A Quiet Wedding

People were condemning faster than they should of, so fast it was apparent to me that they were denying themselves the privilege of reason. It scared me, to see everyone so absolutely furious at someone they had loved just a few hours before.

The wedding was a grand disappointment. Few things could have ruined it. Only one thing could have caused this level of distress that was surrounding her. Everyone who wasn't on a cell phone, texting or calling someone to speak loudly, the momentum of the story they were slowly unraveling forcing the volume of their voices to raise to the almost unbearable. I leaned against the faux granite countertop of ______'s kitchen. We had all come here, originally to find out where she had gone, hoping that her destination would be the apartment building. But it wasn't. She was gone. And for her sake, she should probably stay away for a while. _____ and ____ seemed furious. Even Justin, who I suspected should be happy seemed upset, as if because he hadn't foreseen it it was troublesome good news.

KNAPPA

I've seen this lamp, in very different locations, three times within the last two weeks. I think it's following me... or rather... God's trying to tell me something. I know that I'm conjecturing quite a bit, but why not? When things happen in three's, you know something's up.

Regardless, cute lamp. 24.99 from Ikea. Makes me wish I was an electrician and knew how to install ceiling lamps.

The Enlightenment League

I can figure things out. I can figure out why I'm so angry right now. But that doesn't help. I couldn't think of anything to say that would make sense. Things should make sense when you say them, right? My face flushed and I started to cry. It was as if a monsoon had just claimed my face as its own, and I couldn't control it. The worst part is, I knew, no matter what I said, Justin wouldn't understand. But I needed him to be able to, because he was the only person with me at that moment. And that moment was everything. Yet everything was being lost. It was slipping away, with my concentration.
I tried thinking about the stop-starting of my breathing. I tried thinking about the placidity of ducks as they float on lakes and other small bodies of water. My last resort, always, I thought about my seventeenth birthday party when I realized how wonderful it is to be surrounded by a family you love. Nothing. Nothing would stick and nothing would completely go away. "Sorry," I got out. He must have found it amusing to watch me cry because the next thing he said had such a pleasant, otherworldly quality to it. I couldn't actually sense concern, just curiousity. "It's not your fault. But I can't believe you're crying over this. What's really wrong?"
I tried to look at him for a few seconds, to shoot him some kind of glance, angry or confused or displeased even, but it didn't quite work because I could hardly see out of my eyes. What was really wrong? Why did I feel this way? I could figure it out, I just needed time. I stopped crying after a few seconds, and I started breathing normally, very calm. Then I knew. It was a thought that I could change in to words that I could finally tell him.
"I know--" I looked at him really hard, because I did know everything, so much more than he did, "it all. I know everything, but I'm not happy." I could feel years of discipline slipping away. It felt like blasphemy to say, but the feeling was just so unadultered. He knew it too, that it was wrong for me to say. He rotated a bit on the window sill. "I know everything and I'm still scared. I'm still alone. I have no one to save me, no back up plans. This is it," I threw my arms out. My right hand hit a wall. I laughed, but it was angry. And now my damn inconceivable hand hurt. "And I'm just," the crying started again. The word scared was all I could think about--that and the vast void of nothingness that I was scared about.
"Scared is a perfectly legitimate feeling. I got scared, too." I laughed. Justin didn't have normal human emotions. "But you just have to realize, that if you want to be happy, that's all. You need to stop thinking so much. You need to just focus on being happy."
"You don't understand," I wanted to hit him for deconstructing my fears and finding such a simple solution. "I understand perfectly well. You got to realize that no matter what you do, what you think, absolutely none of it matters. But if you're happy, at least you'll have that."
We sat for a long time. The wedding was tomorrow. I didn't want to have to wear my stupid bridesmaid dress. I didn't want to have to smile while Jessica got married. I had thought all of this would make me happier. I had thought a lot of things. But I guess I shouldn't have thought anything at all. I wanted to run away, someplace new, where experiences don't trigger thoughts. Where things just are. I knew Justin didn't want to be here either. "What makes you happy? Jessica's going to get--"
"Love, too, is just a state of mind that you can crawl out of," he waved my concern aside.
"How do you have so much control over everything?" I had fallen apart so easily. He was quiet for a long time. He rubbed his hands together. "I have nothing, so I don't care when it gets taken. I realize that everything is nothing, so I can't care when things don't go right. I believe in nothing, so nothing can contradict with the way I see the world."
It sounded like his own personal mantra. "How long have you thought that?""Since I was sixteen.""I guess I have a long way to go," I was rubbing my eyes now. I wouldn't let myself cry again. Hopefully.
"It won't be so bad. If you ever need anything, just ask me. I've been through it all." I never would have thought of him as a thoughtful person. I told him so. "I used to think a lot. When I was sixteen, that's all I did. Some days I wouldn't eat, I'd think so hard. But I've gotten my thinking over with now, and I just am. More like a robot, reacting instinctively to his environment. That's probably why you don't think I'm intelligent, because I never have much time for self-reflection." I thought he was doing a better job at being enlightened then I was. I didn't tell him that, though. I just let myself sit in the near darkness.
"You have to be thinking about something now," I said because it was quiet and it was dark, and nothing was happening, and he was still conscious.
"I'm thinking that I should either walk you home or walk you to a bar to buy you a drink. I think the second. Because if you drink enough, you'll stop thinking, and maybe you'll be happier."
I laughed. "Sure, but only if you're paying."
"Money is also nothing, so I wouldn't mind."
"Stop saying that word, it--," I couldn't say it, "it freaks me out."
"Well, why don't you nothing stand up and nothing walk with me to a nothing bar so I can buy you nothing beer."
"I'll stand up, if only to hit you." I did.
"See? Very instinctual. It's a better way to live. Even though that did hurt."

Will/Testament I 2008

As I casually watch iCarly, sitting in a modern office chair in an empty hotel room, thinking pensively about the hours I might spend after getting my severely impacted wisdom teeth removed at the young age of eighteen in a few days, two thoughts come to distract me from the task at hand. First, I am only wearing underwear. It is a bit odd, the whole laptop + underwear combination. Not very professional. But then, who really has the courage to, day after day, look the part of a professional these days? Now ask yourself, who at eighteen doesn’t love being alone and in underwear? The second thought, perhaps a bit more morose: I will be undergoing actual surgery, with anesthesia and the whole works. And with that comes a chance of death. Maybe one is not more likely to die from analgesia than swimming off the coast of California in Great White territory, or from driving to work everyday, but the chances stand at 1 in 350,000, and who can say that I won’t be that one? The “human error” that we wrote off as the last explanation for screwed lab results in chemistry could actually kill me Monday morning, in some third floor medical office in Northbrook.

Actually, I must confess, I don’t buy into the hypothesis that sharks will actually eat you. Sorry to divulge, but sharks are really awesome creatures, and we shouldn’t condemn them to be fear mongering creatures in our minds. But let me clarify with some real facts: It is over twenty times more likely that I will die Monday morning from a malfunction with unconsciousness being pumped into my face via mask than my entire lifetime risk of getting eaten by a shark. So don’t eat sharks.

Regardless, why would panic be mildly panging against the walls of my mind, I have no idea. Except I have every idea, so I’m going to start listing them in the driest fashion imaginable by myself. I would call it a Will of sorts, but I own very little of actual value. Perhaps a testament, of everything I’ve managed to gather together in eighteen years of being alive. First, unlike most people out in the world, I have decided to come to the decision that there are no second chances. You won’t be reawakened; your consciousness won’t persist into a second life, an after life, or for long after your brain stops beating. This is not an atheistic sentiment. It is simply being rational. And as such, I might also wish to point out that religion is pointless.

Well, not pointless. It’s rather like a crutch. It has evolutionary benefits, for keeping people optimistic. But nowadays, when plagues can be explained, religions are becoming increasingly vestigial. For me, it was quite excruciating to do away with the crutch, even though I had never really leaned upon it, and had grown up fairly unaware of the whole thing. I looked to God as the all-powerful being that everyone else looked to, for morals or lessons, or something. Which was fine, I suppose, and necessary, but I had my parents for that. When I finally reached a point where I couldn’t imagine the crutch anymore, couldn’t hold it under my arm because no amount of persuasion could get me to see it, I fell, and I fell hard. A year of intoxicating, otherworldly depression came upon me, and I attempted everything, even attempting Buddhism, a sort of step down from religion, while still giving me, hopefully, some guidance so I wouldn’t feel dejected and alone. But alone I remained. Only through working with small children, oddly enough, did I learn that life is for living, that it can be joyous if you let it, and it had not been given to me for distracted, frantic thoughts about death. Small children are vivacious, and they are engaged with discovering everything around them. They have imaginations that blend what lies in front of them; they don’t stick their heads into the clouds to search for the heavens, because they have discovered heaven on earth. It is the everything that is everything of earth. Every sense your mind can incorporate, all five, or more, or less, that is what heaven can be.

What finally made me push religion completely aside, allowed me to stand for the first time and look out at the world from a higher, more understanding plane? The solution to my salvation lied in the religious themselves. They are happier than I will ever be. They have an extra edge when rationalizing, looking to the God(s), as it were, in times when they should find themselves alone with no where to turn. But they are not saints, they are not nice, they are hardly what I would want my children to aspire to be. They are not good people. They will hurt and cheat others out of life, anything to let them remain happy and content in a trap which humanity has built and thrived in for millennia. Their competition among each other is irrelevant yet bloody. You call this God you have never seen by a different name, and the rules you fervently attempt to stick to at all times of your life are slightly more or less odd than your fellows, yet constitutes such a large difference that they must die? Or be converted? All for salvation? Which you have no evidence exists?

iCarly is back on, so I must continue this later.

Too

I'm too hot to go to sleep.
Too angry to think unless horizontal.
Too tired to promise I won't be angry tomorrow.
Too hot to even think about it.

Writing Books

Huzzah! I have crossed the word threshold with my novel. It was a long and arduous journey, but somehow, I buckled down and got things done*.

Now I begin concentrating on writing a book with my dad about culture and identity. It should be exciting. I never realized how little thought people put into their own identity and the identity of others, how people just take other people for granted, so hopefully this book will become an amazing and necessary project.

*Oh they got done alright, in a really unprofessional, daresay sloppy fashion.

life's some of that crazy shit

the synthesis of events, recorded and later recalled, a mixture of all the sensory inputs i can feed my brain, rise and fall as any great story should. except this one seems to be never-ending.

eureka!

Finally, mild success with my existentialator!

Yesterday I selected a card which stated: Creation is what we're meant for. Most of my cards have more directed prompts, like: make a painting, or play a game. This one was rather open-ended. I had thought of it, actually, stirring from my sleep into a hypoglycemic dreaded land. The day before I had decided to make my existential cards a reality for the summer, and when I awoke in the middle of the night I had all these ideas flashing in my head. I giggled internally when I thought of Creation is what we're meant for as I crawled over the side of my bunk bed. It was both a sexual innuendo and a very true commentary on human life. Creativity is what separates humans from animals and from machines. It is sexually selected for in our population (surely everyone has heard the adage: Musicians really Roger your Hammerstein). And it is also linked with intelligence. The ability to be creative correlates with larger brain regions.

But also, creation is what we're meant for is also a painful reminder that at the heart of our existence, our very meaning when you remove all sorts of reasoning, of religion, is simply to pass on our genes.

I didn't think about that as I walked to pick up some computer paper, taping them together to make a mini-mural. I am no artist, but it didn't really matter as I just let my hand do whatever my mind thought of. And sometimes, isn't it better, to just do what you want? Just do what you just thought of? Creativity and impulsion may be more closely related than I think, because although some forms of creativity require you to think (playing from sheet music), sometimes you just have to rely on your instinct (improvising music). The whole modern art movement was so catching because it moved away from the normal laws of what had been thought of as art since the beginning of humanity, until you got Pollock simply throwing paint at canvasses.

The results were epic. And while I didn't have the know-how or the skill to produce a painting, I sure did make an interesting mural out of potentially mindless doodling.

Or maybe it was a more profound look into the random firing of neurons in my brain.

Okay, enough of that.

Writing a Novel is Hard Work:

I thought there were so many words to use. Now I realize I can only effectively toggle with hundreds of them, much less than the infinite I had imagined before setting off on this silly, silly quest. The thesaurus has become my best friend, my warden of sanity, staving off the unending similarities in my diction.

Regardless:

My mind has little left to say. Adieu mis amie. Adieu.

Ant Epic Poem-An Introduction to Summer's Existential Attempts

Today marked the second day of my existentialistic journey. I have to question the validity of its course. Existentialism is the search of individuals to find meaning in their lives. And while most people rely on Gods and higher order structures to understand where their lives are going, some people choose to rely only on themselves. I have created an existentialism machine. It gives out daily prompts for things you should do. The question I have solidified, however, is how do actions affect the way you find meaning in your life? It seemed to make more sense when I was creating the idea.

I suppose in the olden times God created meaning for people by making them do things. I don't want to put God on the same level of the little box I stuffed full of notecards... but in principle I suppose they're similar.

Today I pulled out the prompt: Write an epic poem.

I did.

Here it is in its rough form:



bristled legs miniscule shuffle
'cross monochrome linoleum

segmented and jointed amber grains
of carbon march on

sterile sisters where gender makes
no difference, no change

form tiny streams with bodies 100
percent genetically the same

they flow out from their hill laid
out under the surface of the earth

scourging the weekly scrubbed floor
for calorific crumbles

one lone worker sniffs a chemical
catches it from the kitchen's air conditioned air

there is sugar, a beacon of nourishment, currency
of life, radiating its message in tones to taste

tripping off the designated path to the mandate:
food is more important than rules.

antennae tailor a trail indirect to the
emittance of food pheromones

sticky fibers of a spider's net
catch and tighten, threat

puzzled and confused by the rare
sensory input, she begins to shake

chitin rustles, sending an escalading
avalanche of signals through the silky mesh

vibrations project, like a door bell ringing,
but no one's home

salvation, security found
in the inattention of predation

the journey continues, up and down
the grooves between tiles

the sheer cliff of wooden cabinetry
poses a biblical obstacle

but the journey to all sinks began
with one vertical step for antkind

with hair hooks in your feet and a weight
of 1/1oooth a gram, impossible is a lying convention.

the skyward trek produces wonderful sights:
the human constructed habitat aboveground

piece of pizza, speck of cake, puddle of pepsi
dust the stainless steel basin

they must be consumed, a feast of waste, a feat
of human consumption: there will always be leftovers.

Crying in my Room

I think of you.
Not as a person, but as an idea.
That in my life, there's more than what I can see.
People here are weird. They don't understand
each other. They don't care about other people's feelings.
They don't see the big picture, they live in the daily menutia.
I don't want to be one of them.
That's why I'm in love with you.

Journey to Paul's Broca

Paul needed brain surgery. He loved telling people that. As a 16 year old without a driver's license, he needed something, he felt, to distinguish himself from the ranks of juvies, and going under the knife just sounded cool. Even the simplest surgeries carried with them the threat of death but these surgeons were going straight to his ticker. One little mix up and his life would be over. He could tell that people went through that thought process whenever he told them. Their concern fed his ego.

The surgery itself wasn't even that serious. He didn't have cancer, although they were going to buzz off all his hair, giving him a chemo-stricken* look (*other acceptable alternatives: fascist neo-nazi, THX 1138 extra). The doctors just needed to run some tests after a rather bizarre head injury had resulted in an interesting fMRI reading. They had told him specifically what was wrong, but he hadn't remembered much, because he wasn't paying attention. He had been scared. The human brain, like the ocean, was the last frontier on earth. The fact that the doctors were shocked by his fMRI suggested that something unknown was occurring inside his skull. And while Paul was pleased to know that he was different, he was also worried that this difference could kill him.

The procedure was more simple to understand than the lists of possible things that were wrong. They were going to go inside the left side of his brain where they had noticed the discrepancy. He was going to be put under anesthetics because the problem appeared to be structural as well as functional, and they were basically going to look around, injecting a bevy of safety-approved chemicals to assess the problem.


No. He wasn't worried about the surgery, because his insurance covered it. His parents were a little nervous, but he assured him that he felt fine and was fine, and they, without medical degrees, couldn't disagree with him. He wasn't that worried when they wheeled him into the operating room. Nor was he that worried when he laid out on the table. But he did feel a fleeting shot of alarm when his vision became blurry and he noticed a blurred glint coming off of something that looked sharp. But in a couple of seconds he was unconscious, and he couldn't worry anymore.