Posts in category "Thoughts"

Worthy Exchange

This was not what I meant to talk about tonight.

There are too many…frustrating peo­ple to deal with late­ly. So many things piss me off, man­i­fest­ed in so many dif­fer­ent ways through dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties. I’ve nev­er real­ly liked peo­ple in gen­er­al, which has usu­al­ly made it hard for me to make friends, although this has caused any actu­al friend­ships to be rather sol­id. I’m start­ing to believe that “hate” isn’t too strong a word. Even though I feel like I’ve been able to come a long way in my tol­er­ance of oth­ers and of the human race in gen­er­al, there are still times when I feel like putting an axe through some­one’s head.

Everywhere I go in every­thing I do, I run into at least one per­son I can’t stand. I can’t begin to explain myself, because every time I try I get flus­tered. Even at the table ten­nis club, when all I want to do is for­get every­thing and focus on a sin­gle goal, I run into annoy­ing, cocky, social rejects. Even when I sim­ply try to relax and hang out with my friends, there are peo­ple there who just seem cre­at­ed to rub me the wrong way.

It’s all made me appre­ci­ate the friend­ships I do have. Even when I think of all the vex­ing sit­u­a­tions peo­ple put me in, I feel I have lit­tle to com­plain about. My clos­est friends com­plete­ly make up for the fuck­ing idiots I have to deal with all the time.

Sometimes, that’s just hard to keep in mind.

Balderdash Englightenment

I’ve late­ly been get­ting into dis­cus­sions where I gen­er­al­ly show a strong sense of con­fi­dence in my con­vic­tions. The role of dis­tance in a rela­tion­ship relat­ed to the lev­el of com­mit­ment, as a sub­ject per­haps, or instruc­tions in becom­ing a more socia­ble per­son, as anoth­er. I’ve been answer­ing ques­tions of life, love, and hap­pi­ness almost as if I know the answers. Yet I can’t fig­ure out where these opin­ions are com­ing from, or even where I’m get­ting the strength of my beliefs.

Have I gained so much strength so as to affect my think­ing? Have I become blind­ed by over­con­fi­dence? Or do I con­sid­er my expe­ri­ences to be suf­fi­cient enough to give advice when peo­ple ask me? This may pos­si­bly be the case even though I gen­er­al­ly don’t like to give advice, since I only speak when I feel that I have a suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of the sub­ject.

The truth is that I don’t know where my assured­ness is com­ing from. In the last few weeks I’ve felt an odd sense of wis­dom, and my cer­ti­tude seems to be com­ing from this feel­ing. Perhaps an over­flow of emo­tions has caused me to feel this way, and every­thing I’m feel­ing now is tem­po­rary. The most impor­tant thing I try to keep in mind is the fact that I may be wrong in almost any­thing I believe. I need to keep an open mind. Yet late­ly I feel as if I do know much more about the way things work, the way life goes, the way the world turns.

I think of what I do know now, and try to remind myself that there is still a great deal I don’t know. I sim­ply have a strong trust in my judge­ments, deci­sions, and con­vic­tions made with the lim­it­ed amount of infor­ma­tion one always has in fore­sight. I’ve late­ly become more cer­tain about my life, and the direc­tion I want it want to take. I cer­tain­ly know what I want, but I try to remain flex­i­ble.

In the last two months I’ve learned more than I have in year before that, and the sud­den surge of con­fi­dence I’ve gained in my opin­ions seems to be relat­ed to this. I real­ize that I’ve learned a great deal through the course of my life.

But I have much more to learn as well.

One Man's Sip

Glasses on the windowsill

I final­ly print­ed off my pic­ture of the glass­es on the sill and framed it, which is quite some­thing con­sid­er­ing the fact that I have bare­ly any dec­o­ra­tions in my room. I was lucky enough to have been giv­en a nice met­al frame as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but have not had a decent pic­ture to put in it. Since I don’t have a career going yet, I try to keep a min­i­mal­is­tic amount of fur­ni­ture until I can afford to invest in long term sets, and for now the pic­ture rests on my cof­fee table. I want­ed a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the image because of the poignan­cy it evokes in me.

Every time I look at it I can’t help but think of the morn­ing sun seep­ing through the cracks of blue venet­ian blinds, of the flour­ish of green leaves out­side the win­dow. I think of lying on a swollen bed with my back to the wall, notic­ing the bright­ness of the sun fill the room, talk­ing well past the break of day. I think of sleep­ing next to some­one, hold­ing her head, draw­ing on her face, see­ing the ear­ly light bring out the sun­flow­ers in her eyes. I remem­ber how we’d go to sleep, plac­ing our frames on the win­dowsill before suc­cumb­ing to exhaus­tion.

Perhaps I’m so affect­ed by this image, this bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ry, because of how much I rel­ish the act of sleep­ing next to some­one. One of my favourite parts of a rela­tion­ship is being able to hold some­one before los­ing con­scious­ness. I sup­pose it betrays a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, a cer­tain unpar­al­leled inti­ma­cy, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is some­thing that I’ve always been attract­ed to.

But how odd it is that this may mean so much to me, yet mean so lit­tle to anoth­er. That even some­one shar­ing this expe­ri­ence with me may think of it in pass­ing, as some ephemer­al expe­ri­ence, not worth remem­ber­ing.

What do we take with our­selves when we fall apart? Do we keep the mem­o­ries or the emo­tions? Do we only take the good and leave the bad?

With this pic­ture I try to take every­thing. I don’t want to hide from hurt, I don’t want to neglect any feel­ings. I choose to see the image as a beau­ti­ful thing, a frame in time when I felt some­thing greater than most things I’ve felt in my life. I try to turn the pain into pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gain from my expe­ri­ence. I look at this pic­ture and become affect­ed by every­thing it means to me.

Even if it means noth­ing to any­one else.

Charge

How odd that the themes of my writ­ings have most­ly shift­ed in one direc­tion. I always won­der what peo­ple think of what I say. I would imag­ine that peo­ple think I’m being melo­dra­mat­ic, that I’m look­ing for some sort of pro­tag­o­nis­tic pathos, or that I’m being some pre­ten­tious fuck.

It’s as if a sin­gle inci­dent has shift­ed my mind­set, that I just can’t seem to com­plete­ly get over what has passed. The hurt­ing has stopped, to be sure, but the think­ing isn’t done. I still get inspired by mem­o­ries, ideas, emo­tions, almost any­thing I’ve expe­ri­enced through this.

I was once scared that I would nev­er fall in love again, and I used to be emo­tion­al­ly numb. Perhaps all of this was sim­ply a result of a life of stag­nan­cy, of bore­dom. Now I can write again, I have things to think about, I have emo­tions to expe­ri­ence, I seem to have things to look for­ward to.

Can heart­break be so ben­e­fi­cial? I know that I can feel. I don’t need to force my artis­tic writ­ing. My mind seems to be filled with new end­less thoughts. I can even appre­ci­ate cer­tain music on anoth­er lev­el now. This com­plex­i­ty, this mys­te­ri­ous­ness is so inter­est­ing.

My only wor­ry is that this new vital­i­ty will lev­el off into noth­ing­ness.

I Think She's Cute

I find that I’ve become more attract­ed to uncon­ven­tion­al beau­ty late­ly. Well, that’s not to say that my past propen­si­ties have been com­plete­ly tra­di­tion­al. Aaron thinks that my whole speech imped­i­ment thing is just me try­ing to be a unique per­son. I’m not real­ly insult­ed by this (even though I’d nor­mal­ly be, espe­cial­ly since I have a great respect for Aaron’s opin­ions) sim­ply because I think that if he had any…inter­est­ing tastes, he’d under­stand.

I once had a dis­cus­sion with Trolley about the fact that almost any type of fetish made sense to me — hair, loli­con, necrophil­ia, rape, scat­ol­ogy, plucked chick­ens — except for foot fetish­es. I mean, most of these all have very deep-root­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. Sex with ani­mals, for exam­ple, may turn some­one on due to feel­ings of dom­i­nance over an ani­mal, or a belief that they are mak­ing some­thing feel bliss­ful plea­sure (per­haps as a com­pen­sa­tion for inse­cu­ri­ty in being able to plea­sure some­one). Most any sort of fan­ta­sy can be rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly jus­ti­fied.

Aaron and I were even able to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for bad teeth fetish­es, which is an inter­est­ing idea since I know so many peo­ple who can’t stand crooked teeth. He knows peo­ple who only date oth­ers who are “less attrac­tive” than them, and we take this as a sign that these peo­ple may be inse­cure about their looks, and are turned on when viewed as the more attrac­tive per­son in the cou­ple. Of course, this can be relat­ed to any sort of “flaw” that may be found in some­one.

I once knew a girl who was turned on by guys using cal­cu­la­tors, and I can eas­i­ly relate this to my “girls wear­ing glass­es” pro­cliv­i­ty, inso­far as being extreme­ly attract­ed to intel­li­gence, both being a sort of phys­i­cal (albeit pos­si­bly soci­etal) man­i­fes­ta­tion of an intan­gi­ble thing.

Feet, how­ev­er, I can only jus­ti­fy when relat­ed to the trib­al tra­di­tion of feet-fore­head touch­ing. Subordination is rep­re­sent­ed in the younger peo­ple touch­ing the feet of the elders with their fore­heads. Perhaps some­one may be attract­ed to the fact that they are brought to the lev­el of the toe suck­ing, sim­i­lar to the idea of dom­i­nance. It’s hard for me to even see foot fetish­es on a basic phys­i­cal lev­el, which is eas­i­ly done for breasts or waists, etc. unless one con­sid­ers the impact of soci­ety on what peo­ple find attrac­tive.

I can just see all the hits I’m going to get from inter­est­ing search strings now.

Most of my propen­si­ties can be eas­i­ly explained, although I get var­i­ous odd reac­tions when peo­ple find out, and most are either laugh­ing too hard or too weird­ed out to allow an expla­na­tion. Speech imped­i­ments are some­thing I just can’t seem to jus­ti­fy, although such an inef­fa­ble thing has allowed me to more eas­i­ly accept the quirks of oth­er peo­ples tastes.

So there’s this girl who works at Folio and she wears glass­es and turtle­necks and is there when­ev­er I buy some­thing and I doubt oth­er guys would find her as attrac­tive as I do.