david lynch

The worst days ever are also the best days ever.  I hate nights when I can't focus on what I need to (homework, reading...), I don't have friends to be with, so I just waste the night wishing I could be doing something productive.  At the end of those nights, I am so fed up with my self that I realize it's time to do something about it.  So the worst day becomes the best day because it leads to BOOM! change.

Last night found me studying a little about a man I was introduced to by my friend Curtis Whitear back in high school.  I will admit, until recently, I was so afraid of David Lynch that I would not go near him- I would not let my mind even wander too close to thoughts of him (paranoid, yes.  Unprepared, yes).  He is a visual artist/sound artist/surrealist- he makes films and videos and music that are so pure and strange that you can't help but be moved in an unsettled way when you experience them.

My first real experience with David Lynch was a movie called "Eraserhead."  I could not sleep the night after I watched it because I was so unsettled.  It's a movie about really strange people who live in a strange, mechanical, dirty world but they act like it's the norm, like nothing is strange.  You are thrown into a world that the characters shouldn't be okay with (because you certainly can't be) but they are.  For example, the main character, Henry, goes to a dinner with his girlfriend.  In the house, Henry's girlfriend and her mother and him all sit down to talk.  First of all, it's super awkward.  Then, the mother asks Henry a question, and Henry starts to answer until he is interrupted by his girlfriend having a weird fit.  She starts moaning and rocking back and forth.  The mother is not fazed at all, and she grabs a nearby hairbrush and starts brushing the daughter's hair until she stops having her strange fit.  Of course, none of this is explained in the movie- why does she have a fit?  Why does brushing her hair make her settle down?  Is this normal?  You just have to take it for what it is.  And it's unsettling.

I started to look into David Lynch's philosophy and it's very interesting.  It's essentially a philosophy of meditation, and I don't want to go too far into it because I don't fully understand it and trying to explain it would lead to a lot of assumptions on my part.  But as far as I understand it, David Lynch is always looking inside himself through meditation and bringing those things that he finds in his mind out in the open and expressing them visually and through music and sound (I like this because I am an advocate of finding one's real self.  I think that that is where everything that is good has a place.  I think that is where beauty and power and everything Godly can be found.  I think that is where God can communicate best with us).  Lynch's works have a dreamlike quality and are very interesting.  They always cause you to feel something.  Those feelings he conjures are feelings that are still relatively new to me.  Want a taste?  He released two new songs in the past couple of days, and you can try them out here.  I really love the first one on here the most.

The whole point of this is that I feel like I have been too confined in my own expression and art.  I have always thought that great art followed a set structure (and I will never say that you don't need structure in art- everything great has a skeleton of some kind), but that never led me to any exploration on my own.  I want to explore my own mind and find some undiscovered recesses in there.  So, I have a new plan for the next little while.  I want to eat right, breathe right, sleep right, and think right in order to get my mind right.  I am going to wake up in the morning and instead of being groggy and slow, I am going to wake my mind up through concentration and meditation (I really am working on self-mastery and self-control right now, too.  I need it and I think this will help).  And then I am going to do some stream of consciousness writing- just let whatever comes to my mind fall to paper.  Because, I write poetry and I love poetry, but let's face it, as a society we are just not trained in understanding poetry any more.  The way our culture is accessed (at least writing-wise) is through prose.  I have always, always felt incompetent in story-telling and prose writing.  So this will be all about exploration and experimentation.

I think this will be good for me because last night I wrote a poem.  After I wrote the poem, I was thinking, this is the best thing that I have written.  It was one of the most controlled poems I have ever written and yet, at least to me, it seems natural and exploring.  Then, I went back and looked at my old poetry.  I saw that every single poem I have written taught me something new.  I was able to retrace some of my steps of progress to the poem I wrote last night.  It came to me that everything we do is important.  Every decision we make leads us somewhere, even if slowly, and if we want to go somewhere, we have to start making steps in that direction.  Each step gives us new insight and new tools to use, and who knows when we will need those to do some good for some one else some day, may be to day.  Every decision we make is important.

I have some new material to post on here, and I plan on doing the meditation/stream of consciousness every morning for a while, so I am hoping to post that experimental writing here every day.

Here's the first one.  Listen to that first David Lynch song while you are reading it.  Gro~ovy...

I had recently funded the ammunition of a basket-case. He had strapped for cash and breezed through the only test I have- windmills turning and fires burning. The result was inconclusive, so I spent the rest of my money on starving. We don't have to live this way, you know? I said to him. That's what he said to me.
I kept finding strange wooden barrels knocked over while I was walking home. Did he have something to do with it? Whatever the case, my initials were on those barrels- like when you find your name drawn from a cheap raffle.
We spent the night returning late movies. I had forgot to spend the money on saving, so loaded, the movie rental store didn't let us speak. The earth started moving the second we set off, so we never made it anywhere. When did the earth become a treadmill? I asked. Seven ghosts once inhabited our place, was his reply.
When we got home, I tried to eke out a meager existence. The seven ghosts had come back and I was a wanting host. I couldn't even turn my back on them. So I grew flowers and vegetables in the bathtub, with a slow leak keeping the floura watered.
In spring (seasons were judged solely on the rising of the plants in the bathtub) my heart caught in my throat. I choked and sobbed as I heard him say-
"What?
Scared and disillusioned by the flowers?
Horses Elliott must be determined by the hairs on his back."
That night, I ran to the fields. I stomped on every blossom that wanted to speak "life" and I spent the night forgetting mercy in the sand. Weeping, I dragged my self home, whispering things I forgot to understand. It all was clear to me as I saw him finally spend the last of my money on destruction.
But those were MY plants.

hangin' with justin

Mel isn't as used to hanging out with celebrities as I am.  You can tell she is pretty excited.

I like to think of Justin as a little brother.  Sometimes we get on each others' nerves, but for all that, we shore do love each other!

I like his jacket.  That's why I am pointing guns at him.

i have a headache

and I think it's because I haven't been sitting up straight, lately.  And I sleep with my neck all cranked.  And I haven't been doing yoga.

villiam vordsworth is cannon boi

I post this merely to show how hilarious I am.
So, I am writing an essay about William Wordsworth and whether or not he belongs in the literary canon, and the title of this post is what I put as the title for my paper.  I am so funny!
I wish I was cannon boi, too.
If you, my loyal subje...er...readers, my loyal readers, if you wanted to grant me my deepest desire, you would start calling me "Cannon Boi."

love is the word

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes in the entire world.

“Love is found in the affirmation of another person’s identity and stewardship, in seeking his or her growth and good, not in interpreting all the other person’s responses in terms of your own needs, hungers, or desires.”

-Stephen R. Covey

“Love is always open arms.  With arms open you allow love to come and go as it wills freely.  This is in harmony with the natural ebb and flow of love.  If you close your arms about love – and attempt to capture it – you will find that you are left holding just yourself.”

 

-Leo Buscaglia

we're the wild things are

And happy 18th, Miley!  We can date now!
And is anyone surprised, really, that we are in love?

horses elliott

I feel like the structure of my life was shaken to its core.  Whatever I built up has fallen down and I have had to rebuild.


What happened?  A lot of things have culminated to bring this to pass, but the thing that really rocked me and started everything shaking happened today when my teacher discussed Mrs. Dalloway.  He taught us that the philosophy really proposed in this book is that of existentialism.  What an existentialist believes is that this life is all there is.  Our souls are really only here for a brief minute and we have to make our lives what they mean; we have to find our own purpose and meaning.  So, if you felt like this life is all there is, and you wanted to make something of it, what would you do?  What would you do to make it meaningful and worth living?  I think the answer is go out and do good things- experience tons of things, feel everything, be good to other people, do acts of love for others, and essentially, seize the day.  "There's only one life to live- make the most of it..."  So this way of living really resonated with me.  Okay, but here is where the kicker came for me-


Compare this with a life with a religious take on eternity and the immortal soul.  What is their philosophy?  Life is a test.  Life is simply a brief moment on the great eternities, stretching out forever before us and behind us.  It tells us that our purpose is to have families and be responsible.  A life that is not stable like that does not really fit snugly in a religious environment, right?


All of a sudden, when my mind newly labeled the first philosophy "existentialism" and then compared it to this (all of a sudden) fresh perspective on religious philosophy, I realized that I have been more and more living and thinking like an existentialist (everything has been about experiencing and experimenting).  I didn't know I had been doing that, and I don't know what it is about labeling, but all of a sudden I realized that my ideas on life fit inside someone else's box and it became something that I could step back and look at.


So, I was there looking at my life, and we kept talking about the book, and other thoughts came to me that I had recently had.


First, was from the book- one of the amazing parts of the way Mrs. Dalloway was written is that each paragraph that follows a character's thoughts really shows the way a human being thinks.  We don't just have a steady, flowing train of thought all the time; our thoughts usually jump from idea to idea because of whatever outside stimuli is around us.  And in fact, our thoughts can be completely inconsistent with each other from one thought to the next.  For example, I can think, "I have become a very collected and calm driver,"  get cut-off by another person on the road, and then think, in a sort of rage, "Stupid people should not be allowed to drive."  This is usually topped-off with a bird.  E.  A person that substitute-taught today spelled "beautiful" like this (and this is really true, and he did it thinking it was correct): "beautE-ful."  Haha the E was capitalized and the hyphen was there and everything.


So our thoughts jump around, and so do our circumstances change.  So do our philosophies on life.  In fact, there are so many philosophies in the world that have been used and discarded that it's a wonder we don't find a way to use them as an energy source in cars.  Really, you can't show me a single philosophy for life that doesn't have some hole in it or can hold up in every situation and circumstance you put it in.  Is that kind of depressing?  No one has all the answers.  All of this kind of was hard for me, too.  But then I started watching things by Spike Jonze.  He directed an amazing movie called "The Fall" and he also directed "Where the Wild Things Are" and other great films.  No matter what the movie is about, no matter what happens, the overall theme of the movie is that love trumps all, love is over all and under all and through all, through everything that matters, that has substance.  Paul said,

    "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

  And though I have the gift of  prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."

Love is the only thing that means anything.  Last week, I watched a talk that President Eyring gave a few years ago.  He told a story of when he was a bishop of a ward, and he was helping out a man who, for years, had had problems with substance abuse and breaking the law.  The man got baptized, and a few days later, he was intoxicated by some substance and ran his car into a building.  He was okay, and when the cops came, they were trying to arrest him.  But the man said, "No, no, it's okay.  I'm a Mormon, now!  You don't have to arrest me!"


Eventually, the man got back to face President Eyring in his bishop's office.  President Eyring, on being with the man, started to become infuriated and filled with (as he thought at the time) righteous anger- he could only think of how the man had hurt the church's name and had done nothing good.  He could really only think how thoughtless and bad the man had been, and as he was filling up with this anger, getting it ready to let loose on the man, all of a sudden, something happened.  (Here, as President Eyring was talking, he started to get really emotional.)  All of a sudden, President Eyring saw the man as a child.  And he knew, in his heart and through the feelings of the Spirit, that Heavenly Father was letting him see the man as He saw him.  President Eyring realized that he had no idea what kind of hardships the man had lived through, what kind of painful experiences he had had.  He saw him as a child who was trying the best he knew how, who really, in his heart of hearts, wanted to be good.


President Eyring then said that up to that point in his life, he had been praying for charity, the pure love of Christ, and in that moment, he knew what that was, how it felt.  That was love.  That is love.


So I think how I see so many people every day.  At school.  (I think that is one thing that makes BYU so hard for me- it's just that we are supposed to be practicing a religion of love.  These are people who are definitely members and definitely supposed to be doing these things.  They don't have an excuse...well... It's just hard because I feel like people not of the same faith as me are not held to the same standards.)  The people at school don't seem to care that I am alive.  Who am I to them?  I hate that hardly anyone looks at me.  I hate that hardly any one is trying to help me smile by acknowledging me.  What, am I a spectre?


But President Eyring's story put it more in perspective.  It's this- I just don't think very many people are truly filled with love, no matter what religion they belong to.  I think it is something that is to be worked at gaining through lots of desire, asking, and sincere effort.  I also feel like charity is not up to other people.  It is up to me.  I don't need to wait to have a group of friends before I can start acting charitably.  I can do for other people what I wish they would do for me.


Can I say that I feel like I am making steps towards that end when I stop my own thoughts and really focus on a person sitting next to me?  When I wave and say hello to someone and see a smile come on their face?  When I make someone laugh?  When I show something that is important and dear to me to someone else?  It is simply a shift in attitude from me to someone else.  


An autobiography I recently read really helped me understand that shift.

The autobiography I am talking about was written by John Stuart Mills, a Victorian philosopher. His story is very remarkable in that he was basically a prodigy. Mills's father did not believe in the traditional education system, so he raised Mills and educated him himself. Mills was raised on the belief system of the utilitarians, which is simply belief in supporting “the greatest good for the greatest number”. It was a very calculating and unfeeling faith, and it was all about securing pleasure for oneself. Inside this system, Mills at first flourished, and as a genius-prodigy, he was publishing and lecturing in his teenage years and was quite prominent even at a young age. He was incredibly intelligent.

What was amazing about this story is that after a small number of years of being successful, Mills basically woke up one morning and had lost all his taste for life. He could not feel (I can think of no worse state in the entire world.  Please give me feeling, even if it's deep sorrow or pain.  Give me feeling). A deep cloud of gloom swept over him and he sunk to its depths. In his autobiography, Mills says that this cloud would not leave him for a long time- months. His life carried on like this, with him wondering if he should ever be happy again, until, while reading, he came across a fictional story of a father's death in a small family. This little story seemed to cut through the gloom and awaken in him some sympathy and finally! feeling. It helped to cause the cloud of gloom to leave, as this first emotion helped to change his attitude.  Do you see, he finally felt?

What he learned, in his own words, was this: “Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind...”

For me, I feel like my body is a machine, in a way.  My spirit is inside this shell, this machine, and the machine can work pretty well with only a small percentage of focus from my spirit.  I can let my spirit kind of wander around and sulk around inside my little shell without hardly ever looking out.  At those times, everything seems very hazy and almost colorless.  But then, when I make that shift, I feel like I am totally plugged into my body, experiencing everything that my body can experience.  I am plugged into my hands, I can see colors vividly, I can think straight, my feet are gripping the earth, and my ears are filled with beautiful music that dances all through my being.  That shift is completely outward.  That shift is seeing a need and filling it.  That shift is not being afraid.  That shift is acts of love.  That shift is not worrying about the self.  That shift is, I will repeat it because I think it's important, outward.  It is not forgetting the self, but it is.  It's about totally being one with your self, but not doing things for your self.


This is important to me because I am tired of running in circles.  I got so, so fed up with life and the way everything was the same!  Every single time I felt like I needed to improve, I would take the exact same steps and set the exact same goals every time.  Things would work for a little while, and then they would go sour, again.  I would set the same goals, keep them for a little while, and then fall again.  I decided that that is stupid.  It is incredibly stupid.  I don't care if I am "improving myself," if i keep doing the same things over and over again, I am crazy, because it obviously isn't working.  I kept thinking, oh this time I have more dedication to my goals so I will be able to keep them.  No.  All I could think of was Thoreau asking me, "Does wisdom work in treadmills then?"  And Isaac Brock mocking me- "I took off running at the greatest speed/ Didn't bother looking to either side of me/...I left the hills at this point in time/ To run on treadmills in a dotted line."  Things had to change.  I had to change them.  I changed my attitude.  I changed my perspective.  Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it was change, and I am still changing.


So there is all of this, and all of this has come on the end of a couple of worrisome thoughts for me.  Do you realize that the world is a huge mess?  Sufjan Stevens made a documentary called "The BQE," and this, more than anything else I have seen, seems to be able to encapsulate my thoughts- it is finally the symbol that best captures and expands my ideas. The BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) is a road system in the outskirts of New York City that was built over a relatively long period of time.  The design (due to many difficult circumstances) is incredibly messy.  It came as a solution to the huge increase of commercial traffic in New York, but it is just jumbled and almost haphazard seeming.  Watching the documentary, I started to think how even though the road-system is not great, everything has grown and expanded around it.  There are offices and apartments and stores and warehouses and other roads all built around the BQE.  So the system is not great, but it is kind of working.  The only way to improve the system and make it more efficient would be to tear it all down and start all over.  But what would that mean?  It would mean displacing thousands and thousands of people and tearing all those offices and apartments and stores and warehouses and roads all to the ground.  There is no way that that is going to happen.  So what do those people in New York do?  They make the best of it.  They do the best they can with the system they've got.


What does that mean to me?  I have started to see and feel how the system we are living in is really not good. Yeah, we are getting food, but really, are we eating the best food we could be?  No.  Do big businesses care about us?  No.  Do companies care for anything but money?  No.  Most of us have housing, but could the system be more efficient?  Yes.  Is the system of government perfect?  Are the people in power perfect?  No.  Are morals holding up?  No.  Is there deep-seated corruption where we can't see it?  Yes.  We are living in a fallen world of imperfect systems.  We won't live in a perfect society in this life.  And this completely scared me.  I felt like I was living on top of a bubble that was about to pop, and here I was afraid for myself and so many people, and here I was wanting to revolutionize the system.  I wanted to change everything.  And here was religion telling me to just do the best I could with what I was given.  It was telling me to lead a good life- raise a good family, become stable, learn and give way to many inner changes.  I could not reconcile how big a mess the world was in with what religion was asking me to do.  What, you want to pretend the world isn't a very big mess and just live on happily ignorant of everything falling apart?


Then I heard recently that a church leader (I think it was an Apostle, but this is really information without a reliable source, as I think I am telling this as the third or fourth source) gave a talk about this in church.  He said, yes, the world is a mess, we are aware of that, but just keep on living, doing the best 
you can.


So, the church, our leaders know this world is a mess.


Then I realized why we have received the counsel we have received, and I realized it because of the BQE.  Everything, our society, is built up so much, our laws and ideas and systems are so ingrained in us and our culture that the only way to change everything would be a complete revolution.  It would mean wiping everything out, breaking everything to the ground, to bring out a more perfect system.


So a lot of things started to click for me.  I looked at existentialism.  It is a philosophy of action, and I like it (actually, I love it.  The more I live by trying to find meaning in life and in giving, the less I am bored.  I realized a couple of days ago that I have not been bored for a long time.  My mind is constantly trying to find better ways of doing things because I hate the way the world works right now), but I was giving myself too much to it.  I could absolutely not be happy inside it until everything around me was perfect- school had to be how I wanted it, my roommates had to be who I wanted, the culture had to be what I wanted it, my friends had to be what I wanted, because it was all about perfecting everything around me.  I can start living with the (again, fresh) religious outlook.  I can be happy where I am because of love.  And all of a sudden, life has meaning and purpose again.


And my friends, my family, I love you.  I would have nothing if I didn't have you.

sorry, this made me laugh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA-DOdRVthk

yeasayer, welcome back to my life

I would like to formally welcome Yeasayer back into my life.  It's been a while.  And now I cry a little.

"cuz it feels like being tranquilized
i know that separation kills the soul
but i won't stop falling like raindrops
cuz i like it when you lose control"

!!!O.N.E.!!!

pearls before swine

simplicity

I had a dream last night that I actually remember pretty clearly, which is rare.

I think it was about truth.

Dreams are all cloudy and colors, right?  This one was swirling with black ribbons of cloud, and I was in the middle of a conversation.  In the conversation, a person asked me about another person and said, "Why do you like them?"  Now, when I answered the question, I didn't even know who they were talking about, but I answered.  I said something close to, "Because they are simple and easy to understand."  After I answered the question, I realized that the questioner and I had been talking about a modern singer who is direct and to the point.

It was kind of cool to realize I had carried on a conscious conversation about a person who I didn't even know I was talking about.

Anyway, I will explain why the principle of simplicity seems so cosmically important to me right now.

I recently read the introduction to Ender's Game, both the book and the introduction were written by Orson Scott Card.  He talked about how the novel he attempted to write (and actually succeeded in doing) was one that was totally direct and not ambiguous at all.  He wrote straight in the prose of truth and pure story.  He totally has the power and ability to use all the fun English-language-tricks of ambiguity and layers to make texts nearly incomprehensible to people not trained in those tricks- Card graduated with a masters in literature.  He simply chose to not write in a way that was inaccessible to everyone.  However, he wrote a story that is applicable to many, many people in tons of different ways and a story that you can't walk away from without thinking, "There is a lot of truth in that book."  It has inspired a lot of people, including me, to be a better person and more than anything else, to want to fight to be more capable and more intelligent.  This comes from a story that I first read when I was in elementary school!!  This is not, I repeat, not a hard book to read.  It is straightforward and simple.  However, I still read it today and glean new ideas and truths from this masterful book.

And then, there is this guy- James Joyce- whom I have to read for my English class.  This guy is a genius.  He is from Ireland and just literally absorbed the entire culture of humanity- he learned tons of languages and learned tons of philosophy and myths and religions.  We are talking about a guy who, when he exhales, has knowledge dripping from the air molecules where the oxygen used to be.  I think standing in his same vicinity would make you more intelligent from breathing his air.  Okay.  Now, let me show you an excerpt from his last novel.  This novel is a sprawling 600+ page-mammoth, and it comprises a single night of one man's dream.  This man has about five characters, and they are representative of almost every hero, every ordinary man, every mythological creature, every Adam and Eve, every philosophy, every language, and a hodgepodge of every dream-sense you could ever have.  Here is the excerpt-

"Orkman ribpop easily cross arrows. Flaunting wissam on narrow shoulders opens me. opens me. Pilly saw Roman do the tiger on ruskpappy for Flynn. Squiggles on canvas slapped brightly on Easter fippoon aiktart. Common man sees field sorry fart on apple."

Ha.  Try to read that for six hundred pages.

I don't care how many layers there are here.  I don't care how much breadth and depth this prose covers.  I don't care that the key to every lock to every door of happiness is in this text.  I absolutely can't read it.  Is this accessible?  No.  It's not.  Does this help anyone?  Yeah, like the 50 "scholars" who devote their entire life to the interpretation and study of the leaps this guy's mind makes across every word and every sentence to every allusion to every piece of literature in all of history throughout the text.

So, do I hate layers?  Do I hate ambiguity?  No.  I think they have their place, but I think that place is nearly the same place as a puzzle.  Understanding texts like that gives a feeling that is equivalent to putting a puzzle all together.  It's fun.  Sometimes it's enlightening.

Otherwise, it's stupid.  And that's why I hate school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfVgc-U_ZMc&feature=related

glark cable

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the london underground
When it struck me that i've been waiting since birth to find
A love that would look and sound like a movie so i changed
My plans and rented a camera and a van and then i called you
"i need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And i want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in
The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and i yelled "quiet on the set"
And then called "action!"
And i kissed you in a stye that clark gable would have admired
(i thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And i want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear
That you're perfect versus just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by?


-Clark Gable, by The Postal Service


What I am doing right now, it's not life.  I want to take a friend, and I want to walk across the country.  I want to hold hands and not need food or shelter.  I want to feel alive.  I hate looking on the last few months of my life and thinking, "Was it all a dream?"  I want life to ooze out of every action I take, every word that erupts from my heart, and every emotion that rattles my soul.  I echo Ben Gibbard- "I want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real."


I wrote a poem.


Starving carved, hollow smile
Eyes that work out of duty
Fold yourself, pretty one
You are not a spider with eight legs
You are a coin glued to the ground
You are one part of many pieces
Not one piece of many parts


My hope comes from the lives of good people who have come before me and who are with me now; they have shown me that there is no emotion or power more abiding than love, and there is nothing more important to obtain.

pakistan

This song is really great.  It's world music, and it's Peter Gabriel.  It's only a dollar but it goes to help the victims of the flood.  Please look into it.

http://www.petergabriel.com/news/archive/2010/11/01/'Open_Your_Eyes'_for_Pakistan_Flood_Relief

gravity

Yeah, when I sit down to write, nothing comes out.  I want to talk about how I have felt about being alone.  I want to talk about the Sufjan concert.  I want to talk about how I have changed, and how I have stopped running in stupid circles.  I want to talk about being with my friends.  I want to talk about letting everything go, and holding everything close to my heart all at the same time.  I want to talk about taking things too seriously.  I want to talk about how Orson Scott Card made me cry.  I want to talk about what it feels like to feel absolutely pure love.  I want to talk about new feelings.  I want to talk about goals.  I want to talk about breaking out.  I want to talk about my new ideas.  I want to talk about the book I started writing today.

I want to be able to express myself.  I can't.  Not today.  So here are some pictures.

My life is a happy one.

"While Ugly Marie waited to pee,
Hamster-bell's scream attempted to quell
The scary urge he could easily see."

"Forgetting he was still subject to stress,
Phillip decided, today, not to dress..."

A boy I love.

Getting ready to have our lives changed.

My experience at the Sufjan Stevens concert.

I was taking pictures of the skyline, and Morgan said, "Do you want it to be prettier?"  And then she got in the picture.

After hiking to the top of the "Y" with Morgan.

We made faux apple crumble.

It was just as delicious as it looks.  We also watched Prison Break and Hannah Montana.  I think I liked Hannah Montana better.

the dark spot

Where there is no anchor,
How can I be sad when
A friendly ship floats away?

Whose hands are the clouds
And whose hands are the ocean
You are there and there

And I am there.
How can I not see all the light
For one dark spot?

my Self

I have been very busy.  When I say "busy", I mean that I have been frantic running around, thinking about things, and trying to sort through all the garbage that goes into the current that runs down the middle of my soul.  But tonight, it's been different.  I have done something I hadn't done for a long time- I visited my Self.

A quote came to mind.  The context he was writing about was a little bit different from my own, but the principle is the part I think is important.  Thoreau said,

"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."


Tonight, I cleaned my house, I closed all my books, and I turned off all of my music, I turned off all of my worries and thoughts, and I visited with my Self.  It wasn't me with Matthew Arnold, or me and Isaac Brock; it was me with me.  It wasn't me with Rudyard Kipling, or me and Sufjan Stevens; it was just me with me.

As it turns out, I really missed my Self.

And I started to realize something that I think is important.  I have not been my Self for a long time; and another quote comes to my mind.  This is Isaac Brock-

"You didn't buy a face, nope just a mask.  So HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!"


What I realized and what that quote from Isaac Brock helped me conceptualize is that I am not my Self most of the time- I am just a costume covering my Self.  Lately, I have chosen to wear the "I'm quite angry at the world" and the "I am so angry at the world I will change it no matter what" costumes.  I also have a cheesy costume.  And a goofy costume.  And an "academic" and an artsy-me costume.  I have all these, but none of them are actually me.  Even my poetry (which I thought was my pure Self coming out) is simply one or two costumes at a time exposing themselves.

I actually, despite my recent thoughts to the contrary, do know who I am.  The feeling I had while I sat with my eyes closed, shutting everything else out, was so familiar that I almost cried at having missed my dearest friend.

that's what I'm waiting for

When I leave Provo, I will have this as parting council- "You don't have to be in love or kissing buddies with a person to nod and say hello."