Posts in category "Thoughts"

Journey

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Bus rides are always either real­ly good or real­ly bad.

They’re real­ly good when I find a win­dow seat. That’s when I can tune out com­plete­ly, lose myself in my music, and become total­ly obliv­i­ous to any­thing going on around me. I get to watch every­thing pass by and drift in and out of my thoughts. It’s when I get the most think­ing done dur­ing the day (even more than in the show­er).

They’re real­ly bad when I can’t find a seat and I’m left stand­ing up. I keep my music low so that I can hear any announce­ments by the bus dri­ver, or peo­ple try­ing to get by. I’m always on guard about where I should be mov­ing or when a seat might become avail­able. And music on a low vol­ume isn’t real­ly worth lis­ten­ing to.

One of the rea­sons why I haven’t bought a car is because I’d lose all my think­ing time. Every day I can reflect for an hour going to work and an hour com­ing back when I’m on the bus. If I was in a car, I’d be too busy pay­ing atten­tion to the road, to bad dri­vers, to traf­fic lights, to pedes­tri­ans. I would­n’t be able to think, and I’d prob­a­bly write a lot less.

Some days, when I’m com­ing close to my stop, I wish that the bus would just keep going, just keep dri­ving, and nev­er stop. I’d ride it from morn­ing to night, lis­ten­ing to my music, just enjoy­ing the feel­ing of going some­where and nowhere at the same time.

Thinking about noth­ing and every­thing.

Seeing Through

I hate how trans­par­ent peo­ple can be. Let me guess…you want to impress this girl, you want to talk about your­self, you want some of my fries, you think that girl has a nice ass, you love your rep­u­ta­tion as a char­ac­ter, you want me to lis­ten to this song.

I only con­sid­er it trans­par­ent when these peo­ple nev­er actu­al­ly say what they think or what. It’s not like they begin with, “I only act this way around you cause I want in your pants”, or “I don’t real­ly care about you but I’ll let you speak first so I can have my turn lat­er”, or “I want some of your fries so I keep ask­ing about how good they are so you’ll offer me some”, or “You’re hot so I’m going to stare”, or “I want a crazy rep­u­ta­tion so I’m going to act crazy”, or “I want to be the one who intro­duced you to this song”.

I’ve been told that I’m very trans­par­ent when it comes to peo­ple I don’t like, and hope­ful­ly that’s the only case for me. I gen­er­al­ly won’t go around telling peo­ple that I hate them, but I’d rather some­one know than not know. That way they won’t waste their time with me and I won’t waste my time with them.

Things would cer­tain­ly be a lot bet­ter that way.

Mellisonant Apogee

I could nev­er under­stand why some songs could make my eyes water.

  • Radiohead — Paranoid Android, with its con­tra­dic­to­ry chords
  • Thrice — Artist in the Ambulance, with its repent­ing, inspi­ra­tional move­ments
  • Dreamtheater — Disappear, as the harp leads to dis­tor­tion in a bit­ter­sweet explo­sion
  • Billy Talent — Nothing to Lose, with its heartwrench­ing cho­rus
  • Godspeed, You Black Emperor! — Hungover as the Queen in Maida Vale, right when a sin­gle vio­lin inter­rupts the ser­mon
  • No Motiv — Born Again, when the drums kick in heavy and lead the lis­ten­er to the present
  • Lovage — Anger Management, with its pin­ing soft rock melody
  • The Dears — Heartless Romantic, with its thump­ing, dis­tort­ed bass hits against the dron­ing organ synth and dual vocals
  • Elliot Smith — Waltz #2, with its steady, but heart-break­ing tone
  • Bad Astronaut — These Days, every time the effu­sive cho­rus rush­es in
  • Strung Out — Match Book, in its entire ener­getic hope­ful­ness
  • Postal Service — The Dream Of Evan And Chan, through all the open­ing lines
  • Misfits — Saturday Night, as soon as the drag­ging gui­tars kick in
  • Portishead — Undenied, with Beths frag­ile voice accom­pa­ny­ing a sim­ple, dis­tort­ed loop

For the longest time I had assumed that it was the songs them­selves, com­posed so well with so much pain, that would blur my vision. These songs were sad, and tears were the prop­er response.

Then I heard some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, some­thing that was calm­ing yet lift­ing. A dreamy song by Modest Mouse called Float On, that filled me with an inde­scrib­able sat­is­fac­tion every time I heard it. And I real­ized that all these songs, as sad as they are, were mak­ing me hap­py.

So hap­py that tears are the prop­er response.

Inner Barrier

This pho­to I do devel­op and print and when­ev­er I look at it, it chills my heart and I can’t look at it for long. I real­ize that it brings to the sur­face the dark aspect in the depths of my soul, which ter­ri­fies even me. I can only recoil when con­front­ed by beau­ty or evil.

—nar­ra­tor, Soul Mountain

For some, every day is a strug­gle.

Me? I tend not to notice.

(Finally.)

Personal Horizon

Andrew and Alex are going on a back­pack­ing trip to Europe until the end of this month. They’ve request­ed a list of peo­ple inter­est­ed in receiv­ing infor­ma­tion and details about their trip, so nat­u­ral­ly I let them know that I’d like to have some doc­u­men­ta­tion dur­ing their jour­ney.

And while I under­stand their moti­va­tions for try­ing to have such an inter-per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, I don’t under­stand why it has to be because of a trip.

Isn’t every­day life inter­est­ing enough to talk about? Can’t one learn as much on the bus ride to work as being some place com­plete­ly for­eign? I nev­er decid­ed to make an extra blog or some­thing for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, even though it was still a some­what life-chang­ing event. To me, the month was anoth­er part of my sched­ule, some­thing I had planned to do. It was as sig­nif­i­cant as any­thing else going on in my life, or maybe I should say, any­thing else going on in my life was as sig­nif­i­cant as that. I hope I nev­er have to rely on trav­el to con­sid­er my life impor­tant enough to dis­cuss with some­one.

Perhaps, I feel like I still have so much to learn about every­thing else that I would gain as much just think­ing in the show­er as I would being exposed to new things. Every day can be excit­ing. Every sec­ond, there’s a chance to learn and grow. There are still so many things to fig­ure out.

And I prob­a­bly con­sid­er myself to be one of the biggest.