On Dating and Romantic Expectations

so my homie Chad and i were having an awesome dinner at Izakaya Naru, catching edamame, frying taco rice and talking shit. we weren't even drunk. we were post collegiate sober and there was a situation that just needed to be addressed. there just so happened to be some dude on a "date" with a well put together asian lady. i'm not going to peg her as Japanese just because i was in an Okinawan establishment and she just so happened to have black hair, yellow undertones and a fantastic body for a 30something. in fact, i wouldn't have even known her ethnicity if it weren't for her awkward as hell, forever alone-- perfect, date who kept saying stupid shit like, "your culture is so cool. you have anime, manga, samurai and the Shinkansen." as this faildate dinner theatre ensued, Chad and i couldn't help snickering, fuck even openly bringing ourselves to tears as the jabrony went on and on. it made me wonder if she was someone he had met without the aid of some small fortune. she was pleasant enough, made good conversation and kept good sport at each "oh i love your culturerrrruuuu" mouth diarrhea this dude kept spewing. he was trying soooooo hard to impress her. rule number one bro: DON'T PUT THE PUSSY ON THE PEDESTAL. she has a vagina, you have a penis, you want to put your penis in her vagina, if she likes you, this will happen, if she doesn't like you, you can't put your penis in her vagina. simple. if i could have been his wingman/lifecoach/mo'sister this is the one simple thing i could impart to him. that trying really, really hard to impress someone, will often fail. anyone can smell fear and this dude reeked of it.

On Exploitation

something profound here Whether it be about celebrity Or otherwise. it's a misnomer to think people are willing exploit themselves. And by that I mean it's not much of a Choice. it's a hard bargain To give up anonymity and liberty for material wealth and comfort. people who have never been hungry/poor will never understand. I read somewhere that people who Aim for the appraise of the crowd Are people who are looking for Something to fill the void from The lack of unconditional love & Affirmation from one's parents. something tells me it's very true.

shiiiiiit

Did it ever occur to you that what you did to me was worse than treason? I was your home.

Aging

Things I Would Like to Hold on to: Youth, Memories, both good and bad, Time, make it stand still, My Dinner.

On Being Haunted

It's about being haunted. We live mostly in our head. There are theories and ideas to flesh out, finding the right words to say, analyzing a gaze, events planned properly, routes taken neatly and efficiently. Till the end you are disruptive, a terrible figure of desire in a dream, and even then the disappointment is palpable. sleeping and waking in dreams are indications of illness. i waste no time and words with you in a seedy corner of subconsciousness. The act leaves me set in a messy motel room, the faucet is leaking, i know this because i am trying to wash my hands. In the cabinet, there are exactly two pink pills. Time measured in packets, i take it because i don't want anything to do with you anymore. i wake up bemused. Sometimes, when my body is telling me to get up and use the restroom, my dreams turn into nightmares. So this nightmare is shaken off. Until from my peripheral, i see you. Someone i imagine you to be, not in an imagined place but in the corporeal. Shock is very little understood. My body knows what my mind cannot. i keep walking. i cannot say what is bothering me. i want to scream. Run down the list of 'maybes". Maybe I: still love you, wish things didn't end that way, should have known better, regret ever knowing you, never want to see you, need a cigarette, need more than a cigarette, wonder why you still hurt me, am angry and don't like being reminded of you. Let's call this psychic pain. Something that wanes with time, but the body remembers, the sudden sadness, the loss. Grief is experienced in stages. The pain i can carry, it is the sadness i cannot.

Moʻo

"Hey, isnʻt that a GEICO gecko?"
"Oh, yeah it is!"
"Look. It doesʻt have a tail"
"Maybe a cat tried to eat it.
Can you catch it for me?
i want you to get me one for christmas."
"OK, Iʻll try"
"Aw, it got away."
"Thatʻs OK, you donʻt want one without a tail
anyway."

for someone who despises words, those were the most
thinly veiled words spoken.
the sadness you could not hide,
with anger i shouldn't have kissed you.
teeth meeting teeth, its violence surprised you.
many times i have said, "There is no reason to fight".

"Reverse Goldilocks",
muttered as i awoke. exactly.
"I know it's not fair."
You sat in my chair, ate my food and slept in my bed.
repeat.
i gave you a key to my apartment,
you never went back to yours.

the nicest thing about Hawaii Loa was the view.
At night i would sit on the roof or your
filing cabinet and watch the moon move across the bay.
picturesque.
Ms Elaine Chang died a week before you left.
She thought you were a swell guy.

i wished you had left me your Smith & Wesson not
your movies, shitty books/music and other things
you could not part with.
'till the end i protected you because
"You become responsible,
forever, for what you have tamed."

さようなら
i thought as you lumbered
to the wrong parking lot.

i have stopped drinking
and smoking excessively.
i do not cry at work,
on the bus,
in the car,
while listening to music
or watching television.
only the faintest florecent
flickers of pain.
in photographs i smile,
i am happy.


Christmas Day, Laundry Room, 1pm:
i see the GEICO Gecko.
the little sucker is bigger
than i remembered.
where a stump was, a phosphoresent tail.
beady black eyes watching my hand,
he slowly
lifts a foot
i see your setae.
i wonder if you tickle.
and he cheeses it--
behind the wash basin.
rats!

On Heartache

A few days ago
a friend of mine asked me if I had done something with my hair
because I '...look different.."
To this I ran down the usual list:
Glasses,nope,
hair is frizzy, nope,
not wearing makeup, nope.
Running out of things that could possibly make my being different,
I replied, "I'm happy today".
And I repeated this statement, emphatically.
Truly.
It's been a long time.

Luz

Turns out that love is easier than hate
and I should probably stick to loving the people
in my life, even if these persons have hurt me.

Revenge as oft depicted by Tarantino and Pak
is long, ugly and ultimately not worth the time.
The pain, anger and sadness are temporary. Life
ebbs between lightness and heaviness and tonight
I am light.

awkward, sort of

Perils of having parents on FB: Mom said,
"Mirina, I saw you went out drinking with friends.
And with boys too( disapproving voice)."
I didn't have the heart to tell her that more than half
the boys were absolutely apt to dress me rather than undress me
and that the other set of boys are just good friends
^_____^

"Angel" - Massive Attack

had a badass cinematic dream,
soundtrack included.

i'm in this mockup of Sacred Hearts Academy.
in my dreams SHA is a large labrynth like complex
that smacks of a penitentiary. the red roof
translates well into my dreams. we are all in
our late teens, congregating in the gym.
there are boys and girls, we have on the same
uniforms, raglan tees and black shorts.
we're all just doing what we have to do,
knowing the inevitable.


suddenly, i realize i have to escape this joint.
i'm opening all these ornate doors,
trying to escape but am being
shot at from the outside.
i move between doors for cover and when
i face each door the view is clouded.
these ornate doors turn into cheap mirrors
as soon as i face them. i can't see my enemies
and there are bullets whizzing past my head,
stucco and wood fragments flying in fractals.
::Cue in Massive Attack's "Angel"::

suddenly this dude comes out of nowhere
and starts running with me. he leads me out of the gym
and asks me to get into a Japanese van, which promptly
turns into a badass bike. the bike is silver and blue.
i'm holding on to this bike for dear life,
i can feel the wind in my face.
i see the stars above us.
mostly i feel safe.

his bike is lighting up the road.
we are driving on a well paved road then veer
on to a dirt track. the dirt is brown sugar in hue.
there are more kids in uniforms stuck at this fence.
it's just this fence and green grass on the other side.
attempt one, ram gate open. this fails. attempt two
trying to jump a fence and then somebody woke me up.

i wonder who else has multimedia dreams.

Having One

oh sweet clove cigarette, my lungs feel incapacitated but the cloudy lungs
they are worth the smoke. puff puff puff signals. now i know why singers
smoke regularly. how else is one supposed be mindful of breathing?

Isn't it terrible that all the fun things in life are bad for your health-
but such is life! bacon= tasty, drinking= jubilation, speeding=fun and
no matter how many strips of bacon i eat while downing martini in my mother's
beamer, i will never crash.

On Floundering

ah one of my favorite subjects.
my endless floundering. mermaid in a bathtub,
odd creation crash landed in the middle of the pacific ocean.
slosh, slosh, slosh.
now i'm drier and have stopped smoking.
this time is for me.

this is my mild and sly return to the blogosphere.
home of my heart for the past 11 years.
i can't muster the will to deaden the itch to type
the itch to write. i hear that the choice to write is a suicide pact.
but what am i to do with no vice?

with my new fangled freedom
i've been blowing up Facebook,
reading a Queen Mary boatload of articles on everything from
physics to fashion, circuits to circus, our love affair with technology,
the legality of state sanctioned assassination and living a life eating bitter.

projects here i come

Mahayana

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110422/sc_livescience/scientistsabuzzovercontroversialrumorthatgodparticlehasbeendetected

Is this why I am dreaming of electric green grass,
the universe unfolding
twin stars and galaxies
nebulas and knowledge
Open Close Open Close
extraterrestrial communication,
packing Aqua Man for The Journey and
acts of love and survival?

Someone once said
that God is simply love and that we are all
moving towards a single direction.  
While I don't know if this is true
It would be a nice surprise-
to be on a grassy knoll
watching the many moons and stars
A quiet peace that fills all space
Understanding exactly everything.

Ain't No Sunshine

Umma,
Can you give me a ride home,
It's raining? Do you have an umbrella?
My Car windshield is leaking
Take the Bus

OK

When I was young
I thought I was adopted

OK

#2 Man with a Box
Sits next to me
You want my box to break,
Don't You? Little Girl
Wants my box to break
Filipino Lady saves me,
I think she's an angel.
She gets his ass kicked off the bus
#2 Man with a Box
Points and threatens and old Japanese lady
and gets off the #2

OK

Rainy night.

OK

#1 Hawaii Kai
Cold and Quick
Fat Fat rain
No Heat
No Fatigue

Casmero and Company
Security Shack
Wave, Wave, Wave
At me. Good Night,


One Million Miles Away
OK
But Ain't No Sunshine

Nothing for me here.
I think Nothing tastes good,
The Artist would agree.
It's not even scary
Thinking
The Ghost can keep me company.

"Engine Driver"

i have a memory of old honolulu,
and by that i mean honolulu in 2000.
so ten years ago when starbucks was kinda
sorta new, i discovered that soy chai lattes
are crazy delicious. one of the very first
starbucks was in ward. it's now nothing
more than a shell of a failed whole foods
but once it had an Island Snow, and a whole
bunch of other crappy little surf shops.

i remember this day because the way
that the sun shines today reminds me of the
way the sun shined that afternoon. my purpose
for being at that location and who i met is a bit
foggy. however i do remember grabbing my soy chai
latte, sitting with whoever i was supposed to meet
there and then leaving about half an hour later.
(i have a feeling it might have been speech and debate
related, before Jenny and Chad had their showdown)
it was one of many of those odd social situations
where i'm either bored or feeling out of place.
on that afternoon i felt quite out of place so i
walked home.

they're glistening like diamonds, go out and find them

we were on a field trip in some apocalyptic part of future tense, subconsciously mapped part of Oahu. this is the beach we get to after a really long drive. we pass mountains that are so green, they can't be landmarks in Hawaii. always wet lawns, like someone over watered entire portions of the island. gigantic waves that crash toward the road, no beaches for miles and miles. then i am instantly transported to this beach. sometimes i am breathing under water at this beach, letting the tide take me, no fear. sometimes i'm here alone at night. and sometimes i am actually drowning, no fear.

this time as i walk to the waves, five footers like Sandy's, i'm not drowning or swimming, i'm stealing diamonds. there are diamonds all over the place, jewelry that people have left on the beach and in caves and trees so that they're not lost in
the waters. i'm walking around and just picking earings and loose diamonds, i'm stealing. there are people around me, and they see what i'm doing but they aren't outraged or bothered. i notice that one of the diamonds that i've stolen look exactly like one of my mother's earings. i place it back in my pile then i walk up the steps of my elementary school and deposit the diamonds somewhere. i'm in a lagoon with someone else and we're digging through the mud with our toes, picking up quarters.

telephone call, wake up and the logic of dream linear narrative is gone.
damnit what does this dream mean?
can't help but hear "Don't Blame Your Daughter" by the Cardigans play.

On Being Lost or Errant, Whatever Sounds Better

despite my veneer of "i don't give a fuck!",
i'm actually a type A personality.
i just threw up my hands and legs,
got drunk and dunked in artificial
bodies of water and laid prone to stare at stars at night.
i have lived next to graveyards.
at some point
in middle school and high school my plans were fucked with
and therefore my self discipline/self assuredness
in certain things disappeared.

if my mother and father would have invested some time
in raising me, i don't think i'd be so fucked up.
however they are not to blame, it's mostly me. at some
point in middle school i lost God too and now the
higher power is teaching me quite a lesson for
my infidelity/blasphemy.

and now i'm lost in my life.
will be graduated after this semester and have
no idea who to become. guess i can only be me,
but my current self is not doing so hot in the
"making enough money to be comfortable" dept.
working sixty plus hrs and making jack squat
for the rest of my life is in no way appealing.

here are the things that i want in life:

1. Time for myself
2. Time for family
3. Time for friends
4. Time for traveling

The other night my friends and i played a game
called, "Let's Pick Mirina's Future Out of a Hat"
and the most viable careers were:

High School English Teacher
Journalist
Journalist
"Dear Mirina" columnist
Personal Stylist
Megatron

Megatron would be an awesome thing to become,
cause Megatron is big and awesome and a good guy
but i don't know how much Megatron eats or sleeps
or if he even has a family. Plus if i devote
my life to becoming Megatron, i'd have to spend
light years doing interstellar traveling, leaving
me no time to have family/friends. and i am not a robot

my problem is finding the motivation or mojo
to put myself out there. i'm a shy recluse or like
one funny ass bitch said once, " the artist recluse".
however as stated before, i don't feel like being
a big ass loser for the rest of my life. do you know
how long that is? i'm pissed off cause i should have
been dead a long time ago, but nothing
ever goes to plan. and here i am
in some strange purgatory- esque existence.
i can't understand the purpose, greater lesson this pain
is to teach me. maybe my head was getting to big,
maybe i did something heinous in a past/present/future life
or maybe none of this matters or makes sense at all.

On Pain

The last time was at St. Francis (for myself)in
2008 for an exploded ovarian cyst. At the time of rupture,
sitting on a toilet of course, i thought it was the
beginning of my monthly cramps. A few moments later it
was obvious this pain was something different.
As i shuffled out the bathroom with this intense pain,
constantly throbbing, slowly curling me into an upright
fetal position or as i would like to call it-- the grandma
with osteoarthritis- i told my bf to take me to the ER.
Normally he'd be skeptical and annoyed but this time the
"i'm not fucking around" look on my face made him move
pretty quickly.

so i get to the ER and i have to fill out a bunch of paperwork
which sucks but i'm admitted almost immediately because the look
on my face said "i'm not fucking around". A pasty ass face,
dilated eyes and cold sweating cannot be faked. Almost
immediately my nurse asks me, "are you pregnant?" Answer "No."
"Are you sure you're not pregnant?" Emphatically, " No!"
Nurse: We'll take a pregnancy test anyway, I'm going to need
a urine sample." Wait, my head is starting to hurt
"We're gonna take a urine sample?"
She'd better be holding my hand.

So after an hour and a half and my urine sample indeed corroborates
my story that i am not in fact not pregnant, the next line of
query is "Have you been doing any drugs?" Answer, emphatically "NO!"
"Please, we need to know if you've taken anything...blah blah blah"
This is really starting to annoy me. This line of questioning
stops once my blood work comes in an hour later and it's obvious
that i'm just in a lot of pain, something that's causing my
white blood cells to be sky high.

Then comes the 20K question, "How much pain are you in?"
Answer, "UhaA lot of pain?"
Apparently i was to use my non- existent elocution abilities to
describe the pain or perhaps i was to lose a bit of
control and cry like a girl to explain this pain. i could do neither.
So then we played the number game, "On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the least
and 10 being the worst, how much pain are you in?"
Answer, " It's an eight". This number of course means nothing
to my nurse who's probably seen people with broken limbs come in
and say their pain is a five.

My invisible wounds cannot be quantified-- so much for empathy.

Solution: A liter of yellow dye that tastes like lemonade,
four MRI scans that show an explosion by the left ovary,
and lots of painkillers.

So i come to the point of this long ass blog and embarrassing
story to say that i fucking hate being in pain.
Pain is acute, sharp, blunt, dull, stupefying, blinding but mostly
isolating. There are no meters or stress tests to show
how much pain a person is in. Despite the cliché "I feel your pain"
we cannot feel each other's pain. Some people cannot even
begin to fathom or consider another person's feelings much
less "their pain". Platitudes are especially annoying when
one is in pain, "You'll get through this. We've all gone through
it. I know how you're feeling." There's nothing like
physical or mental pain to make you realize how truly lonely you are.

Mana

i ka olelo no ke ola
i ka olelo no ke make

in words there is life,
in words there is death.

once i asked you in a drunken stupor if you had great mana.
you paused as if you didn't know how to answer my question
and then you answered, "Yes, i could say i have a lot of mana."
this was one of many lies you gave life to.

bernadette mayer spoof

Whole Lotta Crap

I am sleeping ~~~
Awake!
There are cashiers ringing,
Supervisors singing or squealing
My hands are blurring lines of flour on countertops
And counting bills, making change and bagging
Things I will touch once or twice but will be eaten,
Like the Pink/ Green Tipped- Dragon fruit that became the Emperor and Empress of Japan’s Breakfast, or the yellow soft brie that will be
Eaten their lunch. No Panic, Go Organic!
Next to me is the best/worst coworker,
She/He likes to ring things real slowly,
Always making long conversations and ringing and packing
really slowly,
If only, She or He would ring a little bit faster,
I would be less stressed out when I come home to my Mom, my Dad and my two sisters, friends, barbecues and ice creams…. Yummy Tahitian Vanilla, SHIT!
You are now staring at me,
I’m very sorry,
I forgot to push that little button, and now there is a line,
That forms and winds all along the isles,
You, Sir or Ma’am I am very sorry, I did not take your change
Or credit card, and I blanked out in the middle
Of The Transaction, You asked me a question
Like “How are you” like you cared about my well being,
And I stared at you
stupid,
Like “I hate small talk” and “You’re being way too personal”
I glare at you,
Like “I hate going through these motions”.
Sometimes In these situations,
I wonder if I have Aspergers or some other kinda disorder,
I really dislike, FUCK! I hate looking people in the eye,
It makes me uncomfortable and gives me the willies,
Like Banjo Pluckin, Swamp Rat- Hillbillies, and now
You are ANGRY because
I’ve been smiling but not paying attention,
Like I should be licking your face while I ring up your groceries and be your surrogate
Mother, who came with you free but unwilling.
Would you like to sample some chocolate?
Too many words, and not enough substance is being
exchanged here
Money is really dirty,
My God, is it really only three thirty? I get off of work in only twelve hours. People here are afraid of Canola and Corn,
They think it will give them cancer,
They do not like when their fruits touch the register belt, but they
Pay in cashes EBT checks in Express there’s nothing
Express about the elderly.
Would you like to purchase a reusable plastic bag
to forget in your car home trunk backseat other car?
You ask “How do they treat you here?”
I say “Very well Sir or Maam.” We’re all about team member empowerment here.