My thoughts on the past few months...

At first, I wanted to write to myself. I wanted to speak so that only I would hear, write so that only I would read. I wanted to do this because I wanted a closeness to myself where I could be honest, and most importantly, so that my voice would create change in the tomorrow, nudge my soft body into action, and be the harbinger for a new day.

I want change, of course, because I am unsatisfied. I am unhappy with the state of things, the way I am. And there simply hasn't been enough time, or rather, I have not made enough time where I can plainly lay before me the many pieces. To view the many elements in my daily weather. The many voices in this truly never ending conversation.

I then realized, and you are witness to this realization, that this would not work. Writing to myself, for myself, for a selfish reason, would not have the same power, the same spirit, as writing to you, whomever it may be, generous enough to read.

~

I have been working at a law firm for about three months now, and working has left me filled with so many new sensations, yet I have not been able to sort through them all.

For one thing, I have never expected much from life, and this job offers me a lot. Another thing, I have always sought so much out from life, and I have yet to find nearly any of it.

Good pay, professional environment, benefits, and responsibilities. I have never felt more a part of the adult world--far from my parents' world, and instead, a world where people take for granted the control they have over their circumstances, where outrage is a form of expression that is listened to and heeded, not simply tolerated, ignored, by god, always, but also by he who owns your misery.

I have always had a privileged life, but as a generally quiet child, who preferred the sideline, but craved the limelight, the world felt ungraspable, and I often expected the indifference I received as deserved, and the attention from others as a blessing. I always felt my Asian race as the opposite of easy access to community, identity, and general cultural pride. It always left me feeling uneasy in any social group, since I suspected, as I am sure others have felt, where I am from, and who I appear to be, was a sliver of who I am, and where I want to go.

It's strange that the sterile environment of the office space offered me a sense of ability, and deservedness I have never felt before. In the office space I felt for the first time a new and raw sense of empowerment. Crazy, what having some money in your pocket can do. I can have my own apartment. I can buy my friends' drinks. I can help the family I love. As a professional, I am entitled to my say in things as long as I am right. There are no opinions, there is only the simple statement of fact. I am at times the Asian guy, but only when the atmosphere becomes relaxed enough so that we stop talking about work related things. When we work, we don't bring our personal lives, we are a sterile group of egos and iq's. I am not your buddy, I am not your friend, I am Mr. Park, and I am someone you should respect--and this feeling is new to me. I am Mr. Park, and I am someone you should respect. That is not how you pronounce my name, and my name is not another Korean. That I should deserve respect, that someone should speak to me as an equal, and not some other. I liked this. From standing in the shade, I walked into the light, and the blinding cloak of whiteness felt warm, and comforting, and almost Godly.

~

I have always wanted so much from this life. I have always believed in beauty, and in love. I crave peace, and humanness. I respect generosity, and I am grateful for all gifts. And life is a gift. Every single voice, as it quivers in the darkness, with its small distinct vibration, is a feather of a giant phoenix and we all live, and we all die, and we all miraculously burn and fade into ashes, and the process is a million years old, timeless, and infinite as the stars. I wish to open my arms, my mouth, my heart, and show the world what I mean. And I have always believed, as I do now, and I pray I will until my final day, that what I speak can have some say in the magnificent conversation that is this burning world, this dying day.

So I cannot stay cloaked. And I cannot remain comforted by a blinding light, in the stead of a darkening shade. Such extremities are the result of a hungry heart, and I have hungered for a long time. But after gorging myself on this, and on that, at the age of 23, what I really crave is a calm. A peace where I can steadily see myself and the world before me in the soft glow from my open mouth.

I will always love the sunset, and I will continue to drink from the starry night, but such indulgences are not for the human heart. The human heart beats at a constant tempo, sometimes a little more fervently than other times, but throughout life the human heart is a room, and a room cannot grow, cannot shrink; but there, there is the place where it all begins.

This act is an act of arrival. These words are a delivery of light.

This is the only way I can see who I am, and how beautiful you really are.

And that will get me through the day; that is how I choose to burn.

We are not simple beings of hunger, we are more than fuel, more than fire, we are the flame, the dancing shadow and the light, with dimmer thoughts of desperation as well as glimmering dreams on our minds.