The proof is in the Pudding May he rest in peace....or simply cease

After long days of traveling, a plane trip or two, a change in habitat, and a vital imbalance in PH level of Oregonian water, Dino, the beloved beta, passed away sometime last night. While peacefully barrying him next to a puddle of rain water in the back yard, I reflected on how much I have learned by having him in my life. There are those of you who will read this and laugh at the absurdity of actually caring for a fish, but I do and there is something to be said about that.

I have come upon the basic truth that value lies where you rest it. Everything is meaningless and worthless until you take the chance of bestowing it with some focus. For instance, Dino was a fish whom I could have easily bought, fed, and stuck on my desk, never worrying or caring about his existence and just understanding that he wont live long and that fish are pretty emotionless, soulless creatures who are oblivious to there surroundings. Isn't that how most of us see fish? But under the circumstances of buying Dino to fill our dorms need for a pet, I decided that I would see what happens when you learn to love a fish. I would play with him, talk to him, watch his mannerism, assign personalities and moods to him, and in general, treat him like I would a dog or cat.

The result: I know that Dino was alive and had a life. I cared about if people recognized him, I took pride in his feeding schedule, I noticed he loved prolonged eyed contact, and that music made him swim faster. He especially liked Led Zep played really close to his water because his gills would slow down and he would swim in circular patterns. People laugh at all this, but the point is, I don't really like fish. I like connections.

So Dino got sick, and I got worried. Dino died, and I cried. My Dad asked me if I was emotionally attached to him as I made his plot in the ground and thats when I knew: it wasn't the fish I was sad over, it was the loss of a relationship. Now I wonder if this could happen with anything? Some people find talking to animals absurd while others walk on the brink of complete isolation except for their mammalian counter-parts. Is it that investment makes all the difference? I made a concious choice to love something that was almost an object, and in it I found fulfillment.

As I hold back tears that seem almost foolish to myself, I question whether it was worth it. Had I treated him like just another plant in water, I would likely be out to coffee with somet friends, thinking about what color beta I should get next. At the same time, the entire experience of carrying my fish through security check at LAX and explaining to the airport personel how he was my "emotional support" and that he would die if X-rayed would be lost. COming home from class to see him swimming happy in his bowl would be a numb experience, instead of the smile that would cross my face if I saw him with an extra spurt of energy. I guess it's like any relationship. If you take the chance of love, you will hurt when it's lost, but not taking that chance could result in so much more...blah.

The same experient is running with my pet plant Georgio who is being baby-sat by my boss at work in LA. I hope he is doing ok. I don't want to loose another one  ¶ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

  Baby Ain't No Deal I think life is smacking me on the face right now, letting me know that it is still here and I am still needing to live it. I dont really understand how it works but I am happier than I have ever been while still managing to hit all-time lows. Does this make me manic-depressive? I think not since what my college education has taught me proves that psychological abnormalities are functions of society. Instead, I simple think that each day....no...each second...is all important while completely void and to find how those interact is my challenge.

I don't really get how to do good. I mean, I'd like to suggest ending poverty, stopping the war, killing less animals, curing AIDS, sending peace worldwide and all that other hobo-jobo bull. But each of those only touches a certain sector or people in a certain section of life. They are also almost completely unattainable and require a lifetime of commitment, something very few will do. Never the less, they will be good things if they occur, but won't something else just as terrifying take their place? Cure AIDS while spreading poverty. Educate all while increasing taxes on the suffering. I sound very pessimistic I know, but I am trying to decide if I have spent my whole life idealizing concepts that shouldn't be focused on. Just the same, I wonder if doing good should actually encompass other things. Let's say you share your food with a friend, discover a lost dollar bill, and have an amazing conversation with you mother. You have helped out one person by fulfilling their needs, bettered your financial stability, and spread love and peace through great connections. Aren't those just as worthy if not more than world peace? Maybe they seem so because they take a fraction of the time and effort and they personal benefits are far more evident. This is turning selfish..

Speaking of which, I think love is so infatuation because it is self-indulgent. Selfish and selfless, love never feels bad. Sometimes people make choices out of love that end up being very painful because they feel the need to sacrafice, but never is actual love damaging to the owner. Not the things that follow, but the strict emotion, the internal surge of heat and flutter, the loss of consiousness and presence of divinity, is wholy good and well...holy. And that explains why people will die for love, kill for love, do anything for love. Because love is good and love is complete and love is only the one side of equality that we want to exist in.

I get it now. I get that to do good, is to do love, and love, an emotion held within, can be projected anywhere I put it. Like hate, like anger, like shyness, like poise, I can throw my love into any task and that will be doing good.

Whenever I turn on my cell phone it reads the welcome message that I wrote 4 months ago: "Spread some love today"  ¶ 1:22 AM 0 Comments

  Gnight in Dush Im trying to figure out the meaning behind things and the men in my life have been helping me. I think that, although directly opposed to sexist judgements that lead to the enforcing of boundaries and barriers dependent on what lies beneath ones shorts, men as a whole think so separately from women. Be is social tunning, cognitive abilities, physical nature or whatever you call it, they add something I cant produce. Most of all, they are stubborn and give me a chance to work. Work hard on my own thoughts and my ways of expressing myself that can be read and understood.

I would like to make a shout out to Ryan Pedersen. Thank you for making life how it is, helping me understand who I am, and giving me the chance to live with you, through you, all you, ya know what i mean.

And to all my loves in Oregon; you are the constants that i miss and the something somethings I want to kiss and this is going downhill...so read my mind.


The candles in my room are burning low, the cat by my side wants to cuddle, and the remnants of pie need my attention. A goal for myself:
Be true in thought
Be kind in mind
Think of what will better, not destroy
Love over all
and Merry Christmas?  ¶ 9:31 PM 1 Comments

  Unadaptivity So its weird, right? Finding yourself 4 months thrown back, harboring a heart-full of revelations and experiences that have taken you to a new state of awareness but everything is the same. The faces, the drama, the irony, the fights, the loves, everything. Except you know that they have had their share of life-changing experiences also being held to themselves and are pretending equally as hard as you that they feel everything the same. The thing is, it does feel identical to how I left it. Hillsboro paused for me, and now that I am back, I resume. But some things always change.

For one I have come upon the fact that I am the "other" in my family of 4. People always say moving out allows you to see your parents more like the people they are instead of just your mother and father. Because of the circumstances, I have always pretty much seen my mother in that light, and at times my father, but coming back home, I can see the family unit and where I fit in. I guess it all fell in when I heard my dad whisper to my mother in an argument "..and Kara? Where the hell did all that passion about that...STUFF...come from?" The following comments talked about how being a vegetarian is ludacris, my mom's comments about how I don't take the idea of a career seriously, and how proud they are of my brother for considering graduate school. And it hit me: I am the only registered Democrat in this house of Republicans, and that has an effect on something. I've always been the youngest, the one who will never have as much experience as anyone else in the family, the one who has the most ignorance, the one with the wildest ideas and most artsy ambitions. I sit close to my mother who, very proudly, "doesn't eat pig anymore" and thinks that organic is a label all foods should hold, but still seats away, as she claims that people are here on earth to work and worship as their primary actions. My dad is a little further away from me, relying greatly on emotion rather than reason and tending to fall moderately in his politics, but still considering my piercings and clothing choice "suggestive of things that don't reflect my true beauty". My brother, who according to my mother has been conservative since youth, is my most utter and complete opposite. While I asked for a faux-tree to bring some holiday cheer and spare a youthful pine, he grunted with his chainsaw, ordering my family to go somewhere where he can just hack something down. Beef and chicken make up 90% of his diet and he calls me a tree-hugging hippie. We fight about how I spend my time dancing when he works year in and out to make money while I spend it. He will be a wealthy mechanical engineer, I will go into the Peace Corps, he won't buy pink shirts and spends 20 minutes on his hair everymorning, I live in one pair of pants and shower when I feel like it. We don't mix. It's only now, when our family is made of 4 adults, that I have discovered how much I don't fit and that it bugs my parents. It kinda hurts and I dont know why


But I am greatful of this, because we can still love, still support eachother, and still laugh the night away when it comes down to it. Although my dad won't buy me the Bob Marley CD I put on my Christmas list and Eli will continue to laugh at me when I talk about life after school, I will know that they will never abandon the true me. ah yes, another revelation: I allow what people believe influence how much I get to know them when really, all people have hearts worthy of loving. I need to stop letting what they think is right and wrong in the world tell me how and to what degree I should befriend them. Everyone has a biased and tainted view of the world, so why is mine more worthy than theirs? Its not. It just is not.

I have so much more to write but I think that might go in a different journal. I am loving life and am scared to hell what will happen in my life in the next few years. Pray for good times...for sure


"And the waitress is practicing politics, as the business man slowly gets stoned...yes their sharing a drink called loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone"  ¶ 11:01 PM 1 Comments

  geyser glacier lover I read and I read and I read and I search and I read about things that touch and curl the insides I have left after long days of finding what I thought I wouldnt find. The accounts of the oppressed, the journals of the hated and the words of the revolutionaries. Black women who fight to live in a world where they are told to die. And I come upon the words of Assata Shakur as she sits waiting for the final judgement which will send her to jail for a sentence unworthy of the crime. Echoing in my head, I wonder what this woman, who changed her name to disembody the slavery that shaped her past, has to tell me that may shape how I ought to live my life. I don't agree with her version but I do with her mission; to free herself of those vices that keep her from happiness. She writes about the struggle her and her lover face; should they express their love when the possibility of creating a child who will have no free mother nor father could come from the act?
says Kamau " We can't gaurantee our children will ever have a future in a world like this. Struggling is the only guarantee our children will ever have for a future. You may never have another chance to have a child"
"I have to think...my mind was screaming..who would take care of my baby? Since I was a teenager I had always said that the world was too horrible to bring another human being into. And a black child. We see our children frustrated at best. Noses pressed against windows, looking in, and at worst, we see them die from drugs or oppression, shot down by police or wasted away in jail. What had my ancestors thought when they brought their babies into this world, only to see them flogged and raped, bought and sold.."

Her cry echos that of a great deal of my peers. To bring a child into a world of such pain seems selfish and foolish. But her answer, her answer brings me hope Not because i believe in creating babies without parents, or children who are products of ambition, but rather because I see resistance when no hope exists.

"I'm gonna live as hard as I can and as full as I can until I die. And i'm not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born. I'm gonna live and Im going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that union, I'm going to rejoice. Because our children are out futures and i believe in the future and in the strength and rightness of our struggle.."

Can I hear an amen?  ¶ 3:12 PM 0 Comments