Bday words from the most amazing people I know
In case you haven't heard, I'm working on a birthday project that I hope will serve as both a way to immortalize myself as a 25 year old (I have aging issues) and show my friends just how much they mean to me. I don't have a huge family or what I feel are real ties to any place or time, but what I lack in those areas is compensated for an infinite number of times by the people I surround myself with.
On a day like today--when I want to curl up and just sleep away the bullshit--the words they submitted for the project are like heart fuel, and I cannot even believe that I am loved this much:
From my pillar:
You are the bleeding-colour infusion in my patchwork quilt of friends.
Tempestuous and stronger than your small frame suggests, you remain
the one person on whose bed I know I can crash when life gives us the
brass knuckle backhand.You are dynamic, spilling over with what you once called "electricity"
one drunken night; we are lucky to know you and luckier to keep you.
Thank you for being as present overseas as you were when we were kids,
kicking in our pedal pushers and eating pints of ice cream.
From my inspiration:
It must be a chance for me to concise how you wonderfully influenced my life and how many times I've wished I had a life like you. However, I don't have enough skills and elegant words as a writer, a poet or even a communicator. So I just decided to let you know that I am so proud of my friendship with you and thankful for being your friend right now... even when I started not speaking English right!
Now it may be the time for me to help you in some exciting world called in Japan. I bet you will go through life-changing experiences regardless of its goodness or badness. I would love to share what they are.
From my partner in combat:
This is Chelsi. A dear friend, my only confidante, an artist who makes my life more colorful, more exciting, more worthwhile, and sometimes, more challenging. I have never laughed so hard, nor have I cried so much, with another human being. Thank you for being my sounding board, my colleague, my room mate, my sister, my counselor and teacher, my tormentor and audience, my classmate and drunken alter-ego. And above everything else, my loyal, beautiful, frustrating friend. Happy 25th Birthday-- I love you, ‘lil C!
From my star:
Chelsi, what can I say about this woman that someone else hasn't said before? We all know she's a beautiful person.. inside and out, with a smile that can warm even the coldest of hearts. She is a deeply passionate, caring, loving and loyal friend. Let's just say, Chelsi is one of the brightest crayons in the box... if not THE brightest
From the one who won't let me quit:
C H E L S I
Built Economical - but not without bite.
Feisty and fearless - she’ll win that fight.She’s off for a voyage to a land far away,
Hoping she might get a little foreplay.And all the while her tales she will write
Of her and an Irish man whose muscles are tight.She’s a great friend who will last through the days
From our first note in math - to our 317 ways…She’s one of those few - with her heart on her sleeve
but don't do her wrong, she hides a knife in her weave.Like a trusty pair of pasties - she’s built tried and true
A toast to my friend whose now twenty two!
(plus 3)Now I'm done rhyming and want to conclude...
dearest C:
You're ridiculous in all the best ways.
Loving
Talented
Crazy
Stubborn
Hilarious
You are uniquely you and today celebrates that.
Thanks for the friendship.
Love love.
Neophyte
I’ve been meaning to write this post for several weeks now, but it’s just such a beast of an entry that I reverted to my four-year-old self and have been sitting in a corner playing with toys, pretending not to hear my laptop calling and ignoring life almost altogether. Then I made the realization –well, not the realization, more like I finally chose to address the fact –that the reason everyone is so freaky about getting things done in life as soon as possible is because we’re all trying to make something of ourselves before the inevitable. It’s all a race against time, isn’t it? So if I can’t move on and maintain a proper website until I get over this hurdle, I should just get it over with.
I realize how psychotic that sounded. Please don’t e-mail me about it.
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine that was going through some relationship issues told me she’d once found the answers she was looking for right here on this website, and since then she’s been coming back hoping for more. A few weeks before that another friend of mine all the way on the other side of the world sent me an e-mail and the first line was: Dear Chelsi, Queen of LOVE. -Both poor friends are actually under the impression that I actually know what I’m talking about half the time. But the truth is, dear Internet, when it comes to relationships, I know nothing. Sure, there are times when I’ll spout off some things that sound logical because often we can make sense of our lives when we look at them in retrospect, or if we’re just coming from a third person’s perspective, but there are more times, times like the ones I’m currently living, when everything is just a jumbled pile of crap.
When I’m going through relationship, or what-the-fuck-is-this-ship problems, they are more often than not ones that have lasted years, involve the same stupid person, are always either on the forefront of my brain if not floating around in the periphery, and just when I think I’m getting over it, getting stronger, something happens and I completely fall apart. You’d think that I, the one they call Queen of Love, or Girl With Answers to Life, would be able to step back and look at my heavy situations and find that one tiny pinprick of a malfunction, like a single defunct wire in a bundle of Christmas lights, and just fucking fix the shit. Or better yet, I’d just go buy a set of new lights and call it a day. But in all honesty, I’m just not as smart as I come off to be. And I suppose if things were ever that easy, I wouldn’t feel the need to send my problems out into the electronic, unrelentingly judgmental abyss that is the Internet, now would I? (Side note: for my newer readers, if you were around to read my high school entries, you probably would have pulled out a gun and shot yourself because I was the biggest sack of self-pitying shit ever.) Of course, I stay in denial by not opening up my comments because I’m sure strangers would gladly rip me another asshole, but that’s another story.
Denial doesn’t work for this relationship stuff, I do know that for sure. The longer you stay in denial the better chance you have for monumental heartbreak on top of monumental heartbreak from the same person, and I really don’t think anyone deserves that much power over another human being. It just isn’t right. But, another truth is I am masochistic, so, even though this paragraph alone sounds like it came from a fairly level-headed person, I rarely ever take my own advice. Instead, when I’m going through problems of the heart, I do the following things:
- Sex and the City on repeat. I know how girly that sounds, I’m sorry. And no, I’m not going to go into how many times that show has saved my life because it’s too ridiculous to actually put into words, but it has definitely been more than like, a hundred.
- Music. Music has saved my life even more times than SATC, if you can believe that, and I’d be more than happy to suggest some tracks that can make you feel temporarily invincible, and I promise that none of them will be I Will Survive.
- The banner on my phone says DON’T DO IT. “It” being drunk dial of course, (another problem I’ll save for another post) but it also means don’t text, don’t call, don’t sit there and think up reasons to call the person you so desperately want to talk to because if they’re making you feel like a big fat pathetic slug, they’re probably not worth it.
I feel really dumb for just typing those out, but it’s all I really have to offer at this point. So to the two gals I mentioned earlier: I hope this helped. If you can’t connect to me through my false all-knowing-ness, then maybe we can just relate through our own girly stupidity.
Cheers.
Demystifying The Lesbionics
When you’re in high school you’ll do pretty much anything for money. Same goes for when you’re trying to make it in the art and writing world. This explains why, for the greater part of the last decade, I’ve held a job in retail. I know what you’re thinking: Retail? Seriously? Because yes, it really is as awful as everyone makes it out to be. One of my co-workers at my current job told me that when she first came to this country she got a job and Guess, and every day on her way home she’d burst into tears because she was depressed and miserable. Fortunately, if ever I get to this point with a job, it is not uncharacteristic of me to quit or transfer immediately. So that’s what I did this past summer.
Three years ago a woman who’s become one of my most favorite people in the entire world got hired into the company I mainly worked for as my boss. A couple years later another woman who has also become one of my most favorite people in the entire world got hired to be the boss of another location and the first woman, my boss, trained her. Shortly after that they fell in love and became known as The Lesbionics (watch the video here and maybe the reference will make more sense).
My boss ended up quitting this past May and soon after that my entire life seemed to fall apart for reasons I’d rather not say, but when it rains it pours and the new management that was ushered in after her was absolutely awful. There are no words that could describe the sheer disgust I felt for how far downhill the business went, and how speechless I was that nobody seemed to want to do anything about it. And then, just when I was barely a centimeter away from the point of my co-worker when she was at Guess, holding my tears on the muni train because of how much I hated my life at that moment and how far down my job had assisted in dragging my spirit, I transferred to the location that my ex-boss’ girlfriend manages and my work world turned right-side-up. It's no longer my main source of income, and I could actually quit and still survive just fine, but I keep going every Saturday because I love to help the people I love. Unfortunately, it’s a bit far from where I live so when I work there I usually stay out at their place for a couple of days and have a grand ol’ time.
Floyd Salas, a novelist/boxer says, “All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit.” And I totally agree. So I can sit here and deconstruct these two fabulous women and hope that by the end of this post you’ll understand why in addition to the necessity of spending weekends with them when it comes to my part-time job, I also feel that it’s a necessity when it comes to my wellbeing, but I won’t. Their cool factor has absolutely nothing to do with their sexuality and everything to do with the fact that, just like the rest of my friends, there are a ton of things I see in them that I see in myself; things that make me smile and things that scare me, but as a whole, it’s just a damn pretty thing to look at.
I suppose that it’s not possible to discover the universal spirit in everyone. Some outsides are just so unlike our own that it seems pointless and even a little absurd to think that our cores would be at all similar. But it’s definitely possible to discover it in some people, and, when you do, I suggest you hold onto them tight. 2007 has been pretty rough ride for me, but I’ve survived it thanks to important discoveries and realizations like these.
The Odd Couple
Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol were both painters who emerged from a broad Catalan cultural movement in the 1800’s. The two artists and intellectuals were responsible for an entire shift in the art world because they allowed themselves to be inspired by foreign influences (namely Parisian). In addition to mountain-movers, they were also very close friends who lived together, traveled together, and died just one year apart from each other. Kindred spirits, I suppose. It shocked a lot of people that the two painters were so close on account of their differences being so big. Casas mainly painted political paintings because he wanted to make the world aware of important issues, and he likened himself to Goya in works like La Carga because he thought he was doing a service to the world that was on the same level of greatness. What a ham. Rusiñol on the other hand, despised politics. He made art for the sake of art and made no attempt to conceal his addiction to what he called “artificial paradises” --a.k.a. heroin. In the end, he was largely to blame for the general public’s idea that modernisme was not a good movement to follow because it was influenced by sin.
My housemate Angela and I went out to Ruth’s Chris Steak House tonight for a fancy shmancy just-for-the-hell-of-it dinner, and I told her about how our friendship reminds me of Ramon and Santiago. As it turns out, more people than I thought wonder why and or how we are friends. Many things on the outside, like our personality, our interests, our goals, don’t match. She is one and I am the other. But there is something deeper that runs through both of us, something more solid but somehow less tangible, like some kind of deep-rooted understanding, that keeps us close. She asked me which of the two painters she was and of course, as she is the more serious one, I answered Casas. She was a little disappointed that she didn’t get to be the heroin addict, but I reminded her that people took Casas’ work to heart, and the only thing I wish I could inject directly into my veins is the spicy cheese sauce that Taco Bell used on their Zesty Nachos (may the rest in peace).
Our very different lives are once again veering away from each other and certain decisions will soon place us on opposite sides of the country. I tried not to get too attached to this living situation, but that got shot to shit pretty much after the first day and now, sadly, in two weeks I’ll be elsewhere. I will miss the gorgeous loft, the swing set, the convenient location (ahem, BevMo is RIGHT NEXT DOOR), the garage parking, the non-commute, but more importantly, I will miss her. My make believe liquefied cheese high predicts that a trip to New York this summer will be mandatory. Who knows? Maybe by the time I get there she’ll have taken over the entire state with her business savvy logic and I’ll arrive just in time with my delicious fast food and rants about the soul to turn everyone into raging hippie liberals. Can’t wait.