The Write Mood

I'm in the writing kind of mood, but at this point, I haven't a thing to write about. Maybe I'm really just in the thinking sort of mood, and I want to write in order to feel like I have answers to the questions swimming in my head. Or am I the only one who thinks of unanswered questions swimming in one's head like a school of fish in a fishbowl? You think of different subjects, look for answers, to get the fish to go one way or the other; hopefully away. The worst is when they come directly at you, demanding to be fed answers you don't have--


Go away fish, go away....

The Other Self

I got done recently looking at old pictures, quite a few of which were pictures of myself. After viewing those photos, it occurred to me that we are quite rarely who we believe ourselves to be; although, of course, this could be my experience alone.

When I think of who I am, what I know, how I think, and what I can do, it's a very different image in my head than the one that greets me in the mirror. Most notably, when I think of all the different ways that I act, according to my many interests and thoughts, the impression I would get, as an outside observer (ie, someone not me), is that I'm shifty and somewhat unpredictable. A sycophant. Someone continuously plotting and full of ulterior motives.

At the same time, I'm very aware that many people trust me outright, and usually after initially meeting. I don't understand this at all; this dichotomy.

I have very real ideas and feelings about who I am and who I strive to be. I want to be trustworthy, fair, kind, strong, funny and fun, serious when I need to be serious, loyal, far-sighted, open-minded, I would love to be brilliant, and generally a decent human being. What I see in pictures, and the mirror, but mostly pictures, is someone disturbingly quiet, judgemental, constantly mildly dis-interested, overweight in the lazy disgusting sense, and I usually look slightly constipated. I can only hope my word choice reflects a better image of me. However, I quite regularly inflect words and sentences with the wrong tones. What I think a spoken sentence is conveying is quite different from the sentence I actually hear when I speak it. I attribute this to Asberger's Syndrome, but it's not an excuse, it's a handicap to overcome.

This isn't nearly as concise as it was in my head before I started trying to put it into words. What does it all boil down to? I don't think who I am on the inside is really shown on my outside. I think it's something that needs more work... a lot of it. I could list my flaws till the sun came up, but unlike admitting you have weaknesses, telegraphing them to the world is a bad idea. I only hope that the truth lies somewhere in between the good and the bad versions of myself I've depicted here, then at least there would be hope.

Death, not in the Romantic sense

Given the location of my home and that I must drive every day to work and/or school, I spend a lot of time in my car alone with my thoughts. Naturally, my mind wanders as I head down the highway. At night, as I'm driving, I often drive faster, because I want to be home relaxing sooner. However, I very rarely wear my seatbelt, the way they are set up in my car, and my physical build, causes the seatbelt to cut into my neck painfully, and leaves a sore spot after I'm done driving; so, hating the confinement of seatbelts anyway, that's all the more motivation I need not to wear one. It occurs to me while driving that some animal, perhaps a deer, could roam onto the road and cause me to wreck. My mind then turns to what exactly would happen to me if such a situation were to occur. I would be hurt, definitely, but would I die? And how bad would I be hurt? What would I do? Would I regret not wearing the seatbelt? Or would it really make that much difference? Would my cell phone be close enough and would I be uninjured enough to call anyone for help? How frequently do cars come by if I can't call for help? How much pain and disfigurement could I deal with in order to live? How strong would my will to live be?

I don't know any of the answers, and any answers I think I might know are actually only pure speculation. However, once I'm done thinking of all these questions without answers, I wonder what it would be like to die. Would it be peaceful, or would I be full of anxiety? I hope if I'm to die, it's peaceful, since I can't see the point in getting worked up about something over which I have no control. What will it be like when the light fades out of my eyes? Will it be like falling asleep after a very long day? Will there be something on the other side of this consciousness? Or will everything I've ever been and thought simply fade with the wind? The idea that there's something on the other side, some sort of afterlife seems to preposterous as to be laughable. And yet, the idea that there is a race of humans running around observing the natural world, trying to figure out what makes it tick, and calling it science and learning and respecting it so much, seems equally laughable. For that matter, the fact that there are conscious beings living and making decisions of their own volition, despite however instinctual various creatures may be, seems beyond preposterous. The universe would be a much simpler place if all interactions were chemical and carried out by inanimate objects all along, and Occim's razor would point to such. The idea that, in a Universe that takes eons to truly create or destroy anything, we bloom into existence and are extinguished just as suddenly, is what's truly preposterous; yet here we are. And what about the intangible things? Things like honor, integrity, goodwill? These are human constructs of course, but at what point does anything become more than the sum of its parts? When does cellular life, chemical signals, and electric current become a human? When does that human become a person with a personality, distinguishable from any other person? What about intrinsic things? Love? Emotions relate to chemical signals, but doesn't comprehension of reality trigger these emotional-chemical signals? Aren't concepts like love more than the sum of their parts? The idea that all of this fades in the blink of an eye? Surely that must also be preposterous, no?

Given all these unlikelihoods, the fact that there is this notion called life at all and that this life is finite, how unlikely is the possibility that it doesn't end with the demise of this mortal coil? Cells live and die in our body constantly, synapses in our brains fire electric sparks, and yet there is an over arching theme called human that acts and thinks with consciousness beyond what a cell could possibly imagine, even had they imagination. It may be wishful thinking on my part to want something, anything, on the other side, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Wishing for someone to love you back, or for situations to go well for you doesn't preclude the possibility that these things can, or will, or will not, happen.

And if there is nothing but this life, why are we wasting it learning anything more than what's basic to our survival? How ridiculous is that, wasting years of one's life, years that can't be gotten back, in the pursuit of knowledge and learning? If this is the only life we have, shouldn't our commitment be to living it rather than learning about it? We're all Faust in this case, only some of us never realize the foolishness in wasting our time learning. I'm all for improving oneself, but not at the cost of putting one's life on hold to live later, after the studying is done. And is the studying every really finished? At what point can you say, "Ok, I've learned enough, time to live my life."? I study history, I learn about the ways people who came before lived, the ways they built their lives up around them. It's taught me that it all fades with time, and the convictions that held a society together, can and do change, or fade away. Everything important that we seek to preserve eventually disappears, it is all of it fleeting and relative. Living, however, does not. It's the one constant throughout all of this. People, animals, life, continue to live and interact, it is the overarching static constant. People interacting, the ways they treat each other, that's what's important and passed on. It's among the briefest things, but also most enduring because it's constantly being repeated, rejuvenated, and passes into the future even as we live it. It takes the Sun's light approximately 8 minutes to reach the Earth. When we look up at it, we aren't seeing the Sun, we're seeing 8 minutes into the past to what and where the Sun was. How many milliseconds are we living in the future actually, compared to the time it takes us to comprehend and live our lives in the immediate past?

Everywhere I see the paradoxes and pointlessness of life and lives, organic organisms bumbling about in the fields and hills, running amok on a blue ball in the midst of vast and dark emptiness, barely removed from an ongoing nuclear reaction eons in the making and enduring, and yet, here we are. How ridiculous are our lives when viewed from that kind of perspective scope? You think that math test matters in the morning? Or that bit of money you're returned for investing your time at work? Of course it matters, existence is existence, and cannot be denied, if it exists it must be equally important. The secret is if everything is equal, then it's a static and unmoving existence, but existence, life, is not fair, there's something in motion. Why? With as ridiculous as our lives are, we must surely live them, and I like to think we should keep an open mind about the next step, whatever it may be. Life is for the living, for the living of it. Death cannot be the end, even if we don't understand the next step, it must only be the end of the beginning.

Forgotten Things Remembered

It's occurred to me that I tend only to write in my blog when I'm trying to figure something out. If I already figure it out by the time I'm ready, or around a computer, to write, then I never actually write it down, because at that point the answer seems painfully obvious and pointless to write. And I'm sure that sometimes I'm just writing it down to try to convince myself that the conclusion I've come to is the correct one. In any case, here goes....

For some time now I've been wanting to write about seduction, and not in the sexual sense, although that's certainly part of it, I mean seduction of thought, when that thing you hate becomes an acquired taste and eventually something you can't do without. But that's a tale for another time. Another thing I've been wanting to write about is my biography. I'm now in a strange place, that is, a place mentally where I'm finally comfortable with myself. I'm sure this is one of those cryptic statements where anyone uncomfortable with themselves is disinterested, or worried I'm going to become preachy, and they're going to disagree because every human life is a different situation with a different solution; and anyone who is already or has been comfortable with themselves is even more disinterested in my nonsensical drivel. However, this is for me, and I wish to try to connect the dots along the path of my life since my current state is to me quite a surprise, and I wonder if looking at the path my life has taken thus far will make it more obvious. Again, another time. I'm just mentioning these now so that I don't forget them later.

Now, the subject matter at hand.

Finding the perfect girl (or guy for that matter, but this is my blog, we're going with girl) is a paradox in two ways (ultimately, it's untrue because no one is perfect, but there are some who come closer than others). There are two directions finding the perfect girl can go, given of course you've had the cojones to talk to the girl/ask her out (and assuming you've dodged all of the other false positives). The first direction, is into the ground. You will find out that she is, in fact, not perfect. But this is the best of the two directions, because it means you've had the time to spend with her, and, optimistically, along this path and direction you've discovered that it doesn't matter that she's not perfect, you've become attached and can no longer think of a more perfect person, despite all of the faults you've learned the girl has. Even if it doesn't work out, hey, you've learned the girl wasn't perfect, at least you now know, and the issue is settled for you. The second direction, is nowhere. This is when your time together is brief and fleeting. This is the lovesick puppy syndrome, where you're memory of the girl is the only thing you have to go on. Try as you might to keep the memory in context, and pure, the more you think about it, the more you rewrite the experience, turning it into something it was not. This is how shrines are made, the person is sealed away in your mind, your memory, and ferments there, forevermore preserved in a state of perfection. Writers call it "a Muse," or "the Muse." This is where she, the person, fades away until she's only a shade or ghost of what she really is, and you've fallen in love with an image, filling in all the missing parts of the person with what you wish she was, until she becomes the embodiment of everything you want, and only a shell of what she is. This is sort of like the Shmoo. Once at this point, how can you give up the perfection you've created? Logic tells you to, but emotions are what always win out. Time is the only cure I've found, and it's not 100% effective; eventually, hopefully, you meet another person, or the emotions are stretched so thin by separation that they cease to flow.

Fear of the first direction has stopped me before, but I've been down the path of the second direction too, and it's worse, like a drug addiction you can't escape. Falling quickly in love, the love inevitably burns out just as quickly; anything worth having is worth the time and patience required to make it so. You should fall in love slowly, letting the heat build so that it warms and stays ingrained inside you, the way fire stones hold heat. Anything else is a flashfire that will burn itself out all too soon.