Falling

Do you know how to walk in stilettos? I think a lot of people don’t realize that it’s a learned skill. Girls don’t just put on stilettos and know how to walk in them. Someone has to tell you to feel like a string is pulling the top of your head to the sky, and you have to learn to put one foot exactly in front of the other and swing your hips instead of your legs. Once you walk well in stilettos, you can walk gracefully in anything. You can wear sneakers or flip-flips or snow boots and people will still turn and look and think, “wow”. Maybe in the snow boots, they won’t think “elegance” but that’s what a girl in stilettos has.

She walks toward him naked, barefoot, and she still has that high-heeled walk. She wears big, steel-toed, clunky combat boots when she goes out at night and she still has that walk. Maybe she has to think about it a little to always walk perfectly, but she practices whenever she remembers. And walking like that makes her feel radiant, like sex appeal is beaming out of her skin like sunshine in the arctic summer.

It’s too bad everything else isn’t as simple as stilettos. She walks around life, knowing that as long as she keep her composure, keeps her abs tight and her self light while she walks, she won’t fall over, won’t embarrass herself, won’t break an ankle or a heel or a heart. She can’t always remember, though. Sometimes she forgets and the potholes come get her: does he still love me? Am I ever going to know what I’m doing in my life? Why am I afraid of losing 10 lbs? Why do I think about myself so often?

And she breaks down, and she can’t do that beautiful, graceful walk. She slumps and she looks ungainly and awkward. She walks over to find something to distract her, something to sit down with so she doesn’t have to keep walking, doesn’t have to keep embarrassing herself by not looking smooth and unruffled and perfectly composed. She doesn’t like people to see that side, because she’d rather not admit that it’s there.

But he sees it, and he tells her not to worry, to smile for him, please baby, smile for me. Because maybe he’s macho but it’s hard for him too. And she cleans up, and they part ways, and they say they’ll meet up later, but they don’t. That’s all she has of him.

She’s full of doubt. She hears him say “I love you, I miss you” but she’s not sure whether he means the whole her. Maybe he can’t deal with her when she’s awkward and ungainly and so very imperfect. She doesn’t know whether he just loves her when she’s sexy and funny and graceful, or whether he loves her even when she’s not.

And this is exactly the kind of thing she can’t ask him. Because she’s not sure she’d rather have the wrong answer than no answer. So she calls him, and she hears his voice, and she falls again.

waiting and trading

Sometimes things just seem so uncertain. You’re on a train, and you watch the other trains go by, and you don’t know where they’ve been or where they’re going, and you also wonder whether you should be on them. You also wonder if you’re on the wrong train, whether the other ones are going somewhere better, whether they came from somewhere better than the place you just visited and whether you should’ve gone where they came from instead. You wonder if you’re really doing enough to make sure your life is going in the right direction. Is it weird that I write so much about doubt? It’s like I only write in the blog at my strongest and my weakest. At my strongest, I believe I want to tell everyone who’s listening that I’m queen of the world and they’d better get used to the most deliciously decadent despot in history. And at my weakest, I just hope someone’s listening. Are you listening to me? I feel weak and lethargic right now. Sure I have a stuffed up head, but I think it’s more that I’m waiting the way Didi and Gogo wait. I’m waiting to get my acceptances and rejections from colleges, I’m waiting to go to college, I’m waiting for February to start on my New Year’s Resolutions. I made them already, but I haven’t started on them. I’m waiting for Godot the way everyone else is, since life is just what we do while we wait to die. You have to do something, and I’m doing it. What the something is, I’m really not sure. I know that the days keep flicking by both slowly in minutes but far too quickly in hours, in pieces of my lifetime. Is it normal to think about mortality as much as I do? I think most people have to be reminded. “His/her suicide/illness/sudden death reminded him/her of his/her own mortality.” I must have read a line like that in a dozen books, heard it in movies, whatever. It’s everywhere. I don’t think most people walk out on the street and think, that car’s accelerator and brake wires might be fucked up and I might not make it across this street alive. And you know something, usually I don’t either. Because I can’t live my life in fear. I managed to be afraid for all of one week this year. I was afraid of men for an entire week. But I realize now: life is full of trade-offs. I trade the extra security of locked doors for the joy of having my family and friends just drop in on me. I trade the fun of being single for knowing that my boyfriend is happy with me. I’ve traded away friendships for the comfort of not being so upset. Maybe some of what I trade is wrong, maybe unwise, maybe it won’t be the best in the long run. At least it’s fun to bargain…

New Year’s Rant…

What’ll you be doing on the last day? I’m don’t know, but I’m sure that getting drunk and/or having sex will be on a lot of people’s lists. Maybe mine too. Probably a lot of the same people will hug and kiss their loved ones, some people will listen to their favorite song for the last time. Do you ever think about the last meal of the guy who’s going to executed? Do you think he can really taste it? Maybe he’s managed to get lobster or something, because it’s his favorite food. Hell, maybe he’s having deep-dish pizza with roasted garlic and sun-dried tomatoes and portobello mushrooms and everything else possible. Throw in some basil and oregano and call it a last meal. All that stuff has a strong taste, but is it stronger than the taste of imminent death? And could you ever ask someone who would really know? “Hi, I’d like to know if it’s possible to enjoy a meal when you know you’re going to die today.” What would they say? Probably fuck off you insolent twerp. Well, maybe not that. But something with a similar message. Or maybe they’d just start sobbing. Maybe you should’ve just kept your curiosity to yourself. Maybe your need for knowledge is not nearly as important as compassion for a condemned prisoner. Of course, if I had my way, this would be an impossible question to answer. There are no prisoners condemned to death in my perfect world. Not even my perfect world- my ever-so-slightly improved world. The death penalty is borne of a revenge instinct, and revenge is essentially a desire to cause another pain. And why should we encourage that? There is enough pain in the world without introducing more. I believe that the goal of all people should be pain reduction. Don’t sit there with a headache when you could just take a pill and make it go away- that’s pain you don’t have to have. Don’t fear becoming a “pill popper” when all you’re taking is ibuprofen- chemical addiction isn’t possible with that stuff, and even if it were, you’d have to take the stuff consistently over a long period time to get an addiction. Once a month with your period cramps ain’t doin shit. You know what else ain’t doin shit? Congress. They fucked up healthcare. It’s really that simple. I was so hopeful (dammit, Obama, look what you did) that something would get done, that something would get somewhere. But you know what we have in Congress? People who’ve forgotten why they’re there in the first place. Yeah, the Republicans are against having it because it would look good for Obama if it worked. Now, one wonders, why would it look good for Obama if it worked? Because it would be good for the country, perhaps? Thank you, GOP. Isn’t that what I want to discourage? The desire to cause more pain. It’s preemptive revenge- it’s a lot like preemptive war, and we see how well that works. When you’re the world’s remaining superpower, there is no good reason for preemptive war. Seriously, what’s going to happen if you wait for them to attack you? Probably nothing, since they know what happened to the LAST guys who tried that. AKA Pearl Harbor. 9/11 doesn’t count because that wasn’t an attack, that was a mass-murder. Only countries can start wars. But we couldn’t treat this like a crime, because then the perpetrators would have a right to trial in the world court, and in addition, there would be absolutely no reason to go to Iraq. Oh wait, there still wasn’t any reason to go to Iraq. Baby, what are we going to do? I’m stuck on you. I think of the guys my age getting shot in Iraq- guys literally my age. 18. 18 is just so damn young, when you think about it. I mean really, I make tons of youthful mistakes just because I’m so inexperienced- and yet I often feel more weathered than other people my age. And then these kids get shot in Iraq. With no experiences. Hell, I bet some of them are even virgins. Can you imagine that? Going to Iraq and getting shot before you’ve even had the chance to hit a homer? But hell, you don’t need to go overseas to get shot. You can just go trick-or-treating in Alameda and be extremely unlucky. You can just walk around East Oakland too late at night. Hell, you can just sit down to your piano lesson when you’re seven years old and never walk out again. You know, when the Supreme Court said the ban on handguns in a public housing project was unconstitutional, I wanted to force Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito LIVE in a housing project for a year. Hell, they wouldn’t have to leave town. I’m sure DC has plenty of nice, dangerous projects to choose from. When are we going to realize that old white men know jack shit about the world? Seriously, we elect these numbskulls and they’re so afraid of inflation that they advocate for a spending freeze in a recession. The problem is that when no one’s spending anything, someone has to, and no one else has the power to make money. Just the government. Just like only the government can run an effective military. That sucks kids who aren’t even old enough to drink into service to get shot.

Maybe that’s enough bullshit about bullshit for now. Happy new year.

The night before Christmas Eve…

…I wrote this:

There is a thing such as homesickness. One may not believe in it for a long time, over a decade in fact… but it most certainly exists. Knowing that it is Christmas Eve and you haven’t had any eggnog all season, or listened to Bing Crosby sing any carols, or seen any of your good friends home for the holidays, or even kissed your mother and said “I love Christmas”… this is homesickness in essence. It isn’t truly wanting to be home, and really, there’s nothing that special about it- it’s just doing nothing or something other than what you want to be doing and being prevented from doing what you really want to be doing not by time or money or other people, as is usually the case, but by place. It is knowing you are in the wrong place for what you want to be doing, and wishing you were in that place so you could do what you always do. It’s wanting to be home not because you like your home, but because you do things at home that you cannot do in Mazatlan or Bahrain or even the next town over from your home.

Perhaps most people are more attached to their family members, to their friends than I. It’s strange to think that because so many people are important to me, to the extent that I would donate a kidney for them and I would let them call me at 3 am if they thought it was important enough to wake me up. But up until now, I have never been homesick. Most people, especially children, get homesick at least once before they really leave their parents for good. I witnessed many children at summer camps and sleepovers being homesick, and for me it was much like my relationship with shyness- I could see it happening to someone else, I could recognize it, and I knew what its effects were, but I honestly could not understand it. Shyness is still beyond me. I truly couldn’t do it if I tried. But homesickness, I begin to understand. For children, it is the fear of the unknown. If something goes wrong, they can’t run to their mother to save them, and they feel very alone and unsure, which isn’t a nice feeling. They cannot run for the familiar help of their parents if something is wrong- place prevents it. It’s another thing that they cannot do not because they don’t have the time or money or because their parents don’t have the time or money, but because they are not home.

And as children get older, they don’t need to run to mommy. The fact that they can’t get their parents to solve their problems becomes less of an issue, because they find that their parents can’t really solve their problems anyway. They may fear the unknown, but their parents couldn’t save them even if they were at home.

And so children grow into teenagers and adults who don’t get homesick so much. But there are certainly things that can bring it about once again- a crisis, Christmas, food that has the same name as it does at home but really isn’t the same. You wish you could have a hug, you wish you could see your family and wish them a Merry Christmas in person and sing “Break Forth” the way you always do, you just wish you could get a damn milkshake that tastes right. And you know that you can do none of these things, because of place. Again, it is the problem of place. You are sick for your home because you are not there. And so you realize that at some decent hour today, you must call home. Because certainly you cannot cure your homesickness- being in the wrong place- but you can do something to assuage it. You can call and listen to home, whatever that happens to mean. And maybe you will still wish you were home, but you will feel better knowing that at home, everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Knowing that maybe home changes too, but in the important ways, it is still the same home you left. And with that, you can enjoy the experience of being away from home and wish everyone else a very merry Christmas and happy new year.

Idyllic Childhood

I had an idyllic childhood. I spent most of my days with my stay-at-home mother, playing with my brother when he came home from school, and walking the dog with him and my dad after family dinner. My large extended family would gather monthly for birthdays, and two weeks every summer, we would all go to my grandparents’ cabin in Tahoe.

My dad worked close to sixty hours a week, but I was still much closer to him than I was to anyone else. He sang me to sleep with old country songs, he carried me on his shoulders in front of the band after Cal games, and we went to church together on Sundays. He was my sunshine and my hero; I feared disappointing him more than anything.

Things change. My brother started fighting with my parents, I decided I was too old for lullabies, my relatives had less time for Tahoe in the summer. My dad started getting back pain and losing weight; in addition, he was laid off when as his company went bankrupt and had to take a lower-paying, less fun job.  I was in my awkward preteen years, which are never easy for anyone.

Things change more. My dad’s back pain turned out to be pancreatic cancer, which killed him four months after diagnosis.  My mom got a job which involved two months training in Maryland, during which time I lived with my grandparents. When she got home, she worked full-time and her schedule changed every two weeks. My brother was already in college, so I spent many long hours alone in my house; between this and problems both normal and abnormal for someone my age, I became depressed.

Although none of this was fun for me, there are upsides. I am much closer to my mother now than I was before, because now we can only rely on each other. If I hadn’t been depressed and gotten behind in my chemistry homework, I would never have learned that I love tutoring kids because I wouldn’t have spent so much time in my teacher’s room after school, and I doubt I would have wanted to come to Mexico to teach.

I also have increased perspective on life, which is usually good but sometimes detrimental. While I wasn’t heartbroken when my boyfriend broke up with me, I also have a hard time thinking of an F grade as a horrible thing: neither are on the scale of a malignant tumor.

Children also affect me more now. Whenever I go to the Farmacia in my neighborhood, I over-tip the kids bagging the groceries because they are usually younger than ten and they are working instead of playing outside. The last time I watched the musical Annie, I cried during the first five minutes because I started thinking about the plight of orphans, how they have no one to love them or care about their lives. Also though, I cannot help but smile when I see parents patiently answering their children’s questions, little kids playing catch in the street, or fathers carrying toddlers on their shoulders so the kids can see parades.

While I believe that sadness is a part of life, I also want to do my part to lessen it. I want every kid to have as wonderful a childhood as mine.  I’m interested in so many careers- teacher, doctor, chemist, art historian, mathematician, politician- and I hope that college will help me decide which one I want to pursue; but whatever I choose, I want to make the world happier in my small way.

My God

When I was small, I liked the idea of God, and I believed he existed, but only as an abstract idea. I went to church for the spectacle, the singing and my fellow Catholics; it wasn’t until one specific incident that he became personally important to me.

My mom and I took my dad to the emergency room when I was fifteen.  I brought homework along, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I prayed the rosary in entirety three times, which is when the doctor came back out to talk to my mom. My dad stayed at the hospital that night, but I went home with my mom believing that everything would be alright; I had prayed my rosaries and no one had told me otherwise.

It wasn’t until the next day that my mother told me my daddy, the person I loved most in the world, had terminal cancer and three to six months to live. I couldn’t stop all the tears in front of her, but I saved the true extent of my emotions for God. When my mother was at the hospital, I started yelling at God: ranting about how he didn’t answer my prayers, that it wasn’t fair because I was only fifteen and needed my daddy, that (of all stupid things) Beyoncé was older, richer, and more blessed in general than me, that she didn’t need her dad nearly as much as I needed mine.

Then a thought dropped into my head: we die because we are so selfish as to believe one life is worth more than another. I only wanted to exchange my dad’s life for Beyoncé’s because my dad was important to me. It was intensely selfish to think my loved ones were worth more than anyone else’.

Sure, there wasn’t a voice, and an angel didn’t come unto me. Nevertheless, I believe that God answered me, because I think that thought was his and not mine.

Since then, there have been times when I didn’t feel I could talk to anyone else, or I talked to others and they couldn’t help me. So I talk to God, and I feel that he listens. I certainly have doubts about whether or not I’m imagining the whole thing, but I like to think that it doesn’t really matter. Whether he really exists or he’s just a comforting construct of my mind, I believe I’m better off because I believe in him.

Beautiful world

I come from a world of beauty. Everyone else lives in this world as well, but so often they fail to see it. I get up in the morning, and while some people sleep through it, and some people appreciate the sunrise, I notice the beautiful graffiti the neighborhood boys have made on the previously bare white brick wall. I went to the Louvre in Paris, and while nearly a hundred people crowded around the Mona Lisa, I gasped at the amazing Titian works around the back. Truly, I do find the balance and perfection of the Renaissance paintings beautiful, but I find the slightly off-kilter figuratives of the Mannerist era (Bronzino, Greco et al) more appealing.
I ride the public transportation, and although there are many attractive men arriving or departing at every station, I smile at the woman who gives up her seat for an old man or the father playing hand games with his six-year-old daughter. Her smile is always brighter than I think possible except in that moment.
I admire Rhetoric, that refined goddess of the silken oration, the passionately lowered voice, the persuasion of the masses. Lovelier, however, is the raw appeal of Truth; no graceful garments has she. Truth weeps in the gutter, dirty and scarred, recalling her story to anyone who listens. So many pass her by, but stopping to admire her and hear her tales is more than worth it when one finds that her history is more fantastically dramatic than anything one could dream.
I live in the world where “anything essential is invisible to the eyes,” as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says in The Little Prince. I live in a world where the most beautiful picture might not be of a Hawaiian rainbow, but of a puddle of dirty water, where one’s mother can be beautiful at any weight, where gray can be the most vivid color of all.
I come from the real world, and the beauty is all of humanity, feuding, embracing humanity, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. I am its observer; I intend to be its advocate. Whether as a doctor, a politician, a writer, an art historian, a teacher, a mathematician or something else, I will serve and protect the beauty of humanity. I will serve my world.

esa noche

So this is how it went down, beginning to end.

I was with eight other volunteers and two staff members from my organization in the lovely Mexican beach town of Melaque, on the Pacific coast. The first night, I drank a little, enough to get buzzed, at this bar with everyone else. That was fine. The Saturday night, however, I got pretty drunk; I think more so than I’ve ever been. I haven’t been drunk more than five times in my life- you could say that I’m pretty inexperienced. All of us were at the bar, but only five of us decided to go on to a club to continue the party: four girls and one guy. I was having a good time dancing, but I didn’t know how to salsa when a salsa song came on, so I got off the floor. A good-looking (to my drunk eyes, so one doesn’t know how good-looking he really was) guy came up to me during the song and asked me to dance, and I said yes, because, well, what was I there to do? The song changed from salsa back to hip hop, and I’m a Yay Area girl: we started out face-to-face, but the natural style of my home is freaking. And we continued in that vein for a while, and eventually he turned me around, and we started making out. I’ll admit, the guys I’ve been with recently have been good kissers, but this guy kissed with huge amounts of passion, like if he had me, he’d die happy. Naturally, I didn’t mind when he led me outside- I thought there would be more kissing. As we continued off to a motel room, I did vaguely realize that I was going to have sex with him, but I was okay with that, too. He was a good kisser, he ought to be good in bed, right?

We got up to the room. I’d made certain before that there were going to be condoms- I was sober enough to do that. Or maybe it was my subconscious kicking in, I don’t know. I undressed for him- he was a little disappointed that I had just done it, like that, no seduction, but not so disappointed that he didn’t laugh when I said I was a get-to-the-point kind of girl. Even though his English was as terrible (or maybe even worse) than my Spanish, he got that much. I lay down on the bed for him, and he started getting into me- and as it started, it was fine. But I let him go too far. Love bites and squeezes transformed into bites that drew blood and bruising tears at my flesh. The first position wasn’t working for him, so he told me to change, and I did. I did fucking everything he said. I couldn’t stand the sex anymore, so I asked him if I could just suck him instead. He had no problem with that, but boy, I’m sorry I picked that as a substitute. He kept forcing it farther down my throat, pushing my head down, making me gag- I started crying, tears streaming in rivulets down my face, but I didn’t stop. I could’ve stopped, anytime- I know that. Maybe I was in a strange place where I didn’t know where to go for safety, maybe I was drunk enough that I didn’t feel like I had a choice, maybe he was a lot bigger than me and if he had wanted to force me to stay, he could’ve, but I could’ve said no. And I never did.

I didn’t know how I was going to leave until I heard the voice of my roommate at the motel room door, calling my name. I got off him, got my clothes on, and practically ran out of there. He called after me, “Will I see you again?” and I replied, “Maybe”: my typical, non-committal response; the response of the weakling I was.

I got outside with Julia, and she was pissed, because I hadn’t told her where I was going. At first, I was so relieved that she’d found me that I just kept happily telling her that I was really sorry, really, really sorry. I told the others the same thing when we got back to them, happy to be free, happy to be away from that entire situation. It was only later, as we drove back to the hotel, that I started to feel what had happened. I felt so ashamed- not because I thought I was a whore or anything like that, but because I hadn’t fought back, I’d just been a pushover, I’d let him do whatever he wanted to me. And you know something? I know a lot of my friends say it is, but that’s not rape. I said yes several times to start with and I never said no. Sure, it was horrible, but that doesn’t mean it was rape.

The next day, several of my friends noted my MAJOR hickey on my neck and ragged on me a little bit. I tried to be cool about it, since it was my fault that they only knew the funny bits. But the whole thing made me want to cry. I was paranoid for a couple days about all the guys who whistled at me- while previously, I thought it was funny and a little flattering, I remember thinking “get the FUCK away from me, please please please go away”. I don’t think like that normally. I don’t live with fear. It’s just not my style. But this really shook me up.

I’m better now, but that night, I lost a little more of my innocence. I thought I’d lost it all already, but I never thought that I could be so totally traumatized by someone who didn’t mean me harm. For once, I acted the teenage girl I am. I guess, in my mind, I had the opposite idea of the Puritans: sex was always supposed to be good, unless someone was taking you by force. And you know, he wasn’t. I took me by force. I wouldn’t let myself get out because I thought that this might be all the action I might get for the next month or more, and I wasn’t willing to admit that it was bad, that it wasn’t worth it. And because I didn’t stick up for me, no one there did.

So I’ve learned. No more random guys. Sure, I won’t bother to have a boyfriend, but I’ve decided I need to hang out with a guy three times before I trust him that much. And I’ll have his name and number so that either my friends or I could charge him if something bad happens. This won’t stop me from getting drunk or going to clubs or flirting, but I’m going to protect myself more.

So that’s the story. Now you know.

hope

I just watched the Sex and the City movie with KL, and I feel downright optimistic. It’s funny, I hardly ever talk to people online. I feel like I don’t translate well to facebook chat, like it’s so much harder to come up with something to talk about, and because the talking is all there is, it gets a little awkward. And I practically spent the weekend hanging out with Miss L and I realize I miss all my high school friends- but I’m not going to miss them any more when I go to Mexico. Because they’re already gone. They’re already off in their own lands, spinning away at their own lives trying to make sense of it without me. I might visit band before I leave for Mexico, but on the other hand, maybe not. That high school world is just gone and behind me. I like seeing the younger kids, but it’s really not the same- they still live in a world where passing English is important, where the science teachers are mostly incompetent, where they don’t know if they’re pretty or ugly or whether anyone will ever love them or if they’re just in a relationship for the sake of being in one. I’m rapidly leaving my teenage years and I’m glad of it. I may continue to lead a dramatic and exciting life, but I’m not going to do it with that teenage angst attached. And I’m going to remember that some of my friendships may fade, but often, you see someone again and it’s like you were never apart. I can hear the Oktoberfest music through my window, and it sounds so much like life, you know? You spin around and you laugh in each others’ arms, and then you spin off to another partner and keep laughing, keep turning with the music. Of course you hope it never stops, but the musicians can’t play forever. You just try to have as much fun spinning as you can while it lasts.

To all my girls, I love you. To all my boys, I love you too. And to all those of you who aren’t mine yet, I can’t wait to meet you

burning

I can’t represent for shit. I got it backwards- I got an Oakland face with an LA booty. I’m sure you know what that means, and if you don’t, well, have fun with your imagination. It occurs to me that I spend a great deal of time thinking about my beauty or lack thereof and contemplating on the place of beauty in general. Most of these posts refer to it somewhere. Is it because I’m shallow? I don’t think so, but why else do I always come back to it? I suppose it is my central insecurity, and also the one thing I am least able to fix. Sometimes I think things would’ve turned out better if I were hotter, but then, that’s the problem isn’t it. I can’t really make myself much hotter. I am this hot. The irony is how much colder I really am than everyone else- I run at 96 degrees, beezy. I can’t pull off layering because I get too hot and want to pull it off. Besides, we know you skinny chicks are just trying to hide what you look like under all those damn clothes. Yeah, I’m doing it too. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing it. Maybe we should walk free under the sun, soaking up it’s rays and exciting the pricks on all the guys we meet. But hell, I can’t afford the sunscreen for that lifestyle. I mean, really, sunburned nipples? No thanks. The fairy dream of the sun as the life-giving force of the planet is great right up until it burns you. Or melts the wax in your wings. But that’s life, isn’t it? You can’t fall too much in love with any idea, anything, any person. Too much devotion to anything burns. Perhaps one day I’ll learn to live dispassionately; it would hurt a lot less. But oh, the sun feels so delicious on my skin, warming it and caressing it as I lay out and think of how nice it feels. And no matter how many times I’ve gotten burned, I still go out and smile when it hits my face. Maybe one day I’ll get tired of it- but somehow I don’t think so. I think getting tired of the sunshine would be like getting tired of the city or ice cream or people- you have a few bad experiences, but it’s worth it anyway. Maybe that’s life? Maybe I won’t know until it’s over. Oh I’m so trusting. I might be a cynical bastard, but let’s be real, I’m a bloody optimist by nature. If I feel like you appreciate me, you can ask for nearly anything. You might not get it, but I’m never insulted if you don’t try to insult me. Oh I love you. I just love people so much… too much maybe. Like the sunshine. Lucky I have my clothes to protect me, huh?