The craving of intellectual stimulation and the delving of mind into thought is at strict odds with finding a way to fit into the community within which I find my physical self.
To sit contently sullen on a beach in Asia pacific with the warm sand beneath me as I watch the sunset on another part of myself.
To find a way to be a complete version on myself is a confusing and hesitant path today.

I love to watch my students.

Children forgive so easily. They are overwhelmed by emotion and then, like a passing wind, they let it go. They don't hold on to unnecessary negativity, they don't read into things, an apology in an apology, a mistake is a mistake and betrayal is never in question. I hadn't realized until this year just how possible it is just to let shit go. How fucking wonderful you feel when you forgive someone and how unbelievable you feel when you forgive yourself.

I can't tell you why I set such unrealistic standards for myself but, I can tell you that I beat myself up over insignificant events all the time. One lesson I am going to try to hold on to for all my years is one i learned from my kids this year: conscious forgiveness is a needed part of my everyday life. It's an orgasmic release of negativity and stress. It is one of the most human things I've done in a while and is helping me overcome the sometimes judgemental side of myself.

Forgiveness, regardless, I recommend.

i want so desperately to trust my heart

I wish my blog tag picture would fill the bordering box.

If your t-shirt could talk

What would it say?

"Relax for a moment and music holic"

"IT'S SO ME...
STILL I'M HAVING MEMORIES OF HIGH WHEN COPS CRASHAS L LAUGH PUSHING"

"I believe in EVOL SOMEONE U WIL MIS FOREVER(upside-down)"

That's what mine would say, gamsamnida.

As she told the languid account of her misfortunes
the crevaces of her worn and distant face would grow deeper

Her story would never reach further than the foot of her bed
Time itself a currency that she would never have enough of

I absorbed every word as a perfect lesson of a hard life
A life of lessons stewed so viciously it would spill
Where the wisdom could be but caught in those last moments

Rejected was her visitor’s familial claim
There wasn't enough love in that relationship to fill a thimble,
she explained

With acceptance so impervious that I would question nothing
She put death deep within my life

Tonight, for the first time, in perhaps my entire life, I found myself thinking ~I miss the old days. The days when energy bubbled from my veins in the most infectious way. The days when a night wouldn't pass without some drama-ladden story writing itself. The days when I didn't think twice about stirring it up. When my laugh always had a hint of mischeif and at least one set of eyes watched me thinking ~what will she do to next. When life felt like a play and I, the leading actress, pushed the line to see just how far I could go before life rubbed me raw.
Now, I'm so less apt to play a hand in this game. Maybe I threw in the cards a little too early.

If you understand this about me

It is one of the small pleasures of living in a developing part of the world that the foreigners one meets tend to live life in a vivid and eccentric sort of way, and when you listen to their tales of high adventure in the African jungle, you find that you are subsequently ruined from a conversational point of view, that you can no longer even pretend to be remotely interested in someone's trip to the mall, or their thoughts about the stock market, or their opinions about the relative merit of a basketball player, and soon you will be branded as aloof, simply because once, in a faraway land, you heard some good stories.

I don`t want to talk.

Stump me with a word.
Shatter my depth of understanding with what is obvious to you.
Cut into my ineptitude.
Scar my ego.

I walk sifting through a vat of listless minds.
I wake missing the disturbing manifestations of my subconscious.
I drift off listening to dead conversation.
I am conceited and my irritability grows with the limitations of here.
I stay home.
Dirty me not with your obvious bantering.
I am annoyed with your attempt.
You have nothing to offer me.

Brother, is this what I am to you.
Nothing am I if I am this.

I don`t want to talk.
I am not here, I never was.

I'm hoping to hold onto an emotion and/or train of thought long enough to complete a cohesive entry

Caution: An angry (bull-ddong) rampage displaced confrontation

In this fast paced Seoul, city-goers clastrophobe, I'm a treeplanter of 6 years-rural Africa loving camper, lacking a toenail and a few inches under my soles. Anti-capitalist at heart, though consistently lacking in practice, I connect a little deeper to my "alien" status. "Fake it 'till you make it" could apply but, I just don't care about occupying the mold right now. My anger must mean I'm slightly offended. Anyone that knows me, knows that I'm a doll faced, wine dining city-slicker when I need and want to be. But, I just feel that there is something more naturally mesmerizing to witness in this world than TV, media, advertising, the latest gossip, stocks, fashion, business agendas and technology. I can flirt with it, and do regularly but, there is something essentially soothing and fulfilling about the removal of all such things; being left with nothing but, fireside chats on morals and philosophy, and the comic creativity that comes when being without artificial stimulus. Having a man look into my unpainted eyes, exposed and open about what's important to me just makes sense. An exquisite world evolves when one stops trying to be connected to something material and truly checks in with oneself and the world around them. I know my ego is getting a work out as I type but, lets all try to find a more accurately descriptive word than "bush woman" and I'll try harder to not see your needs and desires as weaknesses.
I am now going to try to break this cycle of "you see me as weird so I'm going to separate myself and see you as weird and lame" and happily get back to my K-pop education.

A raven's affirmation

Occupy me not, heavy is this heart but, free of you it is
Lie to me again for I see your bubbling wretch of falsehood,
the loftiness of truth upheld by lies
Foolish are you to have threaded a damned life
For you are a running fool and I meet you with a cliff
Fall into oblivion, fool another fool, I am shield of the wiser

You recede from me into a night of African dreams
Farewell is your love in a tear slowly shed
Evaporate silent breath

O lesson opportune, close not what beats within,
the heart too must learn to fail
And just as refused to be, fooled I am in confidence
made clear today by the raven's knowing eye
Hear rising my intuition, severing your blond lock
Brain of a new vision, heart of a story lived, what a task is thine,
Within your beat still strong

To men certain whispers of myself bequeathing
but that affection me more strongly contemplating
To another rarely offering
Loathe you not, for it is with you my heart grew wise
And without you it dreams of something more

An ESL Kindergartener's Rendition of the Bubble Gum Song

Exhausted, late, sticky. “Good morning everyone, how are you?”

A unanimous response, “I’m pine, thank you, how are you teacher?”

A smile. “How about we start with the Bubble GUM song today?”

“Yeah!”

CD in player, Track 9. Play. Wait.

Bubble bum, Bubble bum, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, Bubble bum

Bubble bum, Bubble bum, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, Bubble bum

I LOVE it, I LOVE it, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy, Bubble bum

“Again?” Yes, again.

African

"I am an African, not because I was born in Africa but because Africa is born in me."

-William Easterly

As an ever-searcher seeker of universal truths one thing has recently become clear. Some things are not true because all of humanity depends on it, some things are not true because the ways of the world have made it so but, some things are true because you grip to its verity with such unrelenting belief that a million years of history couldn’t make it false. If this is religion, so be Africa. If this is love, so be Africa. If this is truth, so be Africa.