I decided that i wanted to take a look back at where it all started. There's a lot of time between my first blog and now, and it felt really good to remind myself of some of the things i was thinking back then. This was probably one of the first things that i did when i moved to Arizona ... crazy. In a way, i miss those days - the way we miss any memory. It seems like all the bad things pale in comparison to the good memories that i'm reminded of, especially with my dear friends the 'Chelles. Take a bow, girls - I meant (and mean) every word written below.
Welcome to the past - keep your hands inside the blog at all times, please.
8.13.2003
Hello and howdy sports fans! I guess i just saw so many of my friends (namely the 'Chelles) doing this that I just couldn't resist!! Yes, yes... I am completely aware of the lemmingesque ramifications of this deed - but I assure you that if my friends jumped off a bridge, I would most certainly not follow! ... well, at least until I got bored. ... ten minutes later.
So wow... a blog... what should i write? I guess i should start by saying that i hate capitalizing my "i"s in typed conversation. It's one letter - it by no means deserves so much attention and care that i have to reach my pinky finger aaaaaaall the way over to the shift key just to satisfy some grammatical rule invented by a man with no hair. ... well maybe he had hair, but that's beyond the scope of this argument.
I think that as this blogging (verb?) is a direct result of my compadres (ettes i think) from P-Town, i should dedicate this beginning - indeed a veritable bloggining... to my beautiful, darling, extremely entertaining 'Chelles. WHO, incidentally, have some of the most depressing blogs i have ever seen! I hope you don't expect that HERE! If i were to be morosely depressed, i would most certainly not tell you about it! That would negate my ability to charge you with "being ignorant of my obviously upset feelings" and certainly my right to say "you don't even care! Just go away!" at any point in random time!
Of course i speak not of anyone i know - I simply wish to relate what incredible lessons you learn while living with someone of the opposite sex. ... That would be a girl for all you idiots. Of course, it occurs to me that if you couldn't figure that one out, you have no idea what i'm talking about, and so the jest went straight over your head, and out the window. What a shame.
SO. I guess to finish this absurdly pointless blog, i should tell you all something i have as yet not mentioned: As Darryl Whorly (sp?) said, but pluralized - "I miss my friends."
I want to take this opportunity to also say a few more things.
1) I hate my old bank, and everything that they stand for... or crawl for... on their stomaches. (that's a snake reference - biblical if you will. i AM a religious studies BS degree holder)
2) Schwarzenneger? Governor? California? Shotgun?
3) It occurs to me that though life is a series of transitions, constantly in transition, (redundancy = redundancy??) and it is highly unlikely that any of us could spend our entire lives with the same friends, in the same place, forever, (perhaps not so much the latter as the former) this past summer taught me something that will be with me for a long time. (whew! now THAT was a sentence that enjoyed running on!)
That lesson (to break up the paragraph) is this: Carpe Diem. I knew that i would have to leave just a short month or so after i called the Michelles - but i did it anyway, and they filled my life with such joy and laughter (not to mention D-Rama) that i can scarce imagine what my life was like prior to the day we all went to see Bruce Almighty. Watching AI last night (again x3) gave me some insight i had previously not had. (thus, it gave me the insight... redundant again?)
"Come away o human child to the waters of the wild, with a fairy hand in hand - For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
If it were not for fairies like Michelle and Sheli, life would be a lonesome, dreary, lifeless place to exist.
Thank you for your friendship - you are angels of a higher order than ever imagined by any man or child on earth.
And so, to finish this blog in a sort of nostalgic mirth and sadness, (call me a walking contradiction) Thank you to all of the people that I have gotten to know over the years... and i mean ALL of you. You have all contributed to where I'm going, and where I've been, but most importantly - you have contributed to where i am now. That, to me, is the greatest gift i could ever ask for.
I am alive; I am happy; I am writing a long, pointless blog.
Goodnight, sleep tight, and for God's sake, if the bedbugs bite, kick 'em! Kick 'em with your foot!
.Christian
posted by Christian at 8/13/2003 10:31:00 PM
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Mostly Mundane
That's what this blog is mostly going to be. See the thing is that I have to work the 3rd shift tomorrow night ... 8pm to 6am. Yech. Well the way i figure it, if i want to be able to stay up all tomorrow night, i should stay up all tonight, too - then go to sleep when i'll have to normally. (maybe a little earlier)
So here i am, the guy that rarely goes to sleep after 10:30pm in Phoenix, going to sleep around 5am here. Granted, i've been staying up late here anyways, but let's face it, i'm going to be BORED AS HELL after around midnight, and nothing to do! (it's Sunday, so no one sells alcohol AT ALL in this county, which means EVERYWHERE is closed after 9 or 10pm)
I guess i could always do what any sensible college student (in Peoria, Illinois) would do - go to Steak and Shake and kill some time at Wal-Mart. Oh man ... i can feel my stomach turning already! And that's without even factoring in Steak and Shake! ... yes, i have a thing against Wal-Mart. Why? Well, to put it plainly, everywhere tries to scrape off some cost here and there, and in the process they have to take that money from someone else. (certainly not themselves) That might be the vendor, who might pass it on to the manufacturer, who most likely will pass it on to the worker and the parts supplier, who will pass it on to ITS workers, and so on. It's like a reverse buck passing ... or the electron flow before lightning strikes the earth. (which is from the ground up to the clouds - that's the path that the static charge is following down as it superheats the air into plasma ... which is lightning)
I don't hate Wal-Mart for trying to save the end consumer money - i dislike purchasing anything from them because they really are the best at what they do: taking money away from the supplier and passing it off as savings to the customer. (who, if they work in manufacturing, might well be able to thank Wal-Mart for getting laid off recently, and thus not having much choice of where to shop but ... Wal-Mart)
Now i could probably go on and on about that kind of thing, and realistically i'll never be able to cover all the angles (good or bad) to give a fair representation of that company. That's just how i feel, i guess, and sometimes regardless of facts backing it up or going against you, you're going to feel that way anyway.
I just remembered i have to run an add on a table ... brb.
-------- TEN MINUTES LATER ---------
Did that feel like 10 minutes to you? Maybe you should come back in ten minutes ...
Seriously.
....
...
..
.
Did you just read down the page and not actually leave? ::sigh:: Fine. I see how you are.
I have had a really great string of songs come on Pandora, btw.
"Do You Know? (The Ping-Pong Song)" by Enrique Iglesias
"We Were Born the Mutants Again with Leafling" by Of Montreal
"Los Angeles I'm Yours" by The Decemberists
I just love the sound of the last two, but the sound AND the lyrics of "Do You Know?" (and the fact that the title includes "The Ping Pong Song" I suppose) worked great together!
According to AZlyrics.com, the chorus goes something like this:
"Do you know what it feels like
loving someone that's in a rush to throw you away
(Do you know how it feels)
Do you know what it feels like
to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed"
Not something you'd expect from "The Ping Pong Song." Not stupendous, mind you, but really not that bad.
If we're talking about break up songs, though, i'd have to say that "Call it Even" by Vertical Horizon is one of my faves:
"I saw an open door
and i looked inside it,
but i had no idea
what you were hiding.
So now i'm holding a bag,
and it's heavy,
and the conversation stops -
so much for "friendly".
And if i told you i was dying of thirst,
(and the sky was falling just to make it worse)
would you just smile and push me away -
Can't be bothered with the words i say?
Why can't i see it
like it really is?
Know it
like i know my name?
And if it's all the same,
i don't like this game,
so let's pack it up
and call it even."
That was from memory, so maybe i'm off a bit, but still - great song. Really the only great one on their "Running on Ice" CD (i remember the name??) but definitely worth a buck on iTunes.
And no, i'm not on a "break up song" thing for any personal reason, just going off the "Do You Know" lyrics. Personally, i can't wait to get home and see my Lula :-D And meet Eric Michael, of course.
I really hope that everything ends up OK with Pandora and the other internet radios. (mostly Pandora)
I think the fact is simply that you have a bunch of old fuddy-duddys who have no clue about the world anymore deciding the laws. Telling people what they can and can't do with the internet after letting them develop their own habits (good or bad) is really just another prohibition. It's like outlawing anything, really, but it's especially bad in that kind of situation. It's one thing to have a small percentage of the population breaking the law, but another one entirely to have a large portion of the population disagreeing with the law.
Maybe that's not the case yet, but i have a feeling that if music and movie publishers don't wake up and smell the bit-streams, someone will come along and throw them out the window. That's pretty much what seems to have happened with internet radio. It's a superior format that allows people to personalize what they want to listen to, get track and album (and lyrical!) information instantly, as well as browse similar songs and discuss the experience with fellow interneteurs.
Now sure, i'm full of that "It's so totally awesome, dude! Out with the old, in with the new! Down with the man!" fervor that might make what i'm saying seem trite if not completely baseless, but as i've said before, that's just what i think ... take it or leave it.
BTW, Tom Petty should be considered a kind of god. "Accused of Love" is just one of those ... well ... songs you should listen to at least once ;-)
And if you've never watched the video for "O! Valencia!" by The Decemberists, you should. But listen to the song by itself first and let your imagination do the talking. I think that's what draws me most to The Decemberists - they create music that impassions your mind. You can't help but imagine the smallest details of every story they tell.
And hey, they're catchy, too :-D
I've decided i'm going to try rowing again. I had a chance to go out and scull with Wendy on the Chattahoochee, and it was "simply awesome." (as Billy Ocean ::hah hah:: might say) It made me remember how incredible the water can be, and how much i love being on it. I'd love to say that it's rowing that hits me like that - that molten, liquidy slug of recognition that tears into your gut and spreads through your body in a warm, tingly wave, pulling you muscles taut and relaxing them at the same time, leaving you staring off distractedly at everything (and nothing) all at once - trying to take it all in as if you'll be able to recall it at will later on.
I love being on the water. Even nasty, smelly water. Even rough and tumble water. I feel that it's the ultimate reminder of how incredible everything around us is. Can you imagine? Heat anything to a point and it'll either liquefy or combust, which just means part of it stays solid (for a while) while part turns to low energy gas (smoke) and the rest into high energy, liquid gas. (fire) Now OK, i'm not sure as to the definitions above, but the terminology and the exact wording isn't that important. What matters is the idea:
It's all molecules.
You want to talk about a mind trip? Think about all those Yogis and priests back in the day (a Wednesday, surely) talking about how everything is one, and how we're all part of the same. Think about how all those ideas have been around forever, and here we are in a world where we know that IT'S TRUE. Take it out of the context of religion and it's easy to see the proof in the pudding. Literally. Pudding is made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons. WE are made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons. ERGO, (which is the name of a very licky dog in Georgia, who is also made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons) everything is one: A neutrino which is either Negatively, Positively, or Neutrally charged.
Trip, huh? I once heard that fuzzy logic says that if you left a bowl on a table for eons, it would eventually fall through the table. And why not? If all everything is is EPN (Electrons, Protons, Neutrons) then all it takes is a little gravity to help encourage one molecule to swap Neutrinos (is that the name??) with another. It'd be kind of like putting one very light gas and one very heavy gas in the room together so that they together took up all the volume of a given space. Sure they would be separate, but look at the border between the two and see if you can tell me where one stops and the other starts. I guess the one thing that would shoot down that theory about the bowl and the table is that gravity would have to be acting more heavily on the bowl than the table (which is currently impossible) or there would have to be some external (non material) force acting exclusively and equally on all parts of the bowl.
Did i just go there? Yes i did. Because this is where i'm going: Water is molecules (with two one hydrogen, one oxygen, and one hydrogen atom) loosely sitting on top of each other. Your body is molecules solidly sitting on top of each other. How cool is that??
Anyway - i feel like when i'm on the water, it brings me closer to reality. It's a reminder of what the world is: Positive, Negative, and Neutral, hanging out and having a party together. So what are our minds? There are more things in the this world than matter. Energy is a good example. Matter couldn't HAVE a charge without energy. Matter and energy - i guess that aside from the fundamental existence of the universe, a brain is the biggest example of those two building blocks working together: Matter for the Brain, Energy for the Mind.
OK. If anyone is still reading, you get a prize.
At one point in an interview with Bill Moyer, Joseph Campbell describes the image of a large (giant, even!) sculpture in a dark, cavernous temple somewhere out there where i've never been. The sculpture is of two faces dividing from a central visage. Light and Dark coming from Neither. Positive and Negative coming from Neither. Good and Bad coming from Neither. Neither and All. One of the most important points of that image is the All. The fact that both sides diverged from the middle ... the All. Good is Bad, Light is Dark, Existence is Nothingness, Being is Non-Being, and we are all One.
OK. So it wasn't a prize.
I'm going to go now, and stop blathering on about life, the universe, and everything. I probably won't stop thinking about it, but i can't possibly tell you EVERYTHING that i'm thinking! (though i hear the padded rooms are quite nice come summer time)
Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Christian
So here i am, the guy that rarely goes to sleep after 10:30pm in Phoenix, going to sleep around 5am here. Granted, i've been staying up late here anyways, but let's face it, i'm going to be BORED AS HELL after around midnight, and nothing to do! (it's Sunday, so no one sells alcohol AT ALL in this county, which means EVERYWHERE is closed after 9 or 10pm)
I guess i could always do what any sensible college student (in Peoria, Illinois) would do - go to Steak and Shake and kill some time at Wal-Mart. Oh man ... i can feel my stomach turning already! And that's without even factoring in Steak and Shake! ... yes, i have a thing against Wal-Mart. Why? Well, to put it plainly, everywhere tries to scrape off some cost here and there, and in the process they have to take that money from someone else. (certainly not themselves) That might be the vendor, who might pass it on to the manufacturer, who most likely will pass it on to the worker and the parts supplier, who will pass it on to ITS workers, and so on. It's like a reverse buck passing ... or the electron flow before lightning strikes the earth. (which is from the ground up to the clouds - that's the path that the static charge is following down as it superheats the air into plasma ... which is lightning)
I don't hate Wal-Mart for trying to save the end consumer money - i dislike purchasing anything from them because they really are the best at what they do: taking money away from the supplier and passing it off as savings to the customer. (who, if they work in manufacturing, might well be able to thank Wal-Mart for getting laid off recently, and thus not having much choice of where to shop but ... Wal-Mart)
Now i could probably go on and on about that kind of thing, and realistically i'll never be able to cover all the angles (good or bad) to give a fair representation of that company. That's just how i feel, i guess, and sometimes regardless of facts backing it up or going against you, you're going to feel that way anyway.
I just remembered i have to run an add on a table ... brb.
-------- TEN MINUTES LATER ---------
Did that feel like 10 minutes to you? Maybe you should come back in ten minutes ...
Seriously.
....
...
..
.
Did you just read down the page and not actually leave? ::sigh:: Fine. I see how you are.
I have had a really great string of songs come on Pandora, btw.
"Do You Know? (The Ping-Pong Song)" by Enrique Iglesias
"We Were Born the Mutants Again with Leafling" by Of Montreal
"Los Angeles I'm Yours" by The Decemberists
I just love the sound of the last two, but the sound AND the lyrics of "Do You Know?" (and the fact that the title includes "The Ping Pong Song" I suppose) worked great together!
According to AZlyrics.com, the chorus goes something like this:
"Do you know what it feels like
loving someone that's in a rush to throw you away
(Do you know how it feels)
Do you know what it feels like
to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed"
Not something you'd expect from "The Ping Pong Song." Not stupendous, mind you, but really not that bad.
If we're talking about break up songs, though, i'd have to say that "Call it Even" by Vertical Horizon is one of my faves:
"I saw an open door
and i looked inside it,
but i had no idea
what you were hiding.
So now i'm holding a bag,
and it's heavy,
and the conversation stops -
so much for "friendly".
And if i told you i was dying of thirst,
(and the sky was falling just to make it worse)
would you just smile and push me away -
Can't be bothered with the words i say?
Why can't i see it
like it really is?
Know it
like i know my name?
And if it's all the same,
i don't like this game,
so let's pack it up
and call it even."
That was from memory, so maybe i'm off a bit, but still - great song. Really the only great one on their "Running on Ice" CD (i remember the name??) but definitely worth a buck on iTunes.
And no, i'm not on a "break up song" thing for any personal reason, just going off the "Do You Know" lyrics. Personally, i can't wait to get home and see my Lula :-D And meet Eric Michael, of course.
I really hope that everything ends up OK with Pandora and the other internet radios. (mostly Pandora)
I think the fact is simply that you have a bunch of old fuddy-duddys who have no clue about the world anymore deciding the laws. Telling people what they can and can't do with the internet after letting them develop their own habits (good or bad) is really just another prohibition. It's like outlawing anything, really, but it's especially bad in that kind of situation. It's one thing to have a small percentage of the population breaking the law, but another one entirely to have a large portion of the population disagreeing with the law.
Maybe that's not the case yet, but i have a feeling that if music and movie publishers don't wake up and smell the bit-streams, someone will come along and throw them out the window. That's pretty much what seems to have happened with internet radio. It's a superior format that allows people to personalize what they want to listen to, get track and album (and lyrical!) information instantly, as well as browse similar songs and discuss the experience with fellow interneteurs.
Now sure, i'm full of that "It's so totally awesome, dude! Out with the old, in with the new! Down with the man!" fervor that might make what i'm saying seem trite if not completely baseless, but as i've said before, that's just what i think ... take it or leave it.
BTW, Tom Petty should be considered a kind of god. "Accused of Love" is just one of those ... well ... songs you should listen to at least once ;-)
And if you've never watched the video for "O! Valencia!" by The Decemberists, you should. But listen to the song by itself first and let your imagination do the talking. I think that's what draws me most to The Decemberists - they create music that impassions your mind. You can't help but imagine the smallest details of every story they tell.
And hey, they're catchy, too :-D
I've decided i'm going to try rowing again. I had a chance to go out and scull with Wendy on the Chattahoochee, and it was "simply awesome." (as Billy Ocean ::hah hah:: might say) It made me remember how incredible the water can be, and how much i love being on it. I'd love to say that it's rowing that hits me like that - that molten, liquidy slug of recognition that tears into your gut and spreads through your body in a warm, tingly wave, pulling you muscles taut and relaxing them at the same time, leaving you staring off distractedly at everything (and nothing) all at once - trying to take it all in as if you'll be able to recall it at will later on.
I love being on the water. Even nasty, smelly water. Even rough and tumble water. I feel that it's the ultimate reminder of how incredible everything around us is. Can you imagine? Heat anything to a point and it'll either liquefy or combust, which just means part of it stays solid (for a while) while part turns to low energy gas (smoke) and the rest into high energy, liquid gas. (fire) Now OK, i'm not sure as to the definitions above, but the terminology and the exact wording isn't that important. What matters is the idea:
It's all molecules.
You want to talk about a mind trip? Think about all those Yogis and priests back in the day (a Wednesday, surely) talking about how everything is one, and how we're all part of the same. Think about how all those ideas have been around forever, and here we are in a world where we know that IT'S TRUE. Take it out of the context of religion and it's easy to see the proof in the pudding. Literally. Pudding is made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons. WE are made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons. ERGO, (which is the name of a very licky dog in Georgia, who is also made of Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons) everything is one: A neutrino which is either Negatively, Positively, or Neutrally charged.
Trip, huh? I once heard that fuzzy logic says that if you left a bowl on a table for eons, it would eventually fall through the table. And why not? If all everything is is EPN (Electrons, Protons, Neutrons) then all it takes is a little gravity to help encourage one molecule to swap Neutrinos (is that the name??) with another. It'd be kind of like putting one very light gas and one very heavy gas in the room together so that they together took up all the volume of a given space. Sure they would be separate, but look at the border between the two and see if you can tell me where one stops and the other starts. I guess the one thing that would shoot down that theory about the bowl and the table is that gravity would have to be acting more heavily on the bowl than the table (which is currently impossible) or there would have to be some external (non material) force acting exclusively and equally on all parts of the bowl.
Did i just go there? Yes i did. Because this is where i'm going: Water is molecules (with two one hydrogen, one oxygen, and one hydrogen atom) loosely sitting on top of each other. Your body is molecules solidly sitting on top of each other. How cool is that??
Anyway - i feel like when i'm on the water, it brings me closer to reality. It's a reminder of what the world is: Positive, Negative, and Neutral, hanging out and having a party together. So what are our minds? There are more things in the this world than matter. Energy is a good example. Matter couldn't HAVE a charge without energy. Matter and energy - i guess that aside from the fundamental existence of the universe, a brain is the biggest example of those two building blocks working together: Matter for the Brain, Energy for the Mind.
OK. If anyone is still reading, you get a prize.
At one point in an interview with Bill Moyer, Joseph Campbell describes the image of a large (giant, even!) sculpture in a dark, cavernous temple somewhere out there where i've never been. The sculpture is of two faces dividing from a central visage. Light and Dark coming from Neither. Positive and Negative coming from Neither. Good and Bad coming from Neither. Neither and All. One of the most important points of that image is the All. The fact that both sides diverged from the middle ... the All. Good is Bad, Light is Dark, Existence is Nothingness, Being is Non-Being, and we are all One.
OK. So it wasn't a prize.
I'm going to go now, and stop blathering on about life, the universe, and everything. I probably won't stop thinking about it, but i can't possibly tell you EVERYTHING that i'm thinking! (though i hear the padded rooms are quite nice come summer time)
Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Christian
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Uncle Christian Skips His 10-Year
A quote from Death Cab comes to mind:
"So this is my ten year ..."
ok ok ok, so those aren't the words, but the sentiment is pretty much the same. More on that in a bit, though - more importantly, i've just become (practically) an uncle. Brian and Sydni have had little Erik Michael Abrahamsen and by end-of-day February 22nd of next year, i'll officially be his uncle. (in-law)
While it's certainly nerve wracking to realize that there is now going to be a small child in our group of friends (and that like it or not, everything we do will serve as an example) it's also exciting. I think that deep down, everyone wants to be listened to, looked up to, etc. Kids do that ... (for a while anyways) they look up to you. They think of you as a "grown up".
It makes me wonder just how much growing up i've really done. It almost seems like after a certain point, i just plateaued. It's like working out - if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, eventually you're not getting any stronger, you're just maintaining. That's probably where the rituals associated with different life stages are supposed to come in. An example might be the progression from high school to adulthood.
Graduate and go to college: Your first big step in "growing up". Less influence from parents, more personal accountability. You're really expected to be planning your future.
Graduate college and get a "real" job: You're held fully accountable for your actions. This is when you start living that big future you'd been talking about. Maybe you dress nicer - go to swankier parties ... show off how grown up you are and how well you're doing at it.
Reach adulthood: Maybe somewhere after 25 you start thinking about less beer and more whiskey. Less snowboarding trip, more Caribbean Cruise. Less Mustang and more BMW.
I guess it's the progression between living for the ideals you've derived from your immediate social group (ie students and faculty) and start living your life in accordance with your perception of the grander societal norms. You go from trying to fit in with the clothes you wear and who you talk to, to fitting in with ... uh ... the clothes ... hmmm ... damn. I guess some things just don't change.
"I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, just a lie you've got to rise above."
Maybe. Maybe the truth is actually that the only deception is the concept of an "unreal" versus a "real" world. Things that mattered in your youth (social acceptance, perceived success, Jolly Ranchers) will always matter. It's not a question of a different world, just a different scope.
So here i am, a couple of nights before my 10 year reunion, and i'm wondering if i made the right choice. Should i have sucked it up and gone? Would I have gotten there and realized "Hold on - these aren't the people i remember at all! They're all responsible adults who've morphed dramatically from their former selves, and we're all going to get along now because we've matured!"
Honestly, i doubt it. Not to say that people wouldn't have changed - i'm positive they would! But maybe not on the inside. Maybe not in the places that would be necessary for that kind of happy reunion. I can't imagine anyone saying "Wow ... I'm so glad you came to this reunion so that we could get to know each other better. I didn't know you or want to get to in school, but i'm all ears now!"
True, i'm adding on a layer of contempt that may mask the truth of what i'm saying a bit, but the truth is there. I'm certainly no exception! I've communicated to a few people that i remembered, who i honestly wish i'd known better, (instead of ducking my head in shame or trying too damn hard, and never finding that happy medium) but i really couldn't even imagine striking up a conversation with anyone else. Even the folks i messaged would be hard to talk to for lack of common ground.
I know i'm generalizing, but i can't help but think i'm right.
What i long for is not a chance to revisit my memories, but a chance to re-experience them. I spent so much time (for most of my life until college) just drifting through life, a willing captive to the tides of fate, that i never took the time to look around and experience what was going on.
I "fell in love" like a fool - constantly and with little cause, thinking that life was like the movies, and i was the sacrificing and ignored protagonist. I walked the paths and roads of "the lovely valley land of Kent" as if there were a camera following me around - a crowd sympathizing with my every let down, rejoicing at my every success, and wordlessly praying for my every hope to be realized. If there's anything i want, it's a chance to go back and experience every year of my life for the first time. I wouldn't want to change anything, just to actually live it, instead of just surviving it.
And how can one reconcile the youth that dreamed of a movie script ending with the thought that maybe life is just life, and there is no ultimate meaning or grand scheme?
I've dreamt of that school. I've dreamt of acceptance, proving myself the hero, and even discovering an old flame where there had never been one. All these things tell me something now more than ever: I would only go there to find my dreams, and searching for them would neither yield any results, nor better the reality of my life.
Joseph Campbell tells a wonderful story about a samurai who sets out to avenge his murdered master. The samurai spends years hunting down the man who committed the crime and finally corners him in a garden. The battle is brief and the samurai, having disarmed his opponent, steps forward to strike him down. In a fit of rage at his defeat and seemingly inescapable death, the beaten man spits on the samurai's face. He is surprised then, as you can imagine he would be, when the samurai wipes the spit from his face, sheathes his sword, and walks away.
We may well ask why he would turn away and abandon his master's vengeance. Why not strike down the murderer where his stood, spit still hanging loosely from his chin beneath his bared teeth. The samurai would tell you a fairly simple thing, but one hard for us to relate to in this day and age: If he had killed him then, it would have been out of his own anger, and not solely out of the duty he had sworn to his master.
There are MANY lessons to be learned and points to be thought on from that one story, but i think that the one i'll focus on is this: You should never kid yourself about the reasons you do something, nor the emotions you have vested in said action(s). I've tried to teach myself that life is too short not to know why you're living. It's not some invisible hand guiding you, or a path determined by fate - it's your own thoughts and desires leading you on the way.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam teach that man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and was cast out of the garden with and by his own free will. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, because everything including joy is impermanent. Sheryl Crow teaches that it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Christian
"So this is my ten year ..."
ok ok ok, so those aren't the words, but the sentiment is pretty much the same. More on that in a bit, though - more importantly, i've just become (practically) an uncle. Brian and Sydni have had little Erik Michael Abrahamsen and by end-of-day February 22nd of next year, i'll officially be his uncle. (in-law)
While it's certainly nerve wracking to realize that there is now going to be a small child in our group of friends (and that like it or not, everything we do will serve as an example) it's also exciting. I think that deep down, everyone wants to be listened to, looked up to, etc. Kids do that ... (for a while anyways) they look up to you. They think of you as a "grown up".
It makes me wonder just how much growing up i've really done. It almost seems like after a certain point, i just plateaued. It's like working out - if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, eventually you're not getting any stronger, you're just maintaining. That's probably where the rituals associated with different life stages are supposed to come in. An example might be the progression from high school to adulthood.
Graduate and go to college: Your first big step in "growing up". Less influence from parents, more personal accountability. You're really expected to be planning your future.
Graduate college and get a "real" job: You're held fully accountable for your actions. This is when you start living that big future you'd been talking about. Maybe you dress nicer - go to swankier parties ... show off how grown up you are and how well you're doing at it.
Reach adulthood: Maybe somewhere after 25 you start thinking about less beer and more whiskey. Less snowboarding trip, more Caribbean Cruise. Less Mustang and more BMW.
I guess it's the progression between living for the ideals you've derived from your immediate social group (ie students and faculty) and start living your life in accordance with your perception of the grander societal norms. You go from trying to fit in with the clothes you wear and who you talk to, to fitting in with ... uh ... the clothes ... hmmm ... damn. I guess some things just don't change.
"I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, just a lie you've got to rise above."
Maybe. Maybe the truth is actually that the only deception is the concept of an "unreal" versus a "real" world. Things that mattered in your youth (social acceptance, perceived success, Jolly Ranchers) will always matter. It's not a question of a different world, just a different scope.
So here i am, a couple of nights before my 10 year reunion, and i'm wondering if i made the right choice. Should i have sucked it up and gone? Would I have gotten there and realized "Hold on - these aren't the people i remember at all! They're all responsible adults who've morphed dramatically from their former selves, and we're all going to get along now because we've matured!"
Honestly, i doubt it. Not to say that people wouldn't have changed - i'm positive they would! But maybe not on the inside. Maybe not in the places that would be necessary for that kind of happy reunion. I can't imagine anyone saying "Wow ... I'm so glad you came to this reunion so that we could get to know each other better. I didn't know you or want to get to in school, but i'm all ears now!"
True, i'm adding on a layer of contempt that may mask the truth of what i'm saying a bit, but the truth is there. I'm certainly no exception! I've communicated to a few people that i remembered, who i honestly wish i'd known better, (instead of ducking my head in shame or trying too damn hard, and never finding that happy medium) but i really couldn't even imagine striking up a conversation with anyone else. Even the folks i messaged would be hard to talk to for lack of common ground.
I know i'm generalizing, but i can't help but think i'm right.
What i long for is not a chance to revisit my memories, but a chance to re-experience them. I spent so much time (for most of my life until college) just drifting through life, a willing captive to the tides of fate, that i never took the time to look around and experience what was going on.
I "fell in love" like a fool - constantly and with little cause, thinking that life was like the movies, and i was the sacrificing and ignored protagonist. I walked the paths and roads of "the lovely valley land of Kent" as if there were a camera following me around - a crowd sympathizing with my every let down, rejoicing at my every success, and wordlessly praying for my every hope to be realized. If there's anything i want, it's a chance to go back and experience every year of my life for the first time. I wouldn't want to change anything, just to actually live it, instead of just surviving it.
And how can one reconcile the youth that dreamed of a movie script ending with the thought that maybe life is just life, and there is no ultimate meaning or grand scheme?
I've dreamt of that school. I've dreamt of acceptance, proving myself the hero, and even discovering an old flame where there had never been one. All these things tell me something now more than ever: I would only go there to find my dreams, and searching for them would neither yield any results, nor better the reality of my life.
Joseph Campbell tells a wonderful story about a samurai who sets out to avenge his murdered master. The samurai spends years hunting down the man who committed the crime and finally corners him in a garden. The battle is brief and the samurai, having disarmed his opponent, steps forward to strike him down. In a fit of rage at his defeat and seemingly inescapable death, the beaten man spits on the samurai's face. He is surprised then, as you can imagine he would be, when the samurai wipes the spit from his face, sheathes his sword, and walks away.
We may well ask why he would turn away and abandon his master's vengeance. Why not strike down the murderer where his stood, spit still hanging loosely from his chin beneath his bared teeth. The samurai would tell you a fairly simple thing, but one hard for us to relate to in this day and age: If he had killed him then, it would have been out of his own anger, and not solely out of the duty he had sworn to his master.
There are MANY lessons to be learned and points to be thought on from that one story, but i think that the one i'll focus on is this: You should never kid yourself about the reasons you do something, nor the emotions you have vested in said action(s). I've tried to teach myself that life is too short not to know why you're living. It's not some invisible hand guiding you, or a path determined by fate - it's your own thoughts and desires leading you on the way.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam teach that man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and was cast out of the garden with and by his own free will. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, because everything including joy is impermanent. Sheryl Crow teaches that it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Christian
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Hero Myth
I think we're all waiting for someone to show up and tell us that we're destined for greater things. According to Joseph Campbell, the basic hero myth starts off with the hero longing to do or be something else. But doesn't everyone reach an age or a point in their lives where they wish there were more? Or that they were living an almost entirely different life? Or maybe feel that there is something else they're destined for?
Maybe that's what the hero myth really does: provides us a story that we can relate to, and feel like we get sympathy, compassion, and self-motivation from it. In essence, it's telling us "You're not alone! This happened to someone else! This is that person's story ..."
So where do we find our mentor? Our change agent? Where is our Obi-Wan to lead us from Tatooine? Our Jack Sparrow to bungle us forward? Our coachman to show us death, poverty, and infermity? Our Morpheus to provide us with a red pill? Are we to provide our own impetus for change instead? What about the catalyst which occurs that jars the hero from the grooved path and throws him onto a path of trials and tribulations which will lead him to his destiny? Are we to create that as well? Is that what these stories are for? What happens when there is no mentor? No change? No trials? No destiny?
What happens when the hero has no story?
Maybe that's what the hero myth really does: provides us a story that we can relate to, and feel like we get sympathy, compassion, and self-motivation from it. In essence, it's telling us "You're not alone! This happened to someone else! This is that person's story ..."
So where do we find our mentor? Our change agent? Where is our Obi-Wan to lead us from Tatooine? Our Jack Sparrow to bungle us forward? Our coachman to show us death, poverty, and infermity? Our Morpheus to provide us with a red pill? Are we to provide our own impetus for change instead? What about the catalyst which occurs that jars the hero from the grooved path and throws him onto a path of trials and tribulations which will lead him to his destiny? Are we to create that as well? Is that what these stories are for? What happens when there is no mentor? No change? No trials? No destiny?
What happens when the hero has no story?
Monday, April 30, 2007
Zero Impact Living and other Flights of Fancy
I've recently taken to walking or riding my bike at least once a day, Monday through Thursday. I take Friday off to be able to do whatever pops into my mind, then for the weekend I work outside in the yard. I've gotten quite a bit done - it's almost unnerving how much of the landscaper I joke to myself that I've become.
When I was out for my walk today, i started thinking about a lot of different things. That's pretty much my favorite thing to do, you know - muse about the most random and sometimes most ridiculous things when I'm all by myself without a thing to distract me. And so, in this absence of books, movies, video games, and human company, I found myself thinking about this and that, until i came upon a more steady train of thought.
I really don't know why it stuck in my mind as a topic i should pursue, but i started wondering to myself about the plants of the desert. OH YES! I remember now! It was because as i was walking along, i noticed a particular kind of tree lining the sidewalk that i realized had also started sprouting up in my front yard, between the neighbor's fence and ours. We had been wondering about what it was, because it's quite "viney" in its early stages - not at all like a tree. The only reason I even realized what it was was that it had quite a few branches which were still more vine than tree, and the foliage was exactly the same.
Anyways! Seeing that tree almost immediately followed by a tall pine started a quiet inquiry in my mind about the nature of the different climates on the earth. I started thinking about the different geographical features that must exist to create a temperate forest where there might otherwise be a desert. It didn't take long to come to the same conclusion as i'm sure i must have slept through in fifth grade biology. (or whatever it may have been that i was so avidly daydreaming through)
Water. Not just any water, fresh water. Simple, right? I know. So I took that simplistic answer and tried to simplify it more: what is it about water that plants need? I thought immediately to humans and how our bodies are almost exclusively run on the water that we so desperately need to survive. I reasoned that, of course, that same need must drive plants. But then what happens to the existing water? Does it evaporate? Get excreted? It's a little easier to see in humans - i've personally never seen a hibiscus walk up to a brick wall and piss its initials.
I could go on for quite a while describing the minutia of my ADD brain farts, but i think i'll zoom out to give you a little more panoramic view.
Essentially, i ended up thinking about the plausibility of creating a grassy, temperate climate in the desert of Arizona. A place where fruits of any kind could be grown as if in their own home climate. I didn't think much on growing seasons, but it would have doubtless crossed my mind and taken another branch of meandering thoughts all on its own.
The caveat - but perhaps most important feature - of this Zero Impact Living zone, would be that it could not (with the obvious exception of the displacement of whatever sand and vegetation originally inhabited the spot) tamper with or alter in any way the surrounding climate and area. If rainfall were collected, an equal amount must be released beneath to account for it. If humidity were extracted from the air, it had to be replaced almost immediately and in the same place.
It could all be done, i conjectured, if the science of the functionality of nature - indeed the very building blocks of growth and life - were understood. Why water? Oxygen and minerals in, waste out. It has to boil down to something simple, after all.
Pan left and we follow the natural progression of these thoughts: What about people? If we could get whatever oxygen and other gases that our body needed through other means, would we still breathe? The scene in the Abyss where the mouse first breathes liquid air immediately popped into my mind, and was dismissed almost as quickly. I wasn't talking about breathing something else, like water or another gas. I was talking about not breathing at all. Would we feel like we were suffocating? Or just holding our breath?
I started thinking about what else we could substitute ... would it be possible to only subsist on a diet of pills to fill our chemical needs? If you could eat a pill that would give you all the calories and nutrients that you need without eating a single bite of "food", would you do it? What if it meant that no living thing would ever again be killed for or because of your nutritional needs? No plants, animals, or people? Sounds ridiculously impossible, i know, but bear with me. The question isn't whether or not this pill exists, it's whether or not you would be able to live on it.
I imagined never eating a salad again, or a steak, or cheese, or crackers, or chips, and i came to a fairly sound decision that it would be impossible for me. And if not for me, then certainly for quite a large percentage of the world's population.
What it all boils down to is that we are not happy just to survive. To merely eek out an existence and leave it at that. But why? Or more aptly, why not? What else is there, or should there be? Shouldn't it be enough to live and leave well enough alone?
This whole time that i'd been considering what would be possible with Zero Impact Living, or breathing without air, or eating without food, i'd been focusing on, (indeed practically abusing) that very thing which i was now denying we should have any need for: imagination. So i started wondering about what it is that makes us different from how we perceive animals to be - creatures existing on base survival instinct and a kind of informal ritual of eating, sleeping, excreting, and mating.
Like, for example, let's say I want a pickle. A lot of people will tell you that that kind of desire, or "hankering" will indicate that perhaps the pickle will fulfill some basic need that exists in your body. Maybe a lack of sodium? I dunno, but you see where i'm going with this. It's like your body is holding up its hand indicating what it needs, and your mind is holding a flashlight on the hand, projecting an image on a not so distant screen. What you end up thinking about is what's on that screen - whether or not it's what your body was indicating.
So what are we to do? Ignore the screen and look at the hand? Turn off the flashlight and try to let our eyes adjust to see what it might be we actually want? What would happen if we just did away with our creativity entirely and stuck entirely to the fax? "Just the fax, ma'am, just the fax." Ultimately the question that that seems to beg is this: What would be the point? What kind of life would that be?
When you think about life, the universe, and everything, what really is the point? If there's a grand scheme, we're not aware of it. So should we try to change the world? Why? If there's any one thing that's true, it seems to be impermanence - the fact that everything that is will once have been. It's not that life is suffering because all good things end, it's that life is fleeting, and that's that.
So i think about the goals i might dedicate myself to: wealth and hedonistic abandon? Why would that appeal if nothing lasts? Getting more only brings about wanting more, and having more things only makes you enjoy what you have less.
What about the future of the planet? Survival of the species? Scientific and medical advancement? No - to what end? If everything ends anyways then there's really no point. And even if it doesn't it's not like there's some major competition going on after which our species will be judged and awarded with some amazing and indescribable prize. Beyond that, if you apply the above rule about having and wanting, then all you do by advancing the species is make the species want or expect more. It's a vicious cycle that only ends in the same apocalyptic scenario as will most likely end up vanquishing even that vague conceptualization that we invented to measure our lives ... Time.
Kids? Same thing. They'll eventually pass on, so no matter how good you make their life, they'll grow old and live life just as you're doing now.
Family? Ditto. If it's all impermanent, the only thing we know is that we'll all end up in some great beyond, which could be the absence of all existence for all we know. (read: no afterlife)
So what does it come to?? Lay down and die, screaming "AAAAGH" whilst shooting your gun in the air?!
I think that, ultimately, the answer to that question is found in some ancient words of wisdom i have heard repeated so many times: 'to each his own.'
We make a mistake, i think, of either living too much for ourselves, or too much for "the greater good ... the greater good ... the gre -" ... sorry, got carried away. Between the extremes of simple survival, having everything we want, and giving everything to society (a complex and convoluted love triangle, to be sure) there has to be a point where everything balances out. Our job, if we should choose to label it as such, should perhaps be to find that point.
I wish i could tell you how to find it - but if i knew, i probably wouldn't have gone on this rant. Life may not be about finding your balance-point, but i think it's probably much more enjoyable once you've discovered not only how to get there, but how to stay there as well.
Joseph Campbell talks about finding your Bliss. The Buddha talked about Enlightenment. Jesus talked about corporeal death and spiritual rebirth. For some, such things are a life goal to live for - i hope that for me, i can reach that point with plenty of life left to live.
XT
When I was out for my walk today, i started thinking about a lot of different things. That's pretty much my favorite thing to do, you know - muse about the most random and sometimes most ridiculous things when I'm all by myself without a thing to distract me. And so, in this absence of books, movies, video games, and human company, I found myself thinking about this and that, until i came upon a more steady train of thought.
I really don't know why it stuck in my mind as a topic i should pursue, but i started wondering to myself about the plants of the desert. OH YES! I remember now! It was because as i was walking along, i noticed a particular kind of tree lining the sidewalk that i realized had also started sprouting up in my front yard, between the neighbor's fence and ours. We had been wondering about what it was, because it's quite "viney" in its early stages - not at all like a tree. The only reason I even realized what it was was that it had quite a few branches which were still more vine than tree, and the foliage was exactly the same.
Anyways! Seeing that tree almost immediately followed by a tall pine started a quiet inquiry in my mind about the nature of the different climates on the earth. I started thinking about the different geographical features that must exist to create a temperate forest where there might otherwise be a desert. It didn't take long to come to the same conclusion as i'm sure i must have slept through in fifth grade biology. (or whatever it may have been that i was so avidly daydreaming through)
Water. Not just any water, fresh water. Simple, right? I know. So I took that simplistic answer and tried to simplify it more: what is it about water that plants need? I thought immediately to humans and how our bodies are almost exclusively run on the water that we so desperately need to survive. I reasoned that, of course, that same need must drive plants. But then what happens to the existing water? Does it evaporate? Get excreted? It's a little easier to see in humans - i've personally never seen a hibiscus walk up to a brick wall and piss its initials.
I could go on for quite a while describing the minutia of my ADD brain farts, but i think i'll zoom out to give you a little more panoramic view.
Essentially, i ended up thinking about the plausibility of creating a grassy, temperate climate in the desert of Arizona. A place where fruits of any kind could be grown as if in their own home climate. I didn't think much on growing seasons, but it would have doubtless crossed my mind and taken another branch of meandering thoughts all on its own.
The caveat - but perhaps most important feature - of this Zero Impact Living zone, would be that it could not (with the obvious exception of the displacement of whatever sand and vegetation originally inhabited the spot) tamper with or alter in any way the surrounding climate and area. If rainfall were collected, an equal amount must be released beneath to account for it. If humidity were extracted from the air, it had to be replaced almost immediately and in the same place.
It could all be done, i conjectured, if the science of the functionality of nature - indeed the very building blocks of growth and life - were understood. Why water? Oxygen and minerals in, waste out. It has to boil down to something simple, after all.
Pan left and we follow the natural progression of these thoughts: What about people? If we could get whatever oxygen and other gases that our body needed through other means, would we still breathe? The scene in the Abyss where the mouse first breathes liquid air immediately popped into my mind, and was dismissed almost as quickly. I wasn't talking about breathing something else, like water or another gas. I was talking about not breathing at all. Would we feel like we were suffocating? Or just holding our breath?
I started thinking about what else we could substitute ... would it be possible to only subsist on a diet of pills to fill our chemical needs? If you could eat a pill that would give you all the calories and nutrients that you need without eating a single bite of "food", would you do it? What if it meant that no living thing would ever again be killed for or because of your nutritional needs? No plants, animals, or people? Sounds ridiculously impossible, i know, but bear with me. The question isn't whether or not this pill exists, it's whether or not you would be able to live on it.
I imagined never eating a salad again, or a steak, or cheese, or crackers, or chips, and i came to a fairly sound decision that it would be impossible for me. And if not for me, then certainly for quite a large percentage of the world's population.
What it all boils down to is that we are not happy just to survive. To merely eek out an existence and leave it at that. But why? Or more aptly, why not? What else is there, or should there be? Shouldn't it be enough to live and leave well enough alone?
This whole time that i'd been considering what would be possible with Zero Impact Living, or breathing without air, or eating without food, i'd been focusing on, (indeed practically abusing) that very thing which i was now denying we should have any need for: imagination. So i started wondering about what it is that makes us different from how we perceive animals to be - creatures existing on base survival instinct and a kind of informal ritual of eating, sleeping, excreting, and mating.
Like, for example, let's say I want a pickle. A lot of people will tell you that that kind of desire, or "hankering" will indicate that perhaps the pickle will fulfill some basic need that exists in your body. Maybe a lack of sodium? I dunno, but you see where i'm going with this. It's like your body is holding up its hand indicating what it needs, and your mind is holding a flashlight on the hand, projecting an image on a not so distant screen. What you end up thinking about is what's on that screen - whether or not it's what your body was indicating.
So what are we to do? Ignore the screen and look at the hand? Turn off the flashlight and try to let our eyes adjust to see what it might be we actually want? What would happen if we just did away with our creativity entirely and stuck entirely to the fax? "Just the fax, ma'am, just the fax." Ultimately the question that that seems to beg is this: What would be the point? What kind of life would that be?
When you think about life, the universe, and everything, what really is the point? If there's a grand scheme, we're not aware of it. So should we try to change the world? Why? If there's any one thing that's true, it seems to be impermanence - the fact that everything that is will once have been. It's not that life is suffering because all good things end, it's that life is fleeting, and that's that.
So i think about the goals i might dedicate myself to: wealth and hedonistic abandon? Why would that appeal if nothing lasts? Getting more only brings about wanting more, and having more things only makes you enjoy what you have less.
What about the future of the planet? Survival of the species? Scientific and medical advancement? No - to what end? If everything ends anyways then there's really no point. And even if it doesn't it's not like there's some major competition going on after which our species will be judged and awarded with some amazing and indescribable prize. Beyond that, if you apply the above rule about having and wanting, then all you do by advancing the species is make the species want or expect more. It's a vicious cycle that only ends in the same apocalyptic scenario as will most likely end up vanquishing even that vague conceptualization that we invented to measure our lives ... Time.
Kids? Same thing. They'll eventually pass on, so no matter how good you make their life, they'll grow old and live life just as you're doing now.
Family? Ditto. If it's all impermanent, the only thing we know is that we'll all end up in some great beyond, which could be the absence of all existence for all we know. (read: no afterlife)
So what does it come to?? Lay down and die, screaming "AAAAGH" whilst shooting your gun in the air?!
I think that, ultimately, the answer to that question is found in some ancient words of wisdom i have heard repeated so many times: 'to each his own.'
We make a mistake, i think, of either living too much for ourselves, or too much for "the greater good ... the greater good ... the gre -" ... sorry, got carried away. Between the extremes of simple survival, having everything we want, and giving everything to society (a complex and convoluted love triangle, to be sure) there has to be a point where everything balances out. Our job, if we should choose to label it as such, should perhaps be to find that point.
I wish i could tell you how to find it - but if i knew, i probably wouldn't have gone on this rant. Life may not be about finding your balance-point, but i think it's probably much more enjoyable once you've discovered not only how to get there, but how to stay there as well.
Joseph Campbell talks about finding your Bliss. The Buddha talked about Enlightenment. Jesus talked about corporeal death and spiritual rebirth. For some, such things are a life goal to live for - i hope that for me, i can reach that point with plenty of life left to live.
XT
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Get it out
Sometimes it just makes more sense if i can type it all out. All is a relative term here - i don't even know if there will be more than one thing to "get out". Probably not ... the mind is fickle if anything.
I remember when - I remember, I remember when i lost my mind ... there was something so special about that day.
Gnarly Barcles. Hah hah. What does it matter what i call "him" if it's just a made up name anyways - the real culprits are Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse ... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
On to the main event. I heard it in my head and it just sounded too good not to put on paper ... in bits ... whatever.
See, the thing is this:
There's a song that's really gotten my proverbial goat. Metaphorical goat. ... hmm. There's really no proverb out there that i'm aware of that mentions a goat being gotten, so this would indicate that the appropriate word for this situation would indeed be metaphorical. I have, after all, no goat to get. Save a metaphorical one.
... which seems to have been gotten. Metaphorically.
I just love that word.
Anyways - the whole point of this little tirade (pron. tie-raid dammit! as everyone around me can attest to, it has no bearing on the topic whether the word was or is pronounced differently in the society from whence the word and its usage originated. This is America. Here, every Cairo can be a Kay-row. My personal feelings on the matter are hitherto inconsequential - the masses have decided the fate of our friend the tirade.)
HAHAH. I just ended that sentence with a paranthetical. No period at all. Eat me El Profesor de In-freakin'-gles.
So anyways, there's this song that has me up in arms. (at arms? who the hell knows? ... you'd better not be saying "me" at this juncture, dear reader)
'Waiting on the World to Change' by John Mayer. I think the reason that i find it so completely off-putting and upsetting is that, like most John Mayer songs, it strikes hard, fast, and 'merciless' at the root of several emotions and thoughts which have seen fit to turn my mind and heart upside down. The emotions the former and the thoughts the latter ... they like to mix things up.
See, what upsets me is this: (yay colons!) What in the hell are we waiting for? Why would we wait? ... and what the hell are we waiting for?? (i know i repeated that one - hold on to it, it's important ... shhhhhhhh ...)
It seems to me that we, the species, of the divided species of humanity, have a very serious problem. We're convinced that there's something else - something important for us. OK OK OK ... that's a lie. The problem really is that there isn't anything. Not that we're convinced there is. There's a very severe distinction between those two statements.
Wait. Scratch that. How the fuck would i know either of those things to be true? What am i? Omniscient? Please. If i knew anything more than the paltry few things which trundle vacant-eyed and directionless through the cavernous expanse which is my mind (though they do have very spacious accomodations, those paltry few) i'd have it all figured out, know where i should be, understand my role in it all, yada yada yada. No no, i think that to be honest we should hone our inquiry into "what's eating Gilbert Grape" into a fine point. A laser even. Those are cool. Said inquiry should henceforth be focused almost exclusively on the question of why i am, where i am, who i am, and why the fuck is Optimus Prime RED?
... OK, that last was just to see if you were paying attention. Petty, i know. ;-)
I think i can officially say that whatever it was that i needed to get out has failed miserably in its attempt to surface to the top of these murky mind waters. Maybe that was the only reason i wanted to write - to get something out or shut it out. What maybe? Wow - my powers of self delusion are almost too much sometimes. Aren't ours all?
All i know is this: The world is too much with us. I keep thinking about how we're affecting this planet and how the human social psyche has developed and will progress, but ultimately it all comes down to one thing: and if you find out what it is... keep it to yourself. The world couldn't bear the truth of it.
And you're probably wrong.
Catch you on the flip side, baby. Wherever that may be.
I remember when - I remember, I remember when i lost my mind ... there was something so special about that day.
Gnarly Barcles. Hah hah. What does it matter what i call "him" if it's just a made up name anyways - the real culprits are Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse ... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
On to the main event. I heard it in my head and it just sounded too good not to put on paper ... in bits ... whatever.
See, the thing is this:
There's a song that's really gotten my proverbial goat. Metaphorical goat. ... hmm. There's really no proverb out there that i'm aware of that mentions a goat being gotten, so this would indicate that the appropriate word for this situation would indeed be metaphorical. I have, after all, no goat to get. Save a metaphorical one.
... which seems to have been gotten. Metaphorically.
I just love that word.
Anyways - the whole point of this little tirade (pron. tie-raid dammit! as everyone around me can attest to, it has no bearing on the topic whether the word was or is pronounced differently in the society from whence the word and its usage originated. This is America. Here, every Cairo can be a Kay-row. My personal feelings on the matter are hitherto inconsequential - the masses have decided the fate of our friend the tirade.)
HAHAH. I just ended that sentence with a paranthetical. No period at all. Eat me El Profesor de In-freakin'-gles.
So anyways, there's this song that has me up in arms. (at arms? who the hell knows? ... you'd better not be saying "me" at this juncture, dear reader)
'Waiting on the World to Change' by John Mayer. I think the reason that i find it so completely off-putting and upsetting is that, like most John Mayer songs, it strikes hard, fast, and 'merciless' at the root of several emotions and thoughts which have seen fit to turn my mind and heart upside down. The emotions the former and the thoughts the latter ... they like to mix things up.
See, what upsets me is this: (yay colons!) What in the hell are we waiting for? Why would we wait? ... and what the hell are we waiting for?? (i know i repeated that one - hold on to it, it's important ... shhhhhhhh ...)
It seems to me that we, the species, of the divided species of humanity, have a very serious problem. We're convinced that there's something else - something important for us. OK OK OK ... that's a lie. The problem really is that there isn't anything. Not that we're convinced there is. There's a very severe distinction between those two statements.
Wait. Scratch that. How the fuck would i know either of those things to be true? What am i? Omniscient? Please. If i knew anything more than the paltry few things which trundle vacant-eyed and directionless through the cavernous expanse which is my mind (though they do have very spacious accomodations, those paltry few) i'd have it all figured out, know where i should be, understand my role in it all, yada yada yada. No no, i think that to be honest we should hone our inquiry into "what's eating Gilbert Grape" into a fine point. A laser even. Those are cool. Said inquiry should henceforth be focused almost exclusively on the question of why i am, where i am, who i am, and why the fuck is Optimus Prime RED?
... OK, that last was just to see if you were paying attention. Petty, i know. ;-)
I think i can officially say that whatever it was that i needed to get out has failed miserably in its attempt to surface to the top of these murky mind waters. Maybe that was the only reason i wanted to write - to get something out or shut it out. What maybe? Wow - my powers of self delusion are almost too much sometimes. Aren't ours all?
All i know is this: The world is too much with us. I keep thinking about how we're affecting this planet and how the human social psyche has developed and will progress, but ultimately it all comes down to one thing: and if you find out what it is... keep it to yourself. The world couldn't bear the truth of it.
And you're probably wrong.
Catch you on the flip side, baby. Wherever that may be.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Back into the light
The world almost seems too immense - engulfing you body and soul in what seems almost a sea of unknowns and shadowy posibilities.
It almost feels sometimes like if you look in the mirror long enough, your form will melt away and reveal who or what you really are. Fire burning away within a hollow cask that eventually rots and whithers into nothingness, or dirt.
The question of who i am and what i'm for often rears it's head when i least expect it - casting me into as dark a hole as i can manage to dig myself into and holding the ladder just far enough away that though within grasping distance my arms flail uselessly at the empty air.
What is it all for? Who knows. Who cares. Ultimately it all comes down to a simple fact: life is a journey, not a destination. Words made famous that nevertheless hold an inordinate amount of truth. There's never been a time in my life when i've doubted the veracity of that elucidation - but times like these call into question whose journey it is, and whether it is our place or indeed within our ability to change ships, switch rivers, or even simply enjoy and accept.
Surely the latter at least. Right?
The presupposition that all is meant t o be one way or the other and that all will end well regardless of present circumstance is a conjecture I hesitate to accept. Maybe it's all crap. Maybe it all ends as it seems to begin - one huge startling realization that all we had previously accepted as knowledge and truth is wrong. You find yourself instead ashamed to have thought so simplistically, and ultimately accept the definitive nature of your being - which you had previously been unaware of. The escape from the womb becomes an analogy for our death, only in reverse. Our certainty of our own existence and the world around us fades into the murky acceptance of a fate within the ground.
If there is a soul, what does it look like? What does it look like? Where is it hiding.
It almost feels sometimes like if you look in the mirror long enough, your form will melt away and reveal who or what you really are. Fire burning away within a hollow cask that eventually rots and whithers into nothingness, or dirt.
The question of who i am and what i'm for often rears it's head when i least expect it - casting me into as dark a hole as i can manage to dig myself into and holding the ladder just far enough away that though within grasping distance my arms flail uselessly at the empty air.
What is it all for? Who knows. Who cares. Ultimately it all comes down to a simple fact: life is a journey, not a destination. Words made famous that nevertheless hold an inordinate amount of truth. There's never been a time in my life when i've doubted the veracity of that elucidation - but times like these call into question whose journey it is, and whether it is our place or indeed within our ability to change ships, switch rivers, or even simply enjoy and accept.
Surely the latter at least. Right?
The presupposition that all is meant t o be one way or the other and that all will end well regardless of present circumstance is a conjecture I hesitate to accept. Maybe it's all crap. Maybe it all ends as it seems to begin - one huge startling realization that all we had previously accepted as knowledge and truth is wrong. You find yourself instead ashamed to have thought so simplistically, and ultimately accept the definitive nature of your being - which you had previously been unaware of. The escape from the womb becomes an analogy for our death, only in reverse. Our certainty of our own existence and the world around us fades into the murky acceptance of a fate within the ground.
If there is a soul, what does it look like? What does it look like? Where is it hiding.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
So here's the deal
I'm done. Done with school. Holy shit.
Yes, i graduated in december, but the stipulation was that i must complete yet one more class to receive my diploma... of course. Well, it's all done! I actually ended up really enjoying it because it gave me a chance to come up with a few really interesting ideas.
Anyways - things here are a little crazy, but that's ok, because life is good... right?
Alright, i'm outta here.
Catch ya on the flip side, baby :-)
Christian
Yes, i graduated in december, but the stipulation was that i must complete yet one more class to receive my diploma... of course. Well, it's all done! I actually ended up really enjoying it because it gave me a chance to come up with a few really interesting ideas.
Anyways - things here are a little crazy, but that's ok, because life is good... right?
Alright, i'm outta here.
Catch ya on the flip side, baby :-)
Christian
Monday, December 20, 2004
Good news!
Not only did i recently graduate from my masters program (which, btw, is officially called a "Masters in Business Administration of International Management with a focus on Supply Chain Management") but i managed to do so with a 3.213!
that's 3 plus .213. Oh yeah.
Do you know what my final grades were? Well here's a hint. My last 8 out of 10 classes were all As, with the other two being a B and a B+. Folks... someone out there likes me.
Christian
PS: DEAR GOD it has been a long time since i talked to any of you... sorry about that, but once the fort gets infiltrated it's tough to justify keeping any secrets in it - and honestly, what do i have to blog about that doesn't involve my emotions? Nope, sorry folks, the blogspot days are nearly over ... not with a bang, but with a whimper.
that's 3 plus .213. Oh yeah.
Do you know what my final grades were? Well here's a hint. My last 8 out of 10 classes were all As, with the other two being a B and a B+. Folks... someone out there likes me.
Christian
PS: DEAR GOD it has been a long time since i talked to any of you... sorry about that, but once the fort gets infiltrated it's tough to justify keeping any secrets in it - and honestly, what do i have to blog about that doesn't involve my emotions? Nope, sorry folks, the blogspot days are nearly over ... not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Still alive
Just an update on life:
Muse is a cool band
I'm officially back up to 2 pitchers before inebriation
I graduate on the 10th of December
My cat is awesome
I'm going to DC and NY from the 3rd to the 6th or so (of November)
Supply Chain Management is the coolest thing in the world
My cat's pissed because i haven't fed him yet
Fable is a cool game
Um. I think that about does it. I've decided not to get personal on any more of these, so the only things i'll be typing in here are mildly superficial, sometimes thoughtless, void-of-any-mental-meat posts. Why you may ask? I'd tell you, but it'd be personal ;-)
Seriously, i'm gonna try to start updating this on a regular basis again, so drop back later!
.Christian
Muse is a cool band
I'm officially back up to 2 pitchers before inebriation
I graduate on the 10th of December
My cat is awesome
I'm going to DC and NY from the 3rd to the 6th or so (of November)
Supply Chain Management is the coolest thing in the world
My cat's pissed because i haven't fed him yet
Fable is a cool game
Um. I think that about does it. I've decided not to get personal on any more of these, so the only things i'll be typing in here are mildly superficial, sometimes thoughtless, void-of-any-mental-meat posts. Why you may ask? I'd tell you, but it'd be personal ;-)
Seriously, i'm gonna try to start updating this on a regular basis again, so drop back later!
.Christian
Thursday, September 9, 2004
Weirdo
That's me. I just had this brilliant idea of telling Zach Braff (the writer/director/actor) of Garden State how grateful i was for his movie and how wonderful it was and how it really left a mark on me. Know what i friggin wrote instead? "Thanks for the breadcrumbs." I guess maybe that sums it up though... Garden State made me feel like where i want to be is real, or at least reminded me that the thought is worth it. It's funny, at the beginning of the summer my roomate and i got some kids' books to help us get used to spanish... start small, yknow? anyways, the book she bought was hansel and gretel... you know where i'm going with this, and if you don't, read the blog underneath this one. I know. I'm a wierdo. ;-)
FTBC, KTBB, etc :-)
.Christian
FTBC, KTBB, etc :-)
.Christian
Breadcrumbs here, breadcrumbs there, breadcrumbs breadcrumbs everywhere.
What do you say about a movie that changes your life again for the first time? I don't know, because I just saw "Hero," and lemme tell you, it didn't. It's not that it's a bad movie mind you ... it is, in fact, a fairly decent, interesting, admirable film, with incredible cinematography and interesting plot development and progression. But it's no Garden State.
Let's shift focus shall we? Garden State. That's a good focal point. If any of you haven't yet had the great and resounding pleasure of experiencing this movie (yes i said "experiencing" for a reason) you are really missing out. It really touched me, especially having watched it so soon after "Eternal Sunshine..." Everything about these two movies ... well ... just watch them, OK? If you don't like 'em, fine. If you don't understand 'em, coo. If you experience a flutter of recognition in your heart and mind, you and i are talkin the same language.
You may be wondering about the seemingly random idea that i've focused on lately. As you recall, i've mentioned my belief that everything happens for a reason, yes? Let me elaborate: Too often, people seem to say that things happen for a reason as a kind of excuse, or an explanation to help ease the truth. I think that it should be looked at in a different way... in a deductive kind of way. In "I, Robot" (which in spanish is "Yo, Robot" ... i just think that's funny ... maybe i should have painted an "!" at the end of it on the posters...) the main character thinks that the robot super-genius, or "creator", has been leaving clues around to help him solve his murder. These clues, or breadcrumbs, end up leading the character, and the audience, on a fairly wild and twisting path. (with LOTS of CGI)
I guess that's my point. Breadcrumbs. I'm sure that a person could drive themselves mad thinking about this, like Macbeth and the Wierd Sisters times twenty, but i like to think that it serves as a kind of reminder that we may control our own destiny, but it's only as blindly as we want. I think it's interesting that in a time where i feel that i have to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life, there seem to be things which are reminding me of what i value and what i desire most. ... of course anyone who's seen "Pi" (or anyone with half a brain) would also remind you that if you start looking for something everywhere, you'll start finding it. But then someone could retort 'isn't that, in itself, a sign?' The conversation circles and loops to the same places with little or no educational or inspirational value... hilarity ensues.
I think if you start thinking of it all as a puzzle, you eventually start to feel like you can solve it ... more importantly you feel like maybe it's all worth something.
So the moral of the story is this: Watch Garden State. It's brilliant. Really.
FTBC (Follow Those Bread Crumbs)
KTBB
and finally...
"Catch ya on the flip side, baby."
.Christian
Let's shift focus shall we? Garden State. That's a good focal point. If any of you haven't yet had the great and resounding pleasure of experiencing this movie (yes i said "experiencing" for a reason) you are really missing out. It really touched me, especially having watched it so soon after "Eternal Sunshine..." Everything about these two movies ... well ... just watch them, OK? If you don't like 'em, fine. If you don't understand 'em, coo. If you experience a flutter of recognition in your heart and mind, you and i are talkin the same language.
You may be wondering about the seemingly random idea that i've focused on lately. As you recall, i've mentioned my belief that everything happens for a reason, yes? Let me elaborate: Too often, people seem to say that things happen for a reason as a kind of excuse, or an explanation to help ease the truth. I think that it should be looked at in a different way... in a deductive kind of way. In "I, Robot" (which in spanish is "Yo, Robot" ... i just think that's funny ... maybe i should have painted an "!" at the end of it on the posters...) the main character thinks that the robot super-genius, or "creator", has been leaving clues around to help him solve his murder. These clues, or breadcrumbs, end up leading the character, and the audience, on a fairly wild and twisting path. (with LOTS of CGI)
I guess that's my point. Breadcrumbs. I'm sure that a person could drive themselves mad thinking about this, like Macbeth and the Wierd Sisters times twenty, but i like to think that it serves as a kind of reminder that we may control our own destiny, but it's only as blindly as we want. I think it's interesting that in a time where i feel that i have to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life, there seem to be things which are reminding me of what i value and what i desire most. ... of course anyone who's seen "Pi" (or anyone with half a brain) would also remind you that if you start looking for something everywhere, you'll start finding it. But then someone could retort 'isn't that, in itself, a sign?' The conversation circles and loops to the same places with little or no educational or inspirational value... hilarity ensues.
I think if you start thinking of it all as a puzzle, you eventually start to feel like you can solve it ... more importantly you feel like maybe it's all worth something.
So the moral of the story is this: Watch Garden State. It's brilliant. Really.
FTBC (Follow Those Bread Crumbs)
KTBB
and finally...
"Catch ya on the flip side, baby."
.Christian
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Monday, August 23, 2004
Guess where i am?
It´s a city called Creel, somewhere outside of the Barranca de Cobre. (copper canyon for those not in the know ... btw, just ask dr know, there´s nothing he doesn´t!)
Anyways, we´ve been driving for a while now and we´ve seen a lot of cool things that i hadn´t really thought i would see during my mexico trip. I´ll try to post a link to pictures, etc. :-) NEways, just wanted to give y´all a heads up... but i´m typing in the lobby of a hotel where we decided to have a few beers ... ok, it´s a best western ... dammit. Anyways, i can´t really type a huge thing because this is technically a "guests only" thing, and this fucking keyboard is driving me in-fucking sane because all the keys are in different places ... not the letters mind you, but everything else, and that´s REALLY bugging me.
OK. Well. Lata.
.Christian
PS: We´re staying at the ¨Paraiso del Bosque" hotel, thus the issues with "guests only." ... thought i´d solve that mystery for ya ;-)
PPS: be back in the states starting wednesday... till then, kick them bedbugs for me - rather WITH me, cause they´ve been teamin up on us. Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Anyways, we´ve been driving for a while now and we´ve seen a lot of cool things that i hadn´t really thought i would see during my mexico trip. I´ll try to post a link to pictures, etc. :-) NEways, just wanted to give y´all a heads up... but i´m typing in the lobby of a hotel where we decided to have a few beers ... ok, it´s a best western ... dammit. Anyways, i can´t really type a huge thing because this is technically a "guests only" thing, and this fucking keyboard is driving me in-fucking sane because all the keys are in different places ... not the letters mind you, but everything else, and that´s REALLY bugging me.
OK. Well. Lata.
.Christian
PS: We´re staying at the ¨Paraiso del Bosque" hotel, thus the issues with "guests only." ... thought i´d solve that mystery for ya ;-)
PPS: be back in the states starting wednesday... till then, kick them bedbugs for me - rather WITH me, cause they´ve been teamin up on us. Catch ya on the flip side, baby.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Do you think?
Is it dreams that sometimes visit upon life? Or life that sometimes visits upon dreams?
.Christian
.Christian
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Random
I guess this is getting really freaky with the 3 days in a row thing, but i was thinking about some random stuff today and it set those good ole wheels rolling. Between then and now i have played Tony Hawk (to beat the extra stuff and get all the fun toys) and taken a take-home test. Which was actually harder than the test i took today. ... 3 pages. 35 questions. i can't believe that class cost 3grand.
I was thinking about the 4th grade of all things. Can you believe that? How often do you start going through your head about one year of your life. And actually, i can't remember at all thinking about the whole year... rather it was just one day and a general feeling. That one day was the first time i fell in love. Cheesy, huh? Not something i'd usually share, but hey, you'll never meet her and i'll never see her again. Hell, i can't even tell if it was a dream or not.
There was this kinda park thing that my school did to celebrate the end of the year. My mom was one of the chaperones i think... i dunno. All i know is that this girl and i started talking and walked together... i think we may even have paddleboated... that's romance ;-) Anyways, the fact that i was (and am i think) a hopeless romantic isn't why i brought the topic up. The reason i brought it up was that i never saw her again... at least i think. See, as a kid, i had such a short, almost non-existent memory, that i couldn't remember anything about this girl by the start of the next week. Face, name, anything. I thought it might be Brooke or something, and i'm pretty sure she was maybe a redhead, but other than that, i remember as much now as i remembered then.
What does this all have to do with anything? Simply that that memory followed me until i reached around my senior year of highschool. I don't know if i've accurately depicted just what this memory of mine entailed... my entire life up until senior year of highschool, as far as i can recall, was a dream. How fucked up is that? I feel like i have no goddamn history because everything to a point, with very few exceptions, seems entirely made up one night in bed! And i'm not talking about the typical "been so long ago it seems like a dream" thing, i mean it quite literally. Anyways, i started thinking about why my memory would be like that. Why was it that when i came back from Brazil, i couldn't at all remember the kid that i'd played with before i left? Sure i was young, we're talking forgetting first grade by the end of third, but still, it's a little messed up, yknow? I mean, put it this way, i remember one time in second or third grade when i got on the schoolbus and ended up talking to someone that was reading "hitchiker's guide" and let me borrow it. You know what the problem was? I didn't remember that person almost the moment i stepped off the bus. I remembered i had the book, and that i'd borrowed it from someone, but i had no idea who! When the guy asked me for it i had that glazed "who are you?" look. I went home, got the book, and returned it to him the next day because by chance he saw me and reminded me again.
I don't know what to say - i have a huge thing that i wanted to talk about but Marianna and Henry and Matt just walked through the door...
We'll keep this brief i guess: the point of what i was coming to is that the one thing i remember about my whole life is how much time i have wasted doing nothing or playing video games. If i had spent one hour of that time doing something else, something productive, i could have accomplished so much by now! But the most disturbing thing is that i don't feel like if i had known that it would have made a difference. Not because i would have been too lazy to change (though that would most certainly have been a factor) but because i feel as if i have gotten to the point where i am today as a result of my past, which is starting to seem so much like a fantasy that i have trouble defining just where i am in the first place! If we are defined by our environment and history, then what happens if we find ourselves without either? Granted such a discovery would eventually mean molding from that point forward, but what if no molding occured? What if all that was left was an unshaped mass? an uncarved block of wood. I know i didn't come up with that one, that's part of Taoist dogma... what is it though that drove that thought? Maybe it's the same inspiration... maybe everyone has these kinds of thoughts at one point or another and some create a belief system out of it.
The big difference is that in Taoist belief the idea is to become that uncarved wood. To become one with your nature, surroundings, existence, and the world ... but not in the same sense (or with the same finality) as death and samsara in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and pretty much every other world religion. The idea is that you're still alive, but you are no longer ... a mask ... you are no longer wearing a mask. Wouldn't that feel good?
"I am an opera singer" - Cake
We all wear them, so maybe we all need/want to be liberated from them... maybe the idea of becoming an unmolded being is attractive to everyone on some level. Who knows. I just keep thinking about what my life would be like if i had just ... payed more attention. Would i have spoken up about my opinions in terms of where to move or if we should at all? Would i have been able to stop dad from drinking? Would i have gotten better grades? not kicked out of Kent? Would i even have been anywhere near the situation where i find myself currently? I mean you really have to wonder if something as seemingly insignificant, which everyone takes for granted ... if something like your memory or attention span would have made any difference, maybe even all the difference in the world ...
I wonder sometimes if what i feel like i'm holding out for is an idea of who i am and where i want to be ... and if ultimately that's what's missing from my past .... the memory of me. ... Maybe the biggest problem of all is that i can't remember my dreams - and so i've dreamt up my life. Fuck. That's a little too deep for 8:30 on a wednesday after all those finals.
Shit. I just realized what i typed last night. "All we see or seem..."
Huh. At the time it was a kind of abstract reference that didn't totally fit the analogy ... now i wonder if maybe i'm my own dejavu. ... I guess that's a whole nother question in and of itself.
KTBB
.Christian
I was thinking about the 4th grade of all things. Can you believe that? How often do you start going through your head about one year of your life. And actually, i can't remember at all thinking about the whole year... rather it was just one day and a general feeling. That one day was the first time i fell in love. Cheesy, huh? Not something i'd usually share, but hey, you'll never meet her and i'll never see her again. Hell, i can't even tell if it was a dream or not.
There was this kinda park thing that my school did to celebrate the end of the year. My mom was one of the chaperones i think... i dunno. All i know is that this girl and i started talking and walked together... i think we may even have paddleboated... that's romance ;-) Anyways, the fact that i was (and am i think) a hopeless romantic isn't why i brought the topic up. The reason i brought it up was that i never saw her again... at least i think. See, as a kid, i had such a short, almost non-existent memory, that i couldn't remember anything about this girl by the start of the next week. Face, name, anything. I thought it might be Brooke or something, and i'm pretty sure she was maybe a redhead, but other than that, i remember as much now as i remembered then.
What does this all have to do with anything? Simply that that memory followed me until i reached around my senior year of highschool. I don't know if i've accurately depicted just what this memory of mine entailed... my entire life up until senior year of highschool, as far as i can recall, was a dream. How fucked up is that? I feel like i have no goddamn history because everything to a point, with very few exceptions, seems entirely made up one night in bed! And i'm not talking about the typical "been so long ago it seems like a dream" thing, i mean it quite literally. Anyways, i started thinking about why my memory would be like that. Why was it that when i came back from Brazil, i couldn't at all remember the kid that i'd played with before i left? Sure i was young, we're talking forgetting first grade by the end of third, but still, it's a little messed up, yknow? I mean, put it this way, i remember one time in second or third grade when i got on the schoolbus and ended up talking to someone that was reading "hitchiker's guide" and let me borrow it. You know what the problem was? I didn't remember that person almost the moment i stepped off the bus. I remembered i had the book, and that i'd borrowed it from someone, but i had no idea who! When the guy asked me for it i had that glazed "who are you?" look. I went home, got the book, and returned it to him the next day because by chance he saw me and reminded me again.
I don't know what to say - i have a huge thing that i wanted to talk about but Marianna and Henry and Matt just walked through the door...
We'll keep this brief i guess: the point of what i was coming to is that the one thing i remember about my whole life is how much time i have wasted doing nothing or playing video games. If i had spent one hour of that time doing something else, something productive, i could have accomplished so much by now! But the most disturbing thing is that i don't feel like if i had known that it would have made a difference. Not because i would have been too lazy to change (though that would most certainly have been a factor) but because i feel as if i have gotten to the point where i am today as a result of my past, which is starting to seem so much like a fantasy that i have trouble defining just where i am in the first place! If we are defined by our environment and history, then what happens if we find ourselves without either? Granted such a discovery would eventually mean molding from that point forward, but what if no molding occured? What if all that was left was an unshaped mass? an uncarved block of wood. I know i didn't come up with that one, that's part of Taoist dogma... what is it though that drove that thought? Maybe it's the same inspiration... maybe everyone has these kinds of thoughts at one point or another and some create a belief system out of it.
The big difference is that in Taoist belief the idea is to become that uncarved wood. To become one with your nature, surroundings, existence, and the world ... but not in the same sense (or with the same finality) as death and samsara in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and pretty much every other world religion. The idea is that you're still alive, but you are no longer ... a mask ... you are no longer wearing a mask. Wouldn't that feel good?
"I am an opera singer" - Cake
We all wear them, so maybe we all need/want to be liberated from them... maybe the idea of becoming an unmolded being is attractive to everyone on some level. Who knows. I just keep thinking about what my life would be like if i had just ... payed more attention. Would i have spoken up about my opinions in terms of where to move or if we should at all? Would i have been able to stop dad from drinking? Would i have gotten better grades? not kicked out of Kent? Would i even have been anywhere near the situation where i find myself currently? I mean you really have to wonder if something as seemingly insignificant, which everyone takes for granted ... if something like your memory or attention span would have made any difference, maybe even all the difference in the world ...
I wonder sometimes if what i feel like i'm holding out for is an idea of who i am and where i want to be ... and if ultimately that's what's missing from my past .... the memory of me. ... Maybe the biggest problem of all is that i can't remember my dreams - and so i've dreamt up my life. Fuck. That's a little too deep for 8:30 on a wednesday after all those finals.
Shit. I just realized what i typed last night. "All we see or seem..."
Huh. At the time it was a kind of abstract reference that didn't totally fit the analogy ... now i wonder if maybe i'm my own dejavu. ... I guess that's a whole nother question in and of itself.
KTBB
.Christian
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
So
Two in a row. Wow... i guess that's pretty impressive ;-) I was actually just kinda killing time because i'm not really tired and i just beat tony hawk underground... i suppose i might try studying for the test that i have tomorrow, but we are allowed to bring in whatever notes we want, and so i am bringing a very convenient sheet with some very convenient definitions.
Man, what a blowoff class. I totally thought that this was going to be the one that was really gonna suck me in and help me figure out what i want to do with my life ... turns out that the class that helped me in that area was (dun dun dun) ACCOUNTING of all things! I can't really explain it other than to say that today during the exam, i didn't so much feel as if i were taking a test as playing some new kind of mentally challenging game that i actually understand. Mind you, that's not to say that it was easy, but it was most definitely enjoyable to a certain degree. Heck, i took my time to the extent that i went into "overtime" this time instead of finishing in my usual 1 hr or less timeframe.
::Sigh:: Project Management? Ops Management? Accounting? Marketing? Religious Studies? Who the fuck knows, huh? I mean really though, almost all of those tie in except for the one very obvious deviation. But who knows anyways? As Dennis Leary once postulated: You could be standing on a street corner in NYC when all of a sudden "yipYipYIpYIPYIP!!!" someone's pet poodle plummets straight down from the 32nd floor of their apartment STRAIGHT onto your head. You are therefore known as Bob, the Poodle Guy. "Yeah, I knew Bob, he hated fucking dogs!"
Life is a series of curve balls, and if you keep swingin at every one, you'll be too tired or struck out to hit the straight, slow pitch that comes right down the middle. (refraining from "balls" jokes and metaphors)
I beat Tony Haw... hmmm ... i think i told you that already. Lemme .. yep ... yeah there is is, line two or so... "just beat Tony Hawk Underground" ... ::sigh:: an old Robin Williams skit comes to mind. I'm starting to feel a little under the weather. Not sure why of course, just know how i feel is all. I guess the big thing is that i don't feel like i have a good enough idea of what i would do if fate came to me, skipped knocking on the door, and just said "Hey yo," (fate's cool like that) "what's it gonna be, Willis?" (fate also apparently watched Different Strokes ... or causes them! Hah hah hah ha ha he heh ... heh heh ... right)
What would you do? Everything you know and feel is challenged to the utmost degree in one moment. Everything that you are, were, and will be hangs in the balance between the two unknown paths which must forever be decided in one moment in time. One moment. You know, in Japanese Buddhism (it's perhaps unfair to leave it at Japanese, but for the most part this is where this particular belief exists) there is a Buddha... Amitaba? Something like that ... this Buddha resides in the "West", or "West World" (no friggin 'best of the west' illusions here folks, this is an 'unreal' place, as in not this plane of existence) which he has created to help human beings who are worthy attain enlightenment. How do you get there? How do you contact this wonderful Buddha? Pray, or recite his name, for 5 moments ... i think. That or 3. Short amount of time, right? Who knows... that's the problem: a moment is, or can be, defined as anything from a quadrillionth of a second to a million years. A moment is, strangely/conveniently/whateverly, undefined.
Do you know what a kulpa is? I think that's how you spell it... A kulpa, as I understand it, is a long time. A very long time. It is the amount of time which it would take you to wear down a mountain with a silk scarf. ... Assuming that A you didn't die first, B the scarf lasted that long, and C there were no save-the-mountain activists impeding your progress.
What if it's a kulpa? What if a moment is a kulpa? What if everything that is, was, and will be in your life and the world around you was challenged and changed over the span of relative eternity?
What if it was, instead, done in a 'quadrillionth of a second?'
I've often wondered about the relative constituency of the universe in terms of 'elements.' Not just physical or material elements mind you, but spacial and temporal as well. There are several theories which have come to my attention of late and intrigue me to no end. (or to a kulpa ... yay sat words)
Fuzzy Logic) There's a lot to this, but the part i find interesting is the theory of how the "fuzzy" composition of matter and reality causes the relative inexistence of any defined forms beyond electrical charges and densities of unnamed, ununderstood (there's a fun word) matter. Essentially, what i find interesting, is the idea that if you were to stop everything right now and leave it for, let's say ... heck, why not? a KULPA ... then eventually everything would become one and the same. This isn't really the interesting part... assume the constancy of a specific applied force, most easily assumed gravity. Two objects under different relative strains from a constant force, when placed in opposition of each other to the degree wherein one impedes the others progress, will eventually pass through each other. Put simply: if you put a bottle cap on a wooden table and leave it there for 'the longest time' the bottle cap will eventually pass through the other - or will at least seem that way. What actually happens is since nothing exists without forces which are not controlled by "nature" as we know it, the bottle cap and the table actually swap energy and 'matter' to the point where the 'matter' is no longer being 'inspired' by the force(s) of gravity.
... simply put: gravity, bottlecap, table, relative non-existence of matter-based reality.
String Theory) The world as we know it is more connected than we could ever understand through a series of 'strings' of spacial and temporal energies and realities than we as spacially and temporally limited beings could ever understand. Imagine each of your fingers as a person. Imagine a cat's cradle in your hand. Pull back a little and you see your other hand, also with a cat's cradle. pull out further and you see four other pairs of hands with cat's cradles. Look again and each of those hands is a finger on a pair of hands with a cat's cradle. Try to imagine this multiplication to the number of humans on this earth, then imagine the fingers as electrons instead of humans, and take that to the number of electrons on the planet. Now take all of that, and imagine it is the composition of a grain of sand or dirt. Apply the cat's cradle to everything in the universe and what you may find interesting is that when you take away everything else that makes your mental vision crowded and confused, it is all ultimately just a bunch of string which goes between and links everything in a cat's cradle you made in your hand. That's a pretty bastardized version of the basic concept, and i don't think i even explained it right, or even know it for that matter... but there you are.
Layer/Path Theory) Imagine a stack of pancakes. Imagine they're frozen, and you flip them on their side so that they are vertical. Each one of those pancakes is a moment in time. (we've already discussed 'moments') Now take a knife and cut the stack straight down the middle. For each moment in time, you have, at the very least, a binary decision. Yes/No, On/Off, etc. these are binary decisions. Example: you can have a salad or a sandwich for lunch. Easy, right? Good. Now, you choose the salad - caesar or house? Take the knife, and cut the pancake halves in half. Eat now or take home? Cut them in quarters. Drive fast or slow? Eighths. Depress gas quickly? 16ths. All the way? 32nds. Infinity. Each moment in time has an infinite amount of choices associated with it, to the point that the pancakes must be infinitely large, and in infinite number. (taking into account our definition of a moment as being infinite, or, in this case, 'instant') It is at this point that it becomes a little easier to see this all as infinite layers divided into infinite paths. But why does each "instant" have infinited choices associated with it? If you had chosen to eat there, you never would have had to decide about the gas peddle, would you? But you would have been in the same pancake, just on a different part of it ;-) Have you ever seen a slice-by-slice disection of the human brain? I think the first one was made from the donated brain of a convict ... but i digress. The point is that if you applied this analogy to this slice-by-slice you would notice that ultimately each slice was like a pancake. What's interesting to note is the shape which is created ... ultimately, no matter how you slice it (forgive the pun) the shape is always the same. What was that old qoute? Is all we see or seem just a dream within a dream ... something like that. What if choice and its repercussions exist, but will always shape us in the same manner regardless of the path we choose?
I guess the real question here is this: "Where are you going, where have you been?" - DMB
"I woke up and I drove to work on the wrong side of the road." - Ben Folds
"When we dance, angels will run and hide their wings." - Sting
"I'm just a curb-side prophet with my hand in my pocket and I'm waiting for my rocket to come." - Jason Mraz
"There is no place I can run, there is no place I can hide." - Nine Inch Nails
"Time is on my side." - Rolling Stones
"Whatever I fear the most is whatever I see before me. Whenever I let my guard down, whatever I was ignoring." - Toad
"KTBB" - Me
.Christian
Man, what a blowoff class. I totally thought that this was going to be the one that was really gonna suck me in and help me figure out what i want to do with my life ... turns out that the class that helped me in that area was (dun dun dun) ACCOUNTING of all things! I can't really explain it other than to say that today during the exam, i didn't so much feel as if i were taking a test as playing some new kind of mentally challenging game that i actually understand. Mind you, that's not to say that it was easy, but it was most definitely enjoyable to a certain degree. Heck, i took my time to the extent that i went into "overtime" this time instead of finishing in my usual 1 hr or less timeframe.
::Sigh:: Project Management? Ops Management? Accounting? Marketing? Religious Studies? Who the fuck knows, huh? I mean really though, almost all of those tie in except for the one very obvious deviation. But who knows anyways? As Dennis Leary once postulated: You could be standing on a street corner in NYC when all of a sudden "yipYipYIpYIPYIP!!!" someone's pet poodle plummets straight down from the 32nd floor of their apartment STRAIGHT onto your head. You are therefore known as Bob, the Poodle Guy. "Yeah, I knew Bob, he hated fucking dogs!"
Life is a series of curve balls, and if you keep swingin at every one, you'll be too tired or struck out to hit the straight, slow pitch that comes right down the middle. (refraining from "balls" jokes and metaphors)
I beat Tony Haw... hmmm ... i think i told you that already. Lemme .. yep ... yeah there is is, line two or so... "just beat Tony Hawk Underground" ... ::sigh:: an old Robin Williams skit comes to mind. I'm starting to feel a little under the weather. Not sure why of course, just know how i feel is all. I guess the big thing is that i don't feel like i have a good enough idea of what i would do if fate came to me, skipped knocking on the door, and just said "Hey yo," (fate's cool like that) "what's it gonna be, Willis?" (fate also apparently watched Different Strokes ... or causes them! Hah hah hah ha ha he heh ... heh heh ... right)
What would you do? Everything you know and feel is challenged to the utmost degree in one moment. Everything that you are, were, and will be hangs in the balance between the two unknown paths which must forever be decided in one moment in time. One moment. You know, in Japanese Buddhism (it's perhaps unfair to leave it at Japanese, but for the most part this is where this particular belief exists) there is a Buddha... Amitaba? Something like that ... this Buddha resides in the "West", or "West World" (no friggin 'best of the west' illusions here folks, this is an 'unreal' place, as in not this plane of existence) which he has created to help human beings who are worthy attain enlightenment. How do you get there? How do you contact this wonderful Buddha? Pray, or recite his name, for 5 moments ... i think. That or 3. Short amount of time, right? Who knows... that's the problem: a moment is, or can be, defined as anything from a quadrillionth of a second to a million years. A moment is, strangely/conveniently/whateverly, undefined.
Do you know what a kulpa is? I think that's how you spell it... A kulpa, as I understand it, is a long time. A very long time. It is the amount of time which it would take you to wear down a mountain with a silk scarf. ... Assuming that A you didn't die first, B the scarf lasted that long, and C there were no save-the-mountain activists impeding your progress.
What if it's a kulpa? What if a moment is a kulpa? What if everything that is, was, and will be in your life and the world around you was challenged and changed over the span of relative eternity?
What if it was, instead, done in a 'quadrillionth of a second?'
I've often wondered about the relative constituency of the universe in terms of 'elements.' Not just physical or material elements mind you, but spacial and temporal as well. There are several theories which have come to my attention of late and intrigue me to no end. (or to a kulpa ... yay sat words)
Fuzzy Logic) There's a lot to this, but the part i find interesting is the theory of how the "fuzzy" composition of matter and reality causes the relative inexistence of any defined forms beyond electrical charges and densities of unnamed, ununderstood (there's a fun word) matter. Essentially, what i find interesting, is the idea that if you were to stop everything right now and leave it for, let's say ... heck, why not? a KULPA ... then eventually everything would become one and the same. This isn't really the interesting part... assume the constancy of a specific applied force, most easily assumed gravity. Two objects under different relative strains from a constant force, when placed in opposition of each other to the degree wherein one impedes the others progress, will eventually pass through each other. Put simply: if you put a bottle cap on a wooden table and leave it there for 'the longest time' the bottle cap will eventually pass through the other - or will at least seem that way. What actually happens is since nothing exists without forces which are not controlled by "nature" as we know it, the bottle cap and the table actually swap energy and 'matter' to the point where the 'matter' is no longer being 'inspired' by the force(s) of gravity.
... simply put: gravity, bottlecap, table, relative non-existence of matter-based reality.
String Theory) The world as we know it is more connected than we could ever understand through a series of 'strings' of spacial and temporal energies and realities than we as spacially and temporally limited beings could ever understand. Imagine each of your fingers as a person. Imagine a cat's cradle in your hand. Pull back a little and you see your other hand, also with a cat's cradle. pull out further and you see four other pairs of hands with cat's cradles. Look again and each of those hands is a finger on a pair of hands with a cat's cradle. Try to imagine this multiplication to the number of humans on this earth, then imagine the fingers as electrons instead of humans, and take that to the number of electrons on the planet. Now take all of that, and imagine it is the composition of a grain of sand or dirt. Apply the cat's cradle to everything in the universe and what you may find interesting is that when you take away everything else that makes your mental vision crowded and confused, it is all ultimately just a bunch of string which goes between and links everything in a cat's cradle you made in your hand. That's a pretty bastardized version of the basic concept, and i don't think i even explained it right, or even know it for that matter... but there you are.
Layer/Path Theory) Imagine a stack of pancakes. Imagine they're frozen, and you flip them on their side so that they are vertical. Each one of those pancakes is a moment in time. (we've already discussed 'moments') Now take a knife and cut the stack straight down the middle. For each moment in time, you have, at the very least, a binary decision. Yes/No, On/Off, etc. these are binary decisions. Example: you can have a salad or a sandwich for lunch. Easy, right? Good. Now, you choose the salad - caesar or house? Take the knife, and cut the pancake halves in half. Eat now or take home? Cut them in quarters. Drive fast or slow? Eighths. Depress gas quickly? 16ths. All the way? 32nds. Infinity. Each moment in time has an infinite amount of choices associated with it, to the point that the pancakes must be infinitely large, and in infinite number. (taking into account our definition of a moment as being infinite, or, in this case, 'instant') It is at this point that it becomes a little easier to see this all as infinite layers divided into infinite paths. But why does each "instant" have infinited choices associated with it? If you had chosen to eat there, you never would have had to decide about the gas peddle, would you? But you would have been in the same pancake, just on a different part of it ;-) Have you ever seen a slice-by-slice disection of the human brain? I think the first one was made from the donated brain of a convict ... but i digress. The point is that if you applied this analogy to this slice-by-slice you would notice that ultimately each slice was like a pancake. What's interesting to note is the shape which is created ... ultimately, no matter how you slice it (forgive the pun) the shape is always the same. What was that old qoute? Is all we see or seem just a dream within a dream ... something like that. What if choice and its repercussions exist, but will always shape us in the same manner regardless of the path we choose?
I guess the real question here is this: "Where are you going, where have you been?" - DMB
"I woke up and I drove to work on the wrong side of the road." - Ben Folds
"When we dance, angels will run and hide their wings." - Sting
"I'm just a curb-side prophet with my hand in my pocket and I'm waiting for my rocket to come." - Jason Mraz
"There is no place I can run, there is no place I can hide." - Nine Inch Nails
"Time is on my side." - Rolling Stones
"Whatever I fear the most is whatever I see before me. Whenever I let my guard down, whatever I was ignoring." - Toad
"KTBB" - Me
.Christian
BTW
If ya wanna check out summa the stuff i've written for the T-Bird newspaper, go to http://www.dastoronline.com
.Christian
.Christian
Monday, August 16, 2004
The Bees Sneeze
I was checking out the infamous Penny Arcade tonight when i found a link that struck me for some reason. I can't explain why i thought it should be linked here, but hey, there it is, right up in your upper right corner. ... wow.
Finance test today. That sucked. It wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be - i'm even convinced that i probably pulled away with a solid B, but i'm always convinced of that ;-) Tomorrow is bound to be fun, though - accounting my friends, accounting. I don't know why human beings create such new and innovative ways to torture themselves and each other, but the gods of masochism must be smiling down upon Dr. Invented A. C. Counting right now. ::sigh::
Had one of those "what does the future hold" conversations tonight. Like that's what i'm thinking about right now - i've had all i want with Futures thank you. (and forwards, and options, and swaps) I really just want to see where life goes right now, yknow? It's too hard to predict anyways... anytime that you think you're standing under a lemon tree, next thing ya know you have to figure out how to sell "limenade". ... that might be good actually ... and i wonder what would have happened if i had been standing under a lime tree...... ... ... ... ok, that's enough thinking about that one. Seriously though, there's so much out there, and a whole world to explore and experience. I don't want to see everything or go everywhere, but it would be nice to feel like i could let life take me there if it wanted to. Ah, who am i kidding, that's always who i've been ... wherever i go, there i'll be... that kinda silliness.
I was actually thinking about that kind of thing as i was running along the other day (btw, almost back up to 5 miles a day) and i realized that there is not one single thing that i would ever change about where i am or how i got here. The only thing i even considered was if i could convince dad to stop drinking ... but if he had and things had been different i might never be here now, which is where i think i'm supposed to be.
You might recall that just a little while ago i posted something which seemed to contradict that. Something about not feeling like i was where i'm supposed to be? Well guess what? It wasn't contradictory at all! Think about it, if i was where i "was" supposed to be, then i wouldn't realize that i was supposed to be there, thereby causing an almost inescapable paradox wherein i would ultimately end up right where i am, thinking i should be somewhere else. It's actually a little bit like economic theory about progression through monetary systems. You might recall (or not, that's ok, i learned this less than 3 months ago) that the idea of socialism was that it was the ultimate result of the progress of an organized economic system through a series of reforms and stages, including capitalism. I liken the afore-mentioned paradoxical results to the doomed system of the USSR which was ultimately a victim of shortsighted longsightedness. They saw the future, but in trying to attain it, failed in a manner... however, it can be seen that there is likely to be a resurgence of this manner of thinking in the future, and that the nation which once failed in the process may be the leader in its resurgence. ... Basically, you learn from your mistakes.
I guess you can think of it in old MacBethian terms: if the witches had never said anything, would their prophecy still have come true? Is self-fulfilling prophecy a reality? If the prophet had told Neo that he was the One, would he have defeated Agent Smith? ... ok, i guess for that one we can at least still ask the authors on their opinions of the matter. ;-)
We are where we should be, to be anywhere else would be blasphemy.
Against whom, you ask? To each his own, i say. The only thing that i know for sure is that i've officially been typing for over 10 minutes after 1 am on the night before my Accounting final, and Dr. Counting would be very displeased. I guess y'all 'll just have to wait to hear the rest of the crap that's been running through my head ... if i remember, that is. After all, tomorrow IS another day, and you never know just what will come your way.
.Christian
PS: Fuck the bedbugs, kick those damn mosquitos, kick em with your friggin' foot.
PPS: Then catch me on the flipside, baby.
Finance test today. That sucked. It wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be - i'm even convinced that i probably pulled away with a solid B, but i'm always convinced of that ;-) Tomorrow is bound to be fun, though - accounting my friends, accounting. I don't know why human beings create such new and innovative ways to torture themselves and each other, but the gods of masochism must be smiling down upon Dr. Invented A. C. Counting right now. ::sigh::
Had one of those "what does the future hold" conversations tonight. Like that's what i'm thinking about right now - i've had all i want with Futures thank you. (and forwards, and options, and swaps) I really just want to see where life goes right now, yknow? It's too hard to predict anyways... anytime that you think you're standing under a lemon tree, next thing ya know you have to figure out how to sell "limenade". ... that might be good actually ... and i wonder what would have happened if i had been standing under a lime tree...... ... ... ... ok, that's enough thinking about that one. Seriously though, there's so much out there, and a whole world to explore and experience. I don't want to see everything or go everywhere, but it would be nice to feel like i could let life take me there if it wanted to. Ah, who am i kidding, that's always who i've been ... wherever i go, there i'll be... that kinda silliness.
I was actually thinking about that kind of thing as i was running along the other day (btw, almost back up to 5 miles a day) and i realized that there is not one single thing that i would ever change about where i am or how i got here. The only thing i even considered was if i could convince dad to stop drinking ... but if he had and things had been different i might never be here now, which is where i think i'm supposed to be.
You might recall that just a little while ago i posted something which seemed to contradict that. Something about not feeling like i was where i'm supposed to be? Well guess what? It wasn't contradictory at all! Think about it, if i was where i "was" supposed to be, then i wouldn't realize that i was supposed to be there, thereby causing an almost inescapable paradox wherein i would ultimately end up right where i am, thinking i should be somewhere else. It's actually a little bit like economic theory about progression through monetary systems. You might recall (or not, that's ok, i learned this less than 3 months ago) that the idea of socialism was that it was the ultimate result of the progress of an organized economic system through a series of reforms and stages, including capitalism. I liken the afore-mentioned paradoxical results to the doomed system of the USSR which was ultimately a victim of shortsighted longsightedness. They saw the future, but in trying to attain it, failed in a manner... however, it can be seen that there is likely to be a resurgence of this manner of thinking in the future, and that the nation which once failed in the process may be the leader in its resurgence. ... Basically, you learn from your mistakes.
I guess you can think of it in old MacBethian terms: if the witches had never said anything, would their prophecy still have come true? Is self-fulfilling prophecy a reality? If the prophet had told Neo that he was the One, would he have defeated Agent Smith? ... ok, i guess for that one we can at least still ask the authors on their opinions of the matter. ;-)
We are where we should be, to be anywhere else would be blasphemy.
Against whom, you ask? To each his own, i say. The only thing that i know for sure is that i've officially been typing for over 10 minutes after 1 am on the night before my Accounting final, and Dr. Counting would be very displeased. I guess y'all 'll just have to wait to hear the rest of the crap that's been running through my head ... if i remember, that is. After all, tomorrow IS another day, and you never know just what will come your way.
.Christian
PS: Fuck the bedbugs, kick those damn mosquitos, kick em with your friggin' foot.
PPS: Then catch me on the flipside, baby.
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
Futures and Forwards
Aren't just for economics anymore.
Happy Blog Birthday/Anniversary Thing. Crazy how time passes.
.Christian
PS: the official day is the 13th, thus the futures/forwards joke... yeah, i know...
Happy Blog Birthday/Anniversary Thing. Crazy how time passes.
.Christian
PS: the official day is the 13th, thus the futures/forwards joke... yeah, i know...
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