A Strange New Place
A Strange New Place
I got to a strange new place today
On the stop right after Heartbreak Hotel
Where I abandoned the dream girl
Who looked at me with soft eyes
In this strange new place
I found a place for the desire to blossom
To bloom without restraint
But the voice it spoke in
Didn’t need to be sexy and alluring
But a steady voice
They spoke of kindness and safety
A soft expression of that flamboyant love
The one the understood
That pain was part of the cage
Pain too hard too dark
For the mind to see any desire
As an invitation to an adventure
Rather than a prison
Of violence and terror
So hopeless
It cannot be faced
What a strange new place
Where the shamed can be accepted
Silently
Quietly
Letting themselves come to the surface in new ways
Passion as unwavering supportiveness
Fantasy as easygoing humor and happiness
This poem is about realizing that sexual love can be beautiful, adventurous, and happy. It doesn’t need to be suppressed. Yet it also can feel the pain of trauma, and be expressed as deep caring and supportiveness. It’s a strange new place because I cannot wrap my head around how it works even though it feels right and true.
Silence Speaks In Terrible Ways
Silence Speaks In Terrible Ways
She told me she thought I wouldn’t notice
When she only replied to a handful of things
Of a series of long letters I wrote
How could I not notice
When I spend an hour
Pouring my heart out
Waiting every second of the day
For a response
She tells me she likes it when I write long letters
But I have grown wary of them
When I know
Most of it
Will never receive a response
She probably thinks that no response is better than a bad response
But silence is a response
It’s a blank check
For the deepest fears
And paranoia
Lurking in your brain
Letting your mind fill in the spaces
With explanations
For why the reason why the truth was too hard to say
Letting The Empress Take The Wheel
My sister and I have this joke about the empress. According to a tarrot reading, my sister needs to rely more on her “inner empress”. What does this mean? Well apparently the emperor card stands for searching out and controlling the world, while the empress waits for the world to come to her.
This actually is in line with a thought process I had myself about being yourself.
Feeling free to be yourself = happiness. Feeling like you cannot be yourself is the root of ALL unhappiness. But how to be yourself is another very difficult story.
One way is a method I like to call, “Letting the empress take the wheel”.
Cardioid Dreams
Cardioid Dreams
The is one thing
That keeps me from showing everything to her
The true me
All the parts I hide from other people
Is the part of me
I’ve tried to reject
To hide inside
To ignore
She says it makes her want to throw up
That some things are better hidden
And I worry
If she knows
How I dream of her warm skin touching mine
Of raw passion like a hunger
That can’t be satisfied
Until there is nothing
Between us
Not even air
I can’t tell
Where her body ends and mine begins
Our hearts like
Two djembe drums
Under a desert sand
Beating in our veins
Our breath
Like the sound of trees
Swaying in the wind
I don’t want to hide
But if she knows
Will she would see me anew
A monster
And would her love flicker and go out
Extinguished by disgust
All The Nice People You Meet While On The Road
There are so many nice people I meet along the road if I’m just being myself and open to people.
When I was on the plane to Napa Valley I sat next to a couple. The girl got really excited when I wanted to draw with my fountain pen because her boyfriend said she loves that stuff and was an art major like me. I couldn’t get the ink of the pen and but got ink over my hands. She gave me her wet wipe in order to wipe ink off my hands. Her boyfriend lent me a pen when I asked for one to draw with. She braided her hair to show me how braids work because I wanted to draw a character with a huge braid. She offered me her chips when I said I was hungry. She was teasing me so much and was so friendly it actually got a bit awkward with her boyfriend who didn’t seem so pleased.
When I was hiking on Napa Valley, I told a couple that it was worth the view but I had to come back down because I didn’t bring any water. The girl asked me if I wanted any of her water, and asked me if I had to cup to pour it into. Then she and her boyfriend tried to help me find a water fountain.
Also when I was in Napa Valley, I forgot to bring a pen with me to draw with. I asked the girl at the front if I could borrow or buy one. She pulled out a packet of pens and just gave me one.
When I was in Austin looking at apartments, the girl who was showing me apartments told me about how Oracle was buying the apartment complex and that she wasn’t supposed to tell me. She told me I had a really nice vibe. I feel bad because I may have gotten her in trouble because when we got back to the office, I asked her about the Oracle acquisition REALLY loudly because I forgot and she put a finger to her lips and looked really nervous. I was mortified.
When I was in Houston taking photos on the rooftop, I was feeling awkward because everyone there was in their own groups talking and they are all from Citi bank but I was taking photos by myself with a tripod. When I got in the elevator, two girls were telling me how they saw me shooting photos. “You got some good shots right? We saw you,” they told me. One girl said she was calling me the other girl’s brother since she also takes pictures. She asked me whether I lived in the area, and I told her no that I was visiting from DC.
When I went to a Chinese restaurant in Houston and I was struggling to figure out what to order, the waiter came up and asked me what I wanted to order. He asked me if I was Chinese, and I responded in Chinese. He asked me if I was born in China or the US and I told him I was born in Denmark and he said it was a nice place. He said he was from Hong Kong. “I can make something Chinese style for you”, he said and made me a custom dish with eggplant, chicken and string beans. I asked him to take a picture with me, for the memories. He agreed and asked me mine name. He told me his name but I only remember his surname (Leung).
I think back to the guy who asked me yesterday whether or not I was a Youtuber and I think I was so busy being self-conscious and embarrassed, that I closed off the chance that he could have also been a nice person. Even after I told him I had 300 subs, he said to me to keep up the good work. I was just so embarrassed I got out of there as quickly as I could.
On Vlogging In Public
Yesterday I was vlogging a guy \asked me if I was a YouTuber, and he asked me all these questions like what my channel was about and how many subscribers I had.
I felt REALLY self-conscious because I AM a YouTuber, but not a famous or successful one and I feel like I’m disappointing people when I tell them that I have three hundred subs. I realized a few things when I felt the feelings of shame:
- People LOVE the idea of youtube, you don’t need to be big for people to be excited about it. Sure some people will judge you but I think most people like the idea that you are trying to succeed and are probably curious enough to look me up and subscribe. In fact, isn’t that what I want? People who are legitimately interested in my journey subscribing to me?
- I’m always REALLY self-conscious when people stare at me when I’m vlogging and I always try to solve the problem by either NOT vlogging or trying to ignore the embarrassment. I realized that there is a third better option. Any time I’m feeling embarrassed, I should just feel the feelings until the right path becomes clear to me. Usually, I feel so uncomfortable I will do ANYTHING to avoid the feeling, but I should just embrace it as I should do in any uncomfortable situation.
Tactics For Sleeping In A Hotel Room
I love love love traveling but one thing I cannot stand is sleeping well in hotels.
Hotels rooms always feel:
- Too stuffy somehow, not enough circulation (I hate that you cannot open the window)
- Too cold
- The mattress doesn’t feel firm enough
- Blankets aren’t soft or warm and fluffy (they are thin and scratchy)
I strategized last night to get the best nights sleep and here are the things I did:
- Ate dinner in the lobby where the air circulation was better and feels like more fresh oxygen
- Turn the heat up as high as it would go (78 degrees F)
- Made the bed as comfortable as possible moving the blankets and pillows around to create a nice nest
- Took a shower, then went back down to the lobby to unwind
- Feel asleep in the lobby then went back to the room to sleep
I feel like this actually was a REALLY good routine but I didn’t sleep well because the spicy wings I ate the day before made my stomach uncomfortable. I’m going to try to see if tonight I can fall asleep like in a coma.
The Attractiveness Challenge
I’m working on discovering and developing my own attractiveness. Just to clarify:
- Attractiveness is not about finding faults, it’s about understanding your most beautiful self and letting yourself grow into that version of yourself. It’s not about imagining other people and wishing you were like them.
- Attractiveness is very personal. It should be how you want to look to feel like yourself and feel confident. It can match societal versions of beauty but does not have to.
I discovered an exercise that can help:
- Stand in front of a full-length mirror
- Remove as much clothing as possible, naked if possible
- Stand straight and adjust your body to find the most attractive posture
- Note any other areas that need adjusting, skin, hair etc. in order to reach peak attractiveness
- Once you find your baseline (just standing straight), try different poses
- This is PARTICULARLY good at detecting problems with posture
- You can take this practice into ordinary life by imagining you are naked, it’s a more natural mentality for intuitively good posture and can make you feel more open and confident
This is an interesting idea, to be naked first because I think it follows the idea that I have with learning in general. You should always start with the basics and move upward. In attractiveness, you must first find your attractive yourself naked before finding your attractive self with clothes on. Just like with any other learning technique, clothes and other accessories (like makeup) actually distract from you seeing the lowest most basic level of yourself. You are the MOST natural and yourself when naked, so it makes sense to start there.
My initial thoughts:
- The MAIN area that is keeping me from being my most attractive self is the posture of my neck and shoulders. My head is jutted forward making my chin weak and shoulders rounded forward, making my stomach stick out.
- I may need to cut my hair since it is too much for the features of my face and makes my features look duller.
- I have other minor areas of posture that need to be adjusted and other grooming things I may want to do.
- This exercise is GREAT for feeling confident in your own skin, I noticed when I focus on improving my own posture, I open up my body instead of hunching and feel more confident.
- I don’t actually need to get more fit and muscular like I always think I do. I just need to strengthen my back and core so I can naturally maintain a better posture.
This seems to work mostly for your body though, and not with your face. My intuition tells me that the biggest tool for facial symmetry is just finding ways to relax your face but I’m pretty lost in that area.
Onwards to a better-looking future!
What If It Wasn’t Real
What If It Wasn’t Real
She used to message me and beg me to get on to play
I thought she needed me then
Loved spending time together
We would joke
And talk about life
Little things
These days she plays
Without me
It’s me who asks
And she reluctantly accepts
In the game, she’s all anger and frustration
She hates the game
She hates the teammates
She hates me
And she hates herself
She denied that she ever had fun with me today
Says she can’t remember the last time we played
That I annoy her
That we need to win if we play
That we just don’t work together
“I like small talk,” she says about her new friends
“We are too busy asking about favorite colors”
“For me to be mad”
I remember a time we asked each other our favorite colors
I wonder if it was less special than I thought
Or if her new friends are more special than me
Its doubt that destroys love
Not hate or anger
Doubt eating away at a foundation so strong
It promised forever
Today I worry
If I left
Would she even notice
Over the laughter
Of her new friends
This poem is about feeling like what you thought you both cherished, only you actually cherished. That there wasn’t a connection at the level that I originally thought.
If that is actually true, I don’t feel heartbroken. Only depressed. So incredibly disappointed that everything was not as special as I thought it was. It takes me back to my dark places, wondering if anyone could truly love me.
Part of me knows it’s more complicated than that. That there is still hope for us. Still hope for me.