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.

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...

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.

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.

A list I didn't know I had

Ryan Martin hanged himself last night.

I'm not sure we were ever really friends, but I think maybe something in us wanted to be from time to time. I wish I had known him better. Looking back, I realize now how often he appears in my memory and just how much time we spent together in high school, that time that already feels like a lifetime ago. We had small problems which we often pretended were big problems, tiny little grievances that were left behind along with most everything else from high school, and I think it's sad that the entire span of my knowing him took place during a time that feels so completely unreal to me now. How terribly real this is now.

I just turned 21, and I just heard about the death of my high school friend. That makes two things scratched off a list of inevitable things that somehow still managed to surprise me when they finally came to pass. Barring major incident, of course I'd be 21 one day, just like one day in the future I'll no longer have any means to deny the fact that I'd become an adult somewhere along the line. Of course my friends and acquaintances would someday die; the Flaming Lips even told me ahead of time. But I know now there was definitely a part of me that didn't want to believe it, that has only now been forced to face the truth.

25th hour...but like, in a good way...kinda

So it's my last night in California for a while...and I spent more than a little of it considering how different this place seems to me now and taking stock of all the people and things I will miss. I will miss my friends, and I will miss having a big sky over my head, as that will soon be replaced with little blue scraps bordered by concrete and glass. To an extent, I will miss the irresponsibility that comes with total dependence, but I will not miss the illusion of stability and stagnation which I have come to realize for what it is. The world has continued spinning while I've been at home, and my life was not put on hold when I returned. Perhaps I could have done more with my time, but these three months meant a great deal, and I have learned and seen and done many things in that time. I think for the first time I've been emboldened by my summer experience, and rather than grasping desperately at my remaining time here I find myself eager to take the next step and return to the work I now see in a different light. Plus there's a pretty girl I'm anxious to see again, so that's going to help the transition I think.

I'm going to miss my parents. I spent a good deal of time with them this summer, and especially in Europe I felt like I was part of a family - not due in any part to the simple (but rather rare) proximity of the three total members of our nuclear family, but rather because of the experiences we were sharing, the reassurance of their familiar personalities in foreign places, and the respect for and pride in each other that we all shared. My parents are truly honorable, amazing people, and my respect for them grows daily. They shaped who I have become, but also gave me the immeasurably valuable ability to think for myself and live my own life. They gave me my life, not simply biologically but intellectually as well. They gave me the ability to think, which is rarer perhaps than one might believe.

While I've said already that I'm going to miss my friends, I think there's a place for them in my future even larger than the one they have in my past, and I'm anxious to share my life with them and have many adventures, because life's too damn short to spend being bored.

The next step begins now.

Old Faces

I've seen a lot of old faces recently, belonging to people I had not seen in years and who had for all intents and purposes ceased to be a part of my life, but who suddenly reemerged on the scene. Talking to these people evoked in me a bizarre recognition of my own growth as I recounted the events and thoughts that have come to define my present self, and then astounded me as I watched them evolve before my eyes from living figments of my memory into flesh and blood as they told me tales of their lives since we had parted. For each of these people, as the time we spent together came to a close, I felt the strange desire to tell them everything about myself...every secret and worry. I suddenly wanted to hold on to them and the fleeting time of our reunion, and every embrace was my attempt at bringing them back into my life for good.

They're good people, every one, and I'm going to try to remember how important it is to know them.

And my blog takes yet another turn for the emo. I'm gonna take a break from this wussy shit and go pound some sheet rock around an engine I'm rebuilding or something like that.

How tragic.

A quick and dirty entry, due to an impending party:

We build our lives, at least to an extent, around various people whose lives intertwine with ours for a given amount of time. Friends, lovers, colleagues, but especially friends. At times it seems we can trust them with things that we keep secret even from our own family, and the fact that they don't actually share any blood relation to us can give us a welcome perspective on our lives. But maybe their lives are never truly bound to ours, as is the case with family. Not having a large family myself, I've always relied on my friends to pick up the slack and I've never been disappointed. I have amazing friends. However, they all have their own lives to lead, and if those lives and their choices lead them in another direction from my own, what am I supposed to feel? How much can I do to keep them close to me, without, through my actions, destroying what made us friends in the first place. To be blunt, should anyone really have to work to sustain a friendship? Or is it better to wish them well on their journey and let them drift away from you?

Honestly, I don't know the answer, but at this point in my life I really wish I did. I fear that as I change, I may be growing out of friendships I've had for many years. I think to myself, "how tragic", but it's no tragedy to have had a meaningful friendship. It's tragic to expect it to last forever, and be disappointed by reality. I suppose, in a sense, they will always be your friend, but maybe (and I hate this word), after a while they're doomed to become an acquaintance. Maybe the trick is to recognize the desire for possession associated with friendship and overcome it. The friendship was what it was, and maybe trying to prolong it is just a selfish desire to avoid pain, or reluctance to relinquish someone who is "yours".

Maybe I'm trying to talk myself into something.

Bryan