Pushing and...

...pulling.

Push an' pull.

It's how our interactions work. We give, someone recieves.

They give back, we recieve, and we work together, pushing and pulling.

I feel like today I was pushing when I should have been pulling. Like the blood in my veins was flowing in the wrong direction.

It's easier to roll a stone downhill than uphill.

Finger traps can only be undone when you move the fingers closer together.

Today is a day where I should have been pushing.

There was no real finger trap today, no drama no negativity.

Nothing I really needed to overcome.

But I feel like I should have stayed quiet, and watched from afar.

Instead of trying to push my way into things,

I should have been pulling in the essence of what was around me, the conversations, the people, the atmosphere.

If you push too hard, someone can pull you and you can fall.

If you push too hard against a wall, you can even end up pushing yourself backwards.

Away from it.

Who was pulling when I was pushing?

Should I have been pulling today?

Or should I have stayed still and listened to your voice?

I'm just a kid.

I'm just trying to find the answers for myself.

***

I had a dream.

There was a deserted mall. 8 floors, circular. Boxes littered the walkways, filled with products and toys that no one would really ever need; clothes that no one would buy. Lawn chairs, umbrellas, leftovers of a summer sale gone wrong, and even the leftovers from the previous winter. People wanted to leave. Move their unpurchased merchandise. Try to find someone who might be interested in a swimming pool fit only for a baby sea lion. The stuff of dreams. Maybe the owners had thought that someone would be interested in the dream, the ideal; and that by purchasing this stuff, one would be that much closer to living the dream.

The stuff only ballers can really get to.

And there I was with friends. No-faced friends, but friends nonetheless, picking and scrounging through the leftovers of what could have been another mans table scraps. The crumbs of biting into reality.

Sifting through the trash, we eventually made it to the top floor.

A man had beaten us to the top. But then again, he had probably been there for a while.

A raggedy face covered in whiskers, curtained by oily hair asked me if we had been here long, and what we had found.

I replied that our visit was short, and that we would be leaving soon. His voice reminded me of someone truly only concerned for our benefit and safety. To impose on him wouldn't be nice at all, and I felt guilty about loving what I could see; for the sunroof at the top illuminated the decaying infrastructure and made the whole mall seem serene.

The man stood up.

He had the body figure of something along the lines of a spider monkey. The sunken eyes hovered over me and each of my friends before he barked, with a voice unlike the one I had just heard, that everything in the mall belonged to him, that this was his domain, and that we were to give back everything that didn't belong to us, that wasn't wanted, and leave.

I said that I didn't want to, and he reached for my bag

I struggled, pushing and pulling until he became enraged, and proceeded to jump around the mall; literally leaping from wall to wall.

At that moment the beautiful sky had disappeared and the sunroof became full of clouds. The mall instantly became intimidating, mysterious, and forboding.

Each time the light would flicker, a friend would be missing, snatched up by the mall master.

As we made our way down, we were continuously hindered by odd obstacles and junk. The man's now-booming voice that reverbereated off of the walls continuously reminded us that he needed everything back, that he wouldn't stop until he got everything back and that he would kill all of us if he had to.

We made it back to the bottom only to find the entrance blocked, and a large creature in front of us.

A chicken.

Oh shit.

White and green, and big enough to potentially drop kick all of us, it chased us around the front of the lot.

We managed to kill it, beating it over the head with a crowbar and a sledgehammer as it chased after us.

And all was calm.

I was in a store when she came in.

So pale to the point where she was grey.

Seemingly young enough to be one of my cousins.

It might have been nice to talk to her if the situation wasn't interrupted by the screams of "She's a zombie!"

They had been let loose into the mall. Just a handful. But they had slowly been eating at those who were living. And those who were bitten didn't become enraged or bloodied. Rather, they became grey, slow, lifeless, and still able to speak.

This girl begged that we help her,

that we let go so that she could

play with us,

spend time with us,

eat us.

My friends urged me to kill her, to be done with it before we had any chance to think again. They handed me the sledgehammer, told me to hit her over the head, as hard as I could.

I pulled back, and reached over my head.

Hammer in hand.

Duality filling me up, overflowing me.

Tearing me apart.

"Kill her, she'll eat us if you don't."

She was old enough to be my cousin, my family.

Her eyes had not lost color. They looked at me, helpless.

Her mouth was not. Acrid, stinging words that belied her grey, creepy complexion.

"Please let me go, I am so hungry, please... please.... help me... don't kill me..."

I swung the hammer.

It bounced off her forehead.

She cried out in pain.

I had hesitated.

She opened her mouth to speak again.

Before she could speak again I swung down, harder, and harder over and over again, eyes closed until I heard a crack.

I opened my eyes and noticed a dent, like that of a watermelon, forming on her forhead, growing larger and larger with each hit.

It wasn't until I noticed that there wasn't anything recognizable on the small zombies' face that I stopped.

I ran.

I ran away, up floors, and down floors until I made it to a small room.

Who am I to decide what lives and what dies?

What had I done?

It begged for its' life.

Where do you draw the line?

I heard people walking down the hallway. No voices. A slow laboring, funeral march.

As I poked my head out the door, the sea of grey made my stomach turn.

I ran. Ran up the stairs, away from the zombies.

Doing whatever I could to escape.

Even if it meant

waking up.

***

Word.

I'm just sifting through the Mall Master's junk trying to run away from those m-fin zombies.

I learned...

...a lot today.

I think.

I opened my eyes a little and saw the ocean.

I feel humbled, and yet I feel like I'm a part of something bigger.

I sometimes worry about us, but what happens, will happen.

I know what I feel though, and I know how I feel towards you.

No one ever said life was going to be easy.

Mm.

I am not wise, I still have much to learn.

Mm.

I have only begun to swim.

You burden...

...with your generosity.

I've been reading A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee,
(I finished Native Speaker last week)
and both books have brought up interesting ideas to me.

Gesture life? Gesturing all throughout our lives?

Something's gotta give, one of us has gotta win.

Sorry. Maybe I'll complete this later.

As I was driving...

...a lot of things came in and out of my head.

If I didn't have my hand on the steering wheel I would've tried to write some of these thoughts down.

So a few things have been bouncing around in my head, one reoccurring theme continues to be this "rok" thing... the responsibility of (or that comes with) knowing. When we know about something, we become, somewhat, responsible, or connected to what we've just found out.

This brings to question the ideas behind lies and truth. Let's assume that a truthful statement is a statement that is, not false, or valid, and that the validity relies on the real-ness of the statement based upon other conjectures/assumptions we have that buttress it.

Whereas,

A false statement would be a statement in which the validity/realness is not very well supported, or not supported at all. In essence, a lie. (DUH)

But, when we don't bring in assumptions/conceptions or anything else into the picture, and just have the statement itself, most people tend to accept it as a truth. And even if they question, false premises can be created to feign the legitimacy of the original concept.

In this sense, a lie exists as a lie, only to those who know it is a lie, and not the truth.

Does that make sense?

Odd sortof idea, changes the way I think about lying and being truthful.

But I guess that was brought into question a little bit last night/today as I was driving.

For a while I had said to myself, let's always be honest. Then it changed to, let's always be honest unless we need to hold back the truth from people. And then it evolved into, let's be honest, unless we need to lie for certain benefits, because some people cannot take or handle this responsibility of knowing.

And now, I'm not so sure where I stand about this.

Next thing... Beauty.

A friend was talking to me last night, and this person said that if he/she could have anything in the world it would be a perfect body because even if they weren't beautiful on the inside, they could be beautiful on the outside.

Certain things make my stomach hurt, or feel weird when I hear it. When I get insecure about my girlfriend, my stomach hurts, when something bad happens or there's a lot on my mind, my stomach hurts. And not like a, stomach virus kind of hurt, but just a small little feeling, that isn't good.

And this is the same feeling I had last night when I read what my friend had said. My friend had also said that models make her/him feel bad, that he/she gets jealous of them and their figures and their beauty.

Is there really something wrong with the way that we are? Is there something wrong with my friend? Is there something wrong with me?

I ask myself this a lot when I'm deep in my thoughts, convinced that no one else in the world has ever or might have thought of these things. I know I'm wrong, but when you're drowning in the ocean your first thoughts aren't necessarily worried or aware of someone else that might also be drowning in a totally different sea.

Does anyone know the Korean fairy tale/fable about the frog who lives in the well? He thinks he's the king, and there's no other place in the world that can compete. He swims around in the water, and can rest in the sun on a rock. However, a turtle comes by, and sees the Frog. The Frog boasts that he is the king of this "sea." However, the turtle tells him that there is a whole MOTHAFUCKIN OCEAN out there (...ha...ha...).

Maybe we're all just a big mix of frogs and turtles. I like to see myself as a turtle, (Self-righteous? We'll get to that soon, I have ideas about that as well) mainly because I look around me and I keep thinking, I hope these people want better for themselves, and want more than just this.

Recently I've been telling kids who are applying to college to "get the fuck out of here." I think it's very relevant and separates the frogs from the turtles. I don't mean to narrow the issue by constricting it to college. However, a lot of people just, limit themselves by setting a standard or an example to reach for. They become to comfortable with their surroundings and would rather opt to just, "whatever" instead of becoming in charge of their own personal growth and become aware of the ocean instead of attempting to live like a king in their own well.

So, get the fuck out of here. In a good way. See the sea, see the ocean, know that you're not just a frog in a well. But if you're really comfortable living as a king of a well, Okay. That's fine. I have no right in trying to get a frog to swim in an ocean. But i guess, in a way, because of "rok" I feel somewhat obliged to tell people that I know about an ocean that does exist out there.

Meh.

Self-righteousness. I think is so weird. It seems like a misdirected form of confidence. Both the frog, and the turtle could be self-righteous. However, the frog seems to be the self-righteous one, convinced of his own kingship, while the turtle is still humble enough to admit that the sea is mightier than he is, and that he just swims within it's power.

Am I being self-righteous? or confident?

And is that what may or may not be "wrong" with me?

In Genesis 1:31, it says, clearly that:

³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

It was VERY GOOD. We are all God's creations, therefore we are, very good.

I mean we could get into a whole other argument about religion and the validity of christianity based upon it's premises, realness and ideas that back it up. But meh. It's a truth until we find out that it's a lie.

But, this is why I tell myself, and I tell people, that there is nothing wrong with the way I am, with the way we are, with the way you are.

It's only our own perversions and misdirections of our emotions and feelings that lead us (and when I say us I mean people, I just read an article about some guy who raped a four year old... sigh.) to commit "crimes" (in quotes because these are derived from ourselves, laws [very legitimate] based upon human nature and the preservation of certain human truths we hold dear to ourselves).

Mmmm.

It's up to us to decide what we think is beautiful, but we shouldn't let it limit ourselves, nor should we belittle ourselves in pursuit of what we think is beautiful. There's nothing wrong in trying to better yourself in a way you think fits you. Just don't limit yourself.

God has a plan for us, but whether or not you believe that doesn't mean you don't have free will. Take it and use it. Whether it's your own glory, helping others, or the Glory of God, do something.

Keep on swimming, I think. Make it to the ocean, see it's vastness, don't squint your eyes so that you lose sight of the world around you. Keep on swimming. There's nothing wrong with you.



*****

Endnote: This was very theraputic for me. I'm actually smiling. Getting this all out makes me feel a little bit lighter, which is one reason why I don't necessarily mind who read this. It's public for those who happen to stumble upon it, but I like this for my own personal records as well =]
KCool. Have a good day everyone.

I've had two...

...dreams recently. One last night, and one a few nights ago.

The dream last night was this: First, there was a small show, a metal band played, I moshed. Nice audience. I was supposed to play drums for a band (that might be getting together this semester). They didn't tell me what songs to learn, and my drumset was crap. So we left it at that. Skipped ahead to my highschool (or skipped back?): I'm in my science building, walking around, seeing old faces. I head over to the library to study for math, or something. Once I'm there I see a lot more people, professors, etc. Some family friends approach me, and I joke with them. They respond accordingly. Soon I'm in a schoolbus, with a lot of people that I know. People in the back begin a card game, the teachers hear them plotting it, and it comes to a stop. The next thing that happens is We arrive at a building (presumed to be in NY, although it looks like a Korean building [as in, a building that would exist in Korea/Seoul instead of New York]). As we walk in, there's a nice welcoming sign, and we head down two flights of stairs, walk through a washing/locker type room, and enter into a large auditorium. It's nice and white, has a few pillars. Greek style architecture. Nice white chairs, and instead of where a stage should be, there's a railroad track with five cars on it (small railroad track, think carnival ride). Soon people started coming in, (apparently it was my birthday). So I sat in the front row, and watched as some friends got onto the train and began a skit. There was a friend sitting to my right, and a girl sitting to my left, who had apparently planned everything, even though I didn't know her. As the skit went on, the train went into operation and took them behind the stage. There behind the stage, they were presented with odd situations in which to react to. Those who reacted "incorrectly" were killed, within that situation. Less gruesome than Saw, but oddly creepier when you think about beauty being around a life and death situation. (I mean I guess both life and death can be beautiful but we can talk about that later). That's blurry, but that was the gist of it. All of a sudden this girl hugged me from behind, and I thought "Oh this is nice!" and then she started making out with me, and I had to push her off because I had a girlfriend, and I kept telling her to stop nicely, but she wouldn't so I just got up and left. Soon a police investigation was initiated to find the people who had died in that building. Around this time, I guess there are riots going on, because some people tried to gun down a kid. He escape with some people (and me) trying to protect him. We led the gunners to the building and got onto the train. One person found a way to beat the system, by not picking either decision. (apparently the key was to pick love when you felt hatred, and supposed to hate when you felt loved in the situation). The place began to flood (the situation room[s]) and we escaped while the gunners died. As we walked out of the building, nothing looked different; except for the welcoming sign at the entrance of the building. it was night and I had to study for a math test. I drove away, ran a red light, got pulled over by the cops, realized I didn't have my permit on me, and then decided to wake up.

Mmm.

The other dream (a few days ago) was interesting. It turned into a nightmare towards the end.

I'll make this a little shorter. Marching band competition at my highschool (which had blended with my college campus) was in the gym right next to the library. In the library people were there socializing and studying. Family friends showed up, one of them was coming here. I introduced her to Pastor Ron, and then we drove towards my dorm. I called Tina to let her know I was almost back but couldn't speak for some reason. As I walked up, around one of the dorm buildings to mine. I saw an old lady dragging a dead body, and a severed head (belonging to the body, I presume) into "her" dorm building. We made eye contact, and I kept walking. As I neared a bend in the road, I saw her appear on the ledge above me. Straight and solemn faced, she pulled out a sword and jumped down at me. (This is where it gets kinda cool, because this is one of the dreams where I had full control of what was happening. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was scary... this old lady.) I tried to talk to her out of it, but she kept on approaching me, so I pushed her into a river, froze the river, and then killed her. I jumped up to fly out of there, and as I took to the skies I noticed three little kids, doll-like flying near me. I went over to them and noticed they had knives and were plotting to kill me. In turn, in defense, I grabbed one of their knives and procedeed to kill them. As I cut them, cotton came out of them, for in the end they were just dolls and not actual people. I woke up at this point. I think. That what was so scary was the notion of people trying to kill me, and my lack of reluctancy to defend myself. Ionno.

I wanna turn these into short stories. I've always liked short stories better than novels. You have fewer pages to present something just as interesting. In a short amount of time, you present people, characters, settings and then develop them within just a few pages.

Maybe I'll try to write this summer...

More to come later...
Don't steal my dreams please =]