Things crescendo, and then they fall, I feel like. Talent, careers, classes, natural disasters, the economy...
Today I got into a moment when all I could think about was breathing, imagining a rasping, shallow breath in my mind and magnifying my own breath. This was before and after Chem section. I walked, because I shouldn't ride my bike, and when I got out of section the strangest feeling overcame me. At this point I'm used to intense moments of feelings, but this was just...nothing, like a white canvas waiting to be filled with noise. The University was empty, so that added to the wasteland feel, but I have a feeling it's not too far off from what one feels/hears when one's drowning. A little calm in the storm before death takes over.
I don't panic. I rarely freak out over anything, but I do let things build up until I break over - so that's my version of freaking out, a delayed reaction unfolding rather than an immediate explosion. So for this crescendo I decided to take a long, long walk around most of the campus. I do everything I usually do: take off my shoes, lighten my load, and walk where the ground is hottest so that the heat distracts. I didn't have my harmonica this time, but it wasn't nighttime. I play Latin guitar music on my iPod touch's Pandora, and I walk, for a really long time.
At one point I passed by a broken Skye bottle, which is one of my favorite alcohol bottles because it's such a deep blue. And I consider the shards for a moment, a long moment. Just gently. I decided that my red wouldn't mix too well with this solid blue to make purple, and that I'd better not try. But the bottom of the bottle had broken clean off so that it was just a round plate of slightly curved glass, like the round glass pieces in your bio lab back home, with hardly any fencing at all. I took it as a memento, and the guy upstairs currently has it right now, but I'll get it back from him, soon.
Alessandra had a dream about making a kaleidoscopic wind chime out of pieces of colored glass. I want to try it, if only I can figure out how to cut a hole in the glass.
From a peer: Frankenstein's monster is the representation of the neglected human soul, which turns violent. Some part of you mutates, then quietly sleuths around killing your loved ones until until you die. But until you die, it'll always be in your shadow, and you know it, and you can't get rid of it. You just know that it's always there. But my question is, can we prevent the birth of the monster? Once the original monster is created it seems pretty easy to prevent it from pro-creating. But the Frankenstein created his monster just as easily as any student might come up with a mathematical proof. Frankenstein's monster is his master thesis, he created unknowingly yet thinking he was onto to something new, something great (wouldn't the secret of life be great for medicine?). It's a sequential process: you find something bugging you in the back of your mind, you explore it, you'll probably find something disgusting that's true, but that you'd wish later that you didn't stumble across.
Is it unavoidable? Do romanticists always find the darkness in themselves whenever they went soul-searching? And should this serve as a warning to readers about their own self-exploration?
I'm still trying to flesh out answers for my SLE93 final...so much to go through.
Monday, May 31, 2010
GaGalicious
Lady GaGa - SPEECHLESS by =thegirlinthebigbox on deviantART
the lie for which we K I L L by =thegirlinthebigbox on deviantART
leather studded KISS by =thegirlinthebigbox on deviantART
I do wish she'd had taken better pictures of these gorgeous pieces, though.
Driving
Strawberry by ~StacyD on deviantART
I'm not above making fun of animals every now and then :)
Father picked me up today and we drove around campus, plus a little bit of El Camino. It was nice; I like driving. It's just a set of manual movements that's relatively simple if you're going under 35mph. It's something that I feel accomplished at, and I can just sit there and drive and drive and drive. In a way, it satisfies that need to run, run, and keep on running. Granted, my friends probably aren't too happy I've joined the cult of air polluters, and I'd prefer running miles on the back of a horse than in a hot car, but it's something. Watch it, next year I'm liable to run off campus for weekend long trips to the beach to be in complete isolation - if I can afford it, that is.
That's a goal for next year: get out and see the world on weekends, rather than stay coup up here all the time. I'd take my homework with me.
Yaaaawn by *Saari on deviantART
Um...
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Simple
If people just lived more simply, my life would be so much easier. And their lives would be easier, too. But nooo, we love complications.
It's karma, Jessi says. Karma.
Ew.
Are we sane yet?
It's karma, Jessi says. Karma.
Ew.
Are we sane yet?
Romanticism
Last night I went to bed at 8pm and this morning I found myself in a sun-square at the LGBT-CRC, a gay short-story book in-between my feet and a sense of quietude. I'm never warm enough, and the moment I move away to sit at the computer and write my body goes into a mini-shock. But the point of today is how much I fascinate myself.
Whenever I explain my thoughts to others, everything becomes so trivial, minimalized so that life's just a breeze and everything's just peachy. 'You're fine', they silently say, 'everything just fine, and you're a normal, rational human being'. How different the picture is when viewed in solitude. Everything's a bigger mess when you're alone, and when I look inside, sometimes everything's alright and sometimes there's a black monster lurking. Sometime there's soaring determination to move the world, or apathy. Sometime there's despair, and a distinct desire to end a life. That's the monster that society is worried about, but in isolation it's really interesting to wonder why the monster exists, and what I can do about. I think the world is so scared of homocidal monsters that it does its very best to push it away.
Two types of philosophers come to mind, book-ends of SLE93: the romanticists and the existentialists. The romanticists explore the world by looking into themselves, embracing the beasts they say exists within every human soul and struggling with it for the best outcome. Some go mad, and some produce the most horrific inventions, such as Frankenstein's monster. These creations are the reflection of the human soul at its worst, paying attention to it rather than ignoring it. The existentialist - or more specifically Satre's No Exit, determines our existence through the eyes of others. Our identity is subject to the objectivity of the Other. It's the first time in our curriculum where the human spirit is defined by what others think of him, not the philosophies he creates in self-observance.
In having ourselves objectified by others is to minimize the monstrosity that we are capable of producing, which makes the world a little safer. If our actions were in a state of checks-and-balances with our community, we are less likely to perform actions which harm the species. If we isolate ourselves, what we produce carries less consideration for the community if the well-being of the society was not the motivational drive. That is, if we went into isolation to dissect ourselves, what we find is much more potent. In Satre's world it requires a group of individuals to hammer out our essence in a constructive way, into something useful and productive, an essence much more easily distilled when we work by ourselves.
How does this carry any application? And why the hell am I talking about it? 1) To study for SLE93 oral exam and 2) to explain why I should not embrace the humanities. If I am someone who embraces the self and throws myself into solitude, I rob myself of the checks-and-balances which society enforce. Without the other I had better not dare look into myself because when I do, the black monster finds an easy prey and I lose myself in my own darkness and light. By myself it is a safeguard to examine the sciences with a critical, unbiased mind and to consider only the world and never myself. This way, we lock up the monster.
The only problem is to figure out how to keep the attention entirely focused on the sciences and not the self.
I went in writing this thinking I would come out with something brilliant, and now I'm not so sure. In any case, time for breakfast. If it comes as any enlightenment, I need some resolution to life problems before I can focus my mind on salvaging my chem33 grade.
Whenever I explain my thoughts to others, everything becomes so trivial, minimalized so that life's just a breeze and everything's just peachy. 'You're fine', they silently say, 'everything just fine, and you're a normal, rational human being'. How different the picture is when viewed in solitude. Everything's a bigger mess when you're alone, and when I look inside, sometimes everything's alright and sometimes there's a black monster lurking. Sometime there's soaring determination to move the world, or apathy. Sometime there's despair, and a distinct desire to end a life. That's the monster that society is worried about, but in isolation it's really interesting to wonder why the monster exists, and what I can do about. I think the world is so scared of homocidal monsters that it does its very best to push it away.
Two types of philosophers come to mind, book-ends of SLE93: the romanticists and the existentialists. The romanticists explore the world by looking into themselves, embracing the beasts they say exists within every human soul and struggling with it for the best outcome. Some go mad, and some produce the most horrific inventions, such as Frankenstein's monster. These creations are the reflection of the human soul at its worst, paying attention to it rather than ignoring it. The existentialist - or more specifically Satre's No Exit, determines our existence through the eyes of others. Our identity is subject to the objectivity of the Other. It's the first time in our curriculum where the human spirit is defined by what others think of him, not the philosophies he creates in self-observance.
In having ourselves objectified by others is to minimize the monstrosity that we are capable of producing, which makes the world a little safer. If our actions were in a state of checks-and-balances with our community, we are less likely to perform actions which harm the species. If we isolate ourselves, what we produce carries less consideration for the community if the well-being of the society was not the motivational drive. That is, if we went into isolation to dissect ourselves, what we find is much more potent. In Satre's world it requires a group of individuals to hammer out our essence in a constructive way, into something useful and productive, an essence much more easily distilled when we work by ourselves.
How does this carry any application? And why the hell am I talking about it? 1) To study for SLE93 oral exam and 2) to explain why I should not embrace the humanities. If I am someone who embraces the self and throws myself into solitude, I rob myself of the checks-and-balances which society enforce. Without the other I had better not dare look into myself because when I do, the black monster finds an easy prey and I lose myself in my own darkness and light. By myself it is a safeguard to examine the sciences with a critical, unbiased mind and to consider only the world and never myself. This way, we lock up the monster.
The only problem is to figure out how to keep the attention entirely focused on the sciences and not the self.
I went in writing this thinking I would come out with something brilliant, and now I'm not so sure. In any case, time for breakfast. If it comes as any enlightenment, I need some resolution to life problems before I can focus my mind on salvaging my chem33 grade.