05 April 2014

Reflections in 40 - Day 31

Lạy Chúa,
xin hãy nhận lấy
tất cả tự do, trí khôn
và cả ý chí con.

Tất cả những gì con có và đang làm chủ,
Chúa đã cho con;
nay con xin dâng lại cho Chúa.

Tất cả là của Chúa,
xin Chúa xử dụng hoàn toàn
theo tôn ý Ngài.

Lạy Chúa,
xin hãy ban cho con tình thương và ân sủng Chúa.

Đối với con,
thế là đủ.

- Lời kinh của thánh I-Nhã

Take, Lord, and receive
all my liberty, my memory,
my understanding and my entire will.

All I have and call my own,
You have given to me;
to you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours;
I surrender it wholly
to be governed by your will.

Lord, grant me only your love and your grace.

For that,

that is enough for me.

- [adapted from the Prayer of Ignatius Loyola]

16 September 2013

25 Apr 13 - Take 2 aka Statements of a Personal Nature in 495 Words

Please tell us something about yourself, your experiences, or activities that you believe would reflect positively on your ability to succeed at Penn State. This is your opportunity to tell us something about yourself that is not already reflected in your application or academic records. We suggest a limit of 500 words or fewer.
----
I’ve done this application grind before, back when it was singly, the most important thing in my life and, ironically, as it so often is, before I knew why it was so. (Important)
There’s a dull hum in the back of my mind as I click through these pages, the familiar array of emotions swirling around my stomach and settling in the back of my throat.  Sometimes I think back and wonder what I might have possibly done differently to ‘succeed’ the first time around, but there isn’t any one thing really. I am who I am, I think what I think, and I know what I know because of everything that’s happened and brought me here to this point today. I didn’t know anything then. So I just did what I was supposed to do.  But when you are merely going through the motions, it’s easy to become just another cog in the machine and sometimes breaking free will also mean falling through the cracks and ‘through-the-cracks’ is just another place where it's even easier to be lost.
I view my last foray into higher education as something like that. Without an accurate understanding of what going to university could mean for me and without a higher purpose to tough it out for, I fell through the cracks. 
I managed to stay afloat for 3 years but despite being so close to the end, I ultimately withdrew, because I knew there were a lot of things I needed to figure out before I continue.  For a long time, I spent every night going to bed, hoping to the Powers-That-Be, that perhaps tonight would be the night I wouldn’t wake up. It was a dark and heavy time.  I made a lot of mistakes.  I wanted to die.
It’s hard to pinpoint the moment I started to feel differently.  I’m sure the ascent was gradual, a step forward here, a step further there, but it still almost feels like somewhere, a switch flipped, and one morning, I woke up and I realized I didn’t want that anymore. I didn’t want to die...I wanted to live.
There’s a line in Augusten Burroughs’, “Magical Thinking: True Stories,” that comes to mind when I think about where I went and now, where I’m going. He says, “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”  I feel like this, more than anything else, is what I learned from my first stint in college.
This insight, coupled with a deep, renewed desire to think and breathe and live and learn, are together the two most important things I have now that were missing before.   I didn’t know then, but I know it now. And now that I do, I am ready.  I am confident I have what I need to succeed at Penn State and that the knowledge and skills I learn here will in turn help me in propelling my good intentions into great action.

09 August 2013

29 Jul 2013 - sometimes i make things up

Dear Diary,

Today I looked up engagement rings and ate an excessively inappropriate amount of carbohydrates. The Internet told me to beat a sore throat by gargling whiskey so here I sit cradling a bottle close to my chest as I stare at a beautiful girl on the teevee. She's good at eye contact.  I'm working on that.

The last time I had bronchitis I quit smoking so I could heal. But the cough persisted until I finally got tired of being a quitter and decided to fuck it and smoke one of my coworker's menthols. I also fucked him and smoked his menthol but that's another story.  The cough went away after that. The shame didn't.

I've been trying so hard to come up with beautiful ways to reframe all these not-so-beautiful things. I think I've forgotten what truth means and now nothing is real unless I think of it in the abstract.

Or at least, 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'

I did a lot of drugs today and now I'm afraid to fall asleep

love
me

26 March 2013

so long and thanks for all the fish


There was one, in between the many, over the course of the night,
that felt different from the rest.
When I knew,
That'd be the one I'd remember you by
Along with your hands, placed ever so lightly on the V of my shirt.
And that airy wisp of a secret I pretended you told to only me.

But even with my vision blurred
I could still see the distance behind your eyes
And maybe that's why we started it off
     already collecting mementos...
Because we knew, (maybe), that was all we really had.

27 February 2013

02/27/13 - (She had asked for a secret in a business correspondence)

One time, I think I was about 6 or 7.. 
My middle sister, Judu, was about 1 or 2.. 

Anyway, it was her naptime

(My mom was away and my grandma was downstairs knitting by the baby monitor)

It was probably about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, 
Probably had just gotten out of school or something.
I had played all the things I wanted to play
And I was bored 
Or lonely (heh) 

So I snuck into her room, 
And peeked at her for a bit. 
She looked SO PRECIOUS. 

AND THEN 

I WOKE HER UP. 

So I could play with her! 

And I knew it the moment I did it, 
That I was being purely selfish. 
TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY SELFISH

I’m not sure if it was my feigned indignation towards bà nội,
That how could she not hear my baby sister stirring, 
Or that the little angel was just so cooperative,
So willing to play with me, 
Wiping the sleepy from her eyes 

I still feel terrible about it. 
More than a lot of other things I’ve done.
(And I’ve done quite a bit)

I guess it’s not a secret, as I’ve fessed up to it 
In a fit of shame and dismay
Multiple times
To my mom and to her
(and also anyone around when the memory reappears) 

Most people laugh and say that's not bad, it’s cute. 

HA. 

BUT I KNOW THE TRUTH
 :(

14 February 2013

happy valenstine's


Wandering hearts in hidden pockets
Relentlessly reaching to find
 
One spirit in-kind
One similar mind

One beat in sync
One piece to link

Kindred.

We are the ones who still believe in magic

The space cadets,
the meanderers

We see in feeling and feel in color
Throughout the world we find the others

And amplify our signal
Of Life and Love

30 January 2013

YOLO

Should I be more concerned about crossing that line?
Show some restraint
While my love is blind 
When I hear
In my ear
that deep sharp inhale--
You gasping for air
Your composure derailed
How would it be wrong when what we want feels real?
For a night or forever-
I can see that you're clever,
So can you really tell me, in being together
Is Time really the measure for what we endeavor?
Why does Time add value to the things we treasure?
Mm, maybe that's why
I am still feelin' fine
though I can't see that line
That people design
I can understand why, because hearts fall apart
But for now, I don't mind..
'Cause I feel as I feel
Like I did before
Sometimes less may mean less though it may sometimes mean more
I can't tell you the time it'll take me to live,
But I know what I give
And I'll believe what I'll get
Will be ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN times well spent.
In a dose or a session,
in periodic confession
I'll take it all.
Because remember?
you told me,
Time doesn't exist..
At least not in heaven

05 December 2012

whackadoodle.


inane
insane
the virility,
our ability
turning profound to profane
net it, regret it
edit, forget it

Ingratiated
insatiated
regurgitated
intentions
in tension
try to place blame
attempts to lay claim
on Beauty, on Love
push comes to shove
everyone's the same

11 November 2012

A Draft from 07/10/12 - #happybirthdaystine

Subject: What else..

there are:

things to do
people to meet
places to find
lessons to discover

sights to amaze
emotions to capture
moments to witness
memories to laugh over

dreams to be found
thoughts to be held
ideas to remember
seasons to be felt

words to hear
hearts to feel
melodies to create
songs to heal

dishes to taste
companions to embrace
lives to share
loves to encounter

twenty four years
like twenty four hours

i wonder what's in store for tomorrow
hey you know, it feels like i just got born


______________________________________________
[*Got the phrase 'just got born' from http://justgotborn.tumblr.com/ ala Autostraddle!]

03 November 2012

18 October 2012

MANIFEST
yo' deeest-iny
stiney
weenie
gotta come clean-y
wit yo'self
then help
will come
from the universe
in bursts
for real
can you feeeel
it 
it's coming 
drumming
hear 
the sound
arounddd.
like
life
is coming
for you

23 September 2012

i think honesty might be the only thing i have going for me

but it's hard 

and being alone makes it easy to confuse anything with love

15 August 2012

take this piece from off my arm and place it on your self
so if you see them turn away
you'll still recall
your scarlet letter stands for heart

"since feeling is first" - E.E. Cummings

since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis 


"since feeling is first" - E.E. Cummings

08 August 2012


[John Davies - A Visualization of Prime Numbers]

"The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number.

[...]

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

- Mark Haddon, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time

31 July 2012

glorious heaven
i nuzzle in your bosom
sweet pound of french roast

25 July 2012

I'm Always Right.. (except When I'm Left)

It may be that

when you get right down to it

there are no answers in life

none

and the only time there is a 'right' answer,

or a right

Thing-To-Do,

is when you decide that it is.



nothing is real.