Tesla Coiling

Earlier today I wanted to go throw myself into a sensory deprivation tank because my brain was feeling a little like this:


Yes, I totally felt like a mental Tesla Coil! I was having one of those moments where I was comparing my life to everyone else's more amazing and awesome life. The comparison game left me feeling agitated because I don't own a house, my car is 11 years old, and I have no cute spring clothes... and those are just the first three things I was getting worked up about.

Sound trivial to you? Well, maybe it is. But I know I'm not the only one who goes through this. I guess I was just having a moment where I felt less than, where I felt like I should be achieving something that I'm not, and in our world, achievement = material things.

I felt like I needed to distract myself from such thoughts so I made the mistake of turning on MSNBC to see what was happening in the world. Why didn't my guardian angel stop me from doing this? Talk about a BIG mistake! I got to hear all the gossipy insanity that is the spin-cycle of our Presidential election process.

Seriously, what in the world is going on with this mess? I'm seeing $6.99 watermelons in the grocery store, there's more homelessness here in LA than anywhere else in the United States and California unemployment hit 6.2% in March, but, nope, I'm supposed to focus on who Barack Obama's ever talked to in his entire life?

Yeah, the TV absolutely had to go off when I was started saying, "Bitch, please," to Joe Scarborough's commentary. AAGH!!! I think sparks were flying out of my ears!

So what made me stop my "Tesla Coiling"?

Well, I looked over to where my four year-old son was lounging, flat on his back in the middle of my living room floor. He was wearing a Spiderman costume with a pair of cowboy boots and he was staring straight up at the ceiling.

He seemed very deep in thought so I asked, "What are you thinking about over there?"

His reply? "I'm thinking about how much I love you." He then sat up and threw his arms around me.

I suddenly stopped feeling like I needed to go to the bookstore and buy some book titled "How to Fix Your Lame-o-Life".

My life is not so lame, even if I have my dinged up car, no new clothes, and no house in the overpriced Los Angeles housing market. Not lame because I have a little boy who loves me and isn't shy about telling me so. Not everyone has that and I'm so lucky.

I hope you have someone who tells you "I love you" and saves you from yourself too.

The Truth, The Whole Truth

Every personal journal I've ever written is in a drawer in my bedroom.

As you might expect, they record events, musings and dreams beginning back in my days as a 12 year-old eighth grader. The volumes go forward from there to the present day.

I intensely dislike the earliest journals and have come close to burning up anything I wrote between the 12 and the age of 20. Trust me, I've had the barbecue grill fired up and a can of lighter fluid ready.

At the last minute, I found I could not burn them. So I doused the flames with the garden hose and watched the wisps of smoke disappear into the haze of Los Angeles. I returned the journals to their drawer.

I don't know why I keep them. Indeed, I rarely crack open the pages of these journals, not even for a nostalgic laugh.

They are the thoughts of a stranger. And when I do pick them up, the words don't make me smile. My journal entries are both disturbing and heartbreaking to me. Even with all the events, wishes and regrets recorded on the page, what always strikes me is how much goes unsaid.

I am unequivocably dishonest in them. Even with myself, I could not commit to paper the true thoughts I had about most things in my life. Everything is veiled, like I was attempting to win a spot in a coded document contest. I don't have the best memory so when I pick up those earliest journals, sometimes I can't even figure out what I was actually doing, thinking and feeling.

However, there were those rare moments when I wrote down what was real. They are easy to identify because I would later go back and black out the words, first with a ball point pen and then with a sharpie.

When I leaf through my journals, there are entire sections that are blacked out. Clearly, I wanted there to be no accidental readings of my thoughts.

Of course, the easiest solution would have been to not write at all. But you might as well ask a bird to cease it's song. I've been writing in one form or another since I was five. How could I stop?

And so black marks streak the pages.

Paranoia? Possibly. But I was under no illusions either. I was too consumed with the fear that someone would pick my journals up, read them and suddenly realize I was not precisely who they thought I was.

I was afraid I would disappoint. Then they would no longer like me. No longer love me. And they might find a way to use my true thoughts and reflections to somehow hurt me.

A couple of months ago a friend asked me at what point in my life I finally became my true self. It is obvious from my journals that as a 21 year-old living in China, I stopped blacking out what I wrote down.

When I leaf through those first, cross-out free journals, I get a chuckle from the occasional disclaimer I threw in for any possible nosy readers. In one journal, I wrote at the very beginning, "If you're reading this and you're not me, how do you know I'm telling the truth?"

I really thought I was clever with that one, didn't I?

Throughout my twenties, the disclaimers disappear until all that remains is the unvarnished truth. But it was often a truth that only lived on paper.

As I get older, I find it's no longer enough to merely write my true self and then live a facade of that truth. No, I have be fully myself whether on paper or in person.

But it's not easy to be 100% honest with yourself, is it?.

And so perhaps I keep those journals in the drawer with their blacked out words as a reminder of an existence that truly was not living. A reminder to never let myself go back to a place that bleeds darkness and secrets.

A reminder to tell the truth.

Gluten-Free Waffles

Is it Wednesday already?

It doesn't seem like it should be. It feels like it should be Friday again. I've been so busy that for three days, I haven't read anybody else's blogs, haven't read the news websites I usually check out and I haven't cracked open the book I'm supposed to be reading, The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. I actually don't know where the book is. Maybe it's under my bed?

I haven't talked to my friends. We're busy trading voicemails. I haven't talked to my sister and I normally talk to her every day. I wanted to call her yesterday but I got home from work at around 10 pm, ate an organic, gluten-free waffle for "dinner" and then fell asleep on the couch about fifteen minutes into Law and Order.

I'm a little stressed out and I wonder if it shows. I wonder if I make faces like hers. I've driven by this image almost every day for the past seven years. She's painted on the side of a downtown parking structure, adjacent to the northbound 110 Freeway. On the days the traffic is actually moving, I don't notice her because I'm too busy getting from Point A to Point B.

Then there are days like yesterday and Monday, days when the traffic barely crawls. Days when I can safely dig my camera out and take several shots of her. These days are the days I wonder, "Why are you making that face?"

Is she wishing she could get out of that green dress and throw on some jeans? Is she feeling overworked and underpaid? Is she trying to emulate the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa? Is she thinking about what's next in life? Does she want to crack her violin over someone's head? No, maybe not. She's probably just thinking about the fact that there's no longer a classical music station in LA. Yes, to my dismay, K-Mozart is now playing country tunes.

Or maybe she just ate a gluten-free waffle too?