What We Take For Granted

          I came home from an arduous session of applied Calculus II and, as usual, my grandmother was boiling something in a pot. The cookbook she kept exclusively in her mind was extensive, and she never failed to execute every recipe with delicious precision. Chicken adobo was my first favorite dish but, like all things, that eventually changed. Kare kare took the place of chicken adobo, and then pork sinigang after that. Favorite dishes aside, as a food lover, every dish she made incited within me the greatest of anticipations. “Foooood” my mind would chant like a mantra of Eastern spirituality as the spices and herbs coaxed my nostrils. Anxious for her to finish the task at hand I stepped into the kitchen hoping my looming presence would somehow help the food more quickly reach fruition. The sooner it was in my mouth the better. The scene was a typical one in our household, but that day I noticed something I never had before: the masked tension in the slight curve of her upper back. It was unmistakably there but she hid it from all of us: my grandfather, my parents, my brothers, myself. I saw all of the gravelly, grassy miles of earth her feet had ever carried her over. I heard all of the aspersions that had been spit into her face, simply for believing what she believed. I saw the squalor and filth she was raised around, but not in. I saw the world she knew best and thought about how far away she was from it.

          She was wearing a faded-lime green ESPRIT crewneck sweater, the one she used to give me sink baths in. It was spotted with lint, sleeves rolled up. Floral tsinelas hugged her feet—slippers that would have been thwacking against the linoleum if she had been walking. She picked the ladle up and began to stir the contents of the pot. I knew it was neither chicken nor pork she was stirring, but something else. It was a something that she had been consistently stirring for decades, unnoticed by me. She was stirring love. I saw that the steam rising from the love was not water violently assimilating into the air, but sacrifice. I recognized the twenty years that were selflessly given for me, but that was only a small portion of what I saw. Decades of different colors swirled together: the blue watchfulness that vigilantly guided, and still guides, her five children, my mother being the youngest; the red hope that they would possess the drive necessary to make the most of themselves; the gold and silver shimmers signifying an undying bond between her and my grandfather that promised they would never part, not in this life or the next; the green nurture and the yellow cackling laughter that stymied the various oppressions that bore down on immigrants, both before and after their relocation. The colors brought me to tears. All of that and what did she want in return? For me to wash a few dishes, for me to help bring groceries in from the Odyssey. Above all, the most sacred hope: for me to live a life of safety and of joy, a life of the purpose we so vehemently believed in. I stood there for a long while, unnoticed by her. When she finally turned around, she knew without words why I wept. She came to me and spoke with the Filipina accent that housed the struggle I would never understand but will always be unceasingly grateful for. “You're welcome,” she breathed. She embraced me, eyes brimming with tears, face covered with wetness.  

Helmholtz: A Poem

The rain and its soul
make me complete, make me whole.
Tautological lines
the contrivance of rhymes
mused along by the thing that I've seen through the blinds.
Like a woman desperately clinging to a man
who trusts her with nothing but fists,
my feeble attempts to resist are half-hearted
my lopsided love only persists.
Even when the damage is deeper;
I'm entranced. No way I could leave her.
She pushed the wheels askew,
stole my mother from my view.
Somehow I already knew it was what she was going to do.


Successive acts of increasing volatility.


More surprising.


Though I've always known her nature
as all men do
I don't know it. Can't hone it.
Sometimes her scent is fresh,
full of life's breath.
Other times old,
like a junior college library;
ever-grateful for her presence,
even when I am not;
consistent in her hypocrisy,
like an interesting character of fiction
diction often precise,
other times a slurry, she is never in a hurry.
There is grace in her destruction
like a spider eating her mate
she cares for her young,
she watches and waits.
I wonder of all who have loved her
many throughout forever
Aztecs removing hearts,
commuters in a daze on BART,
spirits floating through the ether,
before and after history.
Within it as well.
As watches tick, we notice, she doesn't.
As to whether or not she knows a master
we answer “perhaps”;
we write poems about her,

she never reacts.

The Definite Doilies

         I did this for an assignment in class based off of the Storymatic. I'm probably going to chop off the last two paragraphs later on and write a much longer story. For now, this is what is!

           Milliseconds before, the water had only but begun its fiery descent from the china cup. It didn't fall neatly, as one might suspect, but it did fall with grace. There were amorphous clumpings of every blob shape imaginable succumbing to the powers of gravity. James Keil thought he saw them moving in slow motion, but he always felt that way when watching something terrible happen. Almost in the same moment, his upper left thigh was awash in a sharp pain that burned much like an ice cube wouldn't. James was a clumsy fool, and a clumsy fool with a passion for noon tea at that. “BLOODY TOENAIL CLIPPINGS,” he ejaculated as he burst out of his chair and violently shoved the round, plastic table forward with his muscular legs. More water spilled from the teapot as several antiquated cups that looked like Chip from Beauty and the Beast disengaged from their mortal coils against the tile floor. And all this because James had been noticeably (in the crotch of his pants) distracted by a large-breasted (he liked breasts) passerby he had seen straddling a galloping horse through the window nearest him. A cold wind blew into the room from the window, crisp against James' face, reminding him of the scalding pain on his upper left thigh.

          He'd been born into wealth, the child of that guy who invented those cardboard things you put on coffee cups to avoid burning your hands. The less fortunate acquaintances he'd encountered in his twenty three years of life had never hesitated to remind of his privilege, and it made him sick to his stomach. Not their reminders, but the fact that they were right. He'd never accomplished much of anything for himself, other than the ability to squat 380 pounds. He knew deep down that he always wanted to be a dentist. He wasn't a masochist or anything weird like that, he just really liked teeth. Especially when they were brilliantly white, like the shattered china that had just been housing his beloved Earl Grey tea. He'd taken courses geared toward the profession: Gum Health for Beginning Dental Hygiene Practitioners, Dental Formula with an Emphasis in Anthropological Roots. He felt fairly confident that that was all he needed to know. After all, how difficult could being a dentist be?

          He discovered the answer to that question during his first dental lab class. He'd had to work with plaque removing tools on a dummy of a head. The goal was to avoid damaging the dummy's gums. The gum regions of the dummy had special sensors that would trigger loud noises and red lights when agitated, kind of like a dental version of 'Operation.' Every single time James would inflict mortal wounds upon the dummy. It would flash colors the proctors didn't even know it could flash. It was unprecedented behavior. Nobody had ever wounded a patient even moderately with a simple plaque scraper. But James did. Every time. He was just too darn clumsy to be any good.

          He made his way toward the restroom in order to do something about his worsening leg injury. He violently slammed into waiters touting platters covered in open sandwiches and champagne glasses, because, after all, etiquette was everything. He arrived the the restroom door and twisted the s-shaped marbled handle with more force than necessary and shouldered his way in. Immediately upon entry an intense wave of fecal odor assaulted his nares. “Somebody had lasagna,” he thought to himself. He hastily ripped off his pants (literally ripped, he was unable to ever use those pants again) and vaulted his thigh over the sink counter, slamming the golden cold water spigot to full blast above his upper left thigh. The cooling sensation that overtook him was euphoric. The water didn't just assuage his leg, it assuaged his entire being. He felt pleasing cool tingles spread throughout his entire body, first as if only the short body hairs protruding from his pores were being chilled, and then to his very core. He allowed his body to relax when his eyes were pulled to a particular spot on the bathroom mirror. In the lower right corner of his mirror, he saw a peculiarly colored backpack. It was casually sitting on the floor of an unoccupied stall. He knew that whoever had left it there had done so intentionally, as there was no way someone could overlook such a large bag in such a small space. Somebody had wanted him...had wanted somebody to find that bag. He slowly lowered his beautifully-defined thigh from the sink, dripping droplets of wet water onto the flamboyant floor of the businesslike floor. He cautiously pussyfooted toward the bag, stopping after each step to ensure nobody was watching him. He didn't know why he did that, but it felt like a good thing to do. Just before he arrived at the bag, he accidentally peered into the toilet bowl behind it. He learned that somebody had indeed eaten lasagna. He knelt down to better examine the bag. Juicy Couture. He didn't know Juicy Couture made backpacks. The entire exterior of the bag was purple suede, accentuated by green stitching. The logo was embossed on an onyx plaque that appeared to be nailed onto the backpack. He slowly tugged at the bamboo zipper-pulls, overwrought with anticipation as to what he would find inside. When the opening was finally wide enough for him to peer through, his heart stopped. Not literally. The contents of the backpack were phenomenal beyond his most fanciful hallucinations (he often did acid). Sitting at the bottom of the backpack, taking up no more than 2% of its available space, were 6 expertly crafted doilies. They were the most beautiful things he'd ever seen in his life. Each doily was at least ten times as beautiful as the breasts of that woman he had just seen riding a horse. What they lacked in size they surpassed in class and craftsmanship. He fingered one and was blown away by the unreal combination of softness and strength in its texture. He noticed the chrysanthemums stitched into the petal-like flaps along the perimeter of the doily and was absolutely flabbergasted: these were the doilies of Princess QueenKing George Mikaela Esteban Gonzales Nguyen SugarDildo XVIIXIVIXIX! In an instant the purpose of his life became something else entirely. Every ounce of energy he had was thenceforth going to be exerted in protecting those doilies with all of his energy.

           Just then, a man in a red suit with chalky white pinstripes burst through the lavatory door. A pin on his lapel read Neville Caine, D.D.S. In a thick, slurry Cockney he yelled, “GET YO HANDS OFF ME MUM'S CUSTUM PERIOD PADS. BLOKE.” That's what these are? James thought to himself. “That's what these are?” James thought aloud. “Isn't it obvious mate?” James was disjointed by the volley of questions. So he asked another. “Why the purple Juicy backpack? Why the Men's restroom?” “I work as a fairy princess on weekends. Do birthdays n shit. And a few moments ago I was takin' one.” So you just forgot this backpack here? James thought. “What was that you just thought, bloke?” “Oh, sorry. You just forgot his backpack here?” James replied. “Neh. I just wanted to see if some bloke would touch me Mum's period pads.” Neville Caine, D.D.S. sauntered over to James laughing hysterically, like the long lost fourth member of the hyena pack from Lion King. He snatched up the bag, and tossed a period pad on the floor in front of James. “One for the road you sick, freak.” He left.

          James sat there for what felt like minutes, but was in fact hours. Or perhaps it was the other way around. He forgets, as do I. All at once he utterly despised both dentists and doilies, things he had been enamored with mere minutes before. Or was it hours. He forgets, as do I. He tried to sit up on the toilet seat in order to think in a slightly more comfortable position, but missed in a calamitous occasion of clumsiness. He felt back to the tiled floor and heard a crack, sure that something was wrong. He felt no pain, because his mind was too dense with confusion to allow anything else in. He sat on the tiles of the businesslike floor for quite some time, broken bottom and all, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Planet Seven

This is written from the point of view of a child.

          Today is an average day. A regular day. I'm not wearing a jacket because I don't need to. I think Mrs. Likens is really nice. She has a nice smile and nice hair. She is my teacher. We are doing math. Later we will make sentences, but first is math. Also we will do science but only after we make sentences and do math. I write out that three four times is twelve and two three times is six and other things like that. Numbers more than one time making other numbers. It is so easy for me. Adding numbers was easy and subtracting numbers was easy so I am happy that multiplying numbers is easy too. I am a good writer so I make good sentences like, “The car speeds down the street,” and “The best vacations are in Hawaii because Hawaii is very sunny.” The sentences around me are not as long as my sentences are. They are probably not as good.

          I am excited about doing science because there are many interesting things we have learned in science in class. Mrs. Likens talks about planets and the solar system. She says we live on Earth and that Earth rotates around the Sun. The Sun is really big, bigger than Earth, even though it looks smaller than Earth. That sounds silly to me but I believe it because Mrs. Likens says so. Mrs. Likens knows things that are real. Mercury is small and red and is closer to the Sun than we are. Venus between Mercury and Earth. Behind Earth is Mars. Mars is red like Venus and Mars is small too. Not as small as our moon, though. Our moon is very small and it makes circles around it. It is not made out of cheese even though I thought it was made out of cheese. I am sad because the moon is not made out of cheese, but I am happy that Jupiter and Saturn are so big and they are the fifth and sixth planets in our solar system. Saturn is made of gas and I don't understand why it doesn't look like fog. Saturn should not be a circle if it is gas. Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto are the other planets and I ask Mrs. Likens to see Uranus. This makes Mrs. Likens mad.

          I do not know why Mrs. Likens is mad but she makes me come outside with her. “Did you think it was funny to say that?” I have no idea what she is talking about. “What did you say?” “I...asked to see Uranus?” “That's inappropriate,” she says. I don't know why that's inappropriate. She asks me what that means and I say I don't know. She doesn't believe me. She thinks I know. I think it's a planet and that's all I think. She thinks I'm being smart. I know she means smart in the bad way. She keeps not believing me and it makes me cry. She gives me a pink slip which means I have to stand on a circle during recess and I hate pink slips. I hate teachers every time they give me a pink slip. I want to dip the pink slip in acid and throw it at her face. All because of stupid Uranus the planet that she said in class. She says it means butt or something. I didn't ever want to see her butt. It's probably gross and has brown spots on it and sags. I don't like Mrs. Likens. She's stupid and mean.

False Epiphanies I Have Had

One day I came to the unfortunate realization my father was a complete whore.

          I was suddenly awakened by the sounds of shouting. I looked over at the clock. The dim green light enraged me in the form of 12:23. Dammit, I thought. I'd only been asleep for half an hour, and I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep until at least twice that had passed. I had to wake up in about four hours to go to my crappy job that I hated, and now I was going to have to work on basically no sleep. Making Tuscani pasta for the Orca whales that ate their breakfast at Target's “food court.” Pathetic low lives. And was I really any better than them?  Serving out the gruel coated rubber they slid down their throats?

I forcefully tossed my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comforter to the right and slipped into my Deerfoams. I walked down the stairs to see what all the ruckus was about.

“IT WAS YEARS AGO, LIZBETH. OVER TWENTY YEARS.”

“DON'T GIVE ME THAT CRAP, CRAIG. EIGHTEEN GIRLS BEFORE JUNIOR YEAR EVEN BEGAN? DO YOU KNOW HOW DISGUSTING IT IS TO IMAGINE YOUR PENIS BEING INSIDE ME AFTER ENTERING THAT MANY PIMPLY PUBESCENT VAGINAS? REALLY FUCKING DISGUSTING, CRAIG.”

“IT WAS BEFORE WE MET DAMMIT.”

“OH NO, WE HAD MET. WE JUST WEREN'T A THING YET.”

“Oh...ummm-”

“WHOOOOREE. WHORE, WHORE, WHORE, WHORE, WHORE. YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE A VIRRRRGIN.”

“OH AND YOU BELIEVED THAT? I WAS A STUD BACK THEN. YOU KNOW THOSE LITTLE MACHINES THAT  FIND STUDS BEHIND WALLS? I COULD SET ONE OF THOSE FUCKERS OFF FROM A MILE AWAY, LIZBETH. MAYBE EVEN ONE POINT TWO MILES IF MY HAIR WAS PROPERLY GELLED.”

I had told them that the high school reunion was a terrible idea. I decided that I wasn't even going to bother. Before my parents could come in from the garage I headed back to my room, placed my Dr. Dre Beats over my ears, and set myself down in bed. As Kenny G attempted to sax me to sleep, I couldn't help but ponder over what an incredibly ginormous slut my father was.

          Update: My parents are actually just inconsiderate assholes. I got home for the day around 7PM, and they were just lounging on the couch watching the Voice. “Hey, Jamie!” How dare my father speak to me after the egregious offenses of the previous night. I had had so little sleep that I didn't even remember having had an erection. Erections were my favorite parts of my sleep cycle, and he had taken that away from me. I expected a fantastically crafted dialogue of apology to spew forth from their mouths, but instead I got a “How was your day son?” After several minutes of employing subtlety and passivity to express my fury, I discovered that my parents were simply performing an acting exercise from a Meisner book somebody had left on a BART seat. I should have known something was awry because my mother's name is Megan and my father's is Daniel. Upon inquiring why they chose to perform the exercise at such an hour, they informed me that they had been high out of their minds on shrooms my father had purchased in an effort to recapture their youth. I slept especially early that night.

Brown Leaf, A Short Story

It's funny how things that used to matter didn't anymore. Abhas laid back on his bed, gazing through the window blinds at the backyard trees gently swaying in the wind. There were thick branches and spindly branches. There were green leaves next to orange and yellow ones. Red, flowery things that were neither leaves nor flowers clumped toward the right of his view. He sat there and stared and thought about how it didn't matter anymore. It was funny because he had made such a big deal of it at the time. Fussing with the girl on AIM, desperately making his case. His behavior had been lawyerly, if lawyers were young, vain boys building cases to impress girls. He had said the things he was supposed to say, things the other boys had said. It had worked for them but it hadn't worked for him. Maybe they had meant it more. Maybe there was something in the timing he had missed. Maybe when they had done it, it was real, but when he had done it, it was fake. Maybe it was always fake. But she had liked it when it came from them. And now she was gone. She was a flash of images—maybe three. She was a mixture of feelings—mostly embarrassment. And she didn't matter. She used to matter a lot but now she didn't at all. Abhas imagined the dead, brown leaves that were surely resting on the cracked concrete beneath the rich boughs. They had been replaced by newer leaves, leaves with color. Their time had passed. She was a brown leaf now. Not just her, but everything around her that lingered in Abhas' mind. It was all now a huge, brown leaf. It was weird. Different things mattered now. New things. New leaves had taken her place. Maybe these new things would always matter. Evergreens. He didn't think that they would. He thought that most of those things would eventually stop mattering, if not all of them. New things that mattered would take their place, as they had taken the place of the things before them. But for now, they mattered. He was content with that. “There will always be brown leaves,” he thought, “and there will always be leaves with color.”

Thanks for reading!

lol

A crappy, aloof poem I wrote four years ago.

Ubiquitous confusion is filling the air

more naivete and ignorance than i could ever bear

they think they know but they don't

they could try but they won't

content in their bubbles of lies and deceit

the bitter track of history. repeats. repeats.

please stop the record, i want it to end.

can't take the monotony of a nation corroded again.

the grotesque skeleton of the demonic machine

made clear to me, but to the rest - unseen.

Grandma Anne

The sum of the tangible days I spent with her don't add up to much. That's just how it goes when you and your grandmother live over two-thousand miles apart. The time we spent together is hardly enough to get to know a person at all. The funny thing about that is, I feel like I did know her. I feel like I knew her deeply, because with all of the fakeness in the world, there's something about true moments that transcends time. Five minutes in the comfort of true, impassioned love; five minutes in the presence of honest-to-God, soul-deep kindness; five minutes of talking about or being near or feeling something pure and real can feel like a stretch of time that never ends, both in that moment and in your memory. Every second I spent with Grandma Anne, or MA as the other cousins call her, was a true moment. Every second is a second I cherish and will continue to cherish for the rest of time. By example she taught me so much about how to live life. She showed me how to live gracefully and graciously, how to love and care in the truest sense of those words. The past few years have made me more cynical, but she makes me want to be kind. She makes me want to lower my guard, abandon my dislike of people, and choose love. She makes me want to open my heart and let nothing but positivity flow from it directly into every person I meet.

I'll never forget our day at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I'll never forget her sitting in on one of my Little Women rehearsals and how she thought I “had my character down much better than the other kids.” I'll never forget how much it meant to have her say that. I'll never forget how she and Aunt Moira surprised me with tickets to see the wonderful production 'Song Man Dance Man' at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater during my last visit. I'll never forget how she always sent birthday cards to her grandchildren. I'll never forget how they were never late. Throughout her life, she always made efforts to show me how much she cared about me. How much she loved me. And how much she loved all of her grandchildren.

I'll never forget how she tried the Chicken Tikkah Masala I brought home the last time I stayed over, and how despite the fact that it ended up being too spicy for her, she was open to try it. I brought home a less spicy version a few days later that she quite enjoyed. That was her: always open, always ready to receive new things from the world. And she did. She received them, and she lived her life in the only way that's really living at all: full of love. She allowed it to fill her being and it truly radiated off of her and positively affected those around her. Myself included. She is a wonderful, beautiful woman whom I am so blessed to have known.

She always supported me as an actor, as a writer, and as a human being making my way through this world, and that support means more to me than I know how to express. Everything I write from here on out is for her. In honor of her memory, yes, but more so in honor of her life, and her commitment to living it with curiosity, kindness, and beauty. Grandma Anne, I'm so much better for having known you. I know one day our spirits will be together in Paradise. I love you forever.

Jeremy's Thoughts After Watching 'Her'

 I wouldn't really call this a review. I would say I have an abstract flurry of ideas in my mind and I'm gonna try to shape it into words. I have 696 friends on Facebook. Two of them are my parents. A few hundred are former classmates, most of whom I'll never see again. Many are people I've encountered once, perhaps twice as I've made my way from show to show, event to event. I could count the friends with whom I speak to regularly on one hand. How many of my 696 fiends will read this? Certainly not all. In fact, I'd be surprised to get 10% readership. Despite the proliferation of technology and the constant connectedness available to us 24/7, many people are feeling more and more isolated. This is one of many modern issues at the heart of Spike Jonze's 'Her.' There are several scenes wherein the protagonist Theodore Twombley, masterfully played by Joaquin Phoenix, walks along around a peopled walkway or through a crowded square, and he doesn't so much as look at another human being. They don't look at him either. They're all talking to someone (or something) far, far away via a tiny earpiece ubiquitous in Jonze's world. Their behavior is no different than it would be if they were, in fact, pounding the pavement alone. These scenes are devoid of interpersonal communication as I like to think of it: two people standing fairly close to one another, sharing their feelings with expression and intermittent eye contact.

Twombley, not too unlike myself, only regularly speaks to two people in his life, his best friend Amy (Amy Adams) and Paul(Chris Pratt), his workplace receptionist. When he isn't talking to them, he's amorously gushing over Samantha (Scarlet Johansson), the operating system referred to by the film's succinct title. Their relationship forced me to question what the value of happiness is, and whether or not it detracts from genuine happiness if that happiness is derived from an artificial source. Relationships are often thick, murky, and difficult to navigate through. Perhaps there are certain advantages to be had in relationships free of strife. Free of challenges and disagreements. But can such a relationship be considered real? Is hardship not inherent to any worthwhile relationship?

The technology advancing everyday is supposed to make our lives better, bring us closer to each other, bring us joy. In many ways it does, but it's undeniable that a great deal of social media interaction is impersonal, cold even. Twombley finds warmth in artifice, as that same artifice cuts him off from finding warmth in other people. Certain people balk at Twombley's love, as many today criticize the nature of online interaction. Amy more or less approves of his love, which quickly drew a parallel in my mind to Donald Glover. He argues that the Internet has irreversibly shaped the way in which we deal with one another. He thinks we must accept that and learn to continue to grow and develop in conjunction with it. He hates people who say “Put down your phone and read a book.” I'll save my thoughts on books for another time. But at the end of the day, isn't it more important to really talk to people, to be vulnerable, to subject yourself to the possibility of rejection? How can you really love something when you own it? When it has no ability to run away or to go against you? What happens if the technology we build advances so quickly as to fly past us and leave us in its dust? What are we left with then?

Jeremy's Thoughts on 'The Wolf of Wall Street'

I can understand why many people hate 'The Wolf of Wall Street.' The deluge of graphic acts presented in the movie is unprecedented, and the previews had no way of adequately preparing people for the level of filth within . The sex is rife and loveless. The drug use is rampant and unrepentant. Irreverence abounds in only slightly lesser quantities than profanity. That being said, I absolutely loved this film. Some say the debauchery is incredibly exaggerated, and stylistically it is. But the thing is, Jordan Belfort and his motley group of friends really did employ "escorts" by the dozens, and for many years their bloodstreams were essentially rivulets of drugs. Scorsese simply adds dramatic flair to a sickeningly real portrait of lives filled with carnal overindulgence. Many of these things actually happened, and the filmmakers are trying to bring us into that world in a way that entertains when it could depress. Never did I feel that a scene went on for too long nor did I feel that a scene was unnecessary. I was enraptured the entire time, held hostage by masterful performances, top notch directing, stunning cinematography, and one of the most finely crafted screenplays in years. While the style of the movie does induce laughter at otherwise serious occurrences, when the movie needs to hit hard it knows how to. There were several moments during the movie when the often-present smile was wiped from my face as heartbreakingly sorrow scenes unfolded on screen. All in all, the movie took me for a wildly engaging emotional ride, and I'm still interpreting the ending. If you appreciate real filmmaking and can stand a lot of nitty gritty, this movie is not to be missed.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

This obviously isn't by me, but  I love love loooove this. Even Aloe Blacc knows Shakespeare was the man.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Part of My CalArts Artistic Statement

A reminder to my self.

 What issues and concerns inform your artmaking practice?

 The issues that most inform my art making process are the self-destructive cultural and
social trends we have created, how exactly they came to be, and why we continue to allow them
to pervade our lives. I am constantly thinking about the ways in which we interact with one
another. I am fascinated by how bizarre and often ironic our interactions are. These qualities are
present in many of the things we do, from mixed messages, miscommunications, and grudges
lasting decades, to “tests” seeing if our loved ones truly care, and pre-emptive emotional attacks
in order to preserve our own feelings against predicted harm. The list goes on. I think about why
we do these things, and why our society is set up in a way that discourages the free and
uninhibited expression of honest emotions. Basic human emotions such as empathy, compassion,
and vulnerability are first feminized and then ostracized, which brings up another one of our
society’s deep-seated issues: sexism. Our unhealthy habits are supported by a culture that we
have created, and the vicious cycle continues to perpetuate itself. I am also concerned with the
effect social media has on our interactions. I am certainly not exempt as I spend far more time on
social media sites than I would like to, but I do my best to think about the things I do and the
motivations behind these actions. It is so easy to create and wear virtual masks, choosing to
showcase only the most extravagant aspects of our lives or choosing to forego identification
altogether. This kind of anonymity allows people to interact online with a level of cruelty and
viciousness that should have no place in modern society. I like to think that many of these
behaviors are contrary to human nature, but that view is contradicted by the fact that humans
have, indeed, created them. This monster of a paradox is a major force driving me forward in my
desire to create art.

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          What they did on Fridays was never a waste of time. Most adults would disagree with them on that, but they didn't care about the opinions of adults. They were young, they were flippant, and they all had parents willing to waste hundreds of dollars on movie tickets and popcorn. Stupid parents. Sometimes the kids actually used their parents’ money as intended. But not always. JT and Krista were always buying condoms and learning how their bodies worked between the dumpsters behind the theater they all felt was their home away from home. One Friday Krista bent over to tie her shoe and banana flavored lubrication fell out of her shirt pocket and onto the oddly styled carpet of Century 25. The carpet that looked like Boy George had farted gay powder on the modern idea of what the 80s was. For a moment the friends all looked at each other, waiting for a cue. Dick gave them what they wanted by letting out a vociferous chortle, and within moments the friends were in various contorted positions reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil performers, attempting not to laugh out moist, acidic chunks of their In-N-Out burgers. They always had In-N-Out burgers before movies. The restaurant was always way too crowded with baggy jeans and hoop earrings on Friday nights to eat there after. When the regular kids poured in after somehow having enjoyed their weekly mindless action flick the restaurant looked like a magnified image of boiling water molecules. It seemed a little uncool to be eating hamburgers and french fries before sunset, but Dick and his friends didn't care too much. They were the kind of kids who drank milkshakes before eating as opposed to after. I mean, what if the apocalypse came before their burgers did, right? Anyway, for a full year Krista's banana lube became the group's favorite inside joke. At least I think it was a year, but time and the things that fill it never really are that cut and dry. It's a smeary, oozy concept, and the joke never really died, it just kind of became less commonly brought up. One day, or maybe on several days, it just kind of stopped being their main thing. That didn't mean that years later after Dick was stabbed to death in a San Francisco Mission district Burger King and Molly was hit with stage 4 lung cancer the joke lost its power. It never really did. Any one of them could bring it up whenever they wanted to and unleash the hilarity anew. It was good every time, but never quite as good as it was in the moment it happened. As the first, and best ever, round of laughter died down, everybody pretended not to know why Krista would need banana flavored lube, hounding her with their playful ignorance. Jonathan, as expected joked, “JT’s banana ain’t banana enough for ya, eh?” It wasn’t a particularly clever joke, but the way Jonathan spoke it warranted another round of gut-busting. He had a way about him, as if every second of his life was a stand-up comedy routine. A routine he was performing for a room of very important people. There was an extreme sense of self-consciousness that appeared to ebb and flow beneath his levity, but if the rest of the group perceived it, they never made it known. He was mirth. He was their mirth. He always seemed to be illuminated by imaginary footlights, egged on by the laughter of his imaginary important people. When his friends laughed, it was as if they were laughing too. All of the laughter came together to something more than the sum of its parts, and it gave Jonathan a vitality unlike anything he'd ever known. His timing was always impeccable, his comments always fearless. It was a wonder he didn’t have a girlfriend. He probably wouldn’t have had time for one anyway, because he was always too busy getting high.

          They all were, because Molly’s mother grew a shit ton of weed. Her mother was a flower child in every sense of the word. She had actually owned a smokeshop on Hashbury before leaving the concrete congestion of the city for the redwood congestion of Humboldt. There was a beauty in the way she cared for her bud unlike anything the friends had ever seen before, and Molly was quite the hashish connoisseur. Purple Dragon, Creeping Lotus, Firefly Fiesta, Tony Danza Bonanza, you name it she smoked it. Every weekend she’d stay with her mother and load up on leafy greens, every Monday she’d head back to Union City, and every Friday the friends play-acted like it was 4/20 and they were all James Franco. The theater security guard, Terrell, constantly smelled it on them and saw it in the cracks of their eyes, but he was far too old and far too drowsy on Nyquil to care. He was a retired construction worker, and he only worked theater security to help fund the co-payments on his high cholesterol medication. He wasn't completely indifferent to the actions carried out within his domain, but the kids were fairly well behaved and that was fine. Molly actually ran a super successful blog on pot, educating readers about the cutting-edge lecherous leaf hitting the market, reviewing every strain for her rasta far-out readers. Only Tony Danza Bonanza had gotten five out of five leafs in the past year, as it gave users an incredibly acute, pervasive euphoria with virtually no sluggishness. She didn't use her real name on the blog, so she was never recognized in real life for her efforts, but the virtual renown she had accrued was already something more than awesome. Molly made a surprisingly immodest living from sponsorships, so she was constantly treating Dick to nice things. They weren’t anything more than friends, but Dick was kind of their unspoken leader, so she wanted to please him. He always accepted the gifts, but he never gave Molly anything in return—not even his namesake, that thing she so desperately desired. What I'm trying to say is that she wanted his dick.

           Evan was always jealous of Dick, because he had Molly wrapped around his finger, and that was all. The fact that he didn’t want Molly made no difference to Evan, because Evan was Molly-obsessed. He would create characters that looked like Molly in the various role-playing video games that consumed his time, strip them to their underwear, and touch himself until the muscles in his left arm collapsed uselessly by his side. His favorite game to do that in was Skyrim, because he could make sexy dark elf Molly or sexy Orc Molly, and that got him going like nothing else on earth could—except perhaps real Molly in a dark elf or orc costume, but he was five years and $10,264 away from seeing that fantasy actualize. It wasn't cheap dating a girl who always had to be covered in Hollister clothing and China Glaze nail polish. There were certainly more expensive girls around, but the best things in Evan's life didn't come free. Before Molly and he became a thing, every night but Friday night was a “video game” night for Evan. Video games were everything to him, because he never felt quite like he was part of the group. He was kind of just a guy who had started hanging out with them, not talking much to anyone. He didn't purposefully exclude himself, he just never knew what to say to them. He joined them on Fridays simply because Molly was there, and he got to smoke enough complimentary weed to try to free himself from the ever-present fear that Molly would never love him. It only ever heightened it. That's irony right?

           The thing about those Fridays is that it gave them all a purpose. They didn’t realize it themselves, but they were purposeless every other day of the week. Not a single one of them had anything to stand for other than each other—other than those Friday nights. JT’s parents often hit him, sometimes with cause and other times without it. He never knew what to do. He wasn't aware of the resources available to kids like him, so he didn't know where to find professional help. On Friday night, he got the only help he knew about, and it resided somewhere deep inside of Krista. Some Fridays he would find more help than others, but he was always better off having tried. JT dreaded the day Krista would become fat, because she loved to eat, and her metabolism wouldn’t be roaring forever. And she wanted to go into porn. What a silly girl. JT was going to make sure to get a real job. Maybe he'd become an engineer or an attorney. Perhaps a doctor. Those were the only three things worth becoming. At least, that's all anybody ever talked about becoming . He felt confident that his 3.0 GPA would get him into a great school like Stanford or something, even though several of his classmates had derided him for thinking so. “Unrealistic” they called him. Whatever. He would figure it all out later and things would just work out. They had to. He wasn't going to worry about it yet. For now he had a skinny girlfriend and the sex was good. It was the only sex he’d ever known. JT helped Krista much in the same way. It was a mutual symbiosis, and they were always sucking.

           Krista was a fiery, church-going, gun-owning, LGBT supporting, burgeoning young woman. People tried to define her constantly, usually as a slut. She dismissed those short-sighted assessments without so much as a hair flip. She was young, but she knew what she wanted out of life. In those days, all she really wanted was sex. She despised the idea that girls lost something by sleeping with boys, while boys were constantly lauded for their promiscuity. She felt a person should either find all promiscuity repulsive or reward it all, regardless of what private parts were on what end of the transactions. If you're going to be a prude at least be consistent about it. She could tell that JT was a bit taken aback by her future ambitions, but it was all she wanted to do. She didn't see any reason to pretend to want things she didn't want because there was nobody she aimed to please more than herself. She knew she and JT wouldn't last, because she knew JT couldn't stand to be married to a woman who made her living being filmed sleeping with men. He was too gentle for that; he was her little turtle dove. He was more attached to her than she was to him, and she knew he would hurt when the time to part ways finally came, but she didn't care. She liked the times they had behind the theater too much to give him up any sooner than she had to. JT had gotten much better since the first time. He'd learned her hills and valleys, and a primal instinct would take over every time and navigate the terrain that was her with extraordinary skill. She figured she technically could sleep around. She could let JT go and spare him from the greater pain that would build as their relationship continued. She could break it off and sleep around to fulfill her needs, but she didn't want to waste any time training the unpracticed virgins that greased up Rock Hills High with their oily faces. There were some talented, handsome seniors who she probably could have snagged for a few nights but, truth be told, she kind of did like JT. At least a little bit. He was a sweet guy. Sweet enough for her to play around a bit in the novelty of monogamy in what would be the only serious relationship she'd ever have.

          Jonathan prided himself in his ability to make people laugh. He’d lost his father to an obedient Korean soldier when he was eight, so, at sixteen, he’d had enough seriousness for a lifetime. He was always trying to shy away from that history with jokes. Sometimes they were contrived and landed flat on their asses, but more often than not people laughed until they farted. That's something most people did against their will. Jonathan was always dressed so vibrantly—reds, greens, yellows, purples. He was trying, on a very subtle level, to emulate the appearance of clowns and the medieval jesters that preceded them. He wasn't aware of this attempted emulation, but he wasn't oblivious to it either. It resided in the area of his consciousness that's saved for things we don't want to know we know. That was the best place for it. It left room for the earnest frivolity to dance around, striving for lightness in a place where intense gravity used to keep everything grounded and immobile. He was close to everybody in the group, but they all knew he and Dick were the Alpha and the Omega. They'd been acquaintances ever since Jonathan had spilled his apple sauce on Dick in the second grade and the resulting bout of fisticuffs led to them spending a lunch next to each other in the red zone. The purple from around around Jonathan's left eye faded as their friendship took flight. Jonathan was really the only person who could make Dick laugh, and Dick really needed it today.

           Dick was a wrestler, and he'd just been annihilated at nationals. He figured himself a young man of exceptional talent after breezing through the local boys and then definitively taking out everyone at regionals, albeit with a bit more effort. He was not at all prepared for what hit him in Connecticut. All he got was one match, a match during which his body couldn't get a word in edge wise. He was being suplexed, power-bombed, and pinned in a maelstrom of spandex and sweat. A lifeless doll would've fared no worse than Dick in those moments. In seven minutes that felt like a decade of domination, Dick's dreams of national glory were dashed harder than a double last name. He was in a light depression that might've gained weight if not for Krista's banana lube. If not for Molly's Tony Danza Bonanza. Most of all, if not for Jonathan's stupid jokes that shouldn't have been funny but for some reason were. For some reason they were insanely funny. And for that Dick was grateful.

          After the friends had ingested a ridiculous amount of confectionery crap and popcorn covered in chemical substitutions for butter, after they had watched a movie that was far less important than the dynamics they shared, after the sun had set and the In-N-Out was full of baggy t-shirts and hoop earrings, the friends began to part. JT and Krista went “off to the bus stop,” which really did mean off to the bus stop, but not before they left one more ultra thin on the floor behind the theater. Molly began the twenty minute walk to her father's nearby apartment, followed like a puppy by Evan, who was pitifully attempting to strike up a conversation. It was an attempt that would one day, much to his surprise, actually get him somewhere with Molly. But that day was not today. Eventually only Jonathan and Dick remained sitting in front of the theater, playfully bantering about girls and actors and food. Jonathan's mother pulled up in her 1987 Chrysler Plymouth in the mundane color of eggplant with bird turd sprinkles.

          “Til next time , Jonathan, my man!”

          “We'll switch it up, D! Keep it fresh.”

          As Dick watched the dull turd stains disappear around the corner of Satomi Sushi, he thought to himself, “No we won't.” He knew they would be doing the same thing every Friday for as long as they could. And he was alright with that. Actually, he didn't think he could handle anything else. At the very least, he wouldn't have liked it very much.