It's a mood and a decision and a certainty.
From then on, all day, it is only good things. Once it begins to happen, it, for the most part, is complete and lasts until the set time. If it is a panicked series of days of study, it is a productive, if exhausting, several days of determination. What I care more for, is when I can set aside a single day for myself. Sometimes it is purely out of instinctual recognition. Things have been bad, so I take a breath and fulfill an entire day wherein I do exactly as I need. And for it, emerge clearer, better, and whole once more. Or, in this case, things were alright, but not held together well. So it came to a moment where I "woke" with resolve and decided just to do what I needed to do. Not in the sense of steeling myself and pushing forward, but in the complete opposite way. Letting it all fall away, and letting myself just go ahead and take care of it with ease - broken away from all the external thoughts. It was very much taking a day for myself and doing exactly as each moment demanded. It began with writing what and why I was doing as I was in a few simple sentences with immense power. Then a list of ideas and goals. Then a few little things as they struck me. Need to clean that, need to fix that, need to reply to that. Each step simple and obvious. As well as: no, should not do this. Just dropping and moving on. I made a promise and I will not break it. For each moment, I look at it directly, (in a way I probably always can, but never do....) know the answer, and do as I know I really want to do best. The result is a mixture of activities. Tidying, looking up sexual topics I was curious about, showering, a private spiritual meditative dance, dressing up in a comfortable dress and a blanket, studying, drinking tea, talking to Jackson, looking up bus schedules, more memorization, more preparation, more notes, more planning for the coming week, and now this - a reflection on what it is like.
Because it is like being as unblemished and ...as paramount, aloof, prevailing, as I can. Promising to do my best, and every moment checking that I am, and actually doing so. However it starts, it is an unbreakable commitment that makes me more powerful than I am and lasts for the entire time I gave myself. It has been that I lock myself in my room for the entire day, away from everyone and everything, but it probably could be accomplished just as well if it were a promise regarding going out and doing as I think I ought publicly, I think it would not fade because distractions and negatives and badness are repelled with such resolution. It isn't without question, each imperfect option is still considered. But the question each time is asked and answered with such irrefutable knowledge with what I should do or change.
I have done it for figuring myself out. I have done it for planning a summer. I have done it for how I think of my life. I have done it for rescuing my studies. I have done it for reading a book and playing certain games. It is not something that I am very good at just doing whenever I want to, despite how I sometimes think I must be able to (and subsequently am unpleasantly surprised at just how far from the same level of completeness I am) but sometimes things collide or come to a head in just the right way that I can, with ease, slip into this mode of single-minded determination. Perhaps the most mysterious part is that it isn't quite single-minded. It isn't a focus on a single thing, but a focus on a single way of acting. No dedication to one class, but a dedication to an ideal. I will do only important things today. I will not do things I do not want, I will not avoid things I do want. I will go about today with purity. And purity is really as best a description as anything. I want to wear this dress, so I will. There really isn't anything else to it. I wanted to. I promised I would act as I think I should. So that is what I am going to do. I want to study so I will without thinking about other things I could do or should do. I should clean up so I will without thinking or planning much past. I will stop when I am tired, do something else that I want as a rest, and return when I realize I should. There really isn't anything more to it.
As great as these days of eternal uprightness are, they only last a day and are difficult if not impossible to cause.
They vary too. This time it was more materialistic study and progress and maintenance. Sometimes it is very deep dedicated philosophic-spirituality. Thinking of who I am, what makes me me, writing and drawing and communing with how I have been and what I will become.* Sometimes it is a day of doing everything that is frivolous without letting worries intrude. "I promised this day to myself, so it will be computer games, reading, and whatever strikes my fancy at the time." The next day there was no shock or repulsion, but a feeling of gladness and clarity and preparedness afterwards, each time for each kind of day.
*(This is the most frequent, deep, and memorable kind. These I can promise myself much much more readily, and I'm even thinking that possibly at any time. The only reason I don't do so more frequently is actually because it seems oddly selfless and selfish at the same time, and there are things that are more connecting to this world that always need attention. Shame.)
They all have a purity. A separateness. A single-ness which is not narrowness. A promise and certainty. And they are whole belief and knowledge of what I can do. Without the should or need but simple "will." They are shedding all the built up conflicts and knowledge and cross-referenced necessities and just submerging myself in the mindset I have chosen.
It's really too bad that I have only been able to describe the outline and the facts of the nature of these rare days. I have hinted decently at how they are to experience, but, perhaps because this time it was more materialistic, I have not and will not describe any more the quiet "otherness" of the mindsets I throw myself into. I don't have the same deep desire to root out the reason and encapsule the nature and source and being of it that I sometimes do. In fact I don't think I've done a very interesting reflection on a very interesting phenomena so I don't very much want to post it as if I were at least a little proud of it. The only reason I am is because I suspect I will look back and be glad that I wrote it at all, and perhaps will like parts of it or else be able to pick out what was done right and know what needs adding to. Not that I ever will, but the principle of it is really what makes it matter, and makes me act one way or the other.
29 October 2012
21 October 2012
Love, Sex, and Intimacy pt. 1
A summary of love, sex, and intimacy
Fellow Humans.
Demi sexual.... Asexual.
Trust.
I've stayed away from pretty much all the relationship movies, books, and stories. I've certainly avoided porn completely, although I've seen some of it as any internet dweller will have. I've had no curiosity for porn, nor romance, nor romantic comedy, nor really anything related.
It could be a subconscious stigma of mine.
It's possibly just a complete lack of interest.
It may be because I've never come across good material, and indeed I look down on pretty much all of it.
Most likely it is because I already have a version of how love should be and other works are a hideous affront to my (yes) ideal.
But my ideal is really, really so goddamn little to ask. It's terrible how shallow most all love is shown as.
I see love portrayed as someone becoming fond for someone else in 10 seconds flat and about half an hour later deciding that they want to live together with them forever and will spend the next days, weeks, months devoting all their focus on getting that guy/girl. For the reason they had when they saw them that first time. It's insulting.
I see love portrayed as embarrassing situation after embarrassing situation and all the while trying to stammer "I love you." And again, protagonists will do anything for the other person because "it's love!"
I see love portrayed as the highest ideal - a couple married for decades, lose everything and give their lives in a tragedy, merely to be together one last time. You'd think I'd admire this one, but it also, while at least taking it more seriously, is one-sided and just faker than it ought.
I see love portrayed as instantly amazing in a kiss. Mockery.
I see love portrayed as so perfect and passionate because they are in bed together. How is that even love?
I see love portrayed as violent and idiotically risky as they make out in public for no reason other than - so madly in love, isn't it great? While I understand it about a square centimeter's worth, that is, frankly, disturbing and reprehensible. The more so because it is indicated to be admirable. The more so because it nigh always supposed to be admirable.
All of this is perhaps inextricably tied to me being different. Both because I am asexual and because I am too obsessed with ideals to understand shallowness. And yet.
I have now watched some romance in anime that wasn't horrendously shallow and I understand many of the things that "being in love" is like. I have now read a book with romance and a book with sex that wasn't nauseating. (either for being shallow, or exaggerated, or incomprehensible, or mindless, or obsessive, or lame) The animes have been Kimi Ni Todoke, No. 6, and now Say I Love You. (and another I can't spell or pronounce, apologies. I don't think it is that good but I'm giving it a chance) The books were, oh so ironically, Twilight and Dhalgren.
It bears explaining that Twilight was shallow, but for the first time I just let it play out and understood the interest and attraction Bella had. I understood her perspective and it wasn't eye rolling or disturbing or nonsensical to me. Sure, I skipped the paragraphs that were too boring or descriptive, but I could empathize for the first time. (I will say that the next books were just a weird fantasy adventure plot unfolding. Yes I enjoyed the rest too, but that is neither here nor there for the moment.) I don't know if it was because Twilight was more third person, or more first person than other times I have read similar romantic things. Maybe because the romance was the focus and I'd never been interested enough to try before. Maybe because it didn't devolve into eroticism which is what I will skip because it is boring, nonsensical and uncomfortable. I don't know. I just know it was basically the first romance I read. And I got it for whatever reason.
Dhalgren finally was a work that didn't treat sex as either some perfect act, or some deliciously evil act, or some primal act of devotion, or some obsessive goal of life. It was described in detail, but again, not hollow portrayal. Rough, accurate, factual, true, it didn't hide the bad parts. It didn't scream and cry the good parts. It didn't make it into something it wasn't. And while I flinched and still desired to turn away from some of it out of habit, I wasn't doing it because it was wrong or lies or caricature for the first time.
Time after time it returned to describe it. And gradually I was able to scrape away the preconceptions of monsters placed to protect me long ago. Gradually I was able to just accept it for what it was and just imagine it without blocks in my mind. Things like debauchery, depravity, dirty, disgusting, reckless, mindless, oppressive, wicked, and wrong. Many of the same ideas remain, but they have the negative sides removed from them. Still I think oppressive, but not malignantly so - mutually so. Still I think depravity, but not forced and mindless and helpless, but choosing to indulge for awhile. Still I think dirty and wicked, but only because others make it so. Still I think disgusting, but only because I can choose to, as I can with most all organic things. I do not think of there being any of the good traits inherent, but now at least I can separate it from the bad.
So, then, what are my ideals and how does asexuality work for me? What does it make incomprehensible and what do I still completely experience like everyone else?
It certainly makes watching romatic anime and movies interesting. There will be simple statements and portrayals I will completely understand and practically blush in sympathy with how much I know that feeling. And then there will be dissonant moments that I complete do not understand. Of course, it helped to be in love. Suddenly a lot more made sense to me in these movies and books. Even when they were portrayed badly I knew what they were aiming for.
The other day it was holding hands. The girl was marveling at just how much it made a difference, and how it didn't matter compared to how long or how intimate they had been, it was still important and made her heart beat faster. I knew exactly what she meant. Then, at the end, after they had shared something important and personal, the boy asked to kiss her. I understood the asking, but not the kiss. A kiss wouldn't share what the moment held. Kisses are either childish infatuation or a small gift of admiration. Holding tightly is far closer to that strong desire to share and understand and love and comfort. Even just being together - standing, sitting, laying side by side is closer than the brevity and inanity of a kiss.
Indeed, most often what I empathize most with is the uncertainty, fear, and self-reproach that comes with it. Then the resulting wonder and happiness at all the small truths and even greater wonder at the whole truth.
But what is almost always left out, and what is so important to the concept of love, is that frustrated desire to understand. That willingness to trust completely and give everything. Not like "your attention to the end of days" but your whole flawed self to be as close as possible. The ability to stop being who you are amongst the crowd and be yourself or maybe somebody new. The desire to give and to take and to grow together. The desire to Kimi Ni Todoke - Reach You.
There is the accepting of flaws, in yourself and in them. Not to deny them or say they don't matter at all, but to acknowledge them and know them for what they are - good and bad, permanent and changeable at once. There is the fear of doing anything and everything wrong, as well as the confidence that you can and will and it won't matter. There is the desire to adopt and to differentiate world views. To understand, to share, and to expand them. There is the trust that they want to be there for you, past standing up for you, they actually want to understand you.
Some of the things that matter so, are hinted at or shown, but always skewed. The overreactioned attempts to protect. The baring of souls ends in "it's okay, I like you anyway." While I agree, it's shameful it is this instead of care to truly know or just vows to try to as best they can. The dates are all awkwardness instead of awkwardness and turmoiled and blind happiness and distant intimacy. They end in wild kisses, or running away to rent rooms, or just plain turning away because they give up trying to communicate. Instead of attempts to say or share in someway what it all means. They make mistakes and try to hide them instead of try to steel against their fears and draw closer in order to recover what was lost. Because that matters so much more than status or appearance in their eyes. Being true matters so much more than seeming.
Truth in self. Truth in them. Truth in understanding. Truth in self examination. Truth in teaching. Truth in thought, in action. Truth in change. Truth in knowing truth.
I like to think it is because I'm irritatingly mature and wise... instead of blind from the emotions and desires that everyone else experiences. I like to think that being unable to feel sexual urges means I am able to see further and past their distractions. Not that I am placing substitutions for a very real, very true set of thoughts I'll never experience. I like to think I know better, and am not just missing the possibilities the "shallowness" I so deride, has to offer.
Similarly, I realized in middle school that I didn't understand what sex had to do with marriage. Marriage was living together, so there were all kinds of things like enjoying each other's company, agreeing on values, caring for the household, that made sense. But why, why on earth, was sex some sort of important thing for living together in marriage? And for that matter, what was it about rape and cheating that was so terrible. I mean, beating and forcing was wrong, but why is rape so much worse? Especially if it was actually less physically harmful. And cheating. How could love be tied to sex, and how so much so that having sex with another would ruin someone's love?
That still, is... incomprehensible and disturbing to me. Is sex so important? Or is love so unimportant?
What awful propositions.
Company, trust, sharing, values, worldviews, and even lifestyle seem more important. So why is love described as based on irrational attraction and desire above all else. (they even have the insolence to call it true love, of all things) What a needlessly ugly world when we could pay attention to much more meaningful beautiful concepts in how we relate and love each other.
And I am the one who is different. It seems a cruel joke.
Temporary fin. I am missing much of the picture, but I have nothing more to offer on it now. I hopefully will return to add at another time. Particularly the specifics of being ace, both idealistically and physically and sympathetically and more.
Fellow Humans.
Demi sexual.... Asexual.
Trust.
I've stayed away from pretty much all the relationship movies, books, and stories. I've certainly avoided porn completely, although I've seen some of it as any internet dweller will have. I've had no curiosity for porn, nor romance, nor romantic comedy, nor really anything related.
It could be a subconscious stigma of mine.
It's possibly just a complete lack of interest.
It may be because I've never come across good material, and indeed I look down on pretty much all of it.
Most likely it is because I already have a version of how love should be and other works are a hideous affront to my (yes) ideal.
But my ideal is really, really so goddamn little to ask. It's terrible how shallow most all love is shown as.
I see love portrayed as someone becoming fond for someone else in 10 seconds flat and about half an hour later deciding that they want to live together with them forever and will spend the next days, weeks, months devoting all their focus on getting that guy/girl. For the reason they had when they saw them that first time. It's insulting.
I see love portrayed as embarrassing situation after embarrassing situation and all the while trying to stammer "I love you." And again, protagonists will do anything for the other person because "it's love!"
I see love portrayed as the highest ideal - a couple married for decades, lose everything and give their lives in a tragedy, merely to be together one last time. You'd think I'd admire this one, but it also, while at least taking it more seriously, is one-sided and just faker than it ought.
I see love portrayed as instantly amazing in a kiss. Mockery.
I see love portrayed as so perfect and passionate because they are in bed together. How is that even love?
I see love portrayed as violent and idiotically risky as they make out in public for no reason other than - so madly in love, isn't it great? While I understand it about a square centimeter's worth, that is, frankly, disturbing and reprehensible. The more so because it is indicated to be admirable. The more so because it nigh always supposed to be admirable.
All of this is perhaps inextricably tied to me being different. Both because I am asexual and because I am too obsessed with ideals to understand shallowness. And yet.
I have now watched some romance in anime that wasn't horrendously shallow and I understand many of the things that "being in love" is like. I have now read a book with romance and a book with sex that wasn't nauseating. (either for being shallow, or exaggerated, or incomprehensible, or mindless, or obsessive, or lame) The animes have been Kimi Ni Todoke, No. 6, and now Say I Love You. (and another I can't spell or pronounce, apologies. I don't think it is that good but I'm giving it a chance) The books were, oh so ironically, Twilight and Dhalgren.
It bears explaining that Twilight was shallow, but for the first time I just let it play out and understood the interest and attraction Bella had. I understood her perspective and it wasn't eye rolling or disturbing or nonsensical to me. Sure, I skipped the paragraphs that were too boring or descriptive, but I could empathize for the first time. (I will say that the next books were just a weird fantasy adventure plot unfolding. Yes I enjoyed the rest too, but that is neither here nor there for the moment.) I don't know if it was because Twilight was more third person, or more first person than other times I have read similar romantic things. Maybe because the romance was the focus and I'd never been interested enough to try before. Maybe because it didn't devolve into eroticism which is what I will skip because it is boring, nonsensical and uncomfortable. I don't know. I just know it was basically the first romance I read. And I got it for whatever reason.
Dhalgren finally was a work that didn't treat sex as either some perfect act, or some deliciously evil act, or some primal act of devotion, or some obsessive goal of life. It was described in detail, but again, not hollow portrayal. Rough, accurate, factual, true, it didn't hide the bad parts. It didn't scream and cry the good parts. It didn't make it into something it wasn't. And while I flinched and still desired to turn away from some of it out of habit, I wasn't doing it because it was wrong or lies or caricature for the first time.
Time after time it returned to describe it. And gradually I was able to scrape away the preconceptions of monsters placed to protect me long ago. Gradually I was able to just accept it for what it was and just imagine it without blocks in my mind. Things like debauchery, depravity, dirty, disgusting, reckless, mindless, oppressive, wicked, and wrong. Many of the same ideas remain, but they have the negative sides removed from them. Still I think oppressive, but not malignantly so - mutually so. Still I think depravity, but not forced and mindless and helpless, but choosing to indulge for awhile. Still I think dirty and wicked, but only because others make it so. Still I think disgusting, but only because I can choose to, as I can with most all organic things. I do not think of there being any of the good traits inherent, but now at least I can separate it from the bad.
So, then, what are my ideals and how does asexuality work for me? What does it make incomprehensible and what do I still completely experience like everyone else?
It certainly makes watching romatic anime and movies interesting. There will be simple statements and portrayals I will completely understand and practically blush in sympathy with how much I know that feeling. And then there will be dissonant moments that I complete do not understand. Of course, it helped to be in love. Suddenly a lot more made sense to me in these movies and books. Even when they were portrayed badly I knew what they were aiming for.
The other day it was holding hands. The girl was marveling at just how much it made a difference, and how it didn't matter compared to how long or how intimate they had been, it was still important and made her heart beat faster. I knew exactly what she meant. Then, at the end, after they had shared something important and personal, the boy asked to kiss her. I understood the asking, but not the kiss. A kiss wouldn't share what the moment held. Kisses are either childish infatuation or a small gift of admiration. Holding tightly is far closer to that strong desire to share and understand and love and comfort. Even just being together - standing, sitting, laying side by side is closer than the brevity and inanity of a kiss.
Indeed, most often what I empathize most with is the uncertainty, fear, and self-reproach that comes with it. Then the resulting wonder and happiness at all the small truths and even greater wonder at the whole truth.
But what is almost always left out, and what is so important to the concept of love, is that frustrated desire to understand. That willingness to trust completely and give everything. Not like "your attention to the end of days" but your whole flawed self to be as close as possible. The ability to stop being who you are amongst the crowd and be yourself or maybe somebody new. The desire to give and to take and to grow together. The desire to Kimi Ni Todoke - Reach You.
There is the accepting of flaws, in yourself and in them. Not to deny them or say they don't matter at all, but to acknowledge them and know them for what they are - good and bad, permanent and changeable at once. There is the fear of doing anything and everything wrong, as well as the confidence that you can and will and it won't matter. There is the desire to adopt and to differentiate world views. To understand, to share, and to expand them. There is the trust that they want to be there for you, past standing up for you, they actually want to understand you.
Some of the things that matter so, are hinted at or shown, but always skewed. The overreactioned attempts to protect. The baring of souls ends in "it's okay, I like you anyway." While I agree, it's shameful it is this instead of care to truly know or just vows to try to as best they can. The dates are all awkwardness instead of awkwardness and turmoiled and blind happiness and distant intimacy. They end in wild kisses, or running away to rent rooms, or just plain turning away because they give up trying to communicate. Instead of attempts to say or share in someway what it all means. They make mistakes and try to hide them instead of try to steel against their fears and draw closer in order to recover what was lost. Because that matters so much more than status or appearance in their eyes. Being true matters so much more than seeming.
Truth in self. Truth in them. Truth in understanding. Truth in self examination. Truth in teaching. Truth in thought, in action. Truth in change. Truth in knowing truth.
I like to think it is because I'm irritatingly mature and wise... instead of blind from the emotions and desires that everyone else experiences. I like to think that being unable to feel sexual urges means I am able to see further and past their distractions. Not that I am placing substitutions for a very real, very true set of thoughts I'll never experience. I like to think I know better, and am not just missing the possibilities the "shallowness" I so deride, has to offer.
Similarly, I realized in middle school that I didn't understand what sex had to do with marriage. Marriage was living together, so there were all kinds of things like enjoying each other's company, agreeing on values, caring for the household, that made sense. But why, why on earth, was sex some sort of important thing for living together in marriage? And for that matter, what was it about rape and cheating that was so terrible. I mean, beating and forcing was wrong, but why is rape so much worse? Especially if it was actually less physically harmful. And cheating. How could love be tied to sex, and how so much so that having sex with another would ruin someone's love?
That still, is... incomprehensible and disturbing to me. Is sex so important? Or is love so unimportant?
What awful propositions.
Company, trust, sharing, values, worldviews, and even lifestyle seem more important. So why is love described as based on irrational attraction and desire above all else. (they even have the insolence to call it true love, of all things) What a needlessly ugly world when we could pay attention to much more meaningful beautiful concepts in how we relate and love each other.
And I am the one who is different. It seems a cruel joke.
Temporary fin. I am missing much of the picture, but I have nothing more to offer on it now. I hopefully will return to add at another time. Particularly the specifics of being ace, both idealistically and physically and sympathetically and more.
17 October 2012
Maximizing Prosperity
I've obsessed about it before in the abstract, lamenting how terrible it is that I keep falling into this habit of doing things because they are practical. Not thinking, not caring, and just dulling all my senses and enduring for the sake of a meaningless "path to the good life." You see, the basic question is, Should I focus on achieving a good status now, in order that I will have an excellent position later?
Should I put aside all my side obsessions and desires in order that I may adopt them later?
That doesn't make any sense. Not only will I lose all my familiarity with how to actually be interested in things, but I will have instead wasted a good portion of my life. And I have done it before and noticed how much it just doesn't work. For all the time I dedicated, I got so little reward out of it. Whereas if I had instead enjoyed my life for what it was, not only would I have learned more about myself and my interests and had a better time, I would probably be better off for having learned how to involve myself and experienced my interests.
I wanted so hard to be the ideal child. So I was. I performed very very well in school. I never neglected my family's wishes. I never transgressed in any real way. I didn't take risks, I followed most advice. I didn't disappeared off with my friends. I thought I had all the freedom in the world because I had great parents. But now I don't wonder if it was freedom to restrict myself and if I really had tried to do things in a better, more "me-central" way (learning about myself and my world through those self-experienced path of risks and failures) instead of more "future securing" way, I would have been just as constrained by them, under the pretense that I would have been "losing my chances at life." I sincerely doubt they would have acted that way, but it's something I must admit I'll never know.
And of course it seems like I am wrong to think I know better. To try other things when it is so clear that the "right" path is this dedicated, working, focused, preparation one.
And yet....
What that would mean is that it is no longer about the scores and the reputation and the usual objective measures of success. Instead it is about my own involvement, passion, and learning.
I can't help but be revolted. How can I claim such superiority over the "proper life." I'll just slam into a wall and fall all the way I have climbed, won't I? Isn't that what happens? And I'll have so many regrets, and I'll lose the life I could have had! That's what they always say, and they're right, aren't they? How dare I gamble with my life when I have been given everything so far, when I am playing with huge amounts of cash, and all the expectations of friends, family, and my future self.
But the more I stop and think about it. Really think, instead of my constant assumptions, it makes so much more sense. So much more sense to become the person that does what matters to them. So much more sense to pursue dead ends and risks and reap the rewards of understanding, experience, and passion. So much more sense to become the person that doesn't hide behind carefully planned statistical probabilities and instead actually lives. What life, what future, am I securing by this dead lifestyle of maximization of my position. What will I do with it, but continue thinking every year is a critical year to continue securing my future? What, in fact, would be the point if I never learn of myself, my interests, my personality, and my goals? How could I achieve anything but a safe life, secured from everything and sealed off from the things that I really hope for? Yes, I merely want a modest life. That makes no difference. I want a modest life where I am free to do with myself what I will. Not a modest life that is such a fortress of preparedness that all I do is reinforce walls and avoid actually making it livable inside.
How can I teach myself how to live that life of a nomad, wandering the world and picking the fruit I find, when all I know to do is lay bricks, one by one?
Well.
The first step would have to be to accept, with my heart, that I actually do want such a new lifestyle. I've talked about it before, but.... but to actually imagine, accept and desire it without crippling fears and the doubt driving me back to the "right" "safe" "proper" "best" path. (So obviously the right, safe, proper, best path! How can I deny it? How dare I deny it?) I have to do that first before I can progress to any degree. Then. Then maybe I can change how I think and go about things. Actually begin stepping out and just doing things without any promises and plans and guarantees and backups. Actually flourish and grow my life in unexpected and fascinating ways. Try things. Pursue things. Begin things. Really, really create and attempt and bring life to the things I want to do even now, but avoid because of the unknown and the lack of will to actually begin them. (That same lack of will I have talked about before. That same willingness to wait and go without. That same lack of ability to ever begin thing despite all the ideas and interest I have in them.)
I'll have to think on these things. I'll have to think for today, for the next week, perhaps longer. I'll have to be sure and to know. But once I do know. Once I am sure. Then nothing will be holding me back from changing who I am, who I want to be, and what I will become.
Would I be happier?
Edit days later: Oh god, so much fail. I just realized that what I am thinking about as I wrote this is essentially the exact same pattern of behavior as how I (hate how I) play videogames. I've been trying to beat life instead of live it. I try to find out what the objectives are, plan and hoard for them as hard as I can, and forget the rest. That is so effed up.
And I can say that is so wrong, but I don't know how to think any other way about it. Just how I fall back into the same habits about 5 minutes later in a game when I try to play it differently. Yes I can divert myself, yes I've been expanding how many things I appreciate and value and experience. But really really to change how I think and live and plan?
When I look at it that way, it seems like I'll never be able to. Small steps, Grey, small steps.
Should I put aside all my side obsessions and desires in order that I may adopt them later?
That doesn't make any sense. Not only will I lose all my familiarity with how to actually be interested in things, but I will have instead wasted a good portion of my life. And I have done it before and noticed how much it just doesn't work. For all the time I dedicated, I got so little reward out of it. Whereas if I had instead enjoyed my life for what it was, not only would I have learned more about myself and my interests and had a better time, I would probably be better off for having learned how to involve myself and experienced my interests.
I wanted so hard to be the ideal child. So I was. I performed very very well in school. I never neglected my family's wishes. I never transgressed in any real way. I didn't take risks, I followed most advice. I didn't disappeared off with my friends. I thought I had all the freedom in the world because I had great parents. But now I don't wonder if it was freedom to restrict myself and if I really had tried to do things in a better, more "me-central" way (learning about myself and my world through those self-experienced path of risks and failures) instead of more "future securing" way, I would have been just as constrained by them, under the pretense that I would have been "losing my chances at life." I sincerely doubt they would have acted that way, but it's something I must admit I'll never know.
And of course it seems like I am wrong to think I know better. To try other things when it is so clear that the "right" path is this dedicated, working, focused, preparation one.
And yet....
What that would mean is that it is no longer about the scores and the reputation and the usual objective measures of success. Instead it is about my own involvement, passion, and learning.
I can't help but be revolted. How can I claim such superiority over the "proper life." I'll just slam into a wall and fall all the way I have climbed, won't I? Isn't that what happens? And I'll have so many regrets, and I'll lose the life I could have had! That's what they always say, and they're right, aren't they? How dare I gamble with my life when I have been given everything so far, when I am playing with huge amounts of cash, and all the expectations of friends, family, and my future self.
But the more I stop and think about it. Really think, instead of my constant assumptions, it makes so much more sense. So much more sense to become the person that does what matters to them. So much more sense to pursue dead ends and risks and reap the rewards of understanding, experience, and passion. So much more sense to become the person that doesn't hide behind carefully planned statistical probabilities and instead actually lives. What life, what future, am I securing by this dead lifestyle of maximization of my position. What will I do with it, but continue thinking every year is a critical year to continue securing my future? What, in fact, would be the point if I never learn of myself, my interests, my personality, and my goals? How could I achieve anything but a safe life, secured from everything and sealed off from the things that I really hope for? Yes, I merely want a modest life. That makes no difference. I want a modest life where I am free to do with myself what I will. Not a modest life that is such a fortress of preparedness that all I do is reinforce walls and avoid actually making it livable inside.
How can I teach myself how to live that life of a nomad, wandering the world and picking the fruit I find, when all I know to do is lay bricks, one by one?
Well.
The first step would have to be to accept, with my heart, that I actually do want such a new lifestyle. I've talked about it before, but.... but to actually imagine, accept and desire it without crippling fears and the doubt driving me back to the "right" "safe" "proper" "best" path. (So obviously the right, safe, proper, best path! How can I deny it? How dare I deny it?) I have to do that first before I can progress to any degree. Then. Then maybe I can change how I think and go about things. Actually begin stepping out and just doing things without any promises and plans and guarantees and backups. Actually flourish and grow my life in unexpected and fascinating ways. Try things. Pursue things. Begin things. Really, really create and attempt and bring life to the things I want to do even now, but avoid because of the unknown and the lack of will to actually begin them. (That same lack of will I have talked about before. That same willingness to wait and go without. That same lack of ability to ever begin thing despite all the ideas and interest I have in them.)
I'll have to think on these things. I'll have to think for today, for the next week, perhaps longer. I'll have to be sure and to know. But once I do know. Once I am sure. Then nothing will be holding me back from changing who I am, who I want to be, and what I will become.
Would I be happier?
Edit days later: Oh god, so much fail. I just realized that what I am thinking about as I wrote this is essentially the exact same pattern of behavior as how I (hate how I) play videogames. I've been trying to beat life instead of live it. I try to find out what the objectives are, plan and hoard for them as hard as I can, and forget the rest. That is so effed up.
And I can say that is so wrong, but I don't know how to think any other way about it. Just how I fall back into the same habits about 5 minutes later in a game when I try to play it differently. Yes I can divert myself, yes I've been expanding how many things I appreciate and value and experience. But really really to change how I think and live and plan?
When I look at it that way, it seems like I'll never be able to. Small steps, Grey, small steps.
14 October 2012
Reverie-smith
The airlock swung, the pressure broke.
The air flowed in, apparition,
and I flowed out, corporeal.
The mountain held still, and I stilled my self to face the mountain.
I didn't see it. I didn't notice it, but the atmosphere above, rolled past.
The clouds silent and formidable, the sky blue and invisible.
The powers of a turning sun.
My eyes swept the mountainside, my skin felt the cold intrude, soon seeping in, resting like a second skin around me.
My breath. In and out.
I watched the earth, the rock, the dirt, the creeping plants. My mind, dark and murky with thoughts of forces, time, and process. The air held still with me.
Then my attention moved to background. Foreground was forgotten, because
The clouds glided above with the majesty of of the ocean's leviathans.
Like they, sealed off - in sound, in space, in time.
With perfect grace and peace, the aggregates of wisps, the masses of drifts, moved above with unknowable purpose, indelible complexity, mysterious source.
Smooth, uniform rotation. Incalculable twisting and flow above me. And just as tranquil, slipping out of existence lengths ahead.
And I could tell that the sky flowed with the clouds. The air flooded, wove, and drifted with exactly the same size and silence, but beyond perception.
It was as if I could feel the earth rotating beneath me, perpetual.
The solidity of it. The immensity. The whole. Pivoting so steadily so as to elude all perception.
///////
It is one of those things that is something I want to do, but have not imagined, and so it remained impossible:
I want to be able to write in such a way that I can impel someone to dream. Most likely not by actually capturing the moment I experienced, but instead to bring out the imagination of another, so that they will create their own enactment of sanctity and sentiment. Use words that do not guide, but invite away. Use thoughts that do not describe, but liberate. Force the words downward, and thrust the reader apart from common tangibility towards the lucidity scattered and sown in their own minds.
Begin with seeds poor for their lives.... proffer them soil of possibility, give them suggestions of water, communicate opportunities overflowing with oxygen. Hint at bounty and sing of tactics. And watch them create beyond what I could give.
The air flowed in, apparition,
and I flowed out, corporeal.
The mountain held still, and I stilled my self to face the mountain.
I didn't see it. I didn't notice it, but the atmosphere above, rolled past.
The clouds silent and formidable, the sky blue and invisible.
The powers of a turning sun.
My eyes swept the mountainside, my skin felt the cold intrude, soon seeping in, resting like a second skin around me.
My breath. In and out.
I watched the earth, the rock, the dirt, the creeping plants. My mind, dark and murky with thoughts of forces, time, and process. The air held still with me.
Then my attention moved to background. Foreground was forgotten, because
The clouds glided above with the majesty of of the ocean's leviathans.
Like they, sealed off - in sound, in space, in time.
With perfect grace and peace, the aggregates of wisps, the masses of drifts, moved above with unknowable purpose, indelible complexity, mysterious source.
Smooth, uniform rotation. Incalculable twisting and flow above me. And just as tranquil, slipping out of existence lengths ahead.
And I could tell that the sky flowed with the clouds. The air flooded, wove, and drifted with exactly the same size and silence, but beyond perception.
It was as if I could feel the earth rotating beneath me, perpetual.
The solidity of it. The immensity. The whole. Pivoting so steadily so as to elude all perception.
///////
It is one of those things that is something I want to do, but have not imagined, and so it remained impossible:
I want to be able to write in such a way that I can impel someone to dream. Most likely not by actually capturing the moment I experienced, but instead to bring out the imagination of another, so that they will create their own enactment of sanctity and sentiment. Use words that do not guide, but invite away. Use thoughts that do not describe, but liberate. Force the words downward, and thrust the reader apart from common tangibility towards the lucidity scattered and sown in their own minds.
Begin with seeds poor for their lives.... proffer them soil of possibility, give them suggestions of water, communicate opportunities overflowing with oxygen. Hint at bounty and sing of tactics. And watch them create beyond what I could give.
Can I Convince You?
Can I convince you
that it is a good idea to want my last words to be, "I used to be a thing"?
It means so little, and yet so much.
I could ask on and on, what /is/ a "thing"? What makes a thing a thing? And what am I? What makes me, me? And what is being, and what was I being? And how? And what does it mean?
It is personal, and something I remember well. Strangely. I don't know why that phrase said to to me (perhaps once, perhaps a few more times) remained with me days after. Nor why I am able to recall it now, hundreds of days later. Nor why it contains so much lightness of nature in my mind.
It is positively absurd, in much the way life defies meaning.
It doesn't try to be more than it is, it makes a simple statement. It can mean more to you, if you so wish. It is surely unusual and contains meaning at least for me, and maybe objectively. And that, really is what I find most of my life to be about. That strange interplay of what has meaning to me, and what might actually have meaning. For others, for the universe, for time, for reality.
I laughed. I laughed at the pure idea of it. I laughed of the context of trying to communicate. I laughed at the success and the failure. I laughed at being alive. I laughed at the instance and the echoing truth that applies everywhere. I laughed at me, I laughed at the universe, and I laughed at where they become one.
that it is a good idea to want my last words to be, "I used to be a thing"?
It means so little, and yet so much.
I could ask on and on, what /is/ a "thing"? What makes a thing a thing? And what am I? What makes me, me? And what is being, and what was I being? And how? And what does it mean?
It is personal, and something I remember well. Strangely. I don't know why that phrase said to to me (perhaps once, perhaps a few more times) remained with me days after. Nor why I am able to recall it now, hundreds of days later. Nor why it contains so much lightness of nature in my mind.
It is positively absurd, in much the way life defies meaning.
It doesn't try to be more than it is, it makes a simple statement. It can mean more to you, if you so wish. It is surely unusual and contains meaning at least for me, and maybe objectively. And that, really is what I find most of my life to be about. That strange interplay of what has meaning to me, and what might actually have meaning. For others, for the universe, for time, for reality.
I laughed. I laughed at the pure idea of it. I laughed of the context of trying to communicate. I laughed at the success and the failure. I laughed at being alive. I laughed at the instance and the echoing truth that applies everywhere. I laughed at me, I laughed at the universe, and I laughed at where they become one.
11 October 2012
Optimistic as All Struck
It is too bad that most often I do not choose to, or do not get a chance to put down my thoughts when I am noticing the good about me. I don't know if it will work, but I'm going to try to do a little of that now.
It's very tempting to fall back onto the same things that have awed and inspired me before, and there's a good chance that I'll do it again, but I want to try and capture it in a new way and explain it in a way that I haven't thought before.
So this time I won't be starting with how complex the world is. Nor how science lets me see more than seeing. Not with the light of the clouds, the quirk of a video game, the feel of the breeze, nor the elements of taste in a cup of tea. (Though I heated up a cup for the sake of this little endeavor)
What's unexpected then? what can I surprise myself with? What have I not tried before?
This is exactly what I am asking myself. I have all the confidence in the world that I can start anywhere. I'd start with the most extreme examples (of mediocrity, of negativity) if I didn't think it cliche. No, I'd rather settle on something more unusual, less grandiose, and perhaps a bit bizarre. (err, I mean intriguing)
Ecology.
You'd think it would be one of the things that I'd always start with, for things that amaze and inspire me, but I seem to rarely give it as much serious thought as I really really ought. The enormous contradiction is that I want it to be my life's work, and yet I haven't put nearly enough thought into phrasing coherently what exactly makes it endlessly fascinating. What spark of impossible reality blooms in the field.
That itself is part of why I believe ecology is my calling. While many other subjects -- indeed, I'd theorize all subjects -- delight and engage me. I can't recall a time when ecology had to be explained or unlocked for me. The real energy of physics had to be translated and brought to life. Oh, it was! Vividly and marvelously, but it wasn't always that way. The sheer size and majesty of space I recall visualizing for the first time in front of an exhibit inside, I think, the San Francisco Tech Museum. The delight of words and multiple meanings is something I am coming to enjoy deeply, but I still find it finite and variable, it doesn't have the solid, impenetrable wonder that other subject do (, yet!). Philosophy is impressive and pure enough, and it is something I have great expectancy for how universal and beneficent it will prove to me to be, but I do not have any certain answers within it, and perhaps I never will. I feel it is still too new prospect for me. Countless other subjects I have a huge appreciation for (geology, mathematics, videogames (read: interactive media) history, programming, art) and yet each I cannot help but notice how I gained that appreciation. What I changed from, to, and what entirely new areas it opened for me. I can speak of how I was aware of so little before, or cared so little for before I knew them better, and how much that has changed! But first I should look to the original thing I set out to do. (Maybe a few hours from now I can start on that, and I would very much like to write of that, it's too true.)
Ecology. Ecology just, completely, automatically is so very very interesting. I cannot say why life is specifically so much more fascinating to me than the abstracts of how things happen in physics, or the building blocks of chemistry, or the elusive truth of words. Perhaps it is because of the same reason I am fascinated with motion. It is so mysterious in how I cannot pin down exactly everything that is causing the things I observe, and yet.....! And yet I know that everything is there, all the information is there in front of me. And with such absolute certainty and clarity. And with such beauty. Beauty in how it all comes together. Beauty in how it can all be taken apart. And beauty in every step in between. The higher levels of the idea, the execution, the act of taking it apart itself. Everything, everything is beautiful and everything merges and winds together. Inseparable and yet we /can/ artificially separate it. And I can’t tell if doing so makes it more or less beautiful. Probably both at once.
Ecology is like that... like that simple example of motion, only infinite beyond understanding.
Instead of concrete abstract laws of physics there are (just as absolute) laws of nature that are ever modifying themselves. Instead of one action, there are a thousand, all in unison and all in complete /perfect/ opposition. Everything is a horrendous accident and yet, so completely at the same time a marvelous plan that cannot fail. Life acts miracles, but only because we don’t understand it. It can surpass insurmountable odds, but only because we are so limited in our own imaginings. Life acts so definitely and so lifelike, and then turns around and acts so very un-lifelike. Fragility and immortality. It is so impossibly imaginative because it is so very very mindless. Yes, there is the wonder of how fractals and geometry and numbers emerge from randomness. But it’s so much more than that. It is such a fantastic wonder, but how extremely limiting a wonder when life does so much unimaginably more. We haven’t even dreamt up 99.9999% the formulas and mathematics that life has, why stop and wonder at the phi we found in a sunflower?
How very very humbling, and yet how very very empowering ecology is. We can tinker with it, we can even improve it with our mindfulness. And I can laugh and say we can never improve it because we do have minds. We do optimize and plan, and look how life manages so much better because it absolutely does not optimize and plan. It ends up optimizing, but only by avoiding optimizing. By being imperfect, yes, but also by dealing with the inherent random disasters that all life must be able to accommodate for.
I’m speaking of genetics. I’m speaking of behavior. I’m speaking of interspecies interactions. I’m speaking of all the strange subsystems that emerge and blend and make up the way it interacts. Life probably (provably?) interacts with ever increasing levels of complexity too. There is the obvious answer of replication, single cells, multiple cells, colonies, and gaia-like proportions, but I think that too is perhaps too limited a view. It plays with it’s own laws of genetics, it’s own limitations of individuality, (both individual and species scales) it’s own systems of systems of systems.
And everything can teach us something. New ways to think, new levels of interaction and thought and logic. We can use the results, divine the sources, combine the parts, and tease apart rules. Strangely, we can do that. Maybe through tricks of our own minds. Maybe because we are part of nature herself and we can never escape her just as she can never escape us. I don’t understand how we can do it, just as I don’t understand most of what and how and why she works. But it’s that motion. The answers are there, present in the processes everywhere around us. Back through time, now and forward. Always moving, changing, reforming, always the same and yet never ever ever one thing.
It's very tempting to fall back onto the same things that have awed and inspired me before, and there's a good chance that I'll do it again, but I want to try and capture it in a new way and explain it in a way that I haven't thought before.
So this time I won't be starting with how complex the world is. Nor how science lets me see more than seeing. Not with the light of the clouds, the quirk of a video game, the feel of the breeze, nor the elements of taste in a cup of tea. (Though I heated up a cup for the sake of this little endeavor)
What's unexpected then? what can I surprise myself with? What have I not tried before?
This is exactly what I am asking myself. I have all the confidence in the world that I can start anywhere. I'd start with the most extreme examples (of mediocrity, of negativity) if I didn't think it cliche. No, I'd rather settle on something more unusual, less grandiose, and perhaps a bit bizarre. (err, I mean intriguing)
Ecology.
You'd think it would be one of the things that I'd always start with, for things that amaze and inspire me, but I seem to rarely give it as much serious thought as I really really ought. The enormous contradiction is that I want it to be my life's work, and yet I haven't put nearly enough thought into phrasing coherently what exactly makes it endlessly fascinating. What spark of impossible reality blooms in the field.
That itself is part of why I believe ecology is my calling. While many other subjects -- indeed, I'd theorize all subjects -- delight and engage me. I can't recall a time when ecology had to be explained or unlocked for me. The real energy of physics had to be translated and brought to life. Oh, it was! Vividly and marvelously, but it wasn't always that way. The sheer size and majesty of space I recall visualizing for the first time in front of an exhibit inside, I think, the San Francisco Tech Museum. The delight of words and multiple meanings is something I am coming to enjoy deeply, but I still find it finite and variable, it doesn't have the solid, impenetrable wonder that other subject do (, yet!). Philosophy is impressive and pure enough, and it is something I have great expectancy for how universal and beneficent it will prove to me to be, but I do not have any certain answers within it, and perhaps I never will. I feel it is still too new prospect for me. Countless other subjects I have a huge appreciation for (geology, mathematics, videogames (read: interactive media) history, programming, art) and yet each I cannot help but notice how I gained that appreciation. What I changed from, to, and what entirely new areas it opened for me. I can speak of how I was aware of so little before, or cared so little for before I knew them better, and how much that has changed! But first I should look to the original thing I set out to do. (Maybe a few hours from now I can start on that, and I would very much like to write of that, it's too true.)
Ecology. Ecology just, completely, automatically is so very very interesting. I cannot say why life is specifically so much more fascinating to me than the abstracts of how things happen in physics, or the building blocks of chemistry, or the elusive truth of words. Perhaps it is because of the same reason I am fascinated with motion. It is so mysterious in how I cannot pin down exactly everything that is causing the things I observe, and yet.....! And yet I know that everything is there, all the information is there in front of me. And with such absolute certainty and clarity. And with such beauty. Beauty in how it all comes together. Beauty in how it can all be taken apart. And beauty in every step in between. The higher levels of the idea, the execution, the act of taking it apart itself. Everything, everything is beautiful and everything merges and winds together. Inseparable and yet we /can/ artificially separate it. And I can’t tell if doing so makes it more or less beautiful. Probably both at once.
Ecology is like that... like that simple example of motion, only infinite beyond understanding.
Instead of concrete abstract laws of physics there are (just as absolute) laws of nature that are ever modifying themselves. Instead of one action, there are a thousand, all in unison and all in complete /perfect/ opposition. Everything is a horrendous accident and yet, so completely at the same time a marvelous plan that cannot fail. Life acts miracles, but only because we don’t understand it. It can surpass insurmountable odds, but only because we are so limited in our own imaginings. Life acts so definitely and so lifelike, and then turns around and acts so very un-lifelike. Fragility and immortality. It is so impossibly imaginative because it is so very very mindless. Yes, there is the wonder of how fractals and geometry and numbers emerge from randomness. But it’s so much more than that. It is such a fantastic wonder, but how extremely limiting a wonder when life does so much unimaginably more. We haven’t even dreamt up 99.9999% the formulas and mathematics that life has, why stop and wonder at the phi we found in a sunflower?
How very very humbling, and yet how very very empowering ecology is. We can tinker with it, we can even improve it with our mindfulness. And I can laugh and say we can never improve it because we do have minds. We do optimize and plan, and look how life manages so much better because it absolutely does not optimize and plan. It ends up optimizing, but only by avoiding optimizing. By being imperfect, yes, but also by dealing with the inherent random disasters that all life must be able to accommodate for.
I’m speaking of genetics. I’m speaking of behavior. I’m speaking of interspecies interactions. I’m speaking of all the strange subsystems that emerge and blend and make up the way it interacts. Life probably (provably?) interacts with ever increasing levels of complexity too. There is the obvious answer of replication, single cells, multiple cells, colonies, and gaia-like proportions, but I think that too is perhaps too limited a view. It plays with it’s own laws of genetics, it’s own limitations of individuality, (both individual and species scales) it’s own systems of systems of systems.
And everything can teach us something. New ways to think, new levels of interaction and thought and logic. We can use the results, divine the sources, combine the parts, and tease apart rules. Strangely, we can do that. Maybe through tricks of our own minds. Maybe because we are part of nature herself and we can never escape her just as she can never escape us. I don’t understand how we can do it, just as I don’t understand most of what and how and why she works. But it’s that motion. The answers are there, present in the processes everywhere around us. Back through time, now and forward. Always moving, changing, reforming, always the same and yet never ever ever one thing.
05 October 2012
Not hiding
There's no need to hide my tears.
I can walk right by someone, with tears still on my face, look them in the eyes, smile, and they won't even notice that I've been crying.
I will, in the midst of my distress, wish that I could talk to someone - tell someone I'm upset. And then I try to visualize it, and realize that I don't want to hear from anyone, and I don't really desire anyone to know.
"It's okay." I know.
"It's hard." No, it really isn't.
"You're a good person." Yeah, well, that isn't really the problem and it doesn't really help.
"You'll be okay." I'm aware, I'll agree in about a minute.
"I'm here for you." I don't think you can help.
*Comforts* I feel awkward and like I've wasted your time.
*Listens* Now I feel stupid and like I've wasted your time.
"There are other things that are more important." Yeah, I know, I'll be back to normal in a bit.
"Aww, don't cry." This feels more meaningful than being back to normal. But it's wrong and unbalanced if I were thinking straight. I don't want to feel bad about this because I know its not reasonable or practical or helpful. I don't want to be normal either, but it'd be better I guess. Better because it'd be more acceptable. Better because I'd get something done. Better because it's reasonable, practical, logical, and stable.
So what /would/ help? It's not from the responses. I already know pretty much all the angles and ways to look at my situation. I already know what I feel and what I should think and why.
What I do want, is to be understood. Not to be comforted, but to actually have someone know what I'm experiencing. I justdon't think know no one would understand the in's and out's of how I feel, and it'd be just a painful inability to communicate for both of us if I tried.
It doesn't stop me from wanting to be understood.
(I can even articulate the exact combination of thoughts and emotions that cause me to be upset. I can even describe and bring out the looming fears and sadness and how they affect me. I can even pinpoint the way they cross and scrape and why it affects me so. But it wouldn't do any good. I could get someone to understand the cause and the things I care about and why, but not the depth nor the ripples nor the roots that weave in and out and bind it and suspend it. Let alone someone being prepared or wanting to understand.)
I can walk right by someone, with tears still on my face, look them in the eyes, smile, and they won't even notice that I've been crying.
I will, in the midst of my distress, wish that I could talk to someone - tell someone I'm upset. And then I try to visualize it, and realize that I don't want to hear from anyone, and I don't really desire anyone to know.
"It's okay." I know.
"It's hard." No, it really isn't.
"You're a good person." Yeah, well, that isn't really the problem and it doesn't really help.
"You'll be okay." I'm aware, I'll agree in about a minute.
"I'm here for you." I don't think you can help.
*Comforts* I feel awkward and like I've wasted your time.
*Listens* Now I feel stupid and like I've wasted your time.
"There are other things that are more important." Yeah, I know, I'll be back to normal in a bit.
"Aww, don't cry." This feels more meaningful than being back to normal. But it's wrong and unbalanced if I were thinking straight. I don't want to feel bad about this because I know its not reasonable or practical or helpful. I don't want to be normal either, but it'd be better I guess. Better because it'd be more acceptable. Better because I'd get something done. Better because it's reasonable, practical, logical, and stable.
So what /would/ help? It's not from the responses. I already know pretty much all the angles and ways to look at my situation. I already know what I feel and what I should think and why.
What I do want, is to be understood. Not to be comforted, but to actually have someone know what I'm experiencing. I just
It doesn't stop me from wanting to be understood.
(I can even articulate the exact combination of thoughts and emotions that cause me to be upset. I can even describe and bring out the looming fears and sadness and how they affect me. I can even pinpoint the way they cross and scrape and why it affects me so. But it wouldn't do any good. I could get someone to understand the cause and the things I care about and why, but not the depth nor the ripples nor the roots that weave in and out and bind it and suspend it. Let alone someone being prepared or wanting to understand.)
04 October 2012
Coll
I'm hearing crazy amazing science facts and I'm laughing and smiling and clapping my hands at how interesting and amusing and fun it all is.
So why am I the only one doing it? Didn't everyone hear that? Isn't the universe crazy? Isn't it interesting? Isn't it fun? Why isn't everyone filled with glee at how incredibly insane reality is?
Am I wrong? Are they wrong? What is wrong?
What is wrong?
What is wrong what is wrong what is wrong
Why can't I learn about this stuff all the time. Why don't I.
Dammit.
I hate this.
So why am I the only one doing it? Didn't everyone hear that? Isn't the universe crazy? Isn't it interesting? Isn't it fun? Why isn't everyone filled with glee at how incredibly insane reality is?
Am I wrong? Are they wrong? What is wrong?
What is wrong?
What is wrong what is wrong what is wrong
Why can't I learn about this stuff all the time. Why don't I.
Dammit.
I hate this.
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