Here vs. Then

Honolulu is much prettier than Lansing. A bicycle is less fun than a car, but living down the street from my girlfriend is better than living 80 miles from my girlfriend. Cooking fries at Chili's is only slightly worse than washing dishes at Jimmy's, and living alone in a small apartment isn't much different from living alone in a bigger apartment. In summary, I conclude that Here beats Then like apples beat oranges: you're not supposed to compare them, but I prefer the one I'm eating.

I miss my family and friends. My little brother is at Hillsdale College now, as I'm knocking Michigan's dust from my heels; my friends are getting married and having babies, graduating from college, and embarking on their lives. I am living an adventure in exotic lands with a beautiful woman, but oftentimes I just feel like an exile. Perhaps I am suffering from a deficeit of socialization.

More likely I am suffering from a lack of funds ... it'd be great if I could just fly home and visit. It'd be great if I could afford transportation to go places on the island beyond my neighborhood. I like mountains a lot, and I can see some from my street, but I can't really get to them. I'm not sure what I want to do with them. I can't put them in my pocket, or eat them. I just feel I want to be amongst them, and atop of them, overlooking the city and the ocean, and then I think I want to draw or paint or musicate.

I've been writing for several months. Not a novel or a play, but a story. A setting. Theories and philosophies and questions have flowed thru my pen incessantly, under the title "Lost Ground". My writing has slowed to a trickle in recent weeks, so I think it's time to return to the visual arts. What I'm struggling with is subject matter; I prefer to draw from actual source, rather than imagination or other reference (like paintings or photographs), but without transportation it's very difficult for me to get to any such "source" to regularly spend time honing my skills. Why is life such a struggle for me? Have no fear, however; I shall prevail, and when I resume graphic productivity, the fruits of my labor will be available for your enjoyment on the internets.

Until then, Happy Holidays! Hopefully I'm totally off base and Obama isn't the Antichrist after all.

Since my last post, Jimmy's Pub has taken over as my sole benefactor. I work there every night except Sunday, washing dishes and driving deliveries, and my bills are all paid, almost with ease, and mostly on time. Furthermore: Thursday nights are "Live Music" nights; the musician's name is Jerry, and when I asked if I might fiddle along with him one night he reluctantly agreed. After we'd played a few songs he had a change of heart and told me that any night he performs, he'd love for me to play with him. I smiled and said I would.

Everyone seems to like me at the Pub, with the occasional exception of Mike Hunt. Yes, my manager is Mike Hunt. That really is his name, I promise. My absent-mindedness annoys him sometimes; that, and the fact that I write and read books between dishwasher loads. Nevermind that I am the most efficient and productive dishwasher on staff, and nevermind that I do the waitresses' side-work for them and prep food items for the kitchen too. No. I'm there to work. If I lean against a shelf and scribble down a rough time-line for the Fall of Atlantis, after washing two shifts' worth of dishes (because the afternoon guy never showed up) in under two hours, by gum I should be making better use of my time scrubbing the clean floor in the corners underneath the wash machine to make it even more clean. Shit.

Mike Hunt isn't there every night, though, so my work is mostly quite pleasant. Once my mind gets sucked into the black hole of contemplation--usually pondering the first day of Creation, or Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity--the time passes quickly. This arrangement pleases me particularly in its capacity for multitasking: I perform a simple task with easy deadlines, leaving me about 20% of my time free to read a few pages of a book, or work out some problems on paper, and generally make steady daily progress in the creation of a fictional world based on Atlantis.

Soon I hope to build a website that will explain and showcase said project. When it's ready.

So tired...

Life has been better. I am working two jobs, which should be enough to pay my bills for now. Maybe, if I am really frugal and don't eat too much or drink any alcohol, I can even save up enough money to take a class again next semester.

Of course, it probably doesn't matter that much, since I've neglected to turn in any assignments for the past month. No matter what I do, my life seems to persistently implode. Some days I'm content and almost happy, sitting still in my life at the place where I find myself. Most of the time (like today) I find myself alone and utterly useless, and thus unsatisfied and unhappy. There needs to be more to my life than THIS. Help me, God. My girlfriend loves me more than anyone on this planet has ever loved me, but I think even she is losing all confidence in my potential to become a useful human being. The jobs I have are trivial. Inconsequential. It seems I need to make a difference in the world.

How?

Can't deny it ...

You Are Snow

Magical yet potentially destructive You are well known as fun to play with People anticipate your arrival but then are quickly sick of you You are best known for: your serenity Your dominant state: reflecting

What Type of Weather Are You?

Breakfast

An hour ago I walked into McDonald's and bought a sausage biscuit and a hashbrown. For the first time in my life I realized that a sausage biscuit and a sanitary wipe share the same scent. I was not put off by this, because I was exceptionally hungry, but I don't know that I can ever eat a sausage biscuit again.

At least not without orange juice.

My World Today

In my last post I mentioned my friend Doug, who had just moved in with me at the time. A couple of months have passed since then, however, and Doug moved out again last week. He decided he hated LCC and Cottage Inn Pizza even more than I (if that's possible), and so he did what any sensible fellow would do: quit his job, dropped his classes, and joined the Marines! He's now living with his grandparents until April 16, when he'll ship out to the sunny West Coast for boot camp, so I haven't seen him much this month. Doug's grandma feeds him three times a day, a fact over which he gloats gleefully; I woke up late this morning when he walked into my room and said "Hey, what's up". We drank Strongbow, ate pizza bites, and angered lonely teenagers online with our utter domination of every game, all day long. Then we went to the music store to buy guitar picks; so, all in all I'd say it was a pretty productive day.

Other events which transpired since my last post include Spring Break in Hawaii with my sweet and beautiful Vicci; this in itself deserves a long post of beaming written smiles, but not tonight. Suffice it to say I had a soothing, sunny, well-fed vacation in the arms of my loving girlfriend. Mysteriously, my employer "no longer required my services" when I returned to Michigan, so I have been inconveniently out of work for a few weeks. The job sucked, but it did constitute some barrier between me and that persistent wolf, Starvation. Brightening my life again, however, Vicci came here to Michigan for her spring break, so I spent another blissful week-and-a-half without hating life in any way.

Years ago, my cousin Sarah and I wrote a story together called "Elevenses". This week I discovered that she has posted said story on her livejournal. Naturally, I reread and laughed at every line, and since it was never completed, I proceeded to write the next chapter. You can read it here. There will be more to come in the near future, so if you like it, stay tuned for the exciting continuation and eventual conclusion!

Life's a bitch, and so am I.

Doug took one of the other rooms in my apartment, and we might get a couple more roommates soon-ish. It's been fun so far. I'm getting a new, kick-ass PC this week. My car has 3 tires and waiting for the bus in winter sucks. I have a job making pizzas for minimum wage, keeps food in my belly. Vicci isn't coming back to Hillsdale this semester. I hate being here, but I don't think I'd like being anywhere else any better at this point. Hopefully I'll see my love over Spring Break. That's really all that's keeping me going right now.

There are some days, some brief moments in life that are crucial and life-altering. Maybe we never know what events trigger these effects; maybe the underlying reasons are beyond our perception. We tend to trace things back to a conversation, or an accident, or a holiday, or a kiss. Then there are days, weeks, months where nothing at all seems to happen. I'm in the middle of this right now; a bunch of stuff happened awhile ago, and now I'm just waiting for something to happen again. It seems like it's been a long time. Today on the bus, I started thinking about a lot of things, everyday thoughts that come to mind all the time. But they tasted different today. Not necessarily in a good way, but it does give me hope that maybe I'm headed toward a moment where something will happen. That would be great, because lately I've felt that nothing matters and life is an unbearably long string of useless cause-effect motions. I feel I'm spending lots of time doing things I don't like, to buy some time doing things I don't mind, between short periods of sleeping and doing nothing.

I try to blame my mood on Michigan's climate.

In a few minutes I'll go upstairs and listen to a 2.5-hr lecture on astronomical constellations and star-charts and moon cycles. This class is even more boring than I'd expected. I haven't been able to stay awake for more than 10 consecutive minutes so far--I keep trying to imagine some scenario in which I might find any of this information useful or necessary, but I can't. I just don't care about it. Not even a little bit. And it's not interesting. And I'm a whiny complaining bitch.

I want out!

Almost Thanksgivingtime.

It's been brought to my attention that my last post, Truth and Beauty, was a lot of bullshit. Apparently I don't give a damn about truth. Whether or not that accusation is in itself true, I'm leaving the Truth and Beauty post stay put for now because I believe it's a good post. If I wasn't seeking truth, then I stumbled across it accidentally, and the reasons why I followed the scent and narrated the hunt here are unimportant.

Yesterday I had life-changing encounters with a very gay man and an extremely fat woman. More on this later.

Wednesday night I went over to Doug's house, to finally play some computer games with him. Then he drove me and my swelling eyeball to Sparrow Urgent Care. Turns out it was an allergic reaction to his dog, and my eyeball returned to its normal shape by morning. Maybe next weekend I'll go over there and accidentally lose a finger or something.

Tomorrow I'm going home to my family and friends and Wisconsin, and Vicci is coming with me: a 3-year-wish come true. We're both pretty nervous. What will be, will be.

We'll see.

I've heard it said that beauty is truth, and truth beauty.

Clever sayings like this tend to put me on my guard. Picking this one apart over a mug of coffee, I'm initially inclined to disagree: looking around me, and inside me, I perceive a distinct contrast between evil and good. They appear equally true, equally real, but not equally beautiful. In my experience, truth always contains fair portions of beauty and ugliness.

If you were served a delicious plate of food, but were informed that a cook had sneezed on it, you would most likely reject the dish in disgust. If, however, you were not informed of the truth about the sneeze, you would enjoy the food and compliment the cook afterwards. The food is beautiful; the sneeze is ugly. Is the truth, then, beautiful or ugly? In this instance, we want to say the truth is ugly, because our initial perception of beauty has been tainted with the realization of ugliness; but consider a reversal. If you were served an exotic dish of unknown substance, with unappetizing appearance, you might be repulsed and call it ugly. If, however, you taste and find it delicious, you will be inclined to call this truth a welcome and beautiful surprise.

In both cases, the truth encompasses the beautiful and ugly aspects of the situation. Is it a matter of optimism, then, to say that truth is beauty? Could we just as well say that truth is ugliness? Alternatively, could true beauty lie in the contrast between evil and good?

The latter is an interesting concept, one which I can certainly appreciate as an artist. A charcoal drawing relies solely on the variation of value in black and white to create a simple and elegant beauty. This can be seen as analogous of evil and good in the world: in other words, the contrast of good and evil creates beauty.

Of course, this raises serious moral questions regarding the very nature of good and evil. If both are equal yet contrasting partners, indispensable to beauty, then is good necessarily "right", and evil necessarily "wrong"? Perhaps the analogy is faulty.

In my opinion, however, the analogy is not faulty, but incomplete. I believe there exists more than the two dimensions of black and white, right and wrong; I believe in color. Our eyesight utilizes more than the contrast of black and white to see beauty, and so may our minds morally "see" more than the contrast of right and wrong. White light is comprised of all color; blackness is fundamentally the absence of any light or color whatsoever. Good is comprised of all beauty; evil is fundamentally the absence of any good or beauty whatsoever. This model, then, defines evil not as a necessary part, but a subtraction from beauty.

Returning to the question: is beauty truth, and truth beauty? I've arrived at the conclusion that evil is separate from good, and that evil is ugly while good is beautiful. Taking it to be self-evident that evil and good both truly exist in the world, does the saying need to be rephrased, "beauty and ugliness are truth, and truth is beauty and ugliness"? No.

The opposite of truth is the absence of truth. The absence of truth is falsehood. When someone believes falsehood, they are disbelieving the truth. If falsehood is ugly, and ugliness is the absence of beauty, then we don't see ugliness. It's not something that's seen; rather, it's something that isn't seen. Ugliness is the part of truth that's missing, the empty space where we should see beauty but don't. Ugliness is nothing. Ugliness is the inside of our eyelids.

In the end, it turns out that John Keats was right. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye need know on Earth, and all ye need to know." If you examine anything and see beauty, know it is true. If you know truth, look and you will see beauty.

I've done both this morning. After three hours of argument and writing, I've discovered I was wrong and Keats was right. I've discovered beauty and truth together in this line of poetry, and it was well worth the effort.

The Dawning of an Era

My life has been performed on many stages, as many characters, and in many costumes. The lights are blacked now; the next act is moments away.

The water is running in the tub. This day may be different...

No money, no money, no money.

I need a job.

I'm not drunk.

I tried. I give up. Fuck wine.

Two words I've decided to unofficially strike from the English language:
Awesome.
Random.
If I catch you using either of these words without sufficient provocation, I will pummel you with both my fists. Or emit a frustrated groan in your direction and then make exagerated gagging gestures. Today's letter is: "G"!

Goodbye.

Time and the Human Existence

To be fair, Michigan isn't all bad. The city of Lansing definitely has some positve features, and my own living and working situation is pretty damn satisfactory.

Still, it's a monumental challenge to feel anything but disgust for these surroundings. I rarely trouble myself with the Past; I've never felt it should matter when facing the Future. I was wrong. In a sense, the Past is the Future. If I were to graph my life on a set of axes Time vs. Direction, my present is only a point. If it has slope, it's undefined. My past will form some sort of curve, from which we could extrapolate my future ... but of course, that's only in theory, because the undefined nature of the Present makes the Future unpredictable; also, the Past is only real in it's effect on the Present, and Future is pure idea. Future is Hope on one side and Fear on the other.

Okay, sorry, here's where I'm going with this: the Present may be the only reality, but the Past and Future are equally important. Every aspect of my present is characterized by either Hope or Fear (alternatively Happiness or Sadness, Ambition or Apathy, etc.) or in other words, all of my present is characterized by my future. This, in turn, is determined by the base value of my present which is my past. What I want to do is make my present more positive. Isn't that what we do every day? It's called "living". Alright, well in the context of my current discussion, then, this means orientating my past in the direction of Hope rather than Fear.

If you're confused or skeptical, please hold on and really think about it for a moment. The Present has no meaning without the Past; if you look at what you're doing right now (sitting in a chair reading this) and take away the context of Past, it's completely meaningless and in fact reading is only possible thru synthesis of knowledge you've gained in the Past. Likewise, without Future, the Present is meaningless. If, at this instant, the universe should cease to exist, then the Past Present and Future all disappear together.

Anyway my point is that for my present to have any meaning, and for the future to be hopeful rather than desolate, and to attain any happiness, I can't ignore my past. This idea has been slowly materializing over the past several months, and I've started trying to address my current problems at the root, by fixing my past for the sake of my future. But I don't think I've been reaching back far enough.

Vicci and I are trying to fix our mutual past and future, which is good. But some of it is less mutual, and I'm really struggling to get past some mind-blocks regarding the state of Michigan, and related issues. The rest of my past needs to be right, too, from my birth to present, and there are some things that have never been dealt with. I have only a vague idea of where to start, but no action I can take presently ... so I'll wait. But how should I live with things right this instant? It's here; the Past lives in every breath, so how can I touch the intangible?

It's too far past sleeping-time for me to write any more, or revise what I've written. I know it's a mess, and chances are I'll delete it all ... but if you read this, don't be alarmed. I'm not on drugs, I'm just really tired. Please go ahead and comment; at the least, it will amuse me.
= )

G'night!

I Know They're Wrong, but That Doesn't Mean They're Not Right

I am a volcano.

I can build lots of pretty things on my surface, and they may take root and become part of me, but some days I still feel [within my bottomless heart] the rumble of an unstoppable, explosive rage. It takes no form, flowing aimless and troubled beneath my cities and parks and theatres; only the animals and the medicine men are kept anxious.

I have some things coming to me, which have been a long time in coming:
work,
school,
and Vicci.

All in the next few weeks. Normally at such a time, my nerves would be ringing--a split second before my body hits the cold surface of a spring-fed lake on a summer morning at dawn. But this really has been a long time in coming. Right now my nerves are on fire--when I'm at the bitter end of breath, still fighting upwards through the distance, blackness bursting under my eyelids. So close, almost there ... I can't bear it!

I don't know if I'll be posting much in the coming months, folks. This laptop is heaving a long death-rattle, and my dad has decided that I don't need a computer at college. Not that this is a big sudden change out of the ordinary; I haven't been posting much of anything lately anyways ... but who knows? Maybe I'll find time to give updates on my well-being from time to time from a lab PC.