Maybe it'll just crumble.
    She thought.
Maybe it'll just crumble, and I'll slide on through. Then that will be that. Issue resolved.
    She stared at her feet and thought.

The tiles beneath her bare feet

Dear John ... Or, How I learned to stop hatin' and love the V-bomb

Scene: You walk into a large, empty, decrepit gymnasium. Up on the left corner of the roof, there are various shades of brown and beige making their escape from an inverse crater caused by last winter’s storm. To the right, a bucket catching the 10-second interval drops of water coming from a wet roof that, for whatever reasons, has defied natural law and refuses to dry up.

There are a few mis-matched chairs arranged in a scattered and poor-excuse of a U shape in front of a podium. The podium’s laminate face shines in the flickering light and makes it the most ethereal thing in the down-trodden room. You walk toward the chairs, drawing “eeks” and “ooos” from the elderly wooden floor beneath you. You pick the chair that doesn’t look up at you in fear and take a seat. As the chairs moan and groan with every deep breath you take, a woman in her early 30’s stands and walks behind the podium.

She takes a few silent breaths, looks up at the flickering light and with lips of petrified tree bark says,

“Hello, I am 32 and (sighhhhh) I have never had a Valentine…”

The few silent bodies in the room shift uncomfortably in their creaking chairs and begin to whisper “oh my, not one? … never? … oh… noo….”

This is the scene I conjured up in my head almost three years ago when I hit the 30 mark. I was going to have to seek intervention of some sort because all of my friends, males and females alike, had some Valentine’s day story to share. They were of varying degrees of intensity and … sentiments, but stories nonetheless:

 “When I was 21, my boyfriend took me on a romantic hike.”
“The bitch broke up with me on Valentine’s day”
“He sent flowers to my home, my work AND left some on my car.”
“She make me cupcakes, they were the best thing ever.”

And then there’s me, now almost 33 years old with not one Valentine’s story to share. That’s right, folks, I have never had a Valentine. Every year, February 14^th rolls around and I find myself pumping my own gas, clearing insurance fliers (not flowers) from my windshield, eating a Twix bar I bought for myself because the box of chocolates got lost in the mail.

Every year I also find myself being sought out by friends who tell me “you should come hang out with us, we’re having an anti-Valentine party! Who needs ‘em?! Screw them!”

After about 23 years of not having a Valentine, I started dreading the days when giant stuffed teddy bears made their appearance on street corners with heart-shaped balloons, red and white carnation arrangements and ridiculously large cards.

As if the size of the card is going to cover-up the size of the mistake you make just a week ago, as if a giant stuffed teddy bear is going to really tell a person how much they love them even if it is sewed onto that plush heart he’s holding. As if sending flowers is going to make them want you more, as if eating chocolates is going to make everything better…

Ok, maybe eating chocolates does make everything better.

This was my 23 year old self. Hatin’ on Valentine’s day, pumping up my sarcasm to 11 around my friends who had a Valentine. Sending out “I hate you every day, I don’t discriminate” messages to my loved ones. All the while, secretly hoping that whatever person who was somewhat in my life at the time would just say something, do something, show me something. But it never came, the flowers, the chocolates, the cards, the stupid child-labor teddy bears. None of it ever came.

And so the hate on love just continued to build.

It began to boil around mid-January, when the stores started putting out red and pink colored foods. Increased in early February, when people started putting cut out hearts and cupids in their windows and finally over-flowed around February 10^th, when the street corners started to fill with contraband merchandise.

One year, my older sister thought it would be “cute” to give me some love on Valentine’s Day and gave me a couple of flowers along with a “Grow-A-Man.” A small, space-material doll shaped like a man in boxer shorts that you would submerge in water to expand out. I gave her a snarl and said “yeah, thanks.” In my head I was thinking ‘man, what a bitch.’ 

Right?!

Meh.

So how did this all start? Where did it all go to hate?

A cartoon flashback….

I used to be so enthusiastic about Valentine’s day, I loved everything and everyone. I would get excited giving things to people, because I could. I do remember laying on the floor with my Big Bear pencil and writing every person’s name in my class on those Strawberry Shortcake cards and putting them on people’s desks. I didn’t care that no one had a crush on my, that my hair wasn’t pulled on the playground or that I wasn’t chosen first for kick-ball. I just had massive amounts of love for my friends, because they were my friends.

Gradually, I started gaining interest in a number of other things, but my love for my friends was always there. Even as the loneresque punk rock high schooler that was actually a pretty well-known geek, my bad ‘The red seas of my heart will part and fill the sky with my bloody Valentine’ poetry was shrouded in good intentions. It should have read ‘I love you pimple-faced, bipolar bastards even if you do get me in trouble with the Algebra teacher.’

Well, after my schooling was over and I became an adult and realized that the rest of the world thinks about things other than taking over administrative building, smoking pot on magazine production nights (sorry mom) and shoving chapters of information into my brain. I suppose I had lost some of this love-fest- connection with my friends who had gone off and done things of their own and created their own experiences. I suppose it was after I graduated and jumped out of the metaphorical threshold of the world yelling “Here I am, baby, all smart and powerful and shit!!” that I began noticing that people buy each other crap on Valentine’s day. That I wasn’t receiving this crap, and so, did that mean then that I was less of a person? That I was going to be forever alone? Then, one day, someone told me that Valentine’s day was a holiday conjured up by American Greetings and See’s Chocolates to boost sales.

And that was good enough for the communist in me.  Bring on the rage.

So here I am, almost 33 years old, sitting on my bed, alone again. Granted, this year I made an important decision to wake up alone this morning in the name of personal growth. Nevertheless, here I am drinking ONE cup of bay-leaf tea (helps your pooper shooter, try it). Looking over at the ONE empty can of diet soda I had with my meal last night, thinking about making ONE breakfast sandwich… and I’m perfectly content, alive, healthy, and on my way to having the cleanest colon on the eastside. 

This morning I woke up and told my 23 year old self that no, Lu, Valentine’s Day wasn’t a conspiracy against you invented by greeting card companies and chocolate manufacturers to make you feel more alone and grumpy. No one really knows who this St. Valentine is, actually. He was said to be a Catholic priest who secretly married Roman soldiers and their young lovers when the king outlawed marriages (single men fought better in wars, I suppose?). Others say he was a Catholic something or other who was jailed for something or other and on the eve of his execution, wrote a letter to the jailer’s daughter, with whom he had the hots for, and signed it “your Valentine.”  

As you can tell, my historical facts may not be all that accurate but the point is that Valentine’s day has been celebrated for thousands of years. This is a fact – bitter, angry, raging, 23 year old Lu. People love each other on Valentine’s day – you old ninny. And being single on Valentine’s day doesn’t make you any MORE single than February 13^th or February 15^th, nor any other weekend in February when your coupled up friends go out and have dinners and conversations together, with or without you. So why should stuffed animals and mylar balloons make you feel anymore alone than on any other night that you are, physically, alone? You remember, those nights you sit in your booty shorts and t-shirt, eat weird crap and watch bad movies, fart and say “gah’damn I’m so glad to have some alone time.”

So it’s February 14, 2012 and this is my Dear John letter to hatin’ on love.

Dear John (aka 23 year old grumpy Lu),

Seeing people in love makes me believe in love. Watching my sisters get flowers makes me feel happy that the people I love have people who love them. Hearing my friends tell stories of how they received tokens of affection, with smiles on their faces makes me smile as well.

And while I may not have an enormous stuffed animal sitting on my chair – that I would probably put in storage tomorrow – I know that I am loved as well. I know this when I receive those early-morning messages that wish me a great day. When my friends care enough to share their feelings of gratitude toward the people in their lives, when I see my 73 year old father give my 72 year old mother potted flowers (they last longer), when the kids around me in all their little-kid enthusiasm trade hand-made cards, yeah, I feel the love.

So, so long, grumpy-puss. I don’t want you in my life anymore. I’m no longer scared of your Valentine’s bombs, your creeping feelings of self-pity and misery. Your “woe-is-me” ice cream buckets and empty bottles of wine. Be gone with you, bitter Betty, there’s no room for you inside my head. I don’t want to wallow in your mud anymore. If people want to give each other stuff, let them give each other stuff, because people like getting stuff like you like people telling you to have an awesome day. I’m going to love today, like I’m going to love tomorrow and everyone in my days to come. 

Hope I don’t see ya’ around anymore,

(almost) 33 year old Lu.

p.s. I know where you stashed your old love notes from high school, you hypocrite!

And so I say Happy freakin' day to you all. Make it awesome. No, make it freakin' awesome. Hell yeah. I'm loving all this love shit. 

Godspeed...

(Note: As you may have noticed, I've abandoned my 365 project a bit. I'm looking to restart it soon, now that I'm in a new space which I hope will lend itself to creativity. In the meantime I'll be posting some random blog entries such as this one, in which I force myself to examine my recently acquired God complex.)

I was sitting there ever so nonchalantly eating my absurdly large portion of Hawaiian BBQ, watching darkness slowly approach. The ceiling fan above me was whirring, breaking the stale silence in the room. Every so often it would begin to wobble creating a concave air pocket with its blades as if it was taking a deep breath to continue on with its never-ending duty of keeping me cool in my own private hades. I sat in the middle of the small kitchen, on the wooden chair with a creaking, broken back, left leg flung over right, slowly masticating on the piece of meat in my mouth. My tongue searching and sucking at the strands of meat wedged between my teeth.

Whirr, suck, creak. Whirr, suck, creak.

Those are the sounds death makes as it approaches through the broken tile on the lopsided floor of an empty kitchen in the hills of Highland Park.

On the counter in front of me they marched on, caring about nothing more than survival. Restless and determined with a wild kamikaze spirit, they moved their legs across the sleek tile. Greeting each other with hurried furor.

Hello. Is that you Tom?

Yes David.

How are the rest of the men?

Intact.  

Very well. Godspeed.

Godspeed.

Whirr, suck, creak. 

Whirr.

Suck.

Creak.

Soon they will be no more. There was a strange calming sensation running through my core. For days they had been the source of my agony, causing me fits of frustration and pain. My small yelps in the middle of the night awakened no one in my lonely quarters and were carried away by the whirring of the ceiling fan. 

Perhaps this is why I wanted them dead.

Their presence was a menacing reminder me of how alone I had been for the past few days in that lopsided studio with broken tiles, in that big lot with dusty pathways, in that big city with rolling hills, in that big state with crashing shorelines, in that large and confused country, in the bustling world... 

in the quiet universe.

Their determination haunted me. It possessed me.

So I ended up sitting there, in that kitchen, watching them die. I lured them in with peanut butter laced with poison to take back to their colony. To their women and children.

I had no remorse. 

I tore a piece off of my Hawaiian BBQ and licked my lips.

I knew they weren’t going to die there, in front of me. I knew their hurried determination would give them no clue as to what they were feeding on.  I knew that somewhere in the quiet universe, I was disrupting the symphonic chaos that is life.

Perhaps one of them figured it out, perhaps it was seeking justice or looking to reason with me; marching itself up my leg, through the pant folds and over the perilous loose lint, up my forearm and stopping on my knuckle that cradled the now lukewarm Styrofoam box.

I closed the box.

Whirr, suck, creak.

I lowered my head to take a closer look at the renegade and said the only thing I knew to say before I placed my heavy cold finger upon his head.

Godspeed, sir.

Godspeed. 

Days 28 - 31 (July 6 - 9, 2011) ... These parts of Me ...

I seem to be failing miserably at being able to upload my entries on a daily basis. As such, I've decided to give in and take my entries from daily to weekly. Given the amount of free time and resources I actually have right now, I think it would be much more manageable. However, I'm still going to continue taking a photo a day and using them to illustrate my entries - which was my main objective to begin with. That's why I'm not going to change my project name - it will continue to be a 365 reflection of beauty in my world.


With that... my entry for the second half of the week of July 6th -

When I was at UCLA, I wrote for the Latino newspaper, La Gente de Aztlan. As part of our training, our media adviser gave us the duty of creating a newspaper that reflected who we were.

My end product looked more like a zine constructed in a garage rather than a newspaper. Images pasted together, headlines and pull-out quotes masquerading as ransom notes. My adviser liked the idea. I did too, but I still felt a little apprehensive of my collaged personality.

When I was in High School, I found myself hanging out with a group of students who were of mixed cultural backgrounds. I really enjoyed their company and our discussions that we'd have in the student garden. On one of those days in the garden, one of the males in the group (admittingly, one I had a crush on) turned to me and said "you're amazingly beautiful." It caught me off guard and I blushed, it was an incredible feeling to hear that. Then I came to a point where I felt I wanted to fill the part of me that had a passionate connection to my own culture. I was and still am proud of my family's heritage and history and it's something I had always enjoyed reading about. I connected with a Latino group on campus and went to one of their meetings during lunch. That same day, the "friend" who had, just weeks before, told me how amazingly beautiful I was saw me walking out of the meeting space and approached me to declare "I didn't think you were like that, like one of THEM."

I assume he meant like a person who was a "separatist," as they would often describe some of the cultural groups on campus. I say assume because they didn't speak to me after that day. It was hurtful. I let one of my many pieces come out and suddenly I was an ugly person to them.

I still feel fragmented, made up of pieces haphazardly pieced together and bound by reused tape and clamps. The things I enjoy are varied, the things I'm passionate about spray themselves across a spectrum of personalities. Some people would say eclectic, others would say indecisive, but I no longer think ugly.

The photos above were taken in my apartment, which houses many of my various interests and personality ...errr... traits. I threw in an obscure picture of myself as well, a sort of representation of how I often portray myself in the "real world."

I'm often told "you don't talk much" or "you seem very complex" when I'm sitting at a table full of talkative people. I usually agree and smile. Well, it's not that I'm very quiet, nor that I'm complex. I'm just a bit of everything so showing nothing is sometimes easier for people to understand or accept.

But, this is who I am. I'm constructed of various parts of the world that have been somehow cemented into my being like a strange piece of folk art. I could probably stand in between the Watts Towers and be akin to the giant structures.

As I've gotten older, I've come to accept and embrace the many pieces of me. The top photo, I feel, is very representative of me. I had decided to paint my model doll one day, and couldn't decide what color to paint it nor what face to give it. So I took each "limb" and painted everything that came to mind. If you'd ever want to see me naked - well, there I am. In all exestentialchicanasurrealistnerdgeekglamopunkrockartsyfartsypoorkidtechnofileguerrilla glory.

And it feels fine.

365Beautiful .... Day 27... (July 5, 2011) BRAIIIIINS

It's the first day of summer programming at one of our sites, and this site in particular takes a bit more work than our other site. Mainly because there are more logistical pieces to it involved, including estimating students, lunch costs, numbers of canned corn to buy and evening out the amount of weiners to bun per pack ratio - which is always very puzzling. 

I've been the director of this youth program for two and a half years and I find it very satisfying. I enjoy putting pieces together and creating new things. This position has allowed me to do so and allows me to continue to do so - despite how tired I may feel. 

I was sitting at my desk today, with two pencils in my hair, a calculator on my desk and stacks and stacks of papers on either side of me when my back started to hurt... a lot. 

I sat back and looked around and realized just how immersed I was in my work. But I was figuring things out, numbers, pounds, averages, percentages, probabilities. 

God... I hate math. 

I really do. 

But there I was, doing it all on my own. 

My brain must have been smoking at this point and maybe working a bit on the delusional side because I sat there for a good five minutes with a satisfied smile on my face thinking "gah-dang I have a big brain" 

Ah yes, I may be clumsy and forgetful, but I can crunch the fraction out of the cost of a food program for 160 kids.

Hey Lu, you got a big, juicy, beautiful brain. 

365Beautiful, Day 26... (July 4, 2011) ... Boom! Boom! Boom!

I will admit, I'm not a very patriotic person. I lean to the left in my political and social views and I frankly don't care for the corruption and torture this country has historically spread throughout the world.

But, it's fourth of July ... and fireworks have to be lit.

(Legal notice: the fireworks in the photo are coming from a few blocks away, NOT my parent's front yard.)

My family may, or may have not, lit fireworks on the fourth of July. My nieces and nephew may, or may have not sat in lawn chairs and let out little screams of excitement when colorful sparks flew across the sky.

But we were together, and we did enjoy each other's company.

When I got to my brother's house, my family was all there drying off from a day-long swimming session in the pool. The BBQs were just cooling down and beers were almost all consumed. Despite all of that, as soon as I walked in, my sister jumped up and ordered burgers to be thrown on the grill. My nephew took over this assignment and I was told to sit down.

My mom looked at me and said "don't say that we don't love you."

Jokingly I said "Javier (my nephew) loves me."

She rolled her eyes and told me to "shattap."

Somewhere in between, my oldest brother and I got into some random argument (about cell phones I believe) which is what we typically do when we're in a room together. Argue about something I think is right and he thinks is wrong. Well, to say they're arguments is a little misleading. It's more of a one-liner ping-pong game:

"I don't believe it!"
"It's true"
"Bullchet!"
"Whatever"
"Get out of here!"
"Believe what you will"
"Faking Bullchet!"
(My brother usually does the cursing.)

It's more amusing than frustrating, really.

Later, we strolled to the front yard to watch the "uncertified" firework show in Pacoima. As the fireworks went up, I told my nephew stories of when we were kids and how my dad used to build contraptions similar to the ones used in Mexico to hold fireworks. He asked if they had always been illegal and I explained that it wasn't too long ago that they outlawed the firey suckers.

They sky kept going BOOM BOOM BOOM, for two or three hours straight. Everyone was smiling, happy, enjoying the night. Everything negative I felt the week before was being burned away.

I felt content. Everything in my little world was right for the night. If I could only hold on to this feeling...


(feel free to insert Journey jokes now.)

365Beautiful, Day 25 ... (July 3, 2011) ... One in front of the other..

I wish I could have taken some sort of collage-y photo with one foot in one city and the other in another city, but alas, I do not have the equipment to be able to do so. 

So you will all have to stare at a photo of my crazy feet. 

I went to do laundry at my parent's house today. I moved out roughly two years ago now and I've been managing well on my own so far, despite my mom's belief that I might burn down the apartment or some 7ft tall Frankenstein type would be waiting for me at my door every night. 

I moved into a small duplex in Mt. Washington (near Highland Park) and I can't say I regret the move. I feel it's actually made me a better person.

Moving out of my house was an incredibly big deal. My parents are extremely traditional and follow the belief that children should live at home up until they get married. Even then, they should still return home as much as possible. 

We followed this rule pretty well, until it I was the last one standing. 

Now, I love and cherish my parents and am grateful for everything they've done for me... but they were driving me nuts. I felt my relationship with them tearing apart. I hated the way I felt and I didn't want to blame them for it, but tongue just couldn't stay dull toward them. 

I was 30 years old, having completed my B.A., with a pretty good career path and enrolled in a Master's Program and yet, I felt I was not growing. Well, perhaps I was, but I was growing in this strange diagonal direction downward. I was single, not looking to be married anytime soon, not looking to be in any type of serious relationship because I had school on the mind all the time, and I just knew... I would be feeling this for a very long time if I didn't make the move. 

I had planned my move for over a year.

Yes, I spent over a year rehearsing my speech, researching apartments, rehearsing my speech some more, practicing sprinting, dodging and blocking until I finally got the steal nerve to sign the lease on my apartment. 

Then I sat in my parents living room and solemnly said "I have something to tell you..."

I can imagine the multitude of things my parents were thinking, and based on their reaction... moving out was not one of them. 

They were devastated, but accepting. My dad very matter-of-factly said to me "we don't want you to leave, but we also don't want you to be unhappy. Your happiness is more important to us."

So I packed up my things and moved. 

I know my mom still worries about me, as I worry about her, but I also know that she's a lot more understanding of who I am. Now when I go over and see them, I know that I can sit and have a meaningful conversation with her and my dad about anything, without the ugly feeling of resentment and suffocation creeping up on me.

I'm so happy. I'm so happy to be able to write this all down and look at my apartment and look at my home and say, this is where I am, that's where I was... this is where I live, that's where my heart is... 

This is my right foot, this is my left... and everyday I can put one foot in front of the other and... go.