Posts in category "Thoughts"

Resurfacing Morbidity

I ache all over. Snowboarding has the abil­i­ty to make mus­cles I’ve nev­er even known about stiff with sore plea­sure. I’ve always liked the feel­ing of not being able to move with­out hurt­ing in some way, as if I fought an exhaust­ing bat­tle with some mon­ster the night before. Even my trapezii are sore from get­ting my face out of the snow every 15 metres. At one point, I actu­al­ly unerr­ing­ly veered off the 50 foot wide trail, into a beau­ti­ful pow­der tree­line ditch, land­ing me waist deep in snow, upside down. I found that it was actu­al­ly pret­ty easy to ride both nor­mal and fakie with no expe­ri­ence what­so­ev­er, just carv­ing with the heel­side. The only prob­lem became turn­ing on the doglegs. At one point a school of lit­tle eight-year-old chil­dren weav­ing across the hill on skis were beat­ing Nick and I on our boards, try­ing to race straight down.

All in all, it felt good to learn some­thing new again, to try to carve up a slope on my heel­side, to hear noth­ing but silence from the muf­fling snow of the moun­tain. I real­ized that day-to-day, there is always noise. There’s the con­stant sound of traf­fic out­side my win­dow, or even the wind; silence has become anoth­er urban encroach­ment vic­tim. At one point, Aaron and I just stood on the slope and looked at the snow cov­ered lake, moun­tains, and peren­ni­als. The moun­tain is so big, we had to take a gon­do­la to a gon­do­la at the base. I was sur­prized that it was so chill­ing­ly cold; my eyes were water­ing just from the gon­do­la ride up, and my face hurt the moment I stepped out of the van.

We all orga­nized some kind of food co-oper­a­tion, so that we nev­er need­ed to eat out. Unfortunately, my roast end­ed up a bit too dry, and the scal­loped potatos too moist, but they were still good as left­overs. The lodge was great, com­ing com­plete with two bath­rooms (show­ers includ­ed), four twin beds (one of which I had to myself), and cute recep­tion­ists. They even had a wine bot­tle open­er in their col­lec­tion of uten­sils and an elec­tric oven, although a bro­ken met­al grill acces­so­ry that came with the microwave pre­vent­ed us from using it due to a flur­ry of sparks every time we tried.

I only did a half day of board­ing, and spent the rest of the time at the lodge that we rent­ed. It was pret­ty damn good to just get away, to play some cards and drink with­out a com­put­er around or school to wor­ry about. I even got some read­ing done. We watched some TV, played some Mao and 9–5‑2. The lodge had a pool and jacuzzi, which I was lucky enough to spend some time in. Some cig­ars were bought, but they end­ed up being pret­ty dis­ap­point­ing. There was much dou­ble fist­ing of the drinks, although the more mirth­ful dual hand action was when Aaron attempt­ed to inhale from two cig­ars through his nose.

I missed Dolly a lot.

Going there made me real­ize that I still have a lot to expe­ri­ence that I haven’t done already. I’ve tak­en a lot of my child­hood for grant­ed, vis­it­ing oth­er con­ti­nents with­out ven­tur­ing enough out­side of my estab­lished norms and pref­er­ences. I wish I could have absorbed more of the scenery when I vis­it­ed the World Trade Center, or paid atten­tion to the tour guide at the Sydney Opera House. Even some reflec­tion on the way there would have helped me appre­ci­ate what I was about to expe­ri­ence, whether it was the rich musi­cal cog­ni­tion of Hungary’s gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, or even the fresh seafood of Hong Kong.

I can only hope that I am able to appre­ci­ate where I am now, what I’m able to do, and the free­dom I can enjoy, as much as I would appre­ci­ate the expe­ri­ence of anoth­er cul­ture or lifestyle. I think that every­day life should be as sig­nif­i­cant as the excep­tion­al expe­ri­ences, that there can be much mean­ing found in both, and I try to live my life as such.

Perhaps I can already die.

Everyone's Right

I find myself in a fog­gy sit­u­a­tion. I am unsure of almost all aspects of it, exclud­ing the parts which allow me an omni­scient under­stand­ing of my per­son­al view. However, it appears to be that all par­ties involved have dif­fer­ing infor­ma­tion in sev­er­al events. Everyone has con­flict­ing opin­ions on actions, on deci­sions, on faults.

I’m always unsure of what I think, since I can nev­er be sure what oth­ers think. It’s hard for me to tell; some­times my mind starts to imag­ine things. It’s when I start to believe them that I real­ize the need to keep my thoughts in check.

I find that I need to feel vin­di­cat­ed. I often wor­ry about being blamed for some­thing that’s not my fault, or for some­thing that I’m mis­un­der­stood about, espe­cial­ly if the mis­un­der­stand­ing is due to the bro­ken tele­phone pass­ing of infor­ma­tion.

Everyone thinks they’re right.

Including me.

The Need For Antipathy

I seem to be struck with a great need for men­tal and phys­i­cal antipa­thy late­ly. Everywhere I look, things are filled with beau­ty, and I am unused to it. I’m not sure what has changed; whether it’s myself, or the world around me. It often feels like there’s too much to take in, too much to expe­ri­ence, and that I’m unwor­thy. I wish that I could be cold and bit­ter as before, so that I could feel bet­ter about myself, that I did­n’t feel so ugly and ashamed.

Everything is so much sim­pler when the world is black. My mind is made up, every­thing is sta­ble, I can cre­ate. Yet there is always some­thing that is miss­ing, some­thing that I’m always striv­ing towards.

Odd, that I should be look­ing for an end to pain, when pain is so com­fort­ing.

I think it all has to do with the fact that I’m still uncom­fort­able with con­tent­ment. It’s still an awk­ward feel­ing for me, some­thing that I’m not used to yet. Antipathy could change this, but I can’t bring myself to hate again.

My antipa­thy has most­ly left me.

To Be Immortal

Sometimes it feels like there’s too much to think about, too much to won­der about, too much to under­stand. It seems like I’ll nev­er be able to catch up with all my thoughts. There are too many things that take me too long to know. Yet I’m still learn­ing, or try­ing, at least, every day.

I wish I had all the time in the world to fig­ure things out, to become wis­er or more intel­li­gent.

It would be worth it.

Edulcorating the Sour, Enlightening the Ignorant

I had the chance to expe­ri­ence some strong, uncere­bral con­vic­tion from some­one I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, did­n’t have much respect for. I imag­ine that it was caused by a refusal to under­stand any­thing out­side of her frame of mind. She seemed so zeal­ous in her opin­ion, so upset at any men­tion of the con­trary, that any attempt to loosen her resolve proved to be more than fruit­less.

It seemed as if she was mak­ing up for her igno­rance in strength of opin­ion. In order to seem as if she was knowl­edge­able about the sub­ject, she became extreme­ly opin­ion­at­ed.

How can one argue with such a dif­fi­cult per­son? My answer is sim­ple; I don’t. Argument is some­thing that I’ve giv­en up on com­plete­ly, in gen­er­al. I now find dis­cus­sion, as opposed to argu­ment, to be an exer­cise in loquaci­ty and con­ver­sa­tion. At my age, it seems that most peo­ple have sur­passed what Erikson believed to be the iden­ti­ty vs. role con­fu­sion stage. They have become con­fi­dent in their beliefs, and there is lit­tle that can be done to show them a new view. Of course, there are always a few peo­ple who can keep a beau­ti­ful­ly open mind, accept­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any­thing, per­haps some­thing as adven­tur­ous as admit­ting they are wrong.

There always seems to be a fine line between some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed for shal­low, inse­cure rea­sons, and some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed valid­ly. Unless one attempts to under­stand both cas­es, they both seem the same.

The adven­ture becomes not the enlight­en­ment of the for­mer, but the dis­tinc­tion between the two.