I am a half-baked soul and these are evolutions of thought... I think the past works itself out in the present, and where would we be without a past, painful & joyous? Looking is part of healing, and there is no growth without pain, eh? I am finding that writing [but further, conversation] is a way of uprooting and planting...to cultivate more understanding.

This is a poem I wrote reflecting on the bearing of growing up a white minority...

"On-looking differently"

She thrived in her surroundings

Surrounded

by whites of eyes

Needing only to show up

Tuggin at mom's skirt

and that's interesting.

Unromantic and a reverse humiliation.

Why the associations with

white?

I am just a child.

Standing out, wanting to blend in.

In such awareness, paying no attention

but somehow winning it.

Planted there and getting to know it.

Transplanted here,

how drastic in process

and in form

were the attempts to sustain a contrast.

Your flexible hair and transparent eyes

mean different things now

like you should know all the people who live in a Full House.

Now blending in, wanting to really blend in.

Humiliation in acculturation

She is no longer a foreigner

and yet how familiar

is the preservation

of a skinless separation

and as I find myself... going along... I realize I have yet to find or lose myself. I have yet to find you. When I'm past a hard spot, it's there in front of me again. Continual reminders of the near-collapse. Can I look at the doubts & fears without being overcome by them? But in overlooking them, am I able to understand how to overcome them? I wonder... how mystery can provoke even hopelessness. There is a holding on, until... But then I remember that you like coming in the back door. You have ears, eyes, a mouth, two hands; you are not sense-less or unreachable. You're big in a good way... Can I please be alive, part of working out this process?