Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Armory

I think every now and then about buying some form of weapon. The reasons for this very, everything from home defense, to potential revolutionary use, to zombie preparedness.

The real reason though, and it's apparent almost immediately, is that I have the same fascination that any number of boys have with weaponry. If I was actually thinking about buying a weapon intended for use I would think a great deal about efficiency, ease, and reliability. This would lead me inevitably to buy either a shotgun, a rifle, or a pair of hatchets. The hatchets are more for the zombie scenario then anything else. Dead Rising has taught us all the value of a weapon that doesn't depend on ammunition.

Even knowing this whenever the thought crosses my mind I'm always fixated on getting some variety of interesting melee weapon. I know that given my near zero training that the most effective choice for me would be something along the lines of an Axe, something that would take advantage of my reach and strength, and negate my key weakness by making any definite hit a conclusive one. There's no good reason for me to buy, for example, an Evil Wizard King Sword. There's no good reason for anyone to buy that thing, but you can't question the coolness. Likewise my fascination with the, essentially fictional, elven motif and art style isn't near justifying the purchase of an Elven Sword, but these two bits of whimsical thought do illustrate an interesting point.

These weapons are interesting mainly for their looks. They're not really made for combat, they're made to look like they could be used in combat, and then to be displayed. If it's just displaying do you need a semi-functional weapon? The portrait of Stephen Colbert on my south wall isn't an actual portrait, it's a poster, an imitation of a portrait that is almost as good and drastically cheaper. In that spirit why pay full price for a bit of fantasy armory when you can get a solid plastic Brutal Orcish Blade for only $12?

The real answer is because I don't need to be wasting money on toy weapons, and that as far as actual weapons go I'm already set given what I have in my kitchen. Still, it's fun to poke around.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Cramped

There's a feeling that I have so often I had begun to not notice it anymore. That changed. I'm not sure why, but from one reason or another I'm becoming more and more aware of it over time.

I'm cramped. Physically, and it feels almost spiritually.

I'm not sure if the two issues are related, or if the second is simply being labled as a feeling of being cramped because of the first, but they're both distressingly present. The first one is a far too simple story. It's also why I've been cleaning all day. And I will grant, the apartment looks much better now that I've cleaned it and packed a few of the things we simply don't have room for into the crevices and gaps that are part of our hodge-podge arrangement, but even with the space I know it will fail in time. Freedom will only come to me in my escapist addictions.

Spiritually, perhaps mentally, it stems from my own stagnation. An old mantra of mine comes to mind. The phrase is "Not Enough!"* said as a defiant outcry against stagnation, mediocrity, and often even reality itself. Life is becoming too repetitive, even my personal strifes feel painfully familiar. I'm bursting with a kind of wild violent energy that needs... Something.

Ancient Sufi Wisdom

I don't really believe in horoscopes, but I make a habit of reading mine once a week whenever I grab the stranger. It's not because I think it will actually predict the future, but because I think a lesson can be gained from the depiction of the future it makes.

Little bits of daily wisdom like this can be very enlightening, and one of the most reliable sources I have for this is a book my father got me ages ago that I've found and lost several times. It's a collection of short teachings by Rumi, an ancient Sufi master. He was well known for being incredibly eccentric, and I admit that a few times I've found the parables indecipherable. More often then not I see the wisdom, even if it doesn't particularly apply. There are rare times though, like this morning, where I remember to actually check the book (usually moving the bookmark weeks if not months forward) and the wisdom itself applies to my situation.

"Come on in" said the water to the dirty man.
"I'm embarrassed to be so dirty, I'll make you muddy." replied the man.
"But if you don't come in, you'll never stop being ashamed," said the water.

Misc

-Misc posts usually aren't proofread or edited well (at all) And I have no intention to change that. You were warned.

-My perceived financial woes bring me back to one of the fundamental lessons of poverty. If you're middle class or above you can put away a savings. You can have money such that if something goes wrong you can take that hit, dip into it, and come back. One of the greatest burdens of being poor is the lack of such a surplus. When someone who is poor has something happen to them they have to accept it. This, along with the psychological tension it creates, is part of the systemic oppression that is inherent to capitalism.

-Yes, I did just assert that a capitalist system has systemic oppression.

-The idea of getting a minor was proposed to me the other day, and I thought about a sociology minor. The psychological impact of poverty based stress would be a great thesis for that combination of disciplines.

-I got my first "whoa, you're paying me $15 in coins?" look today, I have $385 more from what was my savings and is now my pocket money to go before this is all done. I should just get used to that look.

-I'm not a big fan of 80s music. I am, however, a huge fan of their techno remixes.

-I went through my graduation requirements with my adviser the other day, and one of the things I noticed was that I needed 15 credits, essentially a full year, or VLPA classes. Visual Language & Performing Arts. I'd thought about trying to juggle my schedule such that I could take classes to either refine my drawing skill or learn to play bass guitar. As it turns out, I may have to do one of those.

-The whole vibrating alarm buzzer thing is a very effective tool, but I demand that they retract any claim that it's a less stressful way to wake up. Having your head suddenly buzzed at 6 a.m. is downright freaky. Granted it's only been a few days but I still find myself reflexively grabbing my athame and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

-Sleeping with earplugs has worked in the past, but in my most recent attempt I found a rather annoying little hangup. I was kept awake by the sound of my own blood pulsing through my ears. Interestingly enough, this was the night after the day my class discussed the part of the nervous system that quiets your perceptions of your own internal noises. I think that made me slightly more bitter about this then I would've been otherwise.

-One recurring theme in my attempts to get myself organized is that I buy things that I associate with a lack of youth. I see now how those who have surrendered their deviance do it, it's through the gradual accumulation of these things, and the comforting efficiency of a schedule. I intend to fight that to the very last breadth, including starting a large fire composed of all of the trappings of that lifestyle if I awaken from the lull to find myself fully consumed, but I'm thinking seriously about getting one of those daily pill planner things. That seems like it may cost me a whole notch of deviance though. Those things don't indicate a failing of youth, those are a sign of directly becoming old. Now I believe, as all of us who still have access to youth do, that age is a fully mental thing. I'm fairly sure I'll laugh at that in a raspy voice 60 years from now when my body has moved into the advanced stages of outright failure despite whatever I think at it. Nonetheless I feel the need to embrace some bit of deviance to offset this, but for the life of me I'm having trouble thinking of any that I want and don't already have.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Another notch of weird

In mulling around my apartment I find myself opting out of the normal retinue of clothing, and combing back time and time again to wearing jeans and my robe. I've also said several times, always in idle lament, that I wish I could wear a robe as part of day to day attire. When I mention this around Kevin he tends to remark with something along the lines of "Why not?"

Now understand that Kevin isn't the greatest person to rely upon when dealing with matters of the social contract. It's an odd trait that gives him immunity and inability at the same time, but it's core to his being, and it's not necessarily bad.

There are several reasons not to, most of them dealing with social stigma and ideas of the norm, and the rest dealing with the fact that my robe is a soft almost certainly flimsy blend of...

There was a long pause here wherein I tried to read the tag of my robe just by stretch my neck farther and pulling the hem further before realizing that I could just take my arm out of the damn sleeve.

Also never mind, it's a soft almost certainly flimsy 100% polyester item. Anyway the point is that my robe is a house comfort item, not an actual piece of clothing. Still I've been turning over this idea in my head for a long time, and something recently occurred to me. If I am intent on changing my daily apparel from the college standby of jeans and semi-washed shirt, to some combination of a robe and robe accessories then I should look to cultures which already wear robes on a daily basis.

Thanks to the miracle of the internet I can now tell that I've been going about this all wrong. What I want isn't actually a robe. It's more along the lines of a dishdasha, or a full salwar kameez. I'm still looking into it, but there might be something to this. The whole stigma issue is still in effect, and I may have to deal with people trying to talk to me about Islam, which I know very little about. I'm also concerned about pockets. I'm not sure they're going to be as readily implicated into these garments as I'm used to. In either case it's still up in the air, but it's an interesting bit to consider.

One new issue, that's risen since I started this. If I look for these items in the context of Islamic or middle eastern clothing the prices are on the order of one fifth the price of their Indian counterparts. The only real difference appears to be a few square meters of embroidery that I didn't really want anyway. Also the prevalence for search engines to confuse my desire to buy a simple male garment with what they perceive as my desire to buy a female fetish wear costume. I'm going for one notch of weird, it would be at least five if I began wearing a harem girl outfit all the time.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Damn

There's something that happens to me a lot which I think would be best expressed in a very short film entirely in grayscale, with only the sound of a violin in the background.

It opens on me, at a random location around campus, where I am waiting for something or someone. The violin plays slow deep tones underscoring that this is the base from which things will build. It rises slightly as I open my copy of The Stranger, the music growing quicker, and the sound rising as the bow begins to dance over the strings. I open to a page and the camera zooms in on an add for some obscure band that I like, the violin rises in furious allegro as the camera pans from the add to my cell phone clock. They're coming, and they're coming sometime in the next week. The music rises to a fever pitch and then, as I reach into my pocket there is a sudden jarring halt.

I flip through the faded ones in my wallet, and the music sinks back into low tones of loss as I slump and flip the page, muttering under my breath. The screen fades to black as the violin itself begins to fade out, and just before the whole thing flips over to an over-serrifed declaration of "fin" you me utter a single word.

Damn.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Horrible Momentum

Let's see. Where exactly does this horrible story start.

In a way it starts with me deciding that I needed to have an emergency fund again. This lead to me withdrawing a sizable chunk of money to keep on hand in physical form in a safe location in my room. The idea is that in the case of some big emergency I have this extra money hidden away in the form of cash, which has some uses that my check card just can't cover.

This means that I have to manage my finances a bit more strictly, and also means that I have a general background nervousness about being low on money. Now if you take the emergency money and add it back I'm not actually low, but I'm trying to save that, so I now have a state of percieved poverty beyond my normal poverty, along with a goal which may be unreasonable, the failure of which will be damaging to me mentally.

There are also two other things that I'm not going to discuss which contributed to background anxiety.

So now I have enough built up background tension that it's affecting my sleep patterns again. I've made significant advances in my own struggles with sleep, but I lost a lot of ground the past few days.

Nevertheless I was studying, studying quite a bit for a Psych 202 test which I had Monday, as well as a Psych 209 midterm that I knew I had Friday. Also my Hebrew test which I knew I had Thursday. I knew these things, I had them written out in my planner and on my smaller white board, and I was ready for them.

So Sunday, in order to break the studying fatigue and because I do so most Sundays, I head to Federal way to my current D&D group. I really should've been more insistent on leaving early, and will be in the future, but I know from past experience that the night before a test I have only a 30% (tops) chance of sleeping anyway, so I just said screw it. We get back far too late, and as I expected it didn't matter because I couldn't sleep anyway.

It's now Monday around 5:30 a.m. in this story. I'm hungry, and there's a distinct need for caffeine, so I decide to go get drive through breakfast from McDonalds. I have a noted weakness for their breakfasts. It's fairly cold and my car is finiky, so I let it warm up for about 5 minutes, as I've gotten used to. I back up, then shift to drive and get the [CHECK GEARBOX] error that I've begun to think of as "part of how my car works." The standard procedure here is simple. Car off. Car on. More warming time, and try again. I've been through this at least 200 times over the years I've operated this vehicle, and we've tried time and time again to get it fixed to no avail.

Here's where things go from bad to worse. Car off. Car... fail. Lights on, raido on, then [CHECK ENGINE] a battery light and an oil light.

This is exacerbated by the fact that my car is now blocking the alleyway.

A few minutes lost to denial and panic, a few minutes spent in very hurried thought, then I wake Adam far earlier then he's used to with the idea that he will steer and I'll push the car back into the spot. A bit of humility later we also wake Kevin, so that his much lighter form will be used to steer as Adam helps me push.

I haven't gotten it checked out in any official way yet, but I'm thinking it's the spark plug. That would explain why the battery has power (to the lights radio etc) but the engine won't start.

So now my car is stalled, which adds to greater anxiety, and is going to need repairs, which brings us back to poverty etc. etc.

It was in this nerve wracked state that I went off to take my midterm. Not the best move I know, and I'm not saying I have an excuse for that, I'm making an excuse for something that happened after that. You'll see.

So. Take the test, I think I did fairly well with only one question that really stalled me, and a few that I'm iffy about, but even so I know I can recover from this even if it was a bit of a hit.

At this point in the story it's 10:00, I've got sleep deprivation, the tailspin of the caffeine buzz that I used to overcome my sleep deprivation to take the test, car based anxiety compounding money based anxiety along with other anxieties. It was at this point that I did something which I do more often then I will admit, and which is the bane of my existence, and the singular flaw which has defined my failures over the past few years.

I quit.

I said screw it, I've taken my test, I don't really need the psych 209 lecture and I went back to my apartment to decompress.

I can't excuse that. That was a failure on my part. I can explain it, as I hopefully have, but not excuse it. That wasn't it though, the story takes a horrible twist.

I got nothing done yesterday followed by a long sleepless night of accomplishing even less. I opened my mail this morning and found something with horrifying implications. An e-mail from the PSYCH 209 guys mentioning "The test yesterday." Going back through my planner shows that I have a recorded PSYCH 209 test Friday. My white board has that written in large black letters, but the record has been challenged, and digging up my syllabus I see a death sentence.

The lecture I skipped was not a lecture. That was a test that I was sure was four days later.

Brief moments of profanity later I flip through the syllabus to the exams heading. I'll just quote it for you.

"Exams. We will have three exams (multiple choice/short answer). Each Exam will cover one third of the course (no cumulative exam). All exams are required, and each exam will be offered only once."

In case you didn't catch that, "All exams are required, and each exam will be offered only once."

Further panic leads me to the phrase "Makeups are offered only if you missed a test or deadline for a justifiable, uncontrollable, and documented reason."

I don't consider my actions justifiable, or beyond my control, and God knows how you would document them.

Looking through the grading policies section of the syllabus confirms my fears. I'm screwed. Even if the "required" bit didn't entail some grand repercussion I can't make a sufficient grade in this course any more. Faced with that, I cut my losses, and dropped the course.

That, for the record, is what I'm trying to make an excuse for. I'll take Psych 209 over the summer, which will make my summer quarter much more like an actual quarter then I had planned, but if that's what it takes then so be it.

Efforts are underway to get my car repaired without significant expenditure. I have a psych advising session setup for arranging things, and I've updated my schedule to account for the fact that I do still have a test coming up this week. Still...

It always seems to be like this. At the moments where I think I'm making progress, I take what I think is a minor bump, and through horrible momentum end up here, carried over fates precipice by weakness and circumstance.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Political Misc

I'm in a weird position with regards to politics. I keep a heavy influx of information, I'm pretty highly informed, but I also hate politics. I have a lot of views that I want to express, and I don't care enough to get into a real argument on most of them, so here, in the form of a misc post, are my recent political thoughts.

-I favor immediate irresponsible withdrawal from Iraq. It's my belief that the Sunni Shiite clash is going to generate a certain amount of violence, and all our presence there is doing or can do is slow down the rate at which that violence happens. I think that when we pull out there will be a upsurge in violence and a massive bloodbath, and that if we don't pull out there will be the exact same thing except dragged out over several generations.

-I don't currently plan on voting in the presidential election. I was thinking about this, and a vote for a presidential candidate means that I think that person should be running the country, and so far the only people I know of who are running have failed to convince of me that.

-Barrack Obama has an incredible amount of Charisma, but I really don't know how much Intelligence he has. Wisdom is hard to judge, and I don't care how much Str, Con, and Dex the president has.

-The key reason I hate politics is because of what politicking is. You say what will get you support, what won't get you lambasted, without giving priority to how you actually feel and how you actually speak. This leads to the soundbyte gotcha syndrome that plagues modern discourse, and a system of aggravated douchery that is an insult to my intellect, and the intellect of the American people. Disingenuous pandering, stark polarization, and blatant outright deception are all used casually and constantly in order to win the votes of the manipulated masses, and anyone who thinks of the people in the terms that you have to in order to manipulate them on this level has to dehumanize them.

-The epitome of my issues with politics are embodied in the form of Hillary Clinton. She operates on such a highly political level that I can not, despite having heard dozens of interviews and discussions with her, say anything with confidence about who she actually is or what she actually believes.

-What the hell happened to accountability? And I assure you that this bit of outrage applies to more things then you're thinking about.

-Why wasn't it considered a gaffe when people say things like "You can't expect truth from him in that kind of position." Why is that, in fact, seamlessly accepted as sage advice and not the grounds for revolution.

-I whole heartedly support the violent overthrow the United States Government. I don't think any country that goes over a century without a violent uprising is doing it right. It's doing it well, very very well, but it's not doing it right.

-I'm way too much of a chickenshit to lead the violent overthrow of the United States Government. I don't even have a gun.

-I'm firmly against gun control on the basis that I think the people must always maintain the ability to overthrow their own government. I don't give a damn about hunting, but I support the legalization of assault weapons so that we can fight back against the army.

-I'm also against handguns, because I think if you're carrying a firearm it should have to be visible. Granted there are concealable rifles etc, but you have to work pretty hard to conceal those.

-One of the most insane policies I support is issuing everyone a firearm when they turn 18, both because of the whole overthrow thing, but also because I believe that the problems with guns is solved with either zero guns, or universal armament. One of the keys to the success rate of the psychos who commit school shootings is that they take place in gun free zones. There's no magic stopping them from walking in with guns. Also, if there's only two or so guard they can just shoot them, and remove the incredibly small number of people who are immediately available and would actually have a chance to fight back.

-All of the guns stuff makes me sound crazy. There are much crazier things that I believe, but I'm not going to get very deep into those.

-I think that the powers that be are making racial divide, gender divides, religious divides, ethnic divides, etc. all more prevalent so that the class war won't happen, because if people were properly aware of that we would all pull a Cromwell.

-Oliver Cromwell was, in my opinion, the only person to be both a Badass and a Puritan. He's famous for executing a King, which opened the door to royal execution in the middle ages.

-Tibet was a theocracy, and not a nice one either. The former Dahli Lama was a cruel dictator. Screw Tibet.

-China is also an inhumane dictatorship. Screw them too.

-To be continued (probably)

Monday, April 14, 2008

Crazy

Kevin once summarized the weather around here to me, and I'm beginning to see his point. It goes rainy for 6 months, then insane for a month or so, then construction for 4 months, then fall, then back to rainy.

Right now we're clearly in the "insane" phase. When I got up it was daybreak, and it was sunny. After class it was beginning to get dark. It was clearly evening and raining around 11. On my way back from campus we had a brief burst of hail. Then it lightened up to partly cloudy. Now it's full cloud cover again, and moments ago I heard a thunder. I haven't heard thunder in Seattle in months.

What the hell?

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Bike

I have a strong tendency to talk to myself in moments of great severity. The blend of promise failure and exhaustion that followed my first ride gave me a lot of inspiration. The following are the tidbits that view as being amusing enough to share.

I got a bike because I thought I was out of shape, and like a good scientist, my experiment of buying and using a bike proved my earlier hypothesis.

Regarding the ride from the bike shop to my apartment the court finds, in an 8 to 1 decision, that the bike is the victor. The key piece of evidence in the bike's favor is the simple fact that the rider spent longer recovering from the ride then he did riding.

When you think about it it's a lot like sex. It was a lot trickier then I thought, It didn't last nearly as long as I planned, and afterwards I collapsed.

This experience also brings up our old fat camp line: "No one escapes from fat camp, because the only way out is up a gentle slope."* It turns out that it's still true if you use a bike.

In all seriousness though, I think this is a good step. A baby step, but still.

*The Simpsons

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Working up to Zero

I'm off to a rough start this quarter, but even with that I really think things are going to get better. I know what I'm trying to get to now, I reached it briefly, very briefly, and I think I know how to get back to it.

What it comes down to is getting a lot of little easy things done, but the nature of my condition makes that tricky. The thing about insomnia isn't just that you don't get enough sleep, it's that you're always tired. I get up tired, I spend the whole day tired, and by the time I've gotten nothing done I'm way too tired to do anything.

It's not just the inability to get things done, but I'm too tired to fight things. A lot of these things are part of the cycle of depression, so in this way the cycle caries on. The goal, in the long run, is to establish an inverse cycle. A cycle of achievement, one which will improve my general quality of life, and finally give me enough built up willpower points to resolve my current... lets call it an identity crisis. It's tricky. It's also not really a crisis, more like an identity conflict, or a partial denial moral quandary internal identity of self conflict. I may talk about that later, but it deals with a lot of things that I'm just not willing to talk about in a forum this public.

Anyway, little things. The overall goal may be a better state of physical health, bodily harmony, and level of energy, but you can't start with overall goals. Start with little ones, like a bike.

I have to credit my brother again on that one, it's a good idea that I've been meaning to get to for a while now. Today after Psych 209. That's just one though. One amongst many.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Misc

-My phone is finally back online. I had a weird issue that prevented me from reaching my own voicemail, then I lost the charger, then the phone, then found the phone but had no charger, and now they're all in a neat location. The charger, it turns out, was the victim of the whirlwind of activity that was my remodeling process.

-There's a kid in my Hebrew class that has an amazing speech issue. In English he's fine. However, when speaking Hebrew he does something that makes me completely unable to understand him. His words take the same total amount of time, but he spends half of that time stuttering, then says the word twice as fast as normal. It's crazy. It's also a bit of irony.

-The whole April fool's day music theory, rock ocarina thing worked surprisingly well on my parents. I have to admit I feel a little bit bad about it, but honestly I don't want to be the kind of person who would pass up that kind of chance to add a bit of spice to his life.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Regret

My brother one said something which I wholeheartedly agree with, even if I don't really follow it as strictly as I should. He said "Fast food is the worst food choice because you're paying a lot for something that's bad for you."

Now the 49 cent bean burrito argument aside, that's basically true, but I am, as always, vulnerable to impulse and something inside me said Wendy's. I really wish it hadn't.

This has nothing to do with Wendy's either. All in all I wholeheartedly support the institution, with my only point of contention being a very general complaint about the health of fast food in general.

What this does have to do with is me vomiting violently a few minutes ago after a period of prolonged gastrointestinal distress. I'll acknowledge that I have no formal medical training, but I'm fairly sure that's a bad thing.

I'm going to go lay down for a while...

Thursday, April 03, 2008

On Gods and Champions II

I've thought about it, and I simply can't do this in one post. So expect a III, and possibly a IV.

Now we've already covered my disdain for organized religion, along with my idea of the use of champions as exemplars of a personal creed, but we have to get further into what Gods and Champions actually are.

This comes down to one of the great fundamental questions in life. Is God Real? Like with every other giant philosophical question I've tackled I've come to think that the question itself is flawed. When we're dealing with something like God you have to be willing to get into the fuzzy details on what exactly constitutes "real." If you're asking "Is there a giant superbeing somewhere out there" then there's really no answer. If we're getting into superbeings the pure breadth of what "out there" can be goes well beyond the empirically observable universe and the idea of logical truth kind of breaks down from there. This is to say nothing of the fact that a truly omnipotent being should be above all rules of causality, continuity, and mutual exclusivity.

The important thing is that God exists as a character which influences us. Mythological figures are real in the sense that the character exists in peoples consciousness, even if we have monumental evidence that they don't exist in what I call "collective reality," and what most people call "The Real World." So in this way both Gods and mythological figures that are serving as champions are real. This form of reality is also how figures that did/do exist in collective reality exist to us when they're used as Champions. I'd like to point out that everything which you don't have direct observation of essentially exists only in this way, but that's one big philosophical circle jerk, so lets not get into that.

The important point here is the belief in a God doesn't really mean belief in a physical being. My interactions with these figures are purely with the constructed characters, and these characters are constructed heavily by my own interpretation of their characters.

Misc

-Wow, that last post was supposed by about the pattern of declining motivation over the duration of the quarter and it got into a whole rant about my identity issue. I really am too consumed by that problem right now.

-Still need to buy that bike...

-I've bought more liquor in the past few days then in the entirety of my life. I haven't drinken any, I don't plan to start drinking more, but I feel a little bit better knowing that I have it on hand. There are some situations that arise without planning that mandate intoxication.

-I should learn to start cooking with wine

-I should buy cheaper wine to use when cooking, and continue preserving my current stock of higher, but still not actually high, quality wine.

-I wonder if there's any recipe that can be done with Thunderbird that wouldn't result in notably damaging the dish.

-I should add a bottle of Thunderbird to my stock. They cost what. $2? I'd rather avoid the scenario that leads to me drinking it, but it's still worth having.

-I have a lot of beliefs about mind altering drugs. Foremost in that belief is that each of them has a particular setting in which it is appropriate. This is true across the broad spectrum of liquors as well, which is a heavy contributor to my perceived need to have so many kinds on hand. Whether or not it's true, I'm still convinced that the intoxication resulting from rum is different from that resulting from beer, etc. etc. and that every scenario warrants a different drink. Some how, without ever really drinking, I've become a little bit of a liquor snob.

Dropoff

I think I've found a deeply alarming pattern. This discussion started from a single key point. Given how interested I was in my classes last quarter, why weren't my grades better.

The simple direct answer is that I didn't work hard enough. So we get into a discussion of why I didn't work harder. It gets a bit fuzzy here, but a lot of it revolves around a depression cycle, so the real key is understanding that cycle. If I can break it I won't have a gradual drop in performance like I have every damn quarter to date.

The fact that it's recurring on that level suggests a number of things. The first and biggest thing is that I'm filled, as I usually am, with a lot of "This time it's going to be different, this time I won't screw up" kind of feelings. Those good vibes allow me to be confidently be myself, which is really the key to success.

Now those feelings are obviously going to undergo some degradation over time, but negative and positive feedback determine where you go from there. The ideal is to go to a "Awesome! things are going as planned, I'm succeeding" mindset, and get into a cycle of positive thought, but there are a lot of little things that can screw the whole thing up.

I've been analyzing my negative cycles for a while now and there are some recurring patterns. They're almost universally self reinforcing too, so it's really a very dangerous game. What are the early triggers though, what is it that starts the process that ends up with me waking up at 8:45, realizing I've missed an 8:30 class, and saying "Fuck it I quit" instead of "crap, I've gotta move if I'm going to make my 9:30 class."

The most obvious one is the gradual decline in what I'd refer to as my "fire." In a good state, in what I consider to be an attitude truest to myself I'm a fairly fiery person. What comprises that is kind of tricky, but readiness of public speech, and predisposition to a state of activity are the key signs I'm working with here. This is also where the first bit of self deprecation and ultimately self destruction comes in.

Take for example my PSYCH 209 class. Medium lecture hall, I sit fairly close, on one of the flanks, so I can get room for me and the additional space I take up, without concealing myself with distance. Right now, since I'm still riding the buzz of new, I follow a fairly constant pattern with regards to responding to questions posed by the prof. Wait either 15 seconds, or let the lecturer's gaze sweep the room three times, and if none of those who have volunteered using the ancient hand symbols of this environment are selected, with a given that I'm also signaling, I don't really feel bad in just switching to stage voice and responding without a direct prompt.

The action is clearly resultant of confidence, but in doing so I tend to trigger a reflex which leads me to destruction, because after enough of these incidents I become self deprecating about always answering.

Is it actually bad that I'm doing this? Hard to say, the knee jerk answer I want to give is no, but the real one is much more complicated. It involves a brief analysis of the hesitance of my classmates, the intentions of the lecturer, and brings up the grand question "If it were really a problem, wouldn't she just tell me to shut up?"

In either case my buzz has just been lessened. This example speaks to the overarching problems that I'm simply not yet fully comfortable being myself as I am, as I like being, with my own fire. Some part of me still feels bad about being that person, and it's got enough clout in the grand council of self to rebuke me for it. I've heard of similar a condition, so I know what I would call this affliction, but I'm just going to refer to it as RDS to avoid some awkward conversations of how and why I know certain things.

In essence RDS is a form of self deprecating cowardice in response to a part of oneself which acts with greater tenacity, and I wholly intend to cure myself of it, but I'm still not entirely certain as to how. Two key things come to mind.

1) Embrace the inferno. Actively seek out opportunities to be this person, and get comfortable being it/him.

2) Silence the critics. Remove all the little blocks that you can. The sources of the secondary lashings in response to behavior/scenarios brought about by being.

Hard to say, both will be used, and we shall see.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Destiny

So this story really starts last week. I was at Pike's shopping mostly for groceries but also browsing the myriad wonderworld that is Pike's Place Market. I was perusing the farm fresh stalls when I heard a familiar song, played by the maker of clayz ocarinas. I used to have an ocarina, it's a neat little thing, because it's not quite an instrument and not quite a toy. I've been playing around on it lightly since, and it's really sort of clicked.

Really clicked.

I talk a lot about higher purpose, and true self, and what it all comes down to is that you have to know who you are, and do what it is you know you're meant to do. The technical term is Dharma, I think. Whatever the case I've found what is I'm meant to do. Helping people with science didn't really work. Helping them with psych wasn't going to work, and I'm yet to find a reliable source of legitimate magical powers, so I'm using the closest thing we as humans have.

Rock.

High, kind of flat, discount clay ocarina rock. And I know what you're thinking, what about your classes? Don't worry, the tuition will transfer over to my new classes which are based partially around music theory, but are mostly about sitting around jamming and doing pot with the TA.

And I know, it seems like a lot, but I'll pay my way though. I'll live the American dream of standing on the corner of 45th and the ave blowing the mind of passers by and collecting the change that falls from their newly freed consciousness.

It's a brand new day, and it's time to embrace destiny.