the roof is on fire. . .

there are two people in my life who, in my opinion, fill in the gaps. by gaps, i don't mean Jesus Christ becoming the propitiation for all to have a way to God the Father. not that serious. for all intents and purposes, if quality of life could be a pocket filled with coins, sometimes i find that my pocket has a hole in it. so maybe filling gaps is the wrong way to describe it. maybe they're hole sewers in the fabric of life. deep.

first, kateigh. whenever i am around her, i remember that makeup is so ridiculously fun and that skincare and fashion are fine sciences. and it's not as if that's all kateigh is to me, of course not (we also like joking about how good flamin' hot cheetos taste and how certain random people on the street look like garbage pail kids). if i'm not around kateigh for a while, i end up overcompensating and spending an offensive amount of money with a makeup artist at barneys that uses words like 'fantastical' and wears too much bronzer. with kateigh, i always come home feeling like i am more feminine and like my life is better because i found the best cheek stain ever made.

and my sister. every time ruth visits, she organizes my underwear drawer. everytime she comes and leaves, she makes me look like i'm a very functional human being. i think she must be naturally feng shui. for instance, she bought me an over the door towel rack. i have always just thrown my towel over the corner of the door. sure the door won't close all the way, but where else am i supposed to put it? she also dusted the slats on the door of the laundry room and organized the tupperware. most impressive this trip, she organized my closet while i watched and said "that's my favorite shirt EVER" 15 times. i now spend about an hour and a half of each morning in there because it's my favorite room. she makes me want to always match my underpinnings and buy room spray and potpourri sachets just because. i don't really do much just because.

red rover, red rover, let christmas come over

how strange. it was christmas two days ago and today it's not. and yesterday wasn't either. i mean, i know christmas happened. at my house, there is still a tree strung with lights and ornaments; the holiday display is still up at the front of my shop; the pile of christmas cards have officially become victims of my indecision. . . but it's like christmas vanished. all of those weeks and months of preparation for it to be all over in a blink. i wonder if that's how people feel the day after they get married. six months and fifty grand later. . .

i have at least two volumes of thoughts on it (don't get me wrong, christmas for me was so memorable and resonant) but i don't feel like sharing, mostly because i think it might turn into a diatribe.

so, instead, i will write about how i have a fear of being perceived as a pervert.

at my shop, if you've never seen it, is a perfect rectangle. the "sellable space" is in the front and the storage/office and dressing rooms are in the back. the office and first dressing room (dressing room A) are separated by a wall, but it's not closed off at the top, so you can pretty much hear everything, whether you are a patron or an employee.

it always seems to happen that i have to fetch something in the back when a customer goes into dressing room A. i have this fear that someone will think that it is "more than coincidence" that i have to go into the back just as they are disrobing. don't make me describe what i mean by the quotes (yeah, like closed circuit tvs, discreetly placed holes like in scooby doo, the whole deal).

so what i end up doing is being very pronounced in my actions - if i have to get a file, i exert a little bit more force pulling the drawer open so that the files flap against each other. if i have to pull a size or style from the rack, i do random things like whistle or make rustling noises so to communicate that i am not trying to be sneaky in anyway.

exhibit deux: yesterday, i was in austin with PCH and his family. i noticed all day long that his youngest brother had a rather long thread hanging from his basketball jersey. when i first saw it, my thought was just to walk over and cut it off for him. and then i thought that maybe he would think that maybe i was trying to be inappropriate in some way so i resisted. five hours later, i couldn't take it anymore and just walked up to him and tried to be "cool" about it. hilarious!!

does anyone else share this paranoia (if you are a certified, card carrying pervert, i would probably prefer not to hear about your experiences. . .)?

gold crowns and blue jays

i try very hard to make everything relevant. and that's such a big word for me (i actually avoid using it altogether because it reminds me of the magazine. i aliken it to the idea of irony and ironic t shirts). i have a hard time believing that something can cease to have meaning. i think it's built into the generation x machine.

but the truth is that a lot of the time, things just aren't relevant. my past is not relevant to who i am now, simply by the de facto reality that i am a new creation in christ. my experience and history might be sentimental and even useful to reference at times, but it is not relevant. i fight that. and at times, it's become so hard to center, to focus, to find north on my mental and spiritual compass because i'm trying to get it to point at everything, all at once: my victories, my failures, the experiences that have made me more confident, the ones that have made me insecure, the memories of who i used to be and how that contributes to who i am now.

and most salient here, i feel like i can accept that my sins are forgiven but what's hard for me to accept is that my sins are completely irrelevant; blotted away, forgotten by a fully omniscient sovereign God. how can that be??? and so i carry it all with me because i find meaning and comfort somehow. i seem to refuse to absorb the truth that my sins of yesterday, of even a second ago, are not significant in who i am now. i don't get it. . .

i feel like i'm making it sound sort of pitiful and passive. it's actually vicious. when i carry my sin with me, i am implicitly buying into the idea of entitlement. i am entitled to be less disciplined in a certain area because i have a history of struggling - it's just "harder" for me. i have earned the right to be bitter or defensive in another area because i have battle wounds to show for it. i end up acting out of fear, out of doubt because i feel undeserving since all i can see is the accumulation of my imperfection.

without a doubt, the only thing that is relevant is that God is good and loving and wants to accomplish His will through us for His pleasure and our ultimate fulfillment. it is the only thing that has ever mattered.

if God would be so gracious to allow me to be fully convicted and changed by this reality!

cool and non evil

so, after sleeping on it (literally), i've decided that "onyx" is actually so cool and not evil at all! i even tried making some evil faces in the mirror to see if i could draw out the dark forces. . .and, nothing but angelic goodness emanated from my hair.

hair apparent

i can't decide if i look cool or evil. or cool and evil. i just got my hair colored. the color is called "onyx" and it's supposed to be black with a hint of blue in the sunlight, like a raven. . .and i guess ravens are sort of cool and evil but i'm not a bird, i'm a human. and i don't think i want to look evil even if i have to sacrifice being cool. i mean, i was pretty sure my hair was black before, but it wasn't, apparently.

but that's not why i wrote. i actually wanted to share a story about the best haircut ever.

my dearest friend, kateigh, spent the summer of 2001 in boston interning for a a high end clothier called louis boston. to give you some context: during that time, we, with our friend, joanna, all wore a lot of eyeliner and a lot of black. we said we would form a band one day and call it the 'dirty nuns'. kateigh and i stayed up many nights planning the wardrobes for the inhabitants of the white house and planned out how a soccer tournament, sponsored by the UN, would facilitate world peace. no fighting, just penalty kicks.

during this time, we were also obsessed with finding a hair salon (domestic and abroad) that would offer the most forward, most abstract haircuts imaginable. so that summer of '01, joanna and i went to visit her and decided to have our hair cut at a salon on newbury called yumi. we were to have our hair cut by the stylist, john, who had previously tried to persuade kateigh to allow him to "erase" her hair (a euphemism for "basically shave one side").

so after exploring the back bay district that afternoon, we waited anxiously for our follicular destinies to unfold. a few minutes later, a guy who called himself jason walked up and offered to shampoo kateigh's hair. she left and after another 10 minutes, jason, a sort of neo-james dean, rock-a-billy type with sleeve tattoos and an expansive collection of silver rings, came back for me.

he asked me typical questions before he commenced: how hot do i like the water, do i use conditioner, is my hair colored. . .hot, yes, no.

kateigh would later tell me that she was glad the music was loud because she started involuntarily humming. for me, my toes curled inside my shoes and i couldn't open my eyes.

i can't exactly describe the experience - he basically skipped the light cranial massage and opted to dig his nails and knuckles (and those rings) into my scalp for about 15 minutes. it was excruciating, it was borderline violent, it was, in a word, euphoric.

i don't even remember what my hair ended up looking like. it may have been short, it might have been asymmetric, it could have been texturized. i have no idea. but it was, for sure, the best haircut ever.

onion ring leader

i've been thinking about onion rings. more specifically, how they are made. and even more specifically, how the onions are cut before they are deep fried.

as a matter of fact, i lost sleep over it saturday night. and it's not like i thought about it for a few minutes as i drifted off into a blissful rest; i just laid there, eyes wide open and thought and thought about it. a lot. for hours. like, i used extra eye cream the next morning (actually that's not true because i don't use eye cream. i have a two-fold theory about it. i just wanted the severity of my sleep loss to come across with the gravity that it is due).

to start, i will say that i do prefer onion rings to fries. but until last night, that was the extent of my mental meanderings on this thoughtful and deep fried bulbous vegetable.

i can't say exactly how my thoughts started, but i like to think about processes en generale - how one thing becomes something else, how many things come together to make something greater - have you ever watched a special on how brie is made? or how the US Mint works? it's amazing!!

so i've always assumed that onions were cut from top down, meaning, stem to root. but the dissonance developed when i realized that they are onion RINGS, indicating that they are circular, without disconnection. so when you slice, you would end up wasting the entire middle section of the onion bc you would have to cut through the the root, which is unedible in most parts of the world. but if you just cut the root off, they cease to be onion rings. they would be onion arches or onion semi-circles. that ain't right. . .

so after thinking on it for an inappropriately long period of time, i realized that they had to be cut on its side, in effect, avoiding the stem and root altogether AND having the best part of the onion fully surrendered for its trans fatty acid destiny.

it was a big big moment. sort of like when i realized at age 23 that mcdonald's didn't have an "a" between the "m" and the "c".

rock starry night

i decided to return to myspace a little while ago and somehow, i decided today (apparently) that one online community isn't enough. . .so here i go trying to manage two, we'll see how long it lasts. i have to say that i really love journaling (offline, on paper) so in addition to managing my cyber dualism, i will also try and manage my writing and thought content, on and off line.

hopefully i don't become a self-centered, egomaniacal blogger, those are the worst kind. or maybe i am already and will try my best to keep that under wraps. in the spirit of duplicity, i am also considering taking on a completely different personality for either, in effect, allowing a very small or non existent part of my personality to take on a life of its own. but i do think that would be weird at best and schizophrenic at worst, so i'm pretty sure i won't do that.

for now, for right now, i will just write whatever random and not-too-personal thoughts that come to mind. maybe getting peripheral thoughts out regularly will help me concentrate when i am face to face with someone. . .like a filter for tangential and digressive thoughts.

introductory, perfunctory entry one: today i am making an employee manual.

i've found this to be a tricky task. i feel, most of the time, that i think in a reasonable, logical fashion but know plenty of people who think they're normal and rational and they're definitely not. i have also been called out on some nonsensical, ridiculous thoughts/actions so i'm pretty sure i shouldn't assume that i am the litmus test for "normal". for instance, i have a couple of irrational fears that i can't explain. the first is that every time i encounter a set of stairs (traversing up or down), i imagine myself falling and breaking all of my teeth. my second fear happens every time i go into a public restroom. i become skittish when opening the door to a stall, thinking that i will find a dead body inside. i end up sort pushing the door open slowly with my index and middle fingers, craning my neck forward until my legs become brave enough to join the rest of my body. i try to tone it down when there are other people around. i think this fear was triggered after watching the professional. . .natalie portman goes into this stark white but dirty restroom at the police station and all of the sudden, the door closes to reveal gary oldman (a corrupt cop) with a gun. it's really scary! there's also a pretty scary bathroom scene in sexy beast and about schmidt.

i guess the other unreasonable thing that i think about the jetsons a lot. i say things (in my head) like "if i lived in the time of the jetsons, i wouldn't be stuck in this much traffic" or "if i were a jetson, i could program rosie (the maid robot) to bring me my toothbrush when i'm too sleepy to get out of bed".

all that to say, writing a manual is strange because i have to assume that the person reading either thinks like i do or is willing to on some level. i actually think that's a lot to expect.