Tragedy that brings bitter laughter.

It's funny sometimes, how you can choose to wall yourself inside this crumbling shell of wanting to hate the outside world. Even when your close friends who know you better than you'd like to admit surround you while you cry, trying to hug the choking feeling of loneliness out of you without knowing just how much it means to you to be touched by them, thought of. To be read so easily when you feel that you were words on a page lost in the book of life; written in invisible ink, rained on, dripping away under the black light of your own misery.

my yogurt.

It's mine. I bought two on sale for $2.50 each. Normally, they're $9.30 a piece. Within a week an entire one was gone. Okay, I'll let that one go...

So I wrote a note and placed it under the lid of the sealed one saying, "Please don't eat! Amber needs for training!"

I went in today and someone had removed the note and eaten a third of it.

What the fuck. I mean, to take off the note that specifically says Please Don't Eat, throw it away, and eat it is just rude. And selfish. Fucking go buy your own yogurt.

It's my yogurt.

Remembering empathy.

Had I not looked up randomly when opening the door from my bathroom, the green grasshopper that has decided to share a room with me would have gone unseen by my self-induced gloom stricken eyes. Having already stopped to photograph a dead pigeon this afternoon, the sight of a one legged grass hopper with look-alike leaf wings should not have phased me much. But somehow the pause to read the air lasted a few seconds longer than I'd normally allow; perhaps credited to the mind-altering saturation of the flowers I had smoked earlier, or the rut I'd been slinging muddy thoughts around in for the past week after I realized I'd slid into them on a joyride to my own mental hell.

Either way I found myself struck by the moment, more-so than the emo glasses my perception had stuck on my face. Fucking badass grass hopper. I have two legs. Grass hopper has one.

It crawls closer to me as I project pink light, and feel the natsukashi sensation of empathy.

Trying to grasp a shelter

Often I receive compliments of always appearing strong, grounded, sound, and warm.

Often after the curtain is drawn, I slip behind damp veils of clotted blindness, closing off my senses to the outer world that sneers at my attempts to hide from myself by withdrawing into myself.

Manic outbursts. Those moments when all the tedious details of life meld into one big frustrated pouting question of why do I have to do all this human bullshit every day? Perhaps I've spent too long floating in-between to feel a sense of home in one or the other. Confusion has been known to encourage the desire to escape. And escaping is often an easy downhill roll; look Mom, no hands.

It's funny like that. When I spend intimate time with someone, I often wish to be back in the solace of the numbing arms of my solitude. However, once I get there, such feelings of detachment wrap me up in the blatant fact that I was hiding from myself all along.

But it's boring. And repetitive. Next time might be a different setting or emotion, but always chock full of human deception. And that laughter singing from across the line drawn in chalk, marking the duality of my silver lining radar.

I could change. I'm teetering on the edge of that cliff knowing that at some point, if I jump, I'll just get cold and wet. Which is worse than not having to go through the whole ridiculous process of getting there and getting out. Predictability and apathy breeding with the seduction of routine and false comfort.

Maybe something in me just craves observing myself in the rush of falling.

What's coming through these days...

...I've begun to realize how much I shelter myself from the world.

Not limited to the outside world, but also the inner. Places that have corners in which my dreams creep, crying at me with passionless desire to slither back to that from which they came. The ultimate womb, my brain.

And to this, another sip of wine, and a puff on a newly discovered electronic cigarette, obtained for half price through promises of part time shop keeping and service. I flip through different tabs on the internet; email, empty; second email, empty; friend's website, empty; facebook, empty. Mirror, empty. Mind, empty. Patience, empty. Heart, bleeding. The day it stops is the day I enter the embrace of death.

Welcome to the Amber show, January 31st, 2010.

I've been fighting with sleep for a week now. Worse than that are the arguments I instigate with the outside world; the people that pay me to touch their bodies, the people that do not see me attempting to cross the road where society has designated me to do so. Silent screaming matches at nature for daring to suggest I lay with her, be consumed by her breath like I once did daily as a child. And to this, another sip of wine.

Putting my mug down I hear laughter coming from another room. The house I live in is beyond reasonable living conditions, in Hawaii, on the water, numerous personal amenities, even my own piano to play. The very black and white toothed brown monster I gave away a year ago, never expecting to again live so close to it's sighing mouth and moaning joints. Now a days I wake to the silence of her expecting eyes on my fingers as I instead mash a silencing command on my phone alarm. Chortling delight again fills the space I am trying to squeeze apart, intending to bury this part of myself amongst the kale and decomposing pug in the corner of the massive back yard. Laughter that is not echoing from a room in this home, but a room of my own, one built and frequented in my dreams, put on pause only to wake and go throughout the day as if I was going back to a place of rest instead of this alter-life some deranged part of myself leads in the absence of sunlight.

These giggles are of the self that croons to me, "honey child, doncha know by now this ain' nothin'. Quit pokin' at da sky n tryin' da make it fall on yo head." She speaks without breaking her gaze from the embers she stirrs, stick tracing the spell of time in whimpering ashes.

I've been gone for some time now. I think it's a bit overdue that I return to writing letters to myself instead of inivisibilly spying on people through the social networking genius that is Facebook.

Fuck em all.

cutting my hair

So it's been a while since I did this. And a lot has happened in the meantime between Tokyo, Hawaii, Colorado, Minnesota, California, and Oregon. A couple of difficult things, but nothing I can't handle.

This little segment is about hair, and how people look at you WAaay differently when you do something radical. Well duh. But I'm talking about more than just a new doo, sometimes an extreme haircut brings a new lifestyle.

So my hair was getting pretty long. And nasty. My split end's split end's split ends had triple split ends. And I really wanted to find, for once in my life, a stylist who I could trust not to humiliate me and I could vibe with. Three days after I put in my official request to the universe I got my wish, Miss Tawni, a punk rock strait edge Christian 21 year old working at the Black Cat Hair Salon downstairs from the clinic. We worked out a great trade, photo prints for a haircut. The issue of my disastrous hair came up mid conversation when the conversation stopped between the salon owner and I as his eyes locked on my head and he just stared for a second. Then he reached out and started to run his fingers though my hair (no this is not going down that road you naughty reader) and without breaking his fixated gawk, called Miss T over to further analyze what the hell happened. As I tried to explain my ...experiments gone wrong over the past few months with trying to look good, the two of them not only finished my sentences but listed in chronological order what I had done to myself, like telling how old a tree is by looking at it's rings.

2 hours later I'm starting to realize that life is about to change drastically. Not only because of a massive road trip I was about to embark on up the West Coast the next week. While waiting for my color to set in, the girl next to me, who came in with thick long hair down to the small of her back, walked out with a bob. She had long hair her entire life and decided within ten minutes of Gentry's persuasion to donate to locks of love. Having secretly wanted to try a fohawk for a while now, I decided it was time to leave all my old energy in Hawaii when I left because I was moving out and on the road. So I made an appointment for the upcoming Monday.

In Japan, it used to be (at least in the comics I've read) that when your heart gets broken, you cut your hair. I was about to break my own heart; part of me could sense the depth of it, but you never know how much till you're looking over your shoulder at a fading reflection. Part of the reason I was cutting my hair was the impending break away from my best friend and lover of two years, whom I would also leave behind.

Ariel came with me Monday for support. And for a haircut, but mine took so long that it never happened. She asked if it was going to be a pixie cut, and I adamantly replied, "oh no no no, I still want length."

Well Miss T. had other plans. I walked out with a pixie, my new fohawk standing tall. Already I was beginning to feel a change. In my stride, in my attitude, in my eyes, slowly sinking into the realization of what I had just done. And all the nastiness I had shed as I held my shrunken excuse for a pony tail in my hand while pieces of shorter hair peppered my lap. This is it? This is what I hoarded for years? It was gross, dead, and lifeless.

Cars that were zooming towards the cross walk quickly came to a stop; something a bit unheard of in Hawaii, and the male drivers were staring. I looked around at the other people on the sidewalk. Ariel voiced it before I did, "wow, everyone's staring at your hair." I know you're probably thinking big whoop-de-do, you got a haircut and now you think everyone's looking at you because your head feels naked. But this is Kailua, the white bread town of the Windward side of Oahu. The common girl is a petite surfer chick with long hair and cute clothes. Here's this hippie girl walking by a darker dressed and styled girl with a progressive hair cut who has just realized her power.

And I did. I still wake up surprised I have short hair, peering into the mirror in the morning, yawning and wondering what the hell to do with it. It's a great learning process. Not just how to style my hair, or realizing I need two drops of shampoo and no conditioner (my short hair is saving the plant and saving me money!) With my attitude change, I felt a sense of being mentally naked, which seg-wayed to me learning to say, simply, fuck it.

Fuck it. And Fuck you. With Love! This level of nonchalant-ness has served me famously over the past two months, ironically leaving me less concentrated on my hair and more focused on my interactions with life and people. Masks have fallen away, a process that's been suddenly expedited by me trying to find a balance between the Amber I cut myself away from, the parts I kept, and the person once previously overgrown and now shooting up into the sunlight. And the lime light of women.

I have been more aggressively hit on by women in the past two months than my entire life. No one takes you seriously as a bisexual person in the first place anyway, but cut your hair and change the color of the twinkle in your eye and get ready for the stampede. The first few days following my "change" I started to realize the beginning of this new Amber. Day three, riding the bus, I looked over at the cute girl sitting next to her boyfriend. We locked eyes, holding the gaze I grinned at her, shooting rainbows at her coy smile. Energetically she could have been sitting next to me at that point, because her boyfriend felt a sudden absence in the atten bigizzes tion of his lady. Starting to say something, he turned towards her to find the back of her head. Confused, he looked over her shoulder at me (this is where the good stuff starts). Well a few things bounced around in his head, playing out in his expressions and body language. The first was an "oh shit" dropping of the jaw. Second was the swiftness of his arm around his girlfriend, third being the puffing of the chest and pulling her towards him, efforts to gain her attention back doubling. Catching his eye I grinned at him menacingly, our silent dialogue exposing his fears and freeing mine. There was sincere knowledge that I was attracted his girl friend, she liked it, and he knew that. He also recognized me as a threat. This wouldn't have happened if he didn't believe I could actually win :D

People in general react to me much differently. I intimidate the begizzes out of men just by my haircut looking masculine. Women often peg me as a lesbian, which cuts out a lot of small talk, while at the same time creates a need for an explanation. Which is something I don't have yet.

I've never been this open about my bisexuality. I don't know much about this Amber. And she doesn't know much about this world and how it works. But I guess it's like learning to style your hair. Sometimes you wake up with a cow lick, and sometimes your pillows fucking do you an amazing favor. Regardless of what you start with, the process of creation out of what ever you have is the key. Lemons to lemonade and all that good shit.

One last note. I flipped off a driver who ran through the crosswalk I was crossing. It felt great.

Power to the fohawk!

Day 1-3

Tokyo is INSANE. 

I'm trying to catch my energy up. It's difficult. But I'm excited, and my desire for discipline is greater than my fears. I stopped emotionally eating when I got here, and I don't have the choking feeling when I breath. I wonder what the main trigger is, and why it's left me here. I'm staying focused and clear, and many adventures are unfolding. My first night here i met the music producer Kensuke wanted to introduce me to in the restaurant Ken works at. I asked him about what he looks for in a demo, which is consistency in writing pop albums and good hooks. And like-ability. Ken told me that those things don't matter, it's if he likes you or not. There's balance to be found between the two. I scolded myself in my mind; had I created a demo on schedule, this would have been the moment that I would have fulfilled part of my mission in being here. Yoko asked me, "what the hell are you doing in Tokyo?" I am beginning to remember these things I had forgotten on my way here. At the same time, I finally feel like I'm ready to ishokenmei ganbaru (work really REALLY hard with motivation) the way everyone else here is.

Renn is a yaki-tori restaurant Ken works at. They serve grilled meats, veggies, and a few rice dishes along with beer and other drinks. It is the most delicious yakitori-ya (the ya indicates restaurant) I've been to in years. The kanji (japanese character for a word) for Renn is the lotus flower. The atmosphere is warm, yellow toned lights, a few tables, and a large bar where you can interact with the "master" of the grill. 

That night I met my first Yakuza (the no-left-pinky-man); we joked about him riding segways in Hawaii and he adjusted the bones in my right hand. He said he was a massage master and he was masterful at it. Earlier in the evening I saw him sitting at the corner of the counter; Will told me how the night before they were out drinking and Tomo-san (pinky man) started to joke around and get rough. Will choked him out, took his keys, drove him to his home in his own car and dropped him off to his wife. 

Earlier in the evening Tomo-san sat, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, when his wife appeared at the sliding door, toting their infant tot. Lots of customers had gathered by this time, the baby sitting in a holster clamped at the joint of the left and right counter between mama and papa. Silky sheets of smoke billowed around the room, pillows cushioned the delicate bone structure, fleshed out of the legacy of power and control, lost fingertips, love, and loosing one's self in the supple folds of a woman. The color of spent tobacco thick air coated everyone in a wispy spell. I wondered to myself, still delirious from lack of sleep for 36+ hours and quite buzzed, how this child would cope with these layers of circumstances as she becomes aware of what is around her, defined in our language.

~ Her father, freshly 25, and the clouds of obligations of his profession.

~ The poison hovering the the air, entering her lungs that even her Mother paid no mind to. 

~ And the weight of Tokyo, it's deep and troubled pulse, intoxicated in the seductive comforts of the night. 

Breaking my trance, bright baby eyes leaned their gaze over the edge of her chair across the room, locking mine in a thumb war of playful spirit. I lost; she laughed, and returned to the amusements of playing with her father's stub.