7.31.07

i'm learning a couple things pretty brutally at the moment:

1) if you care about someone, let go of them completely
2) strive be happy, even despite reasons not to be

in other words, become cold and complacent. stoic in the face of all things. kind and loving, yet in need of nothing and desiring nothing. it's hard to let full-fledged joy in without letting in the hurt to an equal degree.

the greek stoics believed in a natural order to things. they emphasized the fact that personal hardship does not matter and should be taken in stride, since there is a larger order to things: one that is right and just, and bigger then ourselves, and one that we cannot begin to understand. we should strive to understand that negative and positive impetus are not to be responded to with joy or despair. we should trust in the order of things and know that we are a part of something that we cannot understand, and bear this duty and this place in the world with pride.

i'm good at showing bitterness, and i'm good at showing joy. i'm worse at expressing love or compassion. and i'm bad at showing people that i need them, or that i'm willing to open up to them, or that i'm willing to risk something for them or become vulnerable for them. i'm so closed off, yet so willingly affected by things all around me. i love letting things in to my core so that they might inspire or meld or shape or influence me. so that i might be stronger, or wiser. i am bad at letting things out of my soul. so i have so much brewing in me of such amazing proportions, and i cannot let such things loose and share them with the people that i want to share things with. i can know and sense what i have to offer someone, yet i have a hard time letting myself truly give that to them, for fear of losing that bit of my soul altogether. it's strange: i can't gain someone in my life without leting them in, but i can't let them in if there is a chance that they won't ever really be a part of my life. so i keep them in a strange middle-ground, when perhaps what i need to do is tell them to leave my life entirely, or tell them to respect boundaries or what-have-you.

but this goes against my philosophical and ethical beliefs. i think that there is so much grey area and so much legitimate feeling that nevertheless should be given credit and attention. some of the most fleeting and elusive things can also be some of the most beautiful. think of a mirage, for example. or a rainbow. or a beautiful dream that cannot be fully remembered upon waking. why is the intangible so incredible?

i've felt the intangible become tangible. i've felt the elusive become close-at-hand. and it's something like grabbing stars out of the sky. it feels like it should be illegal or physically impossible. yet there it is. and yet the sky misses its stars, and sometimes i wonder if i should leave the sky alone in the first place.

7.30.07

reading through old entries, i realize that i speak so often in terms of ultimates; things that are quantified; things that are finite, things that possess more of some quality than any other thing i have previously encountered, whether it be a quality of impactfulness or amazingness or any other similar such thing.

foolish, i say. i have felt awe before, and i will feel it again. i have felt magic and love before, and i have felt the need to be alone before, and i have felt sickness and health and anger and all of it. i can only write about the different forms of sadness or the different uses of isolation for so long before it seems that i am running in circles and getting nowhere.

here's what i want to write about:

things can be replaced. never verbatim as they were, but close approximations. friends are lost and friends are gained. wounds heal and gaps are filled. nothing is the same, but why would we want it to be? happiness goes and returns. old loves return with the seasons and with the holidays. things lost are never lost, even if they are never again seen.

despite this, i am willing to give new things in my life a chance; willing to place them above memories, since memories are just that, and since the things that created the memories are gone. i'm willing to attempt to live for the now. not for the now alone, but for the now more than for the past.

things are so simple sometimes.

7.12.07

just had the most amazing few-days' worth of conversation with my buddies in spider friends. took dean and justin to chipotle yesterday night and bought them a communal burrito, and we talked about music and life and, most particularly, the symbiotic nature of those individuals involved in the world of music, and the willingness of people to help one another out when they see that the cause of the other individual is true and sincere, and the "fake it till you make it" policy and the truth behind it.

played a show tonight and then had to literally run off-stage and out of my house afterwards in order to do a training closing shift at armadillo. came back after work and had a pabst, courtesy of spider friends, and discussed the same sorts of things some more. tentative plans for touring, and the following phenomenon: the universe seems willing to provide to those who care about something and those who are willing to make sacrifices and put in a lot of work for that which they care about. if the cause is legitimate, and if the motives are real, it almost takes effort to fail at anything.

dean says, "hit by a car in a few hours and dead today? stoked." because he knows he's gone out there and really put his all into what he cares about, and because he's given up all the filler in life in order to do so.

you know what? i agree. dead tomorrow? stoked. because i've been honest with myself and with others. those that i've cared about have known, and that's all i can ask of anyone. those things that i've wanted to do, i've begun to do. and i'm even more stoked if i do have a full life ahead of me, because there's an infinite number of experiences to be had and people to know and places to see. i fully condone those who pursue the arts and who live exactly the way they feel one should live, even if it means bypassing offers for money or lucrative jobs or security or comfortability. giving something that really matters to the self is worth so much more than dollar bills when the individual is lying on his death bed. man on his deathbed cannot quantify his millions of dollars, but man on his deathbed can feel good knowing that he has not given up on the things that he has cared about, and knowing that he has put real, solid effort into his endeavors.

dean told me he thinks i need more people to try to pull me over to the dark-side. by "dark-side", he means the world of expression and creation and full-blown pursuit of music and artistic expression. i told him i think i've lived my life for a long time now hoping more people would try to convince me to do so.

7.11.07

3. (By Swedish poet Lars Forssell)


And tomorrow we will awaken
A whistle from the street
The charwoman who shouts

And you will wash yourself behind the curtain
And when we go out we will have won

7.11.07

i used to view my days as installments in a long period of waiting. waiting for what? i was never sure. but i was sure that it would be something. perhaps i thought it would even be something remarkable.

what is not remarkable? i can't imagine my life going in any direction that is not interesting, or strange, or surprising, and i think the same might be said of anyone. even the prospect of utter failure is interesting. but i think that failure is harder to achieve than some manner of success, and the kind of success that i am aiming for, namely spiritual peace and a general sense of freedom and happiness, is something for which the search seems to be as gratifying as the attainment.

anyhow, the longer i waited, the less it felt like waiting, and eventually the waiting became somehow the opposite of that. instead of anticipating the future and doing so by way of the present moment, i found myself upheaving the past, by way of the present moment. soon i exhausted this activity, too, and i reached a place wherein i was neither channeling the past nor the present, but some handshake that existed between the two. the present, i suppose, but not just the present as it existed on a linear plane. rather, the present as it existed in more dimensions than i could count or fathom. deja vu became, by its very definition, a recurring theme in my life, and i began to dream dreams of epic proportions, about war and love and loss and journeys through the woods and along the banks of rivers. the people were always familiar, and the laughs were always identifiable.

anger became an easier alternative to sadness or loneliness, and then eventually productivity became an easier cure for anger and angst than anything else. and thus sadness was transormed into anger, which was transformed into anxiousness, which was transformed into a sense of urgency, which, on better days, was transformed into productivity. perhaps the order of these is off, but the gist is there.

if i view myself as being where i am for my own sake, and if i experience what comes as it comes, then what comes is sort of a bonus feature tacked on to the end of something that cannot end, and that is in and of itself already gratifying.

i've stopped waiting for things to become easier, because they're never easy, and god knows they never will be, and i've started understanding how to use that which is difficult and how to deal with it and how to turn it into something that is beautiful or laughter-inducing or enjoyable in some regard. and when there is nothing outside of my room to spark my interest, there is always the imagination, from which things can be drawn and manifested outside of their prior constraints, so that they may suddenly exist and take form in the tangible world outside my mind.

and amidst all of this there is love, a kind that i just keep discovering within me and keep finding all over my figurative hands as i realize how much certain people in my life mean to me. and i love them for their flaws and for how difficult they are and for the fact that they don't know what they are doing any more than i know what i am doing, so long as they are doing things or attempting to do things with their days and with their actions. those that enter my life may floor me or win me over or stun me or gradually, over time, make me fall in love with them. who knows. and those who leave my life are gone for a reason, even if it is a reason that i cannot have the ability to understand, and that is what it is and although i may miss them, i will have known them for a time, and that is something to be glad for.

i recorded a song this evening (late-night, to be more accurate), and then felt a sudden need to go outside and walk about. i left my house in heeled boots that elevated me and made me feel light and nimble. i walked several blocks, and it began to sprinkle rain, and as much as i liked the idea of forcing myself to walk miles in the rain just for the spiritual test or some-such that such an undertaking might turn out to be, i convinced myself that it could wait for another night, and i went back home. i enjoyed that rain-smell, though, maybe not for what it is but for the fact that it is so familiar.

how is it that people who are so new can seem so familiar? how is it that people who are not so new can seem foreign and then suddenly familiar? how is it that talking to an old friend can feel like meeting someone for the first time, and being excited about such a meeting? the world presents me with things that are bigger than my scope of understanding, and although this should terrify me, it somehow instead fills me with a sense of comfort. my only fear is that i will never find the words to express the things that i feel at the times that i should. and so this translates to the following: my only fear is that people will never understand how much i care, in whatever way i care. but perhaps these things are not meant to be articulated, since they cannot be pinned down, since they are constantly changing. and this is both a beautiful and a tragic thing.

it's still raining outside, and the rain has filled the air with a kind of energy much like that which occurs when the last of one's lungs are drained of their air due to some kind of excitement that does not allow the individual to take the time inhale before he exhales, in laughter or in gasp. the entire outdoors is on a last gasp that will be followed by the intake of air and the intake of something else. things feel as though they are changing, and the notion of change seems more promising than the notion of constancy. the outdoor air sits wet and heavy and positions itself outside my door with bated breath.

i learned today that the word "nothing" came from the two words "not hing". "hing" was another word for "atom"; a word used to describe small parts that made up the universe, particularly in the writings of early philosophers who were considered pluralists or atomists. "nothing" was considered that which existed where atoms did not; or where "hings" did not. something that was empty was "not a hing". it was nothing. i love words.

7.8.07

i know that love exists because i feel it every day, as joy or as pain or as a feeling of peacefulness. i feel it when i watch artists perform. i feel it when i see a close friend contort his face because of shyness.

i remember a moment from my distant past. it was a moment where i cried harder than i ever had before or ever did afterwards. i don't remember why. but i remember that it was anger and despair. i think it was a response to some kind of family dynamic that just wasn't positive. the main reason that this stands out in my memory is the fact that, when i cried at this specific time, i put on sgt. pepper's lonely heart's club band and screamed every lyric to every song as tears drained into my open mouth. i think i shook because i was so angry. yet listening to that album was the only thing i could do. it was a strange thing to listen to an album that brought me so much joy, yet to do so at a time when i felt everything opposite of that joy. so i felt all things all at once.

that's how i feel often... all things all at once. lately i've felt simultaneous senses of calmness and urgency, love and anger, desire for connection and desire for solitude. it feels natural, as if this is how things are supposed to be felt: in conjunction with their opposites. heraclitus says that the universe relies on the unity of opposites and a symbiotic relationship between harmony and strife, each as important as the other.

i've been feeling a lot of love for the people around me, but i don't know where to channel it. into music, i suppose. music channeled it into me at some of my worst moments as a kid, so maybe i can channel it back. it's nice to think of things as cycles.

7.2.07

sometimes, i push away those who actually care about me. in doing so, i isolate myself. so then being alone is a choice i have made, and an action caused by my will, rather than something uncontrollable. then, in isolation, i go through a series of self-imposed spiritual quests of my own design. walks out into the fields at hours of the night during which it is somewhat dangerous. walks further than i have gone before, into remote areas filled with new kinds of energy. bike rides at night. long hours in my room alone, thinking and listening to music. hours lying in fields staring at the sky and pondering, or just trying not to think at all. staying awake for multiple days at a time until i cannot stay awake anymore. sleeping during the day and waking before the sun sets. taking sleeping pills to sleep when i cannot, but should. spontaneous adventures via bus to places i haven't been, or to places i want to revisit. time spent wandering around parts of cities that are foreign to me.

i shun that which is familiar and reliable. i hate that which i am unable to make familiar. and i seek out that which is unfamiliar in all forms, because i never know what i will find there, either tangibly or in my thought processes as response or reaction to the things that i find.

i seek experiences that frighten me, and experiences that push me, and experiences that are challenging in that endurance or mental strength or emotional strength or self-sufficiency are the only ways out. i sketch out adventures for myself, and then i take on the adventures. i do so alone, and i love the alone-ness of it, yet i wish there was a way to share something as beautiful as alone-ness with another person.

the state of being alone and doing things alone is something magical, and it is also one of the only things that can never be shared entirely with another. perhaps i am drawn to others who are similarly alone, because caring for such a type of person is the closest thing to sharing isolationism with someone else.

perhaps i am drawn to those i will never be close to, because in staying far from someone i am sharing with them some kind of loneliness that is too beautiful to be kept entirely to oneself but too comfortable to be abandoned.

perhaps it is at the point where i realize i am not so alone, and that the other person is not so alone, when i lose interest in the person in question (whomever they may be at the time), simply because i can no longer share with them that which is such an intrinsic and inherent part of my life; that which is the foundation of so much of what i do and feel: isolation.

it would be a pity if i could care the most only for those who are also usually alone, just because i need to share my alone-ness in this removed way.