Yoga Class

December 3, 2014

I’m letting the gentle melody of the Braveheart soundtrack Pandora station rock my metaphysical senses in gentle meditation as I lie on a mat of foam that reeks of the lemon ginger scent of Trader Joe’s organic cleaning spray. Let the stress of the day roll off of your shoulders like the ocean breeze in the evening after a sweltering day. Breathe in, breathe out. I listen to the flamboyant voice of my gay male yoga instructor, muffled by the presence of bright blue braces on his teeth that reflect the glow of the candle-lit room every time he smiles.  And by candles, I mean the battery powered pieces of translucent plastic with tiny light bulbs in them. It’s a realm of organic peace that I’m lying in right now. Seriously.

       Clear my mind. That’s what you’re supposed to do in yoga. But all I can focus on is how my muscles are shaking like an epileptic in an earthquake while I’m splayed out like Patrick Star balancing my bodyweight on my wrist with my other arm reaching up to the ceiling. Nothing like the humility of yoga.

I also didn’t get the yoga pants memo. I didn’t realize people actually wear them for yoga. My white legs in my running shorts are positively blinding.

Breathe in, breathe out. Release the stress. Become one with yourself. Don’t fart. God, don’t fart. Someone farts. I’m probably more embarrassed for him than he is for himself. Try to rub the foamy mat to reproduce farting noise so that he can reassure his fellow yoga peers that the wet rumble emitted from his hind area was really his sweaty palm wiping the rubber mat. All of us try to believe it.

“Let’s all breathe out an ‘om,’” my instructor beckons. We all sit in a circle with our shoulders back. I peek through my closed eyelids and see everyone with their legs crossed like Buddha. I try to look like I’m comfortable in that position. Then I hear the beginning of a gentle cadence of bass tones exuding from the mouths of the people around me like monks in a monastery as they harmonize their “Oms”, and these people are really getting into it, like they’re breathing out a demon or something, and you can smell the putrid air of “Om,” and I fight my church giggles because I’m sorry, it just amuses me.

I haven’t been back to yoga. Not my thing. 

December 2, 2014

              Be me. Late for my second flight from my layover in Dallas back to Seattle. Run onto the plane ten minutes before take-off. Breathlessly situate myself in my aisle seat. Silent prayer of thanks for aisle seat. Excessively affectionate couple to my left, aisle to my right. Prepare myself for four hours of silent solitude back to my city. Perfection.

              Begin to journal. I really like my handwriting. I’m engrossed in my own superfluous story-telling to myself, settling into the final leg of my journey home from Thanksgiving in Maryland. Just waiting on the stewardess to bring the drinks.

              Quiet Asian voice breaks my perfect introvert solitude like a small fly on the corner of a TV screen. Did I hear something? Notice a small old Asian man leaning into the aisle looking at my journal. “Are you writing an essay?” he repeats. Politely tell him that I am just journaling, and I return to my silent scripture. He did not take the hint. “I write essays in college. My daughter writes essays too. She’s in high school.” I very quickly realize his question was only an excuse to start talking.

              And talk he did. In his quiet Asian voice that all but disappeared in the drone of the airplane, he talked for four hours without pausing, needing nothing from me except eye contact and the occasional smiling nod. At first I wallowed in self-pity and regret that I could not turtle-shell myself into introversion for the next four hours, and I wondered how on earth I could extricate myself from the undying monologue, but then I realized that this kind Asian man with his Chinese accent and a voice like gentle rippling water truly was Buddha reincarnated, and after about ten minutes of god-like wisdom infused with the most random assortment of stories from his time as a Master of Arms in the Navy and a juvenile corrections officer, I was holding onto every word he said like it was the words of Jesus Christ himself. After twenty minutes of his speech, I shamelessly took out my notebook and began to take notes, much to his delight.

              The following lines of brilliance are the sum total of four hours of ceaseless monologue from a kind old Chinese man who deserves to have his wisdom shared. So share it I shall.

“I am the biggest racist there is. I really am. Against the human race. Humans are corrupt.”

“What you expose yourself to is what you will give back to the world. Garbage in, garbage out.”

“In the navy, my drill sergeant told me to empty my pockets. I didn’t empty my pockets. He asked me why. I told him I took it to mean that I need to empty my proverbial pockets of bias. Bias closes your mind to understanding. Empty your pockets.”

“Your behavior is indicative of where you’re headed.”

[Taking my notebook, he wrote the following]: “As forward-deployed military personnel, you should act and reflect honor upon yourself, your unit or command, and represent the United States as a diplomat.”

“No bullshit – I love to iron.”

“I work with at-risk juveniles. You must make juveniles feel that the society wants them.”

“We don’t want to create more enemies than we have. If you take a suspected terrorist and throw him in jail and treat him like a terrorist, and then one day you find out he is not a terrorist and you set him free, have you created a friend or an enemy? We must treat at-risk youth not like they are criminals, but like respectable citizens, and that’s who they will become.”

“Hope is the only thing to combat despair.”

“What is the one word that does not exist in the American dictionary?” He paused for a moment, and I shrugged my shoulders. “Impossible.”

“Nowadays, marriage is just a piece of paper. Criminality starts at home, when there is no home, and in the family, when there is no family.”

“Eyeliner is intriguing on a woman.”

“My wife will always occupy one of my heart chambers.”

On gay marriage: “Do you want another to dictate to you the parameters of whom you are supposed to love?”

“Societal equilibrium is the prevention of crimes. Is it a crime for a man to love a man?”

“The most dangerous people are Roman Catholics right after they leave the church parking lot.”

“You’re more than naked when you’re pissed off. You’re disemboweled, and the person that sees you angry has the power to push your buttons and be the little insect you can’t scratch.”

“If you really want the president to succeed for the nation, help him. Don’t tear him down. That’s un-American.”

“Good leadership is a product of good followership.”

“One must have a good set of global lenses in order to have a better understanding of what clicks with an individual to bring about their best qualities.”

“I used to be a hippie with long hair in a rock band. I really was.”

“You might laugh at a foreigner’s accent, but they might have the brightest ideas.”

“Early is on time, on time is late, but late is forgivable because parking is horrendous.”

“Dream of small attainable dreams that will be stepping stones to your bigger dream.”

November 23, 2014

              I’m telling you, growing up is no walk in the damn park.

              I’m going to share an excerpt from something I wrote in the minutes just after purchasing my plane ticket to Seattle. I had just hung up with the guy who owned the film crew I met in Ecuador. In the back of a canoe in the middle of the rainforest, he had offered me a paid internship to learn video production in Seattle. I’ve never had any real experience in production. I was about to sign 8 years of my life away to the Army Guard. I had no idea where I was going with my life. But I get this offer and I can’t say no. That offer was more than a job or a next step: it was someone who believed in what I am capable of, and was willing to make the effort and take the risk to push me to my potential. When you meet someone like that, don’t let them go. So we’re on the phone, home from Ecuador, and I’m asking him the logistics of moving out to Seattle. “We have an office with a microwave and a couch,” he explained. “We can try and get you a gym membership so you have a place to shower, and we’ll pay you for your first project so you have enough money to get started.” I’m smiling at the reality of this situation. “That’s all we can guarantee. It won’t be easy, but something tells me you can handle that.” Hell yes I can handle that.

“If I’m going to pack up everything I have and move 3,000 miles away, I only need guaranteed security and guaranteed money to get me started,” I tell him.

“I can guarantee those things,” he says firmly. And with that, he gives me his credit card information so I can book the ticket.

“Is this what trust is?” I ask, shocked that he freely gave me such sensitive information already.

He responded: “If not now, then when?”

So I booked the ticket. I’d been home from Ecuador for 3 days. I booked the ticket for the following week.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had in that moment.

“August 19, 2014

Remember this moment. Remember the moment where you took a chance. You saw a brilliant shining light on the horizon, and you gathered your things, said your good-byes, and you stepped out in pursuit of it. It shone vaguely and glimmered so dramatically there were times when it was all but gone. But it shone, and you followed.

You just booked your ticket. Tomorrow, you will clean out the bedroom at your parents’ house. Next week, you will pack all of your belongings into a suitcase, and in eight days, you will hop on a one-way flight to the west coast to pursue the shining light on the horizon. You will sleep in an office, shower at a gym, and eat at the tables of the people who care about you.

And you will shine. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t be writing this right now.

And even if you don’t believe it, there’s no going back now.”

              I’m being all reflective because tomorrow I go home for Thanksgiving. It will be my first time home since moving here, and even though it’s only been 3 months, I’ve grown and learned and changed so much that it will feel like it has been much longer. And in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful. I’m grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to achieve my dreams, and to my bosses for seeing potential in me and making sacrifices on their end to help me attain it, and to my parents for their sacrifice and ceaseless support, and to my sister and my friends who have remained connected to me even though we are thousands of miles away. I couldn’t have done it without any of them.

              And yes, I’m listening to the Gladiator soundtrack, so please excuse all these sentiments. Got me in my Honey Nut Feelios. 

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 1

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 1

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 2: Apartment Edition

November 3, 2014

            I have my own apartment now. It’s a terrible place with carpet stains, a view of barbed wire, kitchen cabinets off their hinges, and a faucet that drips a drip that is so constant it’s more like a stream of water, but the place is perfect in every way because it’s mine, and I love it. It’s quirky too. It has a one-butt kitchen so small that it should be in an RV. I like to think of it as adorable. And, we have a hallway. It sounds absurd, I know, but think about it. A house has hallways. A one-bedroom apartment, at least out here, doesn’t. It has a living room with doors off of it. When my new roomie Lauren and I opened the wooden door while touring the place and stepped onto the fluffy light blue 1960’s carpet, we stood in the hallway and mentally cancelled all of the other apartment tours that we had left on the agenda. We were home. We were standing in a hallway, and it felt like a home.

            Fast forward a week and I’m locked out of Jordan’s apartment, so I beg the landlord to let me move into my new apartment early. He complies, hallelujah. Lauren drives her beat-up Honda to Jordan’s apartment to pick me up. It’s loaded full with her stuff, and we make some space in the trunk for every single possession I have to call my own. It seems hopeless – I’ll admit my pessimism for the undertaking. This light blue Honda Accord that she got for $100 because the entire passenger side is T-boned in such a way that you can’t open the passenger door adds to the raw, uncut adventure that we’re having in the city of our dreams. I haven’t touched my clothes that are strewn across Jordan’s living room furniture, so I run in and throw them in some trash bags, grab my guitar, and we peace out. Can’t get a hold of the apartment manager, so there we are on the street corner with all of our possessions jammed in this piece of junk with wheels, sitting on her trunk smoking her E-cig, with nowhere to go. We grab some dude on the sidewalk and ask him to take a picture of us in this moment of uninhibited liberty and excessive idealism.

Can't you just smell the adolescent idealism?

            When we finally move in, it takes us about 10 minutes to unload our stuff. The apartment manager comes in and takes us through the place. His name’s Andrew. He strikes me as some washed-up ex-rock band guitarist who hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s pushing forty so he lives alone in an apartment building that he manages with his two senile pugs while binge-watching Seinfeld. “Call me anytime, day or night,” he reassures us, even though it’s become clear that it’d be easier to get a hold of Obama than to reach Andrew when we need him most. The three of us awkwardly sit in a circle on our stained light blue carpet and sign the lease. A whole year in one apartment. Cheapest rent in the area, though, that’s for sure. Probably because of the shitty carpet.

            We salvage some semblance of civilization by stacking up my vintage suitcases in the corner and then stacking my books on top of them next to a cool lamp. It’s the only thing remotely close to furniture we have in the whole place. Lauren and I sleep next to it on this paper thin matt that eats my vertebrae every night I sleep on it, but after 3 months in a tent and 2 months on a couch, I’m not complaining. And there’s no Wifi. It takes more self-discipline than I’m willing to admit to restrain myself from depleting my cell phone data plan streaming “Orange is the New Black” from my phone. Instead I just play a lot of guitar and read my latest author obsession, Kurt Vonnegut. Everyone should read Man Without A Country. Just read it.

            It’s an adventure. All of it. I just signed a one year lease, and I have no income at all right now. My internship ended and now I’m a free-lance video person. I’m meeting with the right people and I have some side jobs tutoring, so I’m not an entirely useless member of society, but it’s scary. Since starting this blog and posting on Facebook, I’ve gotten some messages from people that say what I’m doing is awesome, how life is so exciting, I’m living the dream or whatever, and I am. It’s awesome, and I love it. But don’t get me wrong – there’s a price to pay for this kind of life, and that price is security. I don’t know where my next paycheck will come from, but I know I’ll have a bill to pay in a month.

            I had a meeting the other day with a big name in the industry, a guy who introduced Bill Gates to Bono and inspired James Cameron to produce Avatar. We met over coffee to discuss where I could go from here in my career, and he gave me some really good advice that I’m taking with me: Jump, and then the net will come to catch you.

            So against all the logic I learned in college, I’m just… jumping.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

          Last night, I became an adult.

         I sat alone last night at my bar hangout and wrote a screenplay. I love this bar. It’s a micro-brewery with the best craft beer around. I’ve been on every Tinder date there, seated at the wooden counter under the dim lights. The bartenders probably think I’m a prostitute. I’m there so often that Rick, the owner, knows to simply surprise me with a drink. Don’t even have to order. I sound like an alcoholic. I’m not.

         Anyway, my mad scientist boss calls me into his office last week and melodramatically announces that he has a job for me that he thinks might be asking too much of me, but he feels that I may be competent enough as a writer to help him out. He needs me to write episode 2 of the web show we plan to produce. This show’s been in the works for weeks, and everyone here is on board. It’s a show about…marijuana. Of which I knew nothing until I came out here two months ago. For ten minutes he walks me through his vision for the show, which I’ve heard a million and one times having attended the meetings, then he walks me through a screenplay template, then he gives me a plot synopsis that he has in mind for the episode (a very basic plotline), and then he asks me to develop an ~18 scene, 25 minute screenplay for it. I still don’t know why he asked me, but he did. Fortunately all the dialogue will be developed later, so really I only have to write a simple breakdown of scenes and characters. Easy, right? No. The creative genius and the boss I have to live up to are two magnanimous shadows of nail-biting pressure.

         So I sit on the task for like two days writing absolutely nothing and glowering indignantly at a blank computer screen that glowers back with its cruel, blank stare that makes me feel like a completely incompetent human being. Boss wants it ASAP though. That means sitting on it for two days is not a good idea. But he says nothing of it when he sees me, although we both know neither one of us has forgotten the task that has been assigned and, so far, unfulfilled. Finally, yesterday morning I promise to have it to him that evening.

         Nine o’clock rolls around. I haven’t written anything. I get back from the gym and it’s dark out, the steady Seattle rain falling, bringing with it the cold autumn weather that has been held off for the past month. Pressure’s on. It feels like college again and the many all-nighters I pulled to finish a paper on time. I need to write. I need to drink. Choices. So many choices.

         And this is the moment where I reached adulthood, dear reader. This is when I became an adult.

         I take my notebook and the show’s Bible (the book of characters, plotlines, etc.), and I go to my bar hangout. And on a Friday night, I sit in the corner of said bar, and I work. In a bar. On a Friday night. I remember in college what a Friday night at a bar meant, and I laugh dryly in my mind. The owner of the bar gives me free beer and I bury myself in the task at hand, politely excusing myself from conversations with the men who curiously approach my corner table. The hours pass, and this motherf***ing screenplay gets written. And as I drink more I actually laugh a little bit at my comedic creative genius which probably isn’t that funny, but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t had the guts to read what I wrote since I sent it off to my boss at 1am last night.

         So that’s how I became an adult.