two things;

i will start with the shorter, more recent one.

the drive back from work usually sees me on the road around sunset.

more often than not, the last wisp of color keeps me company

between the sky and costa mesa, at least until i leave the city

and delve into irvine proper.

there has been a stretch of evenings where i believe

(although being wholly new to ocean-side living,

i am not an amateur meteorologist as everyone seems to be

around these parts)

the pacific brought in a tiny amount of weather and fog;

so small in increment, almost like an afterthought stroke

to signify a hint of texture on canvas.

my car cuts through this mist, and the light fades cheerfully away,

and it is the end of the work day.

everything comes together to put my consciousness in an

"overly-relaxed" state, and i pass out before 7pm peacefully.

i doubt i have seen true love more than a handful of times

in my life, let alone experienced it.

i feel true love every time i am home, usually around 10-11pm.

my parents finish watching television,

and sometimes go into their room leaving me to deal with nala and mint.

i tell them to wake up and go outside to pee,

usually in korean, and mint gets up like the four year old

hyperactive, eager-to-please, near-zealot that she is.

nala carries nearly a decade of domesticity on her shaggy face;

a life filled with spurts of excessive joy,

throes of sloth, and an overall simple, dog-minded pursuit of leisure.

i was a part of all those things for her, and every time

we interact in any way, there is a history behind it.

she looks up at me from the couch, sees that mint has already

found her position in front of the door,

and does what any late-aged organism would do to will themselves into action:

sigh, prop up two limbs at a time, stretch for maintenance's sake,

and trundle along to the next second.

she reaches mint (who is all tail and tongue, by the way)

and finds her annoying, most likely, although i can never truly tell

if her whisker twitches signify petulance or affection.

i unlock the backyard door, and mint bursts forth without hesitation.

nala usually looks at me once in the eyes,

then slowly makes her way past the door frame,

just as she has done for the last ten years.

this is where i believe the unconditional love part comes in:

a creature barely a foot tall, maybe weighing 15 pounds,

closing in on the end of her existence, terrified of anything that makes a sound

she does not hear on a regular basis,

gives not a moment's hesitation as she leaves my presence and ventures

into the pitch black of the backyard, a place where anything can happen,

where nothing can be seen and everything heard clearly in the night.

she makes no motion to stop and think,

because she trusts completely that i am there to save her from anything

that might cause her harm, because she knows in her

beautiful, unobtainable, lovable mind that i love her and

will always love her no matter what.

and so she can dirty her legs on the wet grass as she walks back in

nonchalantly, giving me another look when mint squeezes in by her

instead of just waiting to come in after,

and i know that if the world ended in my backyard at that very moment,

i would throw myself at her (and hopefully be able to scoop up

the appropriately-shaped mint-tube from the tile floor with one hand)

and hope that nothing bad has happened, or will ever happen,

to this dog that i love.

i really am bursting to my skin with things to say;

i find it hard to line up a right time and the right words to do so.

another brilliant year gone by, and i finally have things to show for it.

i am surprisingly, and perhaps uncomfortably, proud of myself

for getting to today, despite what my nonchalance suggests.

yesterdays were the ones that held secrets, but now they are laid bare,

singing some quantifiable map that i can finally understand.

tomorrows will now shake in delight for being the secret-keepers

i chase to catch each day.

besides the annual whipping boy resolution

of being kinder to myself, i realized a few days ago

that i would rather choose not to lock myself in with any others.

i shudder to think of a situation where life does away with

all citrus plants on earth when i absolve to make a better lemonade;

who knows what may happen even a breath from now?

as long as i can be happy i will choose to do the things that i

inevitably want to do.

this is a vision i keep having:

standing in between the trees that are my neighbors now,

creating through my legendary and celebrated thought-alchemy

a miniature version of myself.

maybe about a foot tall.

wearing the clothes that i am wearing.

i stare at him as he jumps from the ground and begins to float

in midair (maybe a tribute to my continued

flabbergasted attitude towards gravity and all its mindcrushing implications).

then i point to him with my right index finger,

slowly making bigger and bigger circles around

that messy hair of his;

he begins to revolve slowly with my determination.

one by one, things start appearing from the tip of my finger,

things that i attribute to my ephemeral version of love:

a blanket, my guitar, bottles of water,

books, all the jumbled livery of my attempts at writing,

some favorite clothes of mine that i resign to share, etc.

then i realize this is me that i am seeing.

this is me surrounded by every single thing i want to give to someone,

me that is impatient to be a part of something more again.

when i see me floating there,

i muster up every ounce of energy i have and prepare myself

to throw this "all-laid-out" me at someone.

then i come to my sense, and the leaves on the ground

smell in their wonderful damp, wintry way,

the traffic noise hits my face in waves,

the reality of the moment tunes in with a blip.

what i am saying is that i am overflowing right now.

i feel uneven, although in a good way of sorts,

and i have this urgent need to go full force

straight into someone else.

yes, i speak like a madman. i feel like a madman.

more than anything, i want to prove again that i really do

have something wonderful to give to someone else,

as long as i get a chance.

i hope i can find someone brave enough to accept that.

you know, dear readers, i write this quite a lot here:

dum spiro spero.

when i first read that phrase, i fell in love with it more so than

i fell in love with many things.

i fell in love with it because this phrase, more than any others,

represents how i feel about life,

during the best times and the worst.

i like to imagine some ancient person in some ancient land,

looking up at the night sky,

feeling that same feeling i have of being so purely happy that we are alive,

able to see the glory that is the existence of each speck of light we see

against the backdrop of infinity.

maybe thousands of years separate us,

and the soundtrack to this moment is most assuredly different,

and we probably do not look much alike

(although i have been told i have greco-like features

by my mother, which means it must be true).

but when this person bravely put into words what countless people

believed before them, and will continue to believe far past

the days when their bones dissolve into molecules,

they made this idea ageless, perhaps even transcendent.

i know i am a resigned romantic,

but i fell in love with that vision, and i fell in love with that phrase,

that phrase so perfect in my eyes.

so happy new year, everyone,

and i sincerely wish nothing but the best for you all;

if nothing else, while you breath, you hope as well.