This is how I see myself sometimes. I named this picture "The Aristocrats."

Everyday I think about two things. How to lead myself, and how I would possibly lead others. Every time I think of either, I try very hard to imagine different scenarios and how different people might react to new or radical change. I try to imagine then how to counter their reactions, or lack of them. Some people fight change aggressively while other are passive-aggressive, and the aggression always comes out at the worst possible times.
I've been thinking about these two questions for over a year now, ever since a conversation I had with my uncle after reading 1984. I was completely freaked out by the book and unable to sleep for a solid week, with only limited sleep for weeks after that. I've been affected by books before in a similar manner, but usually because of some personal tragedy affecting the main character (i.e. his mother dying, etc..), not because of a social condition which is entirely plausible and indeed has happened in the past. I was so confused about life after that. I called my uncle and he was the first to pose the ever daunting question to me; how does one go about constructing the perfect society?
First he told me, we must define the word perfect, since it's an ambiguous word, subject to change from person to person. The other ambiguous word is society.


I want to finish this thought but school beckons.

lyrics

I started playing a song the other night on my guitar. These were the words that first came out of my mouth to go along with the melody. Tell me what you honestly think, I can handle it.


I once had a daughter. Her name was Amorie.
I watched her grow up, watched her blow up; every little thing
When we sat, in the park, watching birdies sing
I watched her die; deep inside; buried her with my pride.

And I woke up, from this dream, holding back all the things
I should have said, before you died, and left me here to cry
In this room, in this place, and all I want is your face
Telling me that everything is fine now
And everything is wrong now.





Again, subject to change.

Whatever you think that I am; I am not.

And whatever I think I can be; I might never accomplish.
I had some interesting wake-up calls today.
Fight sleep, or fight the day. You cannot win against yourself.

Hmm....

Laughter followed Jessica as she turned and walked into the next room. Irritation and annoyance crept into her face, and suffused her thoughts. Everything was definitely not going to plan, and however many times she had told herself something like this could happen, she could still not help but feel somewhat dismayed when it did. The utter gall of that... of that man! How could Erik be friends with someone so disrespectful and shameless?...No wonder he doesn't have a girlfriend. She didn't bother to keep back a small and secretive smile that crept onto her face as she turned this amusing and unoriginal thought around and around in her mind.

* * * * *


As she began to realize that her struggle to fall asleep was useless, Becca was filled with an overwhelming sense of dismay. It's all his fault. I wouldn't be up right now if hadn't said those things. Oh God, why does he have to act like such a saint, and then turn immediately around and begin making me look stupid to our friends? She still couldn't believe what he had said to her. Why had he chosen now to start being such an ass? It didn't make any sense. All that she knew was that he would pay for that. She was unaware of a small and secretive smile that had silently latched itself onto her face as she lay facing the night.

* * * * *


Derek lay musing to himself while attempting to read for his geology class. He thought about the last week and the strange melancholy that had attached itself to him earlier in the night and had remained unshakable for hours. Not really a depressive kind; more like and introspective sort of feeling. Sleep. That was the one thing he really needed. Time to think. Time for understanding. Time to regain the balance he seemed to be on the brink of finally retrieving. As he reached over to turn off the light, he began to think to himself and a small, secretive smile briefly touched his lips, while never coming close to his eyes. All women must be crazy, he concluded, turning his back he began shaking with silent laughter as he slipped off into a dreamless sleep.

Social Philosophy

What is the most attractive justification for value-promoting public morality?

This week's paper is seriously hard. It's not that I can't understand the subject matter, I just have no idea how to express my feelings on it in the form of a paper. The way I feel is that I have an extremely long and tedious math problem that can only be solved in my head. No visual place markers; no help from the physical world. All I can do is put all the pieces together and hope they come out in the most simplified form.
The problem is the one I've always had; which of course, is my almost overwhelming impatience. It is probably one of my biggest bars to relaxation and lasting satisfaction. I'm not really ambitious. Just impatient to be at the end. To finish something before I give it up for something else. To finish something before I stop caring. To leave before things have a chance to really fall apart; or to really work. Gahhhh

(shaking head in apparent disgust)

My left foot is numb. In fact both my legs are numb. The left foot however, stands out, with the sharp pain of a limb trying to either stay awake, or go to sleep. I don't know which except now I can't feel it at all. My hand move on their own accord and yet they control themselves. They seem to know when they've made a mistake and instinctually fix it without once consulting my brain to see what it thinks.

I need to sleep.


Disconnecting dots in my head.


Yet I only feel alive at night. It's the only time I feel completely free to be alone, and to be overwhelmingly sad at the same time. I know myself a little. Now it's time to learn the faces of others. I cannot sit in my room reading textbooks and old novels forever. I feel stagnant. I don't think life works in cycles. Or at least if it does than the cycles are all generalized affairs in which the details are constantly changing. Everyday I feel different than I've ever felt before. It may not be noticeable from yesterday, or from a feeling I had years ago, but that is an illusion. I feel different. I AM different. I am no longer myself. I am only the thing which is working towards myself.
I am clay the world's hand. The world belongs to me. I am not the world, but it is me. I am an ocean of thought and feeling, and they are nothing besides the universe outside of my carefully constructed atmosphere. Nothing breaks down those barriers other than myself. Nothing else is needed. My world is me. I am Me. The world is terrifying. I am afraid of myself. Of my core. Of my strength. Of my weaknesses. I am afraid of not realizing myself, while maintaining the fear of outliving myself.

I should maybe stop writing in here when my feet are numb; except it's the only time I feel like really truly laughing at myself.

Rebirth

Not literal, but that hardly matters to the mind. I think I'm starting to realize that people do not actually need for things to exist as they want them to. They just want something to believe in. A higher ideal for themselves. They don't seem to actually care whether or not everything happens as planned, as long as they believe in it enough for it to be reality. God does not need to exist, nor does there need to be an afterlife so long as you can believe that he does, and that there will be. Existence is merely dependent upon consciousness.
We think of reality in either terms of free will, determinism, or fatalism. Either you make your own choices or someone else does for you. You have no control over it. Just do what your told, from yourself or from another, and die. That's all you can hope for. It's all you've got to deal with. Life is like a strange combination of all three. There really is some truth to everything, and yet; objective truth is NOT relative. We DO NOT make up our own truth. Of course we can try, and we can be happy doing it. But happiness is not necessarily a by-product of truth. Truth is ugly, imperceptible, and subject to change, and yet it remains totally objective and independent from our own feelings and thoughts towards it.
Idealism v. Pragmaticism. Can we be both? Both happy and real? Can we deal with life as it is, while maintaining an optimistic view of what it could, or can be? Does it matter? Is life a void, or is it worth fighting through? Can we give ourselves up to nothingness and expect to be content? Can we read, reason, and know?
How can we see heaven if we never knew our mothers?
How can we ever feel redemption without first killing our fathers?
Please Don't Let Go.





Is there anything salvageable from rambling? Is there truth to madness?

Of Want

Want is a curious feeling. More than a feeling. Want is a state of being, a frame of mind, and a path. It is the thing that makes us move, but it is not the gas. It's the motivation. It can be helpful as well as detrimental, since it lacks objectivity by nature.
Desire is similar to want, but it also implies something else. Something more concrete. Want is an abstract emotion which sometimes we don't understand fully ourselves. When we desire however, we know exactly what it is we want. In order to want or to desire, we must be alive, yet how can we live when we want so badly to be something other than ourselves?
Idle and tired. I wanted to say none of this, yet it came out in a vain attempt to be funny, yet I doubt any will get it, which seems to negate the purpose of having it there out of humor's sake.
Nothing said, and nothing taken. Sleep well and wake.

Give Me Your Eyes....

For I Need the Sunshine.

Is This It?

I'm sick of being young and under educated. I can't wrap my arms around the world anymore. Last semester was my terrible one. My one lived in depression and disillusionment. I was a nineteen year old failed prodigy. Nothing in my life had turned out as I had always expected. I am the character in the story who forgets to laugh when his greatest plans and expectations go horribly awry. He forgets to laugh and forgets his soul. He wants to indulge himself in spiritual and social death. He becomes almost violently afraid of real and final death.
This semester I've relaxed considerably, becoming much less depressed and more sociable. I think I'm finally embracing the fact that life moves on. It only took about two and a half years. I was so stupid then; so susceptible to the pitfalls of emotion; mainly being caught up in a year and a half of denying that I felt anything for the situation for the first place, and finally embracing it only to find that closure was almost impossible at that point. I spent the next year thinking and moving away, becoming more myself than I've ever been before. Embracing Self. Not finding it capable of everything I want. Like discovering you have a body, and not being able to beat any but the invalids at a race, while certain you should be able to run a marathon.
I'm sick of people telling me I'm too impatient. I'm sick of compliments that I can't back up. Don't tell me I'm smart or good because once you say it, I know I'll never live up to that.
I'm sick of fashionable existentialism and popular philosophy.
Life and death are dealt in the details, and I want to drink it all in, and throw it up.
I am new but not strong. I never have time, and somehow it's better that way. Too busy to think. Too busy to be lazy; to put off work in favor of daydreams and porn.



I need sleep and satisfaction, I fear I shall see little of either tonight.