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.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, February 16, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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.
Monday, February 2, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, December 12, 2008
May - June, 2005
I should be asleep.
I have a final interview tomorrow, and unwritten papers to attend to by the beginning of next week, which doesn't change the fact that I've utterly wasted the past couple of days playing video games and feeling as little as possible. But I don't know why. It's as if somewhere along the line recently I decided to close my eyes and just deny my circumstances up and down until they went away. As if I could crawl into a video game for hours on end and feel happy. I haven't even been able to write anything decent enough to warrant a blog entry, and I honestly haven't cared to take one glance inside myself for the better part of two weeks. But I don't know why. Maybe I'm tired from all the useless soul-searching I've been doing this semester, which is partly due to this blog, and the fact that I've found few things more rewarding than having fun with my friends and doing everything in my power to pretend I'm 15 again. I'm 21. Fuck. 15 is a long time gone, never to return.
Anyways.
I don't know how I'm going to drag myself out of this, but I think I have to, for the sake of my sanity (and my grades). Which brings me back to the start.
Circles do that.
I should be asleep. But as I was lying there listening to music, I felt strangely compelled to look back at some of the stuff I wrote as personal reflections back in high school when I wrote nightly. I found a lot of bad poetry, granted, but I also found some things that sounded terribly familiar. Circles again.
I could talk more about the themes in these reflections, why I chose these particular ones to share, and who they're written about...but I won't. Maybe later.
The following were written between May and June 2005, and I haven't changed a word.
May 12, 2005
Maybe the trouble is that I think too much about how to say things, when I just need to say them. There is an empty void between us, filled with silence. I want to bridge the gap, to bring her closer to me, close enough to know her like a real person. She’s a name and she’s a place, and she’s the hope I have for my life, but she’s always just out of reach. I could blame myself. What do I say? How do I act? Maybe there should be a connection already, and hoping for one to emerge is as hopeless as forcing yourself to fall in love. Or maybe it’s the same thing. I have only known that closeness once before, and in that instance I was consumed by my love for another. Where is the bond now? Why can’t I feel like I am actually saying something when I speak? It’s a mystery as deep and convoluted as my thoughts, waiting to be explored, but hopelessly dark. I dive down within myself again, for even clear water has its dark depths. Sometimes the casual exterior must fall for my true self to be evident, even to myself.
I sit with my back to the table, laying against it as I crane my head toward the sky. Stillness and clouds and vast blue sky. The breeze blows through the trees at the periphery of my vision, and the wordless question appears once more within my mind. A sense of reslessness, of desire, and of hope. I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. How the microscopic events unfold into earth shattering catastrophes all around me, and I am wholly unmoved. Save by the wind. Sometimes it blows through an open classroom door, and I feel life course through me like cool water. There is some energy and natural power in such a subtle force as a summer breeze…and more than anything else I know, it can bring me to my knees.
The sea breeze blows against my face, though I am now many years younger. A strange shade of sunlight colors my memories in the hues of nostalgia, and I feel the hum of some careless summer song reverberate within my soul. My consciousness brings me nothing but the image of the green ocean lapping against the beach, like the bittersweet sound of music played in the distance, carried by some sympathetic wind to my ear, and even years later…my heart aches to feel such carelessness and grace.
Maybe there’s meaning behind the darkness and quiet of my room this summer night. Maybe I can fall back into the recesses of my mind and let the darkness envelop me. I feel myself pulled toward some other place, where the fresh minted sunlight creeps over me as I sit at my computer. Typing. Breathing. Finding the words to say. Maybe I will turn and walk out of this place and into the nothingness between stars. And be totally lost to comprehension.
Ineffable
May 17, 2005
The night sky is a deep, luminous blue, shining through the silhouette trees onto my upturned face. A haze hangs around the moon, like it should on a still night like this. I walk with my friend, and talk of the future. What will become of us? It feels like I’m living a memory, as if I know I am experiencing a time to which I will reminisce many years later. I’ll be somewhere completely different. I’ll be someone completely different. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll remember what the night sky looked like, and how I walked beside my friend, back in the lost days of my youth.
May 20, 2005
Sometimes I’m surprised by the distance between places. Only two points exist on a path for me as I am traveling: the origin and the destination. But there are other places, people living entirely outside of my notice. People who I will never meet, who exist in the nothingness between points. Maybe someday I will realize that existence is a continuity, with my reality being constantly revised by where I am. Now, I am somewhere different than I was yesterday, even if I am in the same place.
I’m just passing through. The world swirls around me, but I am safe behind by the glass barriers separating my reality from the one outside, where there are nothing but plains and space. The sunlight here is like a sweet sickness, clawing inside me, at the walls of my chest: the affliction of sparse tranquility. Perhaps I am not as safe as I thought..
May 23, 2005
There are so many paths to walk, out among the vast expanses of nothingness, among the rolling hills covered in gold. There are so many silent oases, untouched but by the wind, which gently sways the trees to a rhythm unheard by anyone. I want to see them all, to pack up and leave. Pick a direction and go. Experience the quiet of the empty expanse between the limits of human knowledge. Many things can be cages. And many people are prisoners without knowledge of their bondage. My cell has invisible bars, sometimes only as thick as a pane of glass, but impenetrable. The bars are of my own making, built slowly over the passage of my life and heated and reinforced with every meaningless day that passes when I feel nothing. I hold myself hostage to something that lies ahead of me, something I can’t see. But sometimes, free air drifts into my prison, and I can feel again, if only for a short time. Then I think of far off mountains, strange faces, and gentle winds sweeping across oceans of gold.
The first I saw of her was her bare shoulder, as we were led to the booth across the walkway from hers. I sit next to the wall, and glance in her direction just in time to notice that she has turned her head away. We talk and laugh and eat. The mood is easy, but there is some apprehensiveness within me whenever I glance over. She is beautiful. Impossibly so. I wanted nothing more than to talk to her. Hear her voice. Ask her name. And sometimes I would feel her eyes upon me, maybe wondering what my name was. Whenever I noticed, a warm happiness would spread through my body, and I would smile like a fool, though no one else noticed. We ate and talked, sneaking looks between conversations and pizza. If only we had met somewhere else, without our parents, where we could have become friends, but I had no hope of talking to her with her family so close by. My happiness had abetted by the time we stood to leave, and the realization that we would never meet again dawned on me. I saw so many possibilities, so many futures fall away at that instant when I started walking toward the door. But I couldn’t resist another stolen glance, and so looked one last time. She was looking right at me, and she was smiling so warmly I felt as if I knew her. All of my happiness spilled out in the smile I gave her, and I was sure in that instant that she was sad to see me go, just as I was sad to leave her. That smile would be the only thing we ever shared. Sometimes fate can be so cruel.
May 31, 2005
Sweeping fields lay before my feet as the sweet melody of my journey sings softly in my ear. Faroff is the subdued flute, with its blossoming tones of beauty. But rising up like a wave to carry me forward is the vast symphony of freedom, resonating through me, bringing me in tune with the universe, like the air in my lungs brings life within me. Brings the outside within. The vast spirit of everything interconnected, moving through me and around me, speaking through me to craft this music. I am at once the tall mountains and the wide valleys; all are encompassed within me as the whole is reflected in the part…existence reflected in my soul.
The most beautiful music is the most melancholic, for that is the deepest emotion. It sounds almost like the noises a soul makes as it cries for its loneliness, with its rhythm and sorrowful movement, but with the deepest expression.
June 5, 2005
There is nothing between me and the sky as the wind rushes through my hair. Sun glints off the windshield, as I trace the contour of the glass until it reaches into infinity. My consciousness expands toward the sun as I am enveloped in sublime joy, joy of such depth that I could drown in it, dive so deep that I never emerge again. Joy the color of the late afternoon sun that sounds like hazy, reverberating guitar mixed with rushing wind. It has the texture of childhood innocence, bittersweet and delicate, and fades when I try to hold on to it. Reality fades into a twilight of dream and nostalgia, bubbling up within me and washing across my soul until I am filled with the shades of red and orange cast across the clouds. My consciousness evaporates in the haze, my body becomes a conduit to the vastness of existence, everything becomes clear. But the secret slides through my fingers like water until I am left with only my thoughts.
June 6, 2005
All of a sudden, she was far back in the past, staring out across the beautiful valley, with the clear, blue ocean on either side, and the sun sinking behind the horizon. Such relentless beauty and infinite promise, laid before her feet, all those years ago. Now the light shines in slits across her face, filtered through the blinds, as the sun sets behind haze and city lights. It seemed like reality was anchored to her worn face, and her sad, questioning eyes, wondering where the time went. How did I get here? I saw her again for the first time, surreal and startlingly poignant, standing far down the path from where she had once stood, looking back to where she had once been looking forward. Autumn falls across her eyes, and the sun sets a little lower, damningly slow, casting shadow across what once was bright, welcoming the night, and the cold, saddening light shines as the day grows old.
I have a final interview tomorrow, and unwritten papers to attend to by the beginning of next week, which doesn't change the fact that I've utterly wasted the past couple of days playing video games and feeling as little as possible. But I don't know why. It's as if somewhere along the line recently I decided to close my eyes and just deny my circumstances up and down until they went away. As if I could crawl into a video game for hours on end and feel happy. I haven't even been able to write anything decent enough to warrant a blog entry, and I honestly haven't cared to take one glance inside myself for the better part of two weeks. But I don't know why. Maybe I'm tired from all the useless soul-searching I've been doing this semester, which is partly due to this blog, and the fact that I've found few things more rewarding than having fun with my friends and doing everything in my power to pretend I'm 15 again. I'm 21. Fuck. 15 is a long time gone, never to return.
Anyways.
I don't know how I'm going to drag myself out of this, but I think I have to, for the sake of my sanity (and my grades). Which brings me back to the start.
Circles do that.
I should be asleep. But as I was lying there listening to music, I felt strangely compelled to look back at some of the stuff I wrote as personal reflections back in high school when I wrote nightly. I found a lot of bad poetry, granted, but I also found some things that sounded terribly familiar. Circles again.
I could talk more about the themes in these reflections, why I chose these particular ones to share, and who they're written about...but I won't. Maybe later.
The following were written between May and June 2005, and I haven't changed a word.
May 12, 2005
Maybe the trouble is that I think too much about how to say things, when I just need to say them. There is an empty void between us, filled with silence. I want to bridge the gap, to bring her closer to me, close enough to know her like a real person. She’s a name and she’s a place, and she’s the hope I have for my life, but she’s always just out of reach. I could blame myself. What do I say? How do I act? Maybe there should be a connection already, and hoping for one to emerge is as hopeless as forcing yourself to fall in love. Or maybe it’s the same thing. I have only known that closeness once before, and in that instance I was consumed by my love for another. Where is the bond now? Why can’t I feel like I am actually saying something when I speak? It’s a mystery as deep and convoluted as my thoughts, waiting to be explored, but hopelessly dark. I dive down within myself again, for even clear water has its dark depths. Sometimes the casual exterior must fall for my true self to be evident, even to myself.
I sit with my back to the table, laying against it as I crane my head toward the sky. Stillness and clouds and vast blue sky. The breeze blows through the trees at the periphery of my vision, and the wordless question appears once more within my mind. A sense of reslessness, of desire, and of hope. I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. How the microscopic events unfold into earth shattering catastrophes all around me, and I am wholly unmoved. Save by the wind. Sometimes it blows through an open classroom door, and I feel life course through me like cool water. There is some energy and natural power in such a subtle force as a summer breeze…and more than anything else I know, it can bring me to my knees.
The sea breeze blows against my face, though I am now many years younger. A strange shade of sunlight colors my memories in the hues of nostalgia, and I feel the hum of some careless summer song reverberate within my soul. My consciousness brings me nothing but the image of the green ocean lapping against the beach, like the bittersweet sound of music played in the distance, carried by some sympathetic wind to my ear, and even years later…my heart aches to feel such carelessness and grace.
Maybe there’s meaning behind the darkness and quiet of my room this summer night. Maybe I can fall back into the recesses of my mind and let the darkness envelop me. I feel myself pulled toward some other place, where the fresh minted sunlight creeps over me as I sit at my computer. Typing. Breathing. Finding the words to say. Maybe I will turn and walk out of this place and into the nothingness between stars. And be totally lost to comprehension.
Ineffable
May 17, 2005
The night sky is a deep, luminous blue, shining through the silhouette trees onto my upturned face. A haze hangs around the moon, like it should on a still night like this. I walk with my friend, and talk of the future. What will become of us? It feels like I’m living a memory, as if I know I am experiencing a time to which I will reminisce many years later. I’ll be somewhere completely different. I’ll be someone completely different. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll remember what the night sky looked like, and how I walked beside my friend, back in the lost days of my youth.
May 20, 2005
Sometimes I’m surprised by the distance between places. Only two points exist on a path for me as I am traveling: the origin and the destination. But there are other places, people living entirely outside of my notice. People who I will never meet, who exist in the nothingness between points. Maybe someday I will realize that existence is a continuity, with my reality being constantly revised by where I am. Now, I am somewhere different than I was yesterday, even if I am in the same place.
I’m just passing through. The world swirls around me, but I am safe behind by the glass barriers separating my reality from the one outside, where there are nothing but plains and space. The sunlight here is like a sweet sickness, clawing inside me, at the walls of my chest: the affliction of sparse tranquility. Perhaps I am not as safe as I thought..
May 23, 2005
There are so many paths to walk, out among the vast expanses of nothingness, among the rolling hills covered in gold. There are so many silent oases, untouched but by the wind, which gently sways the trees to a rhythm unheard by anyone. I want to see them all, to pack up and leave. Pick a direction and go. Experience the quiet of the empty expanse between the limits of human knowledge. Many things can be cages. And many people are prisoners without knowledge of their bondage. My cell has invisible bars, sometimes only as thick as a pane of glass, but impenetrable. The bars are of my own making, built slowly over the passage of my life and heated and reinforced with every meaningless day that passes when I feel nothing. I hold myself hostage to something that lies ahead of me, something I can’t see. But sometimes, free air drifts into my prison, and I can feel again, if only for a short time. Then I think of far off mountains, strange faces, and gentle winds sweeping across oceans of gold.
The first I saw of her was her bare shoulder, as we were led to the booth across the walkway from hers. I sit next to the wall, and glance in her direction just in time to notice that she has turned her head away. We talk and laugh and eat. The mood is easy, but there is some apprehensiveness within me whenever I glance over. She is beautiful. Impossibly so. I wanted nothing more than to talk to her. Hear her voice. Ask her name. And sometimes I would feel her eyes upon me, maybe wondering what my name was. Whenever I noticed, a warm happiness would spread through my body, and I would smile like a fool, though no one else noticed. We ate and talked, sneaking looks between conversations and pizza. If only we had met somewhere else, without our parents, where we could have become friends, but I had no hope of talking to her with her family so close by. My happiness had abetted by the time we stood to leave, and the realization that we would never meet again dawned on me. I saw so many possibilities, so many futures fall away at that instant when I started walking toward the door. But I couldn’t resist another stolen glance, and so looked one last time. She was looking right at me, and she was smiling so warmly I felt as if I knew her. All of my happiness spilled out in the smile I gave her, and I was sure in that instant that she was sad to see me go, just as I was sad to leave her. That smile would be the only thing we ever shared. Sometimes fate can be so cruel.
May 31, 2005
Sweeping fields lay before my feet as the sweet melody of my journey sings softly in my ear. Faroff is the subdued flute, with its blossoming tones of beauty. But rising up like a wave to carry me forward is the vast symphony of freedom, resonating through me, bringing me in tune with the universe, like the air in my lungs brings life within me. Brings the outside within. The vast spirit of everything interconnected, moving through me and around me, speaking through me to craft this music. I am at once the tall mountains and the wide valleys; all are encompassed within me as the whole is reflected in the part…existence reflected in my soul.
The most beautiful music is the most melancholic, for that is the deepest emotion. It sounds almost like the noises a soul makes as it cries for its loneliness, with its rhythm and sorrowful movement, but with the deepest expression.
June 5, 2005
There is nothing between me and the sky as the wind rushes through my hair. Sun glints off the windshield, as I trace the contour of the glass until it reaches into infinity. My consciousness expands toward the sun as I am enveloped in sublime joy, joy of such depth that I could drown in it, dive so deep that I never emerge again. Joy the color of the late afternoon sun that sounds like hazy, reverberating guitar mixed with rushing wind. It has the texture of childhood innocence, bittersweet and delicate, and fades when I try to hold on to it. Reality fades into a twilight of dream and nostalgia, bubbling up within me and washing across my soul until I am filled with the shades of red and orange cast across the clouds. My consciousness evaporates in the haze, my body becomes a conduit to the vastness of existence, everything becomes clear. But the secret slides through my fingers like water until I am left with only my thoughts.
June 6, 2005
All of a sudden, she was far back in the past, staring out across the beautiful valley, with the clear, blue ocean on either side, and the sun sinking behind the horizon. Such relentless beauty and infinite promise, laid before her feet, all those years ago. Now the light shines in slits across her face, filtered through the blinds, as the sun sets behind haze and city lights. It seemed like reality was anchored to her worn face, and her sad, questioning eyes, wondering where the time went. How did I get here? I saw her again for the first time, surreal and startlingly poignant, standing far down the path from where she had once stood, looking back to where she had once been looking forward. Autumn falls across her eyes, and the sun sets a little lower, damningly slow, casting shadow across what once was bright, welcoming the night, and the cold, saddening light shines as the day grows old.
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