hauntings

This morning I received a Facebook friend request from a boy I had a crush on for nearly six years. I haven't seen or heard anything from him since high school. I was already feeling forlorn upon waking and this nostalgic twist only deepened that sentiment. It just seems silly to me: a virtual friend request years after having never gotten the relationship I wanted in person. What exactly is the point of that? Nevertheless I accepted, only to get a dull two-line message in return. Of course I've been curious what's come of him as well as many others from my past, but at the same time I can't help but want to leave it as a mystery or a cozy memory, only called upon for rare occassions. Instead facets like Facebook provide opportunities for such unnecessary codas, which I'd say almost ruin the original encounters.

Sometimes the past is best rested to the past. Relationships in life come and go - we find the right people when we need them, and we drift away from them as we grow apart. I wonder how teens now are going to be able to have those same (and what I consider important) experiences with advents like permanent cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Myspace, and Facebook. With these, relationships linger well beyond their necessity and like looming high school reunions, one never knows when they're going to get the surprise attack and be called upon to enumerate what they've been up to for the past 'x' amount of years. These encounters do nothing for me and I prefer being an ephemeral presence to all but a few. Such a desire also explains why I change AIM screen names every few years, weeding the no longer necessary people out of my life.

And with a few more encounters like the one today, I'll be deleting my Facebook profile as well. I'm not even sure if I want to respond to his message. What for?

(self-)alienation

"I no longer trust myself since I aspire to the height, and nobody trusts me any more; how did this happen? I change too fast: my today refutes my yesterday. I often skip steps when I climb: no step forgives me that. When I am at the top I always find myself alone. Nobody speaks to me; the frost of loneliness makes me shiver. What do I want up high? My contempt and my longing row at the same time; the higher I climb, the more I despise the climber. What does he want up high? How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I mock at my violent panting! How I hate the flier! How weary I am up high!"

...this entry may be expanded later...

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Not so vaguely...

"Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body, and then this contempt was the highest: she wanted the body meager, ghastly, and starved. Thus she hoped to escape it and the earth. Oh, this soul herself was still meager, ghastly, and starved: and cruelty was the lust of this soul."

best for everyone

Could I learn to live without people?


(Correction: This should not be an ends, merely the means until I have learned to live by my own rights.)

purposely vague

The guilt complexes I enumerate here are only surface-level. Today I am seeing them in so much more: I am restraining myself at the root - in thought, in identity. My secrecy, which I had recently accepted as an agreeable selfishness, is much more attributed to shame than I realized. And it's not just in how I project myself to others, but there is a deeply suppressing, self-censorship which not only bridles my conduct (by this point having practically erased my social impulses altogether) but my ego as well (and perhaps the unconscious begetter of so much of my hostility).

Every barrier broken only reveals even more unanticipated weaknesses; I feel sick.

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We fight every Saturday he stays.

I laugh inappropriately.

momentary pout

My overwhelming ignorance when it comes to references to Greek mythology, Shakespeare plays, biblical characters and stories, fundamental philosophers, and more is continually frustrating me. Exactly what was I learning during my formative years? Even then I thirsted for learning, but I was so directionless that I consistently obeyed without passion, open-eyed and blind. My interest in these subjects though is indirect (only so much that novels I'm reading allude to them) and hence I'll probably alway be too lazy to delve into them properly.

As I'm trying to go through the literary works on my bookshelf that I have been too intimidated in the past to tackle, I find myself reading aloud (like a true dork) as the best way to ensure not only my attention span but also my comprehension. I think part of my problem with reading fiction is that I have a weak visual imagination. (This would also explain why I can draw something I see in front of me but can't draw an object from thought alone.) I'm finding all other sorts of weaknesses and possible solutions. Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to accomplish something, I neglect the increased depth a more relaxed pace can offer. Forcing myself to pause periodically and jot down notes and reflections has been fruitful though.

I don't know how I could ever go back to living with someone; I'm beginning to realize that I'm a curiously loud person in private. Between reading books aloud to avoid cursory understandings, my increasingly stringent rules for watching DVDs, and blaring my music while flailing about obnoxiously as a break from the other two activities, I'd drive anyone out (at least in a space this size). My increasingly ascetic lifestyle keeps bringing me that much closer to becoming a crazy spinster with twenty cats. My lack of surprise to this is the only part I find disparaging. Blah.

currently reading

"Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases - which means, strictly speaking, never equal - in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to ideas that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be 'leaf' - some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form."

Language, even in its basest form, generalizes us - an attempt to connect with our surroundings - and in doing so we threaten to sacrifice the purity of our uniqueness. We sacrifice it so willingly and unnoticed that it becomes questionable that it ever existed beyond fantasy and illusion. However, before it ever reaches the lips or the pen, language is a form of expression, a desire to project ourselves outside of our minds and body. As with all forms of self-expression, a reflection of what we externalize is received by our senses allowing us a slightly more objective view of ourselves, giving new light and depth to our existing identity despite the inherent truncation in the original transmission. In fact, it is within these gaps that our minds piece together new meanings.

Am I rambling in circles? I lost where I was going with this.

they beckon, they call

With whims so easily swayed by external forces, what else could she be but subservient.

goooooooooooooals

Despite its lameness, at the start of each of the past two years I have written up goals, which on the surface appear as enumerations of scheduled quotas (to read so many books per year, watch so many films and write so many journal entries per week, etc.). They are really ways of not only motivating myself but allowing me to quantify my otherwise immeasurable goals, which are far more important to me than actually meeting the quotas themselves. At this point, I'm pretty well settled into my learning routine so this year I'll be a lot more ambiguous.

As far as books, I'm planning on tackling Proust's In Search of Lost Time (eep!) and Joyce's Ulysses. I'd like to finish 20 books, which is less than what I wanted/accomplished last year but this is because I'm pushing myself to read more challenging works.

I probably watch too many films as it is, so if anything I should be setting up a maximum. I'd like to get into the habit of watching more complex films multiple times and I already have a long mental list of films I need to re-watch for further insight. I'm also planning on studying a number of directors at length: Fellini, Rossellini, Pasolini, Fassbinder, Ozu, Bergman, and Leigh.

More than my reading and film watching, writing will be my biggest aspiration. I need to stop being so damn lazy and start writing more analysis... on everything. (If I can't articulate it, then I'm not fully seeing it.) I need to set aside more time for learning/improving my grammar and very poor vocabulary. This blog will be my main output for all this, but I won't necessarily be posting everything.

And I have numerous miscellaneous improvement objectives: being less hostile when voicing my opinions, finishing things I start, being more honest (though not necessarily more open), trying to become as good at praising things as I am at bashing others, spacing out less amid company, doing what I want despite the objections of others, not using detachment as an easy escape, and (seriously) spending less time making lists and more time actually doing things on those lists.

Somewhere within all this I'll try and find time for my day job and sleep.

a girl in grey gardens