This was an interesting weekend for me.

On friday night I hung out with my friend Jeremiah who goes to university of oregon. We got drunk with his two friends who go to BSU (both female). He invites his friend from U of O over and she turns out to be this tiny asian chick who likes to laugh a lot. Needless to say we got along pretty well and ended up hanging out together for a majority of the night, until she left. After that I sobered up and attempted to leave, but my friend Jeremiah drunkenly told me that he wouldn't let me drink and drive. I told him that I had stopped drinking hours previous and hadn't had nearly as much as he had, but he didn't believe me and proceeded to try and fight me so that I wouldn't leave. This was pretty funny since he's a few pounds and inches shorter than me and probably has even less experience fighting. So he gave up that and decided that he would get in his car and pretend to drive drunk, to guilt me into not going. This of course didn't work and I left. We haven't spoken since, but I'll give him a call this weekend.

So that was my Friday night. Not too bad.

Saturday I woke up at around 5:45 in the morning (yes only a few precious hours after going to sleep) and I drove to meet up with my fraternity at Boise State. We had previously decided that we would take all the new members out on Saturday to breakfast. The idea was to all go eat, then work on our homecoming float, and then all go to the game, and finally have an after game party afterwards. This all sounded fine on paper, but when it came to the actual day we were all tired and grumpy. I even ended up going home twice to sleep almost missing the float making and missing the game entirely. I happen to make it for the party though, although I was so tired I had to scream along with Frog Eyes in order to stay awake whilst driving. Once there however, I became acquainted with a girl (I don't remember her name. I don't think I even thought to ask.) who one of my friends was hitting on. I started talking to her and she ended up hanging out with me for the rest of the night, which was kind of awkward since the other guy kept hitting on her while she was quite openly holding my hand, caressing my leg, etc. It was weird to me because I felt vaguely happy about the whole thing, but numb otherwise. I didn't even think that emotions were involved on my part. When she left I didn't really care. I told her not to go, but everything to do with her was purely physical. Not mental, not emotional. She was something that physically attracted me, so my body wanted her to stay, but once she left, it was only my body that cared.
This may seem trivial to everyone else, but for me it means something else. I've made out with a lot of random girls at parties, but I've been emotionally torn over every single one. I always mourn the loss of potential that might have existed if we knew each other outside of the party. But that's just it, they don't exist, and neither do I, at least not the form that is me when I'm not at the party. When we're drunk, we both see something that our bodies are interested in. If they pique some other parts of us, then we'll do something about it. But really that's it. Agh tangent.

So after she left, I stayed for just a few minutes and also left.

Sunday I finally started writing out one of my ideas for a play, as well as started drafting another one.

Monday I talked to the girl from my Non Fiction class who I've been sitting by but who I've been too afraid to talk to. We ended up walking from the business building over to the river, over the bridge, and through the park to the stadium, and then through the parking lot back to the business building. It was a strange walk, and she barely seemed to talk, but it was still pleasant, at least she seemed pleased to be there, and I felt myself slipping into another strange emotion. This time is wasn't anything physical. I was more content by the "concept" of walking alongside a pretty girl. That was the emotion I felt all day. I was content. I wasn't even really nervous or excited. I don't know.

My feeling today was that I'm growing older. I both like and distrust this idea. I also think that what I've been reading and thinking has had something to do with this vast change that I'm experiencing inside right now. I don't really have the time or energy to fall in love with every girl I see anymore, and I gave up potential awhile ago. Not that I think that people aren't capable of reaching their potentials, I just don't think that their potential is anywhere I want to be a majority of the time. So maybe now that I've internalized this kind of world view, it makes it easier for me to talk to girls because I realize that in most cases it won't go anywhere. So it's that knowledge that allows me to press forward, since I don't want anything past temporarily.
That's strange to me because it's new. I'm a broken record.
It's funny because, now that I'm reading back over this, it's leaving a lot out. I'll have to revise later. I am tired and I want to work on my play, which is starting to develop quite a bit in my mind, and it makes it easier to see where it's going once it's out on paper.

Night.

I sit still, consumed with nothing but a desire to move.

NonFiction

I think, therefore everything is false. Everything is a construct of my mental capacities and my ability to interpret the term "reality." There is no nonfiction. There is only what we see.

Well the family stuff is finally over. The house is weirdly silent and comfortable. It seems bigger and more fitting. I feel a loss of familiar contact, and a refreshing independence. I drank my first beer today since last Sunday. It tasted both bitter and disturbingly delicious, as if it were the bitter dregs of happiness.

Wayne's farewell was on sunday. Strangely, he was a big factor in my moving to Boise. Now he's leaving and I feel slightly how I did when Arrian and Braden left on their missions. Like I'm losing someone large and important in my life. And yet although that feeling resonates to a small degree in my bones, I don't really feel it anywhere else. I don't feel sorry anymore that he's caught up in that insane mess we call a religion. I almost don't care. At least not for his sake. Only for my own. It's all a freakish reminder that in some part my identity, my heritage, are still wrapped up in that nightmare of irrational thinking and subconscious doublespeak. The heart follows the head, and my heart was heavy this weekend. I can't get rid of my family, I don't want to, and yet I don't want to be exposed emotionally to that stuff anymore. Getting hit from all sides from people who either want to 'save' me, or to watch me burn for my infidelity.
What am I saying?

I took a long bike ride today with my dad and my friend Ben who lives in McCall and who attends College of Idaho. He's a gay atheist liberal who is big into theater and history. Our conversations usually have to do with either movies or history.
It was a terrible ride, and I crashed about three times; my legs were a bruised, bloody mess, but we did stop by this amazing waterfall where you could swim around. The trick was to try to see how far you could get swimming against the current. It was fun because it was hard just to stay in the same spot because of how strong the current was, attempting to rush your cold wet body along a long rocky path. It was amazing; the saving grace of the whole ridiculous trip. It reminded me of my fights with the family, my rebelling against the institutions that I feel are trying to impart certain conventional understandings of the world onto my young mind under the guise of open minded liberalism. It's fighting against the current. This is a hilarious concept because yes, it does absolutely nothing with the idea of changing the current. I did not change the world today, no matter how hard I swam. I only momentarily succeeded in staying in the same place. Yet I noticed something interesting.
My arms hurt afterwards. My legs hurt. My abs hurt. I gave up realizing futility and the fact that I physically couldn't do it any longer. Yet tonight my arms look better. My abs look tighter. I'm in better shape as a result of fighting.

When I fight my family about religion, or about the war, or about economics, I am growing stronger. I'm not changing minds any more that I made any actual difference in the current today, but I'm changing myself. So therefore there isn't futility in fighting. Because at the end of the day we are only ourselves, so everything we do is in defense of ourselves, our ideas, our ideals, our lives.

So to me, it seems detachment is the answer. But not the overall answer, and not for everyone else. Just myself. Analysis from the outside. Study the stream. Laugh at it, admire it. But then jump in and fight. Understand also from experience. Sometimes I forget that many people believe that the end is coming soon. That jesus, or whoever is coming to destroy the unbelievers, to restore the one thing that no one can prove, and yet the one thing that needs no proof. Why? Hahahahaha. Because we are human. Because we are still savages, with a small veneer of sophistication. Because we see the sun and conclude that something is keeping it there. That there is still magic and mystery which makes us somehow better or more special than anything else. Because nobody wants to believe in coincidences, no one wants to believe that they aren't unique. That they are not special. I know that I don't. Hahahahahahahaha.

I have hit a wall tonight. I have a lot to say, I just don't know how yet.

The trees stir. Moving effortlessly in their ever constant dance with the restless.
The wind is felt but not seen, and therefore it lends itself heavily to the abstract imagination. We can use the symbolic relationship of the wind moving the tree to apply some sort of understanding in our own lives. There are endless examples like this in nature, and we have seen them for thousands of years, and yet we are still enraptured. We still find meaning in modern antiquity.
Because we still need help. Because we are alone. We need to understand how we work. How everything works. We need to separate what we idealize from what is real, which means we need to determine reality. Maybe this is impossible to some degree. I don't think that that matters though. I think that what matters is we investigate with what we have, and forget whether or not we can ever truly interpret reality. Because what does it matter. Our limit becomes reality. We are limited in physical life. We are limited in our mental lives. We have rules. We have structure. Loose those and we may find freedom. But we might also no longer be ourselves.

Every night with dinner i drink about 4/5 of a bottle of beer (killian's delicious irish red at the moment), which i pour into a large glass mug. i put whatever is remaining in the bottle into the fridge and forget about it. That's been going on for a few days and so when i opened the fridge tonight to grab some soup that inga made earlier, i realized that the top storage shelf was nothing but near empty beer bottles. I don't know why but i couldn't stop laughing about it at the time. inga hasn't said anything about it, but i don't think she realizes that they are all mostly empty, so she probably just assumes that i ran out of room for beer in the other fridge or something, who knows.

I went back to boise to visit for a night last week. I realized that I don't want to be in boise any longer. It never really held my heart, and after two years i'm ready for another change. I know the change won't be immediate, and nothing is definite right now but i've been conversing with my father and after a semi-heated discussion, he conceded that it was time for me to move somewhere else. I don't want to tell anyone my plans yet but i thought this was a good place to put my thoughts down. I know that i won't feasibly be able to leave for another year, but that can be endured. I'm actually looking forward to this year in boise. I always feel better about a place when i know that i'm not far from somewhere else. I become the best employee in the world the moment i realize that i'm quitting sometime in the future. I think a lack of major change scares me.
Almost as much as the change itself.

I am tired, and worn out from the watchmen.

I listened to a strange conversation today while sitting in the hot tub that my family has access to. there was this ultra american family sitting in the tub with me. the mom was a first grade math teacher. the father was an engineer. the five sons all played sports, had braces, and six packs. The dad told some off-color joke and the sons would all snicker and the mom would get pseudo-upset. It's funny how everyone acts when just one unknown is in the room.
I wouldn't talk to them, i just pretended they weren't there, partly because i couldn't stand the sight of them, and partly because i was thinking back over Watchmen, because i had just finished it.
I could tell they didn't like that i said hello and then just stopped looking at them. I mean with their whole family there, they were all practically on top of me. And when I'd open my eyes, the dad was always trying to catch my eye, while the mom was doing her best to ignore me. It also didn't help that i would sometimes listen to what they were saying and i would add a comment, or a correction, usually directed at the mom, who i found a bit silly and pretentious, while not looking at anyone. Everyone would go silent, and the dad would try again to catch my eye, but the mom would just pretend nothing had happened and would keep on talking. I knew i was acting a bit out of character, but it felt kind of nice just to be an obnoxious fly on the wall, while the mom continued to criticize everyone in her family in a strange pseudo-academic way. Like, look at me, I teach math to first graders, so suddenly i'm the ultimate authority on everything.
The dad was good-humored, but it creeped me out the way he kept trying to get people to look at him after he made a joke, you know, just to ensure some kind of response. Maybe it was because his wife either ignored him or criticized him. He was looking for acceptance somewhere. I just wasn't willing to give it to him. Neither were his sons apparently.
Then it was funny how they kept talking about some of the sons, but refused to even acknowledge some of the others. All the kids were 17 and younger mind you. The oldest got the most attention. The mom kept calling him mature for the weirdest shit.

"So I hear that you ate all your food and the food that your grandma couldn't finish last night at chapalas. I'm proud of you. That's a real sign of maturity."
WHAT THE FUCK??? If that's the case, I should be a fucking child. I never eat other people's fucking food. God, all this time i never knew!!!

But then the dad would mention one of the other brothers doing something similar and she'd pretty much insinuate their obvious piggish qualities. Not joking, for one person it meant maturity, but it meant that another was some sort of pig, not human. And it's funny because I found the one who was "mature" to be the most obnoxious of the group. Although 17, he kept playing little pranks on his brothers that made me thing of a sixth grader picking on third graders.

The whole thing was immensely entertaining and slightly disturbing. I wish I could think of more weird stuff from them but i'm pretty tired and i can't really remember details too well.

The last few days have been weird like that though. Talking isn't easy for me anymore. I'm not clever. I can't think of jokes offhand, or witty comments. I try to just keep it basic, but even that comes out wrong. I keep slurring words like a drunk, and i'm often distracted by little things. Last summer everyone thought i was so clever and funny. Now i'm just interesting. People think i'm genuine and sincere and possibly brilliant. I hate to let them down, but i don't feel any of those lately. Especially not to the crowd i'm encountering. Rich fifty year olds who are retiring and looking for someone to speak pop psychology and philosophy with. someone who they can talk about the life's path with, and other mystical nonsense. They want me to come hang out with them and drink wine and just talk, but i can't. I can't get out of my house. I can't take all the new age idealism and vague upbeatness. I can't take the pretty girls who know nothing, and aren't ashamed of it. Although that is more refreshing that all those who pretend to know, to want to know, and still don't. They just know the rhetoric well enough to trap new thinkers like myself. I say new only because i've been recently introduced into the world of ideas, and therefore am still quite green.

Ahh I don't know. Right?

We are on the brink. You and I. We sit on the edge of intervening space. We feel something. We feel the breeze and the panic before the waves. We feel the moment with a false sense of clarity. We see things the fuzziest when we feel the best about what we see. Even when we see naught but wanton and endless destruction; not even when we realize that we are the cause of this; because we are happy. Maybe something less fleeting as well, but happy nonetheless. We watch our world burn. Sometimes our world is your world too. Sometimes we talk to ourselves, and we are really talking to you. Sometimes I doubt that one of us exists. When I read and my phone is off. I doubt that you are there. No. I forget. I slip into another state of mind. It is not being. There is no being. There is. There is no is not because without the is, there is something else. Beyond conception. Beyond nothingness. Beyond will.


Man: The lake looks strange tonight.

Woman: I know. That's why I come here at this time. During the day it just looks like a lake surrounded by trees. At night it's all black. There is a reflection of stars, but only faintly. (Pause) But now. Now it's something else altogether. It makes me think.

Man: What happened today? What happened to us?

Woman: I'm not sure yet. It's like when you dream something so vividly that you are certain it's real, only to find yourself desperately trying to remember that same dream hours later. Ya know?

Man: I don't believe you. There's something else that you want to say. Just say it; although I'm afraid to hear it.

Woman: Oh goddammit. We know each other too well. It's a curse really, to know someone who's like you. Because you can lie to yourself, but somehow or another it always seems to know you're lying.

Man: Hmmm

Woman: He called today. And I wanted to kill him. All I wanted to do was fucking kill him. That or fuck him. Ah god I don't know. I don't want to kill him, I just want to tie him down and beat him with a pool stick for a few hours at least. Just to let him know how I felt. Ha. Ya know?

Man: Yeah. Except you'd be so happy to see him that you wouldn't be able to do anything. And the second he leaves you'd be even angrier for not letting yourself go through with it when you had the chance.

Woman: Goddammit. Ha. You're right but ahh I don't know. (Pause) I wanted to drown so bad in the shower today. I kept imagining my mom walking in and I'd be all gracefully laying down, hair across my face, me looking beautiful. Beautiful and dead.

Man: Ha yeah except in reality you'd be bloated and probably covered in crap.
Woman: Ha yeah exactly. I would look stupid even in death. There's just no way of winning.

Man: Nope. Yeah it's funny. You never actually want to kill yourself. You just want a car to hit you, something relatively quick and painless. You want to die but your will to live exceeds your will to die.

Woman: Hmm

Man: But even then, you just want to be hospitalized. You want to have some sort of religious rebirth where you realize that life is good and worth living afterall. Because from here it looks like shit. In this moment your head is tilted and your eyes are clouded. Everything looks promising, and yet you know it's bleak. You are young but you know youth is fleeting and sooner or later you'll be old and just thankful that your son still writes you once in awhile.

Woman: Life is meaningless.

Man: Life is meaningless. So why hold on to god at all?

Woman: I don't know, it's just that in my church we're encouraged to look at everything and figure out what fits.

Man: So god exists because you're allowed to think he might not? So by them giving you the freedom to question, somehow it makes personally questioning not important anymore?

Woman: No, it's not like that. I'm just saying we're taught to look for what fits. This just seems to fit for me. I don't even really know if I believe that god really started the universe, since I don't really think he's been present since. I just feel that there is something else out there. I don't know.

Man: Hmmm. Whatever. (shrugs) God, works sucks so fucking bad.

Woman: I think we should head back. I always hate being here at night.

Man: Yeah good idea.

Woman: So how's alyssa?

Man: Ehh I don't know. I don't really want to talk about it. You know, just in case it turns out to be nothing. I can't really afford to waste my time on thinking about something that may or may not be something.

Woman: God you're so intense. Maybe that's why we can only take so much of each other.

Man: And yet why we get along so well.

Woman: Ha yeah.

Completely empty right now listening to elliott smith.

It reminds me strongly of Eri and the feeling that I never ever know enough. Always a few steps behind. Behind Eri. Behind life. I'm no good in any direction. Completely useless. Can't connect with anything but nothing.
Perfection only lasts a moment. Then you die.

I'm feeling insane. I met a girl who reminds me of Eri. Except instead of two years older than me, she's two years younger. I don't feel love but I do feel some innate affection. It took me a few weeks to admit that I even liked her at all, and just as I do, she seems to be pulling away from me. Life is insane. But I'm actually glad. I was worried. I really was. Maybe I still am. Maybe nothing is as I imagine. Maybe I'm throwing in my natural paranoia? My tendency to see the worst in people. To see the worst in myself. I call it objectivity. Others call it pessimism. Well I'm optimistically pessimistic.

I'm starting to look at people like numbers. Not as human beings. Mostly because most of them tell stupid jokes and drink cheap beer. Therefore they are numbers. Not people. I think working in the service industry teaches you that people are mostly phony. They bullshit each other so much that they actually believe their own shit. But there are a glorious few who are themselves, even when they don't need to be. It's refreshing.

I'm absolutely exhausted. I've stayed up the past few nights talking with hannah.
I think that's what killed me so much about today. We had nothing to talk about. I haven't felt strange in that way in a very long time. Maybe never. Maybe I've only felt that feeling through a book. It was the feeling of disillusion. That maybe things weren't as I thought they were. It was also the horrible feeling of getting your hopes crushed. Except you don't know for certain if it was a fluke or not. She was feeling sick. Apparently quite sick. But does that matter? Maybe it does. This is exactly why I hardly thought about this the past few weeks. I didn't want to get worked up over something that might turn out to be nothing. I hate taking chances on girls. It leaves me more empty than just about anything else. Luckily I've avoided it for nearly two years. Now that might be gone. Maybe this is good. Maybe I need to suffer at the hands of a girl to make me forget my horrible obsession with eri.

Of Human Bondage has made me even more scared of women. I know I've been in his position. The fact that my mildred was actually an intelligent and attractive woman didn't help at all. I'm not anxious to rush into anything even remotely close to that again. I never want to lose myself to another person. I don't want to open up to someone. I don't want them to have power over my happiness. And I especially don't want to be lonely any longer. Ah fuck. It felt so good to hold hands. I thought about telling her last night that it wasn't going to work. That's how upset I'm becoming to this whole thing. I'll get extremely indifferent. Then loving. Then upset that I'm allowing myself to feel something for someone who might potentially be there no longer. Does this make sense? I feel insane. Why am I like this? Why can't I just fuck and get on with my life? Why do I need to think about this. I'm male. But I'm not. I'm something else. I'm not unique, but still at odds with the majority. I'm torn between wanting to cure loneliness and fierce independence from any need for companionship. And why?

Partly because of the intensity surrounding my love for eri. It still echoes around me at times and my emotions become extremely complex. I don't regret that situation, it's just that it's affected every other relationship I've ever had. Even friendships. I look at things differently. That two year process aged me by ten in some ways. And retarded me by ten in others. I am old before my time, and forever a child. I've become more honest in my relations with others, but that cuts both ways, as does everything, as my father incessantly reminds me.

Ok I need sleep. Good night my little skylarks.

I feel so strange right now.


Since last thursday I haven't been alone. It started Friday morning. Being with someone. Constantly. The point of Indiana was to learn how to be around others. Constantly. Now that I'm home my sister is here. She stays until I leave for Vegas. Where I'll be with someone constantly.

I can't take my fucking family right now. I can't fucking take reality right now. I just went through a Five day mindfuck and now I'm going through a weekend of torture.


My car broke down today in Horseshoe Bend on the way to McCall. Fucking burnt up the clutch. Had to get it towed back into Boise and then was at the mercy of my Uncle all day long. And when I escape finally from his clutches, I find myself cornered by my awkward and nonunderstanding sister. She does not fucking get me. I swear we have a disconnect that i never really noticed before. She likes the material world. I mean she doesn't like it, I mean that it is the only thing which makes sense to her. The second I go abstract she starts rolling her eyes and accuses me of trying to act smart. So I'm forced to cater to her. Which feels like pressure. Which I fucking hate.
And tonight, when my uncle's truck wouldn't start (which he lent to me for the next few nights while my car is out) she acted as if the whole fucked up day was my fault. That I wasn't keeping her properly entertained. She goes, "I don't think I could live her, it's way too boring, It's like you never fucking do anything or go anywhere."

I wanted to say, Get the fuck out of my car! but instead I told her it was a high stress time for me and she should get the fuck off my back. That shut her up a little but I was so pissed I thought I was going to fucking explode. Jesus Christ.

Hahaha so yeah, I'm not feeling so hot. I'm sick from Indiana, I'm still trying to get over what happened there, and now I'm dealing with an older sister who could give a shit less about the things that are important to me and feels that I'm letting her down as a brother if I'm not providing an ever constant party for her to attend, and probably complain about.

I'm happy to go to Vegas, but only as a way of clearing all responsibility for two weeks, and just concentrating on nothingness. The act of nothing. hahaha. I'm so funny sometimes. The words that I say, no one else says. They say my name is Derek Ririe. This is not my real name.

I met a girl in Indiana. I love the knowledge that the act of finding her was the only thing that I'll ever have. Nothing more. She no longer exists outside of the memory of finding her existence. Nothing prolonged. No continued physical existence. And yet no real regret. I found existence. It became conscious of itself. The shared existence of feeling, made gloriously and completely conscious, only to be separated from itself and let bleed and fade. They say my name is Derek Ririe. This is not my real name.

Hmm I need to think and sleep. Goodnight again. And again

collection of loosely held thoughts

I was thinking the other day about how if everyone treated me as if I wanted to be treated, nothing would ever get done in this world. Everyone would be too busy trying to figure out the apparent contradictions associated with the wants that float around in a constant and chaotic fashion inside of my brain. People would be either forced to avoid me all together or become stalker like, since those seem to be the only two modes that would make sense for them to assume when dealing with me. This would be of course based on the assumption that they somehow knew how I wanted to be treated without me verbally having to communicate it to them. Fuck.

I'm not sure if that made sense but I'd be more than happy to discuss it with any of you sometime, although if you're confused now, you'll probably be terribly more so after any sort of verbal clarification that I would attempt to provide. That being said, we shall now fall into the pattern of not-being.






























Did you feel it? The very fabric of your being starting to come apart? No? Ok let's try again. All together now class, Start not being!





























Still nothing eh? That's ok. Maybe it doesn't really matter.



I've been thinking about the way we view existence. We can say that things don't really exist, only that we perceive that something is existing. That it is simply in our minds, like the Matrix. Except where did those images come from? God? Why complicate things? Of course we must perceive things in order for them to exist, but that only applies subjectively! When we perceive things, they exist, but only to us! The thing exists independent of us and our perceptions, except it changes once it leaves our minds. The object is one thing inside our minds through our perceptions of it, but it is something else altogether Outside and Alone. Something we can come incredibly close to seeing, but never fulling knowing. Therefore I agree that things only exist when we perceive them, but only in the form in which they are being perceived! Not in the form in which they may truly exist. But the closer we get to understanding things as they truly exist (meaning independently from us and our first perceptions)then the closer we get to realizing the meaning of identity and existence.
Maybe it's because I think about identity quite a bit, and I hate being misinterpreted as well as misunderstood. Maybe that's what drives all existentialists (haha fuck all the non-conformists who wish to remain free from that particular label (Camus, I'm looking at you!)) to try and determine the meaning of existence in the modern age, with or without some notion of God or a higher power, as well as how to find meaning with the modern existence. Identity is tied (in my mind at least) inextricably to the dilemma of meaning and existence, in that we must have an identity in order to be in existence. They seem to imply each other. Therefore if there is an issue with one, it seems necessary that there must be an issue for the other. If existence is tentative, then where is identity? Either it too is tentative, or it is defined through existence itself being tentative. Either way it seems reasonable to suppose a direct relationship with the two.
To me it seems that once we verify the existence of something to a point of absolution, then we must also realize that the identity is there as well. Except what is absolution, and can we reach it? Probably not with some things, I'm thinking of living, organic organisms. It seems more reasonable with nonliving structures to assume that we can reach this "absolute" relationship in which we have determined that nature of that objects existence completely.


Ok I really need to work on my Hegel essay. Hopefully some of this made sense, although it isn't apparent to me yet why I felt a need to write any of it.

"I fell asleep beneath the flowers"

Do you ever find yourself wandering off in your own daydreams and realize that life in a daydream is so much more magical than life lived in reality? Except that your daydreams are informed by the reality of life and what you learn from it. So without the boring and the mundane, where would your daydreams be? And aren't they developed as a means to escape the natural limitations that the real world puts upon us? So if we didn't have the real world, where would our daydreams be? AND if we had nothing to compare our daydreams to (i.e. the real world) then how would we know whether or not they were better than something else, since we have never been able to experience that something else. Except that daydreams carry pain as well as pleasure. They carry scars as well as healing.

I've been thinking a lot about my daydreams lately because that seems to be the only thing I'm good at. My humor derives from what I see in my daydreams. Or rather my daydreams develop from my sense of humor. I'm not sure which one is correct, but I like to think that it's the latter. My problem is converting what I dream onto paper, or into any real-world application.

I say this because I'm terribly afraid of never accomplishing anything. I've realized lately that it is only permissible to fail once you've accomplished something great. It's perfectly acceptable that Einstein was thought to be slow witted as a child, because he did something amazing with his brain later on in life. Abraham Lincoln is also another noted early failure. Now he's one of the most revered presidents in our history. But how many other people have failed and gotten nowhere? And how many have never once failed, and yet never accomplished anything spectacular in their lives?

There's a lot more to work out here but I need to study still before I go to sleep. I have two tests tomorrow and I'm ill-prepared for both. It's been an interesting semester. I don't know what to do with myself. I am feeling more than somewhat lost at the moment, but it will pass along soon I think. For now all I can do is try my best and hope it isn't too little too late, as has been the case often in the past. Hmm. Goodnight.

I dislike quotes and yet I love reading quotable material. Including song lyrics.


I had this uneasy feeling all day, which reminded me strongly of how I felt from the time I was about twelve until seventeen, for at least a majority of the time. It the feeling of being so confused, that the only plausible thing to do was to grow older and wait for time to show me out of my confusion. Not that it would be a magical and painless transition, but more that time would give me the cognitive abilities necessary to help drag myself out of this deep confusion. Although it wasn't exactly confusion. It was also frustration, and quite a bit of yearning. Sometimes I would be so bursting with this pent up yearning for an unrealized ideal that I would fantasize about jumping off buildings, just to release all the caged energy that felt physically trapped within the coils and springs of my heart. The frustration came from my continual inability to actualize whatever it was that I was yearning for. I wasn't even able to properly identify where these intensely felt emotions came from or why altogether, although I knew it had to do somewhat with several different things.

Maybe it was angst. Angst for love which I knew I had never had and therefore could not possibly understand. Angst for achievement, which I knew was the one expectation that I could never really exceed for anyone other than myself. And even then I never really lived up to the expectations I held for myself. Never the A student, nor the first one picked for anything. Always well liked, just never able to properly achieve what others had set for me to do. Never able to achieve what I used to think I wanted to do.
Maybe it was angst towards god. I never once confessed a single sin to my bishop. Never in my life that I can remember. It might have happened once when I was a child but not since puberty that I can remember. I told him that I had never even heard of masturbation, or that I tried it once and didn't like it. (hahahahaha).
I would get so nervous before meeting with him, and I would turn red and sweat and shake, but I never said a word. I told him that my language was perfect (hahahahaha). I never cussed. And since I hated being around the kids in our ward, no one could tell him otherwise.

I remember being forced to go on a camp out once as a boyscout (Which was extremely rare since it was difficult for my mom to make me do anything I didn't want to do. This is a skill I've honed almost to an art with certain people in my life, although I don't use it quite as much anymore).

Side Note: My sister acted "tough" and would yell at my mom if things weren't going her way. This only made my mom want to punish her and force her to do exactly those things. I on the other hand would listen and give my opinions, especially if I knew that they would find favor with the listener. If I was kind to her, she would be kind to me and let stop going to boy scouts and skip school whenever I wanted. But I wouldn't skip school to go smoke or anything like that. I would usually end up spending those days listening to my mom sadly reminisce about the divorce, which are some of my most vivid memories. Probably because my dad never mentions the divorce. He never even talks about my mom as if he ever loved her, or as if they were ever together.
Side side Note: I even recently asked him to tell me about meeting my mom. He told me he couldn't remember exactly when that was. He got that far-away, misty look in his eyes and barked a laugh. I waited for something more. How he forget something like that? That seems so important to me, when they first met. In every movie, even the fucked up ones, the two people can Always remember when they met, even if it's the only thing that they remember. I know that they met probably about thirty years ago, but that doesn't matter. He should remember. But he just said he didn't. Then he sat down and looked at me. He told me that it was weird because she had been dating his older brother Del, and that's how he knew her. Then they broke up but she continued to hang out all the time until one day she put her hand in his lap and grab his hand while they were driving somewhere with some other people. That was when he realized that she liked him. Then they got married. He told me that she was looking for a father and he wasn't able to be one for her, since he was still a kid. No feelings at all. It was all her. She liked him. She made the first move. She needed something.

Then he looked at me again and laughed. I looked him in his eyes and realized that he wasn't actually looking at me. He was somewhere else altogether at that moment and wherever it was, it was genuinely funny. Like realizing that the worst moment of your life was really nothing more than a gigantic and deeply disturbing joke. A joke this entire time; and you're just now starting to understand it. I didn't know what to do so I started laughing too.





Maybe the angst is over the past. Maybe I'm still trying to get over things that are perfectly normal. Maybe all my yearning and frustration still exist. I know that when I was seventeen, for a brief time everything in the world stood still and I was one with god, time, and love. There was nothing I couldn't understand or overcome. Well all moments of clarification pass. Reality sets in and the cycle begins again. And when we're at the bottom of the cycle we think we'll never make it to the top, and when we're at the top we're so sure it will last forever, even when we know that it won't. I haven't finished this up but for tonight I think that I'm done.

Physical and spiritual are equivalent to me right now. Transcendence is momentary and fleeting. That doesn't mean that it is meaningless to search for it. Just don't make it your life's pursuit. Instead focus on thinking and doing for yourself. I think by doing for ourselves, we're able to see more clearly what needs to be done for others so that they can also do for themselves. Charity should not be lifelong, only until the person in need of charity is able to start pursuing the idea of themselves.

Goodmorning.

Such a beautiful song

This is called "lazy eye" by the silversun pickups. I saw this video last year when I was home for christmas and deeply depressed about the state of my life. I just remember that it came on at like three in the morning and it was the first thing in days that I had seen that gave me any sort of hope for where I was going in life. That's not to say that it gave me any sort of direction or motivation. It was just a feeling, a feeling that even though i'd been depressed for the last year and a half, that someday it would leave and I would be somehow better off in some unimaginable way for having lived through all of that. Which seems so silly to me now. I know it wasn't all because of a girl, but that had a lot to do with it.

It's almost as if I have just a few select number of abstract ideals that control the definition of my identity which would include (but are not limited to):
The intense and lingering separation from my god;
The the separation from the only girl I have ever loved;
The idea that I'm nowhere close to where I want to be in life;
And the realization that I have no idea where I want to be in life.


I don't know if that makes sense. I'll try to reorganize and clarify it later on. I've just realized that these are some of the main sources of my seemingly never-ending cycle of depression. Which is good, because depression is healthy I think. Maybe we fear depression now because no one wants to be different. We all crave individuality and freedom yet we're all the fucking same. Same nothingness. Same problems. Same fear of standing out. Being free takes courage. I'm not making a case against freedom. I'm just thinking through my writing. I like thinking philosophically, I just wish I could look at things in a more mathematically disconnected way instead of attaching emotions and feelings to my philosophical inquiries. Hmmm.

Personality = Fate.

If I live in accordance with myself, and my instincts, am I really free? Or am I instead a slave to my own genetic and environmental make-up? So is freedom an abstract ideal we use to feel superior to ourselves, or is life less fatalistic than that? Of course you can choose to go against yourself, but that seems to lead to being unsatisfied and unhappy. So is it really even a choice?

Would you rather be a content pig or a miserable man? hahahahahahahahahaha

Everything right now is spinning as if I am a part of a dream, a dream which is on the verge of a nightmare; and although it's on the verge of a nightmare, it isn't a nightmare yet; so I continue to dream, I continue to grow more anxious and depressed, and I continue to lose myself in a maze of hyperreality.

San Francisco was extremely fun. I haven't met that many new people in a while. It reminded me of ninth grade, when I first realized that people liked me. I had put myself in a box throughout middle school, which I didn't think was escapable. I didn't think I was funny, attractive, nor particularly original. I of course defined originality as artistic. What I now realize is that I was original in the sense that I was completely different from everyone else that I was ever friends with in middle school. I wandered from group to group, never really identifying with anyone. I talked to absolutely no one about anything I found significant and I ended up adopting a personality in order to be acceptable to everyone around me. I adopted a false confidence through being offensive. I pretended not to care, which of course made me instant friends with all the "cool" kids at school. They thought I was something that I never really cared to be, and that's what they loved me for. Everything started to blend and blur. I remember waking up one morning near the end of seventh grade only to realize that I couldn't remember the last few months of my life.

I still think about that sometimes to this day, although I get uncomfortable every time I do. I didn't know of anyone else who had actually lost track of their own life/identity for that kind of time. I also wonder if losing track was all in my mind the same way deja vu is just your brain temporarily thinking that it has seen something before the moment it's actually happening. Maybe the memory resonates so strongly because it's all a figment of my overactive and highly dramatized mind.

I finally found myself in ninth grade. Or at least a part of myself that only comes out rarely now. It's the part of me that likes to be social. The part of me that likes to be liked, and loved to be loved. I like knowing people and being known. The only problem is that too much exposure leaves me tired and depressed. Especially if there is hyper exposure followed by nothing. While in San Francisco I met alot of really cool people and talked to lot's of pretty girls, who all seemed genuinely interested in me and what I said. We all became close in just a few days and now we're all separated and it's back to the same Boise routine.

I didn't feel like myself the whole time. It was me but I hadn't felt that was in so long. I was taken back to ninth grade and the discovery of laughter and the ability to make people feel at ease.



I can't figure out where I want to take this yet. I haven't slept in days.

I do know that I take everything way too personally. I mean fuck, I met more people this weekend than it seems I've met in a year, and I had an amazing time, but it doesn't feel like it was enough. I didn't meet everyone. Not everyone loved me. I had more girls hanging out with me than I've even seen in a year and I'm not satisfied in the ways that I thought I would be. I think in the back of my mind I was putting myself out there too much, or at least more than I have in a really long time, so every time people didn't want to hang out, or a girl I really liked didn't seemed to reciprocate, I took it so personally. It was like they were rejecting me as a person just because they didn't seem to find me as attractive as I found them. Which is ridiculous because it was only over the course of a few days. Who knows what they really thought. FUCK I don't know why I'm so upset right now but I can't stand it. I think I just need sleep.

I also realized today that I haven't cried since I was eleven. I've even tried to cry a few times in the last few years, but it seems that I've forgotten how. Maybe that's what keeps me imbalanced and either extremely happy or highly depressed. Maybe I'm just overly normal and I can't stand that. Maybe I'm just so mediocre that I need to point out something as silly as not being able to cry as a sign that I must be different from others. Maybe I'm over thinking this. I don't know Jodi. I want to believe in humanity. I want to believe in romance; to believe in love lasting longer two years. I want to believe that potential exists and that it can be actualized.


I'm slipping off.

Excerpt

Something is moving next to me. No wait, it’s inside of me. Where am I? I was just watching myself run through the freshly clipped grass with the sun on my back. I could feel the sun. I give an involuntary shudder. I haven’t actually felt the sun on me in quite some time. Nor can I watch myself. This is a dream. Again. I’m starting to fear these new dreams more than the endless years of the dark nights. No. No matter what happens; it can never be worse than that. Pain is better than nothing.
Are you really so certain of that anymore? A sly voice asks me as I lay there wrestling out of my sleep. It’s that same feeling took us here in the first place. Do you remember that? I told the voice to shut up, I didn’t have time to reflect right now. Tonight was big. Tonight was going to be important. Tonight is the night that I move.
I have been living in the same place for over six years now. Everyday almost the same; sleep all day and work all night. I turned in my two weeks notice fourteen days ago and now I’m ready to leave. I’m not sure where yet though. That’s new. I usually plan months if not years ahead of these events. It’s not that it takes that long or requires that much attention. I’m just bored and always crave the moment when I get to leave and start somewhere new. Somewhere that will excite me for a few years and turn to shit just like everywhere else. Even the move itself is becoming mundane or worse; a necessity. It feels too frequent now, with less and less reward involved.
It no longer seemed strange to me that I still dream, even though I hadn’t really slept in hundreds of years. No, the dreaming was no longer strange to me; it was the dreams.

Frustrated or Excited. Probably Just Tired.

I really feel the need to write right now but I am unsure about what I need to write about. Whenever I have this feeling I usually find myself wanting to write down the millions of story ideas that I have throughout the day, except that whenever I actually sit down to write, not a single idea comes forward.

I am so terrible about procrastination. I leave thursday morning for San Francisco and here I sit not having gotten anything done I needed to in preparation for it. So now I've pushed everything back until tomorrow. Gahhhhh. This type of thing stresses me out but at the same time I feel more than a hint of excitement whenever I push things to the last minute like this. I want to see how deep I can get before I can no longer pull myself safely out.

I started talking with Wayne again today after a few weeks of silence, and I realized that I need to have several different groups of people that I associate with at any given time. Whenever I spent my time exclusively with just one person or one group, my ideas and feelings start to become somewhat stagnant. I need to have several individuals and groups who are vastly different in my world. I also need to keep them all separated for the most part. This is probably why it was always so hard for me to bring girls around my friends. These were two separate worlds that needed to be kept separate. This of course pissed both my girlfriends and my friends off. They couldn't understand why I couldn't just bring the two spheres together like normal people (I'm assuming it's normal, since they all acted like it was). This is also why I want to live separately from my wife, for at least a sizable chunk of the time. I don't want to get bored and I don't want to her to get bored. I know it sounds selfish. That's because it is somewhat, but I also think it's highly rational. Maybe not.

Dreams (Updated and Expanded)

I had a pretty intense post-apocalyptic style dream last night I thought I'd share with you all before class.

The dream started out (if I can remember correctly) at my mom's house in Las Vegas, I must have been visiting or something, I'm not really sure. Anyways: I had just bought a number of books (nine if I can remember) and they were all in the same series. So I opened up the first book.
The next thing I knew I was talking to an old man who seemed completely familiar. He was even talking to me as if we were old friends. My brain adjusted and I knew who this guy was, but I'm not sure anymore now that I'm awake. He told me that he had learned a new trick he wanted me to work on. The trick was to fall on your face, but to stop yourself an inch from the ground with your mind and to bounce back onto your feet. He had mastered it completely and was waiting to watch me try. It was one of the most important things he'd ever learned he claimed, and since I was his favorite, I should also know it. Right then someone came into the house and told us that the disease was spreading and that everyone was needed outside. Except for me and my cousin Jessica. We were supposed to hide in the secret fallout shelter located in the center of the house until they told us we could come back out.

Now what I can remember from the dream is that people were being infected by this unknown disease and they would begin to go mad and fall apart. They still retained some intelligence but it was mostly about how to infect other people (which those of us who weren't infected still didn't understand. We just assumed that it was through touch; if one of them touched you, you were going to become one of them). The nice thing was that once you were infected, you didn't live forever like a zombie, in fact you died on average in about seven days since the infected couldn't eat anything during this period. The problem was that however it spread, it spread fast. It was like a giant tidal wave that you couldn't outrun, you just had to ride it out.


So the story is that the disease was spreading and everyone gets infected at our house and Jessica and I are left on the run. I take a gun that I find in the house (the infected can be shot) and we take off. After this I kind of shake off that dream to find myself still in my mom's house. I was reading a book the whole time, except that the book became real when I read it. But i was done with the first one so I went to the second.
So now I was back in the story and we had found a safe haven of sorts at an old highschool. The only problem was that no body trusted each other. There were a lot of people there, but there was definitely several different factions, and the largest was the one in charge. They put themselves in charge of security and had roped off several sections of the school for some unknown reason.
I was sick of being bossed around and so I finally told them that I had special permission to visit the roped off areas. I was of course lying, But I knew just that the right amount of lies speckled with truth would do the trick, and I was right. They let me upstairs. I don't remember finding anything special up there, they just roped it off because they didn't want people wandering around where they couldn't keep an eye on them. Dissension was ripping this place apart alright. It was time to leave.
I heard the alarms go off and I knew either fights were breaking out or the infected had somehow broken in. Or both. Either way I had to get out of their. I grabbed Jessica and my gun and we sped out, pursued quickly by a batch of infected.

-I actually woke up at this point to pee. I went back to sleep and found myself back at my Mom's.-

I was in my mom's house and opening up the next book. My little brother was talking to me but I was obsessed with find out what happens. I look at the first page. It has a picture which is moving towards me. Or I'm moving towards it.

I practicing the trick of falling on my face and bouncing back up. I couldn't get it. I just kept falling on my face, no matter how much I concentrated. I figured being aware was what was going to save me, but no matter what I just kept falling on my face.

I came back into my mom's house and I really had to go to the bathroom. I kept looking for it but the only one I could find was in the front room in front of the windows which wouldn't close.

-I woke up at this point for another pee break. I went back to sleep and went back for the last time to my Mom's house in Las Vegas.-

I was now convincing my mom to let my little brother and sister watch the movie of the stories I was reading. You see the books I was reading were actually graphic novels that turned into a movie when I started reading them. I wanted my little siblings to watch the movie since they were bored and that was the only thing I could think of to entertain them. My mom protested. She said my life was rated R and she didn't allow the little kids to watch R movies. I conceded and realized that part of the movie was going without me, and it was at the end of the book. I was seeing the ending the books and the movie in front of me. I wanted it to stop but I couldn't tear myself away. The ending involved me going to space in order to escape the disease but somehow people start getting infected in my ship (which is huge and holds hundreds of people).
I finally break away and start back at my own place.

I now remember where to go. I ditched my gun and found a shotgun in the hands of a dead person lying on a roof. He was shooting at infected and eventually died of hunger on his roof, not being able to get down for fear of becoming infected. So I grabbed his shotgun and bullets and headed with Jessica to the safe place I had just remembered about.
We got there almost undetected when suddenly infected starting rushing at us from everywhere at once. These were all moving somewhat slow so I knew they were either newly infected or near death. When someone gets infected they have seven days to live. The first few hours are slow, because the infection still hasn't taken complete hold yet, but after about two hours they become increasingly violent until the seventh day, when they become docile and wait for death. These were all moving slow but some were starting to speed up. They must be newly infected. One got too close and I blew it apart with my gun. That slowed everyone else down considerably, which was good. It told me they still had a bit of intelligence left. Enough to know I could kill them if they came too close. Too stupid to know that they could easily overwhelm me if they worked together.
So we ran to our haven, trying to shake off the infected, so they wouldn't discover our spot. The problem was that more and more kept showing up. I shot whoever came close but they were getting bolder. And faster. I had to concentrate on running and saving my ammunition.
Almost there.
We could see it.
We were surrounded.
I shot a whole through the circle and we kept running, avoiding any physical contact. Finally we were at the front gates. I gave Jessica the code and she set to work opening up the thick metal doors while I kept the Infected off of us. I blew a few more away but I was starting to run low on ammo and more just kept coming. Finally one stepped forward and as I aimed my gun, I noticed that it was an a girl that I knew. A girl I was once in love with. Completely fictional but I loved her none the less. She looked infected and was coming close but I didn't have the heart to shoot her. I let her come right up to me and she walked past me to the gate. She punched in the key code and we all went inside. I shut the doors just as a massive amount of Infected tried to push their way in. I spent the last of my bullets keeping them all out and suddenly it was over. The door was shut. I passed out.
I came to a little later to find my cousin playing video games and eating. I knew we were safe but not much else. I set about to check on all the online security features; to make sure they were all still functional. The computer wouldn't let me log in and I started to get a little creeped out. How long could we last in here? Seven days? Would new, fresh infected just keep showing up? Was this place really as safe as I thought or was it a perfect cage; a trap.
"Relax," my cousin said. She smiled. "Things will work out."

I walked away and heard a noise. That's when I remembered that there was a security station on the premise where I could log in to the system. I rushed there and found my first big surprise. People were already in there monitoring and fixing things. The person logged into the computer and directing people was none other than the girl I almost shot. She told me that she was just sick, and not infected, but somehow the infected thought she was one of them and so she was able to walk around them unmolested.







That was all that I can remember from my dream.
Good night. Time for more.

Ahhhh

I'm completely obsessed with this song right now. Somebody put it with clips from an Anime movie that I've never seen but it seems to work pretty well.

Anyways I'm stressed out right now. I'm going to San Francisco on thursday for a greek leadership conference (boise state is paying for me!!). I'm also doing alot to promote paddy murphy, which is an annual party thrown by my fraternity. Which I won't even be present for. I mean, as much as parties aren't much my thing, I really want recognition for the fraternity so I wished I could have been there just to make sure it turns out good. I also have a huge math test tomorrow. And I'm supposed to get an anthrax vaccination on tuesday but i think I'm going to cancel. I just don't have the time. I mean I want the money, but I really just don't have the time anymore.

It's weird. Last year I had more time than I knew existed. I had so much time I wasn't able to get better grades than B's and C's. Although I've never been an A student. Which I think is funny because sometimes I think that I'm actually smarter than most A students I meet. I'm realizing that smarts has little to do with it though; it's all about work. Which I hate. I mean I feel satisfied after a long day of work, but that work has to be enjoyable at least in some aspect and it can't be continuous. I'm a guy who needs frequent breaks.

I actually used to enjoy my job doing manual labor in a plant nursery (I know, "Derek doing manual labor? Is that even possible?") because I learned to tune everybody out while I worked and I would just do. I learned everything I could and just went at it. It was a super shitty job but I definitely made more there than anywhere else I've been and that was my first job when I was seventeen years old. My best friend Julian was working there at the time and I went in one day to pick him up (actually my mom was picking him up; he didn't have his truck for a week and my mom said she'd take him home) and the boss told me that he'd set me to work in a day if I went and got a drug test. So I did. I started working. My title was a "carry-out" and what I did was carry people's purchases (plants, dirt, bricks, etc) out to their cars for them and usually lay them inside their cars. Then they would sometimes tip you. It was actually illegal to take tips but the bosses would pretend not to notice as long as you kept the cash in your pocket.

So today I woke up feeling like crap. My throat hurt and I hadn't gotten much studying done for my geology test, mostly because I spent most the night working on philosophy homework that I had forgot about until opening up my backpack last night. Oh and by the way I didn't finish my philosophy homework either so I was feeling fairly crappy about that. On top of that I really wanted a bright sunny day. I mean after realizing my depression, I decided that there was nothing I could do except embrace the sunshine of spring.
-I also think that this decision comes a lot from both Jodi's inspirational message about starting this cultural movement in Boise and from a comment that Jodi said to me last night before M and B showed up. (The comment was in reference to not being as extreme as her friend tim who made the movie we watched last night. She said that he went through these intense phases (I immediately thought of my extreme batman obsession when I was six as well as my pokemon and dragonball z obsessions at eleven and twelve) where he completely pursued something, often at the cost of everything else. She mentioned his phase of book reading and it touched upon my secret fear that I don't read nearly as much as I think I should and as much as I think other philosophy students are reading (which is kind of ridiculous because most of the philosophy students I know are seniors which means they're forced to read more, plus they've been around longer).
Plus after seeing Jodi's collection I realized that my mere collection of sixty or so books is kind of a joke (you know I haven't even read all of them). So I always feel fairly self-conscious about seeming academic and not having read as extensively as I would like or feel that I should.
So she told me about Tim who read book after book, not even taking the time to shower. I felt sooo lame right then, because I've often put a book down to shower and then haven't picked it up in days (ah shit). So she's telling me about Tim who also happens to have taught and has an M.A. and who is an indie-film maker (one of my not-so-secret dreams) and I'm thinking,...Goddammit.
So there I was feeling a bit silly in comparison to Tim and she says to me that even though he read non-stop, it was more to say that he'd read the books than for the actual content. Is that hope glimmering on the horizon? Why yes sir I believe that it is. And that's it. She told me that I'm not as extreme but that I actually understand what I read. She said I'm into philosophy but that when I read I get what I'm reading. The point for me isn't to say that I've read x, y, and z, but instead to actually understand the world around me in a philosophical way.
Ok so I'm paraphrasing a little bit but that's how I interpreted the conversation. She can correct me if it's wrong but that's what I seemed to understand and draw from, and that was the thought that's helped me realize that I need to embrace the sun instead of endlessly fighting against it.