Friday, April 29, 2005
As I was trying to work on one of my presentations due tomorrow, I heard a loud drilling noise in the hallway. As I sat wondering who the hell was making that racket at this time of night I began to smell a nasty smell wafting into my apartment. I got up and approached the door to peek out and see, but then I heard a man yell to someone else to close their door. A little bewildered, I decided to step out on the deck to see if I needed to start rounding up my things to avoid an incendiary death or imminent building collapse. When I got to the door, I saw this out in the parking lot. Deciding to risk it, I opened the door and went out onto the deck and could see no pillars of smoke pouring from the building. When I went back inside, both the scorpions and the gerbils were noticeably antsy about what was going on and were trying to figure out ways out of their enclosures. I continued to watch the progress and saw at one point a fireman hit a cooking pan on the ground a few times. When the firemen left at about 1am, I walked out in almost perfect simultaneity with my across the hall neighbour and he knew less than I did save that he had heard a fire alarm go off in an apartment down the hall. We came to the joint conclusion that some idiot must have left their stove on. Back to the projects...
Thursday, April 28, 2005
I figure that I should probably post so that everyone is aware that I still exist and haven't discorporated or been abducted by aliens.
School is winding to a close and has been eating all of my time up except for the few moments I illicitly steal away from it for things like a movie. I think I spoiled myself on artsy movies... the typical cliched action movie just really doesn't do much for me anymore.
I learned an interesting fact the other day. While we are sleeping our bodies are in an anabolic state and it has been hypothesized that plants are in a perpetual anabolic state. I don't exactly know what that means or if plants can have other states, but I was thinking about what would happen if plants really are just all asleep all the time and what would happen when they wake up. I wonder how they would behave and what they would be able to do and what they would, in fact, do.
I was reading a book today, and as I stared down at it, I could have sworn there was a purple aura like haze around the border of the book, like a black light. I looked up and around to see what could possibly be causing the effect but all of the lights were yellow and I couldn't find anything purple around, but every time I looked back at the pages there was the purple aura around it. How strange.
This past weekend I went home to Peachtree City for my little sister's birthday. I had a good time spending time with my little sisters and hurt my back jumping on the trampoline... I guess I need to get in better shape. I took my little friends with me and while Jird and Meriones received a warm welcome, everyone seemed a little weirded out by Faustus and Mephistopheles. It's okay, I love them all. I don't think any of them liked the trip though. Jird tried to chew on my hands a couple times while there and he has never done that before.
Time to stop stalling on my presentation I have to give tomorrow. Back to the grind...
Saturday, April 23, 2005
I thought that after my weird baseball player dream I wouldn't have another one about dying, but indeed I did, last night. I wasn't pleased with its genre/theme switching, but as usual, I'll refrain from cutting it and report it as it happened:
I was walking along a desolate border with a ranger and we were charged to protect it from anyone crossing. At the border itself was a trench with a fence on our side extending a little higher. At one point I looked into the trench and saw a skeleton from the waist up and the spinal chord just laying out as if the bottom half of the body had been ripped off and I decided that I didn't want to do this job afterall. Just as I decided that, I looked up and saw a friend of mine (not from real life) was looking at me regretfully menacingly. I saw that he held an M-1 (bearing no resemblance to a real rifle by that name if one exists) rifle in his hand just like I did. He began to raise the rifle to point at me as if he was putting some duty above all else. As a last ditch effort to prevent the worst, I swung my rifle into position and pulled the trigger, and... click. How I could be out of ammunition while on patrol with nothing happening I could not fathom but it was the case. Sickeningly I looked up for the inevitable. The friend calmly pulled the trigger and hit me square in the chest and I was knocked to the ground and shocked. I began to try to reload my gun which loads like a revolver by putting the bullets into slots, except it was a straight clip rather than a round one. The friend started walking steadily closer, periodically releasing a round into my body. As one of them went through my cheek and shattered one of my teeth, I came to the realization that this was probably the end. I began to wonder what it was going to feel like to die and realize how powerless I was to stop it and wonder if there was an afterlife or if going to nothingness "felt" like something. The dream then took a genre shift turn which I didn't like and feel like disrupted this meaningful continuity. As the friend was standing a few feet from me preparing to fire a final round to end me, I raised my rifle, and blasted him in the forehead. When he fell, he landed near me with his face in the dirt. Somehow I gathered enough strength to not only stand, but walk over to him put the heel of my foot on the back of his neck, and use a knife to slit his throat open. I then collapsed to the ground and told the girl friend that had been with the traitor friend, and who had been watching the whole episode in horror, to call 911. Where the ranger was in this whole situation I do not know. At this point, it shifted genres again into kind of a black comedy. I was riding in the ambulance and had put myself into a kind of torpor where to the emergency personnel, it looked like I was not going to make it, but in reality I was turning off functions to divert energy to repair. I had to repeatedly come out of this state to insist that god dammit, I wasn't dying yet and not to pull the tubes. This persisted in the ambulance and in the hospital until the dream shifted scenes. The last scene before waking up was the hospital calling my mother to announce that I was in the emergency room of Hell's Bells Hospital and that I had sustained 18 shots from an M-1 rifle.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
They say that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. I've been feeling that with respect to language lately. The inadequacy of language for the expression and communication of ideas has been one of the motifs showing up in my life lately ranging from my Philosophy of Math class to my person experience to the book I'm reading, Stranger in a Strange Land. The deeper I delve into thoughts the more it occurs. It happened during an email conversation I had with Curt and it happened repeatedly in my therapy session today. I struggled with explaining concepts having to do with dissonance, anxiety, and an emotion having to do with clinging to permanence that I couldn't even find a close word for. Because words have so many wholly different meanings and connotations, it is hard to convey an idea even when it matches the word you are trying to use. Other times there are more complicated ideas that have words that represent something somewhat similar to what you mean but don't really encapsulate the whole of what you mean. I think it is good that I'm being able to transcend certain parts of language and think of ideas, concepts, and abstractions that I don't have any linguistic representation of, however, I worry that my communication will grow further impaired because of the lack of sufficient forms of representation. Maybe I need to learn how to paint...
On the other hand, I think my therapy is going well. It's not that it is accomplishing much in the traditional sense, but it does give me something that I want. It gives me the therapist as a disinterested observer. To avoid word choice confusion, I feel like it is necessary to clarify what I mean by disinterested since dis- in this case is not a negation prefix. It isn't that he isn't interested in what I have to say, because I know he is and he always expresses regrets that we are out of time and says how interesting all of my philosophical/theoretical expositions are, but that he doesn't have some power structure interest in the relationship and so there are no pretenses to uphold. I suppose that technically in the role of doctor-patient relationship, he has his role that he is supposedly to play so that he technically does have interest in it, but I feel like he has been free about it and what is important is that I don't believe he has vested interests. I have been able to do as I wish and dispense with the small talk and jump straight into my theoretical and philosophical ideas. I wish I could find friends like that to just skip the "lower" things and jump straight into deep waters, but I think that most people don't like to have constant heavy dosage of it without light refreshers like I do. I ran into someone from my philosophy class at the video rental store one time and he said he was just looking for something that wouldn't make him have to think since he'd had to do that at school. I couldn't understand the idea. I can understand not wanting to think about specific topics, but even when I choose something for relaxation purposes, it is meditative or an observation mission so that I continue with mental stimulation of some sort.
Going back to the therapy, it touches on one other idea I've had. Sometimes I do things or feel like I need to do things because I feel like I need to. These kinds of acts are not necessarily things I mean or desire to have represent me but through their instantiation it either allows me to purge the idea from my mind or its instantiation is required to complete the links of some system in my mind. Sometimes it is as simple as expounding an idea to another person, sometimes it is an act, sometimes it is a provocation. In most cases it is something that I mentally require for my evolution but wish that others would forget. They are things I do not want to be held responsible or accountable for because they are acted upon out of necessity. It isn't criminal, illegal, or otherwise bad actions that need to be treated as some sort of compulsion. They are simply steps that must be taken that I am bound to just as I am bound to my bowels. It's like I often require other people for these steps like elements in a chemical reaction, however I only want to present the final form to other people. When growing up as a child, you share your larval form with others like you and it is a bonding ritual to learn and take steps together. As you grow into maturity, however, the paths of people diverge and the steps taken are different. These steps, because they are not shared, do not create the same bonding and oftentimes cause conflict or anxiety in others. The way it relates to my therapy is that with the therapist I have a place to flush the ones that only need to be said. Even though the therapist plays a small role in the sessions, mainly acknowledging what I say and periodically offering his own experiences or choosing which tangents we will follow, it is useful to have him because I can explicate my ideas and theories and worldview. It seems that even without further thought, ideas and systems are substantially changed when shared with another person. They don't have to agree or disagree, and in fact it is better when they don't but simply acknowledge the sharing, but through the act it helps me to develop my ideas through whatever change happens to them in the sharing process. It's almost like the sharing of the ideas is a necessary enzyme for some of my mental development, thus making me to some degree literally dependent on other people to continue my progression. That's a lot to think about.
Monday, April 18, 2005
I've been trying to think of things to post on the blog since it has been a few days. I've had a few thoughts here, a few dream scenes there, but I haven't chosen to post them. This week has been loaded with stress as I have several large projects due all at once that I had originally thought were going to be spread out a little more. The stress has reduced me to occasional clumsiness (losing grip, dropping things, knocking things over) and today led to a headache that distracted from nearly everything. It's one of those cases of where stress incapacitates you and while you have so much you need to do, you have trouble doing anything. In the meantime, my mind cannot rest on one topic alone, of course, and I've been thinking more about the people on facebook. I imagine if I had been a bigger part of their lives in high school or if I was now or if I had gone through the years since then with them instead of isolated. Sometimes I think it might be nice to go through time like that with someone instead of alone. I'm not sure how to verbalize what I think it would give you, but it would give you something you can't get any other way. I've also noticed the casual way the people around me and on facebook talk about things like relationships or sex or drinking. I think everyone, or at least most people, starts at a level of being uncomfortable with things until it sinks in. It's a process of learning to live life, kind of like learning to drive a car. At first you have to be concentrated on all of the particulars but you build automatisms and then can focus on other things in the process. I find that things that are so casual, accepted, normal, whatever for other people often are to me a great mystery or a big deal and so I cannot flow with them. I've had conversations about this with people before where I try to figure out when and where everyone else gained the comfort with these sorts of things that I somehow missed the bus on, but I haven't been able to pin it down. On one hand I would like to blame it on the church, but I really can't because even while at BYU I had this conversation with a number of roommates who didn't miss the bus on a lot of issues. Sometimes I like to tell myself that I'm just on a different bus travelling a different road and that cheers me up for a bit until I realize that I'm the only one on my bus. It gets lonely sometimes but I can't just get off the bus and go hop on someone else's bus... they've already left me behind. I can't just forsake what I've found on my bus either. It would be nice if someone else would hop on my bus or else I find someone else travelling the same road even just for a little while. Sometimes all we need is someone on our same wavelength to bounce things off of and just rap about life. I think that too many other bus drivers just read the map and their passengers willingly go along for the ride. Sometimes I think that to live means to be alone.
Friday, April 15, 2005
So I've been looking at this Facebook thing that Miranda turned me on to and it is really depressing. Since leaving high school, I haven't heard from many of the people that graduated with me and on Facebook I can see even glimpses of what they've been up to. I can see how their looks have changed, where they are going to school, and in some cases it lets me view profiles of more information. Some of them are holding a drink or a cigar or are with significant others in their photos. It is interesting to look at the profiles and see the interests and preferred music and books of some of these people and to see the scraps that others have left for them often referring to nicknames or inside jokes. I think the main reason that it is depressing is that before looking here, these people were like figments of my imagination. I had seen part of them in high school and had constructed my idea of the world with them in their place and role inside of my subjective reality. They were frozen in time as those people in that place in my memory. Seeing all of this new information shows me that these static representations are not valid and that these people are changing, growing, meeting different people and otherwise shattering the piece of reality in my head that they inhabited before. It harms the sanctity of the memory because my brain tries to integrate the new knowledge and connect the new them with the old them and won't leave them as separate. It makes me remember thoughts I had about the people, those I admired, those I wanted to meet or get to know better, etc. and I see now how in this new world I can't go back and do that. I see that they inhabit worlds of their own and are not just 2 dimensional players in my world and that bothers me, perhaps because I know that I will never experience all of their world and so that opens the floodgates and lets more experiences and ideas and bits of time flood past me and I cannot soak it up. It seems the more I learn the more connections to things I see. Every movie and book references other movies or books or ideas or people and I want to take all of it in but it is growing too overwhelming because I simply haven't got the capacity or time to take it all in. I suppose I should just accept that, but I can't and it does bother me. I want the askashic records to be in my head. I want to know everything. Sometimes I wonder if I really like change or not. On one hand, I revel in it, but as stated above it is often terribly depressing. I think that how I really feel about it is that the integration of new static knowledge into a static body thus changing the system in light of the new knowledge is exciting but having pieces that are dynamic throws the whole thing for a loop.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
As a sidenote to the previous post, as I left class, there was thunder to be heard in the distance in the sky despite its apparent calmness. In sporadic bouts, bits of rain fell to the ground. While I was on the campus bus there was a short session of hail falling and bouncing off of the cars. When I exited the bus to head toward the stop for the bus that would carry me home, I saw small leaves falling out of trees as if they were the natural heir to the rain and hail. I thought about how I would feel if these were indications of a coming storm that signaled the end of the world and how I would feel if my symptoms and urgency were an indication to me that it was time for me to play my role in the unfolding of that drama without knowing exactly what the role is. As I walked back toward my apartment building, I looked over toward my apartment complex's nature area and I saw the trees, and the flowers, and the clouds in the sky. Just before going in the door to my building, I took pause to look at the grass growing by the sidewalk and I was just amazed at its colour. I thought that if the world was going to end, this would be a good way for it to go... a mass of beautiful things on a beautiful day ended by a powerful storm coming from the heavens. That would be so much better than a human war where it is all mechanical destruction.
Some strange force has come over me today and at least one other time in the past couple of days. It's like a natural amphetamine or something, but I'm not taking any drugs. Its symptoms manifest in a way that I can best describe as "wired". Despite yawning and other signs of sleepiness, I feel almost indefatigable. When it hits, I feel like I cannot sit still. I fiddle with my fingers, move my legs, and hold my pen in my mouth. In addition, my awareness and focus shift quickly between things and I notice and focus on things I normally wouldn't like another student picking at his fingernails or the way the shoelace projects from a different student's shoes. I seem to be quite paranoid too noticing when people look at me or if they glance toward my paper to see what I'm writing (in this case, notes for this blog entry!). There is also a nervousness, a sense of urgency or excitement without direction or focus. It is like something is imminent and I don't know what but still feel that I must act quickly. When I walked toward a water fountain, a girl shifted from the one next to my destination into my path and before I was aware of what I was doing I quickly halted to avoid collision. When I was heading toward an elevator, I saw a large woman coming slowly in a perpendicular path and I darted in front of her to press the elevator button, flew back as she passed, and then darted behind her to enter the elevator. Another strange symptom is somatic. I have a higher awareness of the muscles in my arms and legs, probably due to the exercise I did on them yesterday. The strangest thing though is the affect of the blood flow on my eyes. In class, I reached out my arms to stretch them and getting a head feeling like standing up too fast, I became distinctly aware of and could feel the beating of my heart in my chest. Every time it beat, there would be a slight dimming in my vision which restored itself at the end of every pulse. After class, when I ran to get a piece of mail sent and still catch my bus, my heart beat quickly and when I paused from running, this dimming on the beat effect was noticible again.
I don't know what keeps causing this buzz like this. In some ways it is good because of the energy as if my body is trying to go as fast as my mind but in other ways it is undesirable because of the constant paranoia, nervousness, and urgency. It could be do to biological changes due to my new exercise program finally taking some effect. It could also be due to the additions to my herb/vitamin daily regimen. Amongst the additions are ginkgo biloba which allegedly has cognitive benefits and evening primrose oil, which allegedly has as one of its effects, the protection of myelin sheaths on nerves to facilitate quick and correct nervous data. Some of it may also be due to my readings about the 1960's in Acid Dreams which has considerable data on people being manipulated by other people and organizations. It really isn't possible to figure it out since unlike a good scientist I have applied numerous treatments all at once as a shotgun approach to hurtle me forward, thus destroying any chance to measure the efficacy of any individual treatment.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
It's interesting to me that so much of life is knowledge and learning but the classroom setting is so devoid of life and is stripped to dead, man-made materials to guide and close in the knowledge. As we sat in my philosophy class, some of the students propositioned that we hold class outside and after doing the part of class that required the chalkboard, we did. As we walked through the doors onto a beautiful north campus lawn, the world seemed brighter and more alive than in the classroom. At first it was magical; there were people around, there was bright green grass and trees, and whirring insects hurled themselves precisely through the air. I opened my textbook to a page with a large pure white section on it and as I stared at the white space the bright sunlight shone on it. I think the reason that religions talk about God as light is because of the beautiful visual effects it can have. As I stared at this brilliant white piece of paper, I saw on it very subtle bits of sparkling. I stared at this supposedly blank space in wonder. As my eyes drew away from the page to regard the teacher, I still could not concentrate on the big picture but instead saw all the little things, nature's metaphors of the sparkling paper. I saw individual ants walking on the ground and small and large bees buzzing through the air. As I tried to pay attention to the lecture, one small bee, flew and hovered next to me. I held my book perfectly still and glided to the edge of it and landed on it. With his wings temporarilly stilled I could look at his features and then watch them as they excited back into flight. I watched as he wavered back and forth and extended my book so that he could land again so that I could look again at him. It was as if this moment in eternity was mine and his alone and we were partners in some dance of wonder.
Inevitably, the environment grew more distacting ranging from saws to airplanes to babies crying across the field. I grew paranoid after finding an ant crawling on my hand and every minute or two I'd lift my book from my lap and look on my legs for more ants and when I'd find one I'd flick it away. I tried to pay attention again to the lecture, but all I could think about was the large ant that I saw crawling around on the professor's leg. Every time he'd lean his elbow down toward his lap, the large and would rear on its hind legs and try to reach up towards the arm as if trying to grab onto it to raise itself up. The big and and the teacher were involved in a dance of their own but the teacher didn't know it.
It's sad that in this carnal world we cannot concentrate on the dances alone but must instead compete for our existence with all of the other creatures in the world. Tearing down the beauty of the dance was the fear that the ants would bite or the bees would sting, and they would if they needed to or felt like they did. It's sad that in our schools we have to block out all of the natural life and the dance of the plants and the animals, but I think that if we didn't then we'd be forever fascinated by the dance and the worries to learn the material. Our life is put together in lifeless chambers and like bacteria in a petri dish, we grow and thrive, but overall are simple creatures unaware of the world at large.
Ever since I read it in a book that mentioned the Grateful Dead, this quote has stuck in my mind. It's amazing how one simple phrase can say so much and pretty much explain my entire view on life. It explains the purpose of life, how it has been, and makes it all worth it all in one. I'd even like it to replace "the cow jumped over the moon" as my dying words and use it as (part of) my epitaph as well. It's that good....
What a long strange trip it's been.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
I haven't been doing so hot on dream remembering lately but there is one scene that has recurred in my dreams for the past few nights. I had initially resisted posting it because it is so small and seemingly insignificant but I almost feel like I'm going to keep having it until I post it.
I am living in an apartment with my family. The scene is dreary and colourless in brownish hues like period movies of an old person's home. I see a few roaches scurry on the floor and hear a bustle of activity in a cabinet that is hanging on the wall. I walk over to it, swing it open and spray bug spray toward the top of the cabinet but midspray I stop amazed. In the cabinet, in front of all of the supplies in there, sits a whole bunch of frogs. They look similar to these tree frogs but they are slightly more lightly coloured, their eyes are more vertically oval and are completely black and they have a plasticity as if they were made of plastic coated clay. Rather than being scattered and hopping around, they are sitting in a wall formation with about 3-4 layers of them standing on top of each other and are just breathing in and out. I take one into my hand and take it to my mother to ask her what we should do. The frog sits calmly on my hand as if dignified and unafraid. This little creature of colour stands out against the drab background of the scene and it fascinates me, but my mother says that we must report their occurance and call an exterminator.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Most religions and traditions have their saviours or their heros or some figures that had some destiny given to them by some power higher than themselves. I don't mean governments or other hierarchies like that because when you can see, you know that those aren't really any higher. Suppose we take the christian Jesus for example, suppose that we suspend disbelief and assume that he was all that the Bible says, a healer, a teacher, the son of God, the saviour of the world.
What I want to know is, did he know it all along? I don't think he could have because that just doesn't fit the pattern of the universe as I have seen it. It's all a struggle for something. I know the movie The Last Temptation of Christ dwelt on this issue a little bit. I want to know what it would feel like to discover a destiny like that. Would you get it all at once or would you have to take it in bits to understand it? Would it come to you in conscious teaching or would you just know that you are different and struggle to find out why? Is it possible that each of us is struggling in some way with this? that we might really have some higher purpose or destiny that we cannot see and we just wander around life seeing hints of it but never getting the picture? What of us if we go through the whole of life and we never understand it? Is it possible that we still complete our purpose without knowing it? If that happens, are we ever given any understanding or are we just parts in a system that cannot be fulfilled in ourselves only? Can we ever accept this limit, knowing that we are part of something greater that understands itself but that we cannot understand?
Friday, April 08, 2005
So I logged onto Blogger last night to make this post and as soon as I do, bam! the power goes out. Unlike the previous several times it had gone out that evening from the storm, this time it didn't come back on immediately. Using the glow from my phone backlight I found my way to the kitchen counter where I illuminated my candle. After stumbling around to its faint flicker (it's not a very good candle), I realized how stupid I was being by following the traditional route of light, proceeded over to my desk, turned on my laptop and allowed its screen to beam light which far exceeded what the candle could produce.
So, the original post topic:
Recipe for Stress: misplace something essential when you are already running late
I was already running a little late for my orthodontist appointment and hadn't yet brushed my teeth. I hurried to do that rationalizing that I'd just drive faster. I walked out the door and headed toward my parking place when it hit me that something was missing. Then I realized what it was... my car wasn't in its normal parking place. I always park in the same general area and the parking lot was nearly empty so I became a little panicked, especially since I was already running late. As I began to sprint around the building vainly checking the alternate parking spots I have used at rare times in the past, my mind raced with thoughts about how secure it was and what I would have to do to find out if it was towed and how I'd tell the orthodontist and my mom why I missed the appointment. In a burst of inspiration, I darted toward the furthest bus station that I use. I ran until my breathing grew harder and then walked as quickly as I could. As I turned over the hill to look down, there sat my car in the parking lot by the bus station. Sometimes when I am running late for that bus I drive to the bus station and then when I get off the bus later that day I drive the car back. Apparently on Wednesday I had driven to the stop and then when I got off the bus later, I had completely forgotten that I had driven and just walked back. I made it to the orthodontist 5 minutes late and suffered no ill effects other than my increased sweat and hard breathing for a few minutes and whatever chemicals panic releases.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
In many crossdressers and transsexuals, the alternate gender identity is formed as a separate identity from the male. It is given different attitudes, preferences, ideals, hobbies, etc. as if it were a totally different person. Oftentimes, a transperson will choose to adopt this new identity as a main identity and leave the old completely behind as a way to get rid of it or as something that must be let go of in transition. This is such a common phenomenon that it is easy for people to assume that I do the same with Michael and Rachel.
This is not, however, the case. My way of thinking about it harkens back to my post about identity as a prism. There is a white light me which when split shows overlapping colours, one of which is Michael, another of which is Rachel.
That initial theory, despite the idea of bleeding colours, still implies more separation than there is. Ever since my awakening, which basically occurred with the divorce and the events leading up to it, I've basically led double lives. I have to present to some friends one version, to family another version, to BYU another version, all different from how I view myself. Sometimes, these separate versions had elements which contradicted other versions and are the closest thing to separate identities that I've had. I do not think that it is a good thing to live in this way and ever since escaping BYU and therefore the majority of the environments which gave the pressure that caused the fragmentation, the "identities" have been merging back together into one with pieces bleeding across with the hopeful eventuality of my being able to be the authentic me without the separate versions.
The gender thing is not divided into versions, however. The current me is some sort of hybrid with an unclear direction. "Michael" and "Rachel" are like words in two different languages which refer to the same thing. The essence is one with two names to refer to the whole. I am not looking for an abrupt transition with dumping of concepts, but more of a fluid mobility towards whatever place I end up. Although snapshots in time may look like abrupt changes, it is an unbroken continuum. I am not trying to be someone else or build a new self to become in place of an old one, but morphing between hybrid forms.
I don't know whether the changes I am making are completely consciously willful or not, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think they touch the essence that I still can't explain. I think it is difficult for us to like other people as the essence that they are instead of by the physical and personality traits that I am proving can be fluid, but I think that it is something that we need to be able to do to truly care for someone. I can't guarantee, however, that everyone I would like to maintain a bond with has that link with me such that it would remain if I continue along this gender deviant path.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
The end of an era in the life of my sister was announced today. Although we had expected it for some time now, she announced her engagement. It's so amazing to me to think what that does to a person's life. You have a wide open future and then in one word, "yes", you have laid down an entire template and set of bounds for the rest of your entire life. Of course there will be variations, but it brings with it a generalized direction, set of goals, desires, behaviours, codes of acceptable behaviour, and expectations. I guess it really is a rite of passage. I always think of a rite of passage being a stepping stone on a linear progression down some road and I guess for what modern society still expects, it is a stepping stone on that road. It is those like me that are still straddling between that road and a diverging road that must make the decision at some point whether to take the normal road and have security and knowledge of the rules or to take the divergent path and be forever outcast and walking blind. Why does walking into the fog where there is no security, no path, no guidance, etc. have so much allure? Is it a desire to forsake the world? Is it a primal urge to explore uncharted territory? Is it analogous to the fog in the mormon myth of leaving the iron rod to fall into temptations of Satan? What exactly does Satan represent in that context anyway given that mormonism differs in many definitions from traditional christianity?
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
In our society, in various different ways, there is a large emphasis on the idea that doing things naturally is somehow superior to doing things artificially. Today I was thinking about this in the context of getting ready to go out. Men tend to do very little before going out but women are expected to go through quite a litany of things. It seems to me that men are presenting closer to the natural while women's decoration is concealing and artificial, however, very few people would argue that a woman is best out in her "natural" state. I think this has its basis in patriarchal society in which man is assumed to be the centre of the universe around which everything else must evolve and revolve. It still does not, to me, explain the seemingly contradictory concept. If anything, what it says to me is that as we are raised with various ideas we build our knowledge structure to take in the ideas that we are presented with in an irrational way. If contradictions such as these can be accepted without any obvious compartmentalization or dissonance or even awareness of the existence of the contradiction, then the brain simply cannot be analyzing all of it as abstract logical entities and is storing the information as isolated linguistic ideas. I think that over time some of it gets systematized into abstract concepts in order to provide for constant, contextual reconstruction of subjective reality and memory, however I wonder to what degree this various in quantity, quality, and topics in different people. I think that the modern world is inhibiting this abstract conversion through its commercial emphasis. It markets products which are merely eggshells of the idea they represent. People buy mockups of era products or foreign products thinking they are bringing into their sphere this other piece of reality but most cannot see that what they are getting lacks the essence. Without the essence, these mockeries are defiling to the original because in people's minds the concepts are limited in scope by the mockeries blocking appreciation for the true objects/meanings. We build our world out of the eggshells and so it looks from a distance like an ivory tower complete with deep and beautiful colours imbued on its surface and we stand and point at our tower and proclaim the magnificence that we have built and glory in ourselves for accomplishing it. When I or one like me sees this tower from the distance we revel and think "Behold, I have found wonder of the ages" and race with excitement mixed with fear toward the edifice. We meet along the way various people, many of whom are good and noble with a few faults mixed in and we dig this thinking it gives humanity to this place and we continue on. When at last we reach the door to the tower and the blindness of our fervor has worn down we look up at it and see it for what it is... cheap, plastic imitation colors.... brittle walls with nothing inside.... sand below as a foundation with the thousands of grains as ideas proposed by this civilization but each lacking in any kind of real stabilizing value. Can we do nothing but sit and weep upon the stairway? Others who have made this journey buy into the religions and notions of the surrounding populace, many of whom are as disenchanted as the foreigner, and try to find in themselves and in ideas of the next world a fantasy that will give them balm. I just stand and walk away toward the next town. I come across other places which have the essence of past, that is to say, they have gained their essence through their history and the human work put into them. These places are littered across Europe and Asia and the ruins of the Americas. Are these places really any better than the eggshell tower? I don't know, but they have a more real feel to them. There is life in them that is lacking in the disillusion of the eggshell world. Even in these places, however, there are limits in the mind of the populace. While in some sense I could move to these places and forever feel some deeper satisfaction than I get from the eggshells, there would always be something missing, and for that reason I must keep walking and searching for it. Any that think that they have found the edge and entirety are merely inventing the wall to justify their end of searching.
This past weekend I vanished out of the state of Georgia with only Kenneth, Matt, and maybe a few others knowing where I was going. Matt and I went up to Asheville, NC to visit Kenneth. We froze a little bit in the rain and had a little fun. When we drove around the town I had fun looking at the roads. There are a lot of crazy twists and exits that you have to take. It is such that if you aren't familiar with the area, you could easily become confused or stressed trying to drive in it, but riding in it with someone that knows the area feels like you are riding on a roller coaster because of all of the decisions made so rapidly. Kenneth showed me around his campus and I couldn't understand why it was that Matt had felt so attached to his family that he didn't want to stay up there. The entire campus is secluded off up a road through woods. It is like they picked a random spot in the middle of the forest in the mountains a bit off from the town, snuck in, and cleared the entire area in secret. It has such a wild feel to it because you'll walk and see campus buildings or fields and then just forest starting just beyond it as if the forest is trying to swallow the campus right up. We went out to eat and got to have a bit of fun at Matt's expense when he spilled his ice cream all over the table and we nullified his protests about its texture and whatnot by reminding him that for several years he has been working in an ice cream shop. We bought alcohol but didn't end up having too much of it. The first night was a little killed in that regard because the Watermelon Smirnoff Twists didn't really taste that great to either Kenneth or me (Matt won't drink). The second night Kenneth had enough to have some fun flopping around like a fish trying to walk around on its tail but I had a little headache and refrained from having too much. I also discovered that the smirnoff twists taste a lot sweeter than I remembered them tasting and I didn't care for that too much. I may need to find a new drink for the occasions that I actually drink.