Wednesday, March 29, 2006
So this morning I went in to the orthodontist for yet another appointment. The appointment began as usual with them looking at my teeth and then they pulled out the slightly painful sander machine that they use to manicure teeth and cleaned up one of my teeth. Then they left me sitting for a little while and when they came back, the woman asked "you wouldn't mind if we took your braces off today, would you?". My initial thought was of course bafflement and I asked if my teeth were even done yet. After her assuring me that they are, she proceeded to remove them. Sometimes it is annoying that I am sensitive to medical treatments as I got paranoid as each bracket came off and especially as the bands on the back teeth were wiggled off. I was utterly convinced that they were going to accidentally pull one of my teeth out or punch a hole in one of them. When she finished, I felt in a daze as if my body had been preparing for shock, which it likely had. They brought out the sander machine again to clean the glue off of my teeth and I swear that every time they use that thing, the scent is more reminiscent of burning flesh than anything else. I hope never to have them use that thing on me again. So I go back in a week to get the retainer which I have wear more or less for the rest of my life.
The only bad thing about having them off is that I didn't get more time to play with my method of eating hard boiled eggs with them that I discovered a few days ago. I could put the egg to my teeth and twist it using the braces brackets as drill bits and thus eat it slowly and make a neat looking pit in the egg as I did so. Oh well, maybe I shouldn't have been so amused by that discovery afterall.
The temperatures lately have been annoying as winter struggles to hold on and the night temperatures sometimes fall to freezing which necessitates my carrying all of my plants in and out on those nights. It seems to be getting much warmer now so hopefully I can leave them outside and they will grow more too. I guess I didn't ever get around to posting about my new plants on here. I transplanted my flowers (Curt, my "garden") into 4 separate larger pots instead of the smaller tray that they were in, I used that old tray to plant some milkweed seeds (the only kind of plants that Monarch butterfly young can eat) which still haven't sprouted yet, and I bought 3 tomato plants, 1 strawberry plant, and 1 cilantro plant, each of which are in their own pots.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
For the record, this post is primarily for myself so that I can get this out and written, however, feed free to read and comment as you wish.
So, a friend that I hadn't heard from in a few months IMs me last night to tell me that he just got out of jail and rehab after an almost fatal overdose on heroin and speed and that he is changing his life.
So, you'd think my reaction would be something along the lines of "Wow, didn't know it'd gotten that bad for you. Glad to hear you are okay and fixing up your life", right?
Well, reality never works out quite that simply, so here is my real, honest reaction to the conversation:
Fuck you for calling me brother and claiming we could tell each other anything and then hiding this problem from me for all of these years.
Fuck you for disappearing for a few months and coming back as a self-righteous prick.
Fuck you for now thinking that all of your lifelong friends are "lost sheep" and that you are on a higher path.
Fuck you for telling me that if I even have an occasional glass of wine then you can't hang out with me at all after I stood by you through everything and most of your other friends rejected you.
Fuck you for rejecting your past interests, clothing, and music as completely negative and devaluing all of the good times we had with those things.
Fuck you for telling us that you love us all but can't be around us.
Fuck you for repeating drilled in, straight society buzzwords and phrases as if it somehow makes you a better person.
Fuck you for your humble and understanding facade masking your self righteousness and slave morality.
Fuck you for trying to destroy or perhaps even destroying even the good parts of yourself from your past that were the reasons we were friends.
Fuck you for joining whatever cult you had to have joined in rehab to cause this change.
I don't feel angry. I feel stabbed in the back.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
As my previous entry hinted at, I am in Amsterdam right now. This computer charges 5 euro per hour for internet access so I need to make this brief and will give a more full trip report when I arrive back home. I will probably be leaving here on Friday if the flight loads are permitting. I had hoped to leave Saturday to get as much of this blessed town as possible, however, the loads are not quite that gracious. Besides being damned cold, this town is wonderful. Today we saw just how much variety there can be in one town. We went to the south of the town to see the Van Gogh museum and Vondelpark and the feel of the town was different from the Red Light District (a whole district, not just the streets with the windows) where we are staying. In the latter, there are coffee shops all over the place and more of the poor, backpacker, vice driven crowd. In the south canal region it is more wealthy and has many more of the museums and straight society. Oh yes, the canals... they are every few blocks and are quite fun. I've always liked towns like Paris and Zurich that have rivers running through them and the canals feel kind of like that. The architecture, while not terribly, terribly variable, is quite beautiful and does vary a bit depending on the part of town you are in. We have taken many photos, some of which I hope to share upon our return.
Friday, March 10, 2006
So, because I don't want to not have a trip, I've been trying to make other plans. So far the leading, but not fully finalized destination is Amsterdam.
There is one thing in particular about this destination that gives rise to some thinking. That is the fact that they have legalized prostitution there. I am extremely unlikely to actually use this service, but suspending normal paths of reason is useful for a little thought experiment.
Let's suppose for a moment that I did use it. Amongst negative effects that it could have is the stigma attached to having visited a prostitute and a perhaps unfulfilling experience by losing my virginity to one without the bounds of love. On the other hand, with my penchant for thinking too much and taking things too seriously, sex has become some other-worldly, and more importantly, unattainable thing. With the mormon conditioning deeply ingrained in me, there is also a certain fear and shame associated with sex as well. So, it becomes this grand affair that stirs fear in me. This fear of sexual intimacy could be partially the root of my failure with women romantically as romance often leads to sex if it lasts long enough and so in order to avoid that thing which I am afraid of, I may subconsciously sabotage my efforts with women to ensure that such a frightful situation may never occur. Having sex with a prostitute would then bring sex quickly down to an earthly level. There would no longer be this "great prize" of virginity to worry about and I would see how it is not other-worldly and that it is something that I could, in fact, do without exploding or ceasing to exist. It also carries the potential for growth that doing any act that you have no experience with and are afraid of carries. It would be a serious stretching of my personal comfort zone and its accomplishment would reinforce to my brain that nothing is impossible and that I am entitled and able to have that which anyone else can have and that I am not pariah or unworthy.
On the other hand, not indulging also has its share of mental revelations. A few months ago I got an instant message from some girl in Athens informing me that she was horny and asking whether I might like to come over for a few minutes before she had class. I turned her down. Now, with that as background, suppose that I am walking down a street where there are dozens of girls that for a relatively minimal amount of effort on my part would have sex with me. Once one has been in the situation that one has passed up many real invitations to sex, one can no longer legitimately argue that he is a virgin for lack of opportunity. It also establishes that there do exist circumstances in which he, when offered sex by a beautiful girl, will turn it down. With the girls of the Red Light District, I am, rightly or wrongly, not particularly concerned with the standard fear of the possibility of contracting an STD. So then, it would be neither fear of disease nor lack of opportunity that would be the cause of my continuing state of virginity. It would also indicate that my drive to sex is not simply a drive to sex, but to either something else which sex fills the need of for most people or to sex within more stringent bounds or contexts. Maybe I've been conditioned to want it in marriage or in love, but the prospect of doing it even in those situations fills me with the idea of panic rather than anxious anticipation as it does most people.
Or, is it just the paralyzing fear that could be alleviated by just doing it once?
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Bad News. The trip isn't going to happen as planned. At this point in order to do it I would have to show up at my orthodontist as soon as they open tomorrow and hope they could get me in early, then I would have to drive to Atlanta, fly to Newark, take a train to New York City, get to the Consulate before noon, stay around the city until later that afternoon. That's just to get the visa. That would require missing work tomorrow and friday in addition to the week of spring break. I don't know that I could afford to lose that much. I also don't think I could pack that quick. Between school and trying to plan this thing, I'm exhausted. Even if I tried to go along with the plan as laid out above and I was able to pull it off I would probably be too tired to enjoy the trip at all. There is also the little problem that until I can get with my mother to a military base I am apparently uninsured as far as health insurance and that could have been a problem.
So, now that it has been ruled out, I'll go ahead and spill the details. I was planning to go to Delhi and Agra in India.
So, what now? I didn't have the time or energy to formulate a backup plan and I nearly burned myself out trying to pull this one off. There may still be time to look into other destinations that don't require visas, but either way I need to reenergize my brain before I can even consider planning a new trip much less actually going on it.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Oh why must my trips always turn so complicated? When I went from Salt Lake City to Asheville once, Kenneth especially will remember, I had to go through several extra hops. With my hopeful spring break trip, if I have any hope to make it happen I will have to miss school on Friday to fly to Houston to take care of some administrative measures and if they are unable to pull a same day turnaround, the trip will have to be cancelled. My mom would want me for the day or two between then and departure so I would be taken to Georgetown and then probably have to fly out of Austin instead of Atlanta which adds another flight segment to have to worry about standby loads on (Austin->Houston, Houston->Newark, Newark->My Little Secret). Oh I do hope I can pull it off though!
One of the things I lamented when I started at BYU was the fact that there was no spring break. Now I find myself here many years later with the last spring of my college career quickly coming upon me. Last year I had to stay and work during spring break and if I thought purely in financial ways, this year would be exactly the same. However, the realization that this is the last chance I'll have to have a college spring break vacation and the fact that I will lose flight benefits before next spring compel me to at least try to plan a trip. It won't be a drunken orgy on Florida beaches or a Caribbean cruise or any of those traditional destinations, but hopefully if I can pull it off, it will be my equivalent of that in my own worldview. The flight loads currently look okay, but as most who read this will know, they can very quickly change. As I'd rather not get either your or my hopes up too high since it is still a long shot, I'll abstain from mentioning my top destination until I've gotten more confirmation that it is actually possible.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Today felt remarkably like spring. It was in the lower 70's, sun was out and bright, and the girls donned their spring skirts. That is all shallow observations though and of course my brain would not let me get off that easy. So, here are some of the thoughts the spring-day brought to me:
1. The basic feelings called emotions such as love and hate are not terribly common to feel when one looks at the whole of feelings. Far more common are the unnamed feelings. In my case, these are almost always thought of in relation to moments, places, or experiences. At some moment I will feel a feeling and the only way to describe it to myself is to think back to times when I have felt it before. For example, sometimes I feel like I'm in Utah or the taste of something makes me feel like some time in the past when I tasted some item. Some picture may make me feel like I have on various trips around the world. It may also help one to think of the question "What does Spring feel like?". You may say "happy" or some other basic feeling or combination of them, but that doesn't really capture the essence. You know that winter feels different than spring and when a spring-day like today comes upon you, the feeling you get is often the same feeling you feel when it really is a prototypical spring day.
Feelings tend to dominate the way we perceive the world. We may say that they colour, cloud, or are an integral part of perception, but either way we must concede that it is one major perceptual filter the world goes through before reaching our brain. They often dominate the way we live, dress, or even think. For example, if I am in nature and it is chill outside, I will feel much more nordic. In my brain, these people are germanic and this brings ideas of germanic culture up. I think of scandinavian metal music. I feel like a creature of the night and may dress in darker colours. I may think of things in a much more subconsciously survival-mode due to the cold and dead earth around. In the spring, however, many depressions or broodings are cast aside, and brighter colours come out to play as well as a renewed vigor in life as the world springs back to life.
This next part is something I very often find myself having trouble accepting. Feelings are not voluntary; they are not a part of the conscious mind. I struggle with the bipartite nature of the concept "I". There is one part that is the conscious mind; that is my thinking, my reasoning, and that part over which I have control. There is also that part which is outside of my control. This includes simple things like basic physical build and genetics. More importantly, however, it includes feelings. If I like something, it is from the uncontrolled I. If I feel something, it is from the uncontrolled I. I did not choose to like something and I did not choose to feel something. I should not always feel ashamed or guilty of what I like or how I feel because I did not choose it. I have consciously tried to get myself to like things before; it doesn't work. It is possible to put yourself into situations which will cause you to feel a certain way, however, this is only an indirect control. I am X does not inherently imply choice. Without choice of these identity characteristics, there cannot really be responsibility for them and thus I should not feel guilt. If someone asks me what my favourite music is or what food I like or what colours I like or whether something annoys me, why do I shirk from answering. How can I possibly be ashamed of something over which I had no choice in defining? Some will argue this point with me and claim that we can teach ourselves things and desensitize ourselves to other things and in some cases they are right, but at some level of identity, I feel like we (particularly I) need to accept that there are parts of the idea of I over which we have absolutely no control and to stop trying to control those things and to stop feeling as if we must feel guilty or inadequate for the value of those things since they are no measure whatsoever of the conscious self.
Also, when I think of feelings in this concept as unnamed experiences, the idea of girls talking about their feelings sounds unbelievably appealing to me because this interpretation implies shared experience rather than simply chit-chat about love, anger, hate, etc. as one might commonly think of "talking about your feelings" as. If any women happen to read this entry, might they comment for me on which interpretation is more valid?
2. If the horoscope signs have any validity, it could simply be that the feeling of being that is present in different environments during formative times in infancy leaves a lasting impression and neural framework. Many switches will be set in the infant's brain during early days, weeks, and months. An infant born during the winter will surely be exposed to different stimuli and environment than an infant born during the spring. It would be difficult to say that some of the foundational parts of perception and thus personality will not develop from and use as a reference these early experiences. The brain rapidly forms new synaptic circuits during early life and the feeling of the time may very well sculpt them to some degree. I wonder if anyone has ever analyzed the signs and the general feeling of the time that directly comes after the target times to see if there isn't some correlation between the two. It would also be interesting to see if the horoscope type systems differ in their interpretation of the months by culture due to geographical and climactic differences which would give different experiences at the same time on the calendar. I would buy this theory of horoscopes much more quickly than anything having to do with the alignment of the stars or whatnot.
3. While stagnation is simply remaining in one state of feeling, change cannot be thought of as simply the move from one state of feeling to another as it appears on the surface. In fact, the primary value of change is that it serves as a catalyst of ideas and activity. Old ways are upset and new ways are added. The brain must somehow reconcile these changes and in the shift between feeling-mindsets, the byproduct is often a surge of ideas. Sometimes these ideas can shift entire paradigms of a person's perception and lead to a different mode of being. Throughout my bumpy gender exploration journey, I have been quite unwilling to stray from my path of exploration. Today as a spring-day catalyzed some other thoughts I'd been having and gave me insight into an alternative I might pursue that previously would have been abhorrent to me. It is quite simply to stop trying to push towards femininity and to nurture a little expression of masculinity just to see what happens. For example, I have tried and tried and I cannot get my arms to thin a bit and they would certainly not pass as female in the size they are now. So, I may just do some pushups and such to try to sculpt and tone them and not worry about girth. I'm even considering replacing the purse with something like a postal bag. The idea is not a rejection of my previous efforts or even the end of a phase, but simply an exploration in another direction just to see what happens. One thought that led to this idea was the fact that prior to coming to Athens, I had no significant alternative gender feelings to my knowledge. I have rationalized many times how they could have been there but buried and while that may have been the case, it isn't important. What is important is the right now and the future. When I leave Athens, all alternative gender feelings may well leave me as I start a new chapter in life. So very many things change when you make clean breaks and start new chapters as when I left BYU to come to Athens and so I really cannot predict. The other thing that led to this idea was the spring-day. Ever since I left BYU, I've been struggling to develop myself, obtain experiences, and make myself whole enough that I feel presentable after having come from the raisin factory of mormonism. As one of those byproduct thoughts of the spring-day, I actually now feel that with some minor modifications, I may be able to obtain some social favour, perhaps even romantic. I will not revert all of my changes, nor will I reject the knowledge I have gained, nor do I preclude learning and experimenting more in the feminine directions. Amongst the things that will certainly stay are the hair and the earrings. I simply won't force it and will concentrate my efforts in another direction just to see what happens and get new input to evaluate. If I don't like the results or it doesn't work out, I can return to my contemplations as I have been in thus far.