Tuesday, February 28, 2006
So I was recently fooling around with my dream formula and I added another item. This new item happens to have an interaction with one of my previous supplements used for other purposes. The night before last I had the most vivid dreaming of my life. I was busy throughout the day and did not have time to record them, however, later that evening there was still enough recall for me to put down a bit about two of them. Here they are:
There were two guys and I walking around in a dark, tropical like location. The only lights were some dim lamp posts surrounding a large pool and some dim lights in the bottom of the pool. Each of the three people started the dream with an ecstasy pill in our mouths but we didn't know what it was. Somehow we found out and we all spat them out on the ground. The the other two started chasing me; I don't recall whether we had ever been on good terms to begin with. As they chased me, I dove into the pool and they followed suit. I swam as quickly as I could in the water but they were gaining ground. I managed to get out just before they had a chance to grab me. As their arms reached from under the water, I watched as their limbs turned to liquid water and fell back into the pool and reformed under the water. They thrashed about like demons trying to escape from the pool to capture me, but any time a part of them came out of the water it turned to water and fell back. As I watched them, rather than be glad and run, I suddenly came to the awareness that these were other people that really did not differ from me all that much yet for some reason I had been permitted to escape the pool and they had not. I just stood watching them and trying to understand my fortune as the dream ended.
In the other dream, there was a group of people and I standing in a dark and empty square shaped room. We were all wearing animal-monster masks that looked like a mesh screen with several black horns coming across our face like ram horns often obscuring our view. The point of whatever game or task we were involved in was to find a sex partner somewhere out in this dark building in one of the many rooms. The sex would be anonymous due to the masks on our faces. I split from the group and walked off talking to a girl from my group whom I had romantic feelings toward. The first stop we made was to a room that was brightly lit and had many square blocks serving as tables with stacks of papers on them. Each block was for one class and the papers were tests for the students to get back. The girl went to find her block and I found mine. I saw that I had received a 54 out of 65 on mine and I was mad about this. I looked across the room to see that the girl seemed pleased with her grade. From this point in the dream, we no longer could walk on the ground, but simply slid along it like ice, but falling or slipping was not a problem. The girl and I went back out into the dark hallway and continued to talk. As we talked, I asked her if there was any chance that she would ever like me romantically even if not that night. Without directly telling me no, she made her answer clear. When we parted in the next room, I left without her and went into a dark, empty hallway, threw my mask on the ground and walked out.
I took the revised formula again last night but had a little interruption during the night which prevented my being able to have and recall many dreams. I was in a dream of standing against a building in a futuristic London. All of the buildings had a sleek, black appearance but no variation in any of the architecture. Just all of these great black monoliths of buildings with lights coming out of their windows. We were in the middle of a bombing raid like the great bombings of London in World War II.
I did not get a chance to see what happened in that dream because I awoke to feel a squirming mass around my abdomen. I felt across the top of my cover and felt the mass under the blanked and shuffled it to the floor. I was tempted to disregard it, but instead got up and turned the light on to figure out what it was. It turns out that one of my hamsters who is a little escape artist had finally discovered that he could open the doors on his large cage by himself. He has long been able to open the door on the small cage necessitating a brick in place to block that door. Strangely, the door he opened on the big cage was the top door of 3 which he would have had to climb and hold on to the bars to open. I'm not sure why he figured that one out before the floor level one, but he did. He was in quite a panic on the floor probably because of being pushed off of the bed and then having a bright light illuminated. I managed to capture him and temporarily secure the cage before putting him and myself back to bed.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
I think I'm going to dream tonight in Sanskrit. I just spent the last several hours studying with a study group and then going to get milkshakes to reward ourselves for our labours. For those that either want to pray to Indra to help me (I'm joking) or want to make fun of me for the difficult test I have in that class tomorrow, take a look a this. Now, that preview on the webpage has at least the first five pages of the text. The test will include photocopies of a page or two out of those first five pages with two selection of 5-6 lines each marked. We are not told what particular passages in advance, only that they are within the first five pages. We have to translate, from memory, each of those two selections word for word as well as commenting on the grammatical forms of some of the specific words. It's gonna be hell.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Oh, how little it would take to make my fall semester difficult. I have been figuring that since only two of my classes will be required, I could take fun and easy classes for the remaining two. So, today I'm in class and my teacher mentions off-hand a course that he will be teaching in the fall. Now, if it isn't a two part course (since obviously I don't intend to be around during the time the second part would be offered), then I almost for sure want this class. It's a class on the Rig Veda and involves reading part of the text in the original Vedic Sanskrit. To be able to read the Rig Veda is one of the major reasons I chose to take the Sanskrit courses that I am currently in. It would likely be a ton of work to take that course just as the current and previous sanskrit classes have been, but oh! I want to!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Two.... assuming I pass all of my courses this semester and test out of one other, after this semester that's how many classes I will have left to finish all of my requirements for graduation. I'll end up taking probably another two in addition to that to fill out a full-time student schedule, but still.... that means next semester a full half of my schedule will be classes that I want to take just for the hell of it. That should also mean that next semester will be fairly significantly easier than this semester is being which is good since I thought that both of these last two were going to be hellish and so far this one hasn't disappointed in that expectation.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Today as I cleaned out the terrarium that belonged to Faustus and Mephistopheles and prepared it for packing, my brain put together this experience with several others of the day and threw in a little future looking with a pinch of reminiscence. Today, I finally trimmed off the large mass of dead tomato foliage from around what is left of the pepper plant. Today feels like spring instead of winter.
Basically, today feels very end of era. I've mentioned recently how I don't know where I'm going to be after school ends and how if this trip happens, I may not even have reason to come back to Athens. It feels kind of like leaving Utah did though. I don't think it is really possible to ever get everything you want out of a place and feel like your experience there ws complete. You just have to move on anyway. Maybe one day you find a place and you can settle there forever. I guess really that could be said of a mental place too as well. I'm not really sure though. I think I'll always feel compelled to move on after a little while.
Getting my scorpions was the fulfillment of a dream I'd had for a long time and was kind of symbolic of my starting a new life here. My plants were also a relatively early addition, so to lose both of these primeval ones around the same time just feels like I've reached the zenith of this experience and now I should just appreciate what I had here as I let the things I started here continue and slowly fizzle out and I prepare for the next stage.
When I came here to Athens from Utah, I really had no idea what to expect. I'd seen a very few pictures, I knew one person, and I'd never been here. I took that leap of faith though and came here and although not everything worked out perfectly, a lot of good things did happen. It feels strange to feel like it is over so quick when I still have close to a full year left here, but I think in some sense, I really am already on the way out.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Well damn. I just discovered that Mephistopheles (my one remaining scorpion) died today. I'm not sure why my scorpions managed to have such short lives. They are supposed to be able to live for up to 8 years and mine made it to just under 1 and just over 1 year in my care. I'm fairly convinced that I've been keeping the humidity levels in the terrarium far too low for them but the setup is difficult to keep even mildly humid. I'm working with humidification techniques on another of my projects as well, so if I find something that works well there I may see if I can rig something up for the terrarium too.
On the other hand, I've had scorpions before now so that is one dream fulfilled and although I'd like to get more, there are reasons why I shouldn't. For one, there are other animals like tarantulas that I'd like to try out and with a now empty terrarium, entry cost on one of those animals would be minimized and thus possibly feasible. In a different vein, now that I'm slowly approaching graduation time, it may not be in my best interest to get any more animals anyway. I already adopted my friend Matt's hamster because it needed a home so I have 10 rodents (8 gerbils, 2 hamsters now) anyway.
I guess now is as good a time as any to mention one possible post-graduation option. My mother has stated that when I graduate she would like to make arrangements for my dear animals to be cared for and give me $1,000 to put toward just travelling the world wherever I want to go for up to about 3 months. If I do that, that will require that I move all of my things into storage at my mom's house and terminate my lease on my apartment. So, when I returned from my trip, I wouldn't have any particular reason to return to Athens unless I had unfinished things to do or see here or if somehow I managed to actually develop some sort of social life such that I could continue it after coming back instead of having to start over. But, if none of this is the case, then as much as I love Athens, it may very well be a good time to move on and experience one of the many other places I would like to live. Moving is difficult enough, but with so many animals it will be quite the task.
There is also the distinct possibility that I could in the next few years choose to move a distance such that it would be difficult or impossible to take my animals with me. Gerbils have a lifespan of 2-4 years and my youngest ones are still only about 3-4 months old. Hamsters tend to have a lifespan of 2-3 years and both of the ones I have are 1-1.5 years old as far as I know. This means that no matter how much I love the little darlings, in about 4 years it is pretty safe to say all of them will be gone. If I were to get scorpions again and could figure out how to not make them die prematurely, that could extend my animal timeline many years longer.
There are plenty of more animals that I would like to have at some point in my life, but it is becoming quite clear that they will not be during this phase. Afterall, I've seen enough movies that the idea of renting a flat in a european city and working even a simple job to be able to just have fun in a foreign place is quite appealing to do sometime in my youth and unfortunately animals could not play much of a role in that lifestyle.
Maybe once I've seen some more of the world both geographically, socially, and experientially and am actually willing to settle down for a little while then I can get a rabbit and a dog and such.
Monday, February 13, 2006
I am really, furiously angry right now. I honestly can't remember the last time I felt the emotion of anger. It usually really takes a lot to get me angry. I let a lot slide and despite being stressed out a lot I find it hard to get angry at things or people.
So I took everyone's advice and wore what I wanted to the club since I am supposed to not care what other people think there. I decided to actually bother using my myspace page for more than viewing other people's information so I went searching for a theme that I liked the look of. I finally found one that I liked and had a good balance of femininity and pattern to it and I really liked the pattern on it. I don't even usually like pink but the shades it had were aesthetically pleasing to me. Then in one of my random moments of inspired thought I came up with the sentence "don't get lost in the rainbow" thinking of it in some fantasy, wizard of oz like context. I got a comment from my brother that said "wow yeah that was a random thought" and a message from him that said "definatly interesting but definatly you, but your page isn't plain at all anymore so thats good." On the other hand, Jeremy said that erik's reaction was "erik was shocked as hll. i think between that and the comment he was kinda scared" and "i hink that he is getting more and more conviced that your gay" and given some of the things erik has said in the past, I have no reason to believe Jeremy was lying or even exaggerating in this case.
In the past, my brother has gotten all upset when I would hide things from him to protect him and gone on and on about how we are brothers and we should be able to tell each other things. Jeremy says I should just blow it off as the ramblings of a drunken person, but I think in vino veritas. If he had a problem with it or a question about it, then he should have said something about it rather than leading me to believe there is nothing wrong.
If you have a problem with me, DON'T FUCKING LIE TO ME ABOUT IT. I only respect people that I can trust to be frank with me even if they don't agree with me or approve of me. So, if anyone has anything to say, out with it.
Strange, so strange.
Where am I and how did I get here? I can, and will, tell you where I was physically this weekend but that doesn't come close to explaining the place I am in. I have often thought that a trauma can jar one loose of a twisted stagnation. This is, I believe, the primary value and growth potential of hallucinogenic drugs. I think it is also intrinsically related to some rites of passage. I did not, however, use any drugs, save for alcohol, this weekend and the shift had already occurred prior.
I really don't know what change the death of Nick caused in my mind, and to be honest, I can't even establish a causal relationship, but there certainly is some correlation. And so begins my tale....
On Wednesday, I drove down to Atlanta to go to the Rolling Stones concert and I arrived early. I tried to find the bar that my radio station had people at and I ended up walking around and getting lost. The area of town was actually rather nice looking like the sort of place that you could sit at a coffee shop and watch people walk down the road.
I eventually gave up on finding the bar and found my way back to the concert. The concert was completely amazing and I let myself loose enough to sing as loud as I could to the lyrics. I got to chatting with the couple next to me and had a lot of fun. Afterwards, they were drunk but invited me to get breakfast with them. Rather than them taking a cab as they had planned, we ended up walking the long distance to my car and I drove us around. We tried several locations and could not find a place open until we drove almost to their hotel and found a waffle house. They bought breakfast for me and gave me some gas money. They also gave me their business cards and invited me to come to their house and ride their horses if I ever have a spare weekend. It was strange to me to go to a concert, meet people, and then hang out with them afterwards on a whim. That feels like something that only happens in the movies. And, to no surprise of mine, it turned out that I bonded with the couple that was older than those in front of me who were closer to my age. The couple was a 52 year old ex-hippie and his 44 year old wife there to celebrate his birthday.
So then I find out on Thursday that Nick's funeral was going to be held on Friday night. After getting out of class, I had to rush about to throw my things into the car and get moving down the road hoping not to arrive too late. During the parts where traffic was moving, I drove faster than I felt safe and then during the parts when it wasn't moving, I spent a lot of time trying to slush through rush hour in Atlanta. I luckily arrived just in time for the funeral. The funeral was nice but a bit preachy. I don't think Nick would really have been as concerned for our souls as the preacher constantly told us. I also think that even a christian preacher should be sensitive enough to his audience to not declare to all of us that if we ever hope to see Nick again then we'd better accept Jesus as our saviour.
After the funeral, a reception was held at the house of a friend of the family. Our host came across to me as the stereotype of middle aged, socialite, alcohol loving America in person. At the reception, the group's emotions ran the gamut. Hugs and chats of various meanings passed periodically. It was at one point in that night that I experienced yet another of these alternate and new realities. I spent a lot of time just standing and staring at pictures of Nick and feeling waves of different feelings flowing through me. At one point a man, the preacher I think, came up to me and it was like another scene out of a movie. I was the inconsolable one in grief staring at the picture with memories running through my head and tears trying to decide whether to emerge and he was the one trying in vain to comfort me and make me laugh by telling stories about Nick. I'd never experienced that role before.
Saturday night was our less-religious tribute to Nick at the Secret Room that Nick frequented in life. I got myself all dressed up in a velvet skirt and heeled boots. When I emerged to Jeremy's group of friends, I had some anxiety as one normally would in that sort of getup and, to my surprise, nobody seemed to mind. On the way up, I got to talking to Jeremy's friend Devin about all sorts of topics centering primarily on religion and ranging from mystical christianity to shamanism to druidism to the necronomicon to my own beliefs which I couldn't figure out how to label. I did a little research today and found that so far the closest I can find is Advaitic Hinduism, though I'd have to learn more to see just how much of it I agree with completely. When I first entered the club, I was unsure what to expect and so at first our group clustered in the corner before sending out tentacles. Erik assured me that the environment was better with alcohol, so I took another first and learned how to use a bar tab. One lucky thing about not drinking often and barely eating a thing all day is that it allows you to save money at the bar. It only took me a large newcastle beer, an amaretto sour, and two shots of sambuca (you should have seen my excitement when I saw that bottle on the shelf... Kenneth understands) to get feeling nice and good. From there, the experiences just flowed like water. I ran into Jasmine who I had known through Jeremy in Peachtree City. She had somehow gotten it into her head that I hated her and she felt she had to ask Erik first if it would be okay to talk to me. I honestly have no idea where she got this notion from. I've had people tell me before that I give a bit of a standoffish vibe sometimes, but who knows. She said she'd love to do my makeup sometime and despite my intoxicated state, that was one piece of information I valued enough to make sure I remembered. ;)
As my readers who have been reading this blog long enough may have noticed, I haven't really commented much on gender related issues lately. I keep trying to convince myself that it isn't a problem anymore and that energies that used to flow there now go to other places. This night at the club opened that whole problem back up again in some ways I hadn't expected. At one point, I had a guy come up to me and tell me that he'd seen me looking in the mirror and that I looked great. I wasn't sure whether he thought I was a girl in the dark or if he was gay. I later ran into him again at the bar and he started flirting again and it seemed more clear that time that he was gay. Although I got hit on by that guy at Kroger a little while back, this was different but also strange. The biggest gender problem, however, emerged with the bathrooms. The first time I went to use the bathroom, I was a bit nervous, but it wouldn't be the first time I'd been in the men's restroom with a skirt on (I've had previous instances of that at the movie theatre and once in Underground Atlanta ), but I was still a bit nervous. As it turns out, this was justified since so many people were drunk and I had other cues such as minor makeup on (we all did... what do you expect at a goth club?) and my long earrings. I went into a stall and when I discovered it wouldn't lock shut, I went out to find another one and a guy looked at me and said "I think the ladies room is upstairs." Embarrassed, I just left the bathroom and went to laugh and tell all of my new friends about what had happened. After a little while, I decided that I really did need to use the bathroom and Raven told me not to worry about it, that she used the men's bathroom sometimes there and that nobody cared. So, I went in again, and when I entered the stall, I heard two guys have a conversation that went like this: "I think a girl just walked in here. No, I think it was a guy. Wouldn't that be cool if it was a girl?" When I finished, I quickly escaped the bathroom to once again tell my tale and sort through my embarrassment. The next time I had to go to the bathroom, I once again tried to figure out my little dilemma and decided this time that in the past, girls had been more accepting of my gender variant behaviours than guys, and so I would just use the girl's bathroom this time. I went in, found a stall, sat on the toilet as is proper in a girl's bathroom, took care of business and got out as quickly as possible. The girl's bathroom was upstairs and was the only thing upstairs so my descent down those stairs past a girl or two going up was embarrassing as well, but nobody said anything this time.
I had another first that night as well. The night several summers ago that I went to a club in Macon with my dear friends Greg and Miranda, despite being totally trashed drunk, I could not get myself to loosen up to dance at all. At the beginning of this night, I felt similar feelings. At one point, one of our group dragged me out to the floor to dance and I couldn't think of what to do. Then, like a revelation, I figured out what to do. I closed my eyes and listened to the music for a few seconds and I found that my abilities of mental imagery that have increased in the past year came in very handy. I would hear the words to the songs and my brain would generate hallucinatory visual closed eye scenes. I would imagine myself as a character in these scenes and imagine how I should act as a character in this overly dramatic bizarre story in my head and I would just move in accordance to that. With my gender variant thoughts and manner of dress I chose to emphasize my lower body movements on movement of the hips and use my arms and hands to emote feelings of worship, awe, peek-a-boo style uncovering of the self, and other fantastic scenes. If I opened my eyes and saw other people, self-consciousness returned but if I closed my eyes then not only did the other people disappear, but they didn't even exist and I could just flow freely in my story world.
So, today, during school, gender/sex thoughts decided to rear their head again and I got to my normal theorizing on it. On one hand I was trying to reconcile the being mistaken for a girl at the club and how I really did like it and how I even accepted part of it as my persona during parts of the evening like the dancing. On the other hand, I felt today a very strong sex drive. It wasn't a brutal thing, but more of a soft but very strong desire. I would look at a girl's skin or shape or hair and have probably a stronger urge than I've ever had to touch her skin and be with her intimately. This happened with many girls I'd look at even if I wouldn't normally be attracted to them. Despite being cold outside, the day had a spring like feel to it, but despite stereotypes, I've never felt that strong of a love/sex urge even in the spring.
As I rode on the bus home, I was reading a book about John Lennon and it seems like any kind of mental stimulation fuels my theory generation and so every few paragraphs, I'd pause to contemplate some new thought about the sex/gender thing. I came up with another semi-theory to explain some of my gender variance that accounts for some of the eccentricities of my feelings. One of the major characteristics of true transsexuals is a hatred for the male genitals as if the genitals are the most important marker of a person's sex (arguably it may be). For me, however, no matter when or how strong my feelings of wanting to be a girl were, I have never hated the penis. I've always had it there and it doesn't really bother me that it is there. In fact, in masturbatory sessions, it feels downright good to have it there. I do think, though, that I hate a lot of what it tends to represent in society. I don't know why I feel so strongly against the will to sex, to power, to dominance, to rough hewn social traits, but I do. Although this masculinity is fine in others, a lot of it I really want nothing to do with. There are other masculine traits that I do like or aren't a problem to me like problem-solving and logic. Why then, if I have no animosity toward the male genitals, should I like the idea of feminity or being a girl? Are these feelings simply an expression of sexual frustration of the strong desires that I felt today?
Once again today, the thought of going to a doctor to see if I couldn't get some kind of medication to lower my sex drive occurred to me. Knowing full well that this is an abnormal desire, I thought to myself that the proper course of action is to go again to therapy and try to root out the source of my anomalous thoughts and behaviours both with regard to my feelings on sex and my feelings on gender to see if one isn't an expression of the other or if there isn't perhaps a third cause or if they are caused by separate issues. I think back to my previous experience with therapy a couple of semesters ago and all I did in there was babble off philosophy and theories and leave the therapist grasping for something concrete to work with. They've lowered the amount of free sessions I can get per semester to four and they primarily emphasize short term therapy at the health center anyway, so even if I go back in, I'm not sure if they could help me anyway. I really do need to do something about this problem though. Otherwise, I'll just be lonely and ambivalent romantically for my whole life.
So many of these experiences this week and weekend were completely new and I almost feel like I've entered some parallel universe. Things will probably settle back to normal soon, but I'd like to take some advantage of this strange period to have some real growth and development and find myself a new resting plane.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
One of the things I have liked about my life in Athens is that I have been able to focus a lot on my projects. These include both experiences and possessions that are some of my dreams, some new, some dating back to middle school even. I wanted a scorpion for years but my plans for a mormon mission conflicted with the scorpion lifespan. My family switched from gerbils to hamsters years ago and I wanted gerbils. Many, many years ago, my family rented a paddle boat and a canoe and I had a good time so I wanted to canoe again. I watch tons of movies and read tons of books trying to get closer to who I want to be. In a lot of ways, it feels like I have been tying up life's loose ends and somehow bringing myself full circle and making myself whole. Now, would life really let me get away with that? Of course not.
So, my mom calls to make sure I heard the news about Nick and so I talked to her a little about that. Holding back tears, I tried to explain that I can't imagine how he must have been feeling. I mentioned to her as I have here that lately, at some point in almost every day, I feel overwhelming stress and feel on the verge of a mental breakdown. I told her that with how bad that feels I can't imagine how much worse it would have to be for someone to kill themself. So, in my vulnerable state of mourning, my mom alludes to a letter she sent that I haven't received yet and mentioned that it has some things she wanted to say, but not to let it add to my stress. Given how convenient email and cell phones are, in addition to the fact that I talk to her on the phone almost daily, her sending a letter is a bit ominous. Why would someone write a letter about something if not that they want to say something they aren't willing to say to someone's face. It's obvious she knows that the contents of it will be distressing to me.
Fuck! (hopefully this will not have to become a signature mark on my posts...)
Everyone has the same fate in the end. It is just a question of when, where, how, and what you did in the time before. In this case it was this weekend, his bedroom, self-inflicted (allegedly) gunshot to the head, and worked his way into my heart even in the short time I knew him.
I hadn't gotten much time to get to know Nick, only a few months really, but his loss struck me harder than I thought it would. Nick was always a compassionate person who would go out of his way to help you and was easy to be around. I spent hours with him on occasion such as at Jeremy's birthday party at Six Flags and camping outside of Best Buy to get Jeremy's Xbox 360. So much time that is spent with people is often meaningless and shallow, but every time I spent any time with Nick, it was a real human experience because Nick showed his weaknesses, his strengths, and his enthusiasm. In some contextualist viewpoints, who we are really is the sum of our relationship to everything and everyone else, and so since he had instilled himself in my mind, he had in a sense become part of me, so his loss wounded me. Although I believe in a reincarnation sort of thing with the physical Law of Conservation of Energy, this doesn't give me much comfort at this time.
Fuck!
Monday, February 06, 2006
Today, as I walked home through the rain from the bus after getting out of class, my mind, still disconnected a bit from yesterday, and I was thinking. When I got to the apartment I quickly jotted what I had run through my mind:
The ego is not bad. Destroying it is simply using dogma of the world to replace the space the ego occupied. Let the ego get too big and it believes it is the only thing that exists and not the world. The proper way is to find it a proper place. Homogeneity of either extreme is destructive.
The shaman is a key. Existence is a series of keyholes. This is not my world. Being mired so much in this world has caused me to be unable to search for my world and so, like a cancer, I have begun to try to create my world here, so strong is my will toward it. In my world I would not have to change myself or my environment, for all would be in accord. All of my major psychological problems here are merely the will to my world breaking the seams of this world's rule. I need to get out of here and find my world before this pressure tears me apart.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
I had a most wonderful dream last night. I woke up this morning feeling like I really had just returned from a trip to Mars. In the dream, I had just decided that I was going to visit Mars and I went to the airport and got on an airplane and flew there. I enjoyed walking around the Martian cities and talking to the people on Mars. I thought of my friends at home on earth who don't even believe there is life on Mars at all and don't realize how easy it is to get there. They go to their scientists who tell them there is no evidence of life on Mars and that probes have not even found clear signs of bacterial type life. Well, duh, it's like if the Martians sent probes and they all landed in Antarctica. They'll stroll around and be like nope, no life on this planet. They might find some of that frozen bacteria that supposedly is around there but they'll assume that that was the most advanced life on the planet. How was it that I knew so intrinsically and easily that of course there is life there and that it is as simple as getting on an airplane to go there? Did enough other people know as well to keep the flights profitable? Or was it mainly Martians using it for their return flight after visiting earth? But the cities are fantastic. It's fun to walk out on the red deserts looking back on the city. They don't litter on Mars.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
A note I wrote in my notebook during a lecture in my Sensation and Perception class:
Birth is neurogenesis. The struggle to find God is social synaptogenesis
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Something is wrong lately and I'm trying to figure out what it is. All of the sudden I tried to introduce order into my life by making todo lists, planning time allotments for various things I needed to do. Making lists of my homework and actually doing it. Trying to stay caught up with the textbook reading in at least some of my classes.
Great, right? Must mean I'm getting my shit together and I'm starting a successful semester. I don't think so. I think it is more of a sign that my grasp is slipping and I'm falling back on structure as a way to try to keep me going and even that isn't working so well.
Today I actually got prepared for Sanskrit class and did enough lines of translation so that I was confident that for once, if I got called on, I could give the right answer. So, my wish comes true and I get called on. Turns out that about 3/4 of the words I translated wrong and even once he gave me the right translations for the words, I still couldn't make sense of what it said. He'd ask me simple questions like "what case is it?" and suddenly I'd realize why he made it a recommendation not to take the class if you haven't studied a case language before. I guess with an upper level linguistics class with mostly linguistics majors, it shouldn't surprise me that they use a bunch of linguistics terminology to explain things and so I haven't the foggiest idea what he's even talking about some of the time, and that's when it is in english. So, not only did I make a complete ass of myself in front of the class but I realized just how terribly unprepared I am to handle this class and there is still a long ways yet to go.
I have a test tomorrow in one of my psychology classes and tonight I nearly wanted to just get completely drunk and I don't drink much and haven't been drunk since sometime 2004. I managed to stop myself at about 2 glasses of wine and was stressed enough that I didn't feel anything at all from it.
At other, just random times, during the evening my eyes would well up and my throat would choke up as if I'm about to start crying and I'd have no idea why. Maybe I shouldn't have changed my vitamin/herb regimin.
Maybe I'm just trying to take on too much at one time. There are still so many other things I feel like I need to take on in my life though, such as perhaps trying to find some social life. Maybe I should try to talk to some of the people in class I met or my neighbours that I met during the fire. I had the opportunity to do both today quite easily as my neighbours were in the hall talking and addressed me first and a girl in my class that I've met was sitting across from me before class. In both of those instances though, I was in such a funk that I just wanted to be alone. I did talk to one girl in a class this morning before I was awake enough to get blindsided by life again.
I still have to clean the apartment.
I still have to buy a pot and plant my new cactus.
I have a test tomorrow and another on Friday.
Things should be going great for me at this point in my life.
I try so hard at so many things. I read books in my spare time on the bus to try to be more well read and get exposure to more ideas. I read Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha and it fucking blew me away and I recommend it to everyone. Now I'm reading the classic science fiction novel Dune. I have tried to listen to a great variety of music. I try to eat healthy. I even try to cook upon occasion. I try to make my apartment a household. I care for my animals and my plants. I try to figure myself out. I try to deal with my past. I blog. I read the news. I'm going to college. I'm living on my own. I do well with my work.
I do all of these things and more trying to somehow improve myself and make myself worthy of something. I don't know if it is a vestige of my time in mormonism or my feeling like I need to earn friends or relationships or how I define my sense of worth or what it is. I just don't feel like I'm really progressing anywhere despite all of my efforts.
Sometimes I just want to leave it all behind and move off to some exotic locale and start over. As I should have learned from moving to Provo and then to Athens, the idea that you can really start all over in a new place is a myth. So much of life just seems like a big game that you can't escape and you have to play by the rules that other people created.
Sometimes I wish I had a social support group here in Athens. I have too much pride to ask for help most of the time even when I need it. Even if I could overcome this pride I'm not sure that I ever know exactly what help it is I need to even be able to ask for it. Even if I could put it into words, I have nobody here to even ask. That's kind of a scary thought, you know. I'd put myself back into therapy but due to university budget cuts I could only get 4 free sessions on the health plan and I can't afford to pay for any beyond that. Besides, although the last therapist was a great guy and it was nice to have someone to talk to, I don't think I really made any progress. I just need friends here who I can go to for help and who actually help me because they actually give a shit what happens to me.
In a song I was listening today, I heard a line that stuck out in my head. I don't see any connection to what's going on in my life and the line, but hey, maybe it's a subconscious connection. In any case, it's a great line:
'Innocence is pain in disguise'
They said.
Now I believe.
"Walking With Shadows" - Gary Numan