Don't Cancel Nini

Tue, 27 Apr 2004

I found a place to live in L.A.
In a big Valley house
My housemates are two women, and Jeana is the master tenant.
She's 39, single mom who teaches grade 2.
She's got a beautiful 9 month old baby girl.

She has 2 gorgeous pit bulls who are super affectionate and love to spoon with people. Oh yes.

The house is beautiful and has plenty of room for visitors, a lovely backyard and a jacuzzi (which doesn't work - sigh!).

This house is almost across the street from my voice teacher's house.

I'm adaptable as you know, and was getting quite discouraged from the lack of receptivity to my well
regulated energy output when interviewing with potential housemates. Girls just don't like me. Girls
who tell their boyfriends that they're not comfortable with me living with them. And I try so hard to be
nonthreatening.

Jeana's house was the last appointment of a 5 day intensive (over 12 houses/apts seen) housing search,
which was made more urgent since my school started. Gas is way expensive.

So wow, things worked out well, and all because I didn't freak out too hard about it, and believed that
somehow I'd land in the best environment for this new stage of life.

Of course, there is currently a pet tarantula in a cage in the room I'll be living in.
And it just MOLTED ITS EXOSKELETON.

Life is funny.

Carmen

Tue, 30 Mar 2004

After more than a year of free floating, mourning and living without much to crunch in my brain except science fiction novels and conspiracy theories, I have elected to go back to school to become certified as a hypnotherapist.

I'll be in a year program starting April 15, here in L.A.
http://www.hypnosismotivation.com/six_steps.html

I figure, why not sharpen my intuitive skills so I can use them for good?

I am concurrently working with Jodi Sellards, my old voice teacher, on building a curriculum/business plan for what we envision as a Vocal/Performance Sanctuary where we will teach speech level singing vocal techniques, style techniques, and where I will apply my hypnotraining to helping students to relax and create unique rituals to activate alpha brain wave activity for optimal performance.

Um, yeah.

Astride the whip crack of the oscillating wave,

CDJ

Mon, 22 Mar 2004


------------------------

I'm stuck again
My own cycle
of explosion and implosion
Heart racing over that
delicate balance between
safety and risk
pleasure and pain

-------------------------

This is Smooth Connection.

-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------

Imagine it Going in a Circle.


This is Connection over my slightly Damaged Wires

-------// ---------//----- ------//---
-------\\-- -------\\---- -------\\---

This is Connection using proxy ports of ersatz quality

---==---==- -==- -==- -==---==- -==- -==---
---==---==- -==- -==- -==---==- -==- -==---


Now I just have a small loop, looping unto myself into
lonely infinity.

-------------------------

Spring brings the Thaw
And the buds of new growth
are small and lonely and painful
but they are all mine

I have always been repressed
and therefore susceptible
to heady waves of desire
bubbling through me
sizzling synapses
hot blood and aching sensation
a heart full of love

and know where to go with it.
Except back to my memories
of when I was beloved
for all of these things.

I am not moved, however
from my inner core, stability and destiny
But that doesn't mean
that I am not doubled over
in heartache, loveache too
Bearing the fullness and the void

How can you keep rolling the dice?
I wondered, about Barry
How can he have had so many failed relationships
and yet still have hope and faith and energy
to risk his heart and tell me he'd fallen hard
and he knew he might get hurt
but he fucking genuinely loved me
met my rage with a sad compassion in his eyes
total acceptance of my pain
he said he wanted to absorb it
and give it back to me as love

Fuck, when will that happen again?
Will I let it happen or do I sabotage myself
to keep company with his ghost
in an idealization of something purified by death?

Yes it must be so and yet
When I open the ports to someone new
Of course it hurts
Of course its not the same
That someone might touch me and kiss me and hold me
and care so much about me
Inspiring me to lower my guard
and set loose the abundance of tenderness and passion
hiding beneath my protective shell.

I'm mostly shell, mostly callous
Which is what happens with too much hurt
Muscles hold the injured parts
tightly and form protective sheaths
The injury never heals unless
these fascia are ripped through
flex again despite the pain
new blood runs through.

What weary mortals are we
trudging along on this quest
Never laying down the sword
Remaining ever ready, ever aware
For the next battle

No questions.
No answers.
No solutions.

Me and you and Schrodinger's Cat.

In the Box,

CDJ

March 20, 2004

Now more than ever it seems I should carve out a
little grotto for myself

Someplace clawed out by the words in my head
Where I sit alone to lament, no hope for me
As all in my circle
fall in love again
and then perhaps my last chance
died in the sky last year.

I'd run off too
I tried
just in leaving the City
forcing myself out of my comfort zone
hoping to rip open the doors
to change

I haven't been writing much
just these spurts like always
little oil wells

If only there were some way or someone
who would fence me in, feed and fatten me
then milk me dry
every word wrung out of me
like those stories about Colette
being locked in a room by her lover Willy
forced to write about naughty schoolgirls

In absence of external pressure and conflict
I forget how to define myself
when not in reaction to something else
I am soft and amorphous
edges and broken shards and pieces
tripwires around my heart

I can't make a move around here
without hurting myself on my own
self defense mechanisms.

Protected and safe from harm
My portable fallout shelter
where I nestle in hiding
Listening for monsters outside
breathing quietly
i can forget to breathe

But it gets lonely here
and boring
In the Safety.
Esp for a girl who used to spend so much time
Being the Edge.

March 19, 2004

some of us were born as ghosts
spirits floating awake and fluid
in different shells and incarnations

we are always familiar
recognizing codes and patterns
speaking back in grokked off phrasing

sometimes our memories
collective consciousness magnified
Hyper animation mimicking life

gone but always there
if you don't believe it
then try
to invoke me
you know how
to provoke me

The samples are exhausted
Market-tested
Time-tested
This product proves its use and value
In unpredictable, dynamic and delightful ways
Constantly evolving according to your input.

My line inputs ache with void.
And I can only feed on my data
for so long.

March 2, 2004

how to tell what makes you happy
when i haven't a clue how to do that for myself
only in contact and in giving
time spent in your space
with your face

in stillness in stasis
is everything all right?
when i've run out of words
because i'm a year older again
smarter, but not really that much better off

when i was younger and i didn't know
and perhaps i didn't care
how fleeting and careless moments are
when i could have been looking at you
from across the room
trying to catch your eye
instead of being a butterfly

i'm grateful for whatever moments
we have when the ports are open
and i get to ask how you are
and you tell me something more than just okay.

Where to cut and where to grow
is a conscious choice we make
Energy must be conserved and not wasted
in efforts which do not reciprocate

Thanks again.

Out of stock,

CDJ

Tue, 10 Feb 2004



When you close your eyes to sleep on the plane

after 2 capsules to sleepy time village

it is almost as if the plane is an illusion

the clouds outside the frosty panel

a willing trip through the neutral consciousness

molecules choosing to move

propelled through the huge metal containers

above the grid above the clouds of ether

landing to new realities

parallel universes



16 hours in the future

but yet not caught up with our present

we're still ahead in so many ways

56 pesos to a dollar

285 pesos/day the minimum wage for most

all the rolex and nike and adidas

and brand name knockoffs

you haggle for sport

to you, it is a matter of 1 dollar

to them, it is 56 pesos

shopping in the markets

you don't want to feel cheated

but you can't help but think

to them it means more

i'd wipe my ass with a dollar bill



i avoided most inward contemplation

knowing the memories which lurk there

a cloud still full of tears

i can wring out if i focus on the pain

so i don't

i don't think much about barry or papa or lolo

i don't think about loss at all

i don't think about missing anyone/anything in the US

not much



i sang some, but not as much

this time i was a talker

improved in tagalog and unleashed the english

i had my mom's back versus all snobby types



the mosquitoes remembered the sweetness of my blood

but i felt the pain less





no where felt unfamiliar

and no where felt special either

i was just there again, in manila

wearing another face over my spirit core

playing with my uncle's new baby boy

the one papa never saw born



2 more deaths of old grand aunts

back to the same memorial chapel

where for a week last year we mourned Pa

I would not let myself cry, feel, or remember



that is called survival.



I've been in transit for the last year

with no real space to call my own

I find there is a strangeness in my travel

from one space to another

spending the first days here or there

rearranging my molecules

readying positions

resetting the center



It is not important, any single day

That Friday, Feb 13 I will be Twenty Nine


That I have no ValenTime.



Please hold.



CDJ

Today I picked Tin up from the elementary school.

I hated waiting when I was a kid.

My pickups were late most of the time.

This caused me great anxiety then, and has since contributed greatly to my abandonment issues.



So I get there early and park with the other early parents.



When the bell rang, I watched as the kids walked outside

The small ones ran smiling into the arms

of the parent who was already waiting there.

How nice that feeling is, I thought.



When there's someone already waiting there

And you want to see them

And they want to see you

And you are greeted with love.



So I walked around to look for Tin

to see if she'd come walking out

in a group of 9 yr old girls or boys



Yelling, Tinderella! Tinderella!

I see her but she doesn't see me

She's walkin alone

Her head kinda down

in a big puffy jacket

Pulling her rolling backpack behind her.



Not sad or whatever. Maybe a little tired.

She's just like one of us, she is one of the Sisters for sure.

Walking alone, but lost in her thoughts.



She sees me and I put my arm around her

You seem tired, kid, I say

Ya she says



We get into the car and I'm about to turn the corner



A kid named Justin screaming her name

Kristin!! Bye!

She looks, sees him and calls back, Bye Justin!



She sits back in the passenger seat

says to me in a dry voice,



"That kid over there, eats paper. He's eating it right now."



I look over and see this boy chewing something.



"There's another kid in my class who eats paper." Tin says, and sighs.


________________________________________




standing outside the barnes and noble

desert mini mall, deserted parking lot

my breath visible in the winter air

as the lights go out at the Bronze Bunz across the way.