Thursday, July 31, 2008

our pasts are fiction.

Most peoples lives, when looked back on, are fiction. The things we know about out past are mixed in with the stories we tell about them. Your embellishment of what happened melds with the reality, until no one knows the difference. Once it's gone it's gone. This is probably why I can remember the plots of books as if I had lived them. Perhaps that is why when telling stories I never really cared if they were about me or not, as those ones were likely fiction too.
I've spent a while thinking about how my life has been so far. For a Twenty year old I haven't done too badly. If I try to tell the story though, it will be naught but fiction. I don't have a problem with fiction, but I can't state fiction as memoir.
I also want to figure out everything before I put anything in writing. I suppose writing about things would clear them up in my mind, would remove the nebulous slag sticking to my ideas. I suppose I'm just scared. I'm scared of what I'll find. There are so many shitty things that could happen. There is a good chance that some of them might happen too. It's not simply an irrational fear, like the fear of terrorism (especially in the US). It is a fear driven by heritability percentages and evidence from the road I've already traveled.
My Father is bi-polar. Putting it that way is a bit too simplistic, but I haven't the desire to go through an explanation. Bi-polar disorder is one of the most heritable mental illnesses. Look up the percentages because I've forgotten them. I'm afraid that is me too. I'm afraid that more shit will pop up.
I already have enough wrong with me, and enough wrong with the world. I don't need more.
That's what I've been ruminating on. Not obsessively so, but with relative frequency. Writing about it does help though.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Wall-E

I just returned from watching Wall-E. There was only one kid in the theatre. It helps that it was a 9:30 showing, but I was pleased by that. The film was beautiful. The colours were a drab palate of greys and rust reds and dirt browns which evoked the feeling of desperation and foreboding I imagine was intended. The first portion of the movie has no human voices. there is some music and once or twice the robots say their names, however the silence is pervasive. The use of Wall-Es eyes for expression is magnificent. My environmental psych class popped into my head a few times as well, and that was interesting.

there's more to tell but I don't particularly feel like doing so.

Friday, July 25, 2008

a late night and a bike crash.

It's four in the morning (roughly). I gotta say, this is getting annoying. It doesn't make a huge deal of difference since I've little to do tomorrow, but shit. I am going to eat dinner with my parents and manage some money stuff, but that won't be until a bit later so I'll have ample time to sleep. I really don't know what's up with me.

On a completely different note my neck is sore. I think it's from this bike crash I had on Wednesday. I was riding my bike a bit too fast, and the streetlight was turning yellow. A car was turning left coming from the other direction, and I was parallel with a car in my lane. The fellow turning left saw the other car, but not me, so he proceeded to take his left. I was going too fast to really stop efficiently because I had been speeding up to make it through the light. by the time I got to the intersection I was confronted with his trunk area. I turned right as hard as I could so I was going the same direction as the car I struck and I hit the car, ricocheting off at roughly a fourty five degree angle. My bicycle and I flew into the air and I landed on my back (and my messenger bag, thank god) about two metres away from where I hit the guy. The wind was knocked out of me pretty badly. The guy got out of the car to ask how I was doing and all that and I couldn't really respond with no wind. I told him I was fine besides that though. We waited around for the police so we could have it on record if anything happened, just to cover our asses. He was a really nice guy, I'm sorry I ran into his car. I found I was bleeding in three places, an abrasion on my elbow another on my left hand, and a geartooth shaped hole in my right calf from the sprocket. The sprocket hole (or chain tattoo as some call them) by far bled the most, though it hurt the least. I later found that I had three or four (perhaps five?) abrasions on my back. None of the stuff was too bad, nor was it anything I hadn't had happen to me before. My shoulder (right) is a bit sore but my range of motion isn't hindered and movement is fine so It doesn't seem to be serious. My neck is sore too. I think its from the shock of me holding it up off the ground so vigorously. I wasn't wearing a helmet see. This is because research supports the idea that riding with a helmet is in fact more dangerous in the presence of cars because they crowd you. I've just been going by whatever the most valid well constructed studies have found. anywho, I was defensive in how I landed, though little of it was conscious, and so I didn't hit my head, and all that's sore now are the things listed above. It's a bit annoying, but not hugely so. I can't say I'm not pleased that I get to be all hardcore. Sadly on the same day one of my friends upstaged me by getting in a motorcycle accident (he's ok, because helmets on motorcycles are infact a Brilliant idea) his accident wasn't as intense as mine, but he passed out and has two black eyes so he gets automatic credit.

Monday, July 21, 2008

weird sleep strikes again

my weirdness in regards to sleep schedule has struck once again. it is five thirty in the morning and I'm not yet a sleep. The sun is very close to coming up. I didn't wake up until relatively late today, but that doesn't explain all of it. I've been living on a schedule where my days are a bit longer than everyone else. It seems like I just tack on a few extra hours here and there and end up getting out of sync. It's also gotta be partly because I haven't been going to work and forcing myself into that schedule. I've just been feeling really excitable too. It's odd. That's the fucking problem with being up at five thirty though, I can't really think properly. I can think quickly but things are working in the correct order, or whatever it is that isn't clicking. I'm going to put off more posts until my head is more clear.

Friday, July 18, 2008

the persistence of memory.

Today during a huge cleaning spree, (likely driven on by a bit of mania and a lack of meds but that's another story) I found that the power cord to my printer is the same as the one missing from my old computer monitor. That was all that had been stopping me from using my old computer for the fun of it. My old computer is a beast and I its Frankenstein. running parts are held together with duct tape, everything is relatively jerry rigged, and I love it.
This computer helped to get me thorough highschool and that year of psuedo college/senior year of high school.
I plugged it in and everything worked fine. I was very pleased because I'd done nothing to it for nigh two years. The computer is a blast from the past. I opened up the music player to hear lovely sounds of my youth. There was so much stuff on there that I hadn't been able to transfer previously. Eventually I'll get to it, but now I'm just revelling in music I'd forgotten or lost. I also love the games and poorly written poems and songs laying about on there.
The songs and poems aren't all bad, but some of them are certainly atrocious. I'm not going to say whether my writing has gotten better, but I garauntee that my editing eye has gotten better. \
I'm enjoying this. I listened to some music I love and haven't listened to as of late for one or another reason, Some Dashboard Confessional, I Voted for Kodos, The Wedgewoods, some older NOFX, some old Catch 22. and some songs just sound better sitting infront of the big ol screen and rocking out. I'm pretty sure it has to to with ties to memory and situation and all of that stuff. It's just so bad ass to rock out to some chiodos in front of the computer. I've been eating it up.
I've also been reading Swan's Way, by Proust for a while now and just passed the scene regarding how the taste of madelline cookie dipped in lime flower tea brought back the vivid memory of his childhood in combray. Sitting infront of the computer rocking out to Chiodos, watching out for things that might break if I am not careful enough brought back a lot of the good memories from highschool. It also did something similar to what Proust discribed, it made me feel that perhaps the time spent in my room infront of the computer was the only time which existed in that stretch. Proust says it as such,

"And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night and revived old memories of combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad as its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular pyramid and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play, for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts which I should have recalled would have been prompted only by and exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shows us of the past preserve nothing of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead."

I'll let Proust have the next to last word as he says things so well.
Hopefully light was shed.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The orgin of my writing voice.

I ran into an essay by Kurt Vonnegut about style, and one of the points of advice got me to thinking. The point of advice went something like this. Vonnegut writes best when writing like the kid from Illinois he is. Joyce writes best when writing like a Dubliner. Twain Writes best when sounding like a man of the Mississippi. Ones orgin is the basis of their best writing voice. I haven't been able to think of an example refuting this. Saul Bellows sounds like a Jew from Chicago, and that is part of why he's so great. When I write I don't know what I sound like.
That's not a function of my writing being convoluted, though that has been a problem. I'm pretty sure it's more a function of my personal influences being so nebulous. I don't just write like a boy from the mountains of northern California, nor do I just write like a boy raised partly in Japan. My influences are such that my writing doesn't fit a single accepted form of prose. I have a weird way of speaking in which anachronisms from my parents generation, sentence structure from Japan, the earnest simple speak of the mountains, and the odd turns of phrase used in my voluminous reading are melded. It's hard for me to divine my influences.
One good example of this is simply in my speech. When talking I use lots of idioms that are antiquated. I don't realise no one has heard them. I always think them to be normal phrases, but am corrected, or met with a blank stare. This is how it is with weird little turns in my speech. I don't know what is odd. I know how other's speech differs from mine, but I sure as hell don't quite know what is up with mine. I look at all speech through the lens of what I've read and what I myself say. It's just natural.
It would be interesting if someone could pick out what was specifically different about the way I write or speak. I know a lot of what I write is either dull or constructed in a normal stylistic manner, but there's something there that isn't at parr. I suppose it's more odd that that is the way I speak too. The odd turns of phrase and awkward sentence structure pervade my speech.
If I figure out what's going on I'll let it be known, though this is rather unlikely.
until next rant.

ahh, near sorted.

dealing with my insurance company wasn't so bad, nor was getting a new tyre. I'm pleased with the interactions and it didn't take a huge chunk of my day or anything. I'm looking forward to getting back to work, and hopefully this won't but a huge dent in my already dented finances. Not something to really worry about though, things are like to get sorted soon.

Frustration and a weird sleep schedule.

My sleep cycle has been drastically perverted. My car has been in disrepair, and so I haven't been going to work, which has changed my schedule a whole lot. This isn't a bad thing, but it proves to me that Ideally I live at a slightly different pace. I know that I work best if I am awake for about seventeen hours. I can go more or less depending on how things are. This would work great if sleeping eight hours were my normal set up, but I'm pretty sure it isn't I'm pretty good with at least ten hours.
None of this is for sure and I might take a log of when I sleep and all of that sometime, but it seems that the normal schedule doesn't quite fit for me. On that note, it's seven fourty in the morning and I'm still awake. I woke up sometime around seven pm yesterday after a few fitful bouts of wakefulness. I'm going to go off and get my car fixed, and deal with the world disliking me. It's nice having these things occur at what is really the end of my day. I don't feel like dealing with anything but, I don't really have a choice now do I.
I'm also not happy that I'm unlikely to see Julie this weekend, as she's got other engagements. I don't like being apart from her for so long. Having had to put up with months of it doesn't make the weeks that I'm putting up with now hugely better. All I really want is to be in the same damn place, but I can't do that without shirking responsibility. I really can't shirk my responsibility if I want to be at all Fair to Julie. It's quite the catch twenty two. I need to be with Julie to really do her justice. To do that I have to shirk responsibility, which doesn't do her justice.
It's rather annoying. I haven't had a good complain in a while, and I guess I'm just getting it all out at once. I'm glad that I'm not crazy, but I definitely am not happy about the rest of the world giving me trouble. I know other people have it worse, and I've kept my complaints to myself (well mostly) for just that reason, but I've had enough.
Oh well. there's naught that I can do at the moment. I'll figure it out.Or maybe I won't, that's to be seen. I just have to keep it up and hope that things will work out.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

dealing with people can just be too much fucking trouble. I understand a lot of how they work, and about why things happen the way they do with people, but fuck, how to deal with them sure is opaque. I wish everything were just more straightforward. I'm always relatively striaghtforward, and try to avoid bullshit, why can't everyone else?
So what sparked this was a conversation, or rather a bit of talking and a lot of sitting in silence, with my girlfriend. If I didn't love her this would have pissed me off. As it is I'm just a little annoyed and perplexed. I try to be helpful, I listen to complaints over which I have no control, and I give what advice I can. I know advice can't be given for every situation, and I know that not everything can be fixed, but trying to understand everything just seems like an obvious must to me.
I can only deal with that which I can observe, or which I'm told of. Silence doesn't improve my understanding of anything. I don't think it's alright for her to get all pissy just because I don't understand what's going on when I haven't any information. Oh well. I'm not particularly able to assess the situation as of this time, so I'll leave it be, but I can't help but still be a bit bothered. Whatever, I'll figure it out eventually. I just wish I were with her so I could pick up those signs I can't over the phone, so I could understand better what was going on, so when she talked with me, I could stop when she was annoyed, or leave, or otherwise do something effective.
I just feel so impotent at this distance, or any distance really.