Lazy Eye

My Sick Little Boy

My sick boy.
Sick before that day,
Confessing your father's sins.
On my stoop in the city.

Before you found me.
From across the room.
And asked me to explain.

All I could say:
What have they done to your head?
Already so sick.

Long before I loved you.
For nothing besides singing.
And that damage to your head.
My sick little boy.

Minumum Wage

We have another month in Sydney. We like it. We love our flat. And we love each other. We do miss home though. And actually embrace the idea of true winter. We're flying into Hawaii right before Thanksgiving. (We're so excited.) We want to see if it was really as magical as we remember or if we were just elated. After almost two weeks in Hawaii, MacKenzie flies back to the East Coast and I fly to Los Angeles to see my best friend. After Los Angeles, I fly into New Orleans for a few days before finally coming home for Christmas. I'll be home in a little under two months, and it seems so close. But when I think about all that has happened in the last two months, I can't imagine who I'll be, what I'll want, or what I'll have learned since the day I sat in the Sydney library and wrote this blog post.

We can feel ourselves growing. I think that's why it hurts a bit. You know, growing pains. We realized when we got here (and found ourselves broke) that this was the first time we had ever truly been on our own. (We're doing it!!!) We're paying our own rent, buying our own food, paying our own cellphone bills, and fronted the cost for health insurance. (I think that about covers it?) Never have either of us not had the option of raiding our parents fridges, or crashing in our childhood rooms for a few months. (Mommy!)

We learned two things, we could pull it off, and working for minimum wage sucks. They should just call it slave labor. It made us both think long and hard about what we wanted to do next, and we still haven't completely figured it out. But atleast we're thinking.

More soon.

Things I still Love.

The things I still love.

I still love writing. It makes me feel closer to you and closer to myself. Like I never understood what I meant until I wrote it down or wrote it out and sent it to you. The truest form of communication when you're on the opposite side of the planet and it's my favorite.

I still love coffee. That sounds silly, but in finding simplicity because you're saving for flights around the world you come to enjoy little things. My little things happen to be a "soy flat white, extra caffiene." (Even though I miss pumpkin spice anything like crazy.)

I still love music. Even when I don't have anything new to spark my imagination, I can listen to your voices and all of a sudden I'm home, in bed, listening to my friends. You can pick me up when I'm running or stretching or sitting at the edge of my bed, wishing I could cry but I can't get the tears out. (My most common problem.)

But most of all, more than anything, more than any of these things added up and multiplied by infinity, I love my sister. What a gracious and beautiful being. Keeping calm and patient and loving. Laughing at me when I'm anything but funny and sitting with me when I can't think of what to do next. Mostly listening, and watching.

So much to be in love with.

It feels like Growing Up.

It feels like growing up. Like each day that I spend here or there has taught me this vital lesson I would have struggled to grasp if I hadn't been desperately chasing after it across the hemispheres. But I don't need to be physically chasing that thing anymore. My feet will always wander, for that I am sure. But running away from myself has lost its zeal. You never find what you are searching for by searching, in having this end goal so well defined you miss the point in everything you learn along the way. For that is the point, everything you learn along the way. I did not set out on this journey to kill my rambling soul or like of adventure but I grew to understand adventure and restlessness have less to do with where you are and more to do with what you're perceiving. The way I yearn for familiar arms and trees is the same as I once did for distant lands and far away kingdoms. That sense of awe does not only come from new experiences so far away but from viewing every experience with that gratitude of uniqueness and beauty. You can find that beauty in anything. I long for my home. In my heart and under my feet.

Lingering Winter

I can feel that cold breeze move past me while I'm trying to just sit down and write something (anything) in this cafe you work in. I'm not sure why winter's still here, or even why we were running from it for so long. I can't seem to embrace this face winter in the face of the southern hemisphere spring. I like truth, not shams. I come to just sit near you because it makes me feel less alone. I don't wear makeup anymore. I think it's more beautiful. I see fear on all those faces, and I don't get fashion. I can feel my mind work as a whirlwind and that's the only way I can think enough to write, when it's pushed forward by overwhelming thoughts that couldn't stop if I tried, fingers with a mind of their own. And that mind I'm not sure where it came from (the three cups of coffee) but it works. Writing is funny because sometimes it drips out of you and other times it's like being dehydrated. Dried up. Nothing left.

This part of a letter is all I've got:

"I've been talking to MacKenzie a lot about living in a different reality when you're far away. Like all those things people are saying to you are no more real than a book you're reading. You think of this weird movie in your head and try to imagine what they're thinking or feeling or what these characters in their story could possibly look like but you really don't know. Yours is the weirdest to read. I have no idea what you're actually seeing and it sounds so far from reality to read that I can only imagine what it's like in real life. Probably...just like...real life. Standing there, experiencing it, believing it because it's real and happening and there's no escaping what's going on all around you. Anyway, weird."

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Hallucinations

I'm reading paragraph after paragraph of words I could have written. I listen, trying to get better at listening, (really just learning more about myself, listening to you) to you tell me you've broken each others hearts 'for a hundred lifetimes,' I know exactly what you mean. I've seen you somewhere before, like I'd known him somewhere before. Sliced from the same stardust and reincarnated a thousand times until we hardly recognized each other. Like you and I; like when I tried to explain to him about home and he closed his eyes.

And no I don't think your dreams of light and cupcakes and joy are silly, because I have the same dreams. I see them everyday. And you said what I meant when you talked about that need to settle down in one god damn place without settling with your soul because settling for anything less than this magic I've become so accustomed to seems so close to death. I'm not sure which one I'd rather. Death by imagination or death by body.

I had this hallucination when we were smoking cigarettes that night. At the table in that apartment where I hear the cries at night so clearly. I wasn't sure if there were two of us, or if I was a schizophrenic mess and for the first time I thought I might be insane. Now I know why I'm here. With the rest of the people who talk to themselves. In this alternate reality slipping along the crease of this dimension. 

Bad Timing

Please just let me call my best friend.
I'm begging you.
Can I write this letter to my mom?
I need her.
Why are you so mad,
When all I did was look at you.
Sobbing all night long.
I know she lost her mind.

Just bad timing.
It's just bad timing.

Home Sick Guilt

I looked at her, and I knew she was different.

Someone said that to me once.
I like all the funny accents you can do.
And it's beautiful to see someone so alive,
And okay with where they are.

I'm okay with where I am.
Even if it's this tiny studio,
On this shaky table.
That won't let me call home.

Even if it's so far away
From hugging you.
And so far away,
From tea and my mom.

I feel bad about missing them.

Kamala

Once, he said to her: "You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it."

"Not all people are smart," said Kamala.

"No," said Siddhartha, "that's not the reason why. Kamaswami is just as smart as I, and still has no refuge in himself. Others have it, who are small children with respect to their mind. Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. But others, a few, are like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course.

Dirty Dishes

I just had the best day at work. Sometimes I forget to just concentrate at what I'm doing at every point throughout the day, because that's how you find contentment. You don't rush through parts to get to the greener grass, you settle in where you are. Anyway, today I got called into work. I work at a tiny cafe and it's usually just me and the owner running the entire place. Today we had a huge party come in and had another waitress working the front. So my boss asked me to come work the kitchen with him. Just me and this tiny Chinese man. I cooked. And I cleaned. I've never worked in a kitchen before, and I don't think I've ever felt so satisfied after a days work. I love cooking, and I love cleaning and when I simplified what I was doing down to that, I found it so easy to enjoy my day. I had a wonderful Friday, I hope you did too. Don't underestimate your dirty dishes.

Humility

She said 'Fact, I work five days a week with an hour commute to the city.' You know she's right because we're living exactly like our parents on the other side of the planet. And all that judgement and all that running was just to feel alive before diving down into schedule and routine and some mono-tone dream we took as a nightmare. I have work soon, where they pay me $3 dollars under the minimum wage, cash in hand, and I have a little bit better an idea of those they call illegal immigrants. Degree in government, one world tour, and 5 continents under the belt and I sweep the floor at night. Imagine those doctors from far away lands that come to mop our floors? Oh cruel world. Where do we get our measuring stick? Maybe humblings the best dose of humanity we can be served. 

Barr Brothers

I'll Come Back Home

On the road. Those things I learned.

I learned to let go. Not to linger in those days of maids and mansions or those of coffee instead of lunch and feet that burn in your shoes. How do you afford to travel? Tomorrow will be unlike today and you won't last long if you try and hold on. Yesterday I mopped the floors and a month ago I sailed on a yacht.

I learned to laugh. I figured out the other day, the reason we survive it is because we laugh, and laugh and we still find it funny. Being hungry and cold and tired and we sit there and look at each others faces and smile. Because tomorrow might be a dream of kings and beautiful places even if today is starving and dirty. 

I learned to write in the dark. I usually write when I can't sleep at night because it's more honest and I'm not thinking as much, I'm just gushing insides to outsides. It's not even like thought, it's like being. It's what I meant but couldn't verbalize. I never read them again and mail them the next morning. I hope you get a letter, it means you moved me. And I'll hold my breath while I drop it into the mail slot.

I've learned to love my home. Those fall leaves I'm missing and those bitter winters when I couldn't breathe. It wasn't the winter that broke my heart it was expecting. Expecting people to be stability when I can only provide that for myself. But now I know I love my home. Not because it's safe, but because I can love any place, and that one just happens to have more people I love.

I'll come back home.

All in My Head

I laid on the top of my bunk bed and listened to you for the first time the other night. Just me and you and my eyelids. And I kept wondering why I was in the same place on a different continent. It made me feel sad. And not the sad, where you feel bad for yourself but that aching sad, that one where your heart feels heavy. I'm dragging it around. It's funny she said it's so outside of people's minds, that thing we're doing. But it's the same old shit, that same reality when you wake up and there's the sun and the people are doing that same drinking and smoking and laughing and loving thing. That trying to get outside of their own mind thing. No matter where on Earth you wake up. And I'm not looking for anything anymore because I know there's nothing to find. It's all in my head.

New Sydney

It's amazing how much being here reminds me of moving to New York City. It's still brisk from the winter, the city looks a bit like New York, and we work just as much. You know that feeling when you don't think you could possibly walk another step? We feel that way on the daily. We've been hustling. No doubt about that. We've been on about a dozen interviews and trials between the two of us. I work full time at a cafe during the day, and then we work as promoters for a bar at night. It's pretty cool actually, we just get to go around and talk to people about coming into a new bar that just opened and it gives us a chance to meet people and go out. We finally made enough for rent, and I'm about to go get my first solid paycheck. We move into our apartment tomorrow. Which is a blessing because I'm over sleeping on the top of a bunk bed.

Week one.

G'day

SYDNEY!!! So happy to be here. My Fijian bug bites are fading and all the memories of long days in an open house hostel. This place is beautiful. We moved to Glebe, a small neighborhood in the inner city. It sort of reminds me of Astoria. One of my favorite parts is walking down the main street because it smells so strongly of flowers and fresh baked bread. Within 48 hours we got cellphones, set up bank accounts, found an awesome apartment down the street from the town center and started two jobs each.  I'm working in a small cafe down the street from our apartment and we both start at a pizza place tonight. (We may have gotten the job after Kenz told him we hailed from the pizza capital of the world.) I think we could be considered professional movers by now. It's a pretty awesome place to make some money for a few months.

Our plans have changed so many times since we left we're just trying to keep everything straight. We're trying to move back to Hawaii within the next few months and I may be working a job in Argentina right after we relocate. (Which is awesome, it will help us with rent for the first month or so.) We haven't gotten to venture out much because we're so concentrated on finding jobs and making money, but we'll report back when we see more of the city.

G'day dude. 

Just Smiling

You know we don't even fight? Sometimes we roll our eyes but really we just work it out. We talk it out. We talk everything out. Even if we're not sure what it means, we say it because we feel it. And we'd rather work it out together than let anything fester. You know how many times you can catch us just smiling at each other? People think it's funny when they see us making those faces at each other for no reason besides we're silly and we love it. How many people can stay within 20 feet of each other for two months and still wake up smiling? And don't worry I remember I'm so lucky you still laugh at all my jokes, you're usually the only one that does. People tell us how lucky we are. And you know what? We know it.

Siddhartha

Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant hight mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. In a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting.

All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.

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