I am now an official owner of:

Organs
Meats
Microbes

But I couldn’t be sold on the particles. They were too cheap…and small. Ironically.

“Oh I don’t think he lives in the Mission,” I said almost dismissively. “It doesn’t match his personality.”

My friend and i were talking about someone we both knew. She thought he lived close to me in the Mission District (a hip area for young professionals who want to be close to gentrification), but knowing who he was. Definitely not. I predicted that the Sunset and Richmond, areas that were a little more Asian, slightly cheaper, and more sedate.

And oddly enough, when we found out where he lived, he did live in the Sunset. The Outer Sunset.

Do people choose the place they want to live in to match their personality? Do they look for places of a certain character, proximity to some things…for their own desires for locality and people?

Or do we change to match the neighborhood we’re in?

Sometimes I remember people can be so defensive of their neighborhood, trying to break all stereotypes.

All I can is…I definitely won’t be living in the Richmond or Sunset anytime soon.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

A perfect little video. It’s one of those videos where it makes you realize how what happiness is. At least for that one moment.

There was a moment today when a great song came on in the bar. But I was with my swollen eye and people I didn’t know well. Instead I stood there and missed the opportunity. Because by itself dancing you can become someone else for a moment. It is transformational.

Toward the end of last week, the company microwave broke.

Ok, no problem, I thought and put my lunch into the fridge. Then I headed out to lunch to bond with coworkers.

Today, a new microwave hadn’t arrived and I was hungry. I wanted to eat the Amish noodles that my mom had delicately mixed with chicken and sauce. When noontime arrived, I was ready. I headed to the fridge. There, I reached for the area where I had last seen it. Yesterday.

It was no longer there. It was replaced with some unmarked containers with stuff that was not mine.

I panicked and searched the entire fridge again. Pushing cartons and canisters out the way. I remember it was in a rectangular box and there was a peach there too. I wanted it. It was supposed to be mine…to eat! Where!

I stood there frantically looking, looking in the tupperware that wasn’t mine. Could it be possible that someone put in another container? I looked on every shelf even the ones with jams and sauces on the fridge door. Like a madwoman I looked in the same places over and over again, believing that if I just looked again if I blinked, it would reappear.

But finally I settled on it being lost, perhaps tossed in a moment of fridge cleaning.

I drank lemonade juice. Organic from Safeway to soothe my disappointment. I held in the burps but tried to not mourn my loss of my Amish noodles, specially purchased and selected from a woman in Pennsylvania.

I just hope someone enjoyed it.

I scanned the facebook message, thinking it was nice that my friend got in touch wishing me a happy fourth of July.

I re-read it again. The first few words, I am engaged… I wanted to yelp with a mixture of surprise, glee and excitement, but fortunately I kept it down. I mean after all I was at work…with some visual designer heads down in their work.

I typed quickly to a few friends. Txt a few more friends. The news. We always thought well at least I had always thought…she was the independent type? That marriage wasn’t necessary to be happy. But I was excited! She did seem looking for that root of security despite her fierce independence. Oh marriage.

Later that day, I went to dinner with a friend. As we sat in a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant surrounded by smoky goodness, he told me how marriage wasn’t on the horizon despite being with his girlfriend for awhile. She didn’t share the same expectations. There was a look of mild despair.

I joked that marriage really was about the wedding. A party where I can spend $50,000 and say look at me, I am so cool! A party for me! But well, logically it’s about the life afterwards?

Has modern society stripped away the words of marriage? Why do we necessarily need words of I do when our actions should speak louder than words? Especially every day? Why do we need to prove to others the devotion and dedication? And why must girlfriend and boyfriend must change one day into wife and husband? Why can’t it be a natural progression?

But I do like choosing color themes and songs.

“Whoa…it’s messy!” Jack said as I was showing him my room in my San Francisco apartment.

I was surprised, but nobody has said my room is messy since Pittsburgh.

I told Chris later and he said, “Jack is very observant!”

There was once a friend asked me whether I would clean up for him when he came over. I said that I wouldn’t, because I didn’t want to change for people. But I always would shove things off the chair so that one can sit at least.

(My room may be messy, but the rest of the apartment isn’t.)

She was upset. I was walking with her, trying to calm her down. We had just been flaked on. Uninvited from an event that I had personally traveled 45 minutes by bus for.

In the lower haight, we went bar to bar looking for a friend. A bouncer checked our ids. She said that we were just looking for someone. He said that he hoped that we found our friend and that we would stay for a beer. We left in a few minutes, me thanking the bouncer.

Then we hopped on the bus. Found ourselves in the Mission where she nursed a beer and I drank a glass of water. She ranted about the unreliability. Around us, there was a couple who was too close. Too close. The music was loud, but it was hipster music. I shouted above the music to be heard.

As we walked back to my place, we saw someone set off a sparkler. Just like the one that Chris set off in Pittsburgh. She screamed in delight. I simply smiled. We got back to my place and I gave her a blanket to sleep on the futon.

And good nights.

As we were walking through the Tenderloin last Sunday (because of the pride parade…), my friend’s 6 year old son wrinkled his nose and frowned, “What’s that smell?!”

Chris said, “Um…stuff…”

Today, I grew silent as people around me describe how their habits have changed. No more games. Listening only to npr. Of course, being green. Buying things because they last, not because it was on sale or a deal. Because it was there and they wanted it.

Have I become like Benjamin Button? Am I aging backwards? Is it better to ignore that perhaps I haven’t matured or am I retroactively immaturing?

Yesterday, a friend who I hadn’t spoken to since I was 18 said I was still the same. Of the same beliefs. With so-called experience, what changes? Does experience equate maturity?

I asked out loud today with dinner with my parents when I heard my second cousin just had a kid—is it better to be an old parent or a young parent?

To which my mom quipped, a mature parent, of course.

I thought by turning 25, I would stop learning about new music and start listening to NPR. I only started listening (and loving) This American Life and still liked discovering new music (although suddenly I disliked going to concerts where pushing and shoving are part of the experience). I am getting in touch with people I thought I had burnt bridges with and people I would have never connect with ever. Yet, I still live in a barely furnished apartment with cheap furniture.

But I guess, I can’t be pretentious?

In San Francisco, as Chris was taking a merry walk to Best Buy, a group of three guys approached him asking for directions to Townsend.

Wanting to be helpful and a good citizen, he asked them for more details—are you going to Caltrain? are you going to the ballpark?

And Chris gave them thorough and clear directions.

Then as he finished, a guy said to his friend, “Oh he’s cute!”

The friend responded, “I would totally take a bite out of him.”

Then the third guy said, “Um, thanks for the directions! Bye!”