I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Neil Gaiman

A little Alan Menken, a little Charles Dickens, and a little loving till we die




After so many years, I remember this song. “Let the stars in the sky remind us of man’s compassion” never gets old. That is what I seek, everyday. From the faces of the sidewalk crowd, the side glances of the finer-dressed, stilettoed ones, and the hushes, the rushes, the blur of lives passing me by in the hallways and on the streets.


I want to live to be a hundred. And at that point I would still be short of curating the goodness that’s surrounded me. Yes, on a scale from 1 to overtrusting, I am pretty damn naive.* Yet I have seen the news of a child killing younger children, it’s the true American horror story. In my latest travel, it’s thoughtless tourism meting out income to locals. When I was seventeen, the doctors found three lumps in my flesh. No, I’m not dying, but I want to love until I die.


A few times I’ve conjured in my head that scene where I’m held by evil at a gunpoint; would even the quarks in my body— for as long as the barrel targets me— not be drained of the love that I so boast of? Skin and bones, I am nevertheless blemished and corrupt. I can’t be messed up with when I’m hungry. I loathe people who cut lines. Many times, actually, I fumble for the keys to where I stored my tiny rays of sunshine. 
 
There is time for pain, but I’ve also awakened to times full of pleasure it pains me. To be so alive but not radiating it. To be so eager to move forward but wanting no one beside me. I strive for the opposite. I love because that’s the only way to hold someone’s hand when the fire burned everything down, to offer your spine when a friend breaks down from the burden of an affair, to give someone your heart when they have stuck pins to it like a cushion over and over. Love— it’s often illogical and I am not the best witness to testify to it in any court, “but I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both”*.
 
I have Chinese ancestry, and that bequeathed me with tiny slits for eyes. When I was a kid, I’d open my eyes wide in photographs. Maybe I still do, when I look at the world and see the beauty of sunsets. I still say “all pieces are falling right” sometimes, and tomorrow when the sun rises, I will again try “my hardest to get it right this time around”*.


*Sarah Kay references 

I’ll be waiting. Even when the rolling fields shift to gray and my skin gets flaky with the dying air, I will wait. I will see the color of rose in my windshield, and I will look ahead. I know you have a faster car, but I’ll still drive and meet you halfway if that’s what it takes— if that’s what it takes to close in the gap between us. When your hand is no longer invisible and I can see the trim of your nails and the crooked lines in your palm that, as the old gypsy once told me, would fit the crooked lines of mine. I will wait.

~ Ok, so my friend Myka said I should write— without regard for syntax, grammar, wordstuff— my most honest thoughts on waiting for love, and this is all I came up with. Fragments.

NYFA, we meet again. Let’s make you happen.
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NYFA, we meet again. Let’s make you happen.

‘It’s like everyone has a central dilemma in their life, and mine was can you be in a committed, mature, loving adult relationship and still get invited to threesomes?’

‘And what’s the answer, Dex?’

‘The answer is no you can’t. Once you’ve worked that out, it all gets a bit simpler.’

*****

‘Nobody else on the horizon?’

‘Don’t you start, Dexter.’

‘What?’

‘Sympathy for the spinster. I’m perfectly content, thank you. And I refuse to be defined by my boyfriend. Or the lack of. Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it’s like you’re free to get on with real life. And I’ve got my work, and I love that. I’ve got I reckon one more year to really make a go of it.’

*****

That moment I believe Dexter more than I believe Emma.

Dear Love,

Twenty-five years I’ve waited, and probably some time more. I cannot endure long queues— the airport, the bank, the convenience store. The only waiting I can, is the one I’ve been doing with you.

You may be the next guy I date, or the one I had a couple years ago. If the latter, at least you’d know I chose to ditch you because I wasn’t sure about you then. If the former, then know that you are the force that compelled me to ditch all of them before.

You may question the way I take risks. Let me tell you instead the way I perceive them.

I took the risk for you the moment I didn’t for them. I wanted to love you with all the bits of my heart not yet devoted to someone else. The greatest risk was: Will you be not someone else? The mainstream question was: Will you be worth it? But I went indie on you and asked myself: Will I be worth it?

I’m not saying be perfect; I am not. Have the courage to pursue me. Buy me time, flowers, chocolates, or plane tickets— I can’t tell you that. But surprise yourself and you’ll surprise me. You don’t have to read all the books I have, even listen to the songs I do. Come to me in your most naked and unashamed, stripped of pretense and fear of rejection. I don’t have to coax you into being a man, because you already are. Just remember that I am a woman. Unlike you on so many levels, but we are bound to be one. 

And with all that I am telling you, more things still pressed between the lines, I am a mystery. Unravel me. 

I await you. 

You are my greatest risk. Even if dying means not meeting you, I’ll live to love you just the same.

Impressions: Kicking asses with Kim Osorio Kim Osorio’s Straight from the Source is my hip-hop primer. I first picked it up last year at a…View Postshared via WordPress.com
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Impressions: Kicking asses with Kim Osorio

Kim Osorio’s Straight from the Source is my hip-hop primer. I first picked it up last year at a…

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shared via WordPress.com