Directions · from · a · Stranger

I try to keep her from thinking
too much because she tends to anaylyze us.
She manipulates us
and makes breathing tougher than it is.

She likes the attention
I can't give.
She likes the way strangers
will call her beautiful
and stare, and make her a beauty queen.
And she doesn't notice
the times I've complimented.

Do I really take her for granted?

She called me up one day
and told me I'm no fun.
She victimizes herself and
makes me feel ashamed.

Do I really take her for granted?

Current Mood:	confused
Current Music:	Somewhere In Between - Lifehouse

Is to go fishing in the Santa Ana (River) stream that runs through my hometown.

I'm thinking a walking stick with some fishing line I manage to scourge down at the Ace Hardware.
Maybe, just maybe, I might even dig up some worms along the way to see what I can catch down in the stream. I know there's a ton of frogs.


Maybe even some land crabs. But I do hope there's some fishies. Because really, what's fishing without fish? oO

Current Mood:	working
Current Music:	ventrilo - learning the way of the druids... and pallies !!

Finish Henry V.
Finish some of my Swift readings.
Study for the Thai midterm.
Study for my AO Sci 1 midterm.
Do my lab report.
Do my science homework.
Play WoW.
Eat.
Write out a chapter for SoT.
Go visit my counselor on Friday, and any other day she schedules.
Go to work.
Sleep.
Call home for mom's birthday (buy mom a present...)
Eat.
Sleep.
Wake-up.
Make sure it's fifith week of school still.

Current Mood:

nostalgic

I use to read there a lot. 
Order myself a cup of coffee at the Starbucks; despite not really being a big fan of the general Starbucks, just this one on Third Street. Then find myself a stool along the bare open shop windows that overlooked the street that lead to the Pacific.

I remember one particular day, while reading Age of Innocence, that a peculiar woman had decided to sit down beside me. She had peppered hair, but a face that was strangely free of wrinkles. Considering, heh, that she must have well been over sixty. Perhaps even verging near her seven-O years.

I carefully turned the pages and tried to make myself scarce. Really not wanting to engage myself in strangers and their business. But this particular woman had a way of entrancing her audience so much that before I knew it, I was sitting cross-legged facing her. All the while sipping on my cup of coffee with an open book in my lap.
We chatted about a many things. Ranging from her family to her current situation: she was searching for a roommate. She also had a job as a ... therapist of a sort. If, I may say that.

We ended up exchanging addresses. Or, rather, I ended up finding myself holding a torn page of a newspaper -- an advertisement she had carefully selected earlier that morning and torn off to remind herself in the future of its purpose.
I sat there, a bit at awe, as I watched her walk away. 

She wasn't the typical granny who swaggered as she walked or needed a carrying cane.
She had an odd way of carrying herself that made one want to simply watch. Be amazed at the strength of her as she walked out and did not ever turn around back to the audience.

I sat up straight. Before leaving, she had noticed I was a sloucher. And in our quick friendship she had gotten off her seat, and stood directly behind my unsuspecting self.
She pressed her fingers upon my back, and I never quite understood it but in those precise seconds that took place I felt a part of me that changed and noted how tense I always was in the presence of others.
She pressed her fingers into my back and a smile rang through her voice, "See, doesn't it feel better?"

Current Location:	trying to input my WoW gamecard data
Current Mood:	confused

If there's one thing you must know about Westwood Village (by UCLA), it's where to locate a damn, good bar. 

That's all. Nothing else. You know where to find one bar and your navigation advising is set. (Because of all the things people have ever stopped me on the streets is to ask, "Where can I find a good place to chill outside and drink beer?"





"The hookah bar. See the Fox tower? It's right by there; on Westwood," I'll add quickly before tucking my hands into my jeans then walking off.

Current Mood:

accomplished

"Would you girls like an important job?" the elder man croaked out and stopped the two of us in our tracks. We merely looked up, with big eyes, at the aging black man before us. His clothes emitting a faint charcoalish, yet tobaccoish scent as he moved in closer to then stopping and reaching to his back pocket with his right hand.

Slowly, he pulled out two crisp dollar bills and handed of us each one -- as though we had agreed to the job before even answering.
"You see," he began. "I have to go get milk for the cats. But," he stopped, just as the purring and meowing of the stray felines echoed their earlier introduction. "My wife isn't feeling very well, but I don't want to leave her alone but," he sighed. "I also need to feed the cats. So I need to go down to the shop and pick up some milk for them. You girls will watch over my house while I'm gone, right?" he asked, giving us a small smile as we went from unsure faces to smiley expressions.

I nodded, and my friend turned to me then back and nodded as excitedly. The way children do naively.

It's been almost fifteen years since then. It kind of makes me chuckle to think of the value a dollar has nowadays. I faintly remember after successfully house-sitting that afternoon, that my friend and I had waited for the ice cream truck to drive by around the three-to-four o'clock late-afternoon shifts. 
We had already planned out what values a dollar would get us. And to think we had two dollars. The idea caused us to be ecstatic.

At the end, we were sitting behind my garage, on the abandoned trailer thing. It must have been five by then. The sun having made its way to the far east, and the two of us sat with our legs dangling in the air as we counted the popper rocks we had bought, and the parachute army men the ice cream woman had given us as a bonus to our other treasures. There was the Ring Pop, and the FunDip, and Boston Baked Beans, and then the assortment of bubble gums we had managed to choose to make out to be fifty cents worth.

And all the while we sat with ice cream Torpedos in our free hands. The two of us each licking our own frozen treat as we talked over our little adventures and garland-makings.

Sometimes, sometimes when I think back I wonder how everyone's doing now. 
I somehow managed to get out of life unscathed. Or, compared to my peers from that small neighborhood, I didn't have to face the troubles they did.
Sometimes, sometimes I wonder how changes are made so that a child eating a popsicle with no worries can be somewhere now having a child reliving the childhood she once had but at such a tender age. I wonder, yet am glad it wasn't me.

Current Mood:

productive

I was turned toward the wall.
Things were a little hazy; likely the effect of the shift between consciousness and being unconscious. Reality fading in and out as I lay there trying to decipher between what was happening and what I was feeling.

I could feel the trickle, tickling upon the nape of my neck. The fingers that slowly made their way through the loose strands of hair, to then breathing and whispering slow coherent words into my ears.


"Your friend is dead." The words kept trickling in, the fingers warm against me.

"Your friend is dead," she repeated. The words not hitting home as I could feel the fingers gently massage my scalp with each tress of hair that fell against my pillow.

As usual, I couldn't turn to direct my own voice out. Rather, I watched nonchantly from above. The omniscient eye that traced out the silhouette of the woman sitting at the edge of my dorm bed. Her voice comforting. Her touch warming, and careful as she blew warm gusts into my hair and slowly mangled the strands into stresses and knots and left me to wonder what the matter was.



I soon after awoke. The message hazy in mind as I thought of the words, the feelings evoked, and the last face I saw before my eyes flew open.
Your friend is dead.
The fingers then slowly wrapped strands and inbetween the draperies of my knots she blew warm breaths that left me falling deeper into the haze of sleep.


My friend's face appeared and the message left its eerieness only to my coherent mind as the image analyzed related itself immediately to the dream. And I awoke, unable to determine the scene passed was reality or nightmare.
Only the reminder that it was so sweet to see mother once again.

Current Mood:

confused