A state of a recognition of soul of its counterpart to one another

Three theories to forget the past and to find what so called true love (above is the definition of true love I found somewhere but forgot exactly where)..

Theory one.
And the theory said that the amount of time to forget someone you love but didn't love you back is, the amount of time you've known the person, times two. This is a false theory, I must say, that with the prove of how long I've known Jake, times two, would be only four months. Based on the theory, it's supposed to be over by now, which is the fourth month after we broke up. And the theory doesn't catch up at all, in fact, it worked in reverse, because I have been thinking about him for every second now. If I don't have to do everything else. Especially when I try to catch up the time I've spent to forget about him by ignoring so many other prospects, that, in the right mind, might turn to be the right one. Possibly. But the idea of having him beside me, watching him sleep, seeing his beautiful circle on the right eye, of course, along with his other qualities as a martyr, someone who cared so much about humanity, is incomparable.

Theory two,
which may be true but need more strategy to comprehend, was that to forget someone is by being vulnerable again and through your imperfect heart out there, with bigger risk of being ups..dropped, and fell apart again. This was proven to be true, since, I liked Jake, I seem to have to shut my door to the past, where J lived, where he has been living for the damned four years of my life. I've never thought I would fall for someone else after that reckless love story with K, except that the theory has a deeper impact of my new love was more vulnerable than mine, having a hard time to trust me when I said I am still friends with my exboyfriend. Just what was wrong with that? Friends are friends and there is nothing more than that.

This problem, appeared to be, assume-ably, something to be proven by throwing your double-broken-heart again, out there. Let it be smashed and thrown away.
Unless there is a miracle, there is no way that this continuously destructive pattern would eventually cycle back to restore the doubled, tripled, glued broken heart.
This is getting harder, to the fact that true love might not come to you to often. The fact where a state of a recognition of soul of its counterpart to one another is a rare occasion in one's life, if anything at all.

So the chance of living miserably with someone whose not your true love is bigger, nowadays, especially when it is ticked by the state of turning thirty and desperation at forty, very dangerous, indeed, because when turned thirty, our mind has grown in its full extend with our body is capable to digest the taste of life. It would be, assuming we would live for another 40 years, the condition is a miserable one.

Theory three,
Which would be the theory of surrendering, is to realize that our mere existence belongs to God, and does He knows what he's really doing?

For me, November 26, 2006. Names on this writing were changed.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones

By Stephen Baldwin with Mark Tabb, published by Warner Faith, September 2006.

I came across the book in the bookstore last two weeks. It has a half face picture of the Baldwin I hardly know (I see Alec more often) and the book tells me why he's not visible in Hollywood anymore. I can't recall any of his movies, but I remember him being the more calm Baldwin. Reading this book is like reading an ego-maniac person who became an ego-maniac person who surrender to God. He still who he is, but he lets God performed in his life. He does great things now, and everyone would know it's the work of God, the God who is in him, not Stephen Baldwin himself.

The book tells profoundly about his conversion, how God orchestrated his life to come to Him. It was all dawn on him when a brazilian maid started to bug his wife's ears, and Augusta, the maid, told her that she came because God told the entire congregation in her hometown in Brazil that
the Baldwin will become Christian and has their own ministry. His wife responded to the story and started to search God. And Kennya, his wife, started praying for Stephen to come to Christ, an hour a day, in a year. Prayer is the most powerful thing that said we believe in God who make the impossible into possible.

And then Stephen tells us his sins, what he has done, although he said there's not any major conversion, knock on the head experience as in Paul. But he continues to show us the "coincidence" of how he founded his ministry "Livin' It", a ministry to the skaters, self-described tough guys in the world (Geezz, okay, tough guys). But, he is fruitful. His ministry is growing, and with prayer, it continues to grow and touch people's life, especially his target, the self-described tough guys who surf, skate, and do all the "I have no fear" activities.

The book tells me three things: God works miraculously in people's life when they allow Him to; there's no such thing in our life is a coincidence; and prayer is the next thing to connect with God.

The rest of the story shows me that Stephen is a human being, with a lot of sin and still living in flesh, but he is continue to work on the character, how his relationship with his o, so powerful wife (whom I admire better than Stephen) is growing, and how he's living his life because he surrender to God.

One thing I want to pointed out and I want to mention is the fact that he's not in the traditional way of evangelising. He's not one of those people who live by the "rules" of what so called a "Christian" way of life. That you should not say this and that if you're Christian. I met someone who recently told me that a Christian can't say "crap" for example, which is for me, when I had a bad day, that's the thing I want to say. Crap! So what? I didn't say God's name in vain, which is my definition of cushing. That's just the example. I don't think Jesus said these rules when he was on earth, only us, the self-righteous Christians who condemn other people instead of loving them, which actually, the main thing Jesus had to say. I agree with Stephen with that. I agree that we have to be relevant without being drawn into the culture. It is risky, but we can do it, when we have God in us. When we limit ourselves, we limit our God. Stephen mentioned about Christian rap music, which would be perfect to talk to the inner city kids, as the examples I've seen in CityCure, an urban ministry in Cincinnati. Yeah for not listening to additional what so called "Christian rules", Stephen.

--The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." —from On the Road, Jack Kerouac

Seek and you may find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

I just finished reading Franny and Zooey, a book written by JD Salinger and one of his masterpiece that tells the story of the children of the Glass family whom, when they were kids, performed in a show called "It's a Wise Child." I always love the language of JD Salinger and how he communicated so well through the direct conversationalist sentences. His words are meant to be read one by one, word by word, sentence by sentence.

This book has a heavier, philosophical content as in A Catcher in the Rye. It meant to treat our minds with thoughts that will give us back the freedom of making conclusion, asking questions, or even choosing what to do, in life. I said, that, in life.

Franny, the first book, tells us about Franny or Frances, the youngest and the youngest daughter of the glass family. She is twenty year old (in the fifties), just quit her major in theatre because she thinks that everything in the higher education is fake and everyone is starving to be someone. She's dating Lane, her boyfriend in one year. The story started with their lunch date in a restaurant prior to a football game where she visited Lane who went to a different school. The conversation at the table turned philosophical and ended with Franny fainted out in the restaurant manager's office, and when Lane left her, she started to chant the "Jesus Prayer".

The what so called the Jesus Prayer is a prayer she found in a book called "The Pilgrim's Way" (which I will check out later, too) that tells a story of a Russian peasant who tried to find the meaning of one verse in Tessalonian that tells the congregation to pray incessantly, without faint. This book and the sequel of the book "The Pilgrim Continues His Way" is the main source of why Franny fainted and later on got sick and unwilling to eat, in the Glass' family's house.

That later on lead us into the second story, Zooey.

Zooey, is the second youngest child, is a twenty-five year old actor who is still living in the house. Another philosopher in the house, Zooey was a tool for the author to tell us beautiful, amazing stories about religion, life, and what ever else might be in Salinger's mind. They older brother, Seymour, whom happened to be one of the main character that Salinger communicated through another novel, died ala Heindrich Von Kleist, committed suicide with his wife. His death has given enough pain in the family, since he was the most brilliant one. And Buddy, is their older brother who lives with full privacy in an apartment not nearly far from their house, without means of communication available, which always worries Bessie Glass, the mother in the house. These two characters influenced the development of both Franny and Zooey, who struggled with their own mind while growing up and trying to forgive the brother who left them egocentrically, and missing him terribly at the same time. The conversations between Zooey and his mother are rich, with the conversationalist style of Salinger, which led into the discussion that disturbed Zooey; Franny found the two books in Seymour's old room.

Zooey's way to talk to Franny about her depression in his own way, such as acting as if he was Buddy and called Franny, was brilliant. I don't know if Salinger had plots in his stories, but he has a way to spit all of his thoughts through these characters, the way he talked about religious figures, about Jesus, about Buddha, about life and what it's all about, was fascinating to me. The conclusion that both Zooey and Franny had, that brought Franny from hopelessness into Joy, was, that reason behind our every act is important. That, indeed human beings have their egos in the front list of those reasons that made us do what we do, but ego is part of us, and there's no way we could deny it. Unless. Unless, we're driven by the higher calling, the higher supremacy, who knew everything from the beginning to end, who had the answer that drives the Russian peasant to search for the meaning of "praying incessantly" and performed the Jesus Prayer until it came back to him as an answer. Which, would be, doing what we love for Jesus, which also mean, doing what we love unto others, who ever the others is. It is such a beautiful book, Franny reminded me of the importance of reasons, the importance of motivation, and what the best motivation is.

Seek and you may find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

Don't have anything to be thankful for? Check your pulse

Mushy, not very crunchy green beans was created through a trial and error process of combining what supposed to be a healthy dish. A dash of minched garlic and ginger will do the trick, with the help of miched walnut that will help to make it crunchy. Sort of.

My brother's timeless joke about a dish, was that, a tasty dish is not a tasty dish if it was made out of supposedly good ingredients. He never spent a second in the kitchen, so he never made any comments out of what came out of the space. The problem was, when I was living at home, I've never spent any time in the kicthen either (I left home when I was in high school). His joke was started when he noticed I helped my mother to cook when I went home in the weekends. After awhile my mom would gave me responsibility of to create a dish. I thought his joke was not fair at all, especially with vegetables, such as bamboo shoots? I mean, they're good for you, but to create a tasty dish out of it require more ingredients other than only spices. And papaya leaves? I love greens as much as a rabbit would, but I don't remember making a dish out of papaya leaves without adding other things in it. In Cincinnati, local/regionally produced vegetables such as green beans and kale created another challenge that reminds me of my brother's remark.

Last thanksgiving, green beans was what I made to bring to dinner with my friends. I've never was succesful with them, since I tried not to put any kind of meat in it. And that mushy green beans was what I brought, they had too much fun in the oven and when they were out, they're not crunchy anymore. Thank God I had friends who were so pleasantly polite, they said they liked my green beans, although I doubted it that it was true.

Thanksgiving is a precious moment to spend with family, in my case, this would be my friends and their family. But the idea of a national feast in the world that offers fast food, car food, and everything that marked "I am in a rush" food, sitting together to eat the same food (turkey, mostly) that came out of each kitchen, created with hand-down recipes represents hope that we can slow down and enjoy life. I am so used to celebrating Thanksgiving, I could not spend thanksgiving alone. But, some people might have to. Some might have to work to keep us safe. And I could see how that must be very hard for them.

One recipe to create a delicious Thanksgiving moment when we're alone, is just to add prayer with that. Happy Thanksgiving, America!

Jesus is right for whatever is wrong in your life

Beside the opportunity to walk everywhere, living in downtown offered me so many opportunities to get in contact with people. Every kind of people you can think of. From "new" people who just moved in one of the rapid "inner-city comeback" along with condo developments which proved that Cincinnati is NOT shrinking. And "old" people, who have been living here, meaning having an actual own living space, or call the streets as home, one of those, whose, some people would avoid to be in contact with. I heard the CityGospelMission with their campaign of "help other people start with a meal" to prepare for Thanksgiving and the holidays on the radio all day long. People did respond, they wanted to help, and CityGospelMission helped them to make the best use of their resources to really shake people's hands, give people what they need, to start, with food.

But, seeing them everyday giving me another point of view. That there's something they need more than just food. Something in their eyes crying out behind the curtain of anger, or dissapointment, or bitterness. I always feel hesitant to even smile to them, which I had tried most of the time. But, when they didn't smile back, I just had to try once more when I see them again.

This evening I went to the library to pick up the books I had on reserve. I parked my car around my apartment and walked to the library. Blinking red light. A lady was walking with her hands in the pockets, empty eyes which seems to look forward to nothingness. No one, including me, could offer her a smile. She walked as slow as possible as if she didn't care of the cars that came towards her. As if she was just want life to end. She has nothing to loose.

Imagine you're a female. And homeless. You're vulnerable. Your chance of getting bitten up or exploited, insulted, or raped, is bigger than if you're not homeless, or if you're male. You still have to face the fact that not every soup kitchen ministry or service open everyday to provide you with a meal. Not every shelter is a "safe" shelter or even have enough bed for everybody. You probably couldn't get a job because you don't have any addresses, or telephone number where future employers could contact you, or if you had bad mistakes that took you to prison. Or even worse, if you have had any drug addictions. If I were her, I wonder how long I would fight back. I wonder how long I would try to get out until I stop trying. One unfortunate moment seem to lead to endless miseries. You know you have to keep moving but why bother? You have nothing to loose. No body you could turn to. No future that awaits you.
And you probably are still trying to make sense of your past, of what happened when you're younger, trying to "forgive" God who let all those things happened. And try to forgive yourself of what happened that lets you where you are.

It's easy for me to make up stories as the one I just did, but I don't know what that woman is facing. I don't know if she has given up.

On any given day, they said, there were 2,500 people live on the street in Greater Cincinnati. That scene was just one of the many that are not recorded in statistics. Or something that you could capture in the radio while you're trying to figure out how much money to give when they campaign heard. People are still people, no matter how much they are "hidden" behind the numbers. But people have their own reasons to be on the street. Sometimes they want to be on the street because that's the only life they knew. Some couldn't get out even if they want to. The reality behind the numbers, is that, each person has their own reason, and there's no way to generalize when thinking about what solution could help them.

Who would tell them that there is Jesus? Who would even start? I know the CityGospelMission has this kind of ministry, to start one on one relationship with people, but I wonder if they have enough resources to reach more people.

Unless you're flat on your back, you have to keep moving to float.

There's no plot. There's only adventure.

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, published by Viking Press, 1957.

I read On the Road again after I visited San Francisco and fell in love with City Lights Bookstore, which changed my point of view of the first experience in reading the book. The sense of freedom at loose, the sense of curiousity and spirituality in the book is very inspiring. Kerouac was one of my favorite writers, one of those who "knew the rules but freely breaking it" and created an entire world of journey with words.

Kerouac brought honest words, merely conversations as a narator and conversations with his world along the journey. There's no plot. There's only adventure.

God may break us in order to remake us

Scar. No one was born with it. If anything like it, it would be called birthmark, and birthmark is far more "holy" than a scar. A birthmark is something that came with us when we were born, attached to who we are. The word scar sounds like something worth to hide, I wouldn't want anyone else to see. It represents a damage, a broken tisue, a failure.

The scarriest scar I had is still on the back of my palm right on the border of my fingers when my right hand tried to stop the velocity that hit my body from a scooter that was hit by a bycicle. The accident happened late at night about nine years ago when I tried to get some coffee (that event didn't stop me from drinking coffee). My hand was in a bandage ala a boxer for about a month, just in time when I had to go to a trip for a research project in Japan. Great. The wound was gone, but the scar are there, four of them, everytime I looked at it I remember how much I was blessed because nothing else in my body was hurt from that accident. Even my glasses were intact! It was a miracle, and I certainly greatful I only had the scar.

This August, life had scratched more scars than I'd ever had in my collected years. What else if it's not because of poison ivy. The three-leaves "plants" is harmful to our skin and body, even if it's been dead for three years. You couldn't see it when you had fun, throwing frisbee, eating pizza, watching the sunset, and listening to a live music.

There's a lesson to this, though. When scrambling through the woods, a pair of jeans might be a better choice.

Our body has an amazing system of protection. When attached by foreign agent, in this case poison ivy, the body had a strategy to fight back. Scars are areas of fibrous tissue that replace normal skin after destruction of some of the dermis. It is a result of the biologic process of wound repair in the skin and other tissues of the body. Scar looks hideous, but it is a natural process of healing. Our scars shows that we, more and less, alive.

We saw the opportunity, took the chance, failed, broken hearted, scarred. If I didn't take the chance to scramble through the forest on that beautiful summer day, feeling pretty while wearing my pretty dress (stop laughing, please), I would not have the memory of a beautiful summer day spent with laughter and joy. I wouldn't know there was this hidden field of black-eyed-susan in the back pathway of Burnet Woods, more like a wild prairie field. I wouldn't know how to play frisbee!

It's life, and life has its scars.

The best things in life aren't things

When Sunday comes, the weekend is over. The long awaited weekend was here, and it's gone. What could be better than spending the weekend as you please? There's no deadline, just things to do. I planned to spend this weekend "to get things done" but I am glad I spent some of it with my friends. I didn't know how I could get on otherwise; this is one of those time when I didn't even know I needed other people to cheer me up.

I thought of friends I have and what they have done in my life without they even knew it. Every single person I met and interacted with was one of the ways God communicated with me. Without they knew it, they brought me to the thoughts I need to think about, decisions I need to consider instead of jumping to conclusions. They made me think of how much God loves me when I thought of my love for them but then sometimes I was dissapointed in them too. They made me think of how much God must have loved me when I knew I could always forgive them and shed tears for them when I missed them. They made me feel blessed with the hugs and love. With the phone calls "to catch up". With the laughter and the jokes and the games.

They said friends multiply joy and divide sorrow. But I knew a friend when they don't judge. We agree to disagree. They tell me what they think but wouldn't tell me what I should do. They came when I cried for my own stubborn-ness, but knew that what I need was not another "I told you so".

One of the goals of my life is not to own things. Things nailed me down, it's a chain to my freedom. In one place and another, I found friends instead, even I don't have any control of how long they would stay in my life. Learning to let go is the hardest thing, but it's get easier with time and when new friends come along; that reminds me, with God, I could face anything.

Someone created us.

The female brain, by LouannBrizendine, published by Morgan Road Books in 2006.

I've never known that in fact, female tears generated pain in male's mind since they have trouble in digesting emotion. That explained why: male always try to shut us up (with anything they can use) the moment we start crying. In my experienced they had used all kinds of things just to get us stop crying, from trying so hard not to "see" us, giving us tissues, a hug, a kiss, whatever, just to get us stop crying. The fact that male and female are two different creatures who live in two different body and brain systems that react and act in their own ways just made life simple. Phew.

Dr. LouannBrizendine explains the entire science on female brain and its interaction with male, its development stages and the chemical reactions in simple conversations helped me to think of myself in a different stage and to make sense of communications with others and with male. Why my relationship with my dad when I was little is important in my development as an adult female; how those touches and hugs and kisses were essentials. What really happened in my brain when I fell in love. What really happened in my brain and my body right now. The changes of our bodies. Why crying giving you a sense of power and made you feel stronger. Thinking about it all, generated a sense of awe, that such a complicated system of life could exist, with generality, but still with an amazing variety of individuality; made me sure, again and again, that Someone created us.

As a scientist as well as therapist, Dr Brizendine gives us real life examples from her patients, along with explanation of what chemical reactions happened in our brain. The female brain develops more dynamic than male brain (ha!) because it has different role and different stages as a female and a mother. Our hormones drives our lives, our emotions, and why we focus on one thing and not another.

With catching chapter titles, she differentiates female brain development in its varying stages. She also talks about sex, menopause, desire to achieve, what tick's us and how we could perform at our best!

A very good read for female to get to know our bodies and how to use its potentials. A good read for male who wants to understand us!

There are two things in Life that I've learned: There is a God, and I'm not him

I hug trees. Not literally. Trees continues to fascinate me. A single tree, trees in the forest, trees in the park, naked trees in the winter, colorful trees in the fall, a tree-lined street, trees that give shades, trees that hold water, trees that bare fruits, trees that cools the air. There is no single tree on earth that has the same shape, even if they are the same kind.

I just came back from a botany class from the CivicGardenCenter, one of the community classes for those of us who are interested in community gardening. Science is not my favorite subject, as you might be able to tell, but if it's about trees, I would not give up to try. Of course I heard about this already when I was a eight-grader, but the non-expectation of what they call exams made me focus on what made sense instead of trying to memorize everything. What I thought would be a boring science class was an interesting discovery. God could not stop showing himself and his glorious mind and creation.

None of us who live in this moment could prove of how long the earth had exist (please don't try to convince me with the entire carbon testing method, and explaining this would need to be covered in a different post), but science could prove that the chronology of creation according to the bible was correct. Trees existed before other moving and breathing animals and us! They were the only one "thing" that could change the form of energy from light to chemical energy called sugar.

Science also proves that it will be impossible to imagine that a complex system as in a tree or even a leaf came from a big coincidence of nature. And the most fascinating thing to me is that there is no tree alike on earth. Well, we can tell that every tree will grow depending on its environment, soil, the amount of micronutrient, macronutrient, the amount of oxygen, water and air around it. But even each tree will produce seeds that each will produce a tree with a different characteristic than the other. And without human intervention, every orange tree will produce oranges that, if each were planted back, will produce a different result. Therefore anomali and adaptation happens. In my brain, I could not imagine that such a brilliant, complex, (and working!) system is a result of a coincidence. There was a brain of all of these.

All the chemical reactions, enzymes, the flow of food, water, air, and oxygen "dictated" the entire system what to behave next. Stomata on the leaf knows when to open and when to close depending on the activity of photosyntesis that happened in the leaf. They know when to "breathe", they know when respiration and digestion need to be done. Reproduction became a natural activity for trees; when they feel like their lives were "threatened" (for example when their roots were cut or if they "feel" there were competitions) they would try to produce flowers, which actually was an act to produce seeds, to prepare themselves to "die." Who in the world could create these natural brain? Certainly not one of us. We could find a way to reproduce trees through cutting, or graphing, or planting the meristems, but we cannot create a tree out of nothing. Only God can.