The Smell of Rain

Every inhalation of Petrichor,

Every breath I take sitting and watching the teardrop water fall to the ground.

I am calm, grounded, grey.

I can’t describe the smell of rain in scents, only in feelings;

calm: an encompassing blanket wrapped around my shoulders and a companion sitting by my side. We are together, we are in love, we are safe, or at least we think we are in the moment.

brave: walking alone on an empty road. Only thoughts to accompany me. I am strong, I am powerful, I am one with the nature that surrounds me. Fuck the world, society, my responsibilities; I will walk until my legs give out. And when I collapse, my time has come. Like a wild rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.

sad: the sky is crying, so am I. But the sky’s tears feed the earth, maybe mine will too.

solitude: lonely, but lonely is not always bad. Today it’s peaceful, but yesterday it was harrowing . But today it’s peaceful

The smell of rain

One second it drizzles, the next it pours.

Ever changing.

Thunder follows lighting.

A bolt hits a tree, a fire starts

It is only natural.

Some days the rain makes me feel gloomy, somedays it makes me feel safe.

Today I feel thankful.

Thankful for the sun, thankful for the rain, thankful for the world, thankful to feel something.

Thankful for the memories.

The scent of Soaftsoap Milk and Golden Honey reminds me of kindergarten. The scent of petrichor reminds me of a time when things were different.

I can’t go back to kindergarten, but I’m starting to believe that I can go back to being happy.

Here I sit, watching the rain, breathing in the scent;

I feel gloomy like the sky, but I am grounded like the earth. my emotions are ever-changing just like the rain.

I am one day closer to jubilation.

I am breathing in the Petrichor

Image via Pinterest.com

Yet another piece of unsatisfactory writing!

I know today should be the day

the one where i take care of it

where i get it out of the way.

I give you the closure you need and i start anew.

But this happens too often

I think someone’s different and that I’ve fallen out of my pattern

and that’s when I tend to fall right back in.

It’s selfish to give myself the benefit of the doubt.

Capable of love,

capable of getting close,

capable of staying there.

At this point it is selfish to give myself the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe the September blues just have my tongue

but then again it’s almost October

and my feelings change with the month.

Everything I know is an extraction of someone else

of something else.

I’m off to a slow start this year.

And I couldn’t ask you to try and understand why that is.

There’s so many things I want done but

I don’t want to take the steps to accomplish those things.

So instead I bite my tongue,

pace back and forth,

stare at the ceiling,

tune people out,

bounce my leg up and down,

speak the same empty words that I do every fucking day (and yet I continue),

crack my knuckles,

evaluate lyrics.

I spend time dreaming about how I should be writing and how I could and how I hate what I’ve created here but I won’t change it

It’s easier to glide by,

like so.

And until I have the time,

until I have the headspace ,

this is how it has to be.

Even if I hate what it makes me do

High school wasn’t designed to make you love yourself.

photo credit: Pinterest.com

Far from Home

“You need to fulfill your camping requirement,” the tall, built, bearded teacher who wears a Hawaiian shirt tells me. In order to graduate OVS, students must go to 2 campings a year. “You are going to Mount Pinos.” I don’t want to go.

Mount Pinos is located in the Los Padres National Forest. Its summit is 8,847 feet high, which is the peak of Ventura. I’ve been assigned to this Mount Pinos camping trip for 3 years. Relatively speaking, it’s an easy trip. Unlike the many backpacking trips that make you walk for 50 some miles. Once I went to Topa Topa backpacking trip last year and got bitten by a tick and had to dig a hole for bathroom. 

Mount Pinos still looks the same: the tortuous path, the fast-moving clouds, the pine trees… Good old Mount Pinos, here we go again. It gets bitterly cold when it’s dark, so we’d start a fire. Starting a fire is easy, but keeping it going is difficult. Taking one from warmth, from civilization, from your weekend… it just seems like masochism. I don’t get it. Do people actually go camping because they like to be tortured? 

Mount Pinos doesn’t have as much pine cones as it did in the previous trips. We only found 1 and a half pine cones this time. In the past, we’d burn all the pine cones we found and it would smell amazing. Maybe it’s because of the newcomers—there are way more campers than before. They would smoke stuff and play loud music. But Mount Pinos is still the same even without the pine cones. It still gives me the feeling of being far from home.

Photo credit: 100peaks.com

Pressure

Being trapped in a fucking superficial choke hold

You say I look pretty, but I don’t feel better not enlightened, nothing like the eight-fold

Can one be seen for more than the shape of their nose?

Probably not how could I even suppose

We claim to be changing the way we think, as a whole, as a society

Definitely not because the way we look still gives people panic attacks, anxiety.

Trying to express yourself, or make a statement resulting in getting called a slut

Looking to get called a prude, insecure, or just plain unattractive if you don’t walk around confidently, if you don’t strut

How could I believe in people acting better?

“Why the hell are you going out wearing that sweater?”

Beauty standards driving me mad

Get me out of here, I want to leave, will I look back and this will be all that I had?

Definition of you and me

What color are your nails? How much were your jeans? Did you get a degree?

Adjourn these standards, adjourn this rhyme scheme, adjourn society!!

photo credit: pinterest

why i love the sun(sets) in california

when I go to the beach or sit in my backyard, i like to have moments to myself where i am able to reflect on my decisions (past and future ones) while i look at the sun setting. 

the sun has always drawn me (even though i hate the heat). i’m not sure why either. maybe it’s because i was born in arizona and raised in california but that has always been a question in the back of my head.

there is a point in the day where the sun becomes vulnerable. as the heat begins to die down and the night chill takes over, the sun is at its weakest and i am infatuated with that moment. when this key element for human survival is powerless, i am able to become emotionally naked. Together, the sun and I are parallels as we expose ourselves.

while i sit on the sand or on the grass and look up at the painted sky, i ask myself these simply put but complex questions: am i happy? and if so, why or why not?

Lately, i have been happy for a plethora of reasons. And today, the sun has made me think of the people who raised me. the sun has made me reflect on my mother who has taught me graciousness and the fundamentals of being a strong woman as well as my father, who installed creativity and imagination into my thought process at a young age.

so tonight, as i look into the golden sky, i thank the sun for keeping me humble and letting me pour my heart out when it and me are completely bare.

photo credit: treehugger.com

iffy // certain

Sometimes I can’t tell if the fact that we as a human species are minuscule is terrifying, or comforting.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever figure out what I want out of this world or what this world wants out of me.

Sometimes I wonder if people think about me when I’m no longer in their lives or when I’m away.

Sometimes I think that when the floors creak, along with my head too I’m rotting.

Sometimes I feel responsible for the happiness of others.

Sometimes I get moody for absolutely no reason other that the mere reason that, I can.

Sometimes I paint people yellow, orange, pink, or purple, who are beige or even grey. (I do this especially often)

Sometimes I say things that don’t match up with what I think, because I act on impulse.

Sometimes I don’t know what I want and often times at that.

Most times I get exceptionally overwhelmed when I haven’t updated my playlists, or I’ve been listening to the same music for too long (approximately two weeks).

Most times I get bored of movies, people, places, classes, colors, clothes, crayons, writings, news, pens, and everything in between.

Most times I go home and go straight to my room instead of stopping in the living room, the kitchen, or any other room.

Most times I crack my neck the way the chiropractor tells me not to.

Most times I push people away simply because I can.

But all the time, I figure it out.

All the time I get myself through even if it feels like the whole entire world is against me.

Not for a minute do I believe that I can’t do it.

Not for a minute do I not work to be better than the expectations put on me, then the standards, then the history.

All the time I believe and stand with me and to all my sisters, I believe and stand with you too.

photo credit: pinterest,com

Thoughts from a Balcony

something has changed.

colors are duller

even flowers look sad.

my eyes feel like a melancholy ocean,

and my cheeks the sand; waiting for the waves to rush on to them.

tears have replaced laughing,

smiles feel hollow.

my face has a different complexion,

more pale, more hopeless, less me.

my body feel lethargic, corpulent, and ignominious,

i am rotting from the inside out.

i have lost a part of me; the will to push, the will to continue, the will to strive

and it shows.

things that barely phased me are now barricades.

it’s hard to exist when you feel like you have nothing to live for.

oh me, oh life, oh self… where have you gone?

photo credit: weheartit.com

untitled

I started my junior year one month ago, which I have been waiting for pretty long time ago. I heard this year will be super tough, taking tons of AP courses, preparing for quizzes, tests, exams, and finals that come one after another. Besides, also need to take care about extracurricular activities, social relationships, being a student leader or something like that. All of those things are taking up both my time and energy. 

photo credit: jjhsfocus.com

It has been 4 weeks since this school year started.

What did I do so far? I don’t know. Probably nothing. 

Nah. I definitely did something, not just something, I have done a lot of things.

I wrote four reading journals and rewrote them several times, three short answer questions, two stories, one lab report, took the first unit exams for all my classes…… Almost every day was extremely busy, I got super exhausted every night, and need to refill my energy level back up every morning.

Actually, the school itself, does not seem to be that much more challenging compared to last year. And the challenges I am struggling with now are not really difficult, they’re just new to me.

There are always ups and downs in life. I am happy I have someone to share both my happiness and unhappiness. 

where my eyes cease to look

If I may,

through ye rivers

through ye trees

it is you who have suffered

by the hand of me

with starlets faded

and trumpets drowned

ye murky streams

stood idle

held fast in winter sounds

– you’re a river –

ancient winnings left unsung

you’re my peer, my equal

yet you still leave me stung 

ye valley, ye hillside, ye marbled dismay

covered in oleander

onward ye May

ye gargling, ye moving, ye ponderous brook 

(struck through me!)

a center it took

“Tear me to pieces

cut out where my eyes cease to look”

and just then will they open to see

the face of summer laughing at me

with eyes open wide 

my love it did wander

for bitter I was

my heart it did squander:

ye forest, ye mountain, ye breeze

ye sunglass driving, ye proliferate bees.

Suppose I am the offspring of thine shepherd:

you are the hunt,

that which I am after.

and with the fall comes the rapid convergence:

mine sweet love’s resurgence

But once again the autumn leaves took

to a different stream or babbling brook

and forevermore I am wandering in a forest ever stranger

of perilous rot

and cavernous danger

All that which a summer could bring!

but once again I am searching for a longer sting

and what of the prospect? What this winter will bring!

while more I could say might strengthen the pressure 

I leave with you no words, no rhyme, no measure

that might contrast mine song of May

it tingles, it trickles, and just may delight

in telling a story of our precarious plight

with the sincerest intentions on an immeasurable scale,

all that you’re left with is a tacky email

and no words, no sermons, no divine light

could bring you back the way it would 

into my life.

minutes later you answer:

true love is true love’s killer

Credit: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1992.5112/

Drink Water, Live Longer

I love Diet Pepsi. If I order a food delivery, a 2-liter Diet Pepsi will definitely be in it. But lately, I’ve announced farewell to it. 

Looking at a can of Diet Pepsi, it’s the word “Diet” that will capture your eyes. It means no sugar is in Pepsi. In other words, Diet Pepsi has zero-calories. It means you can feel guilt-free when drinking a can of soda, it means you can drink ten cans of Diet Pepsi and still stay in shape… but it also means cancer.

Cancer? Yes, cancer. Like I said, Diet Pepsi is sugar-free. However, the Pepsi company replaces the sugar with a kind of sweetener called aspartame. Studies on aspartame have shown that the use of aspartame can increase the chance for an individual to get blood-related cancers. 

On the Diet Pepsi company’s response to the studies on aspartame was replacing aspartame with other non-sugar sweeteners. This alone shows the dangers aspartame triggers. However, most Diet Pepsi I see out there still state the use of aspartame. While I’m no professional in studying sweeteners or the soda industry, I do care about my own longevity. And honestly, even if they use another kind of sweetener in soda, I don’t think I can trust its safety anymore. That’s why I’ve decided to stay off the product.

Looking at all those soda cans, with labels like “sugar-free,” “caffeine-free” or “aspartame-free”… I have a question for all of us—why not just free yourself by drinking water? 

Drink water, live longer.

credit: amazonaws.com