I miss the old format of my website when it was black text on a light background. Sometime when I am swimming and not doggy paddling my way through life anymore. Something about a minimalistic and straightforward UI. Unfortunately, I was told by my student that my site looks vibe coded. It was NOT IN FACT vibe coded by an AI. Dealing with some rude ass shit on a regular basis probably is making me bitchier than I have to be, amidst the world wanting to nuke the living shit out of each other. I broke down on the train the other day – let my backpack with my trusty lunchbox – down to the ground and what felt like the first time in my life – an older obasan checked in on me, but mostly to say that I shouldn’t just chuck my bag to the floor like that or it’ll get swept away. Nicespeak for “get your shit together”. And after hearing me say “It’s hard to explain… there’s a lot of wars…” she got to telling me I got to thinking a bit too much. But it was the first time in what felt like an eternity where I felt like local and/or “native” Japanese folks aren’t simply acting like an NPC. For some reason, getting yelled at seems almost preferable, because then you remember you’re still alive.
Thinking too much, huh? So, should I assume people aren’t thinking? They are consciously ignoring the reality that surrounds them on a 24/7 basis or only the convenient things they want to think about? Isn’t it the latter? Nice thoughts – good. Facing the monstrosity of the world thoughts – maybe you’re thinking a bit too much. It reminds me when a close friend told me they could tell I got better when I stopped writing giant blocks of texts in my stories. Or maybe it was the content of the stories. Either way, it went something along those lines. I know it wasn’t meant in ill intent and there’s stuff people outside of you can see about you that you might be hard pressed to see about yourself, but it still feels like dog shit sometimes man. My raw stream of consciousness thoughts “unhinged” “too raw” “too visceral” “lots of profanity”. The thing is that I’m tired of performing. Those stories were the real me. The ranting, the venting, the pouring my heart out to the internet.
All of that was me and there was a lot more where that shit came from. I’m more exhausted of logging on and seeing half of comments talk like it came straight out of a genAI chatbot. Dude. It’s wild because it feels convincing at times. Like it could really come up with all the solutions to your problems, but it’s just really good at plagiarism. As long as the models keep getting trained and keep learning then at least we’ll be fed a more recent rehash of human pop culture and original thought? Do they never just loop onto themselves and the prompts of other AI like some giant echo chamber?
I want to know what the quality of the AI echo chamber is like. This is what makes me want to use it because I want to see what elements or factors are influencing people in their everyday lives – their innermost personal thoughts and decision making. On one hand, I guess people won’t be swayed so emotionally easily because they have their BFF Andy (It’s some guy from college I didn’t like but actually there are two guys I don’t like with this name so it made the most sense to me to give the chatbots this placeholder name) to vibe check them, even though for the most part it mostly only tells you what you want to hear? It’s not that different actually from me doing countless online tarot pulls from Labyrinthos hoping for a vibe check, but at least I thought there is an extra layer of privacy because there is symbolism in the deck. +1 to tarot to one upping the surveillance state but who knows how long or if this is something that has already been thought of and compromised.
Somehow I feel like the algorithm knows exactly what I am going through and sends me personalized readings through my reels. How much of these are a delusion and how much of these are real life – I have no fucking clue. They vary from something very general to something utterly specific and feel extremely on point to the existing intuition I am already culminating about a situation. The movie I watched was “He’s Just Not That Into You” – my first watch on my last day of being 32. What people say is the first season of Sex & the City but does this mean tomorrow is season 2? Do I have three girlfriends? Anyway, anyway, anyway – back to the movie, one of the character was already married to an Ashley Madison looking type mfer and had this sense or intuition that he was smoking again.
Her dad had passed from lung cancer so it was something obviously very important to her. More so than the infidelity, because he came forward about it before she caught him in the act of it. But the lying about the ciggies was the final straw. And honestly, girl, I get you. Liars can go to hell. It was me also finding cigarettes in my exes jacket after I asked her straight up if she was smoking again. It would be one thing to come clean. It’s another to lie to pretend to be some shit you ain’t and look into my face and lie about it. So I get you girl – and spoiler: she ended up alone figuring some shit out for herself. Despite the casual trans/homophobia and casually racist shittiness of early 2000’s Hollywood movies (you could even say this one was the more woke ones because of the “Queer” advert and using gay men as props and extras) I did like how they didn’t have everyone end up in a pairing in the end. Some people’s next stage is on their own. And that’s how I’ve been feeling about my own life lately. It’s definitely a bit more emo and challenging and it’s easier to channel my inner teen in my writing, but what does it matter in a world where it literally is raining oil because the US has a death wish for itself and the global majority to be cringe? What does it matter?
Oh yeah, I got sick too. Right. I had this idea in my head I was just untouchable and unstoppable from illness after taking care of myself to my fullest capacity – eating clean, exercising, just doing my best in general. Here I am humbled right before 33 about to start my period and with what is it this time? Maybe a 4th bout of the vid? I can’t say, but my manager has been coming in sick to work all this time with a very flimsy mask so I do suppose it might have simply been a matter of time. I feel bad for her in a sense because I think the store might fall apart if she’s off too long, but at the same time it jeopardizes so many people including herself. And you know, not despite late stage capitalism but somehow positively correlated to it is the number of Karens who feel entitled to exceptional customer service because they themselves too are hanging on by a single thread.
I am happy to bear my soul to you all – my imagined or real audience. Do you think with the attention spans of today hijacked by short form video content someone would actually read and engage with all of my text? It actually didn’t seem too far fetched two or three years ago. We have welcomed the Age of Brain Rot ever since. Even my baselines of what is an inevitability or isn’t is shifting. At least I didn’t seem so fucking nuts back then with my opposition – these days it’d be like beating my head against the concrete in broad daylight and hoping that an ojisan would come stop me. I can’t say I am holding out much hope for that folks! ! ! I can still have hope for the obasan of the world though. Maybe about five percent more up from zero.
I don’t know that it would even matter to recall it all. There’s that saying right, that GOD gives HIS toughest battles to his STRONGEST soldiers. And sometimes you get to thinking “Well fuck G-d then.” Recounting the worst moment of your life over and over and over again like a broken record or cassette tape in the world’s tightest security jail that is your brain. “Well fuck G-d then!!!” and you begin to renounce everything magical that doesn’t help you live, eat, fuck, shit and breathe onto the next. You wonder where has the magic gone when it’s just you and you by yourself with no one fucking there to see you mourn about the last shitty thing. You wonder how did you get to your big age like this, how come you’re here and there and everywhere but also nowhere at the same time.
I’m tired of writing some shitty pretenses. I’m tired of censoring myself when all I want to do is explode all of myself onto some shitty WordPress blog post or a drawing pad so called canvas. I just want to feel like I’m a fucking human again and not some perfectly optimized sex toy robot for everyone else’s entertainment and pleasure. I’m tired of this shit!!! I thought I knew some shit, but here I am again, not knowing shit. Took 500 steps forward and no steps back, and then I asked for one extra day off and here I am climbing the giant defenses of my heart, grieving through the bullshit I pushed away to optimize performance and appearances. Here I am grieving some shit I thought were other people’s problems, but they were my own all along.
Why do I still feel like I can’t be real? Why do I feel like I can’t cuss my way to hell and back? My somatic therapist that hypnotizes me sometimes tells me it’s not useful to ask why, but rather how. Asking how means I actually have to think about my problems. At least when I ask why, I can think about something other than myself – something bigger and all encompassing like the shitty, fucking G-d I hated earlier.
For the sake of staying in Japan after many life transitions while I get ahold of my bearings, I started a full time job essentially in the service industry where I am on my feet for practically most of the time I am awake – if I am lucky, I won’t have to stand for the train part of my commute there and if I am really lucky, I won’t have to stand on my way back home (a much rarer occurrence).
My mornings are essentially wake up early, shower, brush my teeth, face pack, change into my full activewear garb (I work at a famous Japanese sports brand hint: sponsors a lot of winter Olympic athletes), cook two vegan bentos for myself (I requested to separate my one hour break at work into two thirty minute segments so that I could eat more), make and eat breakfast and run at top speed for around 4-5 minutes to my bus stop from which I take the bus to the train station. I have one train transfer to take from there and I’ll be at work for around 8 and a half hours that includes my break.
My bentos are a work of art honestly in that there is so much variety in them, and I hit my protein intake goals much better these days, but that deserves its own separate accolades from this post. My coworkers think I am extremely healthy somehow (I am….in some really specific ways), though I can’t help but feel that’s more because of the associations vegan & plant-based diets have with health and dieting culture in E. Asia (a large majority of my coworkers are Chinese & Taiwanese besides the Japanese workers and then there’s me and a mixed Japanese American staff from Arizona who helped train me).
One hour to get back, some time to grab dinner and I hit the gym. PPL. (push-pull-legs) these days. I started a new mobility program that’s around 20 minutes a day that I do before my workout and on my rest days. My big workout rest days are when I stack my other jobs that actually pay me much more decently like my freelance tutoring work and the occasional climbing, dancing, yoga. My off days from work is when I stack my appointments, chores and other, other hustles that are my real passions like tarot reading, auditions, workshops, my art business, drum rehearsals.
It’s a bit insane. I am an autistic vegan bodybuilder artist business man? man! (for the duration of this sentence) who menstruates with a full time job. I am trying to see if I can cut my hours at work, so that I can devote more time to the creation process, because I haven’t really been creating much art since I began. I did start reading on my commute – I have since learned how to do this while standing (my core strength would make a grown man cry), so I don’t actually hang onto anything during my standing train commutes for the most part. I really enjoy it. I forgot how much I loved reading and learning new things. I really want to watch and review more movies, but movies are a couple hours long of time that feels like such a luxury at this point in my life.
My social life has taken a bit of a hit lately, because even though my friends are also working full-time jobs, I am worried I won’t be able to relate to them anymore. I guess this is where things get real. As I continue to learn new things and challenge myself, I have this fear of outgrowing the people I associate with my life before I began managing my time like a dictator. If possible, I would love to maintain the discipline I have kept up till now and acclimate to it, while maintaining my softness to my loved ones. I have some doubts about how soft I can be around them while juggling my new life, so I have been away focusing on work, managing and taking care of myself.
Living in Tokyo at 150% like this really makes a beast out of you. I am, too, curious about what it would be like seeing and meeting my friends back home too. Would they still recognize me? What would we talk about? When the world feels too hard and challenging, I still would love to have arms and a community to fall back into that feels like home to me, wherever it might be in the world. For now, I am still searching for that feeling of “home” and still figuring out even at my big age what I am truly capable of. I oscillate between “there has to be a better way” and “this is the way; trust the process; you’re doing everything you can”. All I know is that I know I will find my way. I know that I am finding my way. I know that I will be the one to forge my own path. I know that I am forging my own path. And I know that even as an adult, I have never let go of my imagination and the idea that the possibilities of what life can look like for me are endless and beautiful. This path I chose wasn’t the easiest, but I love it so much and I can confidently say that it’s mine.
2025 under numerology is a 9 year. Next year will be a year of brand new beginnings. This year is the one to tie up all those loose ends, and as it turns out, I gave up my coveted 2 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, moved house, and ended a long term relationship. People tend to be nosy for reasons I can’t control or foretell, but I avoided writing on my personal life while navigating these transitions for a while.
At the bottom of it was fear. Fear to be seen, perceived, judged and cast away. I can’t say I knew exactly what I was doing, but I am happy to be where I am now on the other side of the road, now with the path before me diverging into a different part of the woods – one that is unfamiliar to me. I’m not one to always do the same thing, but also definitely not one to not allow myself to be changed along the way.
It’s like footsteps in the dark – you won’t always know where the next one will lead. I only have the light of the moon to guide me and as the moon changes phases, the road before me isn’t always evenly illuminated. Can I still keep taking those steps even when I can’t see the path? Even when there are no more footsteps to follow – the trail I make is now mines entirely? And next stepping into the new year, through all thickets, traverses and roots I’ve tripped over in this one, I can confidently say I can.
I don’t always know where my confidence comes from as I’m not always confident. But I do know exactly how to build it back up and how to get back there and that’s saying a lot more than I could have ever said from the beginning of this year. I’ve gotten so much closer to myself through the steps and missteps, and I have never been so grateful in my life before to be exactly who I am and nobody else.
May God find us all in love and the unshakeable conviction that this life too is worth a try.
the eclipse is upon us. did you rest? did you cry? did you wander about and lie? how many times can you scream until you hear yourself back in the mirror? if there’s one space, one place, where i won’t pretend, then it’s here. i eat directly from the hand that feeds me. i make myself known – my edges sharp and wide – my bowls polished; vowels rounded.
what is more foul than a dream deferred? what is rest than a slice of breast from a better rounded chest? i could eat you alive if i wanted. i could turn your mounds into stage plays. i could turn your cries into operas. i could make you breathe the space between us till you bruise from within. desire is but a word; fantasy a fiction.
life has a strange way of opening your eyes to it. the peaks the valleys the ebbs the flows. nature beat us to an award winning rose. caution needs no writing and prose no pose. each cycle carries its mission – at once a still surrender. its time to circle back around. unloaded. grifted.
So close to finding a home. I’m so close to finding a way of being in the world that isn’t at odds with everyone and everything. So close. I cannot emphasize enough how I’m almost there. This time it didn’t work out. But I tried. I did my fucking best with the tools I had on hand and when things got ugly, I didn’t back down. I didn’t run away and simply do as I was told because it was the most comfortable, convenient and preferable option for everyone else. Yeah I have Mars in my 11th hours, so fucking what? So fucking what that I get banned from Discord servers every now and again for going a little too far, for saying something just a little too off-kilter.
It just hurts when it hits closer to home. I’m more scared to take those risks and when I do it’s not that I regret having said or done what I did, I simply wonder were the casualties on the way a necessity to living in my truth? Standing on business isn’t where the choice lies. I still want to be understood and understand. I want to be seen and known and not superficially… in a way that really exposes everything to everyone about who I really am even if it comes with some harsh accusations – I want to be ready for it all. I’m not asking to be made an example of – I’m asking for the opportunity to lead.
Because I’m as ready as I’ll ever be in this moment. There’s no point in waiting for an ambiguous point in the future where the stars will align for me if I’m not ready to accept what’s meant for me. Here I am telling the world that I am. I am ready for it – as ready as I’ll ever be and I’m not going to wait on an invitation to show up to do what I do best. The invitations will come when they’re meant to come but showing up every day is the choice I made for myself. I feel good about what I’ve done so far and what I have coming up next so all I gotta do is keep showing up.
All the universe was waiting on was for just for *me* to believe in myself. It actually didn’t require anybody else to take attendance or participate, it only asked for my own. Hm, a truly modest and humble universe this one is. It speaks so quietly- in a hushed whisper, when no one else can be bothered to hear it. Absolute queen of humility and is one of life’s greatest teachers should you tune in to hear her hushed sounds, the faint noise of her breath.
The things we do for validation. The expectations we apply unilaterally. The categorization of “this is what a good friend would do” “good friends don’t _” I think those are all fine and well if they help you. Forget what I want for everyone else for a moment. I want inner peace for myself. I want to find a warm embrace from within holding me up when my environment doesn’t really care what I think. I want quiet to process the violence of this world. I want the space to fulfill my goals. Sometimes I feel suffocated by expectation of those closest to me. I don’t want to let them down but I mostly want to run. Far, far away. Running is nice – it gets your endorphins up – gives you reprieve. I want to feel the complexity of the moment. I want to feel all the ways I have not lived up to others, perhaps betrayed them. I let it rush through me like a wave, but I always find myself back at shore where the water gently washes over my legs. I have hurt the ones I loved being the most authentic version of myself but there sometimes isn’t a problem to be solved. Sometimes you wait for the day to break again. The things we say and do to not sound like a cluster B personality disorder. And so what if it is? In one world, I am bipolar. In another, a narcissist. In another, a psychopath. In another, heaven-sent. All these are fractals beaming off one another to create a whole image. Some people hold more of a certain section of the fractal than another and in different parts of our lives. The judgement we cast becomes us. We transcend the judgment cast on us. It’s a funny thing to be accused of that which we accused others for. Not like funny ha-ha. More like a gentle smile at the simultaneously vast and tiny lightness of being.
I’m strong enough to reflect on the mistakes I’ve made of my 20s. I am strong enough to reflect on the mistakes I’ve made over millennia. I will use this time wisely to reflect on my decisions then and my decisions now. I will allow myself to progress. Sometimes your body reacts before your mind even has a chance to catch it. But you’d only know that if your body was totally engaged. I’ll let this be a time for my body to be an actor. It can be the star – the protagonist. I will let it dictate what is happening before my mind can race to make a conclusion. I hear you now. I hear you louder than I ever have before. You’re still sometimes a quiet whisper, but you can take reigns. So much of us is divine that we cannot intellectualize yet. I’ll stop hoping for my readers to experience the best of life in place of me. I’ll stop forcing who I want to be and my ideals onto my environment. I’ll stop looking to them for permission. I’ll simply let myself be who I need to be and let the rest fall into place.
Love you deeply and immensely still. and Always. A love letter to the universes that exist in all of us.
今日も早起きして、土砂降り。なんと止まらないの。ピタピタかちゃかちゃ。自転車のカバー買ったのに、蟻の育ち。っていうか使わない。４時２４分の朝。太陽の挨拶は、今日は見ない。蜩の遠い鳴き声が鳥の歌に夢中む。意味がない日本語が頭の中ぱっったんと振り込んで、美しい存在だ。
もう疑わないよ。言いたいことは言う。「ね、ここ、主語付けないと、意味がわからなくなる。」どうでもいい、それは。くだけたな言語でも人を救われた。俺が使ってる英語も意味がない。意味がない。ずっと正しい姿勢で、ずっと正しい構成で、出会える世界線に落ちても、この世が広げないわ。
だからこの設定で、だからこういう関係で、「主語：あなた」ここさえいればいいのよ。もう書けないのね。発言してる神。歌の歌詞しか思い出せない。笑 一方一方で、一歩一歩。夜明けがやっと来ました。頭のガラガラが静かになっていて、お腹のガラガラがうるさくなってく。ペカんとお。
とりあえず人間でいい。とりあえず、好きな音でいい。語気元よ