Abrasive Thoughts, Minimally Filtered

I have a 15 page paper due in 2 days, and I haven't started it yet. I have half a sermon to prepare for about my "missionary endeavors" (cough) in China, but here I am, cursed with a need to write because I feel like I'm caged in this house.

It's the little things that start adding up but have nowhere to go. It's eating these bland tangerines, but having no street vendors outside to sell me sweet little ones. It's having a random spike of electricity in my brain strike the bubble tea neuron, only to realize I can't walk down the street and order at the hole in the wall by saying, "what I usually get, small." It's making lamb kabobs because I miss them so much, and having everyone at the party love them, except myself.

Having spent the last two days snowboarding, it's so strange to be a minority again. Being dropped in white youth culture... that's culture shock with 3 shots of expresso and an uppercut. And the Asians here, they all speak perfect English. Where are the Korean and Chinese accents? Where is the bad fashion sense and inability to apply makeup?? When I walked out the ski lodge and a punk made a racial comment, I wanted to physically relieve my frustration on his face.

I felt like a muzzled dog when I couldn't yell "fu wu yuan!" in the Chinese restaurant. (Why does the food just suck??)

Gah! Why is everything so damn expensive?!

It's strange to be a minority again. Self-consciousness is probably mostly internal, but it exists nonetheless. 

People, things, feel so myopic here. 

I said it before I went to China, and I'll say it again... I have no desire to stay here.... My heart has too much wanderlust.  

On the 857 (Tianjin)

What is it about empty Chicago lanes?
The gentle purr in my bones and lull of the lines
- - - - - - -
Heading east on Roosevelt, then I290
Alone.

Drive.

Red lights turn green in their own time.
They hustle for no man.
Street lamps cast my shadow
Like a broken record, from front to back
In clips and phrases
Again.
And again.
And again.

DRIVE.

Lean this tired head on a frozen pane of glass
The clarity that keeps me separated from 80 mile bursts
Of the Lake’s December wrath.
There’s nowhere to lean a tired soul though,
Not when The Roots are laying down:
“Still your sunken heart thumpin’ like a kick in a snare.”

DRIVE, Damnit.

Where??
Cross the bridge. The concrete towers loom.
Empty.

Michigan Ave can’t take my thoughts
Far enough from here.

No, not when you’re the one driving my mind.

"A penny for your thoughts, a nickel for your kiss, a dime if you tell me that you love me."

Platonic love.

I'm not sure that there was any decent resolution to this year's Gender Series chapels. (Not that I actually heard them. Only that there wasn't anything brilliant said.)

My thoughts, in short, (as if you cared):

Yes, it is possible.
Yes, I think gender always gets in the way from one side or the other, at some point or another, if only whispered quietly and momentarily in the dark recesses of the mind, but is far from insurmountable.

Here here, I raise a question for you.

Can you think of any better indicator of a platonic friendship between a male and a female than their open discussion of attraction towards/relationship with someone else?

And thus, is it safe to measure one's "platonic-ness" with another in light of such discussions?

(There are, of course, a few caveats to that, as there are to most things in life. Namely, we're assuming this "sharing" is not an attempt to manipulate or make the other party jealous.)

Plus, awesome-points for those who can tell me where that title comes from without Googling it.

Canvas Seas

Worlds apart become worlds collide
As my lives start to bleed across the lines
Unspokens borne out of one affair
Drip and drag their scarlet drops
That seep across these canvas seas
Echos of prayers blown continents far
Cords of distant narratives lacerate local hearts
Convolute my palette
Rend composure, coherency apart.