Aw hell, it's 11/9/09

So it's the final rundown to my thesis draft due date. I will be doing little else this week other than maintaining my bodily functions in order to finish the draft on time, which I keep making more difficult by changing the topic. The conclusions I've reached stay much the same, and now I'm basically just changing the questions to fit the answers. I'm hoping that by really nailing the topic, the actual writing of the thing will be easier and faster. We'll see how true that is...

On the party/social front, I'm dealing with the same issues I've been having since at least last year, which is that I don't enjoy a lot of the parties here, yet at the same time I feel like I need to get to know more quality people and bring them into my life. The party I was at last night seemed more like an exercise in making small talk with strangers than anything that could produce real camaraderie. I have therefore decided that I need more video games in my life, to share pursuits with like-minded people. That always seemed to be the way to happiness and friendship before, so I'm not quite sure why I forgot. To this end, I'm thinking seriously about bringing World of Warcraft back into my life - a dangerous idea to be sure. We shall see...

It was actually the music from Blizzard that got me thinking seriously about WoW again. I've put it up in the public folder. Have at it.

Here we stand, on 10/26/09, feet on the ground, facing forward

Hey friends. Looks like I'm gonna have to switch around the daily update thing, since I've already failed to keep up with it. I think I'll try for Sunday - Wednesday, since weekend nights have a habit of leaving me occupied or incapacitated when I would usually be writing these.

Fun events from the weekend:
A friend of Alison's came to visit, and hanging out with him was fun but not without its complications. He also has the strange power, like our friend Zach from back home, of attracting the attention of every female in every room he entered. One can only marvel. And roll their eyes.

On Saturday I went to practice at my Kendo teacher's dojo. For the first hour, my teacher taught myself and a 60 year old gentleman how to do Iaido (居合道, roughly translated it seems to mean "the way of acting in harmony with being"), which put simply is the art of drawing the sword in response to a surprise attack. From what I can tell, Iaido is to Battoujutsu as Kendo is to Kenjutsu - Kendo is derived from fighting forms using an already drawn sword, while Iaido is an art derived from techniques starting and ending with a sheathed sword. Unlike Kendo, Iaido is not competitive and is considered to be an art that is necessarily individual. From what I've read and heard about it, and based on the interpretation of the name, it's supposed to be a very personal exercise, as much about cultivating internal awareness as external technique. For this reason, some people refer to it as "moving Zen". Anyways, it's amazingly cool to watch, and I enjoyed what little I did immensely. Hopefully I can scrape together enough money to buy a sword sometime soon(Iaido is practiced with real, though usually blunt, swords), but in the meantime I plan on going every week with my wooden sword to practice.

After an hour of that came an additional 3 hours of Kendo practice, by the end of which I literally couldn't speak above a whisper from shouting so much. It was a lot of fun, even the part where I had my back to the wall and was getting hit by my teacher faster than I could follow with my eyes. I think the most important implication of this development in my practice of Kendo (and the beginning of my Iaido practice) is that it represents an endeavor that I've excelled at, really enjoy and respect, and can happily incorporate into my identity. I think I generally try to avoid making my identity about anything other than what goes on in my head, but perhaps that's why I feel so adrift so often. Maybe I can take this accomplishment of mine, which I'm really proud of, and hang some weight on it so to speak. Instead of having my identity inform every single thing I do, maybe I can relax a bit and let this pursuit of mine influence my identity a little bit.

Yeah, I'm a swordsman. What of it?

Just the thought makes me feel calm.

Websites:

Iaido

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night:

Music:

Been listening to Laura Veirs, who opened for the Decemberists when Borge and I went to see them last month. Posted a track called "John Henry Lives".

Peace Friends

Look around, it's 10/20/09

Today I resolve to be an unstoppable juggernaut of self-confidence.

I think I have the intellectual capacity to understand, and possibly even excel, at whatever I put my mind to, and therefore the only impediments to achieving everything I can reasonably desire to achieve are time and my own character faults. As to the latter, I intend to identify and eradicate them to the best of my ability. I will identify what I want and then use my reason and intellect as a vantage point both to survey the best way to attain it and circumvent my own weaknesses. I'm gonna win this thing dammit.

I also need to figure out how best to simultaneously and effectively continue my study of music, programming, and astronomy after school. Perhaps I can become one of those brilliant shiny people that's good at everything and seemingly never sleeps...

Site of the day:
http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1792544

Song of the day (up at public folder):
I've wanted to post this one for a while but it's kept slipping my mind. How sad it was that we could not believe...

Hallelujah, by the Helio Sequence

Daily Wave - 10/19

Ok let's play a new game.

In addition to longer entries, which I intent to write soon, every day I'm going to post things I run across or thoughts that I have or things that I'm listening to. It'll be something like this:

Astronomy is becoming a bigger and bigger fascination for me, and this week I've been treated to news stories and pictures regarding planets and moons within our own solar system. In particular, I've read about how Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus both (almost certainly) have vast underground oceans, possibly capable of supporting life (either ours in the long run, or life that might already be there that we don't know about). Anyways, in Saturn news, there's this site:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

which I've shared with most of you already probably. The site is just generally awesome so you all should keep it bookmarked, rssed, whatever.

A thought provoking article about flu vaccinations:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1

Been listening to a bunch of random stuff recently, from Bach to Tchaikovsky to Arvo Part to Massive Attack etc., but I think I'll make the song of the day: Small Time Shoot 'em Up by Massive Attack. It'll be up on the public folder.

Thought of the day: How do you beat yourself?

So. Pictures, websites, music of interest, daily.

Let's see how long I keep this up...

We carry each other

My friend posted this, and for some strange reason I couldn't reply on the blog directly, so I'm going to do it here. He wrote:

"
I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.
.
..
...

That is really all that need be said, but I suppose for lack of anything else to do in this hotel room, I'll pontificate. Briefly.

The matrix it turns out was right about everything as the quote above would seem to indicate. Also matrices are bad as is clearly indicated by a) the movies and b) mo-mor-puggers.

Sigh, I feel so damn emo right now. I really don't want to turn this into a rant. I do want to shape my feelings into arguments, mold my convictions into unwavering logic that would solve all the problems before me, and convert the non-believers to my manifest conclusions ( also possibly converting them into radioactive vapor).

Maybe I just deal poorly with change. I had this naive theory that we would all live together at some point. This theory is clearly flawed in its assumptions that this would be plausible. I don't know.

Coherence. I crave the ability to extract from my imagination the wisp of an idea and brand it into form. A form like prose. This would be most useful. If only I was an artist.
"

My reply:

Funny, you sound like someone I know...but I would reply with the words of a great friend of mine:

"You just gotta belieeeeeeeeeve."

I think I've been down this same road you seem to be describing far, far too often, and it doesn't really even go anywhere. As much as I want to be able to get a grip on my life, to really decide how I'm going to approach every day based on my convictions, it seems the harder you try to hold on to anything, the more easily it slips by. Again, as you told me, our best hope seems to be in possibility - allowing for it and embracing it. And even though the greatest challenge might be relinquishing the desire for this control, or even the desire for any of this to MEAN anything, ultimately I think we'll be happier when we can finally let go...

I had that dream too, and just as you do I feel it slipping away, but it's not the end of the story. I think we still have a greater dream that the world and all the convoluted shifts in circumstance can't take from us, and that is to keep our eyes open and see what there is to take from this life. Our greatest triumph is yet to come, and it'll take more than this to stop us. Paul isn't leaving us, not in the really important ways, and I don't think he'll ever lose what it is that ties him to us. I can't say what exactly that is, but I think it's there, and I think it'll hold us together even when we don't know how things are going to work out. It's part of who we are, and the people we have made ourselves and each other into.

I had a funny thought yesterday as I was carrying the piano keyboard back to my dorm. It was all boxed up in cardboard and tape, and as I was carrying it on my shoulder, it felt to me like I was a pallbearer carrying a casket. I tried to shake off the thought, but it makes a weird kind of sense. We're always carrying our life, and in turn our death, around with us. We are the keepers of our life story, and we carry it with us everywhere, and so too do we carry our friends with us. After all, they're a part of our lives too. As I said before, we've made each other this way, and just like how we are never without our home, so too are we never without each other. Even when we're alone, we all carry each other. It is the reason for our strength, and there is no greater honor.

Dig

We all have a weakness

But some of ours are easy to identify.

Look me in the eye and ask for forgiveness;

We'll make a pact to never speak that word again

Yes you are my friend.


We all have something that digs at us,

At least we dig each other

So when weakness turns my ego up

I know you'll count on the me from yesterday



If I turn into another

Dig me up from under what is covering

The better part of me

Sing this song

Remind me that we'll always have each other

When everything else is gone.



We all have a sickness

That cleverly attaches and multiplies

No matter how we try.



We all have someone that digs at us,

At least we dig each other

So when sickness turns my ego up

I know you'll act as a clever medicine.



If I turn into another

Dig me up from under what is covering

The better part of me.

Sing this song!

Remind me that we'll always have each other


When everything else is gone.




Thanks everyone. See you soon.

Reflections 8/7

They speak another language. I speak their language. I am from an other country. But I am here. I live here. I live in this moment. I am here. I AM!

My own waggling fingers are so alien to me. I wonder if I tell enough people that my stories will be famous that they will believe me. I wonder if I will believe me. The raindrops fall on my face - they know me better than I do.

I hope you'll call me in the morning.

Maybe you'll be the one to wake me up.

New Developments

I've decided I need to move forward on many fronts. I've stagnated too long, and have spent too much time thinking and waiting, rather than learning, doing, and getting all the crap in my head out into the light where I can do something creative with it. I keep having the urge to develop my creative abilities, without really knowing what purpose it will serve. I enjoy writing, just like I enjoy music, but I don't know if I like those things for their own merits, or if I'm trying to use them as tools to figure out another problem. I worry that if it's the latter case, I won't be able to stick with it long enough to really create anything of value, but I think I still have to try. I'm paying more attention to my writing - amount, frequency, and quality. Yesterday afternoon I started writing what may be a long term project. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but it's grounded in my own experience and will likely be largely autobiographical. While I want to tell some kind of story, calling it fiction would be a stretch. I've never approached a major project like this before, and I think I need to spend some time in developing my ideas for characters and story - really decide what I'm writing, and maybe more importantly, why.

On the music front I'm considering taking some classes when I get back to school, probably some kind of composition class along with regular musical theory. I'll also probably find some way to take piano lessons, and hopefully bring the keyboard from home to New York.

I'm going to use my time to create things.

I'm tempted to post what I've written so far, but I'm going to refrain and actually take this thing to a conclusion and polish it first. If it ends up being multiple chapters, maybe I'll post as I go. I'm still working through basically everything about this story - I really have no idea what I'm doing. At the moment I want to just see where my ideas take me and pass judgment later, but it's extremely slow going without really knowing what or why I'm writing. I think I will work on character development first. I wrote two things about the main character at the end of the page, and I think I'll see if I can find more things about him that will flesh out his character. Though honestly, I may just write it as if he is me, or hell, just write it from first person. Dunno yet, but here's what I wrote:

- He has conversations with himself. Whether there are people around or no, it's a rare thing when he isn't talking with himself.
- He creates symbols, and he knows it.

Anyways, time to call it a night. Got silly Chinese class to go to. Funny how I always end up trivializing where I am, even in freakin' China.

One more thing. I'm thinking the time has come for me to speak to a counselor of some sort, maybe seek some sort of medical help for what I've finally admitted is likely clinical depression. I don't know exactly how I feel about all of this yet, but I've acknowledged the fact that I refuse to have another semester or year like the last one, and something needs to be done, even if that something requires more than just my personal effort.

I'd welcome all of your thoughts.

- Bryan

China, Part 2

It just started pouring. I'm going to miss this weather.

Moments like these, when I feel truly aware of what's going on around me, are really the only souvenirs I take from places, times, and people. It's become a matter of some concern for me - memories fade, and in my crusade against sentimentalism I may not be holding onto enough important things in my life. These moments pass, and I fear I don't carve enough nicks and crevices into my life to really get my hands around it and hold on. Everything I hold dear is so insubstantial, my connection with my own life and experience so tenuous. Ideas and perceptions, every moment just passing through. A contemplative life like this, with few attachments, can have its uses, I suppose. Sometimes I think shedding as much human artifice as possible and completely immersing oneself in the sensation of being is as sincere and noble a life as anyone could possibly hope for - an experience closest to the truth of our human condition. Life is an exercise in being, but we can easily forget this and have our lives, our existence, be a means to some other end. It's all a means of comfort I suppose, since dwelling on the abyss too long is dangerous. But too often I have to ask myself "How did I get here? Where did the time go", and sometimes simple recollection isn't enough to make it feel substantial, like it had actually happened.

It's really raining now, and the thunder's started.

I'd like someone to hold on to.

China, Part 1

Hey friends, I want to write something. Probably should be sleeping, but what the hell - can't always do the smart thing. Shouldn't always do the smart thing. That's strangely reassuring.

I've once again run into the problem of having a lot to say and not knowing where to start. It's too bad my last post was so hastily written and posted, despite how genuine it was at the time. The truth is that there are glaring similarities between this big city and the other big cities I've been to in the West. I think we can chalk that one up to globalization and "modernity". But the truth is that there are a multitude of differences, and I've found many of them to be extremely endearing. There's a kind of energy here I don't come across often in other places, the willingness to simply be out in the street and bustling around without necessarily having a place to go. Even more than New York or especially Los Angeles, there are always people out on the street. Morning, noon, and night I hear voices coming up from the street, and, every once in a while, music played by a passing vendor. Of course, the sounds of car horns reach me just as easily, and from what I can tell Beijingers all love their car horns. I suppose it goes in tandem with the fact that cars, bikes, and pedestrians do whatever they want on the road whenenever they feel like it, damn the torpedos. It's a kind of sincere self interest which has been at times both endearing and irritating: people generally handle their business with not a whole lot of concern for what else is going on, possibly as a result of having to constantly contend with many many other people. It could be taken as impolite, but even since I've been here I've come to appreciate the necessity of being able to drown other people out for a while. And their car horns. Seriously, at least in the case of traffic everyone simultaneously tries to go where they want to go - only to find everyone else doing the same thing. Cue the horns. I'm not sure if they are surprised to be constantly confronted by this situation, or if they just like honking the horns.

Anyways.

Every few days there are thunderstorms. I'm writing this in the dark, and about once every minute a flash lights up the room. Sometimes it rains too, and I can hear it blown against the windows of my tenth floor room.

Last week was vacation week. The few plans I started to make up in my head were all unsatisfactory - nothing short of completely unscheduled travel alone would suffice, and as a result I ended up staying in Beijing for lack of train tickets and a nod toward my safety. It certainly wasn't a waste, since I got to see many different parts of the city on my own, which I find to be the most fulfilling part of traveling anyways. I would much rather try to experience some approximation of ordinary life in a place rather than seeing all the famous sites. Maybe I simply lack the imagination, but I'm hard pressed to find a lot of meaning from monuments or ruins, or at least not when I can't see them for all the teeming crowds in the way. I hear the Summer Palace is gorgeous, but I wouldn't really know for all the tour groups between me and the scenery. Made Disneyland look empty. But another interesting aspect of the break was that everyone else who I've been spending my time with here had left to travel, either to other parts of China or to other countries, leaving me absolutely alone for about 6 days. In that time, I did not see or speak to a single person who's name I knew, at least not in the flesh. I've never really known what that was like.

I wrote this on the tail end of it:

--

Why do I write? And what do I write? And, while I’m thinking about it, who’s even writing? Who’s the author here? Who’s the me inside all the flesh and appendages, wiggly fingers in the wind? I can’t see with bad eyes, but my mind seems so clear. My. Me. Reduce reduce reduce, looks like reproduce. How clever.

So where is the me? Oh please don’t say we’re one and the same, I would hate to agree with you, this time. You can be so obtuse.

--

Well, it's getting late. I've got more to say, so I'll write it out tomorrow.

Vitriol Breaks the Silence

I just want to be a fucking artist.

I mean, here I am, with all this raw feeling, pure stinging emotion, boiling up from every glance and thought, driving me day and night, moment to moment from comfort toward something...other, and I still can’t come up with a poetic, thought provoking quotable to save my life. Hell, I’ve crossed the whole fucking world, gone from big fish in little pond to tiny little hors d’oeuvre in the People’s Republic, and all I’ve got is this stupid money with Mao’s face on it to show for it. Not like it’s any different from the green backs I’m used to. IT BUYS BEER JUST AS WELL, LET ME TELL YOU. But GOD DAMN if these people aren’t trying their damndest to be just like us and every other western ORIFICE of youth culture. Ha. I’ve crossed half the world only to show up at another damn bar and club scene, imagine my surprise if you please. And it’s only those little girls, those three little girls who came to tell me wo de yanjing hen piaoliang that keeps me from condemning everything that’s ever touched the West, including this whole damn country. I guess people my age are idiots no matter where you go.

Edit: So this was written in about...a minute several nights ago after I'd come back from a rather lonely night drinking in a particularly Western oriented district of the city...so the vitriol might have been a bit over the top. While I stand by what I said, and it's certainly a perspective that's been troubling me since I've gotten here, it's not the whole story. That story would take much longer to tell, and now that I've got unimpeded access to my blog, I'll get around to telling it soon.

Sine qua non

First, some thoughts on the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine. No, I'm not going to actually talk about the movie, but there was a scene in particular that got me thinking. This isn't going to be much of a spoiler, but if you absolutely want to know nothing about the movie before going into it...tough.

After making his escape from the evil, manipulative government organization, Logan stays the night with an elderly couple at their rural home. During his entire time there, the couple call Logan "son", an innocuous acknowledgment of his status as their junior. The first few times they do this, the audience doesn't blink - obviously they're the elderly couple and he's the strapping, misguided youth out for revenge. And yet we are then given a scene at the dinner table where Logan mentions that his favorite make of motorcycle is a 1948 something or another, and the old man exclaims that Logan was extremely young to know or appreciate such an old motorcycle. Obviously, Logan seems to be a relatively young man, but as he blushes from across the table at the man's comment, suddenly we remember that Logan was more than a century old in 1948. In all likelihood, Logan is several times the old man's age. How strange that the other man still played the role of the old, fatherly sage to Logan's brooding youth when in actuality it would seem more likely for Logan to be sharing his more than a century's worth of life lessons to the old man. But no, the traditional roles are maintained, and never again in the movie are we reminded of his age. Instead he simply falls into the role of the hero with a troubled past, without the length or significance of that past playing any apparent role in his life as we are given to see on screen. Shouldn't he be wiser than we see him? After more than a hundred years of life, shouldn't he be acting less like a testosterone junkie and more like the kind old man who took him in and chided his lack of perspective on the tragedy that had befallen him?

I suppose action heroes can't be too worldly and wise or it wouldn't be a good action flick, but it raised a question.

This is my question: What would growing old be like if you never aged? What effect does physical aging have on the psyche, on one's conception of themselves? Is our confrontation of our mortality necessary for growth, or is simply garnering life experience enough to make us wise?

I suppose this is another indication of my concern for my own mortality. I want to do more with my limited time in this life, but I feel woefully ignorant of what I want out of life. I feel like I've elevated the importance of every moment to such a level that perhaps I only stand to be disappointed. Or maybe I really do need to completely change the life I've been living. Perhaps, like everything else, it's neither one nor the other but both, and likely many other things as well.

I had an idea a couple nights ago: within three years of leaving school, I want to pack up and move with whoever will go with me to another city somewhere else in the world. While there, we would support ourselves by whatever means we could find, learn the language, and really attempt to make that place home for however long we stayed. Like coming to New York for school, living in these different places would hopefully provide different perspectives on life, and at least remind us of the vastness of possible experiences. I hope very much that my friends come with me, but as long as I am able, I think I will do this by myself if I have to. And maybe I do have to.

I wonder how I will feel after going to those places, and when I will want to settle down. I wonder what, and who, I would miss and perhaps be unable to do without, even if I were to live forever.

I think the Jedi were wise to caution against emotional attachments. Pain leads to anger, etc, and nothing stings quite like emotional attachments...

Reflection 4/21 - Skin

It smells like incense here in my little cell, and rain without. The stillness and the quiet are protection from the motion of the outside - the rain falling and the people shrouded in dark clothes and dark moods. The weather is bad today, better to be inside. I am inside, waiting in my fallout shelter against the world. Here I am like the sage, the immortal, clothing myself in this solitudinous space, armor against the onslaught. It comes with me, I think, when I walk outside, and keeps me safe. Who else but me would reside in my clothing, within my own skin? Sometimes there's an echo, too, when I speak, and the words don't get out. But the rain falls on the outside, and I am untroubled.

What I'm trying to say is...

I've learned two new things about myself recently:

1. I like weird people, exceptionally free spirited people, people who have learned that life is an end unto itself. I feel like I can learn from them.

2. I'm not comfortable playing second fiddle in my own life, which is tough when I want to learn new things. I'm uncomfortable with hero worship for this reason as well, but godammit all I wanted to ask him was how to be more like him and less like the person I am now, stuck in a rut.

I just came up with that last one, so it's gonna be three things

3. I want to do more things with my hands. I want to create and tinker. Pick locks and play piano. I'm not quite sure why. Yes I do. It seems more sincere, less abstracted from life. I seem like just the person to dissect experiences to such a scientific level that the life is gone from them, and yet for some reason the social sciences aren't fulfilling at all, go figure. Another instance of wanting to be more like some ideal other than what I am? Perhaps. Perhaps I've just got too many of my own questions to give a fig about Chinese nationalism or the miserable lives of Japanese office ladies. I feel like I'm more alive than all of them, but have somehow forgotten how to speak, and how to walk. I need something real to teach me how to do those things again, differently and better this time.

Interactions with people are strange these days. I have trouble listening to what they say, which is no way to have a conversation. I think I'm afflicted by a strange sense of superiority where I think I'm different from everyone, which has come to equal better in my mind, but at the same time all I want is for someone to get through to me. My friends do that. Increasingly, people I've never met who's work I admire have done that, and then suddenly I meet them and feel inadequate. I need more to show for my life.

Angst over weekend activities continues, but I think I'm narrowing the field. I want things to do rather than places to go, and I want these things to involve a few people who could be friends. I don't want to simply attend different places. I guess this fits with my new desire to develop awesome skills and talents in order to affirm my worth.

I think I would like to write something. A story maybe, some kind of fiction. First I need to learn how to write, and to do that I need to read more. This is another new project.

Maybe the story would start like:

He was leaving today, and each step was considered as he made his way down the street to the subway station. He was reckoning with the city, trying to find the feeling this place inspired in him, the exact notion he would take with him as he made his way back home. To be charitable, he would remember it as it was now, gray and smelling of rain. Even the wind was gray as it shook the bare trees. It was palpable in the air and the whole world seemed very small and muffled, trapped in a snow globe of rain and clouds.

And maybe it would end like:

He opened his eyes as he leaned against the glass, and the sun was still there.

So now I just need to write the middle part, go back and fix the first and last parts, and we'll have our story. No sweat.

So what else? In trying to write the above it became apparent to me that I can only write autobiographically and that I want desperately to go on a journey somewhere, or at least to just leave this place. I think maybe I need to not be so intent on writing something in order for it to be good. My inner voice is pompous and wordy and has no idea what I want to say.

I need to feel exceptional, but it seems like chances of that being anything other than a delusion are getting slimmer by the minute.

Damn.

Youth and Beauty

What is one's youth best spent on? Should one strive to act in a certain way when they are young, with the knowledge that such a lifestyle cannot be maintained forever? Should youth be treated as the playtime before the real work of one's life gets started? What then is the value of being young?

I can, at times, be a terribly cerebral person, and it's been pointed out to me before that in thinking too much I stand to lose precious time that I may never get back, time that I could be spending doing things that are only acceptable of young people. Incidentally if I were to make a list of such things, most of them considered out of the context of youthful exuberance and lack of life experience would be considered to be vices at best and moral failures at worst.

Drinking all night. Staying out till all hours. Random hookups with people a first name beyond total stranger-hood. Carelessness and irresponsibility. Looked at in this light, it doesn't seem important or useful. Looked at like this, as a simple description of activities, it really does seem like people my age are simply trying to take in as much hedonistic stimulation as society will condone before they "settle down". And if that's all it is, and I'm sad to think it probably is for many if not most, then I can understand the judgmental dichotomy between the time before and after "youth". Before you settle down, it's ok to be frivolous because you're just getting it out of your system, but after you settle down, god help you if you ever look back. It'll be too late and "real" life will have begun and no amount of sports cars with make it otherwise.

I don't like this setup at all. It holds a ticking clock over my head and tells me that
anything I do and feel before time runs out doesn't matter and everything I do after has to conform to an entirely different paradigm that denies the importance of the first. Life is all one, and you are always a product of your prior experiences, so why do I get this feeling that so many of my peers are frantically trying to cram their whole lives as they know it into the years before they can no longer cling to some kind of lifestyle based on going to school? I disagree with those peers, just as I have to disagree with my seniors who would tell me that I have to give up the values I hold now, when I'm young, in order to become an adult. It sounds too contrived.

Let's look at that list again. I want to put it in a different light and talk about why it's important. I want to talk about the purpose behind it.

Well, I guess I can only speak for myself as to the purpose behind it all. Everything else is speculation, but I'll try anyways. I wonder if it isn't simply escapism. Like the many or most of my peers who are trying to live large before the giant come-down of real life, going to bars and fooling around is transcendental.

I just realized I'm projecting from what, in my head at least, is a typically female point of view. Not being a girl myself, I may be getting this entirely wrong, but I feel like the female perspective on youth is one of romance, which, in my mind, is equal to a desire to transcend the mundane and reach something larger than life. If I knew how to dance, I imagine that would be rather transcendental in that sense. I hear you asking: "well what's the male perspective?". I dunno. Conquest? I'm dealing in large strokes here, as this is tangential to whatever point I was on about earlier, but if the female perspective is attempting to experience something...elusive and transcendent, then I'd have to say the male perspective is oriented toward accomplishment and mastery. Again, I'm writing this on the fly, so forgive the oversimplifications where they arise, but maybe the answers to why people my age do what they do can be found within the generalizations. Maybe people are that simple.

Maybe I'm that simple. How many people my age have felt alienated from the world at large, thinking they're special somehow, or that whatever angst their feeling isn't simply characteristic of their age. Of their youth.

I think the truth has come out. I started writing this to vindicate myself, to prove that I'm surrounded by a bunch of uninteresting people stumbling around looking for thrills. But if I'm going to be honest with my myself and really stick to my beliefs, then there's nothing wrong with any of that. People are how they are, and I'm how I am. I'm certainly not the first person to feel this way, and I suppose that's a comforting thought. I'd like to find the others. It seems there are so few of my kind.

I do need to find people. As much as I might try to deny it, I think it's the truth. I need to make connections, the kind of connections that will remind me of the beauty of being alive and sharing that experience. I guess my problem is with the orthodoxy of the interactions I'm used to. If the goal of a party is escapism, I think I want something else. I want to escape to reality, really cut through the crap and find someone, if only for a couple hours, and I think that's what I take away from that laundry list of typical college activities: the staying up late is an adventure to share, the drinking is for the comradery, and the sex is an attempt to know someone. All of these are for the connection to others.

A while back I was at a typical kind of dance party. Lots of people dancing, loud music you can't talk over, that kind of thing. I ended up standing off by the wall because I didn't want to dance, either by myself just for the sake of dancing or with someone else. It was all too anonymous, and I was tired of trying to fit into those kinds of situations when I had to honestly admit that I never had any fun. And so it went, until it was shut down by campus security. Noise complaint. But as fate would have it, a small group broke off from the throng and went up to an apartment on 129th street. Suddenly there were few enough people to remember everyone's name and actual opportunity to talk to people. We got out some drinks, ended up playing some games, and it was a great time. A while later, as the night was winding down, I found myself alone in the living room with one of the girls I had met that night. She was picking up her things and getting ready to leave with the rest of us. She looked at me and said, "This is a weird relationship we have. I didn't know you before tonight, and I'll probably never see you again". But for those several hours, she was one of only a handful of people in the entire world for me. I had made connections to them, if only for a while, and finally I had felt like I'd had a night worth talking about, a night worth remembering.

I think I've let too many walls get built up around me while I wasn't paying attention, and life has been oversimplified. Monday through Thursday is school, classes during the day, homework at night. Weekends are for getting away from school, and then preparing for school again. Rinse repeat. These are the people I hang out with, these are the things I do. Recycle, recycle.

This is how I think.

But there's a whole world outside of these walls, these classrooms and job opportunities and resumes. I've let myself get trapped in a radius of several blocks around campus, venturing out all too rarely. I've hung out with the same people. I live in New York, I should not be wanting for adventures or interesting people, but I haven't done enough to satisfy this hunger that I've finally acknowledged. If I can't find the answers or the people here, I have plenty of other places to look, and I won't let myself get trapped into thinking how things are is how things have to be. Everything can change if I'm brave enough to see it through.

And I'm going to find them. I'm going to find the things that make me happy. I'm going to find the people that can teach me about life.

A Disquiet Follows My Soul

So here I am again, sitting in front of my computer in a dark room, listening to heart-wrenching music played loudly over my speakers. I could hardly put two thoughts together on my way back from class, all I could think of was getting home to this dark room. There was a kind of desperation there, seemingly without a cause, and I've found myself here again. Why do I keep running back here?

I think I'm happy, and I think I even know what that means. I'm proud to say that I think I'm giving life a fair shake and keeping my eyes open to what's out there. But what if that's all true, and I still don't like what I see?

It would be easy to believe that I could take some pills and feel better. I've even toyed with the idea of getting a prescription for anti-depressants, and yet I can't see myself talking to a psychiatrist. I would want the pills to feel better but I wouldn't feel the need to acknowledge a problem. Honestly, I don't think I have a problem. Things that make me happy still make me as happy as they ever have, maybe even more so for the contrast. And yet the interim seems so much more gray.

I am troubled by the uncertainties, but more and more I realize how necessary they are. I think that's why I keep coming back here, why I keep sitting back in this chair, listening to sad music in a dark room. When I listen to this music, I feel like I'm tapped into another world. It's always there, I think, but people are too busy going in one direction or another to notice it until something forces them to stop. This world is a world of stillness and ambivalence. Here there is only the feeling. I feel like there's a clarity in this feeling, but the vision given to me is one of certain uncertainty. So many people are certain of things, and move confidently down the path they've chosen for themselves, but when I listen to this music, I don't feel the need to move anywhere. It's like a vantage point from which I can look out at my life. And I don't think it's from a point of sadness - that's not really what I feel. It's a feeling of...profundity.

How interesting that sad music is described as beautiful, but your favorite upbeat pop song probably wouldn't be.

There's a hunger for this feeling within me, a hunger that's been growing more and more lately. In fact these days I rarely listen to anything else if I don't have occasion to. Sure it's one thing to listen to upbeat music while walking to class or working out at the gym, but if I'm sitting at my computer, there's likely only one thing playing. I guess if you're going somewhere, doing something, you need music that will take you there. It's extroverted. But much like everything else I do, this music helps me face inward.

Is this because I don't want to see what's around me? I could believe that. I don't much want to see the people here, and I've grown tired of the same games they play every weekend, looking for entertainment. Wasting precious time.

Maybe I just miss my friends, and my home. I'd like to go home.

We're all in this together

One night, I had two related dreams. The first was in a large, warehouse-like building with several couches laid out in the middle. I sat with some other guys, and realized I had a guitar in my hands. I started strumming something, and everyone else joined in. I thought to myself "I'm so glad I learned how to play the guitar". Then I woke up for a few minutes, only to fall back asleep. My next dream was in what looked like a classroom, with other students learning how to play guitar, and our teacher was Gregory House. Again, I remember feeling glad to be learning how to play guitar.

Conclusion: I need to learn how to play guitar (again).

While I am pretty serious about this idea on its own, it really brought some things to the forefront that had been on my mind somewhat recently. It seems to me that I take a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from expressing myself, and I've been thinking recently that I ought to explore other outlets for that creativity. I used to be so creative as a kid...I was always drawing or building something. My mom recently dug up a bunch of old paintings and artwork from elementary school, and I couldn't believe I had done them. How I could have thought up the stuff I put on paper is beyond me, and I think a lot of it lies in the fact that I literally lacked self-consciousness. I just did stuff. I don't know what capacity I'd have to do any of it today, but I think I'd like to try my hand at it again. Painting, drawing, who knows? Maybe I'll find something I love. The guitar dreams reminded me of this neglected creative world, and I'm thinking now that maybe that might be part of the key to future happiness. It feels good to really want to do something, and more than that I think, it would be nice to do something purely for its own end. It's like my writing, I suppose. I don't write perhaps as often as I like, but when I do it's usually one of the most enjoyable things I'll do all day. And yet, I'll never put any of it to any practical use - it's not going to be published anywhere, and even up until now I didn't even put most of it anywhere anyone else could see it. It is a significant act in itself, sincere and complete. I would like to find a way for my life to be more like that.

I am surrounded by people with plans. They all know what they'll do in a couple years, or at the very least, they know what they want to do. I've become more and more concerned by my lack of such a plan, or really of any identifiable passion to do something. I think I'm passionate about living, but it's hard to put a finger on what that means, or to select a profession or lifestyle that I would consider appropriately sincere to that passion. I feel like I've put in so much time walking the line, hearing about only a handful of socially valid choices that I can make as far as how I will spend my life, and as I near the end of my educational career, I feel afraid that I can't seem to find my niche. However, I take heart in the fact that, for the most part, those people that I count on the most, the people that represent the only certainties in my life, are largely in the same boat. Having spoken to most of them in the past couple days, I've heard similar accounts of these concerns, which is comforting in a couple of ways. For one, I'm not alone in this, and for all the dopes I see compiling their resumes, at least I know the people I respect most are similarly stumped by this predicament. Maybe having no future plans and an ever-increasing desire to live like vagabonds is just what cool people do, and it's just all the uninteresting people that keep the world turning. That'd be nice.

But the notion that my closest friends are experiencing the same doubts as me also comforts me in another way, maybe a way that I didn't want to admit for fear of seeming weak or needy or some other nonsense - that maybe we each can't find something for ourselves to do because the best thing we could be doing is doing something with each other. Maybe after all the doubts we've undergone, it will be the certainties that have been there all along and provided our support that will shape our future.

And maybe it will be greater than anyone could reasonably hope for. And maybe we won't even have to pad our resumes to do it.

A lot of people have called me self-confident, even arrogant. I know that the things I've said and done have been worthy of that judgment, especially when I was younger. But it seems that as I get older, I am less and less sure of myself. However, for as much as I have started doubting myself in recent years, my respect and awe at the character and ability of my friends has only grown. So again, I may be too arrogant in this thought, but I have this gut feeling that my friends are special. That they alone, more than all the ages of people to have come before, possess an unparalled brilliance and understanding of life. I think they could change the world, and I want to be a part of it.

If we're really all in this thing together, if we're realizing that we've looked around at the possibilities being shown to us and found them distasteful, if we don't know how we're going to fit in the molds we've seen, then maybe fear about the future is unnecessary. If we're in this thing together, then maybe the excitement I'm starting to feel about all the unthought possibilities open to us is more appropriate.

At the very least, we can start a band. Maybe you'll listen to us someday.

Reflection 2/9 - Viewing Stones

I'm so sick of writing about things I don't know, and I'm sick of the fact that my life is seemingly composed of those unknowns. I want to write of revelations and certainties, and hope. I want my life to be like a smooth river stone, unique and substantial. I love the feel of stone, the feeling of immovability against one's fingers. Pure substance, dense and smooth. How much of that purity and solidity comes from its lifelessness, I wonder. You feel the rock, but surely what you press between your fingers is a pocket of pure universal substance, that stuff that makes up the world. I like this word, solid. I even like the thought of the world being a lifeless mass of stone, the thought that I could press my face against the dirt and the sand, and dig my fingers into the ground and hold on as the world spins. This all reminds me that the world is indeed spinning, tracing grooves in space, cog in cosmic chronometer. Maybe if I held on, I wouldn't feel so much like I was an accidental smear of bacteria on someone's masterpiece pencil drawing. I would cling to this spinning stone, and maybe then I'd learn something.

Reflection 2/2 - The Humming Heart

I long for a room of my own, with a shut door at my back, pooled in darkness. I'd listen to the air buzz in my ears and then settle on the floor and in all the interstices, and everything would shrink until I could wrap myself in the dark. Or maybe not. Maybe I would grow, the me in my head would grow and take on skin made of music and goosebumped with pure ineffable feeling, and this dark room could be my humming heart. Yes, and I could be so vast that all the open places between things could be my home, and the wind would be arms and words for me to be rest in. And I would grow and grow, greater than life even, to be free of my fear and my loss and all my love I'd fling it all to the stars and scream until I'm sitting here in this room still, breathing this darkness. And it runs like water into my chest.

So I've decided to start writing nightly reflections again. Every night I will simply write out what's in my head when I start typing. Here's the first attempt.

The Thaw, part 1

I am getting older. I am questioning everything. Some things have been confirmed, and those foundations shall be given more care and attention. Other things have been, or may yet be, discarded. The aspects of my life that I have chosen to change, the things that I have let go of, felt like a weight I was obliged to carry on my shoulders, and when I could go no further and had to put down my burden, I found no one and nothing telling me to pick it back up. I was startled at my own freedom. I have since become more wary of my obligations, and just as my sensitivity to undeserved expectations has become more acute recently, so has my awareness of the people and ideas in my life that really matter to me, and might have been receiving only lip service for too long.

I think even more than getting older, I am growing. I mentioned earlier in this blog that sometimes it is best for people to grow out of relationships, and that wishing things were otherwise is not healthy for anyone, but at that time I was perhaps too hasty in my assessment of those closest to me. I might be making the same mistake now, but I know the change is coming, and I recognize now as then that it will happen one way or the other.

I have this image attached to the notion of growth. I suppose I could best describe it as streamlining. That which is most central to who I am has been reaffirmed and strengthened, and even aspects of myself that I had once cherished and had recently forgotten have been uncovered again by this process. Some new elements have been incorporated too, but they seem to share the spirit of what has always mattered to me, and represent a growth out of those ideas.

I hope the following will be somewhat of a disambiguation of the preceding:

Winter break was the catalyst for all this change.

I had developed a rut since I'd been at Columbia, but by the first semester of Junior year, and maybe even the preceding summer, I knew it. I am still struggling with my reasons for being here, and I have been considering many questions the answers to which may illuminate my situation and my path in the future:

What is an academic? Am I one? Is that the same thing as being a student? Am I even a "student" anymore?

Should I be looking around for my career here in college? Is that realistic? Should I be studying my interests or some hybrid of my interests and pragmatic, marketable skills?

If I don't get a job in the field of my major, what will the point of going to college have been?

I don't know the answers to many of these questions. Some part of me gets the sense that I could never be an academic. No part of me wants to enrich human understanding as a whole. It would seem that I am after more personal answers, answers on an individual level. It could be that I'll find those answers by looking outward, but lately I find it hard to find a great deal of affinity for humanity as a whole. These days, it's draining enough to care about me and mine, and I have enough questions for myself without trying to figure the world out. And the problem is that whatever atrocities I may be ignoring, whatever social ills I should be out combating, I see humanity's hand behind them all. There is some idealism left in me, and I know that the ignorance I abhor is sometimes simply a lack of education, a lack of civilization and reverence for thought. We owe it to a great many people to cultivate a human culture of compassion based on reason and respect for our shared human condition.

Maybe people fight because they don't realize how doomed we all are anyways. Maybe if they really believed that all of us only had one life and realized how short it was, people could be more peaceful. It breaks my heart to think of how many things I wish I could hold on to forever, but will eventually pass away from me. Too many people think themselves immortal.

Anyways, I think I got sidetracked somewhere.

You know, I thought this would be an easy blog post. I've been through perhaps the most emotionally tiring couple weeks of my life, and I can't even be poetical and eloquent about it. I was messed up last semester, so much so that even a relatively easy workload felt like a grind. I felt out of touch with pretty much everything, only to come home and find no relief and unlooked for questions about people and things I had always counted on. I think I started losing my mind. And only after that came the most painful emotional blow I've ever experienced. What was meant to be an "intervention" for me, with my friends expressing their concern over my increasingly withdrawn demeanor, resulted in my roommate telling me that in the wake of his father's death last semester, he needed me more than anyone else in the world, but that I wasn't there for him. Ostensibly, he said all of this to tell me how obviously absent I was, but this seemed like something he wanted to confront me about with regard to our relationship. I'm not sure how much my other friends knew about how this supposed intervention was going to turn out, but I hope they didn't know he was going to do that.

I have never felt so guilty, so embarrassed, or so angry. I hope I never will again.

It was clear to me that our relationship was one thing in his mind, and something entirely different in mine. He had made me into something that I was not willing to be to him, and he wanted me to act in a way that I was not willing to act. And so he became disillusioned and hurt at my apparent failure to act the part of his friend. He had made what should have been a discussion between the two of us, taking place months beforehand, into a guilt trip aimed right at me and abetted by my closest friends.

I have many more thoughts on this that I will not share. Things between us now are not good, and most interestingly, I don't really care.

But the most remarkable thing happened after all that, and I felt better than I had in weeks.

I'll tell you all about it later.