Do not envy me

You pay the price for strength and it is toughness. It is it's own punishment and price, to be insensitive to hurt is to be insensitive to pleasure.

Potential is nothing, nothing without praxis and survival is not enough.

It is windy in germany and very very cold. I have not been outside the apartment for a long time and things are, uncertain. As always. Always. I tell myself over and over I cannot, will not do this again and yet I find myself and my faith again and again on the tightrope with this body in the balance. Who knows what it means. Sometimes I feel so sorry for myself, for what I've lost, and sometimes I would just like to find a cause worth dying for and apply myself to it so I can get on with it and die with a purpose. Am I a weapon or am I a boy. Shall I be a weapon or shall I be a boy?

Should I work to break out of what I have been made to be and seek myself again or accept what I am and have become and take pride in my strength? Or is that strength, an answer to the pain I've been through, just represent how that pain has crippled my ability to laugh, smile, and love? Is it my greatest strength and source of pride or my undoing and never-healing wound?

It's all in the balance, I don't know how to answer these things.

Heathrow

Heathrow Entry, backdated due to shitty T-mobile service


So, apparently paying $10 at LAX for wireless wasn't enough for T-Mobile, even though most other major airports have free wireless internet. Instead, they've made sure my TMOBILE HOTSPOT only works at LAX despite advertising hotspots in Heathrow too. Also, Heathrow seems to think they're getting charged per byte of data and theirs is a timed service with a set rate per minute. Absurd. I plan on writing T-mobile and asking for a refund because this is fucking stupid.

The flight was long, obviously. The person sitting next to me was a quiet Englishman who didn't exchange a single word with me the entire flight. When all the lights were out a man with a tray came and gave me a drink which I soon found to be tomato juice (WHICH I DESPISE) and I sincerely wish that drink to hell as it was on my goddamn tray for six hours and no one would take it away. I only got up once the whole flight and didn't sleep at all, thank you very much failed attempt to find some ambian.

The flight attendants were overly English and said "cheerio" a lot and "lovely, lovely" and I hope they are paid extra to do that because, goddamn. I'm now exhausted and have a headache and my face, thank you Cyle, is all fucked up because a certain boy chose to wear a stud in his lip when kissing me goodbye. I have three puncture wounds, my nose which looks gross and red now, right above my mouth, and my chin. It's really cute. The last taste in my mouth is, ugh, tomato juice, but I cannot buy anything here because my currency is worthless and I don't understand the currency system here. I'd look it up BUT MY INTERNET IS NOT WORKING HAHA ISN'T THAT FUNNY?

I also have limited time on my laptop as I don't have the charger-adapter but I'm not even sure the English one is the same as the euro one and even if it was I wouldn't know how to pay for it. I can't do ANYTHING it seems. Except wait, but apparently they're scared of people mobbing the gates or something because they refuse to show gate info until 30-40 mins before your flight leaves. Oh, and as a final note, arriving was fucking creepy because I felt like I was being quarantined by long lonely hallways cornered off by glass.

English accents are one of my favorite things and I feel like I'm in a cartoon being surrounded by them suddenly. I would very much like to sleep.

UPDATE: I had 10 pounds, I now have 5 pounds and a bunch of awkward looking change after buying a soda I could have stolen easily. WHY. Also a black teenager wearing a scene jacket with fake fur lined hood like mine looked at me and I thought we were going to have a tecktonik battle right then and there and I was going to scream I'M NOT READYYYYYYY.

I have no money but I do now have a lot of awkward English coins. Which is lovely. The mystery of where the fuck my gate even is won't even be solved for another half an hour or so, so until then I get to loiter around this airport that costs lots of money forever. I don't want to steal anything so I just get to look at everything for a very long time and hope when my ADD kicks out enough time has passed. This last flight is going to be miserable. Beginning to regret allowing Cyle's lip ring stud thing go to work on my face because I look like I fall down a lot or have herpes. It is 10:34 back home and 18:33 here, and as much as I want to use military time I have no reference on it and I loathe it. I always read it angrily as "eighteen a fucking clock" in my head.

But yeah, I look shitty, I need to shave and shower and sleep. I am not looking forward to going through customs in germany, I am so so so so so so so tired and I would like them to give me a hotel room to sleep in my myself before anyone I need to make a good first impression on can see me.

Au revoir los angeles

Los Angeles is coming to a close, I should be gone by now but LAX has other plans for me at least until 10. I've had to rebook to another flight in London but I'm still on track. Last night I saw Cyle and I'd missed him so badly! He's such a sweet, sincere boy and I've met so few like him. We had a nice reunion. Jonathan went to San Diego for the night, or so I thought, until he announced he was coming back and I needed to be back to provide the housekeys in two hours when I was already two hours out on a bus to go say goodbye to Emixne. Of course, of course. The Metro system decided to give me quite a time as well, leading to me just barely making it back on time.

All in all, stressful but nice stay in Los Angeles. Now I'm listening to the UNENDING security and gate announcements over the loudspeaker. I'm a bit hungry and I figure I might as well get something to eat before my money is worth nothing. Who knows how much cash I have left in my account, dieu. Cyle, sweetheart, bought me lunch/dinner yesterday even though he's low on money. I love that boy, I don't care if he doesn't love me because he's worth it. He's rare, one of the few people I can smile and laugh with and be touched, too, and feel every second of it. It reminds me of how I feel towards Taylor sometimes only there's a physicality there, too.


I dropped my arms with a friend from Highschool in Studio City and now I'm feeling a bit vulnerable. Of course, I found the locked gun case (empty) in my carry on during my pre TSA check (which has become a ritual ever since the Sky Harbor International Airport .22 Caliber Bullet In My Jacket incident. I threw it away. It would have been a nightmare getting it through security and the fucker is hardly worthy anything anyways. Otherwise everything went smoothly. I HAVE TO PEE. Next update will probably be from London.

Los Angeles

...is always a bitter experience and a reminder it seems. Potential defines the city and lack of it's realization is what drives me crazy. It is always less then it could be, always less then it seems. It's the people.

I arrived with a gypsy woman who wouldn't stop smoking pot in the car, she had borderline personality disorder and took $75 for gas, plus $50 from someone else, plus $10 from my friend. We had to drop off another rider in San Jose and it was a 12 and a half hour drive to LA when it should NOT have been, and we almost ran out of gas. THAT was fucking absurd. My debit card has hardly any money on it, which I can't even access because I don't have the pin, so for all things other then credit card purchases I'm fucked.

I stayed with my friend Hunter in the Universal City Hilton for the first night. He was on Jeopardy and was REALLY excited about it. It was nice but a bit strange. I often don't know where I stand with people and my natural instinct has been not to care lately, which does not work when you depend on them for a place to stay or whatever else. It becomes complicating, frustrating, and was foreshadowing for the rest of the trip. The next day while he was taping, I met my former arch nemesis turned friend again Jonathan who chauffeured me to his apartment in Hollywood and we spent the day just going around the city. He took me out with his friend Evelyne to Cinespace, which was a fun night, but apparently in the brief amount of time I spent speaking to Evelyne she decided I was attacking Jonathan (after she asked why we'd used to be enemies and I responded, hesitantly, with a very few reasons and then stated how much he'd grown and how much I liked him as a person now) and chose to tell Jonathan days later, sparking a fight. THAT shook me up, had I been doing so it would have been one thing, but I was blindsided by it and at first Jonathan refused to believe me. It reinforced the fact that you have to watch your words here because either mine were misconstrued or Evelyn had an agenda that included fostering animosity between Jonathan and I. Either way, reminders of the instability of interpersonal relationships and my dependency at the moment are bitter and unpleasant to deal with. I also went with Emixne to Moscow two days ago and it was a disaster. I've never seen him as drunk. He pushed my boundaries to the absolute limit and I was hideously uncomfortable the whole night. He apologized the next day which enables us to hang out again, but it was another reminder of how quickly things can change and become tangled situations that are difficult to get out of. I'm not sure if the solution is self sufficiency or avoiding the situations all together, though I'm beginning to lean towards the latter.

I also met Tom, a boy I'd actually been excited about, but he behaved so much like Mitch did on the first trip to LA that I was disgusted by associating the two. After being SO excited to meet me he apparently "met a boy" on or around the night I saw him and completely blew me off, after I practically begged to be extracted from my horrible night with Emixne. A reminder of how much words mean here and how selfish people who think they might get laid can be, which is nothing new but more bitterly noted after each person I thought was above that kind of thing. I hate rejection and put very little of myself into people as a result, and Tom's 180 on having anything to do with me, for whatever reason, causes a dull ache. Maybe because he's exactly my type; an unstable uncaring semi-sociopathic drug addict who would treat me horribly.

I saw Christoph as well, who made me really happy and took me out for tea/coffee. He had a flight to catch the next day, which was shitty because I wish I could have spent more time with him. Of all people I know down here, he is perhaps the one I've had the most critically unstable relationships with, mostly because I've been the most dependent on him. Each time I return from traveling I forget how much I CANNOT STAND BEING DEPENDENT ON ANYONE EVER. My history with Christoph shows just how that can mar a nice relationship, and the fight with Jonathan reinforced it. I continue to tell myself it will be different while I'm in Germany but the fact that the rules of the game will be very similar or identical is frightening. Still, without depending on Christoph for a ride or a place to stay I was so much more at ease around him.

Today I'm supposed to see Cloverfield with Emixne and possibly do some work for Jonathan, photography etc. Things have been a little uncomfortable after the fight which was a massive disappointment and actually kept me up a bit last night. Jonathan is who he is but he's grown into it and reconciled his nature with his morality. And from what I see, I approve wholeheartedly of who he's become. In any situation I remain wary, but being blindsided last night and then his initial refusal to believe me was upsetting. I need to remind myself to stay vigilant because even when you don't do anything wrong situations can change very quickly. I'm not sure if he believes me, which I suppose doesn't matter as I'm leaving in two days, but what does matter is the principle of the thing. I was hoping to forge a lasting relationship, not survive for a week and then scurry off glad that I had a place to stay and didn't get kicked out.

My flight is on the 21st and it is now the 18th. As of yet, people who have flaked out include Tom, Eddie, Isiah, and Ariel. I expect, of course, messages from three out of four of them after I've left. I miss my friends in oregon, people in Los Angeles can be fairly wretched as I'm reminded when I go clubbing. If I had more solid relationships with people here it would be fun, but the fragility and instability of those things make it a hesitant and uncomfortable journey.

What I've taken away from all of it so far is that it's better to be liked for being good at something, for being talented, then by trying to impress people with your looks or personality. Ability is solid, ability is unquestionable and marketable and viable. I need to focus on honing my own skills and developing them to the point that I'm above this line.

Back to life.

My sister is psychotic

She does this about once every six months. She gets REALLY upset and starts laughing/crying over something trivial and then goes insane. This time was because I, in her opinion, ate too much of the ice cream.

At least this time there were no weapons involved.

Hello, Hello.

And so here we are again. A new beginning, a new perspective. Evolving again. My world seems to be getting smaller though, the same people, the same old histories churned up anew. The same things irritate and spite me as they did years ago. Painful conclusions I've shied away from and continue to do so look me in the eye and I have to accept them at some point.

Others embrace these concepts. Using people, for example. For goods. To fill an emotional void regardless of identity. This is a concept that has always disturbed me. Yet those who embrace it flourish, those who sacrifice their morality for the abuse of psychology tend to do better then those who are honest. And so I must ask myself the root of these things, what it means in a world where the openly wicked succeed and those tied by their morality fail. That there are no rules, only levels and methods of survival, some more precarious then others. It is a disturbing thing, not a nice thing, to wake up to the fact that there are no rules, there have never been any rules.

I am trying not to become bitter towards those closest to me but I am so disappointed in them and myself, but I am the only thing that can change and it's time for that. I have become bitter. I have become cold. I standoffish cling to my beliefs and values that no one can fulfill and grow cold in my resentment towards all who can't satisfy them. I suppose we'll see where I grow from here.

It is time for something new, an awakening, an opening.

On verra.

Inception!

Final test