time

my sense of time has always been limited to calendars, clocks, the sun. i don't think i ever noticed i was getting older, that one day i would look my dad when he was 22, 23, 24. i don't think i ever knew that one day i would get lucky and find a girl that had enough pity on me to marry me, but that hasn't happened yet so i'm still crossing my fingers. i never understood really why my father would lecture me whenever we were alone in a car, it never hit that he was preparing me for the world, that in the world you were responsible to God, to people, and to yourself. but as the numbers increase every year i have a sense of urgency, a sense of overwhelming sadness that nothing is made to last, that everything that began will end.

we're all people getting older, we're all people that could use something, somebody, we're all people that are going to end. will our bodies become part of the earth for others to grow on, step on, cry on, love on, live on? are we just animals without souls, full of air? or are we souls trapped in bodies waiting to snatch a better one after this one dies? are we meant for eternity, to truly live, to be made new, to worship and give our all to our Creator? am i on my out? or am i on my out to something beautiful?

i feel like a child. i don't want to see my parents go, i don't want to lose my friends, my brothers, my sisters, i don't want to see my dog meet his end and know that he simply does not exist anymore. i don't want people to die without seeing life for what it is. life is a journey, a gift, a chance to truly live in eternity. life is hugging your mother, arm wrestling your father, laughing with your sister, playing guitar with your brother, watching a movie with a girl you like, awkward first kisses, lying on grass, climbing trees, taking vows, making toasts, having someone next to you in bed to keep you warm at night, helping those in need, loving those who hate, raising up hands, delighting in God, growing old, watching your kids grow old.

i can't help, but shed tears at funerals, at the thought of death. people say they're in a better place, but i'm not there with them or they with me. i cry that death is an option, that death must happen, and that people believe death is it. some days i believe the whole world deserves death and some days i believe everyone is innocent. i cry at the void that death leaves. the empty space that was once filled. they always will be refilled, but never the same. i cry at the loss of life; it was someone's father, mother, daugher, son, brother, sister, friend, lover. now there's a void where they once were. in time, we're all on our way out. in time, death is the final count.

self-sabotage

I think that when those of us that will become chefs, there is a decision-making process involved that no one can really understand; it's a thought process that ultimately makes you decide that you will be the best, and that you will do whatever it takes to get there -- it's kind of a rockstar attitude, if you think about it.

Then, reality strikes. There's a lot that you don't know -- there's a lot of experience out there that you have to learn in not a lot of time. A lot of times, you overcompensate, however you can. Maybe you yell, maybe you take really basic dishes and try to get them to a point of inutterable perfection, maybe you flirt with the waitstaff. There just always has to be something that puts you on top or makes you unique from the others -- more noteworthy.

This leads to a lot of self-sabotage. With the long hours and the moments of intense stress, things get blown way out of proportion. Someone borrowing your knife suddenly becomes someone disrespecting you and yours. Long days of pent up aggression at work get taken home and hard as you might try to smile, you're surly. Other nights, you get so fed up you can't handle anything and you end up wanting to be anywhere but in bed. You lose friends, because you don't they understand, and you gain drinking buddies, because they always do.

Then, when it's quiet, you check yourself and see what you have left in your reserves.

If you come up with a little bit left, you invest it. You find something precious to you and you invest it and pray that in the long run, the investment will blossom with your career. If you come up empty, you find that at the end of the day, the best things you have in your life are your knives.


-w

I was bored the other day when i decided to stop by my mother's house; i had three loads of laundry to do at my apartment, which translates to one load and nine dollars saved at hers.

The house itself doesn't feel like home anymore, but there's still a nostalgic familiarity to it -- pictures on the wall, places where memories were made, etc. At some point, i found myself in my old room, rummaging through little things that i'd left in the closet. I'd left some sheet music, a couple old magazines, yo-yos and the like.. I'd forgotten that i'd left memoirs from ex-girlfriends on the top shelf.

The thing about high school is the overwhelming sincerity; every girl is "the" girl, and every that you do is the most important thing in the world, as well as completely justifiable, every time.

One was a photo frame from my first prom; she was in maroon, and each picture had managed to catch her with the biggest, most genuine smile I'd seen in a long time. I haven't talked to her since we broke up the summer before she went to college, so the memory and pictures are all i have left of her. On top of this picture frame was a little green box, where i had kept all of her letters that she ever wrote to me. Who writes letters nowadays, anyway?

However, the most jarring was a little styrofoam container. it sat quietly as i looked at a young me smiling proudly with the love of my life at the time. It finally caught my eye at some point because the words on it caught my peripherals.

"why do you build me up, build me up, buttercup, baby, just to let me down.." read one side. the rest of the box was covered with the lyrics as well; on the top, was a message that told me she hoped my SAT's went well and the like, and had made me a cupcake, which was carried by the container.. Things were so innocent at the time. I thought back, and realized that she was the most appreciative and giving girlfriend i had ever had, and also the one that i had broken up with over the worst reason (in retrospect, of course).

We're also facebook friends. She's engaged now.

It wasn't the jealousy that sent me whirling over who i was and what i was looking for in the next couple of days, but it was the sudden awareness of just how much time had passed and what i had learned since that time. Suddenly, it's time to get things in order, time to pull friends that i had pushed away, back, and time to stop dwelling on the past.

I'm never going to be able to remember anything about the cupcake, though.

-w (copied and pasted from my track records blog)