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.