"FOR YOUR SHIP TO COME IN, BUILD A DOCK"*
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| [Untitled] Light Paintings III.I |
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| [Untitled] Light Paintings III.II |
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| [Untitled] Light Paintings III.III |
*on a tile that sat on the upper edge of the stove-top/oven range in my childhood home, were these words in a sort of mosaic tiling. i saw these words every single day of my childhood (post-adoption). they meant very little to me, at the time, because it seemed obvious, like duh. but as i've grown older, i am beginning to realize the power of this daily message. of my two adopted parents, i do not know who bought or acquired the tile; in essence, i do not know how it arrived in our home. it does, however, sound a lot like my adopted dad. he is a go-getter. he does whatever the fuck he wants. after he graduated from graduate school, he was drafted to serve in Vietnam. he enlisted, immediately, was accepted into flight school, and served as a medivac pilot for many years during the Vietnam War. he is a smart man. he's a survivor. he does whatever the hell he wants. and what he and my adopted mother wanted was to raise asian babies. they wanted Vietnamese babies, after seeing the tragedies of war, but for whatever reason, they couldn't, so they went South Korean. my adopted mother internationally adopted two children during a time when there was no internet. i honestly do not know how one accomplishes this without the help of the internet. she filled out forms! she made phone calls! she had to figure it all out without the internet. and i know she did all the work, in this regard, because i grew up with them, and i understood their dynamic. and so, she's one helluva go-getter, too. and it is this realization that has been slowly dawning on me, when i think about why it is that i'm a go-getter, and that it seems like there are so few go-getters in this world. i know my adopted parents think that people think whatever they think about them because we grew up in a very wealthy area, and so, compared to the truly wealthy, my adopted parents also seemed poor. but i was far from raised as a poor kid. i'd seen the world before i graduated from high school. i participated in all of the expensive activities. my adopted dad prioritized experiences over stuff. he hated stuff, ironically, being somewhat of a hoarder, himself, but he never paid a cent more for "things" than he thought the thing was worth. at the drop of a hat, however, he would spend thousands of dollars on a plane ticket, because what i wanted for my college graduation present was to keep chipping away at my goal of stepping foot on every continent before turning twenty five (i didn't reach my goal, because i didn't land in australia until i was thirty one, and i still need to find a way to antarctica). nevertheless, i was raised by go-getters, and the odd thing is that it never seemed that way while i was being raised by them. and so, despite whatever emotional issues i have with the two go-getters who substantially improved my lot in life, i will always be grateful for being raised by them, because i, too, am one helluva go-getter, which doesn't bode well for my adopted parents, personally (as i am always now going and getting as opposed to taking care of them, etc.), but i think that their instilling in me that go-getter attitude will, eventually, change the world. yea, i said it, i'm a world changer, because i'm a world builder, because of all of the things my adopted parents hoped to instill in me, that's the one that stuck, building my fucking dock, so that my fucking ship will fucking come in.
