Aja Luan, A Look Inside

Aja Luan

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold

The cave of wonders. My grandpa’s garage was full of so many trinkets and toys. I would go explore as much as I could in the now nasty place. The wilds of my imagination were fueled by each new discovery. For me, it was a place of too many stories to grasp. He picked up so much waste from the side of the road, he was a collector. He had old bikes, old books and even old televisions. If no one wanted it, he did. Nothing ever went to waste. “Oh the girls are gonna need that.” he’d say. We never did. But we never left his mind when he would pick things up. We never could grasp his love for us until he was gone. At the funeral, we all shared stories about him. About the garage and all the things it’s seen. And all the things he gave us. And all the things he set aside for us. Looking back, it’s easy to see how he loved us through his things. His love was the garage. All of us, his trinkets.

There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west And my spirit is crying for leaving

I am a free spirit. Fighting my whole life to become untethered from everything. The world is mocking me from my stagnant place. I know. I am fighting. I am so close Let me out. I don’t want these people to keep me here. Let me dance in the breeze and sway with the trees. Let me be by the sea. Let me be free. I am trying, I have broken out from the place I was before. I can taste the salty air. It beckons me toward it. The ocean, my salvation. A place as restless as my spirit and as wild as my mind. The only place that has ever felt like home. My watery tears remember your waves, the dirt under my feet remembers your sand, and my frozen clumpy hair remembers the salty air. It is right there. I have almost unlocked my bindings. To be free is to be tied to nowhere yet everywhere. Where no one needs me to be responsible for them. Where I can run for miles, safe by the sea. My home.

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven

What makes a good deed? Acts of service, a gentle smile someone’s way, giving a poor person some excess cash. Why even do those things? People do love to feel good about themselves. They long to bathe in gratification. There’s so much evil in this world. Even if it’s out of greed, aren’t good deeds worth doing? Maybe. Maybe a good deed sprung forth by greed is inherently good. Sometimes the world needs a ‘pick me up’. What inspires people to act? Religion is my best guess. It seems to motivate both the most horrific atrocities and the grandest acts of compassion. It’s too complicated. Is there even a possibility of having a true selfless deed? No, people always gain something from even the most random acts of kindness. Even the happy hormones are a gain; there’s no way anyone could act from the goodness of their heart.

Even so. We still try. It is not a matter of what is truly good or selfless or kind. What we need is to believe people can still have human tenderness. It is so greedy, but so necessary. People need good deeds to believe.