Explore Posterous

Brenda: This isn't working.

So sad to see you go so soon ... Goodbye, sweet little Peyton.

Little Peyton arrived at neighbors Adam and Lauren (and Madison)'s household a mere month ago and yet, he has brought so much fun and joy to our entire street with his spunky attitude and loving demeanor. Everyone loved him, especially the kids, which makes this bit of sad news even harder. Yesterday, he was at the dog park where he stays during the day with Madison when he was attacked by a larger dog. Unfortunately, he didn't survive the attack. Adam and Lauren are inconsolable. My heart goes out to them.

Life is so short. For others, it is but a spark. But the short time one lives can be so meaningful and bring so much joy to others if one stays true to who they are.

Goodbye, sweet little Peyton. We will miss you. Greatly.

Goodbye

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bear my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.

A Goodbye To Gourmet Magazine (listen in on KCRW)

ninety-nine days left in wellington

as of today i have ninety-nine days left in wellington before i leave for indonesia or face removal. Yikes with a capital Y, time flies so fast. i could be mushy and start my thank you notes from now on and visit and do all the places and things i have not visited or done. or i could finish my grand plan of finishing the remaining 15000 words of my thesis in an expeditious manner.

wellington i wish i could love you like there is no tomorrow. maybe tomorrow.

a beautiful last goodbye

没有雨的降温，对夏天最完美的告别。

如果四季的存在可以选择，夏季只要停留在七月，一个月的时间，抛开理性，抛开对未来的深思熟虑。没完没了的摇滚，酒精，油腻，在午夜的城市里疯狂，在令人无法思考的炎热中让所有疯狂的、不成型的情绪恣意，扭曲，我们可以打翻一切甚至可以打翻自己，然后彻底重建我们对此深信不疑。就是在这属于夏季的一个月，让汗液而不是眼泪浸入双眼，再来看这个世界，朦胧，针刺一般。

然而当这一切开始从爆发转为沉寂，炎热却没有随之消逝，就成了一层密不透风的粘液，包住了脑子，让思维动弹不得，而一些急需思考的东西——对自己，对别人，对这段时光，对未来——开始积压却得不到舒展，他们腐化变质，转为焦躁，不安和悔恨，随着每一秒的死亡更加强烈。

八月份向来如此，无事可做，无事能做，除了浪费着每年必定要浪费的31天和期盼八月底九月初某天无雨的降温。

之所以期盼无雨是因为对于我来讲雨点像盐水浸入伤口般让熬过八月的情绪更加糟糕，雨点敲击屋檐的节奏和力度让我不着边际地想到emo。像是Welcome to the Black Parade尾端的鼓点，我总喜欢在午夜之后听这首歌，当周身除了静寂的黑夜别无他物的时候，深邃的鼓点像是从黑暗中传来，黑夜的声音，讲述着被阳光掩盖的故事，在黑暗中奋斗，当双眼再也不能撒谎，心灵的共鸣才是唯一的信任。emo给予了绝望却带来了信任，排挤了阳光也驱散了孤独。这大概也是我对雨点的感受。

如此矛盾，因此也绝对不适合现在这段时间。我只要一晚的风，吹散粘稠的情绪和恼人的闷热，好让思维舒展起来，来看看眼前的路。

有路么？习惯了18年的指引，我现在站在最后一个路标旁，却不知道它指向哪里

身边没有了熟悉了面孔，大家都找到自己的方向了吧

以后还会重逢，让陌生的面孔熟悉

可还是散了吧，那一晚的风吹过，蒲公英般漫迹天涯

Summer Days In Bloom

paralyzed by ancient delight 
and riding for a fall today 
i am dressed in style, so eager in mind 
but furthermore distracted by you 
and it's like i lose myself 
in dreaming of summer days in bloom 
oh, i've got no clue how i could fight that 
all that i am is worth a dime 
worth a dime 
this liquid lunch will not stop my punch- 
drunk quality to doze while i run 
it is thirty-nine degrees in my mind 
it's thirty thousand miles more to go 
and it's like i lose myself 
in dreaming of summer days in bloom 
oh, i've got no clue how i could fight that 
all that i am is worth a dime 
worth a dime 
and it's like i lose myself 
in dreaming of summer days in bloom 
oh, i've got no clue how i could fight that 
all that i am is worth a dime 
cause it's like i lose myself 
in dreaming of summer days in bloom 
for i've got no clue whatever happened 
all that i am is worth a dime 
worth a dime 

The Medium - Facebook Exodus - NYTimes.com

Midway on the 'Laugh to Gasp 'o Meter'

 

So I had no other option but to move home to New Jersey from Washington - the one that has mountains, rainforest, Pacific and all. Family generously took me in when I'd used up all my liquid savings and could no longer sustain a household of my own. Thanks, one and all.

All my friends from school and life - I was a teacher - got together to put on a huge garage sale for me before I left. It helped me get some money together for the trip and whatnot, and I will always be grateful to - and amazed by - them. Beautifully organized as some teachers have that capacity, they made it possible for me to actually get out of there on time as I was already too sick to take care of business myself.  It  truly blew me away.

Two of my dear friends met me at the airport. Me and them and my cat, Jasmine met up in a lovely museum-like area. Continental tm does it up fine there.

Jasmine (the cat) had been given a quarter sedative for the trip as she was always skittish from being dropped off by the side of the road 2-3 mo. old. That would do it to anyone, I think. She was on a long, exploratory lead and could therefore examine the airport displays while we all talked. She gradually got sleepier and sleepier, and eventually was lying in her underneath-plane-seat-sized carrier... just barely awake as I pet her with my 'lots of love.'

Ok - eventually my flight was coming soon, and there was no more of the avoiding goodbyes (for then) to dear friends and beautiful faces... I started walking to the security scanner gate at Sea/Tac Airport... concentrating as if to imprint the faces that gradually became smaller and smaller as I moved off.

I obliviously put the baggage and stuff on the conveyor belt for the x-ray... and waved enthusiastically at my dear ones.

Next thing I know the conveyer belt comes to a screeching halt, what with the whirling yellow lights and the attendent yelling for his mates on other lines to come over and look, laughing and pointing at the screen.

I'm like, "What?" "What is going on here, I'd like to know!"

Turns out I'd put my beloved cat through the machine. And then had to explain in sign language at an impossible distance to my friends how weird and apologetic I was. It must have looked an odd dance.

Then I skulked away. My Grand Bon Voyage.

You should know that Jasmine lived to the age of 16., 7 years past the incident.

I thought maybe it would make a good story some day. And maybe someday it will.

I'm just glad to have written it down.

Dubai Not Dead

Dubai must feel a little like Mark Twain, these days. Upon reading his own obituary in the newspaper, Twain wrote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Dubai has had its share of obituaries as it suffers from a property bust and contagion from the global credit crisis. Headlines from Cairo to London to New York, laced with schadenfreude, proclaim its demise. Newsweek said simply: “Goodbye, Dubai.”

The emirate is certainly stumbling. Many of its state-owned entities drown in debt. Several high-profile property projects have wilted under tight credit, debt and corruption. Its stock market has been in free-fall. Many of its top officials, who once swaggered on the world stage, now skulk in denial.

Still, news of Dubai’s death has been greatly exaggerated. Its fundamentals as a regional hub of shipping, services, people, trade and capital have not changed. “Disneyland Dubai has crashed,” as one Dubai-based banker put it, referring to headline-grabbing property projects, “but the core business model of Dubai remains sound.”

That business model predates modern financial markets and the hyper-globalisation of today. It is not about lavish hotels, skyscrapers and man-made islands in the sea.

It is a simple model, reflected in the statement of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the late ruler of Dubai: “What’s good for the merchants is good for Dubai.”

Creating a hub for merchants has been an al-Maktoum family tradition for more than a century. And it is those merchants and migrants, dreamers and entrepreneurs, who built Dubai, who deserve equal credit for its rise and who will help it grow again.

This openness to foreign talent will support Dubai as it faces today’s crisis. Speculators will leave but plenty will ride out the storm, including Arab professionals who have chosen Dubai as the place to achieve their dreams and middle-class Indian mid-level managers who make the city work.

To understand why Dubai will survive, it is important to understand its commercial geography. It is not solely an Arab state, demographically or commercially. It is a commercial and tourist hub for a region that encompasses the growing markets of south Asia, emerging Africa, oil-rich Russia and the Gulf states, Iran, central Asia and the Caucasus, Europe and China.

Dubai works largely because of the heavy infrastructure investment made by Dubai’s rulers and the expatriate traders, service professionals, construction workers, bankers and techies who make up 90 per cent of the population.

Dubai was never, as one newspaper called it, “The Middle East’s economic powerhouse.” Rather, it was and remains a highly successful entrepôt in one of the richest and fastest-growing parts of the world. Like most entrepôts, it feeds from and fuels growth. Dubai companies, for example, have substantively improved east Africa’s transport infrastructure and DP World manages ports in 49 countries.

Though Dubai is racked by debt, $70bn of it, much of that comes from massive infrastructure projects that have positioned it well for the future. Infrastructure spending is old hat in Dubai. When Sheikh Rashid built the Jebel Ali port in 1979, to much criticism, he made a big bet and won.

Today, Jebel Ali helps place Dubai among the 10 largest container terminal port cities in the world. When Sheikh Rashid chose to take on a big loan in the late 1950s to dredge the Dubai creek to allow for larger ships, he was panned. It worked. The ships came, and so did the merchants. The pre-oil emirate grew and flourished.

The same can be said of its airports, airlines, telecommunications and broadband networks, metro system and expanded highways. There is no city within striking distance of challenging Dubai as a hub in a region that extends beyond the Arab world to 1.5bn people. Its airport is among the 10 busiest for international passenger traffic. It is also among the world’s top 15 air cargo hubs.

Dubai’s property bubble popped. Its hubris also popped. Its core business model, however, did not. Property corrections and over-leveraged state entities can be fixed. Becoming a poor environment for trade would be far more dangerous.

When the world growth engine restarts, city-states such as Dubai will flourish. In the meantime, Dubai will serve as a vital, if somewhat clogged, artery in world trade. The battered but still battling hub city will rise again.

Source.