I was sold without even knowing I was buying.

It’s been awhile but I use to write. A lot actually. I remember coming home and sitting directly on the computer chair. Where in front of this giant tube screen, I powered up the tower by hitting the illuminated green button. Which at the time could have circumferenced my thumb, twice over. For hours I would type away clever (or more like cheesy) little lines that I thought sounded well together. It was like, I, romeo in the story, courting Juliet with letters I only put on my AIM Away Messages.

Cool was I? I practically convinced myself I had the lyrics to the next R&B hit you’d stay up listening to, talking on the phone till 6am. 

Middle school, where it all started. My older cousin Jocelyn would recite poems and spoken word pieces to her friends with guitars strumming from behind at our family parties. “The big kid room,” where I swore I was cool enough to sit in and act the mature age of 11, where you think you already know it all.. (they knew what I was doing.) But I was interested. Open ears and a hungry mind kept me around.

She spoke in such a way that drew her listeners as if hypnotized.. but with smiles on their faces. She sold them. Without them even knowing they were buying. They loved every word. Her syntax was captivating. I looked around and saw all of this and I wanted that. I wanted to do that.

In homeroom class one day during 7th grade, My teacher Mr. Teñada, a filipino american raised gentlemen to whom I now owe a lot to, taught us a weekly assignment of something he called, “Show not tell.” We were told to write a story, with descriptions on the subject.. metaphors, adjectives, “color the story,” he explained. So I did.

One of the first times, I made up a story about how my Mom and I went to a hill and watched the sunset for my first time from a view point. I ended the paragraph with “She asked me what I thought. I didn’t tell her anything, my face explained it all.” Just about every Friday for the rest of the school year, my pieces were the ones he read out loud to the class.. from then on flattered, I knew I had something going.

I was in a ‘relationship’ with a girl named Jenelle at the time. If you’re reading this and know her, ask her.. it was theeeeee most text book, puppy loved, adolescent infatuation you could think of. I even carved her name in wood as a project in front of everyone during workshop…. *enter laughing emoji here* 

Later breaking my heart (or what I thought it was at the time) only fed my expressions in my stories and actually inspired me to write more. Highschool came along and I entered poetry slams. Open mics with acoustics.. then eventually found my own style of “Floetry.” To this day I remember pieces I use to perform out in San Francisco and such with friends of mutual likings. “A Minds Infatuation” or, “This is my day,” just to name a few.

It was a passion of mine. And not buried but put away for awhile till need for use, it still is. My passion. Writing. Poetry. The use of the english language to put a smile on someones face.. Is why I wrote. Now don’t come up and ask me to help you with your math homework, with that I’ve rendered myself useless. haha :)

But now, today.. I’ve come along a different passion that’s rapidly grown on me in the past 3 months. Photography. If you’ve been seeing my MANY (sorry) posts, I like it. But this subject.. Could use a whole nother’ story. Gnite

Date a girl who reads

“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

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