Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Sunday was a rather interesting experience. The church service was a little different than I'm used to, but provided that I can get myself up early enough again I'd like to check it out some more. The most remarkable thing of the morning, however, was that at the church I ran into one of my old high school teachers that I hadn't seen in probably 3 years. Amongst other classes I had from him (Physics and AP Physics), I'd been in a class of only two students where we helped him with running the various computer systems around the school. Because this class was so small, we got to know him pretty well. I got to update him on the basics of what has gone on in my life to move me from BYU to UGA and got to hear what he is doing and about his 3 year old daughter that I'd never heard about.
As usual, I've been theorizing about the recent events that I've described. My latest theory is the Social Birth hypothesis. It basically states that whenever I move into a new situation, I go into a period of incubation where I am withdrawn from the world and try to grow and study and accumulate a basic structure for my foundation in the new world before I begin to interact. My term, although it is more analogous to the birthing process than the biological quickening, for the hook moment for the venturing forth is the Quickening. At the quickening, there is a rapid acceleration in application of the skills and venturing forth into the new world and social sphere where I then feel more comfortable and like an established part.
One problem with this theory is the problem of scope. We can look at large events such as my moving to Athens as one big birth or we can zoom in and find many areas of smaller births which will not necessarily coincide in time of quickening with the larger birth. Thus, it is hard to know when the major quickening is occurring. The recent events may be the onset of it or they may be some minor quickening leading to another long period of incubation to take in and integrate the knowledge gained in the social exploratory mission.
Another problem is the bipolar nature of the nest or incubation chamber and the real world. It is not possible to gain real competence in the real world through intense study in the nest. One can gain the data repositories to pull from in conversations and may even learn some psychology to use as social heuristics, however, the actual usage and practice of social skills must be obtained by venturing forth. It is therefore possible that there may be many times when the nestling feels the quickening but then upon leaving the nest, discovers loads of new information that increase anxiety enough to retreat back into the nest to process this information before a successful quickening.
A final problem is that while in incubation, the structure of the real world is built in the mind as a static construct based on available data. When going forth into the real world, the nestling may find that information contradicts the samples taken in the past and requires re-evaluation as incorrect or time-dependent data. When moving between cultures such as from BYU to UGA, a great deal of re-evaluation is needed due to a large number of parameters of cultural values, goals, and worldviews switched into different positions. The nestling must be careful to integrate the new information in a relative way rather than assuming that either parameter setting is an absolute for human behaviour. Even so, many times the nestling will not notice parameters in the mind that are incongruent with those in their setting and may feel conflict. Other times, parameters in the mind may have cemented at an early age and may be difficult or impossible (the difficulty increasing with age and commitment to the pattern) to loosen or change. This is one major reason that exposure to many different cultures/ideas and the ability to critically think about one's own beliefs is critical.
I still waver back and forth on whether any hardening of parameters is good. I think the ego is the sum total of all of the hardened parameters of interests, values, goals, etc. I'm personally more attached to my ego in a more abstract sense, however, many eastern religions, philosophical traditions, and entheogen experiences place great value on transcendence and abandonment of ego. Thinking of it in terms of hardened parameters that must be loosened gives me more understanding why they may feel that way. Yet.... they have their prescribed roles and beliefs as well and are these not set parameters?
Sunday, May 29, 2005
I'm in a good mood tonight. I think my dream-like excursion from last night must have stirred up my universe which had begun stagnating into a blur of days with no differentiation leaning toward mental annihilation. I got to talk to Allison tonight online for the first time in a while and discovered that it was indeed her at the show last night. It pleased me that it bothered her that I didn't say hi. I hope I don't sound too sadistic for saying that; it's just that I'm glad to hear that one of the few people in Athens that I know would actually care whether I was there or not. She also said that she could possibly help me with something I've been working on and officially invited me to her housewarming party in August.
On another note, I was overjoyed to find in my mailbox today a personalized response letter from William Leonard Pickard who I had written an email to a little while back. He seems quite open to the idea of a correspondance so I am glad for that. It's strange the sorts of places that I look for "penpals" in but I'm excited. I'm sure he'll share many of my interests and he is quite well educated so it'll be fun.
I think I'm going to go to the services of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens tomorrow to try to meet more people and have a group that does the sorts of activities that I know some churches do during the summer. It'll also provide a little bit of variety from my blur-days and give me some social interaction if I like it.
If this turn of events is any sign, I might have finally gotten a grip on this life thing so that I can start proceeding toward my life formation in ways other than just planning and studying it out as I have been doing.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
I am thoroughly convinced that fatigue has drug like effects. I have been tired the past couple of days due both to staying up too late and sleeping in and due to the fact that I've gone back to the sleeping pad since the air mattress no longer will stay inflated. I told Kenneth the other day that in our adventures in the future we should try to do crazy things to give the adventure the feel of a dream. Due to the drug-like effects of fatigue and my actions tonight, it took on a dream like atmosphere which was kind of neat.
After seeing that my new paycheck still has not come, but realizing that I must deposit the one I had in my possession with or without the new one, I put up an away message on IM saying that I was going to the bank. My intentions were fully to go downtown, park by city hall, walk to the ATM by the bank, deposit the check, and then return home to my normal ritual of watching a movie on the computer.
When I reached downtown, the parking everywhere was full and after some time trying to figure out why this might be the case, I decided that maybe it was Friday. Due to the lack of daily differentiation that school provided, I'd simply lost track of what day it was. I drove onto campus and parked to go to that ATM since parking there was much more open. As I walked back toward the car, I saw a newspaper stand and realized that yes, Flagpole is still published in the summer. I should have realized that since I picked up a few issues in my visits to Athens last summer, but the thought hadn't occurred to me.
I flipped through it and noticed that the band Venice is Sinking at the 40 Watt on Friday night. This is one of the few local bands I have even heard the name of due to some association that Allison has or had with them. I contemplated the hypothetical of going to the show as I walked back to the car, and then about half way back decided that I was going to be spontaneous and go to the show. As I walked back to the ATM to get a little bit of money out to go to the show and then towards downtown, I was still not thoroughly convinced that I was going to go to it.
When I reached downtown, I realized that social comfort rapidly atrophies with lack of exposure when social skill levels are not high. As I walked through downtown I felt terrible anxiety just being around people and every time someone even glanced at me as I walked it made me nervous. The city, while full of familiar sites, felt like some place I'd never been to. I approached the 40 Watt to make sure that the Flagpole information was right and then found another newspaper stand to verify that it really was Friday.
Noticing that the club would not open until 10PM, I had to find some way to entertain myself for about an hour and a half until it opened. At first I walked through a couple of streets deciding that I would notice what stores were there and I was actually kind of surprised at what was there and learned where some of the bars that I'd heard the names of were located. My anxiety about being in the city was lower but still present so I decided I needed to go in somewhere. I passed a number of restaurants that I'd like to check out but avoided them for fear of the crowds and out of desire not to spend large sums of money. I walked into an ice cream shop to see if they had anything affordable, but left quietly without a purchase after examining the prices for a few moments.
My next stop was to go to Transmetropolitan since I had met with Kristen there once and thought perhaps I may run into her or an acquaintance there. After an awkward situation of trying to figure out why there was a person sitting on a stool at the top of the stairs, I remembered that I was supposed to get carded there, showed my license, and then continued inwards. Finding nobody that I knew, but determined that I needed to use more time, I sat at their computer and checked my email and Facebook.
After a few minutes there, I left and determined to find something social to do, I remembered that Allison had recommended going to Hot Corner Coffee, so I headed that direction since it is only a few blocks from the 40 Watt anyway. On the way there I heard an evangelical christian prayer about saving the people coming from a stage by city hall and I felt like somehow this night was a microcosm of all of the world with all of the world forces represented in it and I wondered in the macrocosm what I represent. When I reached the coffee shop, I was determined not to use their sitting space without being a customer, so I went to the counter to order tea and after embarrassing myself by asking if there was a difference between the many types of green tea that they sold, I purchased for $2.41 a large cup of their chai green tea and sat at a table. The only person that tried to talk to me was a half-drunk man who mumbled asking if I had a paper dollar bill to exchange for change.
When I ordered the cup, I must have appeared stoned due to my fatigue. My mental processes were not running at full blast and I felt kind of zoned out but specially attuned to some noises like the clanking of bottles. When I took the first drop of the hot tea onto my tongue, it felt like all of the follicles on my head were stimulated as if in some shift of reality. At about 10PM, I threw away my now half empty but bitter (I let it steep too long as I drank) cup of tea, and once again, went out into the night.
As I walked I felt like I was indoors all the time and I felt like they should just project a large dim analog clock onto the ceiling-sky so that anyone could look up from anywhere and know what time it was. After finding that the club was not quite open yet and that I could pay in cash without buying a ticket, I contemplated once again whether I was really going to go to this show. I had never been to a music show in Athens despite it being a music town. Still undecided but pressing forward, I sat on a bench and stared at the wall, feeling once again as if I was in a room in a building, and at once as if all that existed was what was in front of me and behind me was only emptiness. At one point while I sat on the bench, a very intoxicated man mumbling even worse than the first walked by saying something, and then sat on the bench, and kept talking. He was mumbling something about 15 cents and something about some car for which he had some definite reference in his mind but which he did not communicate to me. Not sure if he was speaking to me, himself, or an imaginary person, I ignored him despite the fact that he was right beside me. Never did he give me any cues that I could understand that indicated that he was speaking to me or realizing that I wasn't listening to him. Due to my fatigue, I didn't even feel awkward about the fact that I wasn't even outwardly acknowledging his existence or the fact that I could have been invisible and had the same series of events occur.
It was at this point that the night really took on an atmosphere of a dream as I felt the microcosm of existence and felt like either I or the rest of the world around me could be wholly imagined. I entered the club and found myself a couch to sit on to wait and watch and see the social protocol of this place and how it was supposed to work. I became decidedly anxious again wondering if Allison was going to come and whether I'd be able to figure out this situation alone. After a few minutes, a person entered that matched Allison's general description and I observed her for a while trying to ascertain whether it was her or not. I never did reach a critical mass of identifying cues to go up and see if it was her and she disappeared before the band that I thought Allison would possibly be there for, so I'm hesitant to assume that it was her.
The first band had okay music but their overall feel through their narrations failed to impress me. It did, however, give me a little time to ease into my environment. When Venice is Sinking came on stage, I was quite impressed with their music and I found them to be the best act of the night. During their show, whenever I would look toward the stage, my vision would focus on it and the chairs of people scattered in front of me and I would feel like I was in a movie. Being in this situation was out of character for me and something that normally occurs only in my imagination, yet it was being realized here. I felt the entire time as if at any moment I was going to wake up and either this night or else my whole life would have just been a dream.
The final band of the night was good but not especially captivating to me. Their music, however, provided perfect atmosphere for me to prolong the afterglow of Venice is Sinking and to contemplate over the night and the dream like euphoria I was feeling. At one point during this period I even left the safety of my couch to explore other corners of the room to acclimate myself to the area better.
It was also during this period that my sole exclusively social interpersonal interaction occurred. All of the previous interpersonal relations had been transaction oriented for purchasing goods or services or acquiring information. During the whole show, my couch remained occupied only by me, and then a girl walked by looking for a seat by the tables and unable to find one, she settled herself sitting in a fetal type position on the floor. After the song that was playing finished and the area quieted a bit, I invited her to my couch stating that it was more comfortable than the floor. This invitation and her acceptance of it was the only interaction I had with her. Various people may question why I did not proceed with more for either carnal or social reasons, but simply, I did not care to. I did not even look long enough at her to decide whether she was attractive. I simply reasoned that I had better to offer her than she had on the floor, it would not hurt me to offer it, and there was no reason to save the offer for any other person, so I gave it as the situation presented itself.
When the show finished and I exited the club at 2AM, I was surprised to find the town still full of life. I saw that on one road the police were stopping every car and reminded myself to have my car paperwork handy when I got to the car in case I got stopped too, but noted which roads were least likely to be blocked. I then hurried down my long walk through campus to get back to my car and discovered that the insurance paperwork I have is out of date so I need to search through my papers here for the updated versions. Luckily, my choice of route was not blockaded and I arrived home without a problem.
Now as I prepare for sleep, I fear that I will wake up in the morning and this will all have been a dream or, even if it is not, it will feel the same in my mind. I suppose that's okay though. I have this record here and I had a neat experience even if it did not accomplish my social goals. Often times when I wake up I hurry to transcribe the dreams I've had that night and at the end of a long transcription I realize that I have no left the bed at all and the whole transcription was done in a waking dream and at this point most or all of the dream is already gone so I cannot transcribe it in the real world. I do so hope this blog post is not like that.
I still do wonder though, is reality a dream? I very often feel that it is or that there is something more real than reality and tonight was a magnification of that feeling.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Once again, as I trod the shallow waters of life, I stumbled into deeper waters and descended to the depths and have now floated back to the surface to breathe out the happenings of the deep.
My disappearance from the online world can be noted as commencing sometime last Wednesday evening. I gathered together my little friends and we hit the road bound for Peachtree City. We made good time so I had time to establish a place for my little friends before my larger friends showed up to drag me off to the first public showing of Star Wars Episode III. The behaviour of Matt, Andrew, and I convinced Emily that we'd regressed and that she was caring for children. One such episode was when Andrew demanded that Matt go to fetch him a spoon and Matt, failing to see that Andrew should go himself, complied. During his absence, some unseen force guided my hand to the popcorn bucket and then to Matt's slushed ice drink a number of times leaving a thin layer of popcorn resting upon the ice. Perhaps it was the dark side of the force embracing me and my putting up less resistance to it than Anakin in the movie. I did like how in the movie, they showed him as fighting the temptation and trying to be good for some time, however, I feel like once he did make the decision, his conversion happened a bit too rapidly.
The following day, Thursday, after sleeping in on the makeshift bed that I prepared after arriving home from the movie (no bed had been provided me), I arose and was quickly co-opted to join two of my sisters and the fiancé of the older of the two in a trip to the swimming pool. We piled on to the golf cart and plodded along a route that I could have done almost with my eyes closed in high school since I took that path to work at the job I held for a few months at that time, however, time has reduced my memory. We eventually made it and my instincts in protest to some of the decisions that the others made at forks in the road turned out to be right more often than not.
In order to alleviate any mental stress from meeting Tara's fiancé, I chose to represent him in my mind as just another boyfriend of hers and to shun from my mind the thoughts of the sexual intimacy which will come to them in a few months. Using this technique and following the emerging standard that things are never as bad as I intellectualize them to be, my relations with him were not hampered.
On Friday morning, it was necessary to arise at around 4AM in order to get to the airport to fly off towards the west. Despite our fatigue, we arose and made it to our flights incurring only the normal incidentals that are inherent when traveling in my mother's style. Leaving from Killeen in a car which was, as usual, much too small and cramped for our family, I was reminded yet again of how the landscape of Texas reminds me of Africa without the starving children. It has a beauty in its own right, but I do not think I'd like to live there. One of the prevailing reasons to avoid it is, of course, the heat. Most of us huddled in-doors keeping the air conditioning on. Of all of the rooms in the house, Erik and I ended up in the one room that was to actually get cold at night and we had insufficient bedding to cover us even when squished together.
The following day, when the heat returned, we piled into the vehicles, with my mother, Erik, and I ending up on a mattress in the back of the pickup truck (there was a lid). On the long drive to San Antonio, we roasted in the heat and listened to music coming from our laptops. There was one moment of synchronicity when I removed one of my headphones at a loud part in the song and realized that I could still hear the song in other areas of the truck. I was convinced that my headphones were not that loud and then I realized that of all of the gigabytes of music we have, Erik was playing the same song at nearly the same line of the chorus but only a verse or two earlier than mine.
On the way to the city, the drivers pulled over to appease the predominantly mormon group that my family is (along with my nuclear family, there was present my mother's fiancé, my sister's fiancé, my grandmother, and two of my aunts. The simply had to view the new mormon temple in San Antonio. Despite the area being closed off to prepare for the dedication the next day, my family convinced the guards to let us into the parking lot for a few minutes.
While being coerced to participate in any number of group photographs in front of the edifice, I had a recurrence of what I call the sparklies. I've described them here before but not by that name. It happens most often when I am in bright light. I will be looking and then see tiny sparkling dots appear and disappear across my field of vision as if looking at a sparkling crystal. There is another variation which happened a few times on the trip as well as at other times while home where I would see tiny white dots which move around unlike the stationary sparklies. In addition to these two phenomena, there has been a slight increase in floaters, which are many times larger than the previous two phenomena, however still fairly small and look like dim fingerprints which float across and disappear. With the possible exception of the floaters, the effects are actually kind of neat looking, but my worry about what could be causing them and the possibility of them randomly occurring while driving prevails. I'm going to try to schedule an eye doctor appointment to make sure I'm not suffering from beginning retinal detachment or anything serious and to do something about it if I am.
When we arrived in the city, we proceeded to the mall, where we viewed the film Alamo: The Price of Freedom. Billed as the most accurate film of the events that transpired that fateful day, I had hoped for a good film, but upon watching it, the acting was bad, the script was bad, and it played on clichés. It did, however, serve to provide us with background on the events. After the film, we proceeded to walk a few blocks to the Alamo site itself. The site is pretty like a walled garden in the middle of the city. Inside the church on the site, however, there was a powertripping policewoman. Shannon and I got in trouble for playing quietly off to the side away from people. Erik got in trouble for sitting on the floor. A 2 year old child got in trouble for spitting a chew toy onto the floor.
As we walked back towards the mall to go to the famed San Antonio river walk, another spectre that had been following us the entire day began to grow. Because the mormon temple was to be dedicated the next day, the temple district was holding a jubilee to celebrate it which was to include the mormon prophet and a mormon apostle speaking followed by a dance show. All of our other activities were scheduled and timed such that we would make it to the jubilee on time.
When we arrived at the river walk, we were down to only about 15-20 minutes to explore it before we had to leave for the jubilee. As we looked around, we all became quite aware that it would require much more time to see and it was decided that we would probably return after the jubilee to see more of it. Seeing this as a possible escape, Erik and I tried to convince my mother to leave us at the river walk while they went to the jubilee, however, she could not be convinced. At the jubilee, I took in the book, DMT : The Spirit Molecule, so that I would not be bored. Just as I pulled it out to read, the lights dimmed to a level that I could not read at and so, feeling defeated, I put the book away, attempted in vain to find a comfortable position in the hard auditorium chairs, and went to sleep. I was awoken a few times with announcements such as "President Hinckley is going to speak now" and "Did you hear what he said?" (which of course I had not). At the end of the speakers, Erik, who had chosen to escape to the lobby rather than sleep on the seats, re-entered and told me he had discovered much more comfortable seats in the lobby and I was permitted to escape with him to these seats rather than being compelled to watch the dance show. We sat out there for the intermission and first few minutes of the dance show. Erik then meandered over to get a glance of the show and rushed back to me to tell me that the entire floor was covered in children. From that point on with only a few breaks, we stood at the entry way and watched the show. At one point, we hopped over a small wall and sat in padded seats in a boxed area before being chased out of it by security. Some of the scenes were memorable or stuck out in our minds. Despite it being a church jubilee, there was a lot of patriotic and Texas pride songs mixed in. At one point they had all of the children marching in file like a military parade and had people dressed as soldiers from various eras standing in the middle. While it inspired patriotism in many, it was creepy to me. In another scene, the had a few individuals on a stage in the back, but the bulk of the group was in the pattern of the Texas flag with most forming the border, a few forming a star, and a few more forming a large circle around the star. During this song, they played line dance music, so the border of the flag would quiver back and forth in small rotations, the circle would expand and contract, and the star in the middle would rotate back and forth. Though skilled and doing flips on the stage, the individuals did not impress me but the organic mass of the whole was quite impressive. The most impressive but flawed scene to me was one that Erik and I quickly termed the rave scene. The floor was illuminated with purple and other darkly hued lights and the children poured out in almost never ending streams each holding glow sticks. One group went to the middle where they unfurled a huge cloth circle. Erik and I thought they were going to put the glow sticks onto it and hurl them into the air, but that did not happen. When all of the children were out, they began to rotate the cloth circle following around it like a rotating galaxy complete with a bulk on one side to disrupt the symmetry. They then folded the cloth back up and began to flow in an almost chaotic but slow movement around the floor. In the background was playing church children's songs such as "I am a child of God" and occasional religious narration about how they are the light of the future. As I watched I lamented that they had such potential and blew it. If they had just played energetic techno or instrumental rock like in the party in the cave in the Matrix Reloaded movie then the scene would have been absolutely surreal and more spiritual than anything in the rest of the presentation. Oh, and just to give you a sense of the magnitude, I learned afterwards that in these large displays, there were 4500 children on the floor at the same time.
After the jubilee, we did return to the river walk. The group split and most of them got lost which caused Erik and I to run through large portions of it trying to figure out which entrance the others had come in at. The area is absolutely gorgeous. I love how it has the little river with all of the shops and restaurants next to it. Even as you progress away from the river and closer to the Alamo, the downtown area of the city had the feel that you could just walk around it and feel culture rather than business. I really like that when cities have that feel. I'd like to be able to go back and spend more time to just relax on the river walk and perhaps take the boat ride on it to see more of it than we did by running. If only it weren't so god damn hot during the day there...
On Sunday, because we were not in favour with the Lord (ha!), Erik and I were permitted to sleep in while the rest of the group went to the broadcast of the temple dedication. Most of them ended up falling asleep during it anyway so I definitely got a better end of the bargain. We were scheduled to fly out that day but the flights became too full so Erik and I lounged around watching movies and television programs on DVDs.
Awakening at 3AM Monday morning, we traveled to Killeen and then without problem, arrived in Houston. It was there that our next series of problems evolved. The computer network in Killeen had been down so we were not given paper boarding passes for the next flight and thus did not know the gate to catch it at. Consulting the television screens noted only flights to Salt Lake (for Tara and Matt) and Atlanta (for Erik, Shannon, and I) which possessed what we interpreted as both Delta and Continental flight numbers. Proceeding to the gate listed on the screen, we discovered that the Houston airport has what we termed "magic portals". The gate is not really a gate but a staircase that leads down to a door that leads to a bus. Out of confusion, we boarded the bus and blew off the driver's verification questions. He proceeded to take us to the terminal from which only Delta flights leave. Thinking that perhaps the TV screens had just not updated earlier, we found more and they listed what we thought were the same flights that had been on the list before but with a different gate, which was enough to convince our tired minds that they must be different flights. When we arrived at the gate listed we discovered it was just the same magic portal that we had come out of when the bus dropped us off earlier. We called and woke up my mother hoping she had more information, but she only advised what we had been trying to avoid by calling her... going all the way across the airport to consult a Continental agent. Eventually Tara and Matt made it out without a hitch and Erik, Shannon, and I missed one flight because it filled up, went across the airport (again), and caught the next one out.
I rested the rest of that day, packed up my things, and started the drive back the following day. I got stuck in traffic and the still lingering fatigue caused my reaction rates to be slower giving me some close scares, but I did eventually arrive back in Athens and that brings me to where I am now.
And oh yeah, I watched Easy Rider last night and I loved it.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Interesting... for kicks, I checked the Rolling Stones tickets this morning and the only $62 left were behind the stage which would be kind of a crappy location. I just checked it again and now all that is left is the $352 tickets and it is only 16 hours after general opening of the sales. I didn't believe Kenneth when he said it would sell out this quick but I guess he was right.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Post Extravaganza today...
For anyone that is not convinced that I have enough sensory input or who thinks I might actually have a life, I've now put together evidence that indicates strongly to the contrary. In the link that follows is a list of all of the movies that I have watched between when I started renting at Vision Video (late November or early December) and today. The list, however, includes movies I rented, saw in the theatre, or downloaded. Most of them are in the order I watched them but several at the end of the list were just appended as I remembered them. The ones marked with a * are documentaries. I realize the foreign characters may not render right on all browsers (they don't on mine) and I'll try to correct that when I have time. I plan to continue to add to the list as I watch more movies, but as of this very moment I have watched 126.5 movies and 3 documentaries as shown on the list.
Format is:
Movie Title (Title in English if Appropriate) - Director
Movie List
I ended up taking a break from the movie to lie down and I discovered a new leak in the air mattress but this time on the top. I got out the wax to plug this hole too but as I attempted to fix the wax into position it only enlarged the hole to about 3 times its original size. I discovered that I can minimize the amount it leaks if I lay in the right area of the bed so that I plug it with the sheet and my body. It is, however, another step toward the inevitable demise of this mattress.
But anyway, wow, that movie was beautiful. I found a website that has a bunch of images from it: Spirit of Baraka.
What a way to disillusion yourself!!
First I watched Hotel Rwanda which brought tears to my eyes. It also renewed my disillusionment with the state of the world and the decadence of western culture. It also renewed my curiousity in joining the Peace Corps and being able to just run off into the world that way after I eventually graduate.
Then I found a page full of liberal comics that were humourous to me, however I'd caution anyone who is conservative, supports Bush, or is content in their lifestyle of ignorance to the world's problems, that they'd probably not much like the comics.
Then an online friend IMs me to announce that at prom last night she gave a random guy a blowjob and got doped up on speed and large quantities of marijuana. I'm sure any regular readers or people that know me know my thoughts on drugs (anti-decadent, pro-entheogenic) and can understand that my thoughts of her story were not exactly supportive. However, despite my distaste, I commenced my investigation only to discover that the majority of people do go decadent on that night. I had always supposed it was only a minority and that the bulk of the people were decent.
I described to some of my sources my own prom story:
I wore a suit I already owned and my mom made the flower things by hand. I got a ride with a friend in his van and the same friend even covered my dinner at his parent's country club. I even got the ticket for free because I was a senior. I didn't even have a date. One of the few "wild" acts that I was involved in was that myself and Kenneth insisted that Matt, who was driving, pull over at a gas station so that we could purchase a deck of cards to try to assuage the inevitable boredom at the dance. At the dance itself, I didn't even play the cards. I walked around, ate some food, and spent large amounts of time in observation of girls I was attracted to in their expensive dresses. The second "wild" act I did was to go up and talk to one girl that I'd been observing from a distance at school for a while (termed by my friends "stalking). I got a few lines of dialogue in before she disappeared and did not come back. The third "wild" thing I did was to get a ride back sitting on the floor of a limo that another set of my friends had rented. At their after-prom "party", I ate chips, watched them play videogames on the computer, and basically got so bored that I nearly fell asleep on the floor.When I asked her about it, Dani told me "its not depravity...just a rite of passage". That makes me think back to the various conversations I've had in the past few years, even at BYU, about somehow getting left behind. I feel like at some point I was on the same vibration as everyone else but at some point, probably as early as middle school, I got off the train and missed some key development stages and rites of passage. I'm not even sure that I can see the train anymore to even know if I want to go where it is and unfortunately this metaphor fails because, even though I call it a train, there are no tracks to follow.
After relating my story to her, Eve, the one that told the initial story, commented "now i understand why you're so bitter you have a shitty and boring life". That made me think of a recent conversation I had with my mother. She told me that I should take time off of school to just go out into the world and figure out what I want and/or that I should take a big trip across the world and just forget about the responsabilities that have been crushing me for a while. Unfortunately, I do not feel like I can do that. There are still too many chains with debts and schooling and other commitments that need to be taken care of. And although I would not call others chains, I do have other responsabilities like my wonderful little animals who I adore.
I'll still hold onto my belief that through my plans and schemes which forever dominate my life, that at some point I'll conquer my chains and be free to just live. Despite this faith in perseverance, I have to wonder, how do so many other people already do it without the struggle?
I'm going to watch Baraka now... maybe it'll make me feel better.
Friday, May 13, 2005
So let's see if I can get this straight... I took a long absence from the blog because finals were tearing the neurons in my head apart... that's excusable. But now, school finishes and suddenly I supposedly have mountains of time surfacing and then again I am on some sort of strange hiatus. I think that some of my most inspired blog postings come when I am under pressure. All of those neurons getting torn apart just misfire and I get synapses where there aren't supposed to be any and the result is my blog. That being said, work is quickly fighting to replace the free time and resume the stress present in my head so the inspiration should be quick in coming.
Since school got out this past Monday I've begun to flush the queue of the millions of things that I needed to do that were building up as school wound slowly to a close. I now have my orthodontist app ointment scheduled, I have carpet and countertop visible in the apartment, and I even found a few moments to go check out the apartment complex's pool for the first time. I've also resumed my communications with Zane about helping on his storefront website. Ed is supposed to be asking the higher ups at my workplace about how many hours I can get a week so that I can see whether I will be needing to seek secondary employment this summer (he doesn't know that I'll be doing so if he can't deliver enough).
I received one of those annoying emails from Ticketmaster that announces bands that are playing in my area soon and on the heading line it mentioned Rolling Stones playing in October. Finally it mentions a band that I'd actually like to see! Then I look through and discover that even the cheapest ticket is $62 and Kenneth assures me that it will probably sell out long before the end of the summer which is about the point where I'd be able to decide if I could splurge on going. Oh well! So many of the old bands that I'd love to see are broken up or have half of their members dead so it always sucks when I can't go to one that is still around.
Friday, May 06, 2005
My mom called me the other day to ask me if I have any straight black formal pants and if not that I needed to buy some which she'd reimburse me for so that I'd be attired as she desired for her wedding. Although I did not communicate this thought to my mom, I've begun to have a little bit of emotional distress over the position I am to play in her wedding and meeting my sister's fiancé. The problem is that despite my nominal support for sexual freedom and the ideas expressed in works such as Stranger in a Strange Land, I have difficulty with the idea with family members. Perhaps it is because I've been raised for my entire life in a culture of sexual repression and where it is my duty to protect and care for my family. At my mother's wedding, my mother has asked my brother and I to perform together the act of giving her away. I feel like both in doing that act and in meeting and accepting my sister's fiancé, that what I am doing amounts to a conscious consent to these men to have sexual relations with my mother and sister. In the case of my sister, this will be the first man who I will not have duty or even right to try to protect her from. Kenneth argued that she is an adult and can do as she pleases but I still feel anxiety from it. I feel like in other cases she could do so and it would be her choice and, while causing me some discomfort, it is not the same as this case. In this case, as with my mother, I am being asked to participate in the forming of the connection and am expected to give my consent and support to the union. I have no problem with the marriages themselves or with their being in romantic relationships and all of that, but the idea of sex being involved bothers me. I don't know why I have this ambivalent relationship with the idea of sexuality or feel that in some way it is violating even when done with love and consent of both parties. I guess I haven't really sufficiently founded a difference in my mind between "making love" and "fucking". This could be perhaps because the difference between the two is the romantic love element in the former and romantic love is not a concept I understand and one that I often have trouble believing in. It could be some self-defeating pathology or it could be lack of experience in interpersonal relationships, or it could be the destructive perfectionism I've developed due to my being raised in the harmful culture of mormonism. I don't want to hurt my family members because of my problems with their doing things which are completely "natural" or "normal" or "good" or pick your word, but I feel like I am being forced into a situation where I am not really given a choice but to consent in a choice that I don't feel comfortable making or even being involved in.
I just took my last actual final of the semester. Unfortunately I'm not done yet since I still have an 8 page paper on a topic I know next to nothing about due on Monday. I'm still bumming on the idea that I have so much longer left in school. Over the last few days I keep noticing people's away messages on instant messenger as, one by one, many of them finish their last final of their university career and go out drinking to celebrate it. If I'd stayed at BYU, I could very possibly be doing the same minus the drinking part, but at least I'd be done (okay, okay, for argument's sake it could have still taken until December, but still). Instead, I sit here alone finishing up my fourth year of school with still around another two left. I can't go out drinking to celebrate and unlike most of the world I don't drink at all when I'm bummed about things... if I do that it only makes me feel sick. So, instead, I'll sit here alone as usual, and probably watch Gozu. Then, I'll go to sleep at a reasonable hour, sleep in tomorrow since due to Finals the past two days my sleep schedule has gone to hell, and then at some point I'll arise and begin work on the awful paper. These past few days have felt like a week with all of the shit going on with finals. On Wednesday, I did about 10 hours of studying and by the time I looked back at some of the notes I'd written at the beginning of the session I had to honestly argue to myself that it really had been the same day when I had written that information. Yesterday and today I had 8am finals and so had to be up at about 7 to be able to catch the bus to get to them. Given that I do not function well on little sleep, if I wanted to be able to study yesterday evening or take another final this evening, a multiple hour nap was required. This extra, long midday sleep furthered the confusion in my brain and it attempted to assemble a day divide between my morning session of the day and my evening session of the day. Even last night I couldn't figure out what day of the week is was anymore until I consulted a calendar to make sure that I was paying my rent on time and preparing for the correct exams.
Sidenote: I'm not dead. I'm busy as hell with finals. I have several posts in queue on various scraps of paper that I will post probably Monday or Tuesday if I do not lose them.
In a quick break I stole from studying, I was looking at name meanings and found some interesting things:
Michael: "who is like God?"
Brian: "hill", or by extension "high, noble"
Golden: inconclusive, but seems English
Rachel: "ewe"
Natalie: "Christmas Day"
Sullivan: Although I prefer the original meaning I found (on the sidebar of this blog), it doesn't seem accurate. More common seems that Sullivan comes from O'Sullivan which comes from Ó Súileabháin which means "descendent of Súileabhán". "Súileabhán" means "little dark eye", "sullen eye", or "hawk eye" depending on which source you use.
So I guess with the male name I'm noble and like God but with the female name I'm the dark version of the lamb of Christmas Day... so maybe I'm the antichrist or something?
Sunday, May 01, 2005
My life has, as usual, been a world of opposites.
For example, I keep thinking how much more I am able to do now since I left BYU and I feel some sense of accomplishment as I finish reading things like On the Road, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Journey to the East, and now Stranger in a Strange land or when I watch movies from all of these famous directors like Kurosawa, Godard, and Fellini. But then, I look at people's profiles on facebook and see all of the things they are doing. Some of them have graduated, some of them have listed as favourite books ones that I still haven't gotten to yet. Some are doing cool jobs. Many are moving around the country and even world. Despite what I see as rapid progress, I'm still so far behind on things. I'm just an egg.
Lambda Alliance had two events today that elicited in me another opposites reaction. The first was the Lavendar Graduation ceremony which was held to honour LGBTQ graduates of the university. I helped run the thing behind the scenes and it turned out well, but when I watched the graduates, I realized that in some ways I wish I were graduating too. If I had stayed at BYU, I may well have graduated about this time. Much to my disappointment, my advisor told me yesterday that I have at least a year and a half but to plan on two years more. As I thought back on my two semesters here and imagined 4 more of them it really disheartened me. I'm kind of sick of school and wish I could just move on in my life and if I had stayed at BYU then maybe I could have.
But then I went to the Athens Pride picnic with Lambda and it flipped the tables on me. I got lost trying to find it and ended up in an area south of campus that was just beautiful with the trees and then I thought that despite my convenient location where I am, that maybe I should move to that area in the fall since it is so beautiful. Why is it that I keep being tempted to leave convenience for beauty and freedom? So, I eventually found my way to the pavilion on campus where the picnic was held and I was struck by amazement again. It is next to a small lake which has a little dock and a walking trail that goes around it with a bridge that goes over a thin part of the lake. Nearby were intramural fields and in the distance across the lake was a beautiful treeline. One thing I really like about being here is that since I don't know the area very well at all, I keep discovering new things every day about it. It can be annoying because I keep missing out on opportunities, but I love the thrill and wonder of discovery.
I was thinking about how my mom tried to talk me into transferring to Texas and living with her at what will be her new home and how I refused because I told her I like it here. I really do. The longer I spend here and discover more, the more this place takes hold in my mind. Although Utah was absolutely gorgeous with the mountains, I never really felt quite at ease there with the city and the culture. I mean I was comfortable and liked the town and campus well enough to live there, but it never made the bond with me that Athens is doing. I walked around Provo and discovered new things walking 45 minutes home from the dollar theatre or when I walked an hour to a Blockbuster to exchange movies and I saw new things that I wanted to see again and things that I miss in nostalgic moments now and then, but it's different here. Here, I feel like there would actually be a pain in the break as opposed to just a nostalgia. I think I'm laying down roots here in a way that I never quite did in Provo.
Now that does present to me a dilemma however. I look at people on facebook that are living in California or talk to people like Greg who is moving to Florida and I think about how neat it would be to just move to some place that I've never been and establish it for myself. Athens is kind of like that but I was still coming here for school. I'd like to be able to just pull out a map and pick a city that I'd like to live in because it is by a beach or a forest or a historic area and then just move there. None of the straight world linear life progression shit with education and jobs and relationships, just find something I like in a place and just do it. I'd also like to live in Europe for a time so that I could have a centre to jet around and see all of the sites. If I dig in roots here it will be emotionally and pragmatically hard to be able to pick up and jet off like that.
I've also realized that there are things I want that are more permanent and not so suitable to a nomadic lifestyle. When I was at a Lambda officers retreat, our advisor was showing us his garden and I thought, hey, I would like to have a house where I could grow a garden. Hell, I'd like to get a plant right now. I realized that if I go to Utah to work at all this summer, then I am already going to have to find a babysitter for my animals and I wouldn't get to enjoy the plant either. Is life long enough to do the settled thing and the nomadic thing? It seems when I hear the life stories of older people or even people as young as in their 40's or 50's, that they've been able to do an awful lot, go a lot of places, and live a lot of different lives. Can you really do that much in 20 or 30 years? Could I do that much?
I think in a lot of ways, despite my exit from BYU, I still feel tied down like there are things holding me back from doing that grand life adventure. On one hand there are things like school that I simply can't do anything about. Waiting is. There is also more emotional things like wanting to be able to be with friends and family and trying to keep track of and reconcile in my mind everything that happens to every body I know. I feel like if I don't keep track of it then it will be lost. Why are these memories of relatively insignificant things really so valuable to me that I want to hold on to them? If I just let go and used the mental time for other things, would I ever regret all of the little things that are slipping by unrecorded?