longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me.

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth.
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

by Matthew Arnold

chasing steeper hills

to keep our minds focused more on the beautiful day and less on stuff that sucks, megan malawi and i stumbled into an impromtu but grand tour de echo park.

that slug-bug of hers led us up one hill and down the next, ever seeking the next steepest climb and even more outrgeous downward grade. one of those is a hill we like to call rollercoaster road (which, incidentally, google ranks the 4th steepest street in the world), because while it is utterly terrifying - whether it be daytime or night, reaching the summit of that hill, over which you can see absolutely nothing, and can do little more than trust that there really is a road on the other side, it tickles me to hysterics. whilst megan malawi cried out that she was seeing her life flash before her eyes, just before she turned the car around so's to avoid driving over the peak, i was laughing so hard i couldn't breathe.

the hilly byways eventually dumped us into elysian park (where the slug-bug hugged the mountain - even when it was on the wrong side of the road - to keep from driving right next to the precipice from which any faller would most certainly meet his untimely death). while trying not to give the gunfire too much thought, we scouted locations for the picnic we tenatively planned to plan, and found openings a plenty where we just stood in jaw-dropping awe, beholden to the breathtaking views.

when you're down in the grease and grime of the gridlock, it's easy to forget how truly spectacular this town really is, but when up in the hills, looking into downtown, over at the hollywood sign and observatory, or catching glimpses of the sea crashing into the shore, it's impossible not to see that this city really is one fit for angels.

and just as the clock ticked a reasonable starting line for an afternoon of drinking, we found ourselves settling into a local bakery/cafe for a most delightful booze-infused snack in anticipation of our trek back into the hills...

~k

a dream within a dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet, if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it, therefore, the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

- by Edgar Allen Poe

sacrifice

the dictionary has a bazillion definitions, but this one seems the most all-encompassing:

"the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim."

so how do you know which has a higher claim?

when weighing all things, which things get the most weight, which things are meant to matter more? and why is it that just when you think you know the answer, something, some feeling you didn't expect, some something you didn't know was there comes into play and fucks everything up?

how do you know?

~k

the darkness in immobility

when i stepped off the plane into heathrow airport last november, i had left my life behind. i went in search of freedom from my past, to let go of what had been holding me back, so's to find and make my way on my own.

and i did.

i spent two weeks getting through europe on my own, kicking my past to the curb every step of the way. i had the time of my life, and in reading my journal from that time i feel refreshed in the memories of those sanguine days and nights.

but now i'm stuck. i can't move. i'm still searching for the answer(s) i didn't find there. or anywhere. i try to be patient, waiting for someone, anyone, to tell me what's next, but i know only i can know, and can only know when i'm meant to know. but not knowing makes me fucking nuts. and forces me to...

detach. disengage. isolate.

i. am. (un)comfortably. numb.

i am still listening to the same playlist i made in the weeks between europe and christmas. i'm stuck there. it still feels like my now: "i want to change the world, but instead i sleep." "i get lost in the beauty of everything i see." "what the hell am i doing here? i don't belong here." "you reach for the sun, afraid of the day." "i can't stop and catch my breath." "you don't see me." "paranoia is in bloom."

sometimes i force myself to make plans, and spend every second between the making of the plan and its fruition dreading the company of others and knowing i'm going to have to attach, engage, integrate. and i'm not sure which is worse: faking it for them or trying to explain why i can't.

change is hard. it's unsettling. it's risky. and it's lonely. i feel it all around me, in every breath i take and hold, in every direction i look, in every breeze that passes me by. i just don't know where it's going. or when.

but in all this darkness i never lose sight of hope. and i keep my faith that the when and where is a beautiful time and place, that in the end it will have been well worth this struggle.

~k

foreign service

this post is akin to a drunk text, one of those i might wish i never would've hit "publish", but to hell with it...

i've always believed i'm meant to change the world. whether it be delusions of grandeur or perchance a curse, it's been one of the biggest driving forces of my life. i chose law school, eons ago, because i believed it the path of least resistance toward that end. it wasn't. or maybe it was. i dunno.

but i do know that wednesday brought the news that i passed the foreign service exam. and that less than 30% of takers pass it. that most of the people i personally know who've taken it are as happy for me as they are jealous that i passed it and they didn't. and i feel like it's right.

when i turned down the afhanistan job, it was because it wasn't right. the timing wasn't right. it didn't feel right. and paris guy was newly in the picture...

but now it's different. it's all different. i think about my bucket list, and how it all fits: a year with no address, six months in paris, sipping turkish coffee in the shadow of the hagia sofia. it's like i've always known, without knowing, that mine's a life meant to live without roots. that as much as i love my country and will eternally belong to the USA, i belong really to the world. that i'm here to make the world a better place by bringing what's best about america to the rest of the world. and i want to go wherever they want to send me. i don't care the where, not even a little bit. i just want to go. and be.

and the best part about it is simply knowing. i've been so bloody stressed these past few months, probably because i've felt change in my life happening without knowing where it's going, and where i really wanted it to go (afghanistan? washington, dc? denver? politics? government? more big law?) i know i want to represent my country abroad. and though i'm not yet there, as i have three more hurdles to jump, i know it's what i want. more than anything.

foreign service offers the adventure of a lifetime. all the better that it comes with opportunities abound to make a real difference in the world.

~k

pew(ke)

when my alarm starts going off each morning, about an hour before i get out of bed, i flip on n.p.r. for an overview of the day's headlines. and you know what i heard this morning? i heard the pew report that china has overtaken the united states as the top investor in clean energy technology.

this makes me so effing angry, i don't even really know where to start.

but i think i'll start with the planet's worst enemies. for one second, i will bite my tongue till it bleeds, and accept the truly asinine view that there is no such thing as man-made global warming (or as i like to think of it, "climate change", because when people are too, er, dumb? to recognize that global warming doesn't mean it won't ever snow again, i try to use less confusing words).

okay, it's really hard, but i'm doing it. AND IT DOESN'T EVEN FUCKING MATTER!

even if you disagree with every scientist in the entire world, because you're smarter than them (yeah, you who voted for sarah palin to be vice president), and think global warming is a liberal hoax, how can you still be so stupid as to not recognize that our economic security, technological advancement, the wave of the future, the current worldview outside of the bassackwards bible belt mentality (or what you might like to call "real america"), and our national security depend on going green.

this pew report makes it pretty clear that the greatest innovative minds are still in america, that there are billions of american investment dollars waiting to be dumped into clean energy technology and small businesses (like my friend jim's solar panel business, run on sun (much more on this later)), but that china is where it's all going. because china knows a good business venture when it sees it, even if it sits and laughs at all of us dummy liberal hippies.

american investors won't put their money into small businesses or green research until there are some government regulatory guarantees that establish a marketplace (e.g. cap and trade). and american brains aren't going to stay in america, produce in america, and create jobs in america if china is bankrolling the development of the products their brains think up and then selling that shit to the developed world (which, incidentally, is asking for this stuff).

and don't even get me started on national security, and the fact that our addiction to oil funds terrorism.

if anyone in this country was really thinking, we would stop wasting time pointing at tenable junk science, and recognize that it doesn't matter if the science is junk. the developed and developing world is going green. that's where the brains and money are going. and if we aren't going to support it here, if we aren't going to invest in those brilliant green minds and the ability to produce clean energy products to sell around the world, the united states of america will sooner than later no longer be the developed world.

~k