Quite frequently, we don't know enough about ourselves, and we don't know ourselves well enough, to make a good decision for ourselves. What we think we know about ourselves, are usually constructed out of two or three coincidental recurrences of thought and reaffirmation from few friends. Few opinions, few thoughts, create the conceptualized notion of ourselves. But what we see and paint ourselves to be is never exactly ourselves, and frequently, it's mile apart. So I come to doubt my own idea of myself, as much as you need that to hold on to yourself or break out of yourself.

How do you just be, without disliking yourself? Just how do you exactly know yourself, and just how exactly do you know others and others know you? Dramaturgial theory doesn't really help "Nosce te ipsum." I guess it's not to reach the goal but more to strive for it. I hate that theme in modernity.

I guess it doesn't really matter.

Mothagesso.

"You would"

people tell me. Sometimes it puts a little smile in my heart--hey, this person knows me well, this person categorizes and remembers me-- and sometimes it raises my eyebrows in surprise-- what exactly made you think that I would do that and what does it even mean that I would do that?

"You would not eat cookies." What? What does that even mean? "I don't know, I don't think you'd eat desserts. Or maybe you told me that a while ago." That's true. But 'you would' makes it seems like, it's like,

I can't think of an adjective to describe this person, this person does not make sense to me, so most of the descriptions that I will put under him will be under 'miscellaneous' with bullet points such as "Type of a person that would not eat cookies."

Being known by someone. Acquainted, befriended with, close with. Understood by, comfortable with. A sort of closeness just makes your heart tingle.

It also helps me realize different things about myself and my own habits with their observations. And these days, I've been thinking about few things: I don't make enough eye contacts, I don't genuinely engage in a conversation's topic and simply writes it off, I sometimes just speak without really thinking what the content would mean to that person or the conversation.

If you tune, tune, tune, and finely tune into the conversations, there's so much climate in it. Weather changes. Politics. So much to be learned and manipulated and perfected and it's just easier to tune out, turn off, and just don't think about it. But I should try, because it's a tragedy of mine that I wouldn't really be able to not regret about things. So trying is all I can do.

I would.


Mothagesso.

What makes you feel alive?

A challenge that grinds you to the last moment and then a little more? Perhaps the loosening of the tension after the task, until the next? Or maybe anything voluntarily done, out of pure will. That music at the party that you don't remember what happened but remember how it felt? The loving moments that you wanted to remember all five senses and five billion neurons worth, but you just remember that you wanted to remember?


Have you felt alive?


I've known a person who has been through a lot of fucked up shit. Who's still going through a lot of shit. That person feels dead, detached, then distressed, distressed, destroyed, and then dead, detached, just to feel distressed again. Something psychologically and pathologically moribund. Anything but alive. But yet, but yet, the things that come out of that persons mouth, unto the screen. The pessimistic, the dejected, the utterly hopeless negative thought processes-- those things, I told her,

are dripping with life.

Not out of your desperation, not out of my pity, nothing to do with any intentions or contexts. If you're a breathing human being, you would know that it's squeezing your own identity, gripping, squeezing and dripping your own life.

I said, I don't think I have felt that way before.

She didn't understand.


Mothagesso.

A lot of things seem like absolute bullshit

Nothing is novel anymore. I don't quite understand it, but I feel it, it itches. I told a few friends I feel disillusioned. But maybe I'm just accustomed. Acculturated, to put a positive spin. Grown up, to euphemise.  Things seem to come, as if a shuttle, then go away, then another shuttle comes at a different time, people get on, people get off, but there's always another shuttle so I'm not in such a hurry to get on. I'm still here. And, alas, here comes another shuttle! 

Things. are just. a pattern. 

Guichanaso.

Everyone has "great" memories of middle school dances. They suck in a great way. It's a fun sociological phenomenon, a sort of collective sucking, that you cannot blame anyone for being lame or weird. You don't know what cool is or how cool looks like, so you just have this hatred against the lame-sucking compared to what we saw on MTV.

The sadness that we have failed to have fun.

The dances at my school were exceptionally lame. I would "DJ" and also dance like a crazy man. Vulnerably socially aware, I always was, but also always trying really hard to be cool. I was a stare-proof dancer. I trained my social lameness.

Then I prized myself most for my boisterousness. My screaming presence. My sociability and mostly, my ability to be a little crazy, for the people who really want to be but can't.

I wonder why I lost a lot of that these days. I miss it a little bit, but I also think I just can't do it any more. But maybe I can. I am not sure how to do it here, either, I guess. Talking, bonding, or even just semi-hitting on people. I can't have my arms around people now. My muscles don't do it, and I can't get my mind to think or do it either.

Would I give myself cool points for my life right now?

If I consciously try to be cool, I would be really superficially cool.

But now that I do think about it, I think the only way out for me is to get over it.

By being cool, I guess?

A very weird feeling. What is the best way to spend my twenties for myself?


Why is it that it seems like everyone in the past seemed to have so much fun? 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's, all over the globe. They had no iPhones, iPads, Facebook, Twitter, online shopping, YouTube. Maybe they just had to try harder to have fun and so they did. We don't need to try that hard and now we feel lame.

 This is the sixties. The collars are dumb, but the wedge-heels, I can dig. Also, afro.

I wonder if the generation after us will think that we were cool.

Mothagesso.

“People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television -- you don't feel anything.” -Warhol

Sorting through shit, Guichanaso.

Sometimes I just get the huge urge to tell myself to shut up. I also get the urge to not do the things I'm supposed to do, out of a desperate childish desire to rebel for the sake of rebelling, I think. So I rebel in tiny, insignificant ways, like not going to class once in a while and coming up with silly excuses to mend, or doing shittily on an assignment just so I could have something to "make up" for, if that makes any sense at all. If you're not ruined, there's nothing to fix, right? You need to be fixable. Help needs to be able to approach you.

I woke to the sun rising today. Sorry for being so inarticulate. I really can't say.

Guichanaso.

"Being in love with yourself comes before falling in love with others." -Guichanaso

Mothagesso.

Every once in a very long while, I sense a small feeling of hollowness. I crouch and squint and find the little sea urchin somewhere under the table, in the dark little corner that everyone forgot about. Never really knew about. Only exists because I just saw it. Let's name him, 'lonely'. He's doing fine.

It never sprawls in my mind or turn my room into an ocean of tears or anything. But I do step on him I think, as I pull off all the stupid squeak and gaffes. I stare at him scornfully. I can't really do anything to him though. I can't really do anything.

I read somewhere: "A person's heart is like a little, soft round ball in the beginning. But every time he or she is hurt, they get a little thorn. As time passes and passes, they become thornier and spikier, until no one can dare even touch it. Then more scars, more thorns, more spikes. Until one day, the thorns just fill all the space, and the heart becomes a soft round ball again. Just a little bigger." Sea urchins.

For convenience, I stopped celebrating most occasions. I see pinks and chocolates and blissfully distracted people and their stress and think, meh. I don't even really think about it even as I take a bite of the free chocolate at the library. But this little picture that Up posted sort of shook the Grinch in my head and slapped my heart. It warms a little. It aches a little. Maybe.

Meh.

Happy Valentine's.

Mothagesso.

Island.

 

I always had bad sinuses. Always, blowing my nose or breathing through my mouth. I think it messed around my olfactory senses sometimes, since I think I smell a little less. I realized that it is really annoying to hear someone constantly sniff with stuffed nose. I try to not do it, and carry around a tissue everywhere. This condition also means that, if the environment is dry, I just get a lot of buggers. This is also very annoying.

My tendons are apparently hyperflexible. I am more flexible than a lot of my friends, and consequently, my ankles are, too. This just means that whenever I trip, instead of the ankle supporting itself, it'll sprain itself. The more you sprain, the more flexible tendons get.

I also frequently get canker sores in my mouth. One or two per season. Once I was accidentally hit by a soccer ball in the face, and actually had a cut open wound inside my mouth. I thought it was a canker sore, so I poured chemical to burn it off. It just worsened the open wound. I did it at least three more times. It took at least a month to heal.

I used to eat food quite salty. With my mother's decree, I tried to stop salting at all. I don't salt anything now. I just pepper things until everyone in the table just stares at my plate agape. Meat and Western cuisine were the primary diet for me. But I now enjoy salad (more so with chicken), and coming to America made me a big fan of Korean food. I try to drink a lot of water.

Whenever I was sick, I had to get intravenous ringer's solution put into my body for 2-3 hours to get better. I never wanted this. My mom always insisted. I would usually resist, fall asleep, only to wake up and find out that my mom has my arms all ready for the injection.

Sicknesses. Whenever I was sick, I never said I was. My mom would be the one who stopped me from going to school. It's not that I loved school so much; I would've loved to skip. But I just didn't know if my body was actually sick-- even when they clearly were. I know all these things about myself now, but I was pretty dumb like that. Really not knowing how I am, how I am feeling.

But I am rarely upset and I'm real easy to make happy.

Mothagesso.

In a class learning about meditation and its benefits, a professor stated, "various cultures around the world have been doing these practices for thousands of years, and in Western cultures, we need a scientific back-up to believe in it." I think this is reflective of the development of Western thought anchored in science, its role in defining "modernity" and its presence embedded deeply in all of us who consider ourselves "modern." I remember talking to a friend of mine, excitedly telling her about what I saw in a documentary-- how differences in Western and Eastern psychology and culture are reflected in their languages. She said, "half of it sounds like bullshit." But a scientific proof was not of import here. It was the powerful and evident possibility, which was all the more probable if we reflect it on our own psychology and culture. The findings held certain truths, although there weren't any MRI-captured images of neurotransmitter's movements. The topic went back further than history of science, and it was way beyond what science can find right now.

It may be beneficial at times and harmful at another, but at least it is very clear: our minds are ridden with science.

And science sometimes distracts us totally. From the essential battle of values or accepting certain truths that is not found in a laboratory. As much as science helps us in variety of ways, we should be able to function without having a science mindset, or a science-worship. What is psychology and neuroscience-- if we construct buildings out of them for their own sake, rather than forming them into a staircase, on which we try to transcend ourselves, stepping on the findings as the launchpad? We should be able to make ourselves do ten more push-ups than last time, without the disciplinary drill sergeant with the scientific Exhibit A, B and C. Or at least get ourselves to start doing some push-ups (probably harder to do this). In other words, we should be able to believe in meditation and power of spirits and minds, or think about cultures and see clearly through them-- without having to refer to science all the time.

'But science helps us motivate ourselves to do that, doesn't it? Certain facts help us get our mind to do certain things. Like, believing in the benefits of meditation. Or like, understanding that our mind may not be good at math and accepting that. Also, our belief become stronger because it is true. And our opinions become further developed with carefulness.' But I think some pursue science for the sake of furthering science. What is science, if it becomes end of itself? "Scientific work is chained to the course of progress," (Max Weber's Science as a Vocation) where a new discovery adds to the knowledge, only to be shadowed by the next. There is no first-person development in the a third-person one. Scientists may rejoice in finding something, but they did not transcend or improve anything for themselves. More often, people study science to become professional with an MD or as a certified engineer, not for furthering and improving ourselves. Because science earns us good enough salary, social status, and fascinating distraction, we don't think first-person. Just third-person science.

And for the non-scientists, now we just need a scientific backing to believe in anything. We become much more skeptical for anything unscientific. Anything without charts and graphs and strong correlations. We don't live by conviction, convince with conviction. Politics are much less driven by pure belief. We now have a clusterfuck of slanted interpretation and deployment of facts and figures, to scientifically validate our beliefs. Clean facts muddles what we really believe in. Politics as well as life should come down to values, not facts and figures, because there is no absolutely superior value through which we should live. Science tries to argue that one belief is better than the other. Perhaps it is for the given historical context; the problem is that we always think in those absolute terms of truth and superiority of scientific backings. But politics and life should need things like faith in a certain vision for the future, and discipline to practice it and spread it. Not science. These just needed hearts willing to devote.

(If it is your "value" to say that it is justified to simply dedicate oneself in science, I will have to grant that choice, just worried that that down that path you might find yourself a little less fulfilled than you hoped.)

But I am screaming here for more first-person observations, experiences, emotions, and arising from all of that, belief. Belief requires us to not only to trust the facts, but also to have felt it. Feeling is as concrete as anything else in the world. Subjectivity is what we live through. You may wish to abandon it for objectivity, but you can't. (William James' Varieties of Religious Experiences) So we should uphold it and feel, feel, feel.

And as aforementioned, from all this should arise a clear belief, and the constantly evolving method of living based on whatever the belief. The value for oneself. Not necessarily political, but vital to living. "Life is an unceasing struggle of these gods [values] with one another. Or speaking directly, the ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive choice." I opt to feel as much as possible. To hurt myself as much as possible. To feel most alive as possible. To feel conflicted and rejoiced and worried and unfulfilled and fulfilled and unworried. And believe that these thoughts and experiences will see further than the telescope of science sees.

Therefore, I believe in magical elevator-pulling unicorns.

Sadly, this is the scientifically rational voice of mine.

Mothagesso.

In the past couple of days I gave writing a break, because I felt it was clogging up my head with too much material. Thoughts were okay when abstract, but by materializing them through writing, I had made them real, couldn't handle it anymore. It's numb-er now.

Lots have happened since I came here last. But like someone said,

"Nothing about it wasn't a test."

Yesterday I went to a dinner with high school sunbaes. Sunbae means "upperclassman" in Korean, and connotes a certain aura of respect and elderliness and more bullshit like that, berry big in Asian culture. So we had dinner at an all-you-can-eat Sushi restaurant. The five of us sat huddled around a giant plate of sushi, excited at first, more excited to order another plate of sushi, and then I think we got a little too excited because we couldn't finish the second plate. We looked at sushi as if we were looking at an opponent's ammunition. Never had food been so fucking intimidating. The size of some of those sushi pieces! It was mad. We paid 16 more dollars to be allowed to take it home, none of which we actually wanted to take; we just felt uncomfortable throwing it all away.

Then there was an awkward window before my second engagement, so I went to Barnes and Nobles for some much-needed alone time, coffee, and reading. I picked up Eugenides and a Chai latte and a Parisian Vogue Catalogue (I realize that sounds uber pretentious, I apologize) and plopped on a sofa between two older men. One had an odd smell, but I kind of liked it, the "old" odor of places I had never seen. It wasn't a half hour until he started asking why I was reading Vogue in my free time.

"Are you in fashion?"

"No. I like looking at it because I hope to be in magazines one day."

"You want to write?"

"I want to write."

"Why do you want to write? Aren't papers dying?"

"Yes, but I would like to anyway."

"How does it feel to be running toward a wall?"

"I really don't know, I think I'm too young to say I'm running already"

His name was Richard. After a short dialogue of mutual appreciation and frankness, we shook hands and parted ways. He wished that we would meet again. I wished we wouldn't, because I feared I would lose the charm I knew he sensed upon our first encounter. That's the thing about charms, they fade, they're less charming as people meet more and more often, they lose the mystique of cloudiness. People like envisioning what lies behind clouds. Wondering gives things value, sometimes.

Then I went to some parties to celebrate Friday.
Then I came home.

"Warmth"

Guichanaso.

My head hurts from thinking too much. Giving it a rest.

Guichanaso.

Sudden post-exam epiphany: anesthesia and Anastasia. Omgggggggg

Guichanaso.

I like repetition. Whether it be a song, a movie, a scene, a book, a memoir, a word, a food, a drink, a friend, if I like it enough to say out loud that I like it, I will like it more with progression. At the campus store, it's always the cappuccino. At Jamba, it's the Protein Berry Workout with whey. At NU Sushi, it's two salmon, two eels, and two freshwater shrimp. Though at Starbucks I am more experimental--today I tried a Chai Tea Latte for the first time. For the last three years it was the Caramel Macchiato, then for the last year at college it was the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Salad dressings will be French. Sex and the City will always resonate with me despite its all-American connotations and chick-flicky notes. Cassis Frappe will be my favorite for a very long time, although I'm underage in this country. Noodles with a fork. Orange juice with lots of pulp. Patterns. They give me a warm feeling. The continuation of something that, at its initiation, had no clue what was to be held in its future. There's something incredibly romantic about that. The idea of fate, instilled into an object.

My vice is repetition. I find solace in it.

When I first came to America, I taught myself to speak English by mimicking Disney movies. I must have watched those movies more than fifty times each. What at first seemed an odd jumble of r's and v's slowly became words, then phrases, then sentences, and then the characters suddenly had personality; clouds cleared. It came to a point where, without even starting from the beginning and just flipping on the "On" switch at random, I could say the lines as the characters were saying them. The meaning of each scene became more evident to me as my vocabulary expanded with each rep. No more stuttering. If I did make a mistake at school, all I had to do was come home and hit replay. Then, everything was okay. In about six months, I could hold a conversation with my peers, then become fluent, then articulate, then outspoken, then what did I become? Addicted. I became addicted to addiction.

Writing, too, was and is a habit. Diary keeping was, and is, a habit. My life. Is built up of blocks of routine habits that I have molded to form a castle around me. My castle of habits--it guards me from the unfamiliarity of the outside world, where random answers seem to adhere to equally arbitrary questions. It represents a constant reminder to everything I love about life, and I love that.

But is that bad, I've started to wonder. And why are they always trying to pull me out.

Sometimes I wonder if my castle is but a sand sculpture on a sinking island.


Guichanaso.

From a blog post, "I LOVE YOU, BECAUSE I LOVE MYSELF" by Brian Underwood

"Down with Love" by Blossom Dearie

I don't believe that human beings are naturally and ultimately selfish in all their motivations. But it really is a selfish thing, liking someone. The self-centered perception and selfish wishes. It's just about what I want to do, what I feel like saying, what I wish it would happen, what I want to assume, where I would fit in the picture.

Selflessness is a masturbation.

It feeds to my ego as I congratulate myself for repressing my selfishness. However one's psychology works in a relationship, I think it does come down to selfishness. Even the good-willed wishes for the past or unrealized love is a sort of a selfish bent for the pain of loss. "I wish you love, because I am sad and my last way to cling on as I give up, is to be give you good wishes, and appear selfless." Prove that you're selfish by saying that you're selfless. One time my selflessness felt true was when I decided to hurt myself for the sake of someone else. The pain endured and numbed and I think, healed. But this also may have been because there was no other choice. Not truly because I was selfless, but because I was, indeed, selfish.

There is no apparent objective here. No real guarantee that I will gain anything. No evidence that this is a good idea. Not even the certainty about the sincerity about the urge. But why the urge?

Inexplicable urge. Perhaps that's precisely why. It's inexplicable, therefore I wish it to be cleared out by whatever distillation, reaction, or combustion I can do.

Only if love was so easy.




Mothagesso.

I used to hate questions because they seemed invasive. But then I realized people aren`t as private as I thought them to be, so I felt encouraged and asked more questions. I also realized that many even appreciated questions and took them as a sign of interest. But none of this changes the fact that I`m still annoyed as hell when people ask me questions. Please find the effort to figure shit out for yourself.

Its very unfortunate; we realize our wrongdoings only after the demise of a relationship. Only after we have lost what we had hoped to keep are we capable of enlightening ourselves. Sometimes I wonder if we`re actually meant to be happy. But then again, sometimes I wonder if being happy doesn`t mean to entail a certain satisfaction, but a constant area in life where dissatisfaction necessarily remains to jab us in the knee. Only when I know I could do better--when I know I'm doing something wrong--do I seek improvement, maturity, sense.

I believe in moments. I believe in fleeting thoughts. I believe in everything transient and undetermined. I believe in a world with no rules but a pattern. I believe in familiarity but never a fix. I believe in colors. I believe in a minute light flash across a metallic surface. The metal surface itself is not important. I believe in insignificance.

"We are all a little weird, and life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it....."

Sometimes I believe god made us speak different languages for a reason, because he knew that if we all understood and collaborated with each other we'd be greater than him. So he divided us up and is, currently, having exquisite fun watching us roam in our provincial circles, never achieving anything, never truly understanding different cultures and gaining outside knowledge, and never wanting to. He made us scared of changes and differences ...and hes watching! Allllofittttttt! How freaking scary is that!

Guichanaso.

Sometimes I really believe I've run out of love.

But I do agree with you, I live to remember as well. Cherishing comes with giving value, and noticing, being fascinated, giving value to the act of fascination. If I can't remember, I just lost that moment. The world forgot. But it was there a second ago.. wasn't it? Gone without a trace.

Then again.. "Caring is not an advantage," said a line from a movie.

I've never not had a book in my hand as a little girl. And as a bigger girl, too, I don't think I ever stopped reading. Yeah, people aren't books. I know that. Unlike books, people have multiple titles, conflicts that I may never understand, endings that haven't occurred yet, beginnings that are unrecognized, chapters that spew and invade, sentences go unfinished and thoughts trail into nothing all the time, a thousand and one contributing editors, I know that. People can't be written down. Stop guessing! I remind myself every day.

In desperate need of a weather man, Guichanaso.

 

Make the video silent. My mind was playing this.

Nothing quite soothes me as much
as looking out the window,
lazy in the back seat,
seeing the scenes change.
The intrusive thoughts and words,
from their irresponsible, damned mouths,
that charge into my ears, my mind,
that I don't quite know how to deal with.
Anytime, I can just look outside.

Mothagesso.

"Servo iuvenis" was what I engraved on my iPod for free. I did not take Latin, but I looked some words up to make that phrase up. Because Latin is just that cool.

It meant, "keep innocent."

I feared losing the fascination with the world. The disenchantment, and the openness that will disappear with it. A certain willingness to accept different ideas and viewpoints more easily. Our experiences can petrify our views and values easily. The doctrine of relativism and being open to different views might be the general trend of the times for some minds and politics. But fascination is something different than the version of academic or political conviction. It's not a capacity to fight; it's a capacity to be hurt. Feel bad. Be at a bad mood about the feelings new and ones held onto. Genuinely be sad and eventually be integrated.

I'm going to slowly lose this, given the sort of love for rational and logical I was born with. And I do not want to settle, petrified. I aim to stay a little vulnerable. After less than two years when I was slowly forgetting this, and Guichanaso, you reminded me of this. Thanks. Which also means to say that you make me sad, too.

I'm going to lose myself. We all are.


And so hypochondriac me writes, and never to my liking. If I do like it at the moment, it quickly goes flat after I do. Revisiting it, it's never exciting. Never alive. So enjoy it as much as it sucks to do it. But to be able to refer back, I have to write. It's the only evidence I can leave to myself. It is the only evidence I can leave to myself. The only way to see who you were, remember who you were, at least through the distorted lens of the present.

The only crumb of cracker you can leave on the trail.

It is just suffering and labor to actually constantly freak about this. Like, it's really easy to let go and stabilize and petrify. I remember in tenth grade when I first found the phrase, "I dunno," convenient. Convenient because I don't have to deal with people or ideas. "I mean, I dunno." Write it off. I never really think deeply. You caught me on this too, Guichanaso. But to let go, and justify it with some bullshit that goes like, "Everything and every moment actually shapes me and becomes part of who I am and always lives on." I believe that,


if I can't remember, I just lost that moment. It has nothing to do with me. It doesn't live on. The world forgot. Probably for the best. It's still probable that those little things actually had an impact on me. But I have to keep myself obsessive by thinking like this. Feel, think, write- hopefully, hopefully a little deeper, hopefully, hopefully getting bigger by it. And I just, I have to keep myself innocent. More crumbs, more crumbs to mark my path. Puking up all thoughts. One day, to be part of the forest or to be out on the field, reminiscing the forest.

 

This is a little taste of my insanity.

Mothagesso.

My dream to keep my innocence. Servo iuvenis.
A reassurance from The Economist, if you will.
See also 'Memento' directed by Christopher Nolan.

There's only one thing I would ask.

But how terrible is it that, we have free will so we have to take all the responsibility.




Mothagesso.

After years of self-watching and analyzing, I have reached a conclusion: I'm not very jelly.

I would, however, classify myself as someone with an immense capacity for jealousy. Mainly stemming from sensitivity, and perhaps sentimentality, I could (in time) possibly turn into a possessive, territorial monster. Such prospects; such promising potentiality! Again, its the small things that matter more.

(Pssst: I used your word in there hopefully you noticed because if not I seem illiterate and I dislike that)

But then I could also choose not to. And that, I tttthink (oh god I hope), is the distinguishing factor between someone who is an uncontrollable furball of emotional chaos and me, a well-controlled furball. Sure, some things get to me, and kind of linger in that grey state of iffiness. But I could choose to ignore that, given time.

Unless, a cue!

Games in life start with a signal. The wave of a flag. A gunshot. Then you know it's okay to begin.

Guichanaso.

What happened to boys and girls just being friends?

Guichanaso.

"If desire is suffering, then is love noble?"

a Student, after a 2-hour discussion on the resolution, "Suffering is a requisite to nobility."

Let's talk extremes. The debate mainly focused around the definitions and historical examples and then redefinitions of "suffering" and "nobility," the latter being near impossible to agree upon. A generally agreed definition of suffering was that it is the cause of tension between what is, and what one wants it to be. Whether it was inadvertently imposed, or voluntarily assumed, suffering is itself because there's the discrepancy.

So, desire is suffering.

But then is love noble? Love that is realized and progressed, is it noble? It is certainly beautiful. Perhaps noble, depending on its longevity or difficulty in achieving it. But our general votes for nobility would go towards the other possibility in the following.

Love that is never realized, but tamed its desire in the name of love and accepted the impossibility of realization- is it noble? Love not just romantic, but for humanity or for a subject: if one has failed to bring the change to the world that one wanted to, or if one has not fully come into terms with a subject or created progressed on it, is that noble? Is failure, noble? Because it suffers more but has come into terms with it? It certainly is not despicable just because it could not achieve it; it would be more despicable if one forced it to work.

So suffering seems quite noble. Love, up to you.

Whatever the case, nobility does not console the suffering.


Mothagesso.

Good morning! 

My sleep schedule is in a different world today. Another thing that seems to be in a different world are my earphones, as I cannot find them anywhere in the room. Hopefully I didn't leave them in Michigan. Worst state in the world.

Something I've been thinking about lately is subjectivity in beauty standards.

There's a strange art exhibit in our Norbucks building that's always open. It's been displayed for about a month so far, and yet on the two times I've walked in there waiting for coffee, there was no one else in the gallery. The exhibit supposedly draws inspiration from the human form. It's fabric-based, I think, though I didn't look into it quite carefully. Even now there is no one inside. Fabric reorganized to resemble human limbs and bodies sit, on walls, staring out onto a void crowd.

I think art is something you need to appreciate by yourself. I could be wrong, and I could also be super biased, as I believe almost everything needs to be done solo. Its just the receptiveness we (I) carry around. Almost like a fifth sense. Wait no--ignore me. I really don't yet know what I'm talking about.

Written on a hallmate's door: "Would you like you if you met you?"

Guichanaso.