a Float!

I get into a deeply mystical experience often. Trips without psilocybe. Except that everything that happened was real and physical.

I want to name these experiences, so I start to look for words.

If jellyfish are equivalent to mushrooms in the ocean, then

Mushroom (trip) = jellyfish (?)

I need a new word.

a Float!

That’s how jellyfish swim in the ocean. They float.

In Life of Pi, Pi saw scenes in the deep ocean that were put together as a montage. That’s similar to a float.

But jellyfish float is not imagination, Déjà vu, hallucination. It’s all the real clips of my life that I edited together to make sense.

Make sense

I don’t remember much if things don’t make sense.

And if they do make sense, I feel alive.

Your dad is an octopus.

a Float…

It started with me asking Caleb, “have you found love yet?” Caleb is a friend my I met in 2018. He drove a $2000 camper van across the country and lived a slow life. He has a magnetic space around him that makes conversations very deep. I don’t talk to him often. The last time I checked his Instagram, he had a woman in it… with a baby. Now those two are gone; it’s only art he made. One is on a recycled wood board, a squid with human-like deep-looking eyes and arms holding a fan shell with a pearl inside. He said, “to answer your question, I have found love in my beautiful son, yes. His mother and I separated close to two years ago.”

On Saturday, Khrishna texted, “Shiyu, do you want to go to a drag ball tonight?” Khrishna is my producer friend. She fostered her niece right after Covid started and gave up her dream life in LA to raise this kid with her mom in Oakland. I answered, “I have to Google what that is!” That means yes. In the afternoon, I drove a shaking Turo across towns to fetch my sister from Claremont back to LA, and the usual two hours of driving ended up taking the whole afternoon. I was planning on returning to my mountain home, changing, doing my makeup, and driving to Hollywood after. But apparently, there was no time for these. I ended up driving directly to Hollywood and waiting for her inside a Sweetgreen. When she arrived, she scanned through me and said, “let’s give you a makeover.” She pulled me to the trunk of her car, flipped through her wardrobe, and handed me a fur coat. The ball was very stimulating yet confusing. I fainted twice. It was a lot of energy, and a lot of noise. In the middle of the show, the ball founder came out, everyone was screaming. She yelled, “it is like… taking another mother’s child and making a home for them!” And she repeated it three times. When we left, Khrishna echoed with that line and said “it was literally my experience for the last three years, because I had to raise a child that’s not mine.”

Seth texted me about his new obsession with Baltic finish sauna culture. He said, “the best saunas are on the Baltic sea. In the winter, you sit in the sauna until you can’t take it anymore, then you walk outside. The air feels like the coldest thing you’ve ever felt. Then you jump into the Baltic sea! You get out, and the air feels warm! You typically do this 3 times and the feeling afterwards is just incredible.” I said, “you reminded me of My Octopus Teacher.” He said, “What did you take from that movie? What did it mean to you?” I said, “it helped me understand my ASD friend. I don’t think of them like human anymore, I think of them as octopus.”

Friday, I gave my startup neighbor friend Rafael a persimmon from farmer’s market. He said, “so nice.” I said, “let’s go.” He said, “I can’t; my wife will get jealous when another woman is there.” I said, “then go with your wife and kid!” Sunday morning, I ran into him in the exact spot I picked those persimmons for him and he was tasting persimmons from the same basket I picked him last week. He looked sad and tired.

Sunday night, I invited Hao, my high school mate to my home for dinner. He said he wanted to date an Indian girl who has a kid, but he is afraid of dating someone with a kid. Hao’s worst scare is octopus. I used to scare him in aquarium gift shop with octopus stuff animal.

Sunday night, I had a dream. I had a daughter with Antonio. I was a single mom. I asked Antonio to make a baby with me. I said, “I am ok being a single mom, I want the memory of you.” When the daughter is 4 years old, she was cuddling with me and asking, “mom, why don’t I have a dad?” I said, “your dad is not a human… he is an octopus.” She looked sad and surprised. I said, “but I had two dads in my life, so I saved one for you. You do have a dad. It’s just in my body.” Then she looked relieved.

I woke up immediately and cried so much.

It was like a rain in the early morning.

Supernova

Could be a song…

Love sealed in my 26-year-old. I replay those scenes I made with him in them in Nov 2019. My love was stuck in images of the past, and soon I noticed I was alone. Time changed, and I floated in the middle of nowhere.

I woke up one morning, realizing how lost I was. I texted him to say goodbye. A very long and earnest goodbye. I cried a lot and ripped my nose too much with tissues. I sat at the dining table the whole afternoon, copy-pasting our text histories. I sat there, only feeling the sun move. I wanted to remember something if I left. 

It’s naive to say that I experienced all the love I needed to know what love is about, but I met this love that made all the other love irrelevant. 

Yet, in the end, no roses or songs document how sad and desperate it could be. Three and a quarter years of hoping. I reached my limit, and I didn’t have the energy to cry for help. 

Part of me is wilting and ready to let go. I want to see a different life unfolding in front of me with poetries and gentle touches of skin. Part of me wants to stay and remember how beautiful it was to fall, to throw myself into the fire, and to watch myself die. Part of me felt alive as I was killed by longing for comfort in his cold. 

How does a star do when they meet a black hole? 

I picture a star swallowed by a black hole and struggling to escape. Toward the end, they exploded into a supernova. A shape of a heartbreak. 

The entire universe was lighted and stunned. 

If star has emotions, they will lose breath by the beauty of their heartbreak too. 

Warrior of Curiosity

I discovered a new fear. Aging.

My sister cared to listen to it, and I was surprised that an 18-year-old would like to hear about it. Then I realized it’s not a problem for my 29-year-old and onward problem; it’s a problem since we were born.

I always was the youngest in the classroom. Naturally, I had the privilege of making more mistakes than other few-month-older fellow poor kids. When I finally feel this problem at 29, I empathized with this problem that has been in their lives from the moment that they can tell that they are older than someone, even if it means they are 3. How inescapable this programming is.

There is biological aging and nonbiological aging. Biological aging is happening every second, not a surprise at the very end of our 20s, 30s, or 40s.

They all seem to treat wrinkles as a disease. Then they were prescribed perfumed chemical mixtures and advertisements. But why are not-at-all life-threatening wrinkles and less smoothed skin texture so scary? Scarier than an empty stomach which leads to stomach cancer.

It’s nonbiological aging that’s scary.

Nonbiological aging is fun. It’s so real for them.

What is it about staying young forever that’s so attractive? 

The scarcity of time means wiring themselves to an assembly line of something, a career, a family, and success in tangible and intangible forms that satisfy the expectations of the people who raised them and crush the self-esteem of people who despised them. 

It is the opposite of having abundant time to discover self and wander space and time, permission for curiosity.

The obsession for squeezing float into machines equals the obsession for death.

If I am truly the most curious person as they commented, how is it possible to live out there? Life wouldn’t make sense with any lesser curiosity.

I, want to be the Warrior of Curiosity.

doppelgänger

I got a problem.

I am growing into AURORA. I am becoming her. Voices, thoughts, ways of moving and looking at people. Recently, my sister told me, "you sound and look like Aurora it's kinda creepy". She is not wrong. When I showed up to her concert, I synced with her, and almost everything she said was my thoughts from a second ago. 

Right now she is the sun blocking out all other sources. Fascinating, disorienting, and scary at times.

Through her, I discovered a lot about myself.

“There is something very soft about English and I really like it.”

“I am very isolated, but I seem to touch people significantly when I talk.”

“I love music, but I don’t like listening to most of the music. I found them to be like noise.”

“Success is when I take the best use of my time.”

“I make people laugh but I don’t find those things funny. I was serious.”

“I have a hole in my heart, and it won’t stop talking.”

“I always find nature to be very inspiring, but lately I find people inspiring.”

She is a more journeyed sister. I know we are the same kind, but different. I want to find myself on the other side and with a clearer emerging sense of that self. And I hope that by the time I am ready to share my art with the world, she will have been a guiding light along my path that I will have individuated in natural ways.

A girl and a train.

I woke up with a full-feature film.

Here is the plot:

A girl jumps on a train. She looks like a doll, an angel. With a lovely puff dress, and flowers all around her hat. A seagrass basket. She bounces and dances a lot. It’s her first time on a train, she is not quite used to the movement but she is clearly excited.

A man was brought to the train at an early age. He grew up on the train, works on the train, and lives on the train. He moves in a way with extreme intention and grace and resembles the breath of the train.

The girl meets the man. She is fascinated by the man and how he moves on the train.

During the day, they will find small breaks to wander the train together, he would walk her in the rhythm of the train. She notices the move stops when the train stops, and the move resumes when the train moves. His movement is in complete synchronicity with the train. She falls in love with him.

When the night falls, they would sit next to the window and watch the train uninterruptedly shoot into the dark night with thousands of bright stars. They talk about stars, a lot, like they are their babies.

She says, I am going to marry this man. He is the one. I want him to get off the train with me, and see the world. I will convince him.

The man says, I can’t. I have things to do on this train. She says, well, let me help you, so you can get off the train with me.

She starts to follow him into the dirty and strenuous work of the train. She takes her dress off and puts on work pants. She looks like a dust ball in a few days.

She starts to complain about the man, complain about the train, and yell at him. Sometimes, kick him.

The man never seems to get excited about getting off the train. As days pass by, she gets less and less patience and loses her mind, eventually becoming suicidal.

When she is preparing to kill herself, a group hop on the train. It is the group searching for her. They want her life.

The group starts mass shooting people to death. When they find her and are about to shoot her, she opens her arm to welcome the death. The next second, he jumps in front of her and shoots the entire group to death.

She is shocked and can’t move. He still moves like the train.

For the next three days, they spend every moment together, physically and emotionally. She clings to his body like a sea animal, he gently hugs her back. The hug will stop when the train stops, and the hug will resume when the train moves. They have sex every night, loaded with passion. When she falls asleep, he carries her around on his back with her jaw clipped onto his shoulder like a sea animal. They don’t talk much. They are so afraid to lose each other.

Three days later, he wakes up and says, please stay on this train with me.

She says, I can’t. There is a world out there waiting for me.

She gets off the train, and they never see each other again.

a different kind of human.

I had a problem when he told me, “Oh! I thought you enjoy being told you are different.”

But that sentence doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. It’s just like walking into a garden and tell every leaf that “you are different”, “you are different”, and “you are also different”.

What we all have in common is, we are different.

Instead, I enjoy being told that I am, a different kind.

I enjoy being told that I am, pure. I enjoy being told that I am, just like myself.

And I am in love with feeling this way.

imagine swimming into 30s in my last 2 hours of 20s.

It’s like swimming in an ocean into a new year on a clear night, alone. It must be the same feeling… There is a countdown, and I feel subtle and uneasy. The waves come and submerge all the memories in the water. Unknown. All of a sudden, I am on the other side, looking back at all the houses in the city with lights. The ocean is unexpectedly peaceful. I was once in those houses and struggling with something with someone. And now, I am on the other side looking at those houses, and those struggle doesn’t matter that much anymore. Just blurred memories and craving for warmth. Everything looks far and kind all of a sudden.

We must feel a few times like this in a lifetime. And we will feel one last time right before we lose our breath, except that time, we will never know when it is the last breath.

Thinking about death, I feel sad that I wasn’t treating myself nicer. I feel sad that I once compromised my heart for money, silenced for fear to oppose, just so that I can be a bit more comfortable with the world. I wish I wrote more. I wish I sang more and danced more… was brave enough to make a lot of mistakes with color and not worried about wasting paper. I wish I actually once jumped into the ocean in the middle of the night, looking back at the city light, so it’s not just an imagination.

And now, I am right at that future, I seem to wish something was done differently, so I am ready for a countdown. And I think about what I would really have done differently to make this moment less painful. But then I realized that I didn’t want anything to be different; it’s just it’s all so beautiful that I wish it were a bit longer. I wish 10s were 100 years, 20s were 1000 years, and they are never enough… and I started crying thinking about that too. My middle school was nice, and my high school was nice; my 30s must be so nice too. But I can’t think about the other side right now. I love my 20s. And I just love life so much that I wish everything were much much much much longer than it is.

My favorite place at Burning Man.

I made the intention to go to Burning Man in Jan 2023 when I saw the 3D model of the temple. It was Ela’s work, and I was weird to know so much about her existence but yet never met her. I need to meet her.

Paper Cranes Living Room

I reached out to Antonio’s ex-girlfriend, Lily. I wanted to join her camp. Lily intentionally guided me to a camp called Paper Cranes. When I asked how to find camp, she said patience. I said, is that the name of a website? She said, no, it doesn’t work that way.

I’ve not met Lily yet.

I arrived at Playa on historically the best weather. We just had rain; the mountains looked so crispy and far away, and the sky looked lightly pinked with no cloud, like a glass candy, sweet. People yell at me, “You are home. ” I didn’t know how to respond to that.

During the build week, Tessa and Alvise offered to cook for everyone for the entire build week. It was some of the best cooking I had in my life; it made me feel at home.

I worked hard, and for the most part, it was exhausting and flowy; it didn’t feel mentally draining at all. I got great exercise. Towards the end of the build, I realized how beautiful our camp was after setting up the ambient, real furniture and lanterns. It was filled with a warm glow. I was so proud. Our living room immediately became my 2nd favorite place on Playa, especially because I built it.

Temple

On the second build day, Lisa took me to the temple, and I went into the building shade structure to take photos. Someone told me I couldn’t be there; I left with bittersweet.

Build week went by fast. We had a chill night, and most of our build crew went on a bike tour together; we rode to the trash fence, which was lit up. Then we passed the temple again. On our way back, I rode over a sand pile and knocked myself into the sand. Will came and picked me up, and I fell again to the other side. As soon as I stood up, Tessa stepped on me, I fell the 3rd time. Tessa said, “Now you are being a little bit dramatic.” I immediately started crying. Sandstorm began. I felt so far from the temple. I was so close yet so far, and I still didn’t know where Ela was. In the middle of the sandstorm, I cried and told Olivia about the temple. She listened to me the whole way.

When I returned to rest in the camp, Olivia surprised me with the lead engineer a couple of Temple. I met Eric and Jenna; I named Jenna Jellyfish because of her purple Jellyfish hair. Eric invited me to volunteer in the temple the next day.

I went. I very soon ran into Seth. It was a huge surprise, but then I realized I shouldn’t be surprised. This is his wife’s largest art, literally. I should be the surprise. We hugged twice, and the second time, I felt like his kid.

I started on Temple work by sanding the print words on wood pallets. It was an insignificant job, but I loved it; it felt meticulous. I love small things.

In the moments of sanding, I saw Ela through the holes of a pattern of those wood pallets; I peeked at her, then stared at her.

She is so strong. Such a reliable, warm, and trustworthy heart.

We met. She complimented my dress, which was my scarves pinned together. I said, your playa's name is Woman of My Word. She said, can it be shorter? I said no, it came from Wonder Woman. She asked about my playa name; I said none. She said, I don’t know much about you, but I will look out for you.

Everything about the temple is San Francisco thought-out. Of course. Starting with a registered Delaware LLC, the set up for lunch and snack, transportation, and schedule. There is nothing weird about it; it wasn’t any trial and error; it was one try and a huge success. It was such a perfection that I almost felt uncomfortable.

A guy, George, spotted me and asked me to be on his crew to build the front gate. I had a hard time using the impact driver because the gloves were ground by the heat of the screw, and I was so scared my fingers would be ground. “Can you help me?” “No, you will have to learn yourself.” After switching the gloves almost thrice, I finally screwed in the first screw; it hurt my finger so much. But because of that screw, I told everyone I built the temple like I did. I stole two screws from the piles and kept them as my souvenirs.

I walked by Temple so many times and stared at it. Then, not walking in.

I led a birthday girl and her cloud art car to the Temple on a sandstorm night. In the middle of the sandstorm, the temple was led up with so many saturated colors, and it was cloudy and mysterious inside.

I led the crane team to the Temple after the mud dried out. Pops cried so ugly.

I led Aric to Temple 5 minutes before its final closing. He took a terrible picture of me with the temple, but that was the only solo picture I had with the temple.

But I still don’t know how I feel about Temple. I didn’t grieve for anyone; I didn’t feel it was holding space for anything or anyone for me. I was happy I went but realized I didn’t care much about it. I didn’t see the temple burn. And if I cared about it that much, I would have stayed no matter what, just like other things I cared about. Instead, I cared about meeting Ela, bragging about my “build” of the temple to people, and seeing the reactions on their faces. But because of Temple, I met Ela; because of Temple, I bonded with Olivia; because of Temple, I almost met Lily; because of Lily, I met Pops and many warm souls.

Why do I care about meeting Ela? I am just so curious about her. She is a big mystery in my life film. I knew so much about her before I met her, and I had to meet her. And I did. She made sense. And I am finally not thinking about her anymore. So was the temple. And I can move on to conquer other mysteries. As I slowly ease into my regular life, I realized, Temple was a prompt for my Burning Man; that was it. And it was my 3rd favorite place in Playa for the sake that I talked about it so much for obvious reasons.

My Tent

Shiftpods was the tent Lily recommended to me from day one. However, I was not a big fan of the idea that I was sleeping inside a giant cooler without natural light. I slightly panicked when Shiftpods mini was sold out, but it led me to learn about canvas tents, especially Springbar.

I grew a slight addiction to Springbar, and I can’t stop myself from opening its website on hourly basis.

Because of the price tag and not knowing what I was getting myself into, I bought a cheap second-hand tent from a girl in Venice. The tent was not that new, and I found holes in the mesh, and the stakes were completely rusted. It functioned for sure.

Because of how small it was, I had to pack my size down. I tested and bought and returned so many things. And I measured, measured, measured, and ended up with this highly minimalistic setup that I never imagined myself in so much love.

During Burning Man, I had an open house almost daily to show people my life. I was very proud of how small it was and how well it was functioning, and I couldn’t imagine owning a better piece of gear. It’s a satisfaction that I can fall into, and my thoughts just wave in it.

I slept fully every night, and I woke up naturally when the sunlight started to glow over the tent skylight, reluctant to leave. Every time I came backed from a long adventure, I felt so at home crawling into my tent and turning on my ambient light.

Even after Burning Man, I spent quite a lot of time just looking at the Springbar website and appreciating its craftsmanship and the Zen it brought me in Burning Man.

It was clearly my favorite place at Buring Man.

Breakthrough

I finished writing Tree. Today

I am writing Village. Today.

I didn’t finish Village today; it would be too ambitious to be true, which could drive me too high into danger. So I pause and reflect on what happened.

Tree is the first song that I finished writing. After 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. 5 years of trying. (Not trying this specific song, but a few songs.) I suddenly feel it will be days, not years, before I finish Village.

For all those past years, I blamed my company for stopping me from writing music. It turns out that it was I who was afraid to write because it was uncomfortable and I couldn’t accept that discomfort. Work was a distraction to my writing. Online shopping was a distraction. YouTube was a distraction. Instagram. Cooking. Cleaning. Organizing documents. Measurement. Even reading. Even learning. I am not surprised that I kept finding new distractions as “things I need/have to do,” prioritized those things instead of writing music, and blamed not writing on “having to take care of a company”, or “having to take care of a family”.

There were a few things that helped me break out of this loop. (in the perspective of procrastination and productivity; we will talk about breakthrough of art in the future)

Oliver Burkeman, his series Time Management for Mortals in Waking Up app, and his book Four Thousand Weeks, the intro.

Todd, my new move-in neighbor across the street, a writer, who shared with me about The Office in Santa Monica, a quiet coworking space for writers. It’s a place where people get grumpy if I forget to turn off my ringer. I placed myself in The Office multiple times in my head, imagining that not fun not sexy, quiet space, me and a computer, and all of a sudden my name is on the award billboard. That’s writing.

Ruya. Many things about her. Kaynaktan, an indigenous dance festival in the forest, I could feel the soul of Tree and Village. She taught me to cartwheel on the sand last Sunday. I almost learned, but trying too hard, I fell splendidly on the sand; it was painful after a few days still, so I went to urgent care during a terrible time while I was switching out of terrible health insurance, and gladly, no bone was broken. I was then reminded about Camila, when she talked about how she asked kids to do cartwheels, and kids were like, “Cool,” and they just rolled forward, but adults could not do cartwheels because they were afraid to fall. Then I wondered why I could do cartwheels (willing to risk my bone) but couldn’t write songs. What is so adulting about writing songs than the stark willingness to risk my bones?

Again, Oliver Burkeman. The night before I went to bed falling asleep in Oliver Burkeman’s voice, I started a list of everything that I fear in my phone. The next day, which is today, the drive to check off that list like a classic OCD me catalyzed my courage to conquer them right away. It worked. A few long-standing not able to be completed tasks were suddenly done. And most strangely, I finished my song. Tree was done. Today. Not like perfection though, but I certainly didn’t break my bone.

All I see is magic.

A few months ago, I wrote about how I didn’t want to farm when I visited Apricot Lane Farm. Now I feel like a slap on the face. Farm will be part of my life now, one way or another. But it feels right this time.

Maybe I could break down what happened in the future, but here is the short version:

Ruya’s husband Sam bought a regenerative 20-acre farm in Moorpark, the same place as Apricot Lane Farm. I was then invited to the farm opening party. I ran into Ryland, who is the previous owner, and learned a few hours ago it was he who sold the farm to Sam. The world is so tiny. But more preciously, the circle of people who have done things the right way is tiny. “Of course it was Ryland!” I thought in my head when I found out.

Ryland was surprised to find me there and invited me to the film special screening of Common Ground in the original Oscar theater. I went to Common Ground with my mom. It was a very special experience. Feeling all of a sudden hopeful about the earth.

Now, I want to talk about something completely different.

Story of Seasons, which is my favorite GBA game, it is a farming game. I only watched kids playing because my family would never buy me a game console. Then, after college, I watched a game recording of this with my sister.

Watching the first few episodes was filled with excitement, and I kept playing back because I didn’t want to miss any details. People’s bullet comments also showered the screen; it was so fun.

A few episodes and (literal) seasons later, he has mastered making the most profit on his rectangular farmland, which is growing pineapple. He figured out the most cost-effective gifts to dump on the girl daily so she would marry him with time (by the way, the girl was also calculated to be the most cost-effective to marry). He hacked every dog or horse race and the exact spot to harvest the most precious resources at any given time or spot.

Then, the gamer started to speed up the recording later in the game. Because there is so much repetition now. The discovery is less and less. As a viewer, I also lost interest in the show and didn’t even care to watch him marry the Water Godness, which is the ultimate achievement of this game (both on the dating and farming level).

In Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks that I am reading, he talked about the known fact that when we grow older, time also goes by faster.

And here I am, thinking about time again. How precious it is to have unknown. Behind that unknown is to be discovered and the threat that we might lose part of our current selves, whatever that is. The more we discover, the less unknown we have (or the unknown on our bucket list), the less threatening life is, and the less we also seem to pay attention. That period when everything is young and fresh and filled with discovery is when we feel time is the longest ever because we pay our most precious attention to every detail and, in return, harvest memories.

That’s the magic I am talking about. So many unknowns around me at this time of my life, and so much yet to discover. And when I am older, I will look back at this world, and all I see is magic.

Coming out of a storm

China was hard.

My almost 90-year-old grandparents fought the entire Chinese New Year. Their fight when I was a kid felt so long ago, but when they fought this time, it felt the same as when I was a kid; all the memories were coming back. Their fight was not the biggest one; they were famous for fighting, and this time, it was totally an average fight. But my aunts and uncles were pissed; they were old too, and they couldn’t stand it anymore.

I realized how toxic my childhood was, and everyone, including myself, was surprised by how healthy of a being I am today. It was a miracle. In fact, the rest of the world was nice to me, and my life has expanded so much and become lighter. I love my life.

My cousin was having a wedding in Beijing. Everyone else was not invited except me and my parents. My relatives had the most extensive family drama ever, making up a conspiracy about what my cousin did. They thought she manipulated my grandma, used my grandma’s anger towards my uncle’s marriage to make him divorce, and once accomplished, immediately ditched her and did not invite her to the wedding.

The wedding deserved its season. There was no high-end, but it was highly detailed. It was my cousin’s fantasy; her entire personality was coming alive, and I was proud of her. She has good friends around her who understand her strengths and weaknesses, and she makes things happen with her independence, even with all the drama around her.

Being in Beijing felt like living in a little gold cage. There was no fresh air, and my thoughts were congested after absorbing so many negativities around people. Maybe they didn’t even realize they were being negative; they were just reflections of their surroundings.

I clearly spiraled for almost a month, my energy was lower and lower, and I was a little walking hater towards humans and society. After landing in LA, it was pouring big rain; I was slightly lighter but still spiraling.

The next day, Sam’s birthday, I drove to Eden.

The drive was a “risking my life” drive. I went on the wrong road. It was also pouring in Topanga Canyon; the other cars passing by were going through the little pond at high speed, creating a big splash of water on my windshield. Tesla was giving a warning. The road was winding. I couldn’t see for a lot of moments. It was a real emergency from time to time.

Then, the drive cleared after the canyon. The rain was gone, and I suddenly saw tiny houses, an open field, and a clear sky—the most transparent sky I’ve seen in days.

When I arrived at the farm, I was immediately light and happy. Friends here understand my wave languages, and I can breathe now. I felt alive for a long time.

We picked vegetables and snails, planted seeds, and made a hypothetical hit song. I saw baby goats that were one month old, afraid of the dogs, and then lambs fighting with the dog to protect the goats.

I finally emerged from a storm; I am home now and heading to a much happier place in life. Physically and metaphorically.

The lesson.

I am still processing Envision. It was a lot. I am so glad I did it and will probably never do it again.

It was intentionally dropped as a trip right after China to raise my energy, unlock my potential in performing art, and make friends. It went divinely as intended without planning.

Miguel

Miguel was a gift. We both were grateful right after meeting that we were in LA. He looks like Ryland and reminds me of Brent (the vocal Brent). He talks too much, but I can listen to his monologue forever. Every day, one of the biggest little excitements was running into him in different setups—VIP areas, the beach, or the dance stages. He was my energy ball. I was feeling home next to him, listening to his talk. Sometimes, it could be a bit too much talk, but it was usually just pleasantly fine. Almost all the time, I was loosely looking for him in the open air, expecting to run into him because we did at this time and location, and when he was not there, I missed him a little.

Caleb

Caleb was an angel, a happy warrior. I immediately recognized him in the crowd. and I was immediately happy. He had just positive energy, nothing else. His long hair was a waterfall portal; inside is his hidden necklace. I remember how he smelled—so fresh, so simple, yet so floral. He reminded me of the wolf. We could spend the rest of our lives howling to the moon and feel completely fulfilled with nothing else being done.

VIP and Ninja

I got VIP by mistake from the front desk admission. They asked if I was a VIP, and I saw on the banner that VIP and theme camp were together, so I thought it was the same thing. I said yes, so they gave me a VIP bracelet. Then, when I saw Kelsey and Mateo didn’t have it, I was so upset that I offered to look after the luggage and have them fight for it. They returned empty-handed and told me the front desk made a mistake on my bracelet. So here I am, VIP the entire Envision; it changed everything.

My tent was just next to El Circo and was too noisy to sleep in. Even with great earplugs, the vibration could wake me up all night. I waited until the stage quieted down the first four nights and went to sleep. Starting Thursday, I couldn’t do it anymore. The stage closed at 4 a.m. and sometimes went 30 minutes into 430 a.m., and I needed to sleep around 1 a.m. I started looking for alternatives.

I planned to look into empty tents in La Sombre. Tracia helped me find a few, but I got ambitious and went wild—checking out cabanas.

I found the No.97 cabana, the most expensive suite, open. It was a love suite with a gauze-curtained love seat area downstairs and a nice high bamboo room upstairs. I slept in it on Thursday. It was not a secure feeling. It was too close to the lounge area. I heard and saw people passing by and thought I would be caught alive. The next day, I ran into Miguel and showed him around. He said it was “too good,” seeing I lived the “high life.” Later in the day, I returned to lock the cabana and found it was locked. I checked again in the afternoon, and they even tightened the stairs with fabric.

I didn’t give up. I found all the empty cabanas were locked with a specific red lock, and so did No.97. I started looking at which cabana I should stay in. I saw No.23 in the corner end with a little patio. I waited patiently till sunset, and while no one was looking, I quickly tested the lock and broke the code 192. It took about less than 5 minutes.

No.23 felt like mine. I slept like a baby. The next morning, I picked up the dead bugs from the bed, made the bed, and emptied the room nicer than when I came in. Left no trace. On Saturday night, I also slept in No.23 with Ray from 3 a.m. to 1 p.m. And this time, I didn’t empty it. On Sunday night, I also slept there.

When I talked to people about it (proudly), they were all entertained that I was a ninja in a girl's body.

The Lesson I needed

I struggle with producing my music. It was not the same struggle as writing; I couldn’t stand sitting in front of the computer and flowing my production. I need a producer.

But who would be my producer if I didn’t have much experience as a musician? Also, why would the world want to see me on stage?

I thought Momentum was the answer, so I picked Momentum to camp within Envision.

Saturday night, Wes fed me with LSD. The first real one I had. (The previous one in Burning Man didn’t count, as I didn’t experience a trip.) He wanted to feed me a whole one, I asked for a half.

I felt thirsty and slightly stomach uncomfortable. Then I was seemingly out of nowhere pissed by the crowd. They were stepping on our bags, throwing up, and pooping on the ring of the Porta Potty. It was disgusting. I was also over-sensitized by the sound from Luna. I hate people. I also couldn’t stand loud music.

It was a long walk. I returned to my tent to look for earplugs, but they were not working, so I went back again for my Airpods. Another long walk, feeling threatened by all the beings along the way. The way they act to this land, to the mothers. I stayed in Momentum for a bit; testing out how to use Airpods on LSD took way too long, yet I also enjoyed so much how hard it was for me to figure things out. I was happier being a dumber version of myself. Mateo and Kelsey were with me. I told them I hated everything. They said, “No, think about love.” So I thought about them. There was nothing so far between them and me, and that was not pleasant. Then I became happy.

Mateo and Kelsey dressed in circus crowns duet and took me to the village stage. Ayla Nereo was playing. Everything she said made sense to me. But it wasn’t because she was epic; she was just okay. I was so high on LSD that my brain wanted to make sense of her. It was an extraordinary experience realizing that. Everything she said wasn’t original enough to be worth my sober brain to remember, but the whole world is a liquid piece for me now, so my brain made sense of her instead. I was imagining how everyone was experiencing the same while on LSD, and it wowed me why some people were so big. Now, it all made sense because of the amplification coming out of drugs and mesmerizing stage productions. If taken those away, they were just above-average beings instead of prodigies.

I ordered fish tacos for the group, gladly paid the bill for everyone, and walked away. I usually overthink about bills, but I was so natural at paying that bill that it left a memory in my journey. I expected that the tacos would have been the greatest thing ever and bragged about them to everyone, but only to find out the quality had decreased dramatically.

We walked to Sol Stage and saw Moontrick. It was now fun seeing all the visuals come alive on the stage. The stage itself was its moving piece dancing back to me. I thought about how I should be on the stage, too. The reason why people were obsessed with me over the last few days began to make sense to me now. Yes, they should be obsessed with me because I am rare and fantastic. I felt it. And I realize the world will want to respond to me because it only makes sense to put someone like me on a bigger stage… I deserve to be amplified for humanity. I would have my producer because they would need my energy. Everything made sense. People would listen to my voice forever.

This is it. This is the lesson.

Ray

Ray joked to me earlier today, “Sorry, Shiyoo, you do not blend in!” This was a conversation in which we told people I always lost her, but she always found me.

But here I am, on LSD for the first time, pleasantly surprised yet not surprised to spot Ray in the village. She was with Marissa. I quickly clung to her and soon forgot about Mateo and Kelsey. I walked away from them while I told them I would wait for them a moment ago. (Big apology for losing my integrity!)

I am with Ray now. I wanted to share my whole being and my lesson. I needed to be heard so badly. She resonated with me every other breath. We synced about how confusing it was for me to be at Envision: the waste, the hate, and the people throwing up. I couldn’t unsee them. Yet it was lovely to run into people and find so many beauties in the trash.

I told her my lesson. I said “I understand why the world was obsessed with me, because it needs me; because I am awesome.” She said, “Say it! Say it out loud!” Marrisa also said at precisely the same time, “Say it out loud!” I yelled, “…Because I am freaking awesome!” Marissa laughed out loud like a mama budda. It felt almost like they were from a different humanity club that knew all these secrets that I’d yet to learn.

My arm never left Ray’s arm while we were intertwining and wandering different places at Envision, talking about my LSD trip while I was on it.

Marissa quickly left us, so it was just me and Ray.

When I told her, “I should be on the stage.” She said, “I should be able to choose who has the integrity to be on stage, not them.”

I told her I was falling in love with Caleb a little bit. She said, “That’s cute.” It was exactly how I would imagine her replying.

We floated into La Sombre, and then I toured her my cabana No.23. We had a deep spiritual conversation about how to get things from her tent, then to the bathroom, shower, and go to bed.

We floated together into Casa de la Luz, then into the GA camping area, where I saw her hammock. I was amused by how simple of a structure yet disorganized her hammock was. I laughed from my heart, and the stars opened them up to me. We were so present that it felt like my first time seeing so many stars when I was 13-year-old.

I told her I lost my Dr.Bronner, and because it’s a 18-in-1 soap, now 18 things fucked up. She laughed so hard.

We had so much joy of missing out when we were together. We happily skipped all the DJs and just went straight to bedtime routine. We shared soap in showers, and we brushed our teeth together.

While we were brushing our teeth, we were still talking, and the brushing sounds were syncing into each other, almost like we were brushing each other’s teeth. Then I told her, “when we both knew we were going to be at Envision, I wondered if we would have a moment together, and here is our moment!” She echoed with a giant smile, and we both repeated and nodded, “This is our moment.” “This is our moment.”

We swam into bed together. She made the mosquito nest more comfortable than my doing. Sleeping beside her was heavenly natural, and I almost felt we would grow old like this. I was not hot or cold, just nicely warmed, and slept till 1 p.m. the next day.

Cosmic Reunion. 宇宙の再会。

Phrase I. I fell in love.

Jun 16th. The first time we met. That was about a day before I needed to book a flight to Mexico from Osaka because my Japanese 90-day landing permit was about to expire, and I needed to leave Japan. The pet shop next to my hotel has been a long-term wish for me to visit. Foreigners have to make appointments, so I never was able to touch any pet. On that day, I and Keiko were practicing Japanese/English together, so I asked Keiko if I could follow her into the pet shop. She requested to touch the pet without reservation because she was Japanese, and I pretended to be Japanese, too. So I did. Keiko asked me which pet I wanted to touch. I immediately noticed a new pet, a rabbit-alien-looking dog, in the corner by himself. We asked for that dog. The staff found out I was not Japanese, but I was already touching him, so they let it be. We petted him, took photos and videos, and left.

Jun 20th. He left something in my heart, so I returned to the pet shop to find him. He was not there anymore, so I thought he must have been bought by a family. I was a bit sad. But then I saw his name card was still there, and I took a picture of it, thinking it must have been a mistake that the name card was left out after he was purchased. He is a Pekinese. I looked him up; it’s the Chinese last Qing Dynasty Emperor’s dog breed. He is a little royalty. How typical that I always have an eye for special things!

On June 22nd, he came back to my mind again. So I walked into the shop, found his name card still on display, and asked what happened. The staff recognized me and told me they put the pet on rotation for display, and he was in the back. They asked me if I wanted to see him. I said yes. They didn’t ask me for an appointment as a foreigner this time.

I had a corner seat in the store and put him in my lap. We immediately connected. He was happy. I was happy. Something I never felt for any animal before I felt for the first time. He looked like Stitch and E.T., a rabbit, and maybe even a Jellyfish. His eye was so pure, and he was pretty introverted yet so sensitive to touch. He liked me so much, and I could feel it in his motion.

I decided to buy him and take him through Air Canada through Vancouver, Canada, into Mexico City on July 3rd, then import him into the US later. But the obstacles are sky-high.

First are his age and breed restrictions. Most flights won’t allow this specific breed, Pekinese, because he has a short nose, or dogs less than four months old to board an international flight. Also he is too young for most flight. Air Canada was the only one I could fly him on at 10 weeks old. He was born on April 5th.
Then, there is the rule change regarding entering the US. I must go to Mexico first and enter the US before 8/1. Otherwise, the US updated the law, and he has to be six months old, which means we both must be stuck in Mexico for another two months. Also, most flights to the US need him to be 16 weeks old, so we have to enter the US between 7/28 and 7/31. Otherwise, we must enter the US after October 5th at his 6-month-old.
Then, it was about entering Mexico and Canada. The countries seem okay with unvaccinated puppies as long as they have a health certificate.
Then there is Air Canada’s problem. Air Canada will fly a dog that’s 10 weeks old, unvaccinated, but they won’t fly him unless he has a health certificate and needs to be rabies-vaccinated to get the certificate. It’s completely contradicting.
Then there is the rabies vaccine. Rabies vaccines can be given to puppies when they are 12 weeks old internationally but not in Japan. Japan won’t vaccinate him and issue a health certificate until he is 16 weeks old. But he will be 16 weeks old around July 27th, and I have to leave Japan by July 7th, and a health certificate is not issued without rabies vaccination.

After doing this math like a robot at a million miles for three days straight, I realized all these rules contradicted each other's timeline, and there was no hope. I was almost unable to sleep and eat; I researched and called Air Canada and the US, Mexican, and Canadian governments. 10 different flights and buses. I have visited the shop 7+ times to speak with the company staff, who understands the international complexion.

On the last call, the pet shop office staff told me, you should just give up. It’s not going to happen this time.

So I did.

I walked the street. All of a sudden, nothing interested me anymore. Haori, fancy cafes, restaurants, beauty products, Studio Ghibli stuffed animal toys, electronics.

Weird timing.
I found my favorite moisturizer last night, which my brain has been biting on for the last month. After visiting the drugstores 100 times, I was constantly looking for something that was the perfect texture for my combo skin. Suddenly, I didn’t care about it—nothing interested me, just him. It was the sharpest turn of my brain, and I was also shocked out of space.

I cried last night in bed.

I’ve never been a dog person, and I probably passed 10000 dogs already and never wanted one. Yet I want him.

Suddenly, I am not worried about the hassle of travel anymore. I could take on so much responsibility, burden, and luggage to have him like a mother.

I also think about Antonio and how similar this love is to my love for him. I want to be with someone in life for a long time and care for him. I was willing to give up my most precious freedom to settle for a life with him.

Then I cried again.
I realized I might not be able to stay in Mexico for the dog until he was six months old. I also missed being with Antonio in LA. I have been homesick, and home is him. Then I met this Pekinese, who also reminded me of the feeling next to him.
Maybe I just miss home. And home is the purest moment of being with them.

Then I cried more.

Phrase II. Never give up.

On June 24th, I had an idea after doing more research. I found someone on Google Review who was able to extend their tourist visa for another 90 days, so I immediately rekindled my hope.

June 25th, the next day, I spent 3 hours in front of my computer writing about my story about why I need to extend my visa. I used tourism, Japanese language lessons, eye surgery checkups, and dog adoption as reasons. I thought it was overall strong since I had 4 things on paper. Then, I printed all the materials and went to Otsu like a Wonder Woman.

The immigration officer told me no because they didn’t understand why I must be in Japan, and he didn’t understand why I couldn’t plan the dog into my 90 days and questioned my poor planning. We argued back and forth with Google Translate and another Japanese English speaker for almost 30 minutes, and he finally understood I had just met the dog; it was a love accident.

He sighed and said, your case is too difficult; please go to Osaka's main office and ask someone with more power, or I will send your case to Osaka. I said I will go tomorrow.

June 26th, the next morning, I wrote a brand-new visa extension story with dog adoption, attached my photo with him, his photo, E.T and Stitch’s photos in the story. I was ready to fight.

The Osaka office was more patient than the Otsu office despite being bigger. They listened to my story with a lot of Google Translation, and the officer understood my unique situation. He didn’t want to refuse me, so their boss reviewed my case. The boss still returned with a no, but he said he reviewed my record, and there was no guarantee, but he believed I would be qualified for a visa run. He thinks I could go out for a day and return with no problem.

This is breaking good news. At least now, there is a solution and light somewhere.

Yuki came to Osaka to help me. We called the pet shop together to let them know that I am going back to Kyoto to place a deposit for him. They told me the deposit will hold him for a week until July 3rd. So with this date in the future, I reverse-engineered my itinerary. I immediately booked the flight to Chiang Mai for June 28th, and the return flight to Osaka on July 1st. I also canceled the rest of the hotel stay in Kyoto, and rebooked a new hotel in Osaka Kansai Airport on June 27th to prepare for the next morning flight and booked the two nights Chiang Mai hotel.

I ate dinner with Yuki in Osaka to thank him for coming to rescue him and rushed back to Kyoto to deal with the rest of the process. I ran to the shop before the pet shop closed to put a deposit on the dog to hold him for a week so I could return and buy him in a week. Then I ran to Millennials hotel to cancel my hotel before midnight for the rest of the trip to avoid penalty.

On June 27th, the next morning, I packed three months' worth of luggage and left Millennials in a rush to Kansai airport. While I was in Kansai airport, I went to Air Canada counter and Animal Quarantine Services and did research for how to export him out of Japan. The next morning, June 28th, I flew to Chiang Mai.

Phrase III. A home in Osaka.

Two days later, on July 1st, I showed up at Osaka Kansai airport via a red-eye overnight flight. (It feels like I left Japan for a thousand years because so much has happened in Chieng Mai, which deserves its own story). And as the Osaka Immigration officer believes, I made it back in with a brand new 90-day landing permit! (and I should have trusted the Japanese for what they say and stopped worrying)

While I was in Chieng Mai, I looked up many accommodations in Osaka, and I couldn’t find good options during summer for me and a dog in Kyoto. It was all too expensive and unattractive for an awkward 25 to 30 days stay for me. I also didn’t feel like moving into an isolated Airbnb or apartment after living in Millennials for so long because I needed a community. Millennials was a perfect community before I found him.

After reading almost all the available options in Japan, I found another art house on booking.com called Cocoroom in Osaka. I emailed them, and they came back with a sweet solution to my situation. I was so blowed away. My life is saved.

In April, two months ago, I was going to conduct a vision surgery in Tokyo for over a month, so I almost committed to a community apartment in Tokyo. But because I didn’t like Tokyo, I moved back to Kyoto instead and traveled for my surgery from Kyoto. So, this time, I learned the lesson. I asked to book for two nights first and see if it would work for me, and then I would decide if I would bring the dog here and commit longer. I was afraid I wouldn’t like Osaka and that I would still want to be in Kyoto even if I had to stay in one of those isolated, miserable Airbnbs.

Surprisingly, it worked! It is a magic little space between a cafe, an antique store, a bar, an artist space, a guest house, a garden, an event space, a hotel, a kitchen, and a home. We eat like a family every meal. Although I still loved Kyoto to death and wished this was an option in Kyoto, I went to Kyoto two days later, excited to return to Osaka because of Cocoroom. Wow. I found a home for both of us.

After two days of living in Cocoroom, on July 3rd, I went to Kyoto on the contract day/deposit expiration day to sign the contract and pick him up. However, he was sick. They told me recovery time would be a week or two, and I needed to come back again to pick him up, who knows when.

I was so tired.

He grew a little, and his hair became slightly shiny. When we met again, he immediately recognized my energy, and we sank into each other. Yes, he is the one. I signed all the papers but only returned to Osaka with his meal.

Phrase IV. His name.

People kept asking me what his name was—cocoroom friends, Kyoto Millennials friends, Californian farm friends, Burning Man friends, Mexican friends, Chinese friends, everyone.

I thought about calling him Stitch because he looked like Stitch. But I didn’t want people only to associate him with Stitch because he is so much more than Stitch, he is his own movie.

I also thought about calling him E.T. because he is E.T.'s feeling when I touch him. Like a human touching an alien soulmate for the first time. Also, E.T. was an easy-to-pronounce the name. But I didn’t want people only to associate him with E.T. because he is so much more than E.T., he is his own movie.

So I let him be nameless for a while until my friends got me impatient, and I finally started working on his name.

July 7th. Midnight early morning, in bed, I put my feelings about him into ChatGpt and asked it to give me 100 names. GPT came back with 100 names that I didn’t care about. But it helped me with a vague direction. So, I entered more criteria to ask for another 100 names. Another 100 names I didn’t care. But it helped me even more with where to go. This time I realized I wanted something astronomy, so I asked for a cosmic name. GPT came back with literally just 100 astronomy vocabularies, not even names.

But then I saw his name this time on the 15 of the 100 astronomy vocabularies that it came back.

Ecplise.

It looks like his black head shadowing his fawn body, and the body is like the sunlight coming out from an eclipse.

It perfectly matches the awe, wonder, and excitement everyone feels about seeing him, and it hints at the mysticism and spiritual transformation and significance that I went through with him. It symbolizes the timeline chasing I had to do for him for the last two weeks, just like the moon and the sun, and an eventual cosmic reunion!

Wow. What a serendipity!

I was having an orgasm with his name, and I couldn’t sleep. I ended up calling all my friends in different time zones to see who was available and connected with my Mexican best friend, Lore, who lives in Germany. We chatted for three hours to burn my energy down.

Thank you! ChatGPT! Thank you! All my friends! Thank you! Universe! Thank you! My dear brain and my dear life!

Phrase V. Cosmic Reunion.

In the following two days, I was still too excited to do almost anything, so I called many more friends and my sister to process the magic of his name. Everyone was shocked by how aligning his name was.

Working through this enormous challenge in the last two weeks, I also bonded deeper with many friends in the universe. Ruya, Rachel, Antonio, Caleb, Nuri, Aric, Lore, Leon, Naomi, Yelin, Wenxin, Yilin, Xuyan, Sally, Yi, Zheyu.

The pickup day was initially July 11th.

I went to Kyoto to meet him at the vet for a pickup. He was still coughing, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to wait that long for his recovery anymore, so I went to Kyoto with two other friends. They were both pumped up, too.

We saw him. He was bigger, and his hair grew longer. He recognized me and stayed close to me. He also acted nice on my friends' laps.

The vet did an X-ray as a final check to verify his health, and then they found a lung infection. His body looked so crystal and small, with almost nothing going on inside the X-ray photo. Is that what a dog is? Such a simple creature. A transparent body under X-ray, there is almost nothing in the shell.

I was told I would not be able to fly with him until he is fully recovered. It will take a week if not two.

Wait, what!! I couldn’t believe there was still one more after so many challenges. I left Kyoto again with only another 5 kilos of his food.

I returned to Osaka to find out that the direct Delta flight I wanted to take cost over $2000+ now. I was panicking because that was the only option to return to the US due to all the different airline restrictions on flying baby Pekinese during summer. Now, I am left with even fewer choices and probably need to go to another country for him. I was looking into Korean airlines, and now there are more government agencies and airlines to research. I was so tired. Come on.

Then I looked into other flights going through transfer into LA, and I found a Delta flight that takes 2 stops 3 cities into Burbank Los Angeles Airport, and the price was reasonable. It’s also Delta, so there will be no issue with his flying. It would be a long way home, but we would fly into Seattle first, which means we would clear customs in the first city, and it’s ok if we miss the following flights because we made it into the USA by 7/31.

I was so excited, booked everything, and, after another night of math, worked out his seating with an agent.

After the flight was booked, I felt so peaceful and proud. I was proud that I was not afraid of the unknown, knowing that I wouldn’t risk all the money to return to the USA only to find out the trip had to be canceled due to his recovery schedule. It is a refundable ticket, and it made a massive difference in my head waiting for his recovery because I knew I had options to reverse the flight ticket.

I also daydreamed about where to go if we were stuck in Japan. Maybe I will take a 25-hour ferry with him into Okinawa (he is not allowed on flights in summer in Japan) …

Over the next few days, the vet has been delivering good news about his symptoms and blood test, but everything still depends on his X-ray. Many sources say the X-ray can take a few weeks to clear.

On July 17th, I went to Kyoto again for Gion Matsuri to see him again at the vet.

He has surprisingly recovered! I was suddenly unsure what to do. I wasn’t expecting this fast recovery.

When I was announced for this unexpected good news, he was dehydrated. I fed him with water, then dipped his hair under his mouth in water, and he walked the bench like it was a swimming pool. Then he got cold and tried to cuddle and dry his mouth hair on my pants.

I was curious if I could take him home, but I was told I needed another two more days after numerous communications.

I left Kyoto again with only 1 year's worth of his medicine.

On the 18th, the shop messaged me with the good news that I already knew. I asked him to be cut. They were a bit nervous and said it would look different. But wow, he looked young again, like he was only two months old.

19th is his scheduled pick up day. I went with Flor. She read this story on the train, then she met Eclipse at the shop at 230pm. She was filled with joy and contentment. He looked a lot fresher than two days ago. Phil and Yuki also came to see him to say goodbye.

Flor and I went on my last solo trip before I had him in my life in Arashiyama. I wanted to eat at the tofu restaurant that I previously ate, but it was closed. Then we found a cafe. I had the best matcha French toast in my life in a traditional Kyoto tea house.

6 pm, we went to pick him up again. He was all prepared to be on the adventure with me.

P First staff kept calling his name and was so excited to know the name. When we left, they said, please take care of this kid; we will never forget him. I walked out, wanting to cry. I am sure they took the most care of Eclipse while I was going through all the preparation, and they were my audience and worried the whole way.

Phrase VI. The Awe he is.

When I arrived in Cocoroom, I started to witness how much of an awe he is to this world. Everyone was mesmerized by his presence—not just his look, but… I had an opening party reading this long story the next day, and his name was revealed. I saw such deep happiness and excitement in so many people’s eyes. It wasn’t a crush; it was like something was found after years of losing, missing, and searching.

I was very liberal about letting people freely enter my room or bring him to the living room. Between all the social time and getting used to staying in the same small space with him, I took him to multiple places to get a vaccine and export certificate.

He makes everyone melt. I watched so many people melt in front of him. It was an event each time to see him interact with people. They suddenly became so soft and vulnerable. It brought me so much hope. It made me realize how instant it could be to open someone’s heart. Neil also visited Cocoroom to see him, and we went to Kyoto together. I watched Neil melting. It was so lovely.

He became me in a dog body to allow anyone to touch. Those wounds that I can’t help soothe, he is to alleviate immediately with touch. I saw him interacting with disabled people and homeless people. They won’t be able to touch me like that, but they can touch him like a beautiful woman.

The next day, I sang in the backyard. Then I realized it had nothing to do with him whether I sang or not. It was strange to realize how peaceful I become.

Phrase VII. A lesson of trust.

We did take that flight I booked into the USA. It was 4 trains and 3 flights, then I drove by my mother from the airport to home. It was a total of 33 hours. Before the trip, I sent one of the biggest luggage to Haneda Airport two days before. On the flight day, I went with other luggage to Tokyo on the train, then Tokyo Haneda, then Seattle, then Salt Lake City, then Burbank, and then home. In those 33 hours, I lost a luggage wheel and dragged broken luggage across two other metros in Tokyo. Then, I had a broken economy class seat on the first 10-hour flight to Seattle. I argued with multiple flight attendants and then the pilot into a business class and became probably the only person ever to fly business class in Delta Airlines history. (it was the only class that did not allow pets), and bonded with the neighbor lady who lost her dog a few days ago.

On that long, long flight, our new business class seat was next to the window, and we watched the sunrise together. Eclipse in the sky! The seat in front of me had a stuffed animal lion head sticking out, looking at us. I was amazed by how the world is just a connected piece of continued poetry.

We are home now and made it into the USA by the 7/31 cutoff time. Of course, we do. What a Wonder Woman I am, and how impossible it is for the world to stop me, just like every time it happened in life.

On this journey, I had too many days and nights of panicking. I worried that I couldn’t have him; I worried that the vet would forget my appointment; I worried if he did not recover in time; I worried if he didn’t pass the test; I worried that my luggage would not arrive at the Haneda airport; I worried he could be rejected by flight. But, I should have trusted the Japanese society. I should have trusted myself. I should have trusted it all happened for a reason, one way or another.

フレーズ I. 恋に落ちた。

6月16日。初めて会った日。その日は大阪からメキシコ行きのフライトを予約しなければならない前日でした。私の日本の90日の上陸許可が切れるため、日本を出なければなりませんでした。ホテルの隣のペットショップはずっと行きたいと思っていた場所でした。外国人は予約をしなければならないため、私はどのペットにも触れることができませんでした。その日、私はKeikoと一緒に日本語/英語の練習をしていたので、Keikoにペットショップについていくことができるか尋ねました。彼女は日本人だから予約なしでペットに触れるように頼みました、そして私も日本人だと偽りました。そして、触れることができました。Keikoにどのペットに触れたいか尋ねられました。私はすぐにコーナーに一人でいる新しいペット、ウサギのような宇宙人のような犬に気付きました。私たちはその犬をお願いしました。スタッフは私が日本人ではないことに気づきましたが、私は既にその犬に触れていたので、それを放置してくれました。私たちは彼を撫で、写真やビデオを撮り、そして去りました。

6月20日。彼は私の心に何かを残していきましたので、私は彼を探しに再びペットショップに戻りました。彼はもうそこにいなかったので、彼は家族に買われたに違いないと思いました。少し悲しかったです。しかし、その後、彼の情報カードがまだそこにあるのを見つけ、それを写真に撮りました。彼が購入された後に情報カードが残されたのは間違いだろうと思いました。彼はペキニーズです。彼を調べました。それは中国最後の清朝皇帝の犬種です。彼は少し王族です。私がいつも特別なものを見つける目を持っているのがどれほど典型的です！

6月22日。彼は再び私の心に戻ってきました。それで私は店に入り、彼の情報カードがまだ展示されているのを見つけ、何が起こったのか尋ねました。スタッフは私を認識し、ペットを展示するために回転させていると教えてくれ、彼は後ろにいました。彼を見たいか尋ねられました。私は「はい」と答えました。今回は外国人としての予約を求められませんでした。

私は店の隅の席に座り、彼を私の膝に置きました。私たちはすぐに心を通わせました。彼は幸せでした。私も幸せでした。私がこれまでにどの動物に対しても感じたことのない何かを、私は初めて感じました。彼はスティッチやE.T.のように見えました、ウサギで、たぶんクラゲでもありました。彼の目はとても純粋で、彼はかなり内向的でありながらも触れられることにとても敏感でした。彼は私をとても気に入ってくれました、そして私は彼の動きでそれを感じることができました。

私は彼を買うことに決め、彼をAir Canadaでバンクーバー経由でメキシコシティに連れて行き、後に米国に輸入することにしました。しかし、障害物は天にも届くほど高かった。

まずは彼の年齢と品種制限です。ほとんどのフライトではこの特定の品種、ペキニーズ、または4か月未満の子犬を国際フライトに乗せることはできません。また、彼はほとんどのフライトにとって若すぎます。10週間の時に彼を飛ばすことができるのはAir Canadaだけでした。彼は4月5日に生まれました。そして、米国への入国に関するルール変更があります。私はメキシコに行ってから、8月1日までに米国に入国しなければなりません。それ以外の場合、米国は法律を更新し、彼は6か月になる必要があります、私たちは二ヶ月ほどメキシコに閉じ込められます。また、ほとんどの米国へのフライトでは彼が16週間でなければなりませんので、私たちは7月28日から7月31日の間に米国に入国しなければなりません。それ以外の場合、彼は6か月になる10月5日以降に米国に入国しなければなりません。そして、それはメキシコとカナダへの入国に関してでした。国々は健康証明書があれば未ワクチンの子犬でも問題ないようです。そして、Air Canadaの問題があります。Air Canadaは10週間の未ワクチンの子犬を飛ばすことができますが、彼に健康証明書が必要であると認めませんし、健康証明書を取得するためには狂犬病ワクチンが必要です。これは完全に矛盾しています。そして、狂犬病ワクチンです。国際的には子犬に狂犬病ワクチンを12週で接種することができますが、日本ではできません。日本は彼が16週間になるまでワクチン接種し、健康証明書を発行しません。しかし、彼は7月7日までに日本を出なければなりませんし、健康証明書は狂犬病ワクチンがないと発行されません。

3日間、ロボットのように数学をこなした後、これらのすべての規則が互いに矛盾していることに気づき、希望がないことを悟りました。ほとんど眠れず、食べることができませんでした。Air Canadaや米国、メキシコ、カナダの政府に調査し、電話をかけました。10回ものフライトとバスに乗りました。ペットショップには7回以上も訪れ、国際的な複雑さを理解している会社のスタッフと話し合いました。最後の電話で、ペットショップの事務所のスタッフが私に言ったのです。「あなたは諦めたほうがいい。今回は無理ですよ。」

それで、私は諦めました。

私は街を歩きました。突然、私には何も興味がありませんでした。羽織、高級カフェ、レストラン、美容製品、スタジオジブリのぬいぐるみのおもちゃ、電子製品。不思議なタイミングです。昨夜、私は1ヶ月間ずっと葛藤していた私のお気に入りの保湿剤を見つけました。100回もドラッグストアを訪れ、私の複合肌に最適なテクスチャを探し続けていました。突然、それには興味がありませんでした。私には興味があったのは彼だけでした。私の脳にとって、これは最も鋭い転換であり、私も宇宙からショックを受けました。

昨夜、ベッドで泣きました。

私は元々犬好きではなく、おそらく既に1万匹の犬を通り過ぎ、一匹も欲しくありませんでした。それでも、彼を欲しがりました。

突然、私はもう旅行の手間を気にしていません。母親のように、多くの責任、重荷、そして荷物を受け入れることができると思います。

また、私はアントニオのことを考え、この愛が彼への私の愛とどれほど似ているか考えます。私は誰かと長い間一緒にいて、彼を世話したいと思っています。私は彼との生活を選んで、私の最も貴重な自由を放棄する覚悟がありました。

それから私はもう一度泣きました。彼が6か月になるまでメキシコに滞在できないかもしれないと気づきました。また、アントニオとLos Angelesで一緒にいることを逃したこともあります。私はホームシックで、家は彼です。そして、私はこのペキニーズに出会いました。彼もまた私に彼の隣で感じた気持ちを思い出させてくれました。もしかしたら、私はただ家を恋しく思っているのかもしれません。そして、家は彼らと一緒にいる純粋な瞬間です。

それから、私はもっと泣きました。

フレーズ II. 決してあきらめない。

6月24日、さらに調査をした後、Googleレビューで観光ビザをさらに90日延長できたという人を見つけ、私はすぐに希望を取り戻しました。

6月25日、翌日、私はコンピュータの前で3時間を費やし、私のビザ延長の必要性についてのストーリーを書きました。観光、日本語レッスン、眼科手術の定期検査、そして犬の養子縁組を理由に挙げました。私は4つの理由を持っていたため、全体的に強力だと考えました。その後、すべての資料を印刷し、ワンダーウーマンのように大津へと向かいました。

入国管理官は私に断られました。彼はなぜ私が日本にいなければならないのか理解できなかったし、なぜ私が90日の間に犬の計画を立てることができなかったのか、私の計画の甘さを疑問視しました。私たちはGoogle翻訳ともう一人の日本語英語スピーカーとの間で約30分間論争しましたが、最終的に彼は私がたった今その犬と出会ったばかりであることを理解しました。それは恋の偶然だったのです。

彼はため息をつき、「あなたのケースはあまりにも難しいです。大阪の本部に行って、より権限のある誰かに相談するか、それとも私はあなたのケースを大阪に送ることにします。」と言いました。私は明日行くと言いました。

6月26日、翌朝、私は犬の養子縁組を含む全く新しいビザ延長のストーリーを書きました。彼との写真、彼の写真、E.T.とスティッチの写真をストーリーに添付しました。私は戦う準備ができていました。

大阪のオフィスは大津のオフィスよりも忍耐強かったです。彼らはGoogle翻訳をたくさん使って私のストーリーを聞いてくれ、その役人は私の特異な状況を理解しました。彼は私を拒否したくなかったので、その上司に私のケースをレビューしてもらいました。上司はまだ断りましたが、私の記録を見直し、保証はないが、ビザランが可能かもしれないと信じています。彼は私が1日外出して戻ってくることができると考えています。

これは良いニュースです。少なくとも今は解決策があり、どこかに光が差しています。

ユキは私を助けるために大阪に来ました。私たちは一緒にペットショップに電話をかけて、私が京都に戻って彼のために預金をすると伝えました。彼らは預金が7月3日まで彼を保持すると言いました。したがって、この将来の日付を基に私の旅程を逆算しました。私は即座に6月28日のチェンマイ行きのフライトを予約し、7月1日の大阪への復路のフライトを予約しました。また、京都での残りのホテル滞在をキャンセルし、6月27日に大阪関西空港の新しいホテルを再予約し、チェンマイのホテルを2泊予約しました。

大阪でユキと夕食を共にし、彼を助けに来てくれたことに感謝し、残りの手続きをすませるために急いで京都に戻りました。ペットショップが閉店する前にショップに走って預金をして、1週間後に戻って買うことができるようにしました。そして、罰金を免れるためにミレニアルズホテルに走って私のホテルを午前0時前にキャンセルしました。

6月27日、翌朝、3ヶ月分の荷物を詰め、ミレニアルズを急いで出発し、関西空港へ向かいました。関西空港で、私はAir Canadaのカウンターや動物検疫サービスに行って、彼を日本から輸出する方法について調査しました。翌朝の6月28日、私はチェンマイへ飛びました。

フレーズ III. 大阪の家。

二日後の7月1日、赤目の夜行便で大阪関西空港に現れました。（チェンマイでたくさんのことが起こり、日本を千年離れたような気分です。それは別の物語に値するでしょう）。そして大阪入国管理局の職員が信じていた通り、新しい90日の上陸許可を取得しました！（日本人の言うことを信じて、心配するのをやめればよかったのです）

チェンマイにいる間、大阪で多くの宿泊施設を調べましたが、夏の間の私と犬のための良い選択肢は見つかりませんでした。私にとって25〜30日の滞在は高すぎて魅力的ではありませんでした。また、ミレニアルズで長い間暮らした後、孤立したAirbnbやアパートに移動する気にはなれませんでした。コミュニティが必要でした。彼を見つける前、ミレニアルズは完璧なコミュニティでした。

日本のほぼすべてのオプションを読んだ後、大阪のbooking.comで別のアートハウス、ココルームを見つけました。彼らにメールを送り、私の状況に甘い解決策を提案してもらいました。驚きました。私の人生が救われました。

2ヶ月前の4月、私は東京で目の手術を受ける予定で、一か月以上コミュニティアパートに入居する予定でした。しかし東京が好きではなかったので、代わりに京都に戻り手術のために移動しました。だから今回は教訓を学びました。最初に2泊予約して、それが私にとってうまくいくかどうかを見てから、犬を連れてここに来て長期間滞在するかを決めるように頼みました。私は大阪が気に入らないかもしれないし、その孤立した、不快なAirbnbのどれかに滞在しなければならないかもしれないと心配していました。

驚くべきことに、うまくいきました！それはカフェと骨董品店とバーとアーティストの空間とゲストハウスと庭とイベントスペースとホテルとキッチンと家の間の魔法のような小さな空間です。私たちは毎食家族のように食事を共にします。京都が大好きで死ぬほどだったけれど、このような選択肢が京都にあれば良かったと思いながら、2日後に大阪に戻るのが楽しみでした。私たち二人の家を見つけました。

ココルームで2日間過ごした後の7月3日、契約日/保証金の期限切れに京都に行き、契約書にサインし、彼を迎えに行きました。しかし彼は病気でした。回復に1〜2週間かかると言われ、いつ迎えに行けるか分かりませんでした。

私はとても疲れていました。

彼は少し成長し、毛が少し艶やかになりました。再会したとき、彼はすぐに私のエネルギーを認識し、私たちはお互いに沈んでいきました。はい、彼こそがそれです。私はすべての書類に署名しましたが、彼の食事だけを持って大阪に戻りました。

フレーズ IV. 彼の名前。

人々は彼の名前を何と呼ぶのか私に何度も尋ねました――ココルームの友人、京都のミレニアルズの友人、カリフォルニアの農場の友人、バーニングマンの友人、メキシコの友人、中国の友人、みんなが。

彼をスティッチと呼ぶことを考えました。彼はスティッチに似ているからです。しかし、彼をスティッチと結びつけられたくなかったのです。なぜなら、彼はスティッチ以上の存在であり、彼自身の物語を持っているからです。

また、彼をE.T.と呼ぶことも考えました。彼に触れるとき、彼はE.T.のような感覚です。まるで初めて異星の魂の相手に触れた人間のように。また、E.T.は発音しやすい名前です。しかし、彼をE.T.と結びつけられたくなかったのです。なぜなら、彼はE.T.以上の存在であり、彼自身の物語を持っているからです。

そこでしばらく彼に名前を付けるのをやめ、友人たちが私に焦らしをかけ始めるまで待ちました。最終的に彼の名前を考え始めました。

7月7日。午前0時過ぎ、ベッドの中で、私は彼についての私の気持ちをChatGPTに入力し、100個の名前を提案してもらいました。GPTは私があまり気に入らない100個の名前を返してきました。しかし、それは私にぼんやりとした方向性を与えてくれました。そこで、さらに条件を入力してさらに100個の名前を求めました。またしても私があまり気に入らない100個の名前を返してきました。しかし、これによってさらに進む方向がわかりました。この時点で私は天文学の要素を求めていることに気づき、宇宙的な名前を求めました。GPTは文字通り宇宙の語彙100語を返してきました。しかし、その中で彼の名前を見つけました。それは100の宇宙語彙の15番目でした。

Eclipse/エクリプス/日食。

それは彼の茶色の体を覆う黒い頭部の影に似ており、その体はエクリプスから出てくる太陽光のようです。

それは彼を見ると感じる畏敬の念や驚き、興奮に完璧にマッチし、私が彼と共に経験した神秘的な変容や意義を示しています。それは私が彼のために過ごした最後の2週間の時間追跡を象徴し、まるで月と太陽、そして最終的な宇宙的な再会のようです！

まさに必然の幸運です！

彼の名前に酔いしれ、眠れませんでした。私は異なる時差の友人たちに連絡を取り、メキシコ出身でドイツに住む親友Loreとつながりました。私たちは3時間チャットして、エネルギーを消耗しました。

ありがとう！ChatGPT！ありがとう！すべての友人たち！ありがとう！宇宙！ありがとう！私の大切な脳と私の大切な人生！

フレーズ V. 宇宙の再会。

その後の2日間、私はまだ興奮しすぎてほとんど何もできなかったので、友達や妹に電話をかけて彼の名前の魔法を処理しました。みんな彼の名前がどれほど一致しているかに驚いていました。

この2週間でこの巨大な挑戦に取り組んでいる間に、宇宙の多くの友人たちとさらに深く絆を結びました。ルヤ、レイチェル、アントニオ、ケレブ、ヌリ、アリック、ロレ、レオン、ナオミ、イェリン、ウェンシン、イーリン、シューヤン、サリー、イー、ジェユー。

お迎えの日は最初、7月11日でした。

私は京都に行き、獣医で彼に会うために向かいました。彼はまだ咳をしていましたが、もう彼の回復を待ち続ける気はしなかったので、2人の友達と一緒に京都に行きました。彼らも興奮していました。

彼に会いました。彼は大きくなっており、毛が長くなっていました。彼は私を認識し、私の近くに留まっていました。また、友達の膝の上でも優しく振る舞っていました。

獣医は最終チェックとしてX線を撮り、肺感染症が見つかりました。彼の体はとてもクリスタルのようで小さく、X線写真の中ではほとんど何も映っていませんでした。これが犬なのか？こんなにシンプルな生き物。X線の下で透明な体、殻の中にはほとんど何もありません。

完全に回復するまで一緒に飛行できないと言われました。それには1週間、下手すると2週間かかります。

えっ、まだ挑戦が残っているのか信じられませんでした。京都を再び出発し、彼の食事の5キロだけを持って帰りました。

大阪に戻ると、私が乗りたかったデルタ航空の直行便が2000ドル以上になっていました。夏の間のパキニーズの飛行制限のため、アメリカに帰る唯一の選択肢だったので、パニックになっていました。選択肢がさらに少なくなり、他の国に行かなければならないかもしれません。韓国の航空会社を調べており、政府機関や航空会社も調査する必要がありました。とても疲れていました。頼むよ。

それから、ロサンゼルスへの乗り継ぎ便を調べると、2回の乗り継ぎでバーバンク・ロサンゼルス空港に到着するデルタ航空の便を見つけ、価格も適正でした。デルタ航空なので、彼の飛行に問題はありません。帰り道は長くなりますが、まずシアトルに着陸し、最初の都市で入国審査を受けるので、次のフライトを逃しても問題ありません。7月31日までにアメリカに到着できれば大丈夫です。

私はとても興奮し、すべてを予約し、もう一晩計算した後、エージェントと彼の座席を決めました。

フライトを予約した後、私はとても平和で誇りを感じました。未知に対する恐れがなく、回復スケジュールのために旅行をキャンセルするリスクを取ることなく、アメリカに帰るために全ての資金を投入しないで済んだことを誇りに思いました。チケットは返金可能で、回復を待つ間にフライトチケットを変更できる選択肢があることが頭の中で大きな違いを生みました。

もし日本に閉じ込められた場合に行く場所についても夢想しました。夏の日本では飛行機に乗れないので、彼と一緒に25時間のフェリーで沖縄に行くかもしれません…

その後数日間、獣医から彼の症状と血液検査について良いニュースが届きましたが、すべてはX線によるものです。多くの情報源がX線がクリアになるまで数週間かかると言っています。

7月17日、私は再び京都に行き、祇園祭で彼に会うために獣医のところに行きました。

彼は驚くべき速さで回復しました！突然どうすればいいか分からなくなりました。この速い回復を予想していませんでした。

予想外の良いニュースが発表されたとき、彼は脱水症状でした。水を与え、彼の毛を口の下に浸し、彼はベンチを泳ぐプールのように歩きました。それから寒くなり、私のズボンで口の毛を乾かそうとしました。

彼を家に連れて帰れるかどうか気になりましたが、何度もコミュニケーションを取った後、さらに2日間必要だと言われました。

私は再び京都を出発し、彼の1年間分の薬だけを持って帰りました。

18日、ショップから既に知っていた良いニュースが届きました。彼にカットを頼みました。彼らは少し緊張して、見た目が変わると言いました。でも、彼は若返って、まるで2ヶ月のように見えました。

19日は予定されたお迎えの日です。フロールと一緒に行きました。彼女は電車でこの話を読み、230pmにショップでエクリプスに会いました。彼女は喜びと満足感に満ちていました。彼は2日前よりもずっとフレッシュに見えました。フィルとユキもお別れに来てくれました。

フロールと私は、私の人生に彼が加わる前の最後のソロ旅行で嵐山に行きました。以前行った豆腐レストランで食べたかったのですが、閉まっていました。それからカフェを見つけました。伝統的な京都の茶屋で、人生で最高の抹茶フレンチトーストを食べました。

午後6時、再び彼を迎えに行きました。彼は私と一緒に冒険に出る準備が整っていました。

P Firstのスタッフは彼の名前を呼び続け、その名前を知ってとても興奮していました。私たちが去るとき、彼らは「この子を大事にしてあげてください。私たちは彼を決して忘れません」と言いました。私は泣きたくなりながら外に出ました。彼らが私が準備をしている間、エクリプスに最も注意を払ってくれたことは確かで、彼らは私の旅の観客であり、ずっと心配していたと思います。

フレーズVI. 彼は驚異そのもの。

ココルームに到着したとき、彼がこの世界にどれほどの驚異をもたらしているかを実感し始めました。彼の存在に皆が魅了されていて、その見た目だけでなく… 次の日にこの長い話を読むオープニングパーティを開き、彼の名前が明らかになりました。その瞬間、多くの人の目に深い幸せと興奮が見られました。それは単なる憧れではなく、失うこと、欠けること、探し続けた後に見つけたような感覚でした。

私はとても自由に人々を自分の部屋に招いたり、リビングに連れて行ったりしました。彼と同じ小さな空間に慣れる間に、彼を複数の場所に連れて行き、ワクチン接種や輸出証明書を取得しました。

彼は皆を溶かします。彼と接する人々がどれほど溶けるかを見ました。彼が人と交流するたびに、それはイベントのようで、彼らは突然とても柔らかく脆弱になりました。それは私に大きな希望をもたらしました。心を開くのがどれほど即時的かを実感しました。ニールもココルームに訪れ、私たちは一緒に京都に行きました。ニールが溶ける様子を見るのはとても素敵でした。

彼は犬の体になって、誰でも触れることができるようにしていました。私が癒せない傷を彼はすぐに触れることで和らげていました。彼が障害者やホームレスの人たちと交流するのを見ました。彼らは私にはそのように触れることができませんが、彼には美しい女性のように触れることができます。

次の日、私は裏庭で歌いました。それが彼と関係がないことを実感しました。自分がいかに平和になるかを知るのは不思議でした。

フレーズVII. 信頼の学び。

私たちはそのフライトでアメリカに向かいました。4本の電車と3回の飛行機を経て、空港から家まで母に運転してもらいました。合計で33時間の旅でした。出発前に、最も大きな荷物を2日前に羽田空港に送っておきました。フライト当日は、他の荷物を持って電車で東京に行き、東京羽田、シアトル、ソルトレイクシティ、バーバンク、そして家に着きました。33時間の間に、荷物の車輪を失い、壊れた荷物を東京の二つの地下鉄で引きずりながら移動しました。その後、最初の10時間のシアトル行きの飛行機で座席が壊れ、乗務員やパイロットと口論してビジネスクラスに変わり、デルタ航空の歴史でおそらく唯一のビジネスクラスに乗ったと思います（ペットを許可しない唯一のクラスでした）。数日前に犬を亡くした隣の女性と絆を深めました。

長い長いフライトの間、新しいビジネスクラスの座席は窓の隣で、一緒に日の出を見ました。空にエクリプス！私の前の座席にはぬいぐるみのライオンの頭が突き出て、私たちを見ていました。世界が続く詩のように繋がっていることに驚きました。

今、私たちは家に帰り、7/31の締切に間に合ってアメリカに到着しました。当然のことです。私はどれほどワンダーウーマンであり、世界が私を止めるのがどれほど不可能かを実感しました。人生で何度も起こったように、最初から信じるべきでした。

この旅で、多くの日々と夜にわたってパニックに陥りました。彼が持てないのではないか、獣医が予約を忘れるのではないか、回復が間に合わないのではないか、テストに合格しないのではないか、荷物が羽田空港に到着しないのではないか、フライトで拒否されるのではないかと心配しました。しかし、日本の社会を信じるべきでした。自分自身を信じるべきでした。すべてが何らかの理由で起こったと信じるべきでした。

The movie we were in.

This is a movie about him and dust. Dust felt just like the energy of life. It was ever-changing, so much hide-and-seek. For a second, it was a whole piece, but the next second, it disappeared into nothingness. It’s all real but temporary.

—The first part of the movie, he was not in it at all, and there was barely any dust—

In the midst of the sandstorm, I was trying to find a home. “What is home?” I received this question soon after I entered my second burn, as I felt homeless while building an even more sophisticated camp structure, Motel California, than last year’s camp, Paper Crane.

I visited Paper Crane right after the Motel build week ended. I saw Olivia in a red dress, looking like Frida Kahlo. She was so beautiful to me. As always, she was detailed and elegant, and she moved my heart as she glided into the kitchen.

Then, I competed in the Paper Crane folding competition. I won the bronze medal without cheating. I was annoyed because the other two guys who won gold and silver were already much taller than me, but I had to take a group photo with them—I stood on the ground, and they stood on two separate steps of a step stool—to represent the result of the competition.

Rachel and Chris from Motel Camp shared their relationship journey. They said their non-serious hookup turned into something serious right after their first date. I was very happy for them. They were simply great together; they vibed the same.

I was the only one with an e-bike this year at camp. My campmate, Kanguroo, constantly asked to borrow my bike for the convenience of moving things around the playa during the build. I hesitated because I knew they were less meticulous than I was, but I let them use it anyway. As expected, a small thing of the bike was broken every time it was returned. I was bothered by it, and I was bothered by the fact that I was bothered by these little things.

On Monday night, I saw a drone show above the Motel’s roof. It was far away, but I could clearly spot a small drone that got lost and couldn’t return to the group. While the rest of the group was making a heart shape, it was that missing piece, wandering alone in the night sky, but it seemed to be having so much fun.

Then I walked to the man alone without a bike. I met a guy named Andy at the top of the man base. I shared my love for art cars with him and how much I wanted to create one next year. Then I walked to Luna—one of my favorite art cars that I discovered online this year. Luna was parked next to a lit-up sparkle pony art piece. A sandstorm arrived, and Luna was shooting dreamy laser lights into the dust.

On Tuesday, I gave people facials. I have been given facials to my mom since I was little. I had no training; it was a daughter’s facial. I touched people’s faces and saw them immediately quiet down and sink into a space of awe and divine. Andy also came. He almost cried during my facial on him.

Wednesday afternoon, Motel had a big matchmaking event. Hundreds of people signed up and were separated into seven-color groups with matching colored bracelets. I was the green bracelet team lead. There were no central planning and direction. I had to direct people and help out with coordination. I came up with a game of ten questions, and people chose a side. One of the questions was, “Would you rather be able to control the weather or be able to control gravity?” I picked weather instead of gravity.

Wednesday night, my camp went to Thunderdome to see Ben and Pranay’s fight. I lost the rest of the group, and almost cried on the street, but I was too dehydrated to have a drop of tears come out. I felt homeless again. When I came back, Aaron showed me the fighting video. Pranay also joined the mini-watch party and did a voice-over which made me feel a lot better about the fomo.

Thursday night, I met a bear-like guy who gifted me a flute. Then, we walked to the Lotus Art, and I shared a lotus pedal with him. The Lotus was a giant vibrating art piece that two people could cuddle on one of the five lotus pedals while having a meditative headphone experience. The vibration, light around the pedals, were synced with the voice or music from the headphone. We didn’t hug or touch with hand at all but just cuddled together to share the pedal space. Then after we left the pedal, he started to touch my back gently while we were walking towards the temple, I didn’t engage his touch. Then I saw the crab car—my favorite art car on playa! I was immediately turned on, abandoned him to chase the crab car. I didn’t even tell him that I abandoned him.

I had a wonderful time in the crab car and felt home. The crab car founder recognized me and called me “the girl who always tried to jump on when they passed by last year.”

I received the answer while on the crab car—home is, inspiration. The crab car deeply inspired me, and Paper Crane’s 2023 campmates also deeply inspired me.

Friday, Seth surprised me at my tent with a passionate kiss while I was organizing stuff. He asked me to share an adventure with him and I said yes. We ran away together. We toured a few art pieces, and he directed us under a giant unicorn bubble art. It was only us, and the unicorn completely protected us. Nobody could see us. As he was getting more sexual with me, he asked what I was feeling. I said—nothing. He was shocked and stopped. I told him I hadn’t felt romantic or sexual in a long, long time. He backed up. I was weirdly grateful for this moment and proud of myself for voicing it. We cuddled on the Lotus pedal afterwards. It was day time. There was still voice from the headphones, but no vibration or light effect this time. I could see the landscape of the playa so clearly. The mountain in red, blue sky that also looked dry. We were on Earth for sure, but it felt like Mars. I shared with Seth how sad I was seeing the world getting even more advanced, but everyone mentally was more down. I shared with him how much I was inspired by having a massive space around me.

For so many years, I felt our friendship was confusing to me, and it slowly pushed me away from him. But this time, I felt the first time we shared a real friendship moment together. It was lovely and refreshing.

—The second part of the movie was all about him, and dust—

I noticed him on the Zoom call. He didn’t talk much, but his voice was already piercing through low quality video, stood out to me that he was a strong and persuasive human. Very sharp, very intentional, deep energy.

Build week Sunday daytime. I noticed his inventory right after arrival: Korean ramen cups and farm-fresh fruit boxes color-coordinated like an art piece. Even the storage box and the fruit box had a unique touch. I found him setting up his tent and told him, “I liked you already. I am very fast with people. I am a witch.” He replied, “I noticed you already on Zoom. It doesn’t take much to know someone…” “I also sometimes felt like I was not a human.” Then he said, “Would you like to go to the foam camp with me?” It is a camp where you share a giant foaming shower with around 80 people all naked in a container. He invited me firmly without moving his head or blinking, straightly staring into my eyes. The idea sounded disgusting and intriguing. I said, “yes” right away.

Build week, Sunday night. I asked everyone in the camp to share their fantasies. Some people talked about retirement or dragon, but the two of us almost shared the exact same thing. I said I want to be able to see people’s thoughts on top of their heads so I could walk to them and connect with them at an extreme speed. He said that in the last few years, he had accumulated so much friendship and wanted to continue accumulating more. We both craved connections.

Still build week, Sunday night, after dinner, New Year's Eve party at Motel. I was at the party, and I saw him wearing a giant mushroom hat walking out of the Motel structure holding a white girl’s hand. Next morning, two other white girls (that I am very sure I will never be friends with) stopped by my camp and asked for him. I pointed his tent for them. They walked to his tent, zipped it open, and entered.

Wednesday afternoon was Motel’s biggest day. We had the huge coconut oil wrestling game, followed by the giant match-making party. We had hundreds of people show up, but our camp was only around 30 people to support such a big event. All campmates were hands-on volunteering; we were tired and burnt out at the end of two back-to-back events. He was the lead cook in the kitchen that night. I walked into the kitchen, seeing him playing jazz music, dancing with a realistic-looking fake mustache sticker while occasionally directing Sawa and Ash in hand-making pasta on an Italian hand-rolling machine. The pasta machine was stainless steel and shiny. He told me I also needed to put a mustache sticker on my face. I did, and he laughed.

The camp dinner table was decorated by him with a red and white tablecloth, candles, and flowers. It suddenly felt like a dinner table at a European countryside little inn. After dinner, while everyone was till sitting, he said, “We won’t share a lot of meals like this in our lives, so we might just do it well.” Then, he presented caviar and fine wine as dessert. Everyone was screaming. For the vegan people, he offered his mother’s pickle green bean. It was my first time having caviar, so I had it. But then I was curious about the pickle, so I also asked for one. It was so good. I asked for another pickle; he said, “No, I don’t have a lot left.”

On Thursday, I asked him when we could hang out together. He said Friday he needed to be with friends and gave me his Saturday.

Saturday daytime. Motel was on strike. We had a free time window in the afternoon before dinner and man burn. I said, “Let’s walk and talk around the block.” In that talk, we connected over what was missing from Motel. I said the people felt like who I would have discovered from the default world, not burners. He said that would be how I describe it, too. He said, “did you find anyone that you connected this year in our camp.” I said, “actually, you.” He smiled. He shared with me his calling and what was missing in his city. And he shared with me what his life was like. That talk was long, but it flowed and felt short, and I wasn’t surprised by how aligned our thoughts were and how detailed we both saw the world. It was an apparent deep connection.

Then we walked to his friend's camp, and crawled straight into his friend’s Hexayurt. He laid on his friend’s bed cuddling his female friend, and asked me to join him. I hesitated for a second, then joined them. I cuddled next to him while he also cuddled next to her. He told me he and her had knew each other from high school.

I was gently touched by his hand. Those touches felt so intimate and strangely romantic. For a long, long time, I wasn’t feeling romantic or intimate with anyone anymore, and I thought I had lost it forever, but it came back the moment he touched me. We were with another person, the tent smelt terrible, and all that was confusing as well. When we walked out, I was filled with love and thanked him. I said, “You are such a divine being of intimacy.” He thanked me.

We walked back to the camp, stopped before we entered the borderline, took everything we were carrying off our bodies to the ground, and hugged each other like twins. My body sank into his like a bed. It was one of the best hugs I had received in my life—and could really just be the best one. I looked into his eyes and probably looked a little drunk, and said, “I missed you already.”

Before dinner, he walked out of the shower towards me to hug me. He was still wet on his body with his shirt open, I laughed and closed his shirt and hugged him. I found it quite romantic that I closed his shirt. I could feel I was slowly falling in love with him.

Man burn was about to begin. We started walking together toward the Man. We noticed we were wearing matching silver pants and flowy tops. His pants were reflective, mine were shinny kids’ ones. We both are skinny, fit and short, and we must have looked like fairy siblings from far away.

We walked to the Man talking in a deeper level of intimacy. There were a magnetic field between us, and we didn’t have to explain or talk much, things just made sense in our brains. It was so beautiful to talk this way, like I wasn’t breathing for a long time and I was breathing again in our conversation. When we arrived at the Man, I set up my basket in the first row, put my neon sun next to a light pole, and walked to the porta potty. When I was back, I realized the mistake. Christina sat next to him. They were in the second row, and he was holding her hand. They were happily chatting. I was on the front row, like always, how much I would like to be at the front. Being small meant I had to take care of so many logistics of my life, and I couldn’t stand not being in the front row for a show. But he was out of reach of me and seemed so far away right away, like the longest distance in the world.

In the midst of everything, I saw the crab car. I wished I could just walk up to the crab car, and cry in front of them, and maybe he would have noticed my missing and how upset I was. But I didn’t. I stared at the crab car for a moment and asked myself to be strong. I missed the other Motel campmates too. They were having so much fun, but I was sitting alone in isolation. I was so lonely. I tried to cuddle Lady Jess, who was right behind me, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Her touch wasn’t helping. All I wanted was to be next to him and being touched by him.

Then I saw Lori come and hug Kanguroo. They hugged like high school friends. It inspired me and made me realize I could move around, too—I am an animal, not a plant. So I walked up to Doggie and Jackie, and hugged them. I love them so much, and it did make me feel better when I touched them. They have been like my camp grandparents since day one. I was so happy that I got to know them. I almost cried at that moment.

After finishing with them, I walked towards and stopped beside him. I gathered all the courage, squatted, and asked, “How are you?” “Can I sit next to you?” He said, “Yes! Of course!”

I grabbed my bag and sat next to him on the right side. Christina was on the left. He hugged me with his arm but he was still talking to Christina. I didn’t feel the need to talk to him. I knew him without him talking to me in words. Our thoughts were connected. Very soon, I found both of his hands were only on me. He hugged me and put one of his hands behind my cape. His touch was, again, divine. I felt home again. Like it was the only touch I needed in my life. I rested my head on his shoulder, and he was there for me, too.

Right before the Man burn fireworks started, I asked if I could sit in between his legs. He said, “Yes.” He hugged me fully with both of his arms. I was filled, and I felt so warm and safe. I didn’t have the courage to look at Christina’s eye. I thought she must be shocked internally because I had stole her moments. But I had to act. “I am so sorry, Christina.” I said in my head.

He had a black tassel cape over his naked body, and his tassel was touching my body, and he apologized for the touch. I said, “Please don’t apologize; they are like how you feel.”

The Man's fireworks opened both of our hearts even more. It was just as last year, stunning, and moved us emotionally forward. I held him tight while he grabbed me under my arms, and I could feel our ebb and flow in synchronicity.

As the fireworks progressed, I couldn’t hold my feelings anymore. I was in love. I turned my head around and said, “I want to kiss you.” He didn’t answer, and kissed me. It was the single most memorable kiss of my life. There was nothing, nothing, imperfect about it. It was soft, passionate, intimate, vulnerable, synchronized, and everything that wasn’t needed to say, and it felt absolutely meant to be. We were surrounded by excitement, beauty, fireworks, fire, friends, art, music, and the gift of the universe. We were in, and we were, divine.

The fireworks show (half an hour of nonstop amazement) ended with an explosion that marked the starting of Man's burn. I heard Christina grabbing him and said, “I am so happy I am sharing this with you.” It was a relief for me to hear that from her. I was so worried about her. Her laugh also felt strange. I never saw her laughing like that. She had always been a reserved and slighly awkward person.

As Man transited from fireworks to fire, Motel campmates all stood up and hugged each others one-on-one. I hugged and jumped on almost everyone like a baby koala. I told Jackie that this was like a wedding, not a birthday—a wedding. I felt loved by everyone. I was touched by the words they shared about me, and I was touched by how everyone had been seeing me without talking back to me this whole time. The most memorable one was Tuna’s, she said, “Thank you for being always so present.” Yes, it is the one and only way I want to be. Thank you, Tuna.

After appreciating everyone we wanted to connect with, he said, “Shall we?” He took my hand, and we disappeared from the rest of the Motel group. As we walked further, I asked, “Is Christina on drugs?” He said, “Yes.” I felt even more relieved from the guilt that I had stolen her moment. She must had a great time.

I was taking him towards the Temple. When we passed by at 6 o’clock facing the Temple, he surprised me with another passionate kiss. He shook me, grabbed my face and body, and started to kiss me.

This one, very soon, became the even more memorable kiss of my life, even more than the previous one. I felt I was held and wanted completely. It was another perfect kiss. We both sank into the kiss as if we both belonged in it. I felt like we kissed for a whole century. He was a relatively small human, but I felt so much energy from him. I was so shocked and inspired. It was the softest yet most emotional kiss I have ever received. It was just perfect.

We walked to the Temple together. We kissed again when we left Temple, until someone shined a vehicle light on us to stop us because we were blocking their car.

Then we arrived at the Lotus Petal. The third time I went to it during this burn. We shared a petal. Between our kisses, I heard Bjork in the headphones singing, “All around is love, all around is love…” The creator of Lotus must be proud of us. We used the Lotus as it was designed, in the best possible way. We were surrounded by each other’s gentleness and love, and the love of Burning Man. The voice of the headphones, the light, and the vibration, all reminded us of the same thing.

After a long long time, we left, and walked back to our camp, into his shiftpod. His shiftpod was so clean. Even after one week of the burn, there were barely dust (in such a big living space), and the bedding was still crisp. It was his touch all around the space.

When I was under him, he grabbed my head, and we moved forward together. I was floating in his arms like a flower on a boat. It was just the right amount of holding strength that I didn’t feel any force, or any gravity. It wasn’t sex, but we were sharing the ultimate intimacy together for a long, long time in his bed. It was better than sex. I was just floating with him. There were no gravity. I felt perfect.

I said, “You know, I am actually a better cook.” He said, “Wow…” I laughed, and said, “you must have never gotten that before.” He said, “no, I have never got that before… You haven’t even eaten my food. Let’s see, you had some noodles, and pesto I made two weeks ago…” I laughed.

He had a fluffy pillow underneath his fluffy hair. I was trying to grab his head, but I kept mistakenly grabbing his pillow, and I was annoyed. I started laughing, and he laughed too, and said, “That was pretty funny.”

He fell asleep quickly. I was cold, even with layers of his bedding. Loud music was all around us. And couldn’t sleep the whole night. It was also a precious night. I was not bothered by the fact that I was awake; in fact, I preferred it. I wanted to be awake and remember.

The next morning, he quickly got up, and prepped to leave. I asked to exchange his matchmaking bracelet with him. That was a hint that I wanted to get to know him more. He kissed me while I was on my way to the porta-potty and he was on his way back to the camp from porta, and we exchanged bracelets. He had a white one. I said white actually looked better on me. Mine was green, and it definitely looked better on him.

I last talked to him when I was on my way to check with Aric about logistics. He said, “I will see you before I leave.” And when I came back from Aric, I saw him loading the car, so I didn’t bother him while he was loading. I went to my tent instead.

His carpool friend came by my tent and said goodbye to me. I waited a little bit more, and I realized he had left without coming to find me.

I thought maybe he thought I hadn’t come back from my errand.

After he left, I took down my tent, and Motel also took down the shade structure. We were suddenly exposed to savage sunlight, slowly dying, and my energy was quickly drained from not having enough sleep the night before. I stroked a bit, swept a bit, mooped a bit, but mostly I was feeling homeless and sleepy, cold and sun-burnt, and holding myself physically while still processing all the emotional turmoil I had from last night. I was dying and confused.

In between all the strikes, I went back and forth to Aric to coordinate the rest of the loading and came back to help Motel with mooping.

…

Sandstorm arrived. I was homeless again. It was a strong physical insecurity, but I felt it emotionally too. I felt sad that he didn’t come to say goodbye to me in my tent. I sensed something went wrong already.

The Temple was about to burn. I walked with Kanguroo to the Temple, just the two of us. The rest of the Motel campmates didn’t regroup with us like last night, so after I sat down, I went up a few times to check where the Motel people were. But I couldn’t find them. I settled back next to Kanguroo. We talked about how beautiful the Luna art car was, shining next to the Temple.

The Temple burn started unexpectedly. I didn’t see a Temple burn last year, so it was my first temple burn. The start felt too quick. A sandstorm also arrived, and took over the playa without any warning.

It was the quietest, most massive fire I had ever seen in my life. The Temple flame was hiding in and out of the sandstorm. The sand was creating a continuous orange cloud around and above the Temple, and connecting it all the way to the sky, enveloping everyone in silence. I saw people’s faces. We all looked vulnerable and contemplative. We all looked lovable and sad. We all looked like we were watching Titanic sinking in real time. We all looked like we were in a movie. We looked so believable.

Occasionally, a voice came out of the crowd: a short and sudden crying, or a piercing slogan of protest, or a howl to the moon…

In the midst of the sandstorm, I heard a Ukulele playing, a light-hearted instrumental music in a dark and gloomy scene, and it matched a scene of a movie I knew from the past energetically—in the movie, it was this moment when someone was about to be gone from a relationship, and they shared this final sweetness in temporary. I wished he were there with me. I wished we were dust. He was not here anymore and I felt something missing from my life.

As the Temple was burning, I hit me that We were over. I grieved. The Temple is for death. This year’s Temple is called the Temple of Together. We burnt the Temple to release that grief. But where would my grief go if I had no Temple to grieve it anymore? Temple was burning away as I was grieving, and I had no place to release it anymore.

It was the single most cinematic moment of my life: The sand, the dust, the Temple, the smoke, the cloud, the sky, the Luna art car hiding in the right corner, people’s pious faces, the orange shine from the flame on everyone’s shoulder, my love story, my gone lover, my attachment to his touch, my fantasy that we might share a life together, my movie, my life…

My heart wanted to explode and vanish at the same time. It was too intense that my mind went blank, and it was all too beautiful too.

When we returned to the gone Motel (strike was done), the sandstorm got even more violent. It was a white out in the total darkness. My carpool mates were already packed. We quickly sneaked into the van and drove away. I didn’t have any time to process Temple burn and we were already at the exit, out and on our way back to the default world.

The Temple burn was over, and my second Burning Man was over. We, were over.

—The movie we were in—

I kept looking for the movie we were in. I thought it was Peter Pan (he looked like a grown-up version of him), but it hit me this morning we were in, Her.

He was so easy to connect with, and I was so in love with him without knowing who he was. He was capable of being intimate with anyone, and it made his love so real, and unreal, at the same time. He felt to me that he was almost in love with anyone, and no one, at the same time. It was all so confusing, but it felt so right, at the same time.

And I never saw him again since then. His existence burnt with the Temple and he became sand. He was perfect, and he perfectly vanished into sand.

The ukulele played in the last scene of Temple burn, just like the movie, Her. I didn’t know why he had to leave, but I only knew he had to leave regardless.

In the last part of Her, Theodore and Amy went to the rooftop. Amy said, “We are only here briefly, and in this moment I want to allow myself joy.” It was echoing with what he said on the Wednesday dinner.

He was just like Her. And I was Theodore. I never loved anyone the same way like I loved Him. And yes, it was all, indeed, temporary.

white girl, red hall, black house

This is a dream I had last night…

My parents bought a new house… it wasn’t long after they bought their first townhouse. But this one is completely different—It was an actual house. It was a previous political leader Jeffery Williamson’s house. He kept this house so his nannies and teachers could live here. It sits on a quiet and under-visited street in the city. (the city… looks like it could be San Francisco, all the house are wooden and 3 stories).

The house has 3 floors, all tiny floors, and the sharp roof loft tips out like a black witch-hat. The house is extremely old and dark. When I walked in, it felt like the house was falling apart and not fixable. A lot of spider webs. The connection between the floors was a spiral staircase, all wooden handrail. A middle eastern patterned carpet lined all the stairs with seemingly-unremovable cat hair that was sitting inside for centuries.

At the back of the house, there was a space that seemed to extend into something else. I walked to the back and found a small backyard with a back door. It sit elevated above the ground floor, creating a terrace-like space. The yard was enclosed, the opposite fence wall was distinctly Chinese—it looked like it had been scooped out of the Emperor’s Garden in Beijing, with a few flights of stairs and a door that led to something else.

On one side of the yard, there was a washing station with an old, moldy, and cracked mirror on the wall.

I moved in. The house seemed to breathe and slowly began to look different day by day, as if it was waking up and coming alive. It was still an exciting home because it was a house, not an apartment.

I saw Jeffery Williamson’s nanny. She appeared in the living room. She was also in the small room near the loft and on the stairway.

I opened the door to the backyard. I could feel her walking at the washing station, as if she was getting dressed.

One day I saw a bottle of thick orange juice in a closed lid plastic jug that was so pure and sturdy that almost looked like glass. But it was plastic.

Another time, I noticed a bug floating at the top of the juice. It looked both dead and alive, just existing. I thought it must have fallen into the juice. It was a beetle-looking bug with a shiny green shell. It was huge and so beautiful. It looked so strong and bulletproof like it could fight and protect you from the war. But the lid was so tightly sealed that the bug must have grown inside it from an egg fallen into the juice before.

After some time, another bug emerged. Now there were two—like twins. I was a little scared but I still wanted to drink the juice. The bugs looked so clean that I thought it must be fine to just pour out the drink, move the bugs aside, and drink it.

I can’t remember what I did after. I probably let them be, because I was so curious if there would be a third one coming. They didn’t look like they were going to make a baby, or romantically interested in each others. So if there were a third one, it must just emerge from nothing.

I started noticing there were another juice in the house. That one was red.

“This house is totally fixable,” I thought.

…

The first time I walked through the door in the backyard, I found a huge, long red hall resembling the Long Corridor of the Chinese Summer Palace. In the middle of the corridor was a circular resting pavilion. To the left was a red Japanese shrine, and to the right was a wide, long long staircase descending into a vast green, like a lawn.

At the center of the pavilion was a heavy-duty old stone table. There were people dressing like Chinese palace maid laughing around the table. They didn’t see me walking in. They were so happy and playing with their dresses flying in the air. They weren’t afraid of me walking in like I was only existing.

I walked deeper into the hall, but there was no end. I eventually turned back.

I loved this place—it was my favorite now. I left my black Sony camera on the stone table. I used it a lot but somehow felt safe leaving it there.

Another day I walked in. I saw a huge group of people occupying the hall. They were shooting a movie. They dressed in red work sweatshirt with a huge N logo on the back—they are from Netflix! “Netflix people in my backyard?” I thought. They for sure didn’t get our permission, but I wasn’t annoyed at all. They looked so happy. They probably got some really nice scenes.

I started to worry about my black camera so I walked to the stone table. I went and I saw a little Sony camera sitting there. I was relieved. Then I had a thought. “What if the camera was white? It might fit me better, cuz I am a white girl.”

I took the camera and walked into the depth of the hallway, and turned around to look at these people. They were so beautiful. So I took a picture of the people through the depth of the hallway with the camera. But I looked down to checked the playback, in the picture, there were no people—only red leaves laid freely on the table and fell on to the long stairs, in the exact position where the people had been.

“This is so exciting!” I thought, “I must tell Seth!” Sometimes my life can be quite boring and there was little to say, but this was truly exciting and I must tell him. So I took some more and walked back.

I walked past the stone table. People were packing up. I saw big cameras on cameramen’s bodies. They looks like big boxes outlined with red strip light, encased in long frosted covers. The red light became very dreamy and magical. I could stare at it for hours.

I kept walking back to the door close to my house. The walk felt impossibly long.

When I finally reached the yard door, I looked down on my camera. It… It wasn’t mine! Someone else’s camera. It was white! And the body of the camera with a screen was turning slightly pink and into a irregular shape, and the more I looked into it the more irregular it became. Like a swollen fist! “I must return this camera.” But I had those photos on it. So I carried the white camera with pink skin back into my house.

…

A moment

This morning I had a moment with Antonio. 

I woke up half an hour later than I needed on the date of the flight to Kyoto. He walked into my home and found that I was not ready. 

I started cooking breakfast for both of us, he asked if he can take over the swirling while I was swirling a large portion of eggs in the pan. I let him. So I was able to reset the dishes in the dishwasher while he was doing that. 

When we were finishing the breakfast, I started to put plates in the dishwasher, and he said if he can take over. He went to organize the dishes while I went to organize my suitcase.

After I zipped my suitcase, I used a small scale to weigh it to make sure it was not overweight. He laughed at my nerdiness. 

I packed all the food that I cooked for him into a doubled paper bag. I had round and rectangular Tupperwares. I measured so well with my eye that it fit everything into the bag in perfection. He was watching it and thanked me for packing. 

This morning reminded me of 言の葉の庭 where the two characters were cooking in the little apartment while it was raining outside. In both of their inner monologues, they were hoping this moment can last forever. 

Skin

This could be a song…

Such a hard animal to care for, like my stomach. Like a million to feel.

I couldn’t find a thing to stick to. My mind flee again.

I have an addiction over skin. Noticed all the time lost in searching, and still not sure what I could have been doing. Addiction existed solid I have nowhere to run.

Maybe everything works for me, if I don’t pay that much attention, and maybe nothing works for me because I wish one thing work for everything. My skin is just like me. It needs everything and nothing. Confusing.

I wanted to cry because part of me just wanted to escape. I try cry but no tear comes out. Try to not drown in plastic or fur, try to not be an ignorant child to the earth. (this line is so good!! > <)

Antonio, always perfect, but even better than perfect with his fuzzy baby hair coming out in humid air. He is not happy, but I am in love with the mess in his hair.

I wish I love myself like I love him. What a world if we love our mess like we love our babies. What a world if we love ourselves the way we love our lovers.

That, skin, needs nothing on it, just a bit water, and we can breath again.

A song of air and fire

This is a song of air and fire.

When an air meets a fire, she takes off into space like a rocket. I am the air. And this is the year of learning to dance, to befriend, to belong, and to be one with fire.

—She ran away—

I met Him on Thursday morning I landed in the build. I had a whole drama landing in burning man already. It was a journey of its own. My carpool mate pushed my luggage out of her car last day and I showed up with only half of my survival items. I was exhausted and badly need to sleep and eat. And I was homeless.

I met the build crew, and immediately noticed Him. He greeted me with such uplifted spirit that I was suddenly ready to hammer… I could use that extra energy to hammer him into the playa too. I was animated by this person—

He is this overly friendly and quite exciting/hot character that I don’t have a reference in my friendship circles. A total stranger. I was never once close with someone like him. And for unknown reason I was about to explode. He has a magnetic voice of a teenager boy… And I definitely never once tried to interact with a heated masculine boy when I was also a teenager girl. I was Luna Lovegood. I was, and still full of air. This is too dangerous. I need to run! I am Luna Lovegood, run!!!

When we finished the first shade structure roof, I felt proud and yelled “I need compliment!”, he yelled back “good job!” I was secretly so happy but I didn’t look at him and ignored him.

I remembered he told me he was a bad student and always ran away. The character that flashed into my mind was Draco from Harry Potter. I felt like Hermione talking to Draco. Hermione just can’t shut up, and always straight A.

Dome sucked me in. These mermaids I found, worked at night, chilled during hot day, swam each other’s emotion and body seamlessly. We hit off right away with an ethereal conversation. They were fully present with me and followed into my aura. My people! I escaped to the dome from the build. It was irresistible. Later during the day, I asked Reverbia placement if I can camp with the dome, she said, it depends on the dome. I jumped. Then I privately talked to Yona (dome daddy), and he said “maybe”. I jumped. At night, I successfully set up my camp with the dome and rescued myself from the coming three disasters.

When I swam back from the dome, he picked out on me running away twice from the build. He was right, but I was on a mission to prep myself with the best living situation from lack of supply, and hoping no one from build crew would notice please! But he pointed out on me? I was about to explode again. “I notice everything.” He said.

He wore a red jacket a lot. Sometimes a red bandana. I could easily spot on him in a long line waiting for kitchen food, or in the build. Him in red color was always popping into my eye. It was the right color for him. I was mostly blue into the build and early burn.

One night, I discovered his little purple Uhaul truck. In my 2023 “my favorite place on playa” I wrote about how my tent was my favorite place on playa — it’s simplicity and big ambient. But his Uhaul is…next level! I felt home and almost got sucked in just looking at it… looking into it. I wish I could have designed it, but someone did it and it was right here, and I had nothing to improve. Not just shocking, but also annoying, stylistically how I would picture a perfect cube space, and yet effortless and minimal, very few pieces of furnitures and decors, but max-out ambient, and strangely pragmatic to drive and clean. Rodrigo was there. Rodrigo has hilarious voice. Just hearing him make me laugh but I somehow remembered nothing he said. I was so engaged screening this purple space. Soon, time passed, and I had simply a great time. I wished this Uhaul was an art piece in the deep playa! Him too. He was not too proud, just calmingly existing. Like he is the essence of it. And there was a mushroom on the Uhaul, totally not random on the side wall! Whaaaaa!!!! It was just all too perfect… And I ran away… because I couldn’t stand it anymore any longer.

I remember we sit next to each others in the back wing eating in the early build days before the storms. Journey and him took two cushions on a corner of a table. I asked Journey if I could sit next to her, she said “yes?” reluctantly. Then I realized she was waiting for A Lot. So I scooped to the same cushion that he was sitting on and asked him to move. He was a bit confused yet entertained by my act. Then A Lot showed up right after and Journey looked at A Lot full of affection, and I turn to him, and say “THIS IS WHY!” I was so proud that I can finally read romance before someone else did.

I made people laugh that dinner for saying straight forward yet slightly mean things, and the more I am this way the more people laugh. He seemed to like me straight-forward too. I thought he liked me, probably… And I was irritated by it… And it was too difficult for me to understand why I was irritated by him liking me that I ran away again back to the dome.

I passed by his U-haul again and saw Cobalt hanging around with Cobalt’s girlfriend. This time the U-haul’s energy was completely different than with Rodrigo. It was subtle. Cobalt was an energetic swamp cooler, he cooled the truck down and now I could see things clearly and was able to stay longer. “Can I give you anything to drink?” He was gentle when he looked at me, the very first time I felt something soft was inside him. I asked if he has a sweet drink, he said, Moscato D'Asti. Wait! That’s exactly what I wanted! Why does he have Moscato D'Asti?! Why does he have exactly what I wanted? After I drank, he stared at me and asked “does my eye look red”? I looked into his eyes first time, and my breath stopped for a good few seconds. His eyes were… very pure… in complete contrast of the heat on his face. His face was red…yet his eyes looked so peaceful… “no… they are… blue…” They laughed. I didn’t know why they laughed. But I was glad they did. I was mesmerized by his eyes and those laughters saved me from needing to explain my silence, and why my breath was also taken for a moment.

Soon, Cobalt said storm was coming, and left with his girlfriend. So, I needed to be with the dome, that’s the correct thing right? Or where else do I go? I shouldn’t stay in his truck. It wasn’t appropriate. I will end up stuck in his truck for the rest of the night. I was already feeling sucked in by his truck, and I didn’t know what else we would do! He liked me! I liked him…? Did I just like him all of a sudden because of his eyes? What a classic Shiyoo love story — looked into someone’s eye for four seconds and fell in love… What if I am turned on? How do I ask for sex and deal with a no? I never had to ask for sex. So I have no skill to deal with no. This is too dangerous… I need to run!

…So I did. I ran away again. A very quick goodbye, and I said “I should be with the dome…” An almost fleeing goodbye. I totally fled, in full speed. Wow… That was… such a relief!

At some point, I told him about the stressful carpool situation coming to the playa, and he offered me to ride with him back to SF. I was surprised about him offering so fast, and I was excited about it. I kept it in mind the while burn.

I noticed his bean-shaped stainless steel mug. It was another shiny object in my eye. I couldn’t stop looking at it and was always able to spot it while we were in line of food or shower or in a group.

I caught him holding coconut oil in a broken container in the left corner of his truck, liquid oil spilled everywhere. What a cute bad choice of container from a hustler! Trading coconut oil on his hair for a mess to deal! I almost wanted to offer to re-jar for him right on the spot. I laughed so hard secretly.

Before the second rain storm, we met again in the Coco Disco party with the rest of the build. I was surprised and excited to see him in the build group. Surprised because he looked not much like a group person to me. And I was restricted to show my excitement seeing him. He had coconut alcohol in his bean cup. I wanted to taste it from his cup. But I didn’t ask. He would have said yes though, and I had to deal with his YES… I had a whole coconut in my hand. And he would have offered to carry my coconut… And I had to deal with his help… I also felt too ugly that day to ask to sip drink from a hot boy’s cup and being offered to carry my coconut. After the last storm, I lost most of my clean laundries and toiletries and gave up on brushing hair, doing face and I looked not just homeless but… PRIMITIVE. I was all over the place and quite happy.

I remember when we departed from the Pony camp, I found him also at the intersection, I looked at him, and looked at the storm coming, and immediately rode away to dome in full throttle.

When the second rain storm passed, during the most epic sunset of the burn that everyone was waiting for, I found him. This is THE sunset after all the storms finally ended. The sun shined through clouds in multiple layers of colors, and changed them from light orange to orange to pink to blood orange, until the sun disappeared without notice. It moved all of our hearts in real time, and in sync. So much had happened. Lots of yelling, howling, laughing, hugging, and we all wished this moment could last forever. I stood next to him, and said, “this might be my very last burn”. Then he told me “I was already deciding to take a break from burning man for a few years.” I was not surprised, but… sad. It made sense to me he would not return next burn. But… it felt personal to me. I hadn’t even talked to him that much through out the build. One sand storm and two rains had passed… How did he do? Was he mostly alone? I was all cozying up in the fire pit and bonded deeply with the dome crew. But in the meantime, how did he pass his time? Was he all alone?

He showed up in the dome lift! It made me very… happy! He said, “so you are now one of those dome, ugh?” Am I? Stop pointing me out!!!

I remember seeing him only once at dome lounge. I ignored him again. He was in his red jacket, but his energy was buried by the dome crew even in that jacket. He left very soon and I had a mild fomo. I wished we talked in dome, it would have been a memorable conversation, but it was meant to be missed out that way.

In the next few days, he wasn’t even in my memory that much at all. We went on separate journeys.

Thursday build, I dragged Clif to fly me, Cullen and Sean (Sean from the dome crew). It was an event that I had been looking forward to for all 3 burns, but somehow I learned that I didn’t like being a pilot!!! I simply wanted to be flown instead.

Music when I ran away from his Uhaul before the storm: https://youtu.be/3no252J8-VA

—She came back—

I got comfortable naked during my first shower, where I splendidly failed to bring a towel. So I walked out of the shower naked (and got excited and lost all of my clothes). And… wow, it was very… nice? To have fresh sunshine drying my skin during the middle of the day. So I did that every single shower after. I brought nothing, walked naked in and out.

Once, I walked naked to his truck, towards the end of the burn week. It was still before Man Burn. I was looking for someone, but that wasn’t the real reason. I wanted to show up to his truck naked. And I didn’t remember why. There were other people there too. And I just remembered I walked up to him with such confidence. And I remember he didn’t even change his facial expression or was shocked by my nudity. I was so happy about his calmness. It made my day!

The stage crew took their sofa and moved to the front of the shade structure on Esplanade on the Man Burn day.

I planned a massive group meet up between the dome and the build at the man burn. I shot out messages to people I collected contact. He had a Malta number and the message didn’t go through. I was worried. But when I arrived at the Man burn I saw him sitting among build crew. I was relieved. He was in a group but sitting by himself.

Last year it was such a “wedding” feeling to be at the man burn with Motel, but this year I dramatically fell asleep after Journey’s performance. He was sitting with all the build crew. I was with the dome crew. I felt somehow alone even I was with dome. He felt alone to me as well with the build.

I walked the flame naked with the dome crew in Man’s ashes. I looked very forward to this activity, and I made sure I didn’t fall asleep, but somehow I was bored at the man’s ashes. I remember seeing all dome crew’s beautiful naked bodies but none of their bodies felt astonishing to me. It was like I already saw them naked when we were talking. People’s body never felt new to me. Seeing their bodies were like seeing old friends. I was right next to fire pits but I was too cold the whole time. I remember almost fell asleep in the ashes and almost became the famous Burning Woman this year.

After we put our clothes back on, we visited the steam room art car. It was closed. I was relieved. I didn’t need to be naked again on the Man Burn’s night. I was exhausted. Dome crew wanted to go on more adventures. I was too tired and slightly bored to follow, so I left the dome crew half way, hugged everyone and rode back my e-bike alone on full throttle.

When I arrived at the dome, I found the build crew sitting on a sofa. He was there!!!!!!! He looked straight into my eyes, and I looked straight into his eyes too. I didn’t run away this time. I parked my bike and jumped on him, and he let me sank me into his body.

Ellee came back, and sit next to us. I grabbed her hand, subconsciously, in the blanket, while I was on him. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to hold Ellee’s hand. She took her hand back, soon after. I was relieved after she took her hand back. I realized I wanted to be with him only, and I shouldn’t hold myself back anymore, or grabbing, or running away, to another person, or group.

…So I did. I let myself sank into him. We didn’t talk much while we were on the sofa. I remember he said “why are you so cuddly tonight?” I must be a confusing girl to him. But he liked me. There were things in life that just didn’t need explanation or words right away. It was pure that way, and honestly more honest that way. Our bodies are way more honest than our words most of the time. His body welcomed my body like it had been waiting. It felt natural. I was warmed up, the warmest I’ve ever been in this entire burn, the warmest in the entire three burns I’ve been.

I remember Journey looked down on all of us on the sofa and kissed the three people next to me on the lips, including Losha. Me and him weren’t being kissed on the lips. It was again, a big relief. Thank you, Journey, thank you for being so tuned to the moment, it would have been too much, if you were to kiss me and him also on the lips that night. I couldn’t take more kiss.

Our kiss was very passionate and strong. He closed his eyes, and I realized he was on drug. But somehow it didn’t feel like a random kiss. He was sober in his heart. It wasn’t a mindless kiss to me. It was landing on something that needed to be healed, to be hold, for different reasons, but for both of us, it was needed and so lovely.

We made excuse to get wine in his truck and left the crowd. We immediately started to entangle in his truck. I felt safe. And I had one of the worst (and probably one of the most important) conversation in my entire life. I remember he asked me questions and I couldn’t answer any of them properly, and I even couldn’t remember those questions properly. (and usually it’s the other way around). I was so challenged, entertained and turned on even more. There were great questions and I felt extremely dumb now for not remembering anything. I should have voice recorded the whole thing. I usually am the one remembering conversations and effortlessly impressing people later by repeating what they said. Not only that was not right, but I made it sound like we were having a ONE-NIGHT-STAND! Cuz I literally said those words that night. To me it was way less mindless than that. I wanted to say I discovered so many things about myself and it was excited and grateful and needed more time to process, but I couldn’t communicate anything. I was scared to be hurt. What if he disappears after this burn? Like how Burning Man is? Like how Dalton was? I was scared to be profound and intentional and honest. So I wanted to make myself sound mindless. My level of profoundness always scares people away. I needed to learn to be mindless. I was just simply incomprehensible.

In the mist of all the chemistry and confusions in my head, he expressed to me he was dating another girl. I, at that point, always assumed people were, but I was surprised and felt grateful that he mentioned it this fast. It was such an honest thing to say right away. He bit me twice in my ears and I got hurt, but the second time he was trying to remember I got hurt previous time. He said, “right, right…” Wait a second? So he is not a bad student? He was responsible as hell and trying to learn! What did I get wrong all this time about him? Was I mixing him with other beings?

That sudden shock of awakening was when I realize I was falling in love with his brutal honesty and care. My replies was all terrible, just TERRIBLE, but at least I realized I misunderstood him the whole time. It wasn’t the sex or his eyes I fell for. It was because he was the mirror opposite of how I understood him that turned me on. It was the contrast of the situation that made me exploded. I got him wrong this whole build and burn! And it was during the moment of the sex that I exploded. My awakening and the sex happened both at the same time. And the timing was extremely confusing, and I was overly exhausted at that point to separate them.

When we came back with wine, most of people on the sofa already dismissed, and I finally swam back into my tent like a snail and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up refreshed. Clif offered me to ride his private jet to summerlake so I can be with the dome crew. Astral from LA offered to ride me home in his van. April, my original carpool mate, was waiting for me. Aric also wanted me to ride home with his truck. But I wanted to ride with HIM to SF… So many options… I divided and conquered the whole day and sorted out everybody during the daytime of the Temple Burn. Then I walked to him to deliver my victory of problem-solving the possibility of our carpool.

He was with someone else talking while I walked to him, I punched him in his shoulder, and showed off my success. I must looked like a jumping and angry bunny.

We were wearing both sand-colored clothing that day. When we walked and talked passing kitchen, someone pointed out we had matching outfits. It made my day, that I wanted to dance around him in butterfly shape.

After a long long goodbye with everyone at the temple burn, Clif walked me back to the green lizard where we agreed to meet (and I messed up the time). He was there! I was lit up like an LED lizard myself when I saw him. I felt home-coming, and safe, seeing him. Someone who didn’t give up on waiting for me for 45 mins and didn’t get mad at me knowing that the line would have been significantly longer.

Our energy felt right on with the lizard too, a poetic serendipity to meet at the “end of the tale” of a green LED lizard. It was a perfect pick up.

I was picked up like a kid. I jumped on his bike pole and we rode towards the truck. When it became too difficult for him to ride, I hopped off the bike and he held me while I was walking, then I asked him jump off the bike to just walk with me. The whole time our hands were together. We were so silly, and so precious.

Music when I found him waiting at the lizard: https://youtu.be/3zp32SyvQoo

—She sees him—

He was reluctant to let me drive his truck. When he finally let me, I was entertained. The line was not moving, but it felt short, I even wanted to never get out somehow. It only took 6 hours. During that 6 hours, I looked at him close up and in slow motion. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was like a giant baby next to me, keep moving for the perfect position, trying to find comfort in a very uncomfortable set up. But I made a difference, didn’t I?

When we saw each others in the eyes in silence, I couldn’t stop wanting to kiss him, and he received me like he wanted to, too. It was divine to have a synced kiss.

I wanted to hold him and he let me. I felt like his mother. A baby moving in the truck back and forth with me, trying to hold my hand, while I was wondering if he was comfortable. These were sweet moments I probably will never forget for the rest of my life.

When the night fell dark and deep, I walked out of the car, and saw A SKY FULL of STARS. Fresh air again, no sand storm, clear sky, slightly different hued mountain contouring the edge of my vision. I felt I was ready to leave Burning Man this time. First time, I felt I was meant to leave at the right time. My heart was filled with memories and I aged so much.

We slept on a road curb right outside of the exit. It was finally a tiring and warm night that we earned. I was grateful we were able to straight our legs in the lego of our cargos.

The next morning, I woke up in short alarm reluctantly and immediately had to prep a hearing with a wordy lawyer. That phone call was long and redundant that I wanted to quit every minutes to go back to the presence with him and have wild kiss. Being with him, every minute was worthless. I didn’t want to make money at that moment, I wanted to be with him, and I wanted to burn the lawyer alive for his speaking inefficiency. I wanted to tear the lawyer apart over the phone!

After over an hour of suffering, I was finally back with him. We stopped by Reno for breakfast and headed to SF.

“I am curious about why people sees me in those ways, like an asshole”, “these are assumptions you made about me”, “I wanted to only have deep connections.” These very familiar sentences filled our conversations during the drive. I was running away from him and he pointed me out. “But it’s like running away from LOVE.” He is right! And the way he said it was like piercing through a wall, that I thanked him. I told him he was too nice to me from the beginning, and he said, “so… too friendly, red flag?” I laughed, he is right, now it sounded too funny. I told him later I gave him a playa name Green Flag and I should probably make an LED one.

We passed by Tahoe and he started to share with me his writing. I didn’t know he write, and I didn’t know he liked the woods! I was so thrilled to hear these things unexpectedly. He shared with me over the drive, his passion for writing, his past initiatives for disaster in the world, Palestine, independent early career, his documentary filmmaking past life, and his tempo for a slow book writing. “I write the things I did on the list and still check them off.” He said he had not been writing for 5 years and it was simply brewing in his mind. But I said that was the way it should be. Slow as possible, intentional. He said, but do you know anyone who wrote like this? Has it been proven to work? …Wow, everything he said made absolute sense to me, and he didn’t need to explain to me anything about his heart. He made SENSE to me. It hit me hard like I was attacked by bullets, and I was willingly dying and proven wrong over and over again without much time to process and properly respond to each questions, stories. I was bleeding, and proud. I made probably no sense to him and my mind was all over the place, but I was screaming inside, “he made SENSE to me!”

When the sun set into the mountain as we were driving and talking about the tempo of his slow and almost impossible-to-start writing, I realized I misunderstood his heart from the beginning, not just me, but the whole world, and it made me yell at the earth, wanted to burn people, and explode the ground up to the sky and down to the core of this planet. Woooow! I am so sorry! Look what I’ve done to avoid him and running away from him the whole burn. Look what the world had done to such a caring humanist. But when he jokingly talked about “we could have spent the whole burn together, instead, you ran away and only showed up in the very end”, I said “I wasn’t ready!!!” He immediately followed with, “…no, I actually think you came at the exact right time.” I was shocked in silence and I fell into that synced moment. That moment melted my heart. I yelled and he laughed so hard. I was falling in love with this highly conflicted character, the contrast of his people experience, the rawness of his emotion inside his overly misunderstood look. And I was so scared. Everything of him was becoming more and more personal to me as we drove closer to SF.

As peace finally restored back to my body, I thought to myself, I wanted to support him. He lost everything, and I am about to as well, but we both are on our way to restart creatively in an identical way. Our paths were aligning. I wanted to see him again in the world, when he makes progress in his book. He needed my support. Everyone in the world needs it, but I decided I wanted to give to him in this moment.

I finally started to see him now.

Music during the sunset on the drive to SF: https://youtu.be/sKrsE2lBhu4

—He needs to fly—

We laundried clothes in San Rafael in the rhythm of Latin music. We laid coins and spread powder and pushed buttons like percussion, then we left to his friend house for the gear cleaning while he was dancing around the laundry timers with his truck. We were like in a Bollywood movie, dancing singing in chaos, and having so much fun with chores.

Soon we landed in his friend’s San Rafael’s house, I got email the next morning’s hearing lawyer wanted me to send over a long writing summary before end of the day, and sister was MIA in Stanford while I need to figure out if I take an expensive Uber to grab my vehicle to avoid an overnight ticket. I was immediately depressed and stressed. And when he showed me what I needed to clean when we arrived, I said, “…I need to go,” which of course lead him to misunderstand that my sudden attitude change was because the cleaning chore. He sighed and said “of course, I didn’t expect you to clean this much for me.” But… No! I did want to clean, it’s just… what a timing! I wish I didn’t have that EDD hearing other than driving home and being with him. I didn’t even have a laptop. At some point during the wiping, alone, I told myself, Shiyoo, it’s just money! Money doesn’t buy the presence with people! After calling a few sources, I decided to give up on the $11k hearing tomorrow. I also called sister to let her know I am ok risking a parking ticket to exchange extra time for my car pick up, now I finally bought myself time to clean up his burning gears in front of the drive way in dark. I was light, happy, and almost dancing in exhaustion. When he came back, I must looked light again. When he was almost done with the wiping job, just crushing on last bits of miscellaneous small items, I heard him talking back to himself, “ahhh, come, Sean, come on!” He made the most endearing self-talking sound I’ve ever heard from a guy.

We slept in the truck in a parking space in the windiest part of SF. We didn’t have proper bedding anymore, I used my tent, and Fifi, and Pokemon, and my clothes, and kid sleeping bag to create a semi rectangular sleeping area.

Waking up felt homeless, and in a way, ICONIC, that I regret not doing a quick photo shoot for our homeless morning. Chaos felt beautiful and artistic with him, and it was rarely like that with me and people.

He gave me a wooden gavel as a gift. It quickly became my favorite thing. I used it to hammer him when I felt I wanted to explode. What a useful gift!

The truck wash was pure fun! He splashed water in the exterior while I worked on the inside with wipes and singing out loud. So much sounds and movements were in the space and turned me high. He hugged me while I was flying. When we finished the wash, someone showed up with a bag of “cash” walking towards me and I heard him yelling “do you want a bag a cash?!” I extended my arm to receive the cash I deserved, but when he was close up, I saw that it was a bag of cat food instead.

After car wash, we returned U-haul, we were thinking about Waymo to Stanford, and he asked me if Waymo is driverless if we could have sex in it. I said yes! But it turned out Waymo didn’t support the long drive all the way to Stanford. We did a regular uber, and picked my Toyota in Stanford, and dropped off the cat food to my sister in the parking lot that we picked up Toyota. A series of banking and credit card issues flooded into his day. I saw him quickly turned heavy. I chimed in and helped some, and we knocked them down together one by one.

While we were on call for the credit card issues to be resolved over the phone, he caught two guys cutting off a bike lock right in front of us. I called 911 and he described everything in a literacy like a documentary script. I was impressed, and I was also turned on! And I couldn’t tell him that I was turned on by his scripting ability because he wasn’t in a romantic mode anymore. Default world started eating him away.

We clashed about lunch spots and hotel locations. So many variables… My indecisiveness clearly drove him nuts, and I was on the other hand pushed to make decisions at the whole new speed that I didn’t have. We ended up checking into a motel next to Losha’s airport in Redwood City, and we showered in human car wash style 20 mins before the private flight.

That human car wash saved our day. I was inspired! “This is so eco-friendly!” He added, “...how do you save the world? I shower together with other human and save waters!” We both came out so clean, light, and laughed so much again!

Losha welcomed us. At this point, I understood that our relationship was not meant to be public, so I made sure to not touch him in front of Losha, to be polite about it.

I intentionally sit in the back of the flight. I knew he was good at flying by his way of driving, so I wanted him to discover his pilot self. He was very excited as I expected. And his excitement made me proud of myself, and very peaceful too during the flight. I felt very safe while he was flying. I didn’t feel the view was that much worthy, but seeing him fly a plane first time was so worth it.

After we landed, while we were packing up the plane, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me in front of Losha. It was a strong hug, very real. And it was a another rare moment of my life. I was so used to date guys who wanted to interact only in privacy, that when he hugged me in front of Losha, I was shocked. “Does that mean we are more than friends now?” But I loved it. I was never a person who enjoyed dating in the dark, and I was forced many years to do so. I enjoyed being a same person in and out of all situations, but I rarely had the chance to, and his hug was a milestone for me. It was…refreshing, and healing too. I felt part of me was cured by this hug.

He gave me his jacket, while we sit in front of the airport office with sparkling wine. (His jacket was pleasantly weighted and full of his smell. I enjoyed and remembered viscerally.) It was a lovely wine. I was slightly drunk right away. He must be happy to have me around too. I was loose and arrogant, the way the Build people knew me. Losha must felt slightly jealous of us and was missing Pearl, it was until then I realized Pearl had a thing with Losha. I was so happy and relieved, because right after the Build, Losha clearly had feeling about me, and I was so glad and relieved that he found a better match to enjoy the rest of the burn with.

During the dinner, I touched him, something I never had done on a dinner table while others are around.

When we got out of the restaurant to pack and move stuff to my car, a coin-sized spider showed up on the back of the head cushion on the front passenger seat. (I carried a few palm size spiders last year in a bug birthday party, and I realized spiders are shy creatures, very sensitive.) In my head, this tiny spider was just a shy baby, got trapped in my car. She needed help. He was so scared and it was amusing to me that he didn’t trust me to catch the spider. Then I slowly caught the spider with following his instruction seamlessly, and released it in the bushes. (It wasn’t an accident that I caught the spider. I learned in this burn that I am quite good at point and shoot.) He was still scared, but more relieved. He probably thought I would be so bad at following his instruction and screw up. I laughed in my head that he was on his way to realize this anime-looking-couldn’t-shut-up-all-about-herself-girl was actually a ninja. Or… maybe he didn’t even calculate my success rate at all… he was just really scared of spiders.

Music when we were drinking wine with Losha: https://youtu.be/MZzLANjrqvI

—Clashing, but somehow landed safely—

On our way driving back to the hotel, I asked him if he wants to date me without asking him directly. He was surprised and he sounded unhappy to me all of a sudden. “Wait, you knew this was CASUAL, right?” What people probably don’t understand is, I am always serious about everything, casual is not a word I use.

So I asked him more directly if he wanted to date me. (That was my way of saying I love him. But he didn’t take it as a compliment.) And I got the “no” that I deserved in a quite long form. “You been running away from me the whole burn and I felt what changed and opened you up was the sex and you became attached to me…” I was upset and confused when I heard that, I sounded like a superficial human in his sentence. I said “but the sex was not even that good”, and he was surprised. And I had to suppress my upset and confusion to make him get his points through. It wasn’t just a “no” towards my invitation, it was a screaming towards the misunderstanding that the world held against him, but I took it very personally, and I was bleeding inside. He said my love for him wasn’t love, it was attachment. He said nothing was build between us, yet I had expectations.

Maybe he was right. What I said was terribly full of attachment. Yet still I felt my heart was misunderstood, or I mis-spoke. I simply wanted to say I love him and I didn’t know why the expression triggered him. He sounded more and more distant as we talk, until I lost my mind and not sure what I was talking about. I turned deaf.

We decided to pause the conversation so we could drive back to the hotel safely. And we caught up again sitting in two sides of a bed staring at each others. “We are not COMPATIBLE.” And he almost screamed the word “compatible”. It was not a word even in my dictionary. He described how I interrupted him all the time, and he absolutely HATED it.

Wow, I was already quite exhausted, but that conversation turned his face into a concrete sculpture in front of me, it was like I was on LSD, seeing his face turned hard and icey then stone. The fire was gone, I got a little scared too. I was stoned.

He smoked a lot that night. I said I hated him smoking, he said, but it had nothing to do with you. And he explained the difference between his hate towards my interruption and my hate towards his smoking. The second one has nothing to do with me. But I wanted him to be … “healthy…” and we said the word exact same time.

He told me if he were me, he would not say anything and waited till the attraction was simply not irresistible. Maybe he was right. But that wasn’t me. I am always full of air, and when I needed to explode I needed to just explode. Again, he cared to think in my perspective and situation and I thanked him.

He sensed that I was not doing well, and asked me to say what I had in my mind. I couldn’t find the right word, and eventually, I said … “I felt cold.” He hugged me and said I didn’t meant to make you feel cold. Slowly, his face turned softer back into a human color again. He gained some warmth.

We somehow ended up in the same bed and cuddling into the night with no sex.

…

I woke up feeling not rested, so didn’t he. He said we might have PTSD. What a strong word again.

“I couldn’t find my glasses!” “Oh no, I remember it from the Korean restaurant!” “Me too!” We both panicked. We are very far away from that restaurant. “Wait… it’s right here!” The next second, he pulled the glasses from a box right next to him. “How did that just happen?” I ran into his body again and flied onto him to hug, and we laughed together, then I yelled at the parking lot and he laughed more.

He was speedy packing in the hotel while I was lobbying the front desk in the lobby for extra minutes that I could possibly squeeze for him. I added 1 extra hour, he was relieved, then extra 15 mins. And he finished sooner, like we had an extra 15 mins, so I said “we should have sex!” “Right. Wait… Should we?” Why is he entertaining it back to me like that? It was the cutest thing. Then we joked about we can have sex in Waymo again, and laughed more.

Those laughters softened things a little, but it wasn’t enough. When we were in the brunch restaurant he pointed out me starring into his eyes made him uncomfortable. He smoked more and walked away.

I drove him to Corona Heights, my favorite place in San Francisco. On our way to Corona, we saw the street name Malta close to the end, and it was street name I never noticed, now I do, and would forever not unseen it now. We climbed the Corona Heights, saw entire San Francisco and the Twin Peak covered in cloud, then found spontaneous bathroom by walking into the Randall Museum, and it was my first time too. So many times I’ve been to Randall and even took by several friends, I never noticed Randall Museum. In there, we saw a little Sea Ravioli in a tank, clinging on the glass. What a strange alien got locked on earth! It looked like an old transparent baby, and we felt like we were still in Burning Man. Everything is still psychedelic.

We walked out sun drifted in and out of clouds, the shade of clouds rippled over grass, he smoked again.

He needed clarity, like the one he gave me. But he didn’t get one. I watched him emotionally depleting by this unknown HER and the mystery she left for him in front of Randall in his own smoke. He looked lonely, full of thoughts, and hoping to be somewhere else, or just simply burnt out, exhausted and drained.

Then I took him to Beretta. Another very special place. When we walked out of the car towards the restaurant, he was talking about himself, his feeling towards HER, and I replied “right… that’s why we were not compatible.” “That’s not my point! I was talking about myself!” He was triggered again. And I was stroked and stoned by his words again.

I let him ordered food in Beretta. And the food that he chose was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t something I would even understood to order. Then we met two people that he talked about Cuba over the bar.

While I was slightly drunk over Rattle Snake, we started to get softer with each others again.

I began to realize why he didn’t understand why I loved him. I didn’t explain it, and he needed an explanation. The way I showed him was indeed full of attachment. But it was simply impossible for me in last night’s situation to explain to him why I love him, not to even convey how deep that love has developed without me properly communicating. I simply long for uncorrupted love and I’ve been patiently waiting in life, and he showed up with it. It was hard for me to not say anything substantial about it.

…

And I now understood why I felt hurt when he said we were not compatible. I’ve dated in the last 5 years the biggest demon in my life that compatibility was something I was willing to work for. I am at a point in my life that I am wild open and the hard part was to know if we have the inspiration, imagination, attraction and potential to have longevity in a lifelong “freeship”, and anything else logistics I was willing to work through. And he felt like someone I can do this with. It didn’t take me long to figure that out. He excites me. So many things, the way he naturally is, make me laugh and high and land and learn and he probably had no idea. And I took them all seriously.

I was ready to receive him and work through the challenges. But my life wasn’t ready. I was so scared to tell him that—being a hostage of a 300M lawsuit for almost 1.5 years and about to lose all the freedom I’ve built for myself. Life is going to be dark after this. How could we even date? It’s not about LA or Malta or Cuba. It’s about freedom or hell! 2025, every month, I was about to lose everything in a different form. Palisades Fire, Death, Lawsuit, Death, Lawsuit, Default… And my life bombs are still striking.

I needed to tell him in a perfect moment that I love him before he leaves to Cuba. His “no” was harsh but honest and relieving. I simply didn’t believe he would want to date me anyway, and I wanted to hear the no to get a closure.

…

But he had an earnest point. I talked too much, and didn’t listen. And when I needed to finally listen to his points, I got hurt, stoned, and shut down, and he still didn’t get to be listened. There might be so much more that he disliked about me already, on top of my communication disaster.

…

Then I started to realize it wasn’t all about me or him or her or us, he simply cared, and also wanted to understand and to be understood as is. But this realization wasn’t helpful at all to get over him, it made me even sadder that he had to leave now as I was falling deeper with his honesty. Why did I fell in love so quickly, and why did I always fall in love with a boy that needed to leave?

…

While all these inner conversations were on, I did felt him closer and realer. I cared, in my natural disaster way, and he cared, in a flying bomb way. We did our best. And I’ve never really had a conversation like this in clashing passion and brutal honesty. It was always the other boy running away from conversations or they couldn’t have the clarity to carry forward.

I thought about Emma Watson and Tom Felton again. Emma fell in love with Tom at a very young age, and Tom responded “I see her as a little sister kinda way” and broke Emma’s heart. The whole internet in the last 20 years was confused and shouted out how Tom missed out such a gorgeous woman. But I really understand Tom why he had to say no to Emma. He is such a conflicted character growing up, playing a bad boy but deeply wanted connection, he had to really reconcile all his character conflicts. The world saw him differently than who he wanted to be. And Emma was the opposite, she was the same in and out of camera. The world received her as she is. She was ready to start a relationship right away with Tom. But Tom wasn’t into her like how Emma was into him. They grew up loving each others.

This was very healing. His “no”, made sense, just like how Tom and Emma couldn’t be together. It hurts, but it was earnest, and I respect his “no”. I wish he is a little crazier and more relaxed. But I also love who he is, it’s him that I love, and it’s also the him that he is not that I love. I love both.

He wasn’t satisfied with the Tom Felton reference. He wanted to be referred to Ryan Gosling. But Ryan Gosling was too basic! He is way more interesting to me than Ryan Gosling because of his conflict! He is original! He is full of inner and outer conflicts, heat, darkness, sarcasm in a very cute and raw way, and…

…

We stayed in the airport as long as possible. My mind finally quiet down. So did his intensity. We wanted the best for each others and also wanted to stay here for much longer. He was still the same person that I knew from the burn, but he was more real to me now, and I was glad to carry his weight more than he knew.

I felt special, and it landed the same time that he felt special about me. And we felt special about us.

It was the hardest thing to leave, for both of us. The single most memorable hug and platonic kiss with a person in an airport. It was long and needed to be that long. I remembered it physically till today. It was warm, and every part of my skin felt respected. We wished we had more time. When he was in the line checking with security, moving further and further away, I started smiling. I wanted to be strong for us, and it made me smile to know that he knew that I see him now.

We did it! We clashed but didn’t crash, somehow landed safely, and our hearts were opened to connection again. What a great start to a lifetime of friendship! Goodbye, my Tomorrow Today.

Music when I stayed in the edge of the line while seeing him moving further away in the airport line, the final goodbye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp7NtW_hKJI

—A song of air and fire—

This burn is a song of air and fire. When an air meets a fire, she takes off to the space like a rocket.

It was irresistible for me to love him. He was made to excited me, and I rise, and higher. There might not sound like much logic to it, but there is so much more. Like this long long “song” I just wrote here to remember us.

But there was no time to explain to him. There was literally no time!!! I was air, remember? He was fire. I just took off, like a rocket. And I was flying out of space, before I could even say anything in time, and it was so, so, so, beautiful.

—Final closure song—

https://youtu.be/omT5rKmU5_k

—Astrology to relate—

https://www.zodiacsign.com/compatibility/leo-libra/