elenmosyne

we love you back though

2007-06-04T04:17:11Z

I am so exhausted from the weekend... I'd like to say it's the heat and mugginess after the torrential rains throughout the morning today, but it's not solely that. I semi-ranted to a listening ear earlier this evening about some stupid stuff that happened... mainly involving people who've been alive far too long to really have any excuses left for why they still find themselves capable of acting like uncharitable assholes to other people.

And who are a sure card to get angry and persist in arguments. I wasn't the recipient of that. I like peacemakers to say the least though, because they are always smarter. Not the weak-willed kinds that back down and do it just because, though I'll take them over irrational soldiers any day. The ones that know what bullshit smells like and purposely know they're done with it in their life are where it's at.

Today we finished another stage of cleaning out my grandmother's home after her death this past winter--I was not very close to her although I feel I should have been, and yet I think I was - not in one iota being praiseful - probably one of the most reverent about how to deal with everything in the place, and the simple reality of what exactly we were doing. I walk into the house and see 60 years of unknown memories permeating the place, that my aunt and uncle and parents speak of as we go about the task of moving furniture about and parceling out will dictations.

My aunt and cousin are likely my witting partners in knowing the seriousness - but also the goodness in what we are doing. They are coincidentally the part we are "estranged" from but not really for any reason other than my mother's side of the family had a lot of chaos and tumult that eventually split most of them apart, and even my aunt and her mother in the last years.

The only items that I decided to claim as 'my own' were a small framed painting on glass of the sacred and immaculate hearts, as well as copies of This Side of Paradise, Wuthering Heights, The Winter of Our Discontent by Steinbeck, The Old Man and the Sea, a beaten up 1950 printing of The Greatest Story Ever Told, and To Kill a Mockingbird... which I started reading earlier. I think the last time I had was ninth grade right along with The Catcher in the Rye. Atticus Finch is the model upon which all lawyers and a lot of fathers ought exist (at least, as a baseline template!), but will never be I'm sure.

I sort of wish that I could write shorter, crisper entries... because I'm sure that my rarely putting down "just a sentence" has got to be a turn off. Every so often I feel like I have something that short and pointed to just slop up... yet it always seems like by the time I think of doing it, I'm already on to something else.

On the way to a corner store to pick up some batteries on a whim, I walked past all the construction that's going on doing that strip in Berkeley - and Berkeley is such an old division of Detroit. With the cloud cover, the damp, the destroyed road with hilltops of dirty rubble and the massive demolishing machines sleeping by the roadside while the workers had the weekend off... it felt distinctly not at all like Michigan, or even North America, even though my only eye to places outside is in photographs.

Oftentimes I feel that the difference between here and anywhere else in the world while, large and not at all assuring the same safeties as one's own homeland with one's own peoples, customs, laws, and agreed upon principles... hell, you don't even get that just walking down the street in your own neighborhoods, but regardless, is fundamentally minimal.

The wrecked street and machines were appropriate, but actually, on rainy days where brick or concrete walls get soaked, I never think of them as mere building sides. They always remind me of sea walls instead.

promised you a miracle

2007-06-02T17:21:16Z

A friend of mine earlier this week just realized how immature and egomaniacal people can get when they get dumped, particularly when all previous signs seemed to point to them being "nice" and "sweet"--it's not like it was anything new to her, but to know it and experience it are sometimes two different things for anyone.

She's busy doing rotations in Chicago for her second year med stuff at UofM, but luckily that keeps her busy between dealing with the about-face executed by her "sweetie" and trying to get acclimated to life in a new city. And since I've been seemingly pouring music out into tin cups lately to anyone that stops by and says, "heeeeyyyyyyy, oooh i like that what'cha listenin' to? can i have some?", it was only inevitable that another mix cd doth be begotten.

I think there are probably two or maybe three people on my friends-list that would have it in them to make majorly titanic tracklists--I'm genuinely not as -diverse- as some people, although my music tastes vary far and wide, or narrow and needle-like pending. They'd probably know how easy it is to pick 100+ tracks and then have to whittle it down from there for whatever the person'd like/would fit them most/be new and also engaging to them.

And seriously, there are things like listening to a handpicked selection of songs with you lesserly or greaterly in mind... but there aren't many that match popping a cd or three into a car player and not knowing at all what's about to come on, or what the person may have selected. It's you, the drive, whoever's listening with you, and deliberate songs. It's special, folks.

I cut this one down to about 46. Old songs, new songs, songs I don't like so much, songs I only like the unique sound to, songs I find funny as hell (track #5 on cd 3, because I am a white kid from Michigan), but Rabs'll appreciate them all. Maybe. Hopefully not. It's a lot of popular music and hits a lot of different things.

This is the way it went:

--

Jess: a spring peeper is a frog!
Jess: we went to a pond today and they were everywhere
Jess: my mom was like 'come hereeee little peepers!'
Don: and all she wanted was to find a prince
Jess: she got a stick and was pushing it into the mud to get one to swim
Jess: she already has a prince!
Don: but isn't your mom married too? ^_-
Jess: yea
Jess: to my dad!
Don: I know... I'm kidding, being all mean to the way that people change on you
Don: I'm sure they're super happy

Jess: you are trying to marry my mom!
D: Jess, okay, let me offer you a clue
Jess: no
Jess: no
D: have you seen that one new show that's gonna pit those 20 year olds against 40 year old ladies to win a guy's ~~heart~~?
Jess: lmao no
D: I'm not producing or part of it!
Jess: HAHAHA

D: and psh, german...
D: ..well, it does suck, you're right
D: I'm sure even they'd agree it sounds evil
Jess: nazi's!
D: shhhh, it's from the past, let 'em put it behind them
D: focus on neo-nazis on american soil
Jess: aw
D: or just anyone who's a jerk, anywhere
Jess: but i'm reading the diary of anne frank
D: I think her persecutors are in the ground now though
D: their kids are running around somewhere
Jess: aw
Jess: you said you'd say only nice things
D: well... I did. they're in the ground!
D: I can't do anything about their kids

D: but like all too many things in this universe, that swiftly can change
Jess: oh
Jess: but you never drink!
D: hahaha, I'm kidding, honestly
Jess: unless you've been living a lie
Jess: A LIE RIDDEN LIFE
D: I am the lie
D: how deep, someone should copyright that
Jess: lmaoooo
D: I bet it's on some kid's myspace

Jess: awwww
Jess: me too
Jess: lmao
Jess: actually
Jess: i tend to only ever know the worthwhile ones
Jess: i'm in good company
D: yeah, you even get the non-whiney ones
D: I'm sure Eric and david are cool dudes
D: I mean, they aren't going to ever think they're "nice guys" and wonder why the world is "so cruel"
Jess: lmao
Jess: everyone whines a little
D: well, that's right
D: I just mean the ones that do it at the most inopportune moments
D: like something really awful happens in someone else's life...
D: and all they're like is "mememe why do i suck"
D: and you feel strangely obligated to say "Because you do"

rookies and pros and everyone in-between

2007-06-02T16:04:26Z

It's been a little while... and I've just been an eensy bit busy, one part being occupied with the practical demise of my car. It's facing the death hour: it's a '98 grand prix and we've gone the distance with eachother (in fact, cross-country and many Chicago-bound to and fro miles between), but right now it's looking grim. There's something wrong with the suspension or axel and it'll be about $900 to fix... which may not be worth it, ultimately.

It has 140k miles on it now. I bought it five years ago at a police auction of all places for a steal of $2k under the common value and it's been perfect.. but this might be the end of the line.

We'll see, but for now I'm driving a loaner Canyon, and I gotta say... I dig the truck. I always have had a thing against them because they're big and, honestly, I prefer cars.. amongst other reasons like parking and handling because of the low center of gravity (that's for no real reason except that I have a bad habit of taking turns fast when alone, though not dangerously so), but it isn't so in this case. I do not however dig gas prices.

It's enough to make me either pack up off to a big city and be a smart person who rides the bus or be someone who drives a Prius. And at a rated 60 city mpg... it closely justifies the $382/mo. payment in the longrun fuel savings.

I will never agreeably grasp Hummers or other large vehicles that're non-utility for reasons like that, especially as the emphasis on getting away from petroleum-bases is only going to increase as the years keep going by. The idea of throwing away money.. because you want something supersized to drive around in... does not blow my mind, but it does disgust me.

Then again I never will understand "status" purchases to ride around in anyway, because I don't have those same kinds of ego hang-ups to stumble around with.

One other thing:

I've been trying to lend a hand to someone lately who's having a little bit of a battle between a responsibility to somebody, then their limited time outside of school. They feel like they're being unfairly asked of in the situation... and to avoid going into specifics, basically they "technically" are dealing with someone else's problem, but it actually isn't a -huge- one to tend to. It is truly very minimal.

I don't know how to help people who are.. not a whiney person, but on certain matters they will -become one-. Against their other dispositions and responses. I don't know how to help them get from that step of: "I want to whine and sit here" to "I'm tired of whining and want to do something about it".

Ideally that second step'd be more like "...that was really ridiculous of me, I'm going to stop being that way right now", but that's not it here with this friend.

And under the surface I have this extremely negative reaction to people that are being irrational about something, and even when you're forced to tell them the fact that they are rather than stay silent, they continue to be. I understand their frustration... everybody gets frustrated, whether they handle it on their terms or they let others help them through it. I don't sympathize though with those who decide they'll actively persist in the "why me" act when someone else could use a hand from them. It is stupid, it is self-absorbed, and it is destructive... and utterly useless to boot.

It reminds me of like... it's like with younger kids, when they get upset for whatever reason and if it's for a valid one or a pretty minor one. The ones that start sobbing up a storm and wailing like the end of the world were nigh will do their thing.... but if you leave them alone and don't validate their behavior, they miraculously stop.

Miraculously? No. They just realize that there's no point and quit. That's all.

Some of them. Others continue long and the habit is highly difficult to break. I have no idea what to do for this person, but leave them alone to deal with it.. because they don't want any overtures of help, they want to complain right now. Otherwise they're a generally good person however, this fault and stumbling block of theirs aside.

black holes and revelations

2007-06-02T15:39:07Z

It is now... June 2nd. Aside from this realization, it also strikes me - again - that I will be a whopping twenty-five in the span of six months and five days.

If you say six months doesn't go by quickly, peek real quick at the last six, and then sell that line again. Hint: it won't come out as convincingly to you, or at least, it shouldn't.

Beyond my own regular obsession with the fact that I'm finally approaching the point of no return and zenith of my youth, it occurs to me because somebody has a birthday party later today at 3. I had a discussion earlier this week about "appropriateness" of gifts for someone who's of middle school age, and had to explain why video games (let's get a pass card for Square Soft relics and all the other creative and thoughtful games/developers over the years) definitely don't rank up there on the "worthy and desirable" priority list, even if the gift-getter in question wants them.

We picked out something though that I thought he'd like and that also wouldn't be an invitation to sit on his butt clicking away at a 360/ps2-3/wii/whatever controller.

I understand the ways in which people think so little about what they feed children, anybody's children with.. their minds, their hearts, their eyes and their ears, but seriously, if I hear another sincere "why does it matter? they want it" from somebody I may just try to legalize good book reading and classy/interesting music listening amongst a million other things. I do have an unapologetic autocrat in me somewhere, that's for sure.

Half-jokes aside, video games aren't bad, but mostly I'd rather they be minimal in anybody's life - same with tv, beer-drinking, pop culture sex and beauty magazines (who -always- seem to have the secret to fifty gillion orgasms and that so sexy little number to wear to please your big hungering man..), and everything else that is if not the great satan, then at least dumb.

you remember that one guy in zozo? me too

2007-05-22T05:55:50Z

Louise:
if I wrote poetry I bet they'd all be really cynical
Louise says:
and no one would want to read them with fear of never being able to look at a man buying a bunch of flowers without thinking "I wonder what he did"
L: -again
D: heh
D: yeah, I know, that might happen
D: or you know, any additional minus sign that people are senseless or selfish and destructive about.
D: but sometimes they are good, though, truly good, bear that in mind as well. it's existent though sometimes quite rare
L: well I did actually ask a man why he was buying flowers once (it was 1am and I was working at a servo) because I figured I was just a cynical bitch who needed to realise the world isn't a horrible place
L: then he told me that he felt guilty about cheating on her
L: so that blew that theory out of the water

-

Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.

The aim of all is but to nurse the life
With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age;
And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
That one for all, or all for one we gage;
As life for honour in fell battles' rage;
Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
The death of all, and all together lost.

So that in vent'ring ill we leave to be
The things we are, for that which we expect;
And this ambitious foul infirmity,
In having much, torments us with defect
Of that we have: so then we do neglect
The thing we have; and, all for want of wit,
Make something nothing, by augmenting it.
-"the Rape of Lucrece"

The two snippets aren't connected, but I liked this excerpt earlier. Another late entry... so that'll be that as tomorrow comes swiftly.

It was yesterday that some guy decided he'd like very much to start a fight with me. He liked it so much that we danced right there on the spot because he thought he honestly couldn't wait for my answer to his flirting and invitation any longer.

A day later and the thing is in the past, yet the whole matter still pisses me off, even though I'm fine about it (as in, well able to handle my response to the situation). Neither of us were "winners" in the match, though we wound up going through the bloody mess, and the guy likely has no reason and idea why he was that compelled to throw down. And I am convinced again that sometimes that's all people are: sharks on leashes. who need you to feel it.

Just gotta remember the good things too, but I am sick off of some people's bullshit. I am well aware now of who gets priority though when it comes to good cop bad cop. It ain't the bad cops. later, but not right now, not right now.

I am fine though, I'm always fine. Once you cross certain thresholds you realize that no one surprises you, no one does something you hadn't imagined them capable of from the beginning. I am only surprised by people's virtue and true inner beacon signs, and that right there is a joy.

soyez très très prudent

2007-05-20T08:56:30Z

I don't really got a lot to say at the moment.. or rather.. got a lot, but no time tonight or inclination to put it all down the way I want to. I had this very lovely conversation with a few people the other day about a general but pretty important topic that's been on my mind a lot (and always is), but I'll post about that later - it'll probably be one of those super long ones.

I was pretty glad to get a chance to really dig into something with other people for once... like... you can enjoy the superficial and the fun for so long, but sometimes all you really wanna do is say exactly what's on your mind, and have someone around who knows what it is you're saying - and reciprocate. I don't really need it, but I enjoy it very much when the stray contact like that runs across your doorway and stops for a second.

Not really sure what I wanna say here... but then, not really sure either if it's too important. This past week I've oddly been switching up the dreams between ones of dying (oh yes, sweetness) and other ones in which past familiar faces appear in huge jumbled mashes of purpose and story. I'm (apparently) getting more and more appearances from old friends like high school era souls in them at times, I have no idea why - perhaps old attachments, and my own mind reaching out in dreams?

I've had the same kinds of cameos from the same groups of people for years ever since '01 (sometimes once a year, sometimes more), and leaving those days behind... it typically is one or two people who recur, however. I always consider those dreams to be simple manifestations of missing like.. say, people who're on the level of friends you'd have a true lifelong bond with, and my head simply grabs and plucks those images out from the time and stuffs them into the dream.

The friends that pop up weren't really that type (though they were good/close friends), yet no matter years later every so often they appear and I'm reminded quickly of how very much it is we've all changed in the time since those days.

-

I got my pocket picked the other day. It was my own carelessness: one, I actually took my wallet into a gym facility, which is a big no-no even with lockers available - two, I actually forgot to make sure the lock clicked on the door with my stuff. It was only twenty dollars luckily, but I'm killing all my cards that are still in my possession instantly and having new numbers set up. (in case they wrote down the card #s and simply left them, though I don't expect that - but always watch out for what you don't usually, right?)

How lame.

It's actually funny in a way, as retarded as the fact is - not the loss of the twenty dollars, but the absurdity behind a petty theft like that. I found my pants laying on the bench tossed there after having been rifled through... cell phone, keys, a random pair of clean socks in the cargo pocket, loose quarters, a cheap silver men's band, all these survive, after the interested party had searched and, in the end, found.

Despite its minorness, I felt something similar (in the sense of it, not the scope) to that much larger twinge that some people get when they lose something, or someone does something to them, and it's their first taste of it--say that another person might break into their house and invade their living space, or any manner or brand of intrusion that exists under the sun... not really my first taste of it, or my first taste of being an intruder in other senses, but it's been a while and it was strange to be reminded of the fact out of the blue.

--

busy.. I'll just post this right now, someone's grabbing my attention on aim.

I discovered this cute music video while putting together a mix cd for someone the other day, so here's a look at something quirky from Feist. From youtube to you, mushaboom:

(I also have no icons... which is ok! I'm trashing some old stuff and looking for new non-crappy better fitting ones!)

anywhere in the world

2007-05-14T19:46:08Z

This is a bit of a crap placeholder, but so far I've been a little buried with the term soooooooo.... this is consigned to getting no love. I'm sure lj will have to cry out a lot more before I actually decide to pay some attention to it (or anywhere online it seems), but even then my ears are probably gonna be deaf - til some time avails itself, or til I decide that posting e-mails are an absolute necessity

Because all I wanna do is be outside and do things on the weekends instead of sit home and write or think or anything =P

So one day, but in the meantime my feet are getting familiar with being bare and what shorts are like and all the all too common little things of spring. I also may have an option to see Chicago this summer, or (what what) England/Germany? Or maybe even Australia, linked to the same second trip but pending on if it's after July or before

I don't even know how the other one works out, but apparently if it's my will, there's an invite from an old friend out that way. I may put my finger to the wind, we'll see.

It's more time pending than anything, yet with some available funds in my hands... why not hit the road for a while? I'm thinking both, plus a third that's been cast around in my head for some time. There are some things that aren't super important to do right now, but if this window of time's presenting itself I think that I definitely want to throw some of this summer up in the air

pen and paper, rows and tapers

2007-05-06T23:49:19Z

It was a few months ago that I ran across this one, discarded in some campus library booksale. It's a collection of poetry by a woman named Anne Ridler, but it was sometime this week that I actually got to thumb through and then actually read what was on the pages inside. I liked it, there were about eight poems that (in whole or merely parts) that stood out in my eye.

Sometimes it is the particular point(s) of the poem that will endear it to me, sometimes the general feeling it has surrounding it, other times something else. Sometimes it means something to me, sometimes it's merely no more for what it illustrates and presents and that I value it for doing.

I don't get that "little joy" of running across a poet who happened to inscribe something that takes with me very often... I can appreciate much that people decide to create and what they're saying with it more often, no matter the size, and a plainer and more genuine/purely original piece of art can mean far more to me than someone else's overelaborate attempt at "depth". Typically that simple yet honest and beautiful aspiration toward art and/or their mere expression of a plain idea/emotion/thought... is all that's exactly required sometimes, to make a thing good enough. (quality and composition aside this time - whether the structure of the writing itself, the words/meaning, or the structure of the presentation in the poetic form)

But there's that threshold of something that genuinely digs into you and more or less you feel some vague kinship with the writer, and that's what makes me appreciate some of these. I don't know a thing about Anne Ridler, but I am glad she decided to do that poetry thing for long enough to get her stuff into a book.

This is undoubtedly my favorite, probably because... well, guess, if you've never shot for the stars by now:

Dividing forms can disappear,
Leaving the elements that they share;
And a human eye not only see
But cause this change, if it look rightly--
Jerusalem is not above all wars,
And wilder and more skillful eyes
Could see it now, and in these places.
~"Ringshall Summer"

--

Kirkwall, 1942

Far again, far,
And the Pentland howling psalms of separation
Lifts and falls, lifts and falls between.
But present pain
Folds like a firth round islets that contain
A sheepfold and a single habitation--
Moments in our summer of success--
Or the greater islands, colonized and built with peace.

Cold knives of light
Make every outline clear in a northern island,
The separating light, the sea's green;
Yet southern lives
Merge in the lupin fields or sleepy coves,
In crowstepped gables find a hint of Holland,
And Europe in the red religious stone:
All places in the room where we in love lie down.

--

Ringshall Summer

Never was such a year for sun
At Ringshall as this dreadful one.
We seem sequestered on an island:
Bracken rolls for miles around,
The tips with silver sparkles shine,
And the green deeps close us in.
Though from that water come angry cries
Of soldiers at their practices,
Bobbing like boats in a rough sea
Above the fronds, in tank and lorry,
Or crouching camouflaged and slack,
Snails with their safety on their back;
And though the planes rove through our skies
Constantly, moving like jealous eyes
Over the house, and serve to warn
Us to expect the locust soon--
These only make our survival stranger,
Leaving us the unrivaled summer.

But while the shining of this sun
Making catastrophe seem unreal
Divides the mind, it joins in one
These outward forms. For I could call
The changing tide that laps the terrance
Where I work, water or flowers;
Roses roll right to our doors,
Whorls of white foam; snapdragon flares
Burn up in phosphorescent fires;
Pink and purple sweet-pea spools
Are coloured weeds in tropic pools.
The leaves part with flicker and leap
Of fish, where wrens court and creep
Stripping the grubs; when twilight comes
Our home a solitary lighthouse gleams,
And clumps of white daisies show
Where a shoal swims past the window.

Early, the air's thin silky blue
Only the finest sun lets through,
While through the wide-meshed air of evening
Pours the light of his coarsest shining.
In draughts the garden drinks it in.
Circus flowers of the haricot bean,
White waxy potato blooms, and green
Marrow, hidden in a flannel tent,
And curved like a wind instrument--
All are pleasant for what they promise,
Unlike flowers, grown for the eyes
To please at once, for when the frore
Weather has beaten our ships from shore,
Or hostile guns have bit too deep,
These shall defer the frozen sleep.

Even plants in the grass delight
The taste in fancy: yellow and white
In spring were milky curds here
Of cowslip and cuckoo-flower;
Now eggs and bacon grow, and toad-flax
Hereabouts called buttered haystacks.
Mushrooms fatten in a night,
The yaffle sucking up ants takes fright,
And flies to the little spinney, that
A glacier under bluebells lay,
Rich and warm now with rose-bay.
There he hangs, his body pressed
To the trunk, like a sailor on a mast:
Only his brilliant head betrays him,
Lolling back from the trunk which hides him.

Children, walking on a road, can say
They row in a boat, and thus they
Enjoy the double world, and know
The road both road and river; so
When I leave our hills for the plain below,
To cross the bracken I need a boat,
And from our porch with oars strike out.
When I was little these fronds were tall
To make a tunnel or banqueting hall;
They still reach over my head, as pulling
Through their green waves gently rolling
I and my boat enter the grove
Out of the sunshine. As in a cove
That makes in monstrous cliffs a salient
Each sound echoes, and makes more silent
The cove by contrast, and men speak soft,
Silence hangs in the trees. Aloft
A pigeon takes off with a sharp crack
Like a wave breaking against a rock.
Looking upwards I see no sky;
Delayed by leaves the light slips by
Mellow as honey. Here to look up
Is like gazing down through deep
Clear water, watching a pendent world
A touch will break; pale trunks rise whorled
With leaves like waving weeds, where
Birds quick as minnows cut the close air.

Below the woods widen the plains
As far as Oxford and the Thames,
And the church on its little hill of tombs
Floats over all: fields of barley
With prawn's whiskers, still white and creamy;
Wheat feathers brown or orange; oats
The first to be reaped, where lurk the rabbits
Close in the ever-lessening square
Uncut; they think, while they've an ear
Above their heads, life can go on,
Normal, though outside waits the gun.
Like us, they'd rather pretend than run.

This, then, is our summer country,
Wherein at times, remote and tiny,
I see my own familiar shape
Moving across a painted landscape.
But if the special character
Dividing forms can disappear,
Leaving the elements that they share;
And a human eye not only see
But cause this change, if it look rightly--
Jerusalem is not above all wars,
And wilder and more skillful eyes
Could see it now, and in these places.

--

For a Christening

1

In June the early signs,
And after, the steady labour of subcutaneous growth:
Past the danger of dissolution in the third month,
And in the fifth, quickens.
But hidden while the leaves thicken, through the season when smooth corn
Grows beared, through the peeling of the summer's gold fleece;
Hidden but with heart throbbing, while stars sharpen and throb in the skies,
While sunsets grow cold and orange, while winter airs are whirled and torn;
And at Candlemas with pain is born.
Lying with a left occipital position, what prompts it we may never know,
But at the appointed time dives down, down into the light--
Blinding snow-light, piercing the darkest corner with white,
Brightness of prick-eared cyclamen pink against the snow--
So long hidden, so sudden into sight.

2

You are our darling and our foreign guest;
We know all your origins, and this is to know nothing.
Distinguished stranger to whom we offer food and rest;
Yet made of our own natures; yet looked for with such longing.
Helpless wandering hands, the miniature of mine,
Fine skin and furious look and little raging voice--
Your looks are full human, your qualities all hidden:
It is your mere existence we have by heart, and rejoice.
The wide waters of wonder and comprehension pour
Through this narrow weir, and irresistable their power.
The rainbow multiple glory of our humanity cannot pierce
As does the single white beam of your being.
This makes your presence so shattering a grace,
Unsheathed suddenly from the womb: it was none of our intending
To set in train a miracle; and yet it is merely
Made palpable in you, missed elsewhere by diffusion.
Therefore we adore god-in-our-flesh as a baby:
Whose being is his essence, and outside it, illusion.
Later, the fulfillment, the example, death, misprision--
Here the extraordinary fact of being, which we see
Stripped and simple as the speechless stranger on my knee.

3

Blessing, sleep and grow taller in sleeping.
Lie ever in kind keeping.
Infancts curl in a cowrie of peace
And should lie lazy. After this ease,
When the soul out of its safe shell goes,
Stretched as you stretch those knees and toes,
What should I wish you? Intelligence first,
In a credulous age by instruction cursed.
Take from us both what immunity
We have from the germ of the printed lie.
Your father's calm temper I wish you, and
The shaping power of his confident hand.
Much, too, that is different and your own;
And may we learn to leave you alone.
For your part, forgive us the pain of living,
Grow in that harsh sun great-hearted and loving.

Sleep, little honey, then; sleep while the powers
Of the Nine Bright Shiners and the Seven Stars
Harmless, encircle: the natural world
Lifegiving, neutral, unless despoiled
By our greed or scorn. And wherever you sleep--
My arms outgrown--or waking weep,
Life is your lot: you lie in God's hand,
In His terrible mercy, world without end.

--

Dead and Gone

2

'For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage'
St. Matthew's Gospel

The specialty of time and place
Were of love's making, and are gone;
From the unfocused blur of space
And the indifference of time
Struck by the force of joy or pain--
These will never come again.

True, the environment retains
A faithful passion: earth or stone,
Archway, tree or moving-stair--
The place cries out, cries out in pain:
Its cries are heard by you alone,
The moment will not come again.

So place is widowed. What remains?
Sayings and anniversaries,
Saints'-days that loss discovers,
Hagiography of lovers;
Worse, the gradual death of pain,
For the image will not come again.

And after such a loss, what gain?
Not the longed-for, that is certain.
Nothing, or else a new thing.
If there is any final meeting
It is past desire or pain.
If love is, love is to be born again.

--

Blood Transfusion Centre

'He that gives, let him do it with simplicity.'

But which of us, waiting to offer his oblation
Can look at what he does with entire simplicity?
For between the lifeblood and the dying man
Science interposes its marvelous devices,
Isolating microbes, magnifying cells,
Testing, sealing, measuring, preserving.

So here we stand, in a queue for pure love
(Or it may be, for guilt, or it may be, for pride):
Shop-soiled housewives, typists and gardeners,
Lads and old soldiers--we look at each other
And wonder that health could spring from such complexions,
That such or such a man should design such a gift.
Yet each in his veins is offering the ichor,
Each has entertained the secret vision
Of health by his sickness; of life by his loss.

And here are the couches, with their patient figures
Whose blood is now flowing; and beyond these
The resting figures; and the cups of tea
Tasting of ether. The design is forgotten
In the details of performance: in chatting with the nurse,
In a sore vein, a thumping heart, a wearisome waiting.

To see this as godlike in the rest is to burden
The self who is one of them; belittling it here
Belittles it in them. TO give for those we love
Is natural as breathing, but should we not be hypocrites
To say that we loved this abstraction of Humanity?
The pelican's breast was not pierced for a stranger.
The man who gives his seed to beget for another
Creates he knows not what. THe man who gives his blood
Restores he knows not what. We call in question
Such dangerous goodwill as moves in the first,
But what of the second? Who would have the right
To pretend to the impartial love of a god
And divide himself, not for a man but for Men?

Dindrane who gave her blood to succour a sick woman
And died so, did truly die another's death;
But the woman had her part--to live another's life,
And pain is as hard to relinquish as to bear.
So, toward a presence not abstract though not seen,
Both move, giver and receiver, through darkness.
(We speak of Love as blind, because his day is dark to us.)

The queue moves forward. Humbly we consider--
Humbly and with amazement--
'He that gives, let him do it with simplicity.'

--

The Constellation

Silent the Lyre that streams among the stars
And lulled is the fierce Lion:
So is Orpheus; torment turned
To memory and peace
Pricked out in stars a counterpoint that cannot sound.

So fixed, so quiet, the family constellations
Are memories of love or hate:
Yet each has had its hot creation
When with new sons the old forms fade
Before the calm irrevocable past is made.

These grow and sing: with their sweet jangling cries
The bickering soaring children
Elder with younger jostle for place.
Their milky light, their all-regarding gaze
Has traveled here a billion miles of space:
Distant they are, not fixed, nor frozen, nor at peace.

--

The Images That Hurt

"The images that hurt and connect"
W.H. Auden

All the materials of a poem
Are lying scattered about, as in this garden
The lovely lumber of Spring.
All is profusion, confusion: hundred-eyed
The primulae in crimsion pink and purple,
Golden at the pupil;
prodigal the nectarine and plum
That fret their petals against a rosy wall.
Flame of the tulip, fume of the blue anemone,
White Alps of blossom in the giant pear-tree,
Peaks and glaciers, rise from the same drab soil.

Far too much joy for comfort:
The images that hurt because they won't connect.
No poem, no possession, therefore pain.
And struggling now to use
These images that bud from the bed of my mind
I grope about for a form,
As much in the dark, this white and dazzling day,
As the bulb at midwinter; as filled with longing
Even in this green garden
As those who gaze from the cliff at the depths of sea
And know they cannot possess it, being of the shore
And severed from that element for ever.

--

Nothing Is Lost

Nothing is lost.
We are too sad to know that, or too blind;
Only in visited moments do we understand:
It is not that the dead return:
They are about us always, though unguessed.

This pencilled Latin verse
You dying wrote me, ten years past and more,
Brings you as much alive to me as the self you wrote it for,
Dear father, as I read your words
With no word but Alas.

Lines in a letter, lines in a face
Are faithful currents of life: the boy has written
His parents across his forehead, and as we burn
Our bodies up each seven years,
His own past self has left no plainer trace.

Nothing dies.
The cells pass on their secrets, we betray them
Unknowingly: in a freckle, in the way
We walk, recall some ancestor,
And Adam in the colour of our eyes.

Yes, on the face of the newborn,
Before the soul has taken full possession,
There pass, as over a screen, in succession
The images of other beings:
Face after face looks out, and then is gone.

Nothing is lost, for all in love survive.
I lay my cheek against his sleeping limbs
To feel if he is warm, and touch in him
Those children whom no shawl could warm,
No arms, no grief, no longing could revive.

Thus what we see, or know,
Is only a tiny portion, at the best,
Of the life in which we share; an iceberg's crest
Our sunlit present, our partial sense,
With deep supporting multitudes below.

omg you caught me

2007-05-06T23:28:17Z

I don't have much time, but I want to get a couple things down before heading out in the next hour or so. This weekend's flown by (as time often seems to do), between friends or family or library visits.. and tomorrow is already in my mind. For some reason while I'm no friend of math and yet intimidated by organic chemistry, I like the latter more despite the other's ease--math is more boring on one level (and interesting on another), and easier, but it doesn't quite capture my attention.

There's a game later though (to like, play, not watch)... because I'm a brute like that. I haven't gotten together with a bunch of guys to skate on a team since high school - that's six years folks, the grey hairs will be popping up tomorrow no doubt, but between all the bruises and stiff lower backs.. it's going well so far. It isn't a very high skill league; we're all fairly decent, and a handful of the guys have or do play college hockey (not NCAA, but div. I or II in a league beneath that). I'm not talented like that, but I know how to play at that speed.

Just a couple of things to share though, nothing too big. One funny little story from looking around for some books in a public library, then something else.

-

So while stepping into a restroom I hear this guy singing in the bathroom--on the pot. I'm not kidding. I don't know a lick about classical singing, but it sounded precisely like that from the brief exposure I've gotten from being dragged to a concert or two in the past couple years, and there he was in the stall singing away.

It was actually.. like, quite honestly, pleasant and you could call it beautiful, if you weren't aware that the guy was doing this while sitting on the john. I tip-toed back out after walking in... because for some reason I felt obliged to let him keep that bubble of utter anonymity, like how sometimes you might not want some fellow interstate/road driver to actually catch you singing along to a song on the radio, but I think I got caught too.

He went silent just as I made the escape from the operatic bathroom, so he definitely got the hint as much as I tried to disguise it. It was decidedly the most classy bathroom habit ever, though, easily.

And for the other thing... actually, I gotta roll, so that one thing will have to wait.

savin' it up for friday night

2007-05-04T23:12:29Z

Seriously, I can't believe it's already Friday (and the exclamation with it nearly over, no less). Why? Only for the very plain reason that this is the one week I get to do absolutely like... well, nothing, and live out those days doing whatsoever should come to my mind. It's a week turnaround between winter and spring for the school, yet it doesn't seem enough apparently.

Take that complaint over 7+ days of that going by 'too fast' with a very large grain of salt however, because it deserves one. I am... though, honestly, -tired- of school.

I never thought that -that- monster would ever find me bow to it (that being boredom/wanting out/justgetmedonealready), even to a small degree. I don't really have any complaints over institutions and myself, knowing some of the futility in any of the things that can be said about them, but I am definitely aware of how seriously and on a superficial level I'm tired of being there. Of doing it all, as much as I actually do enjoy it, and as evasive I am of that self-caused beast of the doldrums. If you know me, I am no enemy to being offered stuff to learn and read about.. even though I've sadly gone through like various stupid periods in the past where I was real judgemental about some select things that had worth, and not seeing why they were significant because of - not idiocy, but merely not grasping the broader point and knowing enough to read into the points presented. I was high-horsed and assuming and unawarely arrogant about it... and all born out of an ignorance. That is, basically, so stupid.

And you know, we stupid people never see the point of what is written or why a thing exists if we don't understand it. =p

I just don't -love- this though--who does? It's school, it's people telling you stuff that they learned about to then be able to tell you about it and be paid for it.. and if it's stuff you wouldn't know else if you go listen, if you can only pick it up there... then it is worthwhile. but seriously... I am done listening. I mean, I want to do--that is the root of this. I'm tired of being an ear, even if some of the people along the way truly are pleasant and even downright good professors. And it isn't all one-sided... but the whole process, the journey, the ugh on ugh, I have no enchantment with. All the good things aside, it just is a means to some other new thing. That is all.

I'm just fine though, I simply know how nice it is to not be responsible for a little while before you go and take up the mantle again. This is essentially getting a taste of something you like, and wanting to hold on for a little longer. Everybody likes their freedom, apparently, and to an extent I am no different on that part of the whole parade.

There are a lot of things on my mind.. but maybe all I wanna do is just be for a while - right now, I mean.

I like to tell myself how little it is that I actually need, but then a moment comes along and makes me realize what it is that I want out of life, and I don't mean material things like that sexy car that someone wants gimme-gimme'd, or other ridiculous stuff.

It is wise to want, but I'm not totally sold that some of my desires aren't fundamentally more ridiculous than some others'. I just want however.. a thing I don't even know? I think right now what I want is a challenge. And a few other contradictory things as well.

once long ago they told you to paint by numbers

2007-04-29T21:15:29Z

4/22

--

So it's time for something a little different. Mainly a little bit about school, and then a little bit about actual learning:

This semester's rapidly coming to an end--I'm more or less glad for the fact, even though to tell the truth.. aside from the people I know outside there, some of the profs and other people I didn't truly know well I'll actually miss. It's like by the time you've gotten used to your surroundings and the people around you, just as quickly the hourglass runs out and it's time to pack up.

But with the end of this one, it marks the equivalent of two years of primarily science and math credits, straight-up, all over eachother. And I have more or less weathered and done well in them all.

What this illustrates to me?

I have this down. It isn't any wonder to me, really, that these aren't subjects that come easily for me: they require different sets of skills to work with, different paces, a different kind of attention to devote, and a different work ethic to drive through. If it were that I could reorganize things in me to reap the benefits of having a natural draw to them, I would--I know that I'd be a far different person for them, and that extends beyond any plain classroom and all the meager benefits to gain in there. I have no such desires to wish time and circumstance away however, for at this point in it all - I have no need precisely to even start on such a foolish and useless path.

I know myself well, and now more than ever: I know my weaknesses, I understand my strengths and virtues, I grasp how I could be better without some of the sore points, likewise I see how I could be -worse- without some of the good things. This is in no systematic tallying way... it is merely acknowledging facts, in specific terms - no more, and no less. I think there is a default answer that everyone wants to give and expects out of someone else in turn is a yes, to these questions: are you content with yourself? are you happy with who you are? do you feel up to the tasks you have for your time? living your life, are you comfortable with what you've been given to work with?

I am, however. The question itself is a gauge--and to that I say, I've all the confidence in myself that is appropriate for a person to have, without stepping erroneously and grievously into self-delusion, arrogance, or pride. I feel the current of my own life and I'm not at all afraid of what is out there to be done or what may come.

And yet being sure of what I am doesn't erase the knowledge of what I -could be-; no, am yet to be--how could it? How awful a thing, to not be aware - and we all are by degrees - or be capable of for a moment admitting to yourself, if anyone, where your foundations and outerlying structure can be reenforced? worked on? bettered? And in earnest? In a place where selling yourself to people - to employers, to acquaintances, at times even to friends or family or lovers, is necessary, for some that knowledge can have no room and so they decide to bury the things that they decide can't be turned to an advantage. They leave it by the roadside somewhere that may never be revisited in their soul's eye again, forgotten like any irretrievable period in your life; for all you have is now and ahead.

So it dies, but so dies with it what they have the power to turn in themselves. They gain in a sense, but they don't actually become better in any way if they're committing to living a part of their lives in survival mode when it comes to what they risk. There is, literally, nothing learned or changed, and in bending they haven't gained at all.

And over the course of this whole entry I've actually diverged from the original point that I set out on making. But my point, both the first and the new one: I've gotten this far, I've dived into some of the toughest spots academically for me, and while those gains are miniscule in all truth, what I've proved to myself -via- that in other areas.. is worth it's weight in gold. I understand why it's been necessary to tackle and now, from here, where to take it.

The only other point to make here, tied to the first and largely to myself:

Now to spend some time breaking down some other, less defined, but far more vital walls at hand. I am not ready just yet--there is too much else for me to get out of the way right now--but to steal someone else's line, there is in the rafters, in my heart that "yes, nearby"

but i got 'em back

2007-04-29T21:06:24Z

A pair of old entries, from the past two weeks.

I posted sparingly 'cos of the end of the semester madness, but that finished up Thursday and now... well, not freedom, but a reasonable facsimile for sure.

written 4/16

--

It's a beautiful day outside. The wind is blowing, the sun is shining, and for all appearances it's the kind of day that could make you think absolutely nothing is - or was ever - wrong in the world. For anyone, period, dying or ill, or any fate that is theirs. It is, in a word, pristine.

And yet I'm in this building, not at all sold on the bait and prepping for some last-go exams before the real finals. It is stupid. I feel like I'm throwing an internal fit here, but it's over completely nothing. There is no guilty party here... no wrong-doer who rubbed you the wrong way, no act of your own to make you angry with your own self.. it is nothing, nada, zilch, a negative. If anything it could be school... but it's not even that, really; it's one of those things that gets under your skin, and by virtue of being so undetectable.. you can't even figure out what it is that's making you so sour, let alone what to name it and from there uproot.

There is no one escaping my inner critic today... but most of all for that fact... it all turns back on me, for knowing how undeserved, how awful the outlook is from its origin point.

This is actually really, really stupid.

I'm not the kind of person who always steals upon a solution to a problem and never looks back--life's not circular, but it's not linear either, so something that fixes or rights you one day may not be the same thing to do it in -the next- down the line, nor may it be solved for eternity thereon either. I'm not terribly much the kind to sympathize with people who seem to be recurring on stuff either though. There are some things that you can't do anything about in life and that will -always- be there, and will -never- be gone, and if someone's of the mindset of dealing with them... then they may as well just deal - be it one way, or the other. Find your way to do it and make it happen. That's it.

It's stupid and a little foolish to wrestle with same partners every day or some equivalent cycle, unless it's of the exception where your match-up with the angel has nothing at all to do with you... and is born of actual love toward a thing, a people, an enduring problem, a matter at hand, ultimately

I really hate it though (*sings* ~but hate is a strong woooooord~) when people say, "Be more of this (insert trait or value)," or "just deal"--and that's it. That is my irony max for the day. I absolutely love their thought.. their value for what they want you to get back to, their pragmatism, their beauty of mind and heart, but it's not always a useful suggestion.

I think a majority of some people's internal stuff-ups actually are solved by that when they aren't too great and they're listening. Some of my own are as well, if the moment is trying and all I need is a reminder to let me take it from there on my own. But say to them to be more of something, or be a different way... be patient with them, encouraging, work them through the steps with love, and all they will need to do is flip the switch on the traintracks, think a little, and chart their new course. Steered toward the clear, they are set: all they needed to do was take the time to step back and be this new thing

It is a positively glorious way to be and I think my heart melts at the thought that people really truly are, the cons of them not knowing the way on their own aside. It's like one of those dreams in your life, one of those visions that you'd turn a new leaf over because of if it descended and came to your eye.. and that really actually does come true, and it's real and there for you to touch! If only for a little while! I think I'm obviously somewhat overstating it... but all the same, when people are easy to work with, open to handling a matter/learning, and can make progress on it... whoever they are, sometimes that is heaven to me. That is worth everything in the world to me, makes me rethink everything and want to shoot for the stars, makes me wonder why that moment of crystallized realization isn't ever-present sans their moments of beauty

That one single moment of bliss, of actualized like... everything, and a representative seed bearing every single hope and dream of yours here, can make me think that every single good thing actually could well be true in the universe.

Maybe all people's situations are derivatives of this and that's all, maybe? And yet some people will actually make an excuse out of their lack of A to B simplicity when in truth, one person's added difficulty with making the journey from "identification" to "resolution and beyond" is merely a reason: a fact, a simple truth, never to be confused with an excuse or a "pass on responsibility card" that makes it less important for them to take by the reins and sort out.

And all that out of a vague, indiscernible thorn... that is somewhat passed. And yet I know it and me aren't done, not yet.

A good friend of mine referred this poem to me lately:

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!"
-Rudyard Kipling, 'If'

I don't know about the end, but the rest: definitely.

fourteen seconds till sunrise

2007-04-29T10:11:43Z

Happiness is

..sweet...

And yet I grow too wary of it over time. When it arrives, is it to be - and then snatched away?

A thing lorded over you the instant when life ceases to deliver not only the daily, intermittent although lovely sparks of short-spanned joys, and so turns it into something not permanent - but enough to be dangerous, all the same? And all beside as quickly able to end as any thing under the sun?

And this is stupid. Why hold a thing that is dear to you at arms' length - for fear, for the attempt at your own liberty--and in so doing, make your own chain? I know why: there is too much else to be done to let some things in, with the time and resources they can suck up, if there are other important things yet that you want.

This is vague... but it really is about as general as it appears. I've become quite a master apparently at prioritizing and weighing what can come and what can go in my life, to ignore the smoke that life puts out there, and thus put up the impenetrable defense. To allow only that which you choose and not waste your time. It is worthy, it is fine, and it is effective - so it is said.

I know where my "musts" lay, what I intend to do, what I want to accomplish, what I want to be part of. A moment's whim is not enough to bring some sea walls down, so long as the borders aren't harmful--everyone has territory lines they draw, that remain theirs, because they need them. These portions of their souls that they so heavily rely on keeping safe.

And yet in my heart, I understand too much where real freedom lay in actuality, and what opposites of this liberty - real liberty - risk suffocation of the heart itself:

-the ability to let all things pass through you, holding less back
-the ability to be happy, and not be too conscious of this
-the ability to act in dire circumstances, for the sake of those you deliberately extend love toward
-the ability to love freely, though wisely, and on a daily basis be merciful and just in the fitting proportions to those whom you deal with

I just get so tired thinking about all the 'little steps' on the ladder rungs... knowing where I am right now, sometimes I really just wanna fly with it and be there already.

Today was a great day, full of goodness... and much real happiness.. I don't know what's wrong at all. It is a small thing, a footnote, but present to me in its undefined state all the same.

--

"The next step is rejoicing. To rejoice means not to feel jealousy or resentful of the virtuous deeds done by other Dharma practitioners. Instead, if we wholeheartedly admire other people's good practice, we will be able to accumulate great virtue. When we see someone accumulating the causes that lead to the attainment of a well-placed rebirth or we see someone who has attained such a status, it is a cause for rejoicing. Likewise we should rejoice at the accumulation of merit that becomes a cause for attaining enlightenment.

"We should rejoice at the liberation of sentient beings from the sufferings of the cycle of existence through the practice of the three trainings. We should rejoice at the causes of the attainment of buddhahood, the ten levels of the bodhisattvas, and the resulting state of buddhahood itself. Likewise the generation of the awakening mind, the mind wishing to benefit other sentient beings, the source of oceanic virtue that brings peace and happiness to all sentient beings, is a source of great joy."
-Tenzin Gyatso

If you're phobic you might not find stuff to appreciate out of a quote like that. I tend to be able to draw spiritual worthiness from a wide variety of minds, and (by consequence) in turn value the same ability in others.

This one isn't all that insightful to me - that is, lending new sight to a thing that wasn't under your own consideration.. or charting new territory... it is more like when you read something and like it for the direction it applies, for what it happens to give you right then, in that moment, alone.

oh i think i'll get it done yesterday (aww shit)

2007-04-19T19:21:17Z

It's half-way through the day and I'm absolutely floating--on sleep deprivation. I'm a light weight without a doubt when it comes to that (but that's for lack of 'training' in the art, I imagine, and a lack of need so far to do marathon sessions to study/cram..).

I don't feel floaty like 'it's nice and sunny and wheeeee how super cool', nono, that little bit of natural adrenaline and not so natural caffeine to make your heart beat noticeably went around 7am

More like, "man, gimme a corner cot somewhere to fall backwards into. zzzzzzzzz...." =( heh

=\

(And damn, if it wouldn't be good) It's due to: a) a killer chem exam in t-minus 2.5 hours... and b) a wimpy paper that wrote itself, but still needed someone to put in the time between 12am and 12:30p. Or more like 6a-9a with all the chem stuff going in the hours prior

With weather kind of like this (and this and this), I'd very nearly bet on a grassy nap on a hill somewhere:

--

--

skippers @ 2007-04-17T17:01:00

2007-04-17T21:00:17Z

It's been all over the news that shooting down at VTech, and it's one of those things you'd definitely take a hundred days of Hollywood star baby-drama publication over, any day.

Some of the people talking and analyzing/giving real info about the whole tragedy--the ones not merely jumping on it to talk about it or who're blowing hot air around are interesting... but it's likely some of the videos of student retellings that actually put you closest to the reality, them talking and describing what they simply saw before their eyes. It drags it out of the screen and, imperfectly, gives you a miniscule glimpse of their morning.

Of the dead two professors went down, and one in a real, true, irrevocably honest act of heroism in laying his life down for his pupils. But this is curious:

"Some students have complained that they were put at risk by the university, saying they had received no warning until an e-mail more than two hours after the first incident.

"Student Billy Bason, 18, said: 'I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident.' But the university president has defended his staff, saying they 'had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur'.
--bbc

And it's like, how could you not suspect? The first report came at 7:15--two hours before it happened, forty-five minutes before classes began.

I understand why they thought students in buildings would be safer than roaming outside with a shooter potentially abroad, but faced with the alternative? In this kind of climate, the first thing leaping to a lot of people's minds would be the fact that a school environment would be the prime scene for violence if anyone had the mind for it.

It seems like that'd be the first scenario you'd worry about knowing the past seven years or more of school-deaths, so why did they discount it?

through the grapevine

2007-04-09T21:14:15Z

So I'm sitting here in this library and doing my thing reading articles here or there, and occasionally goofing off/procrastinating, and apparently eavesdropping on this pair of international students while I'm at it.

If that isn't multi-tasking... I don't know what is. =p

..ok, they're gone... I didn't mean to, but they were talking about experiences they've had over here and problems with conversations/the language... and help me, but I find that stuff interesting so yeah, I'm a snoop. They're both Asian (I couldn't begin to designate where), and the guy there I knew, he tutors for a few sections of math in one of the buildings, but mostly they were talking about ideas of staying here, amongst other things.

And they were noting troubles with other people using informalities (slang, etc.) in English around them, with this effectively throwing a monkeywrench into their heads and being a silent killer to the conversation. Which I can sympathize with... if you aren't being attentive to where the person you're communicating with is coming from (I don't mean geography, but you know), you very likely will fail in your effort of communication at least in part, if not in totality.

To say the least, very good communicators always bear this in mind, no matter what kind of interaction they're entering. This ensures not only that they will do their best in understanding the other's words and meaning behind them on that end, but on their own it also decreases any chances at very bad miscommunication like... people out there who want to express their displeasure with someone for doing random thing, but wind up totally doing it in an inappropriate, and/or potentially argument-causing way and gaffing it. Or simply by not electing another, equally appropriate way that would avoid territory you'd rather not venture to with someone. It is always, at baseline, of highly great use to -you- but with an even greater benefit to others as well.

To know the arts of this is more important than many and all dream. And yet it is a very delicate thing that neither can be taught, though it can be helped to a point and encouraged to those interested and receptive. Only accurate imagination and experience will serve you here while wading through the varied shorelines though. It is a thing that very literally can make all the difference in the world.

belfast children

2007-04-07T23:51:12Z

In just a little bit I'm headed out the door, I've hardly even been around here lately: and besides, it's insanely tough to get anything done at home sometimes, as bizarre as that thought seems on the surface. I spent most of the morning and afternoon on homework at some cafe and later going out with a camera, with the time until the 9pm Easter vigil down in Royal Oak.

I've come to prefer the shrine over St. Mary's or St. John's though--Fr. Ron is a sweet man, yet I think ultimately the people and location down in Royal Oak appeal to me more all things considered. I don't mind the extra drive down to Royal Oak if I happen to be out this way in Milford, if I'm not on campus or staying at someone's house, and the area I've simply become accustomed to in the past four months. It's busy, it's vast, it's far different than the limbo of countryside and growing smaller towns out west toward Brighton or Hartland, and that amongst other reasons attracts me.

There isn't anybody that I'd exactly prefer to go with though. Most of the people I've come to know here in Rochester wouldn't understand, and the same goes to an extent for my immediate family: neither parties have anything close to that to seek or derive, so it leaves me on the solo track in this--but that's quite okay! I may venture out with my aunt's side tomorrow.

And it looks like, finally.. the sun's starting to come out again after all the snow and cold that's been pre-dominant all today. Have a good night, everybody.

we live on front porches and swing life away

2007-04-06T00:10:50Z

This is a bit of a long entry, so pass by and skip or read at your own leisure.

It was sometime earlier in the day that I saw this real estate sign/advert., with the tagline being something along the lines of "Let's make the home that you'd want to live in forever--come in today!" And it made me think about that, and my own reaction to the idea.

It seems like such a normal, natural desire for everyone to have this or that place to call "my own", to carve out that niche and stake your flag in the western territories, and it is.

Yet I suppose that the desire itself doesn't appeal much to me at all. And that is a bit of a lie: because everybody does welcome the basic stability of having somewhere to make base camp at. It's that basic priority of security being met, that at the end of the day you've got somewhere that's yours, that's safe, that you can work around and live in, and conduct the shape of your life from there. Nobody, essentially, ever prefers the idea of being homeless.

But I don't have that "urge" to own or have anything of the sort permanently, or have the same dream... to be honest, when people start talking about 'homes they'd love to have', while I can be moved occasionally myself if I see a place that just truly looks nice and makes me dream a dream for half a second, most of the time I just don't give a damn at all underneath it all.

--

It's likely for this reason: I have not the same fascination with being able to look on an environment and say "this is mine", and then enjoy the possessing of it. The world is so large and vast and wide, to plunk yourself down in a little spot somewhere in America, or anywhere, is something that always makes me think of maps of Earth that are made from photographs shot out in space. Or sometimes looking at cells under microscopes: I know my own position along and beside everything else, so how is it that arranging a specified amount of space to my liking will be a thing to satisfy?

Frankly, I don't understand the people out there who seek a thing to make sure is "theirs" and, then, after procuring it, will bask in the sight... and they exist out there, in droves and multitudes. I do understand people however who, simply, enjoy and appreciate things they have or have gained, but with me, I don't feel very strongly even that urge to make my claim, but maybe that's because I'm not certain of what my claim ought be - if it happens that I should have the desire to make it, or not.

Another part of it may simply be the lack of a desire to be tied down to anything, however. I have no compelling compass directing me to invest, and by consequence possibly making a chain to any place/thing/person itself, and besides... who ever wants to think of living in one place, "forever"? I don't, but that's what everyone often does, for what reasons they have, financial or social, whether by the chains of necessity or their genuine freely willed choice. I don't like to stay with some things or to set my roots, as to me it's more advantageous on the surface - whether it is or not - to be free to not become stuck for the rest of your life.

Though really, it doesn't matter where you are, in a sense--so I'm not sure what it is I'm fighting. Geography itself - independent of what comes with the geography - is meaningless, more or less. And besides.. where you live is where you live, no more than that, surely, and double assuredly no less.

And everyone knows at some point in their life, that dear piece of happiness in being with the people, the situations, the places that lead them to hand over their personalized and tailored title of 'home' and make them -want- to be where they are, with the people they are.

They know it, whether or not they'd say they are "home" right now, whether or not it's something they actually have a desire for at the moment, whether or not past conceptions of this were in actuality correct or true and good, whether or not anything; it is there, in all people, unless they should be of the anti-social variety and totally lost. While people will paint very different pictures on their canvases, they will always paint them out of highly similar basic motivations when you look at and compare them, and those universal similarities are the basics of human life itself.

I suppose though that at the moment, in this particular curve in the road of my life, I haven't a clue at all what it is that I want, if there is anything that I especially want in those terms. I feel more often than anything like that person in a relationship who continuously has his foot mentally out the door, yet most of the time people who are in that frame of mind often will reason/assume/self-justify something similar to this: "It's because what is around me lacks what it takes to draw me in."

And without a doubt some places, some people you ought avoid, for the reason of it genuinely not being right, or safe, or even sensible. No matter how earnestly a real "fit" is stroven for, it may be a quest undertaken in vain. It is useless to stay in a place or in a situation if, in the end, it is something that truly you should leave, despite what everyone around you may openly say or otherwise communicate.

Yet just as often there's the unasked question, "Is this something indicative of my surroundings, or is it more indicative of myself? Am I right to want out, or is there something that ought be leading me back to these things and that I ought seek out? Am I obligated, or am I free to walk elsewhere?"

It's kind of like that line of dialogue in the Departed between Leonardo DiCaprio's character and his uncle, in the beginning of the movie when the two were speaking over Costigan's dying mother:

Uncle Ed: What's this I hear from Stephanie about you becoming a policeman?
Billy Costigan: You mean Stephanie, who was the only one who came to my father's funeral? That Stephanie?
Uncle Ed: Yeah, *that* Stepanie.
Billy Costigan: Nothing much to it, Uncle Edward.
Uncle Ed: Are you trying to prove something to the family?
Billy Costigan: When you say "the family," who do mean exactly? You?
Uncle Ed: You always have to question everything, don't you?
Billy Costigan: Maybe it would have done you some good to have some *questions* from time to time, you know? "Am I an asshole? Are my kids a mess?" I mean, those are questions, right? "Have I ever been good to my dying sister or am I just now pretending to be?"
Uncle Ed: Do you need some money for the funeral?
Billy Costigan: When my mother dies, we don't have any more connection.

--

I'm thinking it over though. I don't know if that lack of specific attachment is something to fix, or if it's something useable for good, or if I'm simply nosing around in the wrong areas and haven't found the right situation that calls. It can seem very 'smart' to not give your self, your whole self, your soul to certain things if they aren't a draw to you ...

..but at the same time I think people who walk the streets of life living that way, staying back from things they don't love without effort, secretly are unhappy for choosing or having to be cautious. And worser so is the fact if truly they never needed to be in the first place.

But again, some warning signs are wise to heed. It's your own life at your discretion, and there's nobody else to blame but yourself if you mess it all up. You have this one shot in the middle of it all here, and there aren't any takebacks, ever.

it was back in ol' 72

2007-04-03T01:48:19Z

As soon as 2pm comes and goes tomorrow, I am free: see, there's an eensy gauntlet of double exams that morning, and as soon as it's all over? I'm planning to blow it all off afterward on the invitation with a couple folks to go watch big guys beat eachother up, on ice skates in Detroit.

They also call it hockey, but only in Canada. It's really just boxing on ice... (I'm kidding -->It's better than boxing on ice. ;P It isn't that, really though..)

I haven't even paid serious attention to anything major sports-related for about ten years now though, honestly? I mean, I play, so with the icefest I'm bound to check in on that in the news periodically (or in the event of the Tigers actually ~~not sucking~~ nearly winning last year, them too), so apparently this should be interesting.

If I don't come back from the den where 20,000 shout, stomp, and clamor in unison, somewhere near the Detroit river is likely where my mugged body'll be found. =p

But I think it'll be a-ok

salut

2007-04-02T21:00:21Z

So this is what a journal looks like defunct apparently. It's been a long time since I've posted here, but after kicking the idea around.. I decided that ought be remedied and for some of the dust to be brushed off here.

That said, hi there. It feels a little strange posting somewhere that I haven't touched in six months.. if anything, then simply because of the time table and distance to breach itself. But I guess that's what happens when something is left by the way side though, for: the familiar does not remain forever so, after all, and 'old objects laid down, when picked up, do not always promise to feel the same'.

So this is just out there, saying "hey", and marking my place after twenty-some weeks of zero feeds off this locale in webjunk.

This is also a little notice that (of course) I intend to resume updating this semi-regularly, but don't be surprised by spaced out entries rather than something more frequent -- conversely, that frequency may actually happen, so no promises either way. I am regrettably downright prolific at times and equally not as loud-mouthed at others between stuff in life, so.. being aware of that fact and eventuality, I make no claims. I think luckily it'll be a measure of both though!

And I'd better be out of this library before our math class starts. I hope you're all well.

maxima culpa

2006-08-15T02:04:54Z

These are some quotes lifted off some readings on the 'net and from a book in a cafe last week; they are simple and broad, or merely reflective of time and humanity and even inconsequential, and while not embodying me, they do parts of my mind lately that August serves well in allowing that time to bring them together. I bear truth and yet it seems difficult to want to spend the time away from other things to pen it into a journal out in the spaces of the internet or into a space of its own.

Fortunately one timeless lesson in life is that any thing worthy of being done need only be done for the sake of doing, and regardless of whether the open air should be capable of knowing it to the same depth. Many learn it, many do so then turn it aside, many never arrive at the point, like so many others. It is a difficult one for me as I value articulating things with and to other equally seeing minds rather than for my own sake, and yet so necessary is this to be in active formation all the same as well valued selflessly toward others!

Hold me not responsible for the translations!

--

"nonne amicus certus in re incerta cernitur?" (a friend in need is a friend in deed)

"Veni, vidi, vici." (I came, I saw, I conquered. Caesar)

"Veni, Vidi, Dormivi" (I came, I saw, I slept)

"Taurus excreta cerebrum vincit" (Bullshit baffles brains)

"Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat. (Horace, Satires: What prevents me from speaking the truth with a smile?)

"Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!" (If you can read this sign, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, high-paying world of Latin!)

"illegitimi non carborundum" (-Very- roughly translated: Don't let the bastards grind you down.)

"In Vino Veritas" (In wine there is truth)

"Re vera, potas bene." (Say, you sure are drinking a lot.)

"Ubi fumus, ibi ignis." (Where there's smoke, there's fire.)

"Exitus acta probat" (The outcome justifies the deed)

"Bellum omium contra omnes" (Everyman's struggle against everyman, Hobbes)

"Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis" (All things are changing, and we are changing with them)

"primum non nocere" (first do no harm)

"Pacta Sunt Servanda" (Accords (or treaties) should be observed [Basic principle of International Law])

"fabas indulcet fames" (literally "hunger sweetens beans" or hunger makes everything taste good!)

"Corruptio optimi pessima" (corruption of the best is worst)

"Nemo dat quod non habet" (No one gives what he doesn't have.)

"Qui potest capere capiat" (Let him accept it who can. Freely: If the shoe fits, wear it.)

"Mens sibi conscia recti" (a mind conscious of its rectitude)

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem" (remember to keep a calm mind in difficulties)

"O tempora, O mores!" (Oh the times, oh the morals! Cicero)

"Tempus amoris cubiculum non est..." (The time for love is not in the bedroom...)

"Avarus animus nullo satiatur lucro." (A greedy mind is satisfied with no (amount of) gain.)

"Fama nihil est celerius." (Nothing is swifter than rumor.)

"Mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo." (My conscience is more to me than what the world says.)

"Vademecum" (go with me)

"cui bono" (for whose good [in whose interests]?)

"caeca invidia est" (envy is blind)

"Nullum Gratuitum Prandium." (There is no free lunch!)

"Hic puer est stultissimus omnium!" (This boy is the stupidest of all!)

"Multi famam, conscientiam pauci verentur." (Pliny: Many fear their reputation, few their conscience.)

"Studium discendi voluntate quae cogi non potest constat" (Quintilian Institutio Oratoria, iii: Study depends on the good will of the student, a quality which cannot be secured by compulsion.)

"Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam." (I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.)

"Musica delenit bestiam feram." (Music soothes the savage beast.)

"non scholae sed vitae discimus" (we learn not for school, but for life)

"Semper Letteris Mandate" (Always get it in writing!)

"Aquila non copit murem" (the eagle does not catch the mouse, "don't sweat the small things")

"festina lente" (hurry slowly)

"Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum" (Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble)

"deo volente" (It means god willing.)

"ad astra per aspera" (to the stars through difficulty)

"Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomine Tu o da gloriam" (Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.)

"Cursum Perficio" (My journey is over.) (also sometimes as "I finish my journey")

"Commune hoc ignorantiae vitium est: quae nescias, nequicquam esse profiteri" (Leon Battista Alberti: De Re Aedificatoria, VI,2 -- A common thing with the ignorant, to despise what they do not understand; James Leoni's translation, London 1726 - this translation is not entirely to the point, either, I feel - a better one might be: "A common vice among ignorants is to reject the idea that there is anything to know")

"Quos vult perdere Jovis prius dementat." (Those whom he wants to destroy, Jupiter first makes angry.)

"Prospice tibi--ut Gallia, tu quoque in tres partes dividareis." (Watch out--you might end up divided into three parts, like Gaul.)

"Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum." (Garbage in, garbage out.)

"Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse." (I think we're on the same wavelength.)

"Neutiquam erro." (I am not lost.)

"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur" (Anything said in Latin sounds profound.)

"Ars longa, vita brevis." (Hypocrates: The work (art) is long, the life is short.)

"Astra non mentiuntur, sed astrologi bene mentiuntur de astris." (The stars never lie, but the astrologs lie about the stars.)

"Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem." (Literally: "The one wellbeing of the defeated is not to hope for wellbeing." Colloquially: "The only hope of the vanquished is not to hope." - Virgil)

"Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt"--Horace, Ars Poetica (The years as they come bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.)

"Exemplum de simia, quae, quando plus ascendit, plus apparent posteriora eius" --Saint Bonaventure (He doth like the ape, that the higher he clymbes the more he shows his ars. --Translation by Sir Francis Bacon)

"Sic transit gloria mundi" (thus passes the glory of the world)

"Errare humanun est - sed perseverare diabolicum" (mistakes are human, but to continue making mistakes is devilish)

"Vita luna" (crazy life)

"tum podem extulit horridulum" (you are talking shit)

"Quod me nutrit me destruit" (What nourishes me destroys me)

"Tempus fugit" (Time disappears)

"Do ut des" (Give when you receive)

"Bene est mihil" (I am well)

"Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis." (It is best to endure what you cannot change. -Seneca, Moral Epistles)

"Mea anima est cum te. Nostra animae sunt cum vobis." (My heart is with you. Our hearts are with you all.)

song remains, more than

2006-08-12T01:57:46Z

I paid one nineteen for this baby yesterday. The actual whole piece is far larger than that, but.. damn! All for basically one of those faulty little connectors in the complete thing. I'd rather pay twenty if it were possible to tear out the bad piece in the existing under board and retain the working integrity of the thing, and replace it with the new one. It doesn't work that way however, they say, and so...

..give us your wallet and nobody gets hurt =p It was smoking a little, even, any time I touched it to put the driver's window up or down, and sometimes trusting somebody else's word is the route to go.

It doesn't matter, actually. People in general complain about so many things that don't, unless they actually do - like, for example, if you're in a situation where you truly are scant financially, and I mean, -really-. To the point of being doomed completely if anything even remotely small happens. There are valid things.. and understandable ones too, tied up in the whole experience of living, like personal matters and feelings or struggles, even if they aren't the same as living or dying on the sidewalk. It's inevitable, it's part of what it is to be here. Some people do it less, some more, some completely unconsciously and full on of themselves, some extremely the opposite in their self-scrutiny, some all the time, some not at all (fallacy: everyone does, you can't avoid it, only monitor it ^_-), and all the shades between

And yet it is the most when people are with their eye turned in, instead of forsaking themselves in parts and looking at the issues of those around them in their vicinity, or anywhere abroad. I read this article the other day.. and it mostly makes me think of cases in general similar to those, or my own parents even. I have no answers for any of them, and some people are left in a way.. ultimately up to their own devices, aside from volunteer and charity work from people for older folks left utterly in limbo. Or the other varied solutions for other age groups (50s, 40s, 30s, 20-somethings even) that can help them make connections, and all that when it comes to active means of people reaching out and seeking personally meaningful voices in the world. Along with and very much aside from this there are an incredible amount of things simply served up waiting for physical destruction--and I suppose that is the design in its utmost simplicity in part for life.

Most people wander through it, to greater or lesser degrees and all the more blissful, without ever looking at that fact, and it's no wonder all they will ever care about in their lives is the present moment and what's in it for them. To the exclusion of what's in the future, or what's happening with other people, or what "ultimately" is around them in the bounds of life itself. Then again, when the pinch is on that's what it can come down to, and to lesser or larger degrees does: no person can act without regard for their own person, and I am as oblivious to things in the world that are worthy of knowing, too. I think there's are genuine distinctions between the degrees to which someone doesn't care, depending on their personality and their circumstances.. and these matter, as they do not. Ask me about local governmental things or larger policies in the States, and hell if I know the things that anyone would benefit from and everyone ought when it comes to those. Or pertinent international relations, or motivations and complications, or so many other things. It was only the other day that I was reading something on Bosnia in '95 and the U.S.'s aid to Milosevic early on as a foot into the area, and then their deal with Serbia after he was taken in later in order to be the ones actively playing a role in bringing him to trial in the Hague. And millions more things that I'll never actually care to read about.. though were there the time somehow, I might. These are the limits, yet imperative that they be strained against in what ways they physically will (be).

But it's all just minor bluster from me, I haven't been anywhere, done anything. And I may not for a while until/if I get my way in the end post-grad, except for small things. Small things are important, indeed in a way the most important when those are what are available, if a person's willing to seek them out and act on them (through their community, their friends, their school, church, parishes, synagogues, or any other affiliation they are held in). And so on

Again, bluster in the meantime. I vow to turn good out of it later when some other ground's found.

I have so many things to get to that I've put off the past four days. One of them being about.. a couple hundred pages of reviews before next Tuesday, yet between this and Woodward avenue we'll see how much time I learn to inventively use late at night. Nights are so much better than days, anyway--much "bigger," and other things.

And that's about it for the moment, I think. There was more, but on second thought it likely is another of those things that doesn't have a place.

skippers @ 2006-08-09T20:04:00

2006-08-10T00:14:29Z

When I am the most silent, it seems I have the most on my mind, turned over.

The past three days and the weekend beyond have been bright.. idyllic even in the scenery, if the word can even fit anything, and yet while it is good, the days pass by as if they were pages not touched at all. That analogy is off, it doesn't communicate it right: it's like being. You can be peaceful, you can be at unease, you can be concerned, you can be any thing and motivated likewise, and yet lately I merely am.

It is neither good nor bad, like the kind of peace when you are untouched by the world, the sun, the surroundings, and like heavy absorption on things while you figure out what to do with them. I wake each day and there's this unmoveable peace that exists in me, I touch or read things both at length, paying more attention than a thing necessarily practically needs but drawing subsequently more out of it all the same in the gathering process. Like having the patience and will to explain two or three times in different ways your point to a person who you know is not going to understand or would resist the things you're pointing out to them about their behavior or another person's, and actually being able to get through to them in part (as in passive acceptance of a presented point, over increased internalized comprehension) only for virtue of that detachment and austerity (in the sense of bareness, not severity).

And like being in a place where you are moved by will alone at times and have laid before you only options on what you will direct yourself to do, yet not as frightening as when you're on that sheer border in yourself. I want yet more time and yet the time suffices.

This will pass, though perhaps some of the best things will hopefully be retained out of it. In the moment I've been listening to a lot of instrumental or orchestral arrangements, and while Kate Bush's string sequences from 'cloudbusting' keep being imagined in my mind, this is a piece of what resides in me, and only a representative of others yet:

go west
paradise is there
you'll have all that you can eat
of milk & honey over there
you'll be the brightest star
the world has ever seen
sun-baked slender heroine
of film & magazine

go west
paradise is there
you'll have all that you can eat
of milk & honey over there
you'll be the brightest light
the world has ever seen
the dizzy height of the jet-set life
you could never dream

your pale blue eyes
strawberry hair
lips so sweet
skin so fair
your future bright
beyond compare
it's rags to riches
over there

San Andreas Fault
moved its fingers
through the ground

earth divided
plates collided
such an awful sound

San Andreas Fault
moved its fingers
through the ground

terra cotta shattered
and the walls came
tumbling down

o promised land,
o wicked ground -
build a dream,
tear it down

o promised land,
what a wicked ground -
build a dream,
watch it all fall down
-natalie merchant, "san andreas fault"

skippers @ 2006-08-06T16:47:00

2006-08-06T21:32:28Z

skipperiere: it's dr pepper
xx beforesunrise: but i like it
skipperiere: tell your sister to go get some!
xx beforesunrise: haha
skipperiere: it's what siblings are for
skipperiere: to be the tools of the older ones who were already there
xx beforesunrise: i think mine would disagree
skipperiere: they just don't see the social order involved and the necessary engineering at play here
xx beforesunrise: neccessary?
skipperiere: take out lower class workers, and where is society? same place with disobedient younger sibs
skipperiere: yes!
xx beforesunrise: hahaha
xx beforesunrise: so am i to believe you are your sisters slave?
skipperiere: well, I reversed the rules. it's kind of like the poor projects kid playing the right cards in the city to escape his subjugation
xx beforesunrise: hahahah
skipperiere: so now society--ahem, my sister--just thinks it ought to treat me like I were the older, privileged brother
skipperiere: interesting how social dynamics go, eh?
xx beforesunrise: especially since i, an outside, treat you like you belong in a trash bin!
xx beforesunrise: *r
skipperiere: I think that's just one of the things explained away by some people not being able to see how they ought react rightly
skipperiere: like the way that a drunk bum bumrushes some big guy with a knife, and gets himself offed
skipperiere: obviously he didn't know that there was a certain measure of respect necessary to be involved there
skipperiere: thus, r.i.p. bum =(

I'm kidding about that, really.

My backseat is filled with hockey gloves, skates, two sticks, a towel, wakeboard shorts, and affixed to the trunk a trail bike. I'm taking the rest of the afternoon to meet a friend down in Kensington valley and the massive forestland there. It's been grey the past two days but there've been little spots of blue skies if you scan them long enough, kinda existing as reminders of like how those openings are portals for you to see the reaction of the sun light in the atmosphere and where our sight tops out, and how other men's eyes in planes or space shuttles can look back down onto the earth, where clouds aren't obscuring the land and seas and see through the barrier. There are about.. exactly five hours of sunlight left, and I will use them.

walls and worlds inbetween

2006-08-06T09:12:52Z

It is.. the sixth now, and I'm realizing how I'm starting to get to that point of chafing at the available time. I'm already looking forward to what will come with the end of the month and a full load of classes. Maybe it's the stability of things to focus your mind to, along with the knowledge of placement in something that for all you can see, can get you to where you want to be. It's also the people though; it's always such a toss up what you'll walk into, yet I look forward to seeing what kinds will be in there. I have two evening classes (one with a lab, one language), and I expect the most out of those.

I wrote the skeleton of a poem the other day, which is strange, as I haven't written in the longest time--a year, I think, now. I suppose busyness will do that to you, sapping what potential creativity and usefulness in implementing actually worthy ideas onto the meager constraints of lines. I am no poet though, especially with a greater or lesser absence of technical inclination for precision in raw verse, let alone in the editing process after the shell is initially cast. It depends as always though, doesn't it? Some ideas flow easily into the forms of different feet, meters, and structures (or can be swept into them later), while others simply are - and truly - better suited for being placed down out of a person's mind in a controlled anarchy and their worth being in their meaning and any artistic worth, in the way it is presented in language. Or sharp placement of words and proper divisions of sentences, which do have genuinely worthwhile impact value in emphasizing to readers certain concepts or realities. When done correctly and critically. The latter is a fine line, since when people are given the option they tend to run amok with it and.. byebye cohesion and meaning, usher in the age of merely 'pretty' lines and disconnected ideas that lead to actually nothing being said or observed or felt at all. Mine walks that latter, but (I think) smartly.

Poems don't matter as much as many other things, however. Any serious and focused writing (of any kind) that is put out into mass circulation serves purposes, (kinda, but not really) similar to writing articles in publications, but in a way writing anything 'large' is about the equivalent of the desire to save the world: "saving the world", practically, becomes the same as "saving Kazakhstan" as "saving the United States" as "saving your hometown" as "saving this small group of people"--actions begin on a much smaller scale, though the broad idea is still very important. Just as holding true to the insistence that everybody is worth the same in the way we ought treat them, though when it comes down to it we certainly don't treat a stranger in a foreign land with the same willingness and evaluation as we do a neighbor here, or the fate of a prisoner lost in the legal system somewhere as opposed to someone else we know in tough straits--the finity of resources and human powerlessness dictate that. Seeking the whole is as important as being aware as the way in which the whole is out of reach, which keeps people from deceiving themselves about what they're actually affecting. It makes them know more how they can work harder (and through the knowledge lead them to do so) instead of think their movement at the shadow on the wall was actually dealing with everything when it was only a minor gesture.

Anyhow.. I'm surprised at writing that much on a thing so little in my mind. I'm glad for the extra time this week so so so so though.. it's likely the first time this past year that I consistently stop by my aunt's. In a way I know why I gravitate there: aside from my love for them, I also value their talkativeness. It is something that I can't.. really, retrieve from my own family, I think, whether in cell calls or stopping at my parents, and ever was it that way growing up - my own parents and sister are less thoughtful or less inclined to stating the stream of their thoughts of their own volition (without specific cues to trigger them, that is), and that oppressiveness bugs me more and more. I dislike thinking of the effects of that in the range of a childhood, and what resources that takes away from anyone in those years of learning. I myself am quiet as well, but in a way different than they. It's such a very strange split; I am of that side of the family, yet I seek out the contacts of another that hold things that aren't accessible in the first. Were I to have it my way I'd fill rooms with conversations, and I suppose the constant easy give and take of my aunt's house is just refreshing for me. I don't grieve my own upbringing in that respect, it always serves nothing to do so, yet I do know that I would have benefitted in great proportions from a household like theirs however. She's said that the door's open any time this fall if the classes are late and I'd rather not go the whole way home, and even though it isn't absolutely necessary, I like knowing the offer is out there. It's always there though, as while I (and many other people) have a lot of distant extended family, there remains that familiarity between these two factions that you could drop by at anytime and it'd be nothing.

And that is likely a thing experienced by very few, especially in times where people are divided more and more in the landscape of society, I realize, and even within families as closely knit bonds of those types can fall away easily as well if it isn't something instilled in them to value. I can think of that more, but I'll let that lay

I'm thinking of earlier tonight though, we were talking and my cousin's two year old came up. She and her husband, I hear, have a certain pattern for when they're sorting out the issues of a situation: as in, if he thinks he needs to clarify a matter or his idea, he may start but she's quick to try and let him see he needn't clarify what's clear already with an, "I know." I'm sure sometimes said anywhere between exasperatedly or calmly. It was so funny though that their little boy apparently.. uh.. picks up on that, and uses it in an altogetherly different manner though with the same exact stilling purpose in mind. Anyone may try to speak to or chide him, and if he wants to be left alone, quickly he's saying, "I know! I know!"

--

It's late and when it comes to ending this... I likely won't make an actual attempt. With the time open, a lot of things pass through my mind that otherwise would never have been able to be looked at, and yet I cannot quite put them all together as they sink into my body. It's like seeing bits and pieces of significance and extra detail and workings throughout the day, yet not having a common thread or banner to bring them together under and give voice to. Or yet. And yet even then there is not enough time still, no matter that some of the days feel classically like they were set directly in the shadow of eternity and in the path of, but outside time, eternal for being unpossessing of any such distinguisher that can even start the number count. I think a few people know what I mean, and others do too

There are points in my future but I'd really like to get to them, and away from certain things, faces, and hold the coming days all my own. I suppose it is impatience, to prove oneself to oneself, and to divorce things of varying kinds that are rightly laid at the side of the road. It is unwordable beyond that--I am eager for all and everything, and years ahead cannot come fast enough to deliver me to them. The present is well, but perhaps I am looking for other things, even as I'm stilled as I see the paths of other people's lives lately and must think about them, too, and their fates that they've come to and been found in.