Friday, February 27, 2009

a contemplation on memory

My posting has been very very sporadic of late. My computer died and I've yet to get it fixed. Ah the life of a college student. I have been writing every day though. There are a lot of interesting things happening to me, and though the presumption is a bit egotistical, I bet you'd like to hear about them.

I'm on new drugs. Taking Seroquel. We're still working up to a normal dose but I feel better and friends are taking note. The fact that I can actually chose what to work on rather than being at the whim of mood and inspiration is very odd. I've been taking time to get used to not being nervous about the next coming episode. There's just a whole lot of stuff that I'm still getting used to.

I could explain more, but I've been thinking other interesting things that are more interesting to everyone else. I don't feel so hopeless anymore. Though I still don't believe in a god and I still don't really feel like life has any meaning, I haven't been feeling so hopeless. I haven't felt as blown about on the winds of time and space.

All the things I wrote while I felt that way show a lot. I don't know how accurate or inaccurate the things I though were, but it's certainly interesting to see what I was thinking in the past. It's a different sort of revision now. Before this looking back at things I had written was a study in differing writing style and growth as a human being, now it's more like reading things written by an entirely different person who I happen to have the memories of.

All of this has also given me a differing view on the way memory works. Of course I've been taking courses on exactly that topic as well, so I know better how it actually works, but I've also had these philosophical thoughts about it. That sureness, and lack of sureness that memory has is something I'm rather enthralled by. The fact is that we know only our current state. What is now is all that is. I think I can finally finish reading Swan's way, and the other volumes of "À la recherche du temps perdu" (or Remembrance of things past) The insights that it has about memory, and its sheer size are a few things that interest me.

I've had some of those Proustian thoughts myself. The ones about memory being held in time isolated from other events. It's all of interest to me more now than it was before, because being well and remembering not being well is a surreal experience. The things remembered take on a movie like quality.

I remember tics and gestures I used to do, and I remember being curled up in the foetal position on a bed, but I don't always feel like those people are me. That's the leap that we all make, that these things we remember really happened to us. It's an easy leap to make, and logically solid, but it still is a leap. That's where all of this coalesces into one problem.

It's the same damn question we as a species have been asking since the advanced development of our forebrain. Who am I. If my memories don't define me, because they are only me in as much as I admit they are, then what does? If my actions now become but memories later, then are they important either?

That's the thing. I can't really say if the zen living in the moment is really the best way to go or if the western Sartrean existentialist equivalent is a solution. I don't know if there is a positive thing about our existences, and I don't know if now that I'm well enough to continue on in a way that isn't horrible tumultuous I'll have enough good to outweigh the bad.

That's the problem, the answers don't come. In what I study, the brain and its workings, I don't get to find out what meaning there might be. I'm given more things to mull over, but I'm never given a large number of explanations. That's where I hit a wall. These questions that we ask are nigh unanswerable.

I'm awfully tempted to take the Wittgenstein view that we're just asking the wrong questions. That's a significant idea. Asking what it all means may not be a question that makes sense. An object doesn't mean anything. A state of existence doesn't mean anything. We associate our words with semantic quatility, do we also then associate what they refer to with semantic quality? I'd guess that we do. We want to construct meaning out of our memories, and out of the objects in our world, and out of our lives, but the fact is that meaning may not be applicable to these entities. That's where we may fail, this application of a human construction on something beyond us, be it life, or memory, or whatever else.

Monday, February 23, 2009

lack of posting, explained.

Haven't been posting as much lately mostly because my computer died. I do apologise for that. I'm not sure how long it will be until my computer is fixed, but I have been twittering more because my cell phone still works. so if you still want to hear from me I'd suggest going through the backlogs of this blog or going to my twitter at www.twitter.com/patch615

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Finally Finding out who I am: Living on an even tack

I'm on an even tack. It's unusual and wonderful. I haven't felt this normal in a long long time. I'm so happy that things are good.

I have a few things to talk about, though I really could (and would be more than happy to) go on all day about how my new drugs are affecting me.

It's been a weekend of papers and music. I played a show today with one of my bands, and this weekend I started another band. It's pretty exciting. I need to get back on recording my solo stuff, but I haven't really had the time.

I've really been enjoying all the creative stuff I've been able to do as of late. It's nice. I was worried that my new drug would hinder my creativity, or just change it in some odd way, but it really has made things better. I can create at will now. Before it required passion, or inspiration, now it just works.

That's something I've never known, being able to do something just by working at it. I always was able to do some things naturally and simply couldn't do the others. It's very odd finding that I'm actually able to change my abilities by exerting effort. It's weird being able to write a paper without having some spark behind the writing.

My friends have noticed the difference too. I was worried about giving up alcohol, and to a certain extent weed, but frankly, I know I'm not going to miss it. Another plus is the fact that one of my drinking buddies from when I was drinking a WHOLE lot, also has quit drinking because of the drugs he's on, so we can not drink together. It'll be interesting.

I'm feeling good. Even the stuff that's a cause for anxiety, debt, schoolwork, being single, isn't nearly as bad as it ever was. It feels good to feel good and not worry about the consequences.

It's nice loving music again. Before music was what got me through. I didn't love it the same way. It was like a relationship you have because if you didn't have that person to lean on you wouldn't be able to support yourself. Now it's one of those things where I'm not playing music because I need to, because I couldn't live without it, I'm playing because I love it. Of course I still feel like I need to play, I still have music coming out of me all the time, and just can't hold it back, but it's not so urgent. I can play music without the need for catharsis.

That cathartic turn that writing and music took for me is something I'm glad to be over. Writing to excise demons is always a study in futility. Those demons remain, and the things you write don't bring anything positive into the world about you. The writing is flat, and bitter, and full of the ugliness that language so brilliantly can display.

Language and writing can be so ugly and harsh when used that way. Music too can take on that edge. Music not made as a remembrance of what it felt like to be in a world that was ending, but which was played because playing it would make the world end.

I haven't known who I am without these vast fluctuations in mood. In the mountains I was stifled and so wasn't able to feel who I might be in less confining circumstances, and once I got here I went mad. I've never fully figured out who the hell I am. I know some things about me that couldn't be suppressed by depression, and couldn't be exaggerated away by mania. Those things stick out, but I'm still in a mode of self discovery.

Some would argue that who you are under pressure, in the worst of the worst, is the essence of your being, if that's the case I better know who I am than most people ever will. However, I think that who I will be in the rest of my life (drugs willing) is really about when I'm well.

It's such a trip finding out what is real, what isn't. It's so odd finding out which things really pique my fancy, and which were just infatuations enhanced by mania. It's great finding out that I really am this driven, exciting person I thought I was in mania, but without the arrogance and over reaching. It's also great finding that I'm not the waste of air, and paper, and space, and resources, my depressions had me so convinced I was.

I'm here, and I am finally me.

This is my first chance to find out what makes up my world, and what I am. I feel reborn, with some of the ties I had before, debts, and friends, and school, and memory, but that is no more than I was given at my birth. I am new. The me that will walk out my door tomorrow is going to be a different me than has walked out that door hundreds of times before.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

An excerpt from my notebook.

This is an excerpt from one of my current notebooks

"The world is organised in such a way that people like me (whatever that means) are noted for honour but nor for support. The value of art of course may be changing, but as things have been and may continue to be for a long time coming, I am valued in one way and forsaken in another.

I just make note of this because there is still a heavy stigma regarding mental illness, but the social enthusiasm that mania brings as well as the creativity are rewarded. Like everything else in my world this exhibits a very apparent duality, or polarity of things.

I'm still not sure if I prefer Manic-depression to Bipolar as a term for what I've got. Both make sense, and both are valid. Bipolar just seems like it doesn't fully explain it, unless of course you already think of Major Depressive Disorder as Unipolar depression. Of course only psychologists and crazy folks think of it that way. Which is why I feel Manic-depression is more descriptive to the lay person.

All of it is semantics though. Not to say Semantics aren't important, Just that getting to the semanticity of a single word neglects some serious complexities in the disorder itself."

"It seems like being mentally ill is all I ever write about anymore. What happened to my other interests? I used to write varied things about varied characters but as of late all that comes out is the examinations and laments about my head. I know how much it has affected my view of the world, but it did not remove all my other interests. What happened?"

Friday, February 13, 2009

Preparing for Normality.

My head has felt a little different these last couple of days. I started on a new drug (new to me, not new in the other sense) to sort out my brain. It seems like it's working. I haven't been having the crying spells that had been cropping up this last week.

I just feel normal. That's so unusual for me. I don't feel like there's any serious cognitive impairment, but every once in a while my eyes just sort of loose focus. It's not like the world goes blurry, because everything is clear, my processing just goes out of focus. So I could be looking out at some trees, and the trees will still have defined edges, but the visual image doesn't have any connection to anything else. It's like all I'm getting is the feed, and none of the associations.

That doesn't happen often enough for it to be a serious problem. I do need to start going to bed earlier on this drug, it's pretty sedating. I always used to have trouble falling asleep, so going to bed at 2, let alone as early as midnight, was kind of the only option. There are a few things I need to get used to.

I won't be drinking much alcohol anymore. My dad is on the same stuff, and I know that alcohol affects him a whole lot more now. Drinking the way I used to is just out of the question. Given, I used to drink pretty prodigiously. I like alcohol for alcohol's sake though, so I'll still be able to enjoy a snifter of Irish whiskey, or a bottle of good beer. It will just seem like I had far more beer or whiskey than I did. I suppose I'm fine with that. I'm willing to give up drinking for a modicum of sanity. Shit, even if it just rids me of the depressions I'll happily give up drinking. The problem I keep hitting is figuring out how to deal with social situations. parties are exculsively drinking affairs, and frankly they're rather boring while sober. I really don't like parties, and I really do like alcohol, so there's that. I'll likely just be the DD a bit more often when my friends want to go out drinking for the evening. And I do have a rather good excuse. It'll just be a little hard to explain considering how much I drank before.

Of course all of that is probably a good thing. I will miss it, but I am most certainly NOT going to miss depressions.

I'm really hoping my creativity doesn't suffer, but as if to prove that it won't, I'm working on a concept album. This isn't like some of my other projects, started in mania's and never followed through with. I think it may be good. I'm being a little backwards about it, Lyrics first. I've always gone the other way around. I feel like that might produce interesting results. I'm not sure if I want to do it alone or get some friends involved. I ultimately just want to get it done as soon and well as possible, but I don't really know how that'll work.

I'll likely write the songs and then see if my band likes them. They'd have to like all of them for it to work, but if they did that would be nice, I could use drums and a trombone in the songs I think. It's still a major work in progress, I've only the lyrics for one and a half of the songs. It's exciting though. It's interesting learning to work when neither despondent nor ecstatic.

I spent so much time getting used to, and understanding my mental issues that adjusting to a normal life is hard. It won't be exactly a normal life of course, but that doesn't make it less daunting. I haven't ever really been normal. My youth was spent in a very small town, up in the mountains, in this very specific microcosm of a world. my adulthood thus far has been spent grapling with mental illness. All the while I've never quite felt like there are people like me. I take a sort of Shikatagnai attitude about that, but it still is something to note.

Shikataganai is a Japanese phrase meaning "It can't be Helped" is an admission of futility, but not in a defeatist manner

Normal is going to be weird. Normal is not something I've ever truly experienced, and anything close to that is going to be foreign. I don't really know what to expect. I'm not apprehensive, but I am unsure. It will be interesting to find out how I take to whatever bit of normality I can grasp.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Debt, stress, and a sense of futility.

Sometimes I really hate my life. There are quite a few things that are pissing me off right now. It's usually money that worries me the most. Not because of the credit crunch, though that isn't very helpful. It's all because of things in my past, recklessness being one of those things.

The need for money to do the things I want is rather infuriating. I live simply, I try to be frugal. I live in a small apartment, and try to get my rent in on time. I don't buy things I don't need, and I recently got a job. So why do I still have these goddamned problems. I am simply tired. Tired of paying for things, tired of having to go through hoops just to exist.

my skills aren't of any serious worth. I can chop wood, I can make things, I can scavenge. I can write, and Play music. None of these things pays the damn rent. None.

So I'm stuck with no ability to really survive without the patronage of others. I am talented, but that doesn't get me anywhere. The things I do aren't valued by our societal structure, and I am left in debt.

I don't presume that I am the only one who has these sorts of troubles, but I only know my own troubles, so they are of what I write. That's the problem.

My fucking life. When some things are good, others are bad. Or rather things are always bad, I just don't always know it.

I feel like I burden the people around me. That's mostly because I do. It's hard for the people around me, and I'm tired of doing that. It hurts them and it hurts my pride, and my pride is one of the few things I'm sure I've got. God knows I'd give up my pride if it would give me the things I need, like money, or security, or any number of things.

So that's where I am. I don't have any existential depression, just this new fucking stress about money, and about being able to live on my own. It's an untenable situation.

Like I've already said, I'm just tired. Just too fucking tired. I'm gonna keep on going, and I'm going to try to fix things, but there's only so much I can do. I don't have much control over all of this, and that is disconcerting. I am at the will of things beyond my control. That's not the way I would like to be. I don't want to be blown about on the winds like this. I want to have some control, or to at least believe I do.

I don't want to be the victim of fate. I just want to be. I'm not free to live. That we have to pay to live is a clear problem with this fucking world. You cannot live without money in the western world.

NO matter how smart I am, or how skilled I am, the same constraints apply. The same constraints bind me into these knots I can't untie.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Have I been defeated?

I don't know why I'm doing two posts tonight. There's not anything particular that's driving it's way out of me. I don't have some hidden demon to let free onto the page. All that is unique to this night is a new bottle of pills, a few due dates for the morrow, and a very ambivalent mood.

I feel beaten. I don't think of taking my new meds as a failure. Recognising something is wrong and dealing with it as soon as I have is remarkable. I just feel defeated. It's not specific, nor do I have much real sense of how to combat the feeling.

So much of me just wants to be over with all the extra stuff I have to deal with. Grades, school work, work, money, meds,

If I could just be out in the woods with a garden to tend and other food I could restock periodically, and just write and play music, I'd be happy. Well I say that, butwould I be happy? I don't know. It's an impossible condition, that woodsy condition I talk about. Sometimes I feel like I'm more tired than curious, and I'd rather take a rest in the woods of the US or in an apartment somewhere instead of going on to ask the big questions I want to ask.

Sometimes I wish I could give away my ambitions to people more equipped to use them. Give my ideas and intelligence to someone who wasn't infuriated by the asinine nature of administration, and of money. I wish I could ask my questions, and do my experiements without all these intermediate steps.

Find some mentor and work under them, and then work my way up. No classes that teach me only what I already know, or could find out rather easily. No more money spent in the service of gaining information I already have. Could I just start my experiments now? I have them designed, I have my ideas, and I know what I need to do to make them testable, and to determine their validity. I know what I need to do, why do I need to prove myself for so fucking long.

I am already proven. I'm just so tired. Of the way the world is. Humans construct things, and I don't want to deal with our constructions. So much of what I have to do is separating the stupid human creations from that which was there before.

That's so infuriating.

I'm going to take my pill, and go to bed. If it works my days will start to be level. And then I'll start taking more, and I won't go into those crying spells I've been having. I will alter my chemistry until I am able to move along in a way that the rest of humanity can deal with. I will conform myself to the stupid structures and restrictions of those around me rather than forging my own ground. I am defeated. It wasn't a deceptive feeling. I am changing myself for the world around me. I am changing to better fit into this world of artificiality that I so vehemently eschew.

I am defeated, but nonetheless, tonight I will take my pill and go to sleep. I will say goodnight to the me which is at odds with this world and will wake up muted.

I will be muted. And I will be well enough to control certain things, but I will be muted, and shallow, and like those around me. I will be well, and I will be as the world needs me to be.

God how I hate that idea.

I will take my pill, and I don't know who I'll wake up as. I'm hoping I'll wake up as me, a little less sad, and blown about, a little less likely to cry for no reason, but I don't know.
I don't know if I will wake up defeated, or wake up simply modulated.

an Essay evening.

my left arm still aches just a little bit from the bloodwork I had done today. It's kind of cool looking at the little needle hole in the crook of my elbow. Today has been fast, and slow, and everywhere at once. I wrote a paper for a class. It's mostly done, but I've been feeling so uncreative lately, and I don't think this essay is one of my better ones. I don't know how to make it better though. That's always hard for me, finding that my writing isn't where I want it to be. How hard some things come is worse just because of how easy writing comes normally.

I start taking new beds today. It'll be my first time taking meds for bipolar disorder. I'm looking forward to certain things not happening. No more crushing depressions, no more of the aftermath from wild manias. Of course I'm afraid that some of my creativity will be extinguished, but I don't really believe that it'll be a problem. I just have to learn how to live on a normal even mood. I've never really done routine, or when I've tried it's been completely subverted. That's something new, learning to live on an even level. I look forward to knowing how everyone manages.

I don't look forward to not drinking. I won't miss marijuana, the social bits perhaps, but the rest not so much. But alcohol I love. I love being sane more, so I'll be fine, but I find it ironic that I'm going to stop my serious drinking before I turn twenty one. A good whiskey or a good beer is incomparable. That's not to say I don't try. Of course I can still have a little from time to time, but the separation from the ability to get drunk is pretty marked.

Even with normal moods I'm going to be different. That's something that takes some getting used to. A little bit of medicine doesn't make me normal, it just makes me a bit better. I'm not saying that I'd like to be normal, but I would like to know what it's like. As of now I have no reference point.

This whole thing comes easily. This post has been easy to write, easy to sit down to. When I try to write these graded and marked things the words don't come out as well. It's because I have to constrain my thoughts to some single topic. I can write on some topic, but I can't remove the subjectivity and passion from it. A research paper is fine, because I have all these facts to fall back on, and it's just a thought process. I can also write blog posts and essays and stories filled with whatever it is that defines my papers. There's something I can put into it, but when I have to write some paper making a subjective analysis I just can't do it. I can't pretend to be objective about something so subjective. That's where the problem lies.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

there are more things in heaven and earth than are imagined in your philosophy

listing grievances or putting out a log of my existence never feels very satisfying. I don't like to wallow in my own life. I spend enough of my time having to deal with that which surrounds me, no reason to push it into my writing as well. It's sometimes unavoidable though.

I'd rather write about characters who aren't me. I'd rather tell stories about people who have different problems, and different proclivities. Somehow that's not what occurs. The only character I truly know is myself, and even that comes into doubt. So I write about myself again and again trying to dissect the contradictory person I am. It's a troublesome process. All I ever feel is drained.

Self criticism also only goes so far. How long before railing against my ills and insufficiencies makes those things the centre of my being? It's all in a mess of self doubt that I can't quite reconcile with anything else.

Where does all my self awareness get me? If I cannot change that which I feel, and think by being aware of my own insufficiencies, does it matter that I know? Does knowledge ever make up for anything?

God how I wish I knew. I feel like I would rather be fully aware of a tragic fate than uncertain with a possibility of happiness. All this damn waiting and uncertainty makes for such a bother. The things that I was so deeply attracted to in high school seem to have correlates now. What I loved in Shakespear makes more sense for my current state than for my state in adolescence. My fascination with Hamlet, and with Othello, these tragic characters, makes far more sense when looking at who I have become than when looking at who I was.

In Hamlet's famous soliloquy towards the middle of the play he hits on something really poignant, for reference I'll add some of the preceding matter. Mind you this is from memory and I haven't read Hamlet for a number of years, so forgive any inaccuracies:

to be or not to be, that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a see of troubles and by opposing end them. To die, To sleep, perchance to dream but in that sleep of death what dreams may come

That's the thing that always sticks out, that undiscovered country is what holds us back from death, and even from the future. We prefer those evils which we know to those we have no accounting of. Even an improvement which is foreign scares many, simply for its newness.

It is a fundamentally human trait, this fear of the new. We are uncomfortable with change. That's partly why I think I might rather know for sure of some horrible fate than have to wait and see if things will turn out alright.

I know that isn't really the case, I'm fine being left in the dark and waiting for the uncertain, but the central urge to avoid the new, and stay with the routine still bites at my innards.

That's what this is all about, those things that still grab at me despite my better efforts. Days where I cry for no reason, and days where I feel like I could take on the world despite objective evidence to the contrary. These are the things that are so puzzling. Who am I if I have no control?

I notice that most of this post is (are) questions (not sure if that's the correct grammar for the sentence). I can't help but feel that's what most of our existence is. If this is the era of anything it is the era of knowledge. It is knowledge, or whatever we think knowledge is that defines us. That includes the questions we ask, and the things we think we know.

Which knowledge we chose to ignore and which we chose to take up, which things we chose to put forth as knowledge despite their lack of supporting evidence. Hell even a latching on to evidence as a support for our mental conception of the world.

We are now so defined by what we know, or by what people say we know. I'm rather ambivalent about that. Everyone thinks they have a truth. We are back into a modernist world where the virtues are meta-narrative and Truth (capital T).

Everyone has their knowledge and sticks to it, and that leaves me here in my bubble of uncertainty. I am stuck knowing that all of our ideas are based on ephemera. We are in Plato's cave, seeing only the shadows. We do not see objects, we see the light that they reflect. We do not ever touch things, we are only influenced by the fields around them. We do not ever know anything, because the truth of science (and even that isn't immutable) is that it must be able to be proven wrong. We are uncertain, as much so as we always have been.

"there are more things in heaven and earth than are imagined in your philosophy"

Friday, February 06, 2009

How long till I write myself dry?

Sometimes I just leave the text box open on a tab in my browser. I never really know when I might want to post something. I also never know if it's going to be asinine or if it's going to be profound. The desire to write comes whether or not I've anything to say. That's the sort of thing that gets to me though. That maybe I'll just write and write until all of the interesting things people could hear out of me have been written already.

How often can I write without putting every little bit of myself on the page?

That's not even the primary concern though. I'm more worried about boring the hell out of the people who might read my writing than I am of draining myself dry. I'd rather not exanguinate myself for art, but somehow I imagine that'll happen.

I don't even really know why I feel that should be something all the people who read this know. It's a conundrum I'm not entirely comfortable with. I post and post until I have nothing to say, so is my posting something that I do to empty my head or is it something that I do until I can't do it anymore? Is the emptying of my head a side effect or the goal?

Of what worth is a post if it gives no information and makes no artistic contribution to the world?

Probably none.

Probably none.

A beautiful deluge.

Today I witnessed an unusual downpour. it was trickling one minute and suddenly out from the sky came a deluge. The water poured at a prodigious rate, and everything was water and fury.

Walking around in the rain felt a bit like home. It's an unusual thing. I feel most comfortable in climes that imitate Ireland and England. That dreary, rainy thing just suits me better.

Not sure what to make of that. I could come up with explanations regarding my heritage or something like that. I don't feel like doing that. This isn't an observation made as a foil for biological or psychological musing. I just felt like noting how good it feels to have the water flowing down.

It isn't the rain that depresses me, it is the need, (or social construction) to stay inside that depresses me. It is this insularity, and separation from nature that makes me feel uncomfortable. That's true a lot of the time. I don't feel right surrounded by the sounds of machines.

We go camping because we like that feeling. We like that closeness. I don't understand people who go "camping" with a trailer, or with electronics, or with any number of other things. It is this tie to and reliance on technology, and artificiality which seems to cause so much ill. It's not suggested much, but our move from living with nature, to living against it is a possible cause to many of our ills.

People are so afraid of getting wet that they lug around umbrellas, and put on heavy coats. It's as funny as it is sad.

Like so much else, I wish for a change. Some sort of change.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

What to do about lack of nature?

One of the themes that comes up consistently in my writing is the idea that the cities we live in, and the artificialities we surround ourselves with, are some how at odds with our nature. It's a very nuanced opinion, so a single sentence couldn't really encapsulate it. That's the problem. The theme comes up, but there are all these complications regarding whys, and regarding how our current state may not always be at odds with us.

That's the thing. I don't have a lot of solutions to offer, only critiques. I don't want to just provide a negative analysis of this aspect of modernity. Offering solutions is part of a good critique, and I just don't have any.

This idea(along with it's twin, madness) has dominated my writing since I moved away from the forests I grew up in. The forests were magnificent. I hated the people. The confining nature of the social structure was all the more evident for the openness of the world around me.

I spent so much effort trying to get out, trying to separate myself from the nearsightedness so clearly displayed, that I missed the full effect of a forest on my psyche.

The freedom of being able to leave my front door and be in a world where I could completely avoid human interaction was amazing. If I were to leave my door today I would find pavement, and the sound of engines. Everywhere are the sounds of machines, whirring on, slowly insinuating that there is some mechanical god keeping us all in check.

I want to fix that. The only solution to this disparity between what we are and what our cites are is what I've been thinking of as plant terrorism. I use the word terrorism because it has emotive force. what I'd like to do doesn't resemble terrorism in any way. I am not planing on spreading fear. It is the spreading of plant life that I'd like to work on.

on all of the concrete structures that line the campus I want to plant climbers which will grow up the walls, covering the cold, too-smooth manmade stone. Find someplace with the right conditions and plant an Ivy. one of the great things about this is the fact that once you have ivy on a wall, taking it off takes pieces of the wall with it. The permanence of what we create isn't really permanence at all. Each thing we make can be destroyed in rather short measure, adding plants reminds us of that.

I understand the problems with upkeep, and damage to property, but I feel like removing some of the anxiety, and damage our overly planned cities cause is well worth a bit of vandalism. We've spent so long trying to subvert nature, it's time to , if only slightly, help it along.

The things that surround us are concrete and glass, and we are slaves to these materials. The wood we see is processed, and stained, and varnished. The trees we see are city approved, and managed by arborists, and experts. In a city, or even a town of any decent size, the wills of nature are secondary to the wills of man.


So maybe we can avert this crisis of mind that living in our manmade shelters seems to be causing. Plant something. Make the world less grey, and perhaps things will get a little better.

Morbid thoughts.

Sometimes you just need someone to talk to. I think that's part of why we get into relationships. I know it's a big thing for me. Some nights are just too long. I know that if I chose to lie down I'd be met with nothing by fear and despondency. That's why I seek out someone who could understand me.

I guess it's shelter from the storm which I seek. I also want someone who I don't get tired of. People are great. And people are horrible. I can't deal with people for too long without getting some time to myself, but sometimes there are people who I can put up with no matter what. There are people who I don't feel like I need to get away from. They come few and far between, but when this occurs, it is magnificent.

I'm tired of waiting for something to happen. There is so much that I want, but can do nothing about. I just don't know what to do about that. The things that bother me the most are the thoughts I have in the middle of the night, while trying to get to sleep. The thoughts that haunt me, about death and about all the shit that could happen. That striking fear that makes one seek out any sign of life they can find.

Today in a class the professor was talking about suicide (psych class) and while he was talking about it I thought of (and pictured) someone just standing up and holding a gun to their left temple (presumably they were left handed) and pulling the trigger. I pictured the blood splatter out to the right of the room, and the scattering of people after the event. I imagined still sitting in my seat, blood and brain on my shirt, not doing anything.

Everyone around me would have been running or crying. Everyone would have been shocked, but I was sitting alone, unphased, waiting for whatever was next.

It was a morbid thought, and I realised it, but there was little I could do about it.

like the lyrics to a beauty pill song "The season makes me cruel, but I have these thoughts in the summertime too."

Sunday, February 01, 2009

longing for a forest.

Yesterday in my daily errands I decided to go on a bike ride. I was downtown on my bicycle, and for no reason in particular I rode her down the bike paths into south Davis, and ended up following the bike loop. I Found myself looking for stretches of wilderness.

I'm not a creature of cities. Even a dirt road, kept by the wheels that roll over it, is too human for me. The woods have a particular feel to them. Walking through a meadow out towards a stand of trees is entirely different than any experience in the suburban, or urban environments most of us live in.

Davis would be wonderful if you grew up here. There are places to play, and there are trees and paths and parks. All of that would seem so wide and open. It is only when you've been in the truly wide and open that all of this is sullied.

I am shaped by my experiences, and cannot get around that. the things I hated about growing up in the mountains shape me as much as the things that I loved. The things I detest hold as much sway over me as the things I adore.

Of course some of this thinking has been brought on by an unusual desire to stay in. I want to get away from all of the traditional worries of the world. I want to get away from debt and away from bills, and away from cars, and away from dental problems, and away from administration of anysort. All I can do while here is retreat into my room. That doesn't suffice. Were I in the mountains I could just walk out my door, and I would be someplace different. I would be in the trees, away from the heavy influence of man. I could go off the dirt roads that run through the forest and just walk. The branches would crack beneath my feet, and the sound of the wind in the trees would inspire song in my thoughts.

I wouldn't close myself off with headphones, or with conversation, because the things I could hear wouldn't be engine noises, and electrical hums, and the buzzing of fluorescent lights.