don't be afraid, don't be a fraud

There is an old school of literature of the persuasion that artists should not wait for divine inspiration to overtake them, but rather that they should take the blind dive a la the alacrity of the most senseless member of the Polar Bear Club into icy oblivion, or boldly take their work by the nape (your knuckles white under strain, the crisp white cuffs of another's collar under scrunch) and command this proverbial person--this still as yet inanimate marionette doll--to speak, to sing, to spew life in all its glory ("I'm a real boy!"), cold eyes aflutter in fire, the once limp and uninspired body in sudden throes of agitation, ripples of robustness. Fickle and flaky as its make is, your Muse may never make nor save the date otherwise.

I still can't quite place the source of this anxiety, this oppression that still clings to the back, coaxing the curvature of the spine. Perhaps it is only a matter which concerns a better balanced backpack, some sprightly exercise, new shoes.

I was on the Richmond train on my way to the Mission the other day when I saw you, or your likeness. You had just emerged strolling your bike in from 24th Street and sat down perpendicular to me. I looked up from my book and for a brief second met your frank gaze. It quite reminded me of the time, some two years ago, when I was waiting at a terminal gate at the SFO and saw you then, too. Only it wasn't you then, either. I had been nursing feelings of melancholy when my sister touched me on the shoulder and diverted my attention to you. There you were, yards away, at sixteen or seventeen to my twenty, in your high school flush of face and urgent youth. You were waiting not for me but for some beloved or betrothed beyond the gate. What was recognizable both instances, though, were those eyes so earnest, yearning vaguely for something. I recall again the way, say, a bath, or a brief rout outdoors in the rain, lacquered your lashes into dark dramatic fringes (your coarse, wavy brown hair suddenly dyed black in a slick), sweeping your moist green eyes, and I always fancied you were really moved by some tender recollection or unearthed truth.

quite by random today, i recalled a phone call i'd received from an old peer (i do not venture to call this person a friend, as i'd never genuinely felt that any sincere connection was ever established between us). but for the sake of an expression, i will allow the loose term here, in recognition of the fact that we did have mutual friends in high school, we'd passed time in common social gatherings, we'd exchanged small talk and (ultimately forgettable) trivialities. i found it noteworthy that before the said phone call, we'd virtually been incommunicado for at least two years after high school. even when we had been acquianted in high school, i never felt that he'd ever gone out of his way to make a real effort at friendship. so it was quite by surprise for me when i'd realized he'd fished out my number from his phone log and rung me up.

however, i am sorry to report that not much time had elapsed before it was amply evident that the phone call was not one old chum ringing up another to reconnect per se, but a telemarketing call. i soon learned that he'd been working selling cutlery to friends and family for commission and veiled my repulsion out of politeness. now, i don't mind helping out a friend now and then when i can afford to. what i do mind is the sheer shamelessness with which he had to call me suddenly for the first time that i could remember to try to make a profit out of me. was i interested in buying a new set of stainless steel knives? what about my mother? the phone call quickly grew awkward (i assume) when he realized it'd bear no fruit. and in his heart, i knew that he knew what a farce this whole thing had been. i was embarrassed for him, quite frankly, and forgave the excuse he'd conjured to hang up.

strange nostalgia, like missing someone you've never met

i've been back home from school and two weeks into winter break. what does a person do, coming home to no conveniently lined up holiday stint and no fixed itinerary do? this girl mulls and manages to find alternate ways to cave under a self-engineered stress. poised at the start of my second semester at sf state, it occurs to me for the nth time how the time does escape...it seeps through cracks and crevices as you indulge in idle moments, when it catches you looking away for a single unsuspecting moment--that's all it requires, really. like upon coming home to a falsely demolished home after having been away for a protracted Hawaiian hiatus, your heart heaving and your tonsils heavy as your bags drop on either side and you--travel-weary, sun-kissed you--stare dully and vaguely at the mound of mulch where your life once stood, and your neighbor, brushing by you as he takes his pooch on a jaunt, shrugs at you--high-browed and meek-mouthed. as i grow a little older everyday, i have increasingly less patience for these idle moments..for it is truly the curse of the young, in all our unbridled beauty and glory, to merely exist under the misty illusion that a boundless bundle of time has been spun out for us, at our ready disposal. it's a precarious field i've chosen, and i feel like i should be running already. much like the weather, it is an itchy, dry cold that whines for a warm shower, and there is always, invariably, that stitch of psychosomatic chill that lingers well into the sun-flooded summer.

time over time--over coffee, over car rides--my parents make abstracted, faraway talk of a retirement in Vietnam, where the cost-of-living is decidedly manageable, and where they'd be able to live comfortably--saving the as-yet uncertain existence of social security doesnt go defunct along the way. this would happen after my sisters and i are all officially working adults and can earn our own livelihoods. it always catches me off gaurd, the idea of my parents graying and waning away--as you and i will one day, too, dear reader. my parents...the two grand pillars of solid rock who've raised me up to the stars to do what I may, frolic or falter. it is all the incentive i need to feel that if i am anything short of what i can be, i shouldn't be doing this.

My aim from here on out is to write something--anything--everyday, be it awful or not, be it posted here or in one of my dated journals (I've been meaning to start a clean one, to document my couple of years in San Francisco). I feel most alive when I am writing. There was a lack before. Writing was it. I now know what was wrong all along, and I'm going to do something about it.