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Diamonds are worthless other than the value attached to them by the silly tramps you have brain washed into thinking that diamonds equal love. Guess what, sluts? Your quest for the perfect princess cut supports terrorism and genocide. Congratulations, your avarice has managed to destroy an entire continent!
~I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, the movie about Tucker Max.
Remnants of a failed Marriage that are now resting in the bottom of the San Pedro River.
Diamonds are inherently worthless, and less precious than emeralds, rubies and sapphires, yet the cause of so much death and anguish. They’re only as valuable as their advertising (Sources: Have you ever tried to cell a diamond? and Is a diamond’s price a true measure of it’s value?) and as long as people keep falling for it, they’ll be perpetrated as an integral part of the entire courtship process even though they’re actually abundant and better as a cutting tool than as jewelry.
I was going stir crazy again, and my boyfriend knew it. He watched over me with concern, desperate to alleviate my depression, but was unsure how. He knows that I hate living in Kansas, but we can’t leave. Not yet.
“Want to go to Colorado this weekend?” he asked. Manitou Springs, Colorado was the scene of our first date (which lasted a week long) and was the beginning of our happy little romance. “What do you say? We’ll take off as soon as I get back from work and we’ll just start driving?”
I can’t explain what it is about Manitou Springs, CO that cleanses me. There’s something wonderful about hiking Pike’s Peak, or climbing the rocks of Garden of the Gods and looking up to a sky that’s so much bluer than the one in crap Kansas and looking around to seeing fit people. If there was a heaven on earth, it would be this place.
I love this place. I love the town, I love the thin air, I love the fact that it’s mountainous and steep and people around there love the outdoors. I love that the culture of fitness exists there, in a way that it doesn’t exist in Kansas. I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I’m so unhappy. Even the pruned and prettied up lakes around the state capitol are marred by the fatties who park their car and picnic, their blubber hanging past their belt lines as more evidence that Kansas is fat. The 100 feet from the car to the picnic table leaves them gasping for breath. How are they not ashamed of themselves?
What’s worse? They gawk. They stare at anyone who might be in shape, using that area to work out. God forbid you not have a shirt on… then again, if you didn’t want people to leer at you, you wouldn’t put it out there. That’s what the Kansans say anyway.
Ah, but not in Manitou. There, people working out isn’t a novelty, it’s the norm! People being fit, using the great outdoors and sucking the marrow out of life is what that entire fit culture is about.
We somehow got it in our heads that we could do the entire Barr Trail, which is 13 miles (one way), gaining 7,400 feet in elevation and one of Backpacker’s Magazine’s 10 Deadliest hikes, in a day. We made it exactly halfway up before a lack of water and overall fatigue got us. To my chagrin, hiking a marathon of this magnitude is just a little out of reach. Next time, though, I’m kicking that mountain’s ass.
There’s a one mile Incline carved into the side of the mountain. In that distance, it climbs about 2000 feet in elevation, leaving you breathless with it’s scenery. It’s the greatest work out that I’ve ever done. He made me do it twice in one weekend. When my body could take no more, he made me walk around town just to push our physical limits a little further than exhaustion.
I was left happy and content on the long drive home. I curled into the passenger seat with my boyfriend’s sweater and spent a good part of the eight hour drive asleep, with his fingers running through my short, pixie cut hair.
I suppose life could be worse.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. -Iris Murdoch A Fairly Honorable Defeat
I suppose I am mad with joy to find a landscape so beautiful, so perfect. It’s something that doesn’t exist in Kansas, so I love it even more. It’s like seeing the dawn for the first time and being overwhelmed by the colors. It’s like seeing the world through rose colored glasses or coming out of the cave, after spending a lifetime looking at shadows on the walls.
Take me to a place where the fat, the lazy, the unadventurous cannot go. Take me to the sights so precious that only those who strive mightily can find it. Somewhere halfway up the Barr Trail, at the little cabin called the Barr Camp where I sat and chatted with other hikers, trading stories and sharing tips, was when I realized that up here is the heaven on earth that I have longed to find. There’s a certain amount of roughness that weeds out the weak, the obese, the gutless. That’s a place that I might find myself content to stay awhile.
“When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”
~Vincent Van Gogh
We went camping in Arkansas, along the beautiful Buffalo river.
I’m an urban girl. I hate being out in the boonies, where the nearest grocery store is a shack with a three legged dog, and a man with a lazy eye and a banjo saying “ya’ll ain’t from around these parts, are ye?” punctuated with a spit of dip hurtling from his toothless mouth into a metal pan.
I do, however, love the outdoors. I love the in-climate weather and being in the expansive forests, deserts and rivers that disregard humanity. A man who can exist outside of society as a part of nature is one who has the ultimate control of their life.
We awoke to a little mist that covered the rocky shore and placid waters.
When the sun arose and heated the sand beneath our feet, we took a canoe down the stream.
We lit a fire at night, when the air got chilly. The scent of burning drift wood rose to the air and I sipped my Smirnoff Ice (yes, I drink girly drinks) and white wine with the flame-grilled steak and pork chops on my lap. Declan sat by me and pointed my eyes at the stars. We traced our fingers over Orion’s bow, and Diana’s arms. We found the Spring Triangle, and I followed the tail of Scorpio as it curled in the sky.
I don’t like coming out into the country too often. It’s a strange and backwards place, and at no point in my life have I ever reveled in the idea of simple, country living. It’s just not who I am. But if you skip the rustic and go straight into the barren seclusion of nature, then you’ll find the other home of man.
If society went down the tubes tomorrow, and we’d all be forced to live off the land, I’d actually be okay. I’d be able to hunt and gather, kill and cook, and live within the elements. Do I want to? No, showers are nice, and so is meat from the freezer section, but there’s a beautiful sense of self-efficacy when you know that you can be so primal.
I am an American soldier. Did you know that? I am one of 362,847 Army National Guardsmen. As of last weekend, on August 25th, 2010, 41,392 of those soldiers were mobilizing, in theater or returning home. I’m not sure (although I highly doubt it) if that number includes those who are mobilized to the BP Oil Spill, Haiti and various other disasters. Unlike our Active Duty or Reserve brethren, we have that stateside mission of “grab your gear, mother nature’s being a *itch again“. My one weekend a month, two weeks a year, has turned into one weekend a month, and half of my youth. Fun stuff!
The military and my pack-up-and-go-traveling lifestyle is the reason why I’ve had such promising fledgling relationships fail (Read: Halo-Eyes, Tattoos and Entanglements). I had reconciled with the idea of being alone. I was content. I was free. I was perfectly lonely (h/t David S. at Rest is still Unwritten). Then Murphy’s Law reared his ugly head and threw a handsome man in my direction. 
Ah, and there was the Meet-Cute. I ran Physical Training, which, in response to some challenges and smack talking from colleagues, turned into Physical Torture. My goal was to ensure that they could only manage a slow waddle the next day. I succeeded. As a happy consequence, he started liking me as his equal. We started working out together and it wasn’t long before we found our opinions, our hopes, our dreams, our desires were interlocked in some strange, but beautiful way.
On one of those “One weekend a month…” deals, I flippantly said “I want to go to Colorado tomorrow.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ll go.” I pensively twiddled my thumbs before asking the question that was floating in the air between us, “Do you want to go?”
“Sure.” And we left. We went from our first date, which lasted an entire week, to living together in under a month. After five months, we’re now inseparable.
Well… almost inseparable.
He and I are the type of adventurers that look for reasons to travel – whether it be work, leisure or even war. Travel is a calling, and the purpose of it never overshadows the very nature that drives us to flutter from place to place. He and I have been looking for that next good deployment since long before he and I met. What a cruel twist of fate, the Ranger God answered our prayers and gave them to us at the moment when the thought of being apart seemed so unbearable.
We were once very linear in our thinking; Service came first. Travel came shortly after that. Love might make the list… after career, education, adventure, adrenaline and a host of other fun priorities.
Now I sit with my fingers enclosed in his palm, fighting the urge to kiss, to stay, to say damn it all and just be together. Let’s stop being so non-traditional and get in line; let’s get married, get a PhD, and have a kid. Why can’t way spend every single day together? Why do we continuously move towards things that would tear us apart?
Because we have to.
The very core of our nature that forces us to travel – to go to Colorado and climb Pike’s Peak at a moment’s notice – is the same force that moves us to do our jobs in uniform to the best of our ability. That means volunteering for things that aren’t always pleasant. It’s not a choice. It’s a calling.
And it rips my heart in two every time we have to say Farewell, Adieu!
He must go lead, because he’s good at it. He’s better than most. Likewise, I must do my job, because I’m good at it… better than some. So it must be that the man whom I love more than I love myself must always leave, and so do I.
I wish I could fall in love with a civilian. I wish I wasn’t born a nomad. I wish that the uniform we wore part time wasn’t a part of our being all of the time.
Now I’m happy. Deliriously so! Content to know that I have someone to always come home to. In fact, I now have a home. My home is a black-haired, dark-eyed, brooding man with an iron grip and a low timbre in his voice. He likes to sit under waterfalls, and climb mountains. He runs fast, jumps high, and can sweep me off my feet with one swoop of his strong arm. He soothes me when I’m scared. He warms me when I’m cold.
I’m just afraid of what a two years apart will do to us.
Instructor course in Kansas City, KS.
I met Drew Bouge at a Turbo-Kick instructor course in Kansas City, KS. Earlier this year, I had thought to become a fitness instructor… alas, I find that while I love working out, I’m not so great at working with people. I’d make a great Drill Sergeant though. Drew, on the other end of the spectrum is the type of person who gets you moving and gets you excited by sheer force of personality. He’s good looking, he’s athletic, he’s friendly. It all seemed so effortless to him.
By virtue of the alphabet, he and I ended up beside each other during the testing phase. I found myself silently trying to compete keep up with him. Where others did a lunge, he did a push up. When some people did a cross-step, he did a full leap. He kicked higher, punched harder, and looked infinitely happier doing it than the rest of us sweat-soaked wretches.
I added him on facebook because he was a person worth knowing. I kept up with his steady stream of status messages as he did a hybrid of Beachbody’s two toughest workouts: p90x and Insanity. He was also a zumba instructor, which is a latin-dance inspired aerobic work out, and getting certifications in God knows what else. If there was an Energizer Bunny in the guise of a Fitness instructor, he’d be it. I can easily work out for two to four hours a day (some people watch TV, other people work out) but the sheer voracity that he uses to approach his craft intimidates me to no end. If I worked out with him for a day… maybe two… I wouldn’t be able to roll out of bed for a week. I can admire that. Continue Reading…
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go.
But no matter, the road is life.
~ Jack Kerouac
I find myself in the most mundane little household tasks. I’m doing weeks worth of laundry, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the medial task of folding this, hanging that, putting this in the little cubby hole, putting something else into the closet. Last night, we dropped our bags in the living room and slept in our own bed. Tomorrow, we’re re-packing those bags and heading out again. I am as much a stranger to my own apartment as I have been to the last few hotels I’ve stayed in.
credit: Weheartit.com
An apartment is where my mail gets sent. It’s where I shower and sleep, and on occasion, have a meal. I hang my hat here more often than other places, but the chairs, the walls, the furniture that inhabit it’s barren walls are no more a part of me than the random trees that line the highway as I pass it by. Everything I own is just stuff. What do I care for stuff? What do I care for the things that trap you to one place? I could leave it all behind tomorrow without a second glance.
The place I sleep and eat can be a hole in the wall. It can have a vice grip door and bars on the windows. I’ve never cared. I sleep here. Sometimes I’ll eat here. But this isn’t home. Four walls, a TV, and expensive furnishings are not the indications of a life well spent – Oh no, they’re just the trappings of a gilded cage.
The road is home. The sky is home. The world is home.
The day I content myself to live and stay in one place is the day that I have died inside.
“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
-Abraham Heschel
I went to visit my boyfriend (now X-husband), J, while he was in South Korea. I remember going there with the doe-eyed wonder of a 19 year old girl. I was very much in love, and looking forward to a happy future with this man, and it showed. I’ve never traveled around Asia, in spite of it being the continent of my birth, and I was eager to see where the sun rises first.
“Is she a juicy girl?” J’s colleague asked.
credit: http://undeadastronauts.com
J flared, his embarrassment and anger palpable. “No,” he said disdainfully. He may have said more if we weren’t in public. Later, J had a discussion with that person.
“What’s a juicy girl?” I asked later on.
He shook his head and said nothing and wouldn’t elaborate on it.
When I returned to the US, I spoke to one of my colleagues who had just returned from a summer on another US military post in Korea, shadowing the Military Police. I posed the same question that J had ignored.
“A stripper. A prostitute. Sex trade stuff.” He went into great lengths to help me understand why J was so angry – Juicy girls, drinky girls, local talent, whatever they might be called – and described the extent of the human trafficking that was present in the area. Young girls, as young as I was then, who had the similar cat-like eyes, with an upward tilt to their outer corners, dark tan skin and slender limbs throwing hopeful eyes at soldiers to be rescued from their dire situation (read: here and here). Subjected to humiliating sex acts that populate the world’s porn industry and forced into indentured slavery, these girls are the product of the sick demand that exists for this depravity.
No, I wasn’t ashamed of being likened to those poor creatures. I was ashamed of the racism. I have the slightest almond hint to my eyes and the dark golden tan and thick black hair of a pacific islander. I also speak fluent English and French. I have been a member of the uniformed services of the United States and been educated within it’s borders. I surmise that J’s colleague had fallen into the trap of his own prejudices; The only Asian girls he had known were in the red light district, therefore, we are all of that same profession.
It’s sick, it’s twisted, and it shouldn’t exist in the United States.
A few years later, my relationship with J deteriorated and within a few months of our final divorce decree, he was re-married with a child. I knew none of this, of course, until a mutual friend uploaded me on the situation. It seemed sudden, and I was a little curious about what she looked like, so I perused the wide web and saw her social network profile appear.
Spain's Olympic Basketball Team before playing in China
To my dismay, she had posted something about me.
“Poor [Riley]. If J wanted to look at you, he’d look at Asian Porn. They’d look better.”
Holy ignoramus, Batman! Your racism is showing, you might want to cover that up.
There are any number of reasons to hate me, particularly if you share the same values as my X-husband; I’m an elitist, I value school and education over street smarts, I believe that there are classes in our society that can predictably be dictated by the level of education one strives for, I believe that someone has to mop the floor and that those people are our High School drop outs and illiterates, I believe that people who are fat are undisciplined and lazy, I believe that people who want to stay in one place for the rest of their lives have closed themselves to the world and I believe that not all people are equal. Call me a snob, a bitch, an egotist. Call me any number of things, but likening me to something seen in an Asian porn… because I’m Asian too? That’s all you’ve got? You’re just an racist idiot. I hope you like your simple, humble living because people who think as transparently as you never elevate in status.
“A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black.
That was wrong.
They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.” -A. Whitney Brown
I’m not saying that she has no reason to hate me, in fact, she has several. But under no circumstances are any of those reasons tied to my race. I suppose it was my own fault, my X-husband had admittedly been a man with an “Asian fetish”. I should have expected nothing less from him, or his ilk, and I should never have deigned to associate with them.
I am a part of a group of travelers; I spend most of my time amongst the wonderful wayfarers who drift in and out of my path, and there is not a racist among them. They are men and woman who see people as they are and who they are, not for the superficial characteristics that they were born into. No, when they love, they love the person. When they hate, they hate their traits.
Travel – it is the cure for all of life’s ignorance.
We sat across from each other, a little timid, a little cautious. It was one thing to sit in a crowded room and make snide remarks about some of those around us, it was another thing to be in my room, alone. There was a greater feel of intimacy but not the kind you would think. It was like the confidence of a bartender and their customer, or a hairdresser/barber with their client.
Give me another round, Phil. There’s a lot swirling through my mind.
At a breakfast a few days prior an older gentleman of a higher rank and grander scope of experience imparted his wisdom on us young officers. To my left was Phil, married with a newborn baby. To my right was another colleague, married since the stone age with twins that were somewhere in the double digit ages. There was someone who was recently engaged and another who had to go home several months ago to take care of a family crisis and returned to finish his training. We talked jobs, personal development, fitness, career… and family.
“Who at this table is single?” inquired the wise man.
I coughed and meekly raised my hand. Am I the only one? Yup. I had phased out of the last part of the conversation – they were talking about wives, kids, family considerations… What did I care? The selfish life is a good life and my career decisions are mine and mine alone.
“What about that last guy you were dating?” asked the guy to my right.
“He’s gone now,” I said. “We were only together for two weeks anyway.”
“That’s about 13 days more than usual for you…” we laughed.
There were some exchanges between the men about their single days and how they missed it. Stay single as long as possible, they advised. There’s no rush to settle down. It was a run of qualifications ‘We love our family but sometimes we wish we had stayed single for longer’ and ‘We don’t regret anything but career choices would have been easier without a spouse’.
“Having a kid changes you on a molecular level,” said the wise man, “It changes you in a way that you can’t see.”
Now Phil sat across from me. We naturally placed ourselves at a respectful distance, half the length of the room. I inquired about his family – now that he had a wife and kid - and did it make him feel any different?
“My kid’s only a month old. I don’t feel different,” he confessed. “I’m just a little worried that she’s get into her teens and fall in love with Private Snuffy… she’s going to come up to me saying ‘But I love him, Daddy!’”
I scoffed. “Blame it on the Amygdala.”
“Is that it?” He asked “Cos when we were younger, everything was so…” exasperated, he tried to convey it through expressions and hand gestures, “and now, Love is just a series of logical decisions and hedging your bets.”
“The Amygdala processes emotion,” I explained. “It’s not fully developed until adulthood, hence why teens are so emotional.”
That’s why we don’t really fall in love anymore, we seemed to agree. Sure, we loved, but the head-over-heals, Romeo and Juliet in love seemed far out of our grasp. Maybe it was just how our particular brains were made. If everything boils down to the chemicals, then maybe it was the reason why he and I hated staying in one place too long, and why we had such an affinity for foreign languages and why we got along the way we did. It’s possible that attraction can be boiled down to subconscious, evolutionary responses to how someone looks and smells and what we can ascertain about that person and their compatibility with us when procreating. It’s why we might favor someone who reminds us of the opposite sex parent. It might even explain why women are now favoring androgynous looking men (a fad I refuse to partake in – nothing is less sexy than a man I can beat up). Having a child didn’t change him on a molecular level, maybe people who believe that want it to be true, so they make it so.
We both sighed. Him, with a family, sometimes wishing he could be single with the freedom to make decisions without someone reprimanding him at home. Me, with no one but the faithful love of my dogs and the occasional lonely nights wondering if there’s more to life than living for yourself. The grass isn’t greener on either side of the fence. The only time it’s greener is when you’re too ignorant to see the weeds.
