Choose to be a sun; provide for others - be mindful of your impact and influence on others. Never underestimate the power of suggestion. Are you blinding others, are you pulling them in with the gravity of your words in a self-destructive maelstorm without consideration of the end, are you a positive, negative, or amoral source of inspiration or are you sucking the life out of others.

Mankind has gone down the wrong path and I don't see that the beast's head has turned back to ensure that it will keep its barings. It is not navigating it is lost; society is a game for adults where the rules are created to ensure that humans who no longer have to fight for survival can fill the void of purposelessness. There is nothing an individual can do to affect these rules or change them because the board is rigged. There is nothing we can do; we need to fight to survive to find meaning again.

I don't know where to start. The medication stopped working again; I suppose that is as good a starting point as any. Last time it was tough; and a medication change was made; years passed, and it stopped working again again. It's worse this time; I'm frustrated - I will have to fight this for my entire life and it isn't anything tangible. If there was some way to fight this intellectually I could handle it, but the more I dive into the questions and answers and subsequent questions about life and the accompanying whys the harder it is to answer the questions; the harder it is to accept that the answers are not complete and never will be.  I feel as if I am alone; but I am not in the physical, emotional, or mental sense.  Everyone struggles with life; but the dial is turned up too high.  I can’t handle my own struggles anymore; and the more I live the more struggles I see in others; and the more empathetic I am to their internal battles.  No one should take other’s problems on their shoulders; I cannot take my own advice, but I can’t stop myself from wondering about those who I’ve come in contact with and their well-being.  I say that my goal in life is to grow and be a better more understanding and spiritually conscious person, but I am not grounded in reality as a result.  The more disparity I find between how things ought to be and how they are the more discouraged I become; an insult, an impatient person in a check-out line, animosity towards fellow man or woman, etc. have all become catastrophic offenses against humanity as a whole.  Seeing the universe and its living beings as one connected consciousness and believing that negativity in thought and action affect the state of this oneness is discouraging, it breeds despair and hopelessness.  I can’t come to terms with my own inner struggles.  There are past reasons for which I think, react, and act in regards to any given situation yet I am told to live in the present moment and try and learn new strategies for which to process events to heal.  The wounds are too deep, I expose them from time to time a little here and there, but that exposure doesn’t heal the wound, it just re-opens it and exposes it to the harsh environment that I’ve come to box myself into intellectually.  Being let down as a result of opening up to someone has it lessons; when do you shut it all off and block out everything.  When do you find yourself running on auto-pilot to make it through the day – only to go home and lay there and despair?  The chains you wear are invisible, when you feel as if you’ve freed yourself from something that is burdening you there is always something to takes it place, and the progress you’ve made becomes humorous, turns to self-loathing, it becomes a bad joke on yourself.  Why would you continue to fight, why continue to struggle?  Ultimately what is the value in living?  You have daily goals, you have weekly goals, you have dreams that are not time-based you have hopes and desires, all of which you believe should be met and you try as hard as you can to please everyone and at the same time try and find time to take care of yourself.  Sleep becomes the only escape, or some other temporary reprieve.  Delaying or keeping at bay the monster that lives inside; the sleeping dog that you should let lie.  Leave sleeping dogs lie.

I didn't think, I hoped that I wouldn't be writing here again, I feel guilt for having the need to do so. There are people that have worse things to worry about than I do, but I've caught the downward spiral. Things change, things happen, time goes on, pain comes and goes. I don't know where to pick up from where I left off, seems as if time has not passed, and here I am again.

You might say that I have made a conscious choice not to be melancholic anymore.  You will not find me talking like I was below.  I'm talking about all of it, because most of it is depression seeping through.  That, unfortunately -or this- was my outlet, blood-letting, however you want to look at it.  This is not a sob story then, it is just the facts.  I was diagnosed with having severe clinical depression, I had been feeling the ways I did for almost a year, and had no idea that anything was unnatural about it.  It was a very gradual thing.  I started with an anxiety attack, went to the doctor because I couldn't handle it, the depression came out, and I've been on pills ever since.  The type of pills I would've referred to as zombie pills at any other point in my life previous to having actually taken them.   Funny, since I already considered myself to be an emotionless void, probably because there was no room for any other feelings besides the big hole I felt was in the center of my life.  Now I am a zombie, on anti-anxiety pills very much like the bulk of "stressed out Americans."  The pills are most known for their ability to prevent seizures in severe alcoholics, something of which I was very close to becoming at one point in my depression.  Tranquilizers, to prevent anxiety attacks for me.  Then the Serotonin candy.  Happy brain chemical.  I almost can see the annoyance in people's faces that know I'm on them that see how giddy I can be at times.  It is probably due to the fact that it is in such sharp contrast to my past sarcasm and cynicism.  Despite all of these zombie pills, I cannot help but feel this is the way "normal" people feel.  By that I mean people who are not depressed or having suicidal thoughts.  I can only hope that this will be my last entry in this diary and that someday I'll have the strength to deem these "life-enhancing" drugs unnecessary.  And if you read this, and were like me, abhorring the idea of taking any kind of chemical to help you because you know you are not that weak; that you will take a second thought about it, and actually consider getting help for your brain, a sometimes dysfunctional organ.

Two people come together, whether it is planned or not is of little consequence, but the results impact the entire life of what comes of the action.  Born with a first breath, and dying with its last, this now unformed entity, inevitably becomes part of our physical world.  And with our  rules; some unspoken, some unwritten, some written years ago, it must learn to find and push the limits, and learn to strive to survive.  To find individuality, but not forget the benefits of communal behavior.  To find love, yet be burned many times on the way, perhaps never to find what may to this day be synthetic in origin.  To learn to deal with emotions and the instinctual urges, yet fight them in the name of moderation.  These fights and struggles part of what must be because of the unified moment between two individuals whether it is a curse or a blessing to them, or to their creation.  Growing up to a certain point without self-awareness, until the outside worlds influence teaches them self and everything else that is not self, and the way we look at our world now.  Growing up with that self-awareness but unsure of what it means to them within the surroundings they find themselves in according to circumstance.  These individuals must cope with new challenges and experiences every day, adapt, change, and learn.  Learn what brings them downcast looks despite their feelings, learn what brings rewards despite their conscience.  This is part of survival, we know it all to well, yet it is a gradual development.  Which eventually becomes just that, surviving in the only way we know how.  And who can we depend on, at times it seems like no one, but we find people who we can relate to on whatever level we can, we surround ourselves with people that make us feel like we belong, people that make us forget our regrets and soothe our emotional wounds.  We are educated, if we are lucky, and what we do with that;  we expect to enter the real world, we expect to find it a place with welcome arms?  People that are loving and kind.  A world full of opportunity as we are led to believe, because we can accomplish anything if we set our minds to it and work hard through honesty and dedication.  Those are the principle's that govern our great country are they not?  Yet at every turn, you find people that are walking on the insecurities of others, using them as support for their own personal gain.  You go to bed, you work, you go to bed.  In between you try to find something.  Perhaps you try to find something in your work, or in your dreams.  You think you've found something, it will never leave you, it can't.  This something fills the void in your life.  Temporarily.  We breath and we live.  We stop breathing and we die.  When we die, there are no rules, there is no self and everything outside of self, we are once again part of that unformed entity, that had been brought together by two entities unformed at one time, brought together by four entities, which were previously unformed, brought together by......and where does our story begin, and where does it end.  Some may say it ends when we decide, those who take it upon themselves to say that their life has been exhausted for them, they are tired, they have seen enough.  There are those that fade away with disease and weakened bodies, shells of their former selves.  There are those that die unexpectedly, crashing expectant dreams of loved ones.  And with this death, the expectations expire, they are completely gone.  Freedom.  

Skeletons in heaven, marked and shattered bones, among billowy clouds and sun-streaked skies.  Eyeless sockets and nerveless bones, shafts of light penetrating clear bodied waters, down below.  When everything we'd envisioned for ourselves, is bordered by assimilation and it's imminent progression.  Takes us far away from the body of entirety.  Stripped and calloused hands cling to broken hourglasses, broken  and exposed to the bleaching sun, tired of the day, wide awake at night.  This irony strips us of our flesh, muscle tissue, organs, and hope.  Skeletons on earth, wandering the passages of a maze of bewilderment, and unbeknownst to them, a watcher riding the very walls of their own creation.  Picks them up -one at a time, and places them in heaven.  Skeletons in heaven.  The depths of the ocean could not betray.

It's safe to say that I have some sort of "Holden Caulfield" syndrome, what does that mean exactly?  When a woman gives you a scrap of attention you "fall in love with them," just for the sake of the act.  You also look back on experiences with a sense of nostalgia tainted with resentment for how events could've turned out, and everyone is superficial and fake except for you with your oh-so-true intentions and motivations which couldn't be misdirected -no that would be impossible.  If you haven't read the catcher in the rye, it's hard to understand.  This picture can somehow collectively be explained, more eloquently than I am for sure, rather than piecemeal.  And to analyze myself, I'd say I'm starved for attention, and in my timid ways of not acting on any of these urges -I observe, judge, and reflect, and by the time all of this has happened, everything concerning the event is long gone, and I'm stuck somewhere with my hands in my pockets and a look on my face like I've just eaten something rotten.

There is nothing more fascinating than hearing someone explain something you feel that you've felt all along but haven't been able to piece together for yourself.  Whatever language we know as humans our first language is that of imagery, those vague pictures and ideas in our heads that we give labels to.  Most of which are not communicated clearly as we'd like in spoken or written languages.  Like dreaming, when you wake up and have a hard time recollecting because the imagery is slippery, and not in the "language" or form of language that you are used to deciphering.  If you have one foot in this dream world of imagery all of the time, you might wonder if it's difficult to communicate with others who find themselves immersed in the here and now; it is.  The dreamers, be it you are inside of your mind speaking with yourself, or merely drifting along with whatever happens to pop into your head.   

There are certain species in the world we know as humans that participate in experiences of which we have no understanding whatsoever.  These same species act on instinct completely.  Insects act on instinct, it makes sense, animals without the blessing/curse of self-awareness act on these urges.  What are we as humans acting on?  What is it that motivates us to do what we do as sentient beings?  We are aware of ourselves and does that take us to the next step where we think we are aware of what others are thinking feeling?  Someone very intelligent told me that they look at every individual as an alien that they have no understanding of whatsoever.  What kind of assumptions do you come to when you hear someone say one sentence, when you see someone commit to one course of action.  Do you consider the fact that we came from these animalistic actions of primal urge?  Do you consider the fact that what you may think is truth is just a chemical reaction in your brain?  There is absolutely nothing for certain, everything you take as truth is questionable, do you question it?

This is an apology to those people who have touched my life, when I have turned my back on them and chased after something in the name of excitement.  "Those people" referring to one person in particular.  My ignorance takes me places I'd rather not go, but here I am, I am who I am because of it, and I will be who I am for more that much more of it.

I've never really mentioned anything specific on here, but today is a good day.  Nine Inch Nail's new album is available for listening; http://www.myspace.com/ninofficial (4-26-05)-click the link.  The man is a musical/lyrical genius, he has more emotion, life, thoughtfulness in one finger than most people have in their entire life.  It's only those people that choose to see that there is shadow-play from every light source that can appreciate it, those people that are not afraid to close their eyes and let the primal instinct that is inside everyone rule their life, not the supposed thought out and planning/scheming ego.  There is an untapped infinite source of emotion inside of all of us, repressed every day, in every way, society deems it so.  So we live through those that are fortunate enough to find themselves in situations where it is profitable to expose their extreme emotional outbursts, and what can we do but stand by and critique.

Lamenting.  Not those people that have touched my life and left it, but more so the people that have not become part of my life yet.  I feel, know, hope that there is someone out there to complete me.  As anyone else, what a joke it becomes when you go out on weekends from bar to bar, like every other person who feels alone, hoping beyond hope that they will happen to stumble into that person that will remove that feeling of aloneness.  Where are you?  It brings a smile to my face, the expectation however remote the chances, perhaps it will happen, the waiting is the hard part, but it is not cumulative.  The wait is the same no matter how long it has been, the feeling does not intensify, you can only hope that there is someone out there that is feeling the way you are, and when you do finally meet that it will be obvious to both -exactly what has occurred in their having met.  Until it happens I will continue to wait, and make mistakes, and meet the wrong people, and learn from the experiences.  

Life takes on less and less meaning as it progresses, as meaningless thoughts and experiences take on meaning, the entity experiencing them loses out.  The experiences themselves become alive and take on meaning.  Where does this leave you, as the person outside of the experience -an outside observer?  What is the most basic instinct, to survive?  And what if that weren't in place -I wonder how many people would still be around if they took the time to think about what their life has been and what it will be for them.  What if you asked someone if they were tired of life and they said yes, if they didn't wake up the next day would they really care?  Suppose a terminal illness suddenly took their life, what regrets would that person have other than things they hadn't done.  Surely they wouldn't regret that they hadn't missed X years of life, but mostly that they hadn't done what they wanted to in the short time they had.    

You find yourself in what you see?  You find yourself in what you see?  You won't find fools like me and you, you found yourself, you found yourself, I found myself in you.  

Death and rebirth, life is riddled with it, if that can be said.  The first breath we take when we are born, inhale, life.  Then the first exhale, the first death, and every breath after that in and out a rebirth and death again.  We fall asleep and wake up, we blink, a week ends a week begins, all on different levels.  When you are about to fall asleep and things are winding down, this is when the ghosts of your life come to haunt you, the persistent memories -when you are all alone.  Whether they are people you'd rather forget, or people that you want to remember forever.  They can be events that you don't want to remember or forget,  anything -the ghosts.  At what age do most people accumulate experiences and get to the point where they would wish to start over with a blank slate.  Fleeting moments of happiness or preoccupation with something else during your busy self-involved life make you forget temporarily, but they are always there waiting to stick their head in.  Maybe if I don't ever go to sleep, maybe if I don't wake up.

There are times when life seems at its most challenging, whatever the aspect may be, and I see something simple, whether it's a concrete sidewalk with some garbage in its cracks, or I see something outside of the window of my room, and everything becomes clear, there is a moment of clarity where the difficulty dissipates.  Until recently I thought I was the only one that experienced moments like these (how self-centered of me, yes).  Someone close to me shared an experience where there mental state was overcome with some present experience that overwhelmed and incapacitated them, they stopped thinking about it, looked outside and saw something simple, there is nothing special about what they saw, but they actually saw, and what they actually saw triggered something in them, and woke them up, took them outside of their mental state, brought them outside of the trivial bubble of their own making.  It made them feel alive, it took them for a ride, and left whatever troubles they had behind, because they had a sudden and overwhelming understanding all of a sudden that put things into perspective again.  It took them out of their self-hypnotic trance.  It's moments like these that I live for, it's moments like these that I long for, waiting patiently for wake-up calls, heaven sent, chemical interactions, whatever they may be, most likely a survival mechanism.  Glorified instances of this may be the wind blowing the leaves on a tree, moving in unison, an experience so simple but so unlike anything else, all of the physics and principles that govern our reality come to life all at once, so perfect, so planned.  What can you do when presented with experiences such as these but smile.  And take another big stride in the direction that you know is right.

There is a separation between reality and how I perceive it.  Seems obvious enough.  I have a tombstone for every "could've been", one big graveyard that houses all of the aspirations that fall dead and lifeless.  Each time I dig a new grave for a future I had hoped to be part of, a piece of me is taken with,  a piece that is irretrievable once it's let go.  Slowly I am becoming more a part of these futures than the thing that manifests them, crumbling like a leaf in a gutter, and blown away in the autumn wind.  What is left?  So I will be standing on the other side of the fence watching myself be buried -for my eyes are the last thing to go.  At least I can see the end clearly,  watch myself becoming whole again in a new light, my eyeless sockets do not see that I have become the very thing that I feared most.  A gravedigger for the future, my own.  This is the way it should be,  there is no separation between that which I project for my future and that which is -here and now.  I am being theatrical, but isn't it fun? 

Only time will tell.  I'll never forget the day I decided to become "indifferent."  Where gray became the color of my sight, and I took my heart off my sleeve and pushed it deep down inside my chest.   But it can only be hidden for so long before it becomes exposed again.  Coaxed out of its hiding place, it finds a way all of its own, I can't control it.  Thought is the antithesis of emotion, think about the irrationality of emotion all you want, there's no denying emotions.  There is no deprivation, only an empty feeling that stares into your heart -unblinking, unrelenting, and you cannot help but blink, you look away, but it follows your eyes.  It's like a poison that seeps into your veins and takes over.  A poison, or a cure?  Eventually everything becomes clear, but the process cannot be skipped, and can you survive those feelings, the inevitable emptiness that accompanies the promise you may make to no one but yourself.  Yes my heart beats.  It beats and beats and beats, 80 times a minute?  And to sleep, a dose of reality served on the rocks.

The present moment, I read somewhere, actually lasts 3 to 5 seconds, at least I think that's what it said.  If you think about what that means it's very interesting.  There is a stretch of time where if you dedicate your mind to thinking about living in the present moment and experiencing it -whatever that may mean- somehow intensifies reality (at least for me it does).  What do we do to avoid thinking?  There are many approaches; some people keep busy with entertainment, some with work, some by surrounding themselves with active people, some by filling their lives with hobbies they are passionate about.  And in between all of this?  Who in this world actually takes the time every once in awhile to stop whatever it is they are doing  and realize what is going on?  Undo that zipper that runs down your chest and take off the skin for a moment and look at your hands, look into your eyes in the mirror, really take a good look at who you are, and think about what you've done with your life, what you've done to others.  Keeping busy by meditating or emptying your mind is another alternative to thought.  Feelings are an alternative.  

Is there a chain of emotion, I would imagine that emotions are structured similar to a web for most people, interwoven strands of emotions and their opposing shadows, like love and hate, happiness and sadness.  All one mixed up web of a seriously confused piece of meat.  Pathetic.  There is something satisfying about insulting yourself, even when it is indirect.  I used to believe that to be pessimistic is to always avoid being disappointed.  Now I don't think it pays to be optimistic or pessimistic.  How about neither -disappointed or pleasantly surprised, but just roll with the punches.  It takes time to let a thought settle inside of someone.  How long I wonder does it take for a traumatic event to effect someone and their lifestyle or their thought processes.  After 25 years of life and the past events that have helped shape who I am, what is it going to take to shake me.  Thank you for challenging me, everyone out there that I haven't met yet, thank you for changing who I am and making me a better person by helping me see things in a new light and grow.  I will still be smiling.  Not out of spite.

You know when you screw up, screw up big time.  One of those life-altering decisions that you wish you could take back.  And the fun part is that when you are making them, you KNOW, you really KNOW, that you are making a mistake, yet you watch yourself commit anyway.  Part of the learning process.  The need to stamp a disaster with something -to what? -to soften the guilt that goes with it?  Learning process.  What a joke.  I once had a friend who said that he used to get so angry at times that he saw red.  I wish I could see red.  I understood that man's mentality, I could truly relate.  I know frustration, the kind that comes out when you're alone, or lashes out at some innocent.  Like a barbed tail infecting the poison in another individual, to be passed on indefinitely.  You can see it in a persons eyes if you look close enough.  If they let you look long enough.  You can see anything in there.  Most people don't want to see.    

Why can't life be like a beautiful song, or a fairy tale, a fabricated reality with superficial beings so fake that they don't recognize it when they see it in others.  Where there are no misunderstandings and no lumps in throats, where people can convey exactly what they'd like to with a glance.  Stupid questions warrant stupid answers.

Every once in awhile you have to wonder where you are going.  Where are you are going in what sense?  The inconceivably complicated world of circumstance, and you, just you.  There are people that care, there are people that are indifferent, there are people that pretend one way or another for their own reasons, and then there is you.  What role do you play in someone else's life?  How much time do we put into thinking about someone else and how we are affecting their life?  On the other hand, there are individuals who don't think about themselves, and only contemplate the results of their own actions on others.  Going through the motions, wandering through the mixed up place that we call reality.  And yet, I still don't know where I'm going, regardless of the situation I find myself in, no matter how controlled it may seem, no matter how resistant to change I might arrange my life.

I have so much love to give, but no where for it to go.

When does the fun stop?  Who's to blame for all of these fun things that happen, little picking here a little picking there, and so I ask what is worse, a chip here a chip there or losing your shoulder all at once?  An autobiography of self-pity, self-centered self-loathing egotistical garbage, story of my life, all of my own making -in my mind, a private cesspool of festering resentment, it comes out in the car when no one else can hear me, but my own ears.  It doesn't sound like its coming from my mouth, it doesn't sound like me.  What do I sound like?  Acceleration, parallels in physical, pedals, running, drinking, screaming on the inside.  So many nothings to say.  My lips part -something is coming out, but it doesn't quite make it, but I think it, that's enough.  Ah the subtleties of human emotions.  Where are you going stream, far far away, take me with you stream, on your dark journey.  I laugh at my own anger.  It's not even warranted.  Can I call it frustration, is that closer to the truth, or does it just sound better?  No, I wouldn't say I'm confused, even though there is no coherence to this paragraph whatsoever.  Sarcasm.  Conversations with myself.  Hey. At least it's easier.

Life can throw you all sorts of curveballs, you can expect anything, but there will always be surprises.  The two approaches to life, do they separate one type of person from another?  The person who expects the worst, and is usually pleased by the results of an outcome better than expected.  And a person who is optimistic always hopeful that things will work themselves out for the better, and are they disappointed at the results?  Is it the view coming into a situation that determines how someone reacts?  More so the reaction of the person to what happens to them.  Life gives you lemons make lemonade.  Cheesy really.  I've come to depend on my surroundings perhaps.  So I surround myself with support.  The foundations of which are, friends and family, and how lucky am I that I am not alone in this world, or worse yet that I am not surrounded by people and feel alone still.  It is so easy to pity yourself for the smallest things.  You always have to pick yourself back up, it really helps when you have someone to talk to, someone that listens, someone to confide in.  Bottling it up for later is like swallowing poison,  your insides churn and your body wants to expel it, you won't let it, and so just like stress does best it breaks down your immune system, it will find a way to get out in another form.  You only get one body, what you do to it you are stuck with the rest of your life.  It seems obvious but I don't think too many of us really think about that when we are eating, drinking, working too much, not getting enough sleep, etcetera What will happen to my body when I am older as a result of the mistakes I've made?  We will have to wait and see.

It's amazing, really it is.  You spend your whole life believing in something unspoken.  You spend your whole life, spend, think about that, spend it, your whole life doing any one thing.  Too long,  Isn't it?  Or isn't it?  What do you focus on, what do you block out, what do you take as meat for you life?  Sustenance, pride, ignorance, pride, ignorance?  What would happen if you let that all go?  Inhibitions gone,  the goal of any alcoholic right?  

It never fails... I am beginning to think it is impossible to be a successful artist without being pretentious.  I knew it was coming.  They always have to throw their two cents in, don't they?  If someone in an audience were listening to their favorite artist and were somehow swayed in their opinion based on the sole fact that the musician on stage made their opinion clear, what good is that persons opinion in the first place?  How weak minded are people, how weak minded do people think people are?  Am I overestimating the average person's intelligence, or overestimating the artists intelligence?  Or underestimating both?  It probably wouldn't be hard for anyone to figure out what I'm talking about:  I live in the US, and this particular piece I'm writing will be dated soon, within weeks (of 10-26-04).  I didn't have to make my opinion known.  It's about thinking for yourself, not being swayed by someone else's opinion, these people out there who are holding signs, and putting stickers on their vehicles, and taking every chance they get to make their opinion known.  Give it a rest and spend the time making a scarf or some ants a log and shut your mouth for a minute.  

What if not death awaits us all.  The personification of death has always been that of a skeletal being, with his scythe and gray robes.  A shell of a shell, an instrument for harvesting, and cloth without color -lifeless.  How many will you harvest today, might I be the next one on your listless wanderings?  Oh there are times when fear doesn't possess me.  Perhaps if I could join you on your journey, to not see all that you have not seen.  No judging, thinking, feeling, or being.  What memories have you taken, while the survivors sleep, like a thief in the darkest of nights.  It surely is a favor that you do us all, the list you have does not only include individuals does it?  Memories, feelings, beliefs, what else are you after?  When your threatening skeletal hand reaches for my heart my eyes will be open, I want you to gaze back into what it is that I am not to be anymore.  Just like the cold can be comforting at times, you are who you are, the acceptance is easy, the wait is hard.  Weary beyond your years, we are one and the same.  

If you thought about what moments in your life have shaped who you are, would they be the positive experiences or the negative ones.  Are there really positive and negative experiences, or is it just how we look at them?  I'm for believing that it is how we look at these experiences.  Why is it so hard then to shake a feeling of seemingly undeserved trauma in spite of this optimistic view on what's thrown at us in life?  Question, ask why, ask as many times as you feel necessary, no one is waiting to answer you, if they are they are not going to answer.  Would you want to hear the answers?  I'm not sure that I would.  C.S. Lewis has a quote that goes something like this, "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."  Where would we be if there wasn't  pain, suffering, character building events in our lives.  I don't want to know.   

Seeing a friend struggle through something you've felt, something that you are going to feel, at a loss of what to do.  The certain pain to come.  Drink another drink.  Have them drink another.  What other remedy is there?  Who will be there with certainty to hold you when you are feeling that which you cannot explain, who will be there when what you cannot explain comes out in terms hostile to the listener, yet they listen?  Have another drink, God's blessing to all souls in need of a quick cure to an impossibly difficult ailment.  Love the elusive temptress that will haunt us all to the bitter end, for those who seek, and those who stumble upon it and learn too late of the bittersweet end, of what they once felt, but wished now, that they could hold within their grasp forever.  Too late, too late.  It's gone.

When the future is riddled with uncertainties, and your past blocked out by clouds of your own creation, the present becomes that much more pleasing to live in.  What is the gestation period for doubt.  When do the seeds germinate and become realized.  Their potential is only as large as our imagination, once that first step is made in the direction of pessimism, anything in the other direction is an uphill struggle.  What feeds it, but fear and anticipation?  What is it that you fear, can you answer that?  If you can it doesn't make the situation easier, it complicates things further.  What can you do about these irrational fears?  Asking that question is the first step in the wrong direction.  You can't do anything about them.  You fear: being hurt by others, deception, becoming an innocent victim of circumstance, what you might do to others unwillingly, what lies ahead for you, your past, your job prospects, your health, what your friends think of you, what first impressions strangers have of you, your social standing, your growing abdomen, your mental health, anything and everything.  Some of these things we have control over, some we do not.  Therein lies the difficulty we face.  Which of these things do you think you have control over, and how much control?  The fight for control over something larger than we are is a no-win situation.  But would you lie down in the face of adversity?  Do difficulty, stress, and strain make you curl up into a ball and shut your eyes to the world around you?  Are you standing in a crowded street staring up at the sky blindly  while "the world" turns in its mechanistic fashion.  It's hard to think there are freedoms in this world sometimes, especially when the abstract term is given meaning in a societal sense.  Where the overabundance of freedom becomes such a difficulty as to overwhelm our youth with decisions, which have no place in relevancy.  And does this not carry over into adulthood?  Your decisions are now based on past experiences and outcomes, you are looking in every direction, trying to discern every possible option, which is the best.  Make sure you check every one of them out, or you might miss something.  Entertainment, transportation, medication, careers, studies, hobbies, everything we do is full of choices.  Some are unfortunate enough to be inundated with their choice of every one of them.  Are the truly important choices we need to make up to us?  Or are we like so much paint.  A creation of an ongoing, infinitely layered portrait of life as we know it in the present moment.

Nothing hurts more than knowing that someone you love in is pain, and there isn't anything you can do about it.  It's like getting your world turned upside down on you, your head spins, your heart aches, and the only thing that can distract you is something that requires your full immediate attention, and even then your mind wanders.  Life is cruel sometimes.  

It's been awhile since I've talked to myself.  The reasons are not meant to be shared.  Funny what quiets you down, makes you stop and look at who you are, who you are becoming, how you are changing, how you are remaining the same despite change.  Walls come up walls come down, walls come up walls come down.  Things come in, things are let in, things are pushed out, things sneak out.  If you could take a step back from the world and imagine all of these people around you with variations on their walls, some with mazes, some with traps, some with moats, some with open arms.  And all with different intentions.  Some without any intentions at all.  We wander around and meet people.  People wander around and meet us. After wandering around a bit, sometimes we lose them, they lose us, or we let go together, walk some distance away, plop down on the ground and think of all of the things we've done.

What is a bigger joke than the existence of the human race and it's ongoing battle and search for individuality and acceptance respectively.  If you can't laugh at yourself what good are you to anyone.  We get so wrapped up in our little lives, to remedy that?  Just go outside and look up at the stars for awhile.  Think about how insignificant you are.  Does the sun care if you are breathing tomorrow?  Is it going to rise regardless, of course it is.  So don't be surprised when you look up at the stars and you begin to feel dizzy, overwhelmed; embrace that feeling, for as large as life may seem to be, or as small as it may seem to be at that moment, depending on how your little life is working out for you at the moment; it just is, and it can just not be at any moment.  You might think there is a degree of pessimism in looking at life as a joke.  Perhaps there is, but I know I'll be laughing no matter what is thrown at me.  

1's and 0's, power no power, nerve endings firing nerve endings waiting, a chemical present a chemical absent, heart beating no blood flowing, metal flesh.  How complex will computers get before the resemble mankind in some form or another.  What is the purpose of the search for artificial intelligence?  

Disregarding the vague nature of the phrase "mental illness" and what it implies in our complex society for the sake of what I am about to write.  Is it something that develops due to a series of experiences and realizations, or are they the result of chemical imbalances which cause the particular experiences that we associate with mental illness.  Can you with the right exposure and thought become mentally unstable.  Seems like a stupid question.  What I might be suggesting is that there is more to it than the severe trauma cases that we associate mental illness with.  What about the gradual process of losing your grip with the reality around you because of realizations that you may come to that don't fit with the general consensus of those around you and the alienation that ensues.  And what exactly do these feelings of alienation do to you?  Do you start to find that: it's hard to get out of bed in the morning, its hard to believe that you are meant to work a mundane job and get through life just to get through it, you feel no sense of accomplishment in your daily activities.  Do your delusions of grandeur make you believe that you are meant for more.  Does the size of this world intimidate you, the abstract concepts that we apply to it make it larger than manageable.  What are we to do with what is given to us?  Analyze it until we don't know what we are working with anymore or live life and leave it.  What's so wrong about feeling like there is something more to life than this other than the fact that it scares the hell out of me.     

Scared of open spaces?  Scared of closed spaces? Scared.

How much are we all missing out on by letting our conscience and better judgment take control of our lives?  What kinds of things will you regret, regardless of whether or not you would ever bring your ideas past a fleeting moment of consideration, everyone has their own collection.  On the other hand how beneficial would it be for people to be depraved of the things that they love.  Imagine being in isolation for a whole year with no one to talk to, no one to listen to your thoughts but yourself.  How would that effect your priorities.  What person hasn't thought of how wonderful it would be to be self-sufficient.  Materialistic people?  Greedy people?  Or just people who are dependent on those around them.  Or is the anti-socialistic side of me bending truth to be beneficial to my viewpoint.  Patting myself on the back again.  Ah it feels good.  What happens when you start thinking the other side of things too often.  Not the practical what am I going to do next, but the abstract concepts of reality, love, god, ect.  What happens when you live in that world more than, well, I'm not going to say it, I'll word it this way: when you live in the abstract world more than you live in the world most people are living.  Seems kind of ridiculous to think of it that way, considering the word living and what it implies.  There must be a connection between something like agoraphobia and a tendency to live in this abstract perception/obsession of reality.  The what ifs begin overtaking the present.    

Just how hard is it to convey a feeling.  I struggle with it daily, something is inside trying to find a way to get out.  Why the need?  Why does anyone feel the need to let other people know what they feel, what they think of reality, why does it matter?  Does it matter?  Creating a website with ramblings on it.  What exactly is the point of that.  While you're sitting there reading this.  Why are you reading it.  Curiosity.  Do you want to relate to the feelings that I'm trying to convey, do I want you to relate.  There is no feedback after you've finished reading this for me.  My words die on something abstract.  Out there for a select few who happen to stumble upon my website and spend the time to read.  Otherwise just out there, along with all of the other things going on in the world that are just there.  Waiting.  Angry at the solitude.  Are they my words, if they are posted here, even if I have written them, you are reading them, I'm not speaking them presently.  They have come from my brain, and fall on my keyboard with the stroke of my fingers.  What a simple thing, who would've thought.  

Just when is it that we get too caught up in our world and what is going on within it?  Only when something happens to jolt you back to reality and knock you off your pedestal I suppose.  Otherwise you're flying high, or sinking low.  How many people out there want to quit their job and become a gas station attendant or a grocery store stock-boy that works the graveyard shift, how many people out there want to live off the land, independently of any form of government.  It's these thoughts that keep you going but what puts you over the edge is what's most interesting.  Is there room in society for someone that is as "normal" as is permitted, that serves his/her function in the workplace in all sense of community he or she may belong ect.; room for them to have a momentary lapse of reason, get tired of the pace of life, throw their hands in the air and say what in God's name is going on in this world, what is wrong with the person directly in front of you, hand them a once in a lifetime token and have it be a fail-safe way of telling that person that they are wrong in what they are doing-saying and save them some trouble.  Just one of those tokens, imagine what that would do for the world, but then again it probably wouldn't be the best thing to give those tokens to people who would be apt to use them in passionate situations for revenge or something similar.  Maybe a baseball bat would suffice.  Violence that most primitive form of communication, it lurks inside everyone.  Fed by unspoken words, unfulfilled dreams, foot prints on our backs that we allow to continue marking our bodies, backs turned to us, knives plunged in our backs, our own faults, the greed of humanity, the frustration that comes along with being so free that you are not free at all, a kind of comatose feeling so many directions to go in, but no distinction between any of them.  It's not a new idea, reaching the brink of what we call humanity and teetering dangerously over the edge until something snaps.  How do you gauge something like that?  By looking in the mirror and seeing how long you can stand that annoying face that's staring back at you....

Hurtling from earth end over end as small as you can get with womb-like reminiscence.   From shock to alarm to a panicked state to bewilderment to denial to shock to acceptance to denial to acceptance to exploration to limitless possibilities to nostalgia to anger to resentment to self-pity to indifference to anger to acceptance to happiness to a state of complete awareness and bliss and emptiness in a unified consciousness.  What do you care about today, what would have to happen to you to shake you from your world?  To wake you up to the reality that is staring down at you, from below you, from all around you, from the mirror.  If you traveled through space, without a choice of your own, moving further and further away from everything you knew to be true, what would be going through your mind?  Would your thoughts stray from earth, would you feel guilt when they did, and how long would that guilt last?  I'm asking my own self these questions, in the name of self-exploration.  You can come along for the ride if you like, but there's no turning back after you've committed yourself.  A body in motion stays in motion.  Sometimes you have a choice and sometimes you don't, you always have a choice, you never have a choice.  You                     choice.                    .  The key was, "without a choice of your own."  We don't choose our battles.  Along for the ride indeed.

What do you think of when you breathe?  What do you think of when you are doing something basic to the human race?  When you think of universal, what images come to mind first?  Stars, infinity, galaxies, everything beyond that which is imaginable?  I can't say.  Breath is life used to be something meaningless to me.  What if you stop whatever you are doing, and realize that breathing and the simplicity that goes along with it brings with it more complexity than anything you could ever imagine.  Sound familiar.  There are memories ingrained in all things physical, matter is energy.  We expend energy when we breathe, when we think, when we move, everything we do, and these things that act on us, all around us, have been with us for an eternity.  Our closest link to what we can perceive as the present is through breath.  Obviously I am repeating what I've read, heard, or what have you, but memory goes beyond those things.  Dancing, music, friendship, stories, and many other universal things to our culture.  How can so many separate entities feel such togetherness through things we attempt to describe through words?  Sometimes I visualize silver cords attaching everyone, and in the middle of this big mess is the source of it all and what is physical distance?  What is emotional distance?  Surely different than the effective distance which is really how far we remove ourselves from the source.  We are all staggered.  We just want to relate on the same levels?  It isn't that simple is it.    

Just when you think you know someone they go and change on you.  How rude of them don't you think?  You come up with all of these ideas about a person and judge them based on how they react and interact in different situations, you compare how you think you'd react in their situation and how they do act, you hear things about that person through other people's judgmental mouths and filter or exaggerate what you've heard depending on some preconceived notions, you let your emotions sway your opinion of them, your subconscious hides things and brings things to light at the oddest times, and with this collection of illusions that person solidifies in front of you.  And then they pull the mirror out on you.  Just another trick. 

No regrets.  What is an addiction? What is addiction?  In what form do we ask ourselves that question.  Perhaps we are missing a word to describe the different ideas.  The latter being a disease, and the former what -just an obsession?  Maybe they are the same thing.  It's not an addiction if you don't want to quit?  When does it become an addiction? When someone else thinks that you are spending too much time doing something, letting something control your life and get in the way of "normality," when you can't stop?  No regrets?  Are we filling holes in our lives, are we running from stress, is it as basic as instinctual urges?  More likely all of the above, or one here and there depending on the circumstance?  If I want to stop doing something I ask myself why, and I can't answer, only that I want to stop.  Can you obsess about obsession?  Do something for yourself.  Do it for someone else?  How many times are you going to tell yourself this is the last time?  How many times are you going to throw away your addiction paraphernalia,  start a fresh page, turn a new leaf.  There's a whole tree full of leaves up there.  Must you start at the trunk, at the roots?  Where does it end.  It doesn't end you say?  Well where did it begin?   

My thoughts have been evading any sort of permanence lately.  Flitting around like dust motes in sunlight,  I've taken it upon myself to learn more concrete things.  Taking up more and more time learning how to do this or that, my expression has suffered.  Seems like a sweet sad thing, to occupy yourself with something, getting so caught up in it all when that when you walk past a mirror it seems odd to see yourself staring back.  Who is that?  The unexamined life is not worth living?  How can you live if you are too busy looking at your reflections, recollections, and whatever else comes to mind/light.  Everything in moderation, or specialization?  Who knows.    

I sometimes wonder just how much variance there really is from person to person.  At a certain age we tend to latch onto certain beliefs and ideals, and share those with others.  There is our interpretation of life and it's mysteries, but there is also the implementation of them.  How many people practice what they believe, how many people suggest to others how to handle a situation unfamiliar to themselves and then when placed in the situation act accordingly?  From a argumentative/debating standpoint a person might feel far removed from another.  You also have to take into consideration that there might be a motivation for disagreeing with the person in question.  Trying to understand those motivations only complicates things even more.  How many layers are there to this infinitely complex formula that makes up human interaction?  Drop the barriers and meld with someone, your head begins to swim, starting to recover: perhaps at this point you part again -or someone else joins you, you feel like you are incomplete or drowning (respectively).  Sometimes we aren't ready for someone to come in, they sneak in when you are most vulnerable, of course you don't notice until it takes on a negative aspect of some sort.  And you hold your breath to purge this now unwanted parasite who has been feeding off of you.  Of which you only thought not long ago was helping you survive, living in harmony with one another.  Would they respond any differently to your intrusion?    

I realize there are many ways to interpret conglomerates with minds of their own, but within the society I've grown up in, it seems that there is one goal.  Make time to spend time.  Doing what?  That depends on who you are, how successful you become, and how locked in your expectations and the expectations of others you are.  Technology gives us free time, from what?  Technology speeds up the process of travel, travel not just for occupational purposes, but also for information gathering, accessibility of otherwise unknown problems/solutions.  Technology, what an all-encompassing word.  To be eventually as involved a term as God (I used the term lightly) or love (I use the term lightly), or even more so?  So what?  We can do more in a workday, fueling the corporate engines, pushing them to their limits, while the lines are drawn on all sides by politically correct unspoken and yet to be judicial law ideals.  Narrowing.  No one wants to be responsible at the workplace, and the ones that are, are not by choice, they suffer through the choices they have to make and justify it with money.  The money they need to save up for their children who will work within more limited constraints, with better technology.  What do we do with our "free" time?  Use technology to try and free some of it up?  Or use it to kill the free time we do have by feeding our brains with mind-numbing entertainment.  What should we do on a weekend,  our precious weekends.  What a joke.     

Disconnected from ourselves.  How can something like this be, how can a feeling like this exist?  I look at my hands and wonder how they can be mine, how can my fingers be typing, am I controlling what is being typed right now?  What am I, in that sense of the question -I can't answer that.  I feel like I'm being guided, it's the curse of self-awareness.  That supposed blessing that keeps us apart from the lower life forms.  So how can a being who is self-aware feel a gap between something that is and something that is the very thing you feel disconnected towards.  Who is that stranger in the mirror?  Are we trying too hard to see ourselves through other people's eyes?  Am I the only one doing it?  Are we all looking through someone else's eyes, are we looking through a collective consciousness with a magnifying glass distorting our self-perception.  Or are we trying to see the eyes that see, and that in itself disconnects us from who we are?  Eyes are the window to the soul.  Should that be a question or a statement, nobody knows.  A long time ago, when I can't remember thinking of myself in the way that I do now, we are told that we are self-centric, that our every thought revolves around our own world, and the elements that come in and out of it.  So then why does that seem like such a horrible untruth.  Acceptance of who we are.  In those moments we feel connection with others, perhaps we are identifying with someone, or perhaps we are getting a true sense of who we are because of those special people and their ability to act as a mirror, as a window.  Who am I to say, but I have seen windows reflected in mirrors, but I can't help but see myself in that reflection as well, disconnected or not. 

We surround ourselves and our environment with elements that enhance the emotions we are already feeling.  To confirm our suspicions?  What happens when something we hadn't planned takes center stage, is anyone's guess.  Sending our world's spiraling -we need change, like a breath of fresh air, an updraft for someone lost in the attic surrounded by material treasures of the past.  So many grays suddenly exposed to the sun, layers of dust floating away, and you suddenly feel renewed -and there you are, parts of you that laid asleep for so long, or maybe you never knew were there, awake and alive.  Savor it, if you ever feel so full, you're sure you are going to explode.  Just don't forget that there are people who could do well with a dose of it too.  There's nothing wrong with sharing it, in pieces, you might find that people are more willing than you think to brighten up at something as simple as a strangers smile.

I'm feeling especially pretentious tonight, not unlike any night that I write here.  As anyone can relate to, I'm sure there are times in peoples live (numerous or infrequent), where you understand what an artist is saying/expressing and you relate.  You feel the way you feel they felt, and that comforts me.  Comforts me that something as simple as sharing a common experience can connect people on a level above any differences that you might have with them on a person to person basis.  That people are capable -given the right conditions/situations -to have compassion, sympathy, empathy, or even apathy.  They are all so similar but the subtle differences mean so much.  What burns us is when something alien to an individual is written off immediately, as a knee-jerk reaction to something foreign.  As if some different way of expressing something that is outside of that persons comfort zone becomes a mental bacteria that their mind fights off.  Antibodies of the mind pushing the invader out, and sometimes even going so far as to prevent its return in the future.  Change.  Fear of the unknown.  The need to identify, to feel normal, to feel normal by being abnormal -assures you that you know what is normal -to fulfill an image you might have of yourself.  Maybe I am just afraid to let anyone down and the expectations I believe others have for me are my way of giving myself room, when I myself am the one pushing too hard.  The only person I let down when I fail is myself.  How dry.

Skeletons in heaven.  Why that keeps popping into my head is beyond me.  

It's.  Your head swims for many different reasons, your body swoons for just as many -albeit different reasons.  What happens when you suddenly find that you have some say in the occurrence and frequency of one or the other?  What door have we opened, what worlds to explore.  The other side of things.  The unexplainable and inexpressible.  Sometimes things make sense when logically you know that they shouldn't.  We are all just trying not to drown, this does not mean that we are all trying to swim.  Someone once told me that turkeys will drown if it rains, because they look up at the sky with their mouths open.  I wonder how all of that fits in with this analogy I've got going, isn't that the beauty of any form of expression, it's never obvious, and if it is take a second look, or a third, or a fourth, there is always more to offer -branches and roots can all connect to one trunk, but the seeds propagate the species.      

You think you know, you really do, perhaps you think you have thought it all through, or more likely it was a spur of the moment thing -a sudden realization.  You really know, for once in your life, something. Something real, something tangible, something that no one can take away from you.  It's a feeling you try to keep to yourself, or maybe share and secretly want to keep with you forever.  And you try to remember how you felt, conjuring imagery or thoughts you might have had at the time.  But it's different, the harder you try to grasp at it the more it eludes you, evades even.  You are chasing lights through the swamp, pawing at weeping willows, choking on sand, following feathers, feeling the ground beneath you so strong and omnipresent that it overpowers you.  You are here, things happen to you, time goes on, things change and your walls crumble on all sides until that feeling that you tried so hard to remember becomes part of who you are.  Indiscernible from the rest of you.  And so you are whole -as empty as that might feel -as you always are and always will be.  Close your eyes and try so hard.  Bury yourself alive.  Forget everything else and just be.

I apologize a million times.  I'm sorry, a million and one, for what I'm not sure -maybe I'll do something terrible in the future, we don't know what is going to happen, to change us.  Apology accepted?  Thanks.  I've been meaning to tell you about this a long time ago.  You already knew?  I must've been talking in my sleep again.  You've been having conversations with me when I've been asleep?  Yes I've heard of that.   

It puzzles me how hard it is to effectively communicate a feeling, no matter how powerful that feeling might be.  The ones you want to share it with, unfortunately have to suffer through your attempt at explaining it.  Some things are only expressible through, well certainly not on here.  So I'll not even attempt it.         

And I'm wondering.  What am I wondering?  That's what I'm wondering.  Thoughts move in circles, vicious circles?  More like points, that indefinable quantity/location, scattered throughout my reality.  Is there an interconnectedness jumping from point to point?  Doesn't seem to be, constellations are made drawing imaginary lines from point to point, the end result being something predetermined.  I find what I'm looking for because the transitional periods are determined by the one and only me.  The constellations are arbitrary, the stars are light years away, perhaps the stars sending their light from so far away are already burnt out, and what I am forcing myself to see in these connections is false.  Based on the assumption that changes are relative only when noticed.  What is it that I fear of change?  When lies become reality, and the reality is a lie.  Who could've known?  I certainly didn't set myself up.  Or did I?

I am more in love with ideas than anything, but I'm guessing that isn't unique to me as a person.  Nothing turns out quite like you intend, even if you are lucky enough to get it into the final stages you've conjured in your mind.  I can't relate to anyone who has felt that a lifelong project has been completed.  Perhaps a word substitution would alter the truth of that statement.  Lifelong?  Relate?  Maybe it's that I've never met anyone who has completed a lifelong project.  At what age do we forget about them?  When does "What do you want to do with your life?" become a statement and not a question.  How gradual of a process is the elimination of original thought.  Reflexes knee jerk reactions nods.  Sleep being taken over by moss, vines-slow moving plants.  Photographs every week, to watch the advancement.  Click Click Click.  Visuals associations sleep associations shells ocean vines where are you taking me.  Home at last?          

Beauty.  Is it something innate that is reflected from the things we see, or does it emanate from a source.  Is it a combination of the two and both elements are possible in any scenario, limited/restricted only by the one-eyed viewer.  How many variations of one thing can there be.  One word cannot possibly cover such ground.  If only we could feel this way forever?  This present moment, a mob of people, bodies pressed up tightly against one another, reaching for illusions of beauty.  They are so real.  Illusions don't go away when the brush your fingertips, they wrap around you and squeeze the life right from your veins.  And we beg for more, even when our reality becomes part of the illusion.  It seems that in the indirect search for the meaning of beauty I have gone on a tangent.  Isn't that just beautiful?       

In a world full of conflict one particular instance can seem insignificant.  How far out do you allow your point of reference to get, where do you set the standard, when does something become out of bounds.  Which situations do you apply what you have discovered to?  Under a magnifying glass anything and everything can seem important, through a telescope what is far away can be brought into your home, into your life, with your eyes you see what? Truth? What you see is the truth?  No, I doubt that.  Your mind does the magnifications and alterations for you, you taught yourself the fine adjustments, but you were given the tools.   

What kind of potential? 

A steady stream of consciousness from all of my past experiences, associations from shadows to pinpoints of light, and onto the tip of my tongue.  Strangers ears'.  Water lapping on rocks, the tide rolling in and out fed by streams around the world like the overloaded over-abundant forms of media.  It is by no means pure, filters, sieves, and overflows restrict and exaggerate until unidentifiable from the source the information carries on in its meaningless manner.  Supposedly this information is to convey some thing-some meaning, altered, unbeknownst to me.  And in my mind to the speaker it becomes nothing more than white noise on the television interpretable on any level.           

Shame.  To be shameless is asking for pity, backwards looks.  Humility, and the subtle difference between the two: one with a sense of dignity and nobility, and the other a twinge of self-loathing.  It's easy to distinguish between the two in retrospect.  

Even when you realize that just talking about something isn't enough, it doesn't help.  As if sharing your goals/ambitions with someone is just enough to fool yourself into thinking something is going to be done.  There is progress on the horizon.  But it's not enough to keep you from thinking about how you should be spending your time doing something about it, no, not by any means.  And when you find out that talking about doing that something versus doing it is your way of keeping the dogs at bay, then what.  You don't talk about it anymore, it goes away, slowly fades away?  Your aspirations, your dreams, your selfish thoughts of what might come of it all.  Vines hanging on a wall, sitting on a marble bench my beard has grown long, don't see me.  Please.

Lines blur from a distance, and what's frustrating is when those lines become more blurry when you attempt to get them into focus.  Needs, wants.  Desire, desire.  Meshing molding churning folding.  One big mess, yes.  What are the specifics you ask, specifically-just what is it that I feel like I need?  I need what I want, or want what I need.  What I need might be good for me, what I want might be good for me.  What I need might be bad for you, what I want might be bad for you.  What I don't want might be good for me, what I don't need might be good for me.  In other words none of it means anything.  They are just feelings that I have for what reason?  For what reason.  For what damned reason?  I am asking more than this simple question when I ask that.  I'm sure if you don't take me literally, and just feel what I'm saying that you will understand.  No matter how hard you want something you can't have, you are still going to want it.  It'll peck at you, like a crow picking at your vulnerabilities after your desires are lost to you.  They're ever-vigilant and when you remember them you'll only then appreciate that you had forgotten them for a time.  What do you want?  What do you need?  Perhaps I should remind you lest you forget.  Remind you to remember that what you think you have forgotten, will never forget you.     

If you want to see something watch Deer Hunter if you want to be something build castles out of legos if you want to impress someone make sure your zipper isn't down if you want to be an astronaut don't grow up if you want to live forever read a book if you want to read a book quit your job if you want to want need if you want to be instructed in everything you do sleep if you want to live on top of a mountain dream if you want to forget it all think on it crack your knuckles and dig in and don't stop until you wake up.

...supposing that nothing would irk me more than what you've just done.  Nothing?  Someone out there could top it surely, we'll just wait for it.  No matter how hard we try there will always be someone to try and chisel away at what scrap or tower of ego you have.  Someone, not to say everyone.  But that's enough isn't it?  Oh but it's funny, but no matter how hard I laugh it still eats away at me.  Yea yea, world's smallest violin playing just for me.  It'll do.  Perhaps I'm letting out a bit too much of who I am in situations unwarranted, it's hard to say.  No.

So here I am holding it in my hand.  What do I do with it?  I look around to see if anyone is watching.  I cover it in that coveted way; one hand cupped over there other, mine, yes mine.  Spinning in circles, maintaining my center of gravity by throwing out my arms, or so I think.  We've lost control.  Unfulfilled reaching not attaining almost but not quite an echo away were you any closer were I any further when do you find me in another place fill it 3/4's it's a bottomless pit and I talk to them convince me that it is any other way do you try it's there for you and I we will triumph the castle has been ransacked pencils with snubbing erasers and I snub the people and the people and the people.  Unfulfilled, leaking out one drip at a time.  What does it mean for me, with all that I have been given to feel unfulfilled.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you I was laughing when I am typing this.  But I am.  Oh yes, I'm laughing.  Laughter is complex, it's like spiking punch.  Adding a new element to something basic.  A hand just reached out from inside my monitor and punched me in the face when I was typing this.  Give me some tools I say, the tools to get the job done, and then we'll be done with it.  Finished.  Mattresses in shreds, and suns shining through broken glass onto beer bottles.  Shoot me in the foot, I'm playing Russian roulette with a garden hose.  Caught in a moment with nothing to say, here it all comes out and meaning to spare.  How desensitized can you get.  Watch deer hunter, download something nasty on the internet, read books about things you've never imagined, expand your mind in all directions then let it snap back when it reaches its limits guide your judgments within your new lines and pause to reflect on the changes that are taking you to new realities that have been there ever since the day you thought you knew what the color gray was, and what it really means to someone without a sense of the.  It all ends as quickly as it began, and we find ourselves wondering where it all came from where it is going.  No we don't.  It just is?  Go figure it out, for now I'll just keep flying kites on battleships.       

Hello?  Pause. Breathe out.  Pause.  Is there anyone out there?  Breathe in.  No?  Good, then I can spill my guts.  So that is what I am really made up of, secrets.  Thoughts that we keep to ourselves, everyone has them, and that makes it ironic to me.  Guts.  You can see a lot if you look someone in the eye.  Really look, without any preconceived notions, just observing those around you, looking for some kind of spark of recognition where you see yourself in another.  That's when it gets scary.  Can you see their guts?  Intestines, kidneys, lungs, heart, pancreas, all the good stuff bundled up in a suit of flesh.  Physical make-up.  Who wouldn't question that statement?  So that is what you are made of.

Sometimes you've just got to force yourself into doing things you don't want to do.

My brain is being used up in areas I would rather not use it.  Whine.  What do they always say about, yea, that's it.  It's hard to take the time to do the things we want to do, for some people.  Guilt?  For what, why?  I have been asking myself that for a long time.  What's holding you back from your dreams?  That question  is intended for myself:  the dreams themselves, the fear of achieving that dream and it not meeting up to your expectations, just having it out there as something to hope/wish for to get you through another day with a feeling that there is an escape to this maze ( I am not self-pitying, I don't think life is a chore ), the fear that it would change who you are, you might not be accepted by loved ones or friends, society frowns on it.  Maybe you have no dreams, maybe you have lost them so long ago that you don't remember what it feels like to desire something you feel is unattainable yet you don't think it's impossible, think/feel there is a distinction there.   That is what confuses me the most, I suppose.  Where does one begin and the other end.  I use the words almost interchangeably, oh well.  Maybe your dreams are nightmares,  you're so pessimistic that you expect the worst, and thus are rarely disappointed.  Speckled disappointment, black ink on white paper, underneath, a pool of ink waiting to seep up from the below and saturate me with the fear that all of my worst expectations might not come true.  

What a sob story about someone who is too weak to cash in his chips and leave the table.  I laugh at myself. Haha.

Many times I've heard the phrase "I'm tired", now let me say it. I'm tired.  Tired of what?  Tired of everything.  Zigzagging around, zoom zoom.  Zoom.  Sputter, choke, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Hit me on the head.  Ah, what?  I wonder how many times I ask "What?" when someone is talking directly to me, despite the fact that I hear them clearly.  I was in a chat room once, someone was numbering down from 1000, 999, 998.  No one noticed at first.  People initially got irritated, as did I  997, 996, 995.  Then I started wondering why it irritated me 994, 993, 992.  Then I joined in 991, 990, 989.  Then I wondered why I joined in and why it irritated other people 988, 987, 986.  Such a simple thing, not insulting, not amusing just counting 985, 984, 983.  Seems stupid, it is stupid 982, 981, 980.  Doesn't take much to make me wonder, I watched my own thought processes unfold before me that day.  Similar to when I am falling asleep and I can observe my own thoughts spiraling into nonsensical dream thoughts.  Partitioning of the brain.  Pigeonholing the capabilities of thought, and then I see that I've missed something again.

Just what goes into determining what you emphasize as important to you?  Put aside the improvable determinism/free will question.  You may think you know what is important to you, this feeling may be re-enforced by a conscious effort to avoid feeling/thinking in a way you feel is intuitive but wrong according to "society."    This feeling may also be re-enforced by a sense of knowing, feeling fully informed about options, and indirectly- expectations of "those" around you, and yourself.  A foundation is built on preconceived notions which you receive affirmation or rejection for.  Picking at your subconscious.  Are you constantly fighting with it?  Just ask yourself what is important to you- if you feel like you are lying, then you know what you hold dear.  But can you be receptive when you doubt your own truth.

I don't claim to be a psychologist, psychic, prophet, philosopher, author, expert on anything.  I observe, and I . . . Well, this is more for me than you.  It gives my ego reason to spend the time to try and make sense of the jumbled mess I call my brain.  Thanks.  Me?        

Some things make me pause and wonder, others shake me back to reality.  Do I waste time trying to find myself?  I know that I do, I am good at keeping secrets from myself though.  It's the journey they always say, not the end you seek.  Is not the journey the seeking itself.  Laid out before me my goals, might seem barren:

I want to write a book. why?  I'm not sure I can answer that.  I want to end what I believe could be my last time around in this world/reality, I have some ideas on how that is to be done, and a good start, but I don't know anything.  A book.  A daunting task.  Achieving some sort of eternal inner peace and universality. . .well I've got my dreams.  

Seems, hard to imagine my goals even having any direction.  Dreams don't have direction, or cohesion; at least by certain standards. . .

Water.  One word, one representation, memories, flood like some simile I don't want to think up.  Watching: waves, blades of grass in the wind, street lights and the shadows alternating on the dash as my car passes underneath them, a leaf tossed around on the air, a single flame of a candle, the pendulum of an old clock, a blinking cursor on my screen- always keeping one space ahead of my words-always keeping one space ahead of my words- always keeping one spa

Where.  I have spent much time pondering questions I would rather not have the answer to.  Defiantly looking towards the heavens, shaking my head in frustration at my own stupidity, ignorance, and/or blindness.  Clenching my fists, what good.  I can't finish my thoughts, one question leads to another.  An answer is a prod, a question a shove.  What would I do with an answer to any of the questions people have been asking of no one who can answer.  Likely, our reality is much different than perceived, we cannot distance ourselves in any certain respect, there will always be doubt, reality.  What a word.

So you think you've got it figured out.  Do me a favor and leave me unenlightened for my truth is not as yours, at least in the meantime.  I've got some changing to do, you've got some changing to do.  Let's change together?  I've went off on a tangent again.

Think everything you have ever thought all at once by emptying your mind of all thought.  Staring.  Staring at the sun? Is that where the expression came from?  Information overload, or is it just that by doing so you truly "see."  Once again I feel haunted by the feelings of misunderstanding.  Why do I feel it necessary to think in words I'll never know.  What is it in details that promotes this same feeling of overwhelming ______ ( word that doesn't exist in the English dictionary, or any dictionary that I'm aware of that would take pages of describing to fully understand, or completely misunderstand, perhaps that is what the purpose of what my ramblings are?).  Is it a -ness word or -ity word.  Unity? Connectedness?  More than that.  Next time there is a breeze take time to stare and the blades of grass swaying in the wind, and tell me you don't feel any kind of -ness or -ity, that's fine I'll feel it for you.

An interconnectedness, a universal consciousness, Love, "God", filled with being.  I have felt things I never thought I could.  I owe it to myself to avoid explaining why I -an extremely skeptical, analytical, pessimistic, denier of absolute truth in God or reality, -feel the need to explain that my past beliefs have been changed.  <--I have already done that, in hopes of not being misunderstood.  Three days is all it takes to love a complete stranger, 32 of them.  Three days -to change your life, to forget the small details in life that keep you from hugging someone,  to discover that you have felt an overwhelming emptiness in the past.  Three days. Three letters. TEC. If you don't know what it is and want to know, please inquire.  I am forever changed, and who I was, couldn't help but be proud, after cringing from the realization that I was quick to judge those who have helped me in ways I could not imagine.  Cheesy? Sure sounds like it.  I have no problems with that.

We are made of stardust.  Infinitely smaller and infinitely larger universes within universes, fractals of an unimaginable size, large and small.  Part of what I ate today came from a farm, tended to by someone who's family generations ago moved from Germany, the other side of the family's history came from England.  Generation after generation before that were in what we now know as Europe.  Those people all came from the earth, came back to the earth, worm-food, eating the fruits of the soil the worms tend, and the worms themselves, rotting beneath the ground.  I am trying, but failing to  express the cycle of things in nature and how I myself am made up of particles participating in an infinitely long list of experiences physical-chemical-electrical, interaction of molecule to molecule, atom to atom, proton to proton, memory to . . .  Are the memories carried along . . . Not in the literal sense.  I remember creation, I remember destruction.  I forget to remember what is really important to me, or to who I should be.

Language.  The worst thing to ever happen to humanity.  How many times have my words been misinterpreted, how many times have a I misunderstood what someone's intentions were.  What impact on my life would it have if everything had been understood completely?  I cannot guess.  There are no words or expressions that can do  justice to anything worth communicating.  They are not feelings, they are not logical thought processes, they are.

They are.  Nothing. Everything. A medium not worth mentioning, not worth living without.                                                        

Complain.  Don't do anything, don't act on your emotions.  Don't let your temper get the best of you.  Just complain.  Complain.  Keep complaining every day, until someone gets so sick of hearing you complain, that they complain.  Go home and complain to your loved ones.  Complain to whoever is waiting in line next to you at the grocery store.  Complain at a funeral.  Complain with body language.  Let them know you are irritated.  Don't do anything about it.  But if you do, please let me know if that something you complained about for so long, left a hole in your life when it was gone.  Fill it with something else.  To complain about. Of course.  Don't do anything, just talk about it, talk about how your life could've been, talk about how it is going to be, talk until you forget what it was that you so desire apart from the present conditions of your life.  Drown your life with dreams to make what has become a dream for some and a nightmare for others bearable in either case.  You don't realize how good you have it until it's gone, you don't realize how bad you have it until it's gone.  Relativity, makes comparing lives dangerous.                                         

Fast cars, fast internet connections, fast computers, quick deliveries, fast transactions, popping pills, loud music, large televisions, large vehicles, loud concerts, popping pills,  books on tape, fast food, coffee on the run, expensive shoes, brand names, popping pills, assembly lines, speed dial, answering machines, cell phones, voicemail, text messaging, day care, popping pills, instant gratification.  At what cost?

There is an argument going on.  I'm not sure which side to go with, there are points to each side- good and bad.  Making a decision is difficult, maybe I need another persons opinion maybe I need to simplify things maybe I need to try and find some kind of reference point and go from there exploring all possible outcomes maybe I need to just stop for a second maybe I need to take the middle route.  Nah,  I'm always playing it safe.  Or is it that I always think I'm playing it safe and then I go with the extreme, or maybe. . .Arguing with myself is pointless.  I'll continue this later, when I've decided to open up a bit more to my side of things.

So it's come to this.  Each day is the same as the one before.  Take a piece here, absorb this there, spit out your ground up carrots and swallow the good stuff.  Do what you will.  It's an error in the making.  Spit up everything, swallow everything.  Do what you will.  I'll just continue being paranoid about how pretentious everything that comes out of my mouth sounds.  I'm a firm believer that the more you think you know, the more ignorant you are.  My ego inflates because of this backward thought process.  Hey I'm ignorant.  Just what sense of ignorant do I mean?  Try explaining to a blind man what the color red looks like, the best you can do is a scientific explanation.  So what's left to illustrate?  I'm not being clear? -so spit up your carrots. 

Inspirations come from places unknown.  Do I need to add a word in there to qualify the statement?  Do I need to tell myself to shut my mouth?  When something leaves an impression on me, and I feel that I'm aware of it, does it really last longer than the time I spend reflecting and checking its relevancy to my own life and it's condition/s.  Doubtful.  I "live and learn" life's lessons.  There is one of those cheesy buggers right there.  Learn and then live. . .

How bad must conditions be, if you were to give up on hope altogether.  Dreams unfulfilled.  But then, what if all of your dreams were.....not realistic.  There is no escaping the fact that. . .Oh (censor) it.

Strange things pop into my head, what I expect and what I would not expect sometimes, at the oddest times.  Specifics are not important, as far as I can see, and with so many variables I can hardly isolate my actions, thoughts, environment, especially any certain aspect of them.  Daydreaming.  Certain combinations of many possibilities, and you happen to notice and capture the right combination that brings you back, to another point in your life, to somewhere you felt you've been but hadn't -whether it is really just a brains mental lapse and relapse for a moment, or we live past lives.  Either way it's something I believe we all treasure.  Deja Vu and/or reminiscing.  

Something that everyone knows.  

We look back on our lives, and have regrets.  We believe that if we were the person we were now, then, we would have acted differently.  Being the people we are now, there is no way to avoid any past experience.  The events of our past help shape who we are.  Part of that regret is who we are.  What we are exactly is a word, but a lot more.  Regretting the present is another thing.  Examining your life through a microscope, head down, fingers on the fine adjustment, as it develops, within the constraints of time you place yourself in. I am currently working at _____.  I am never going to _____ if I don't ______. I shackle myself to the wall.  I am staring right at opportunity.  Too many things going through my mind, not enough substance.  And then I laugh at myself and finish my day.

Time (to wake up.<------April 8 10:20 pm CST USA) is of the essence.

I'm willing to bet repression vs. letting your emotions out is confused in the minds of many, my own mind(s-plural) included.  Any chance I get I'll hide from myself.  For who's sake but my own, I don't know, but it's easy once you convince yourself, to repress them that is.  Indifference, how much difference does it really make.  Sounds quite a bit more overly- and melo- dramatic than I intend.  I blame the English language for that, along with numerous other miscommunication moments in my life.  Grey is becoming a familiar color.  But, I keep myself in check, I throw in a red here and there, and a rational blue.  Always the calm gray to wear the other colors down, like a sheet of paint from top to bottom rolling over all the other colors on a wall.  Caution wet paint?  No.  I'm drying, before you know it kids will be peeling me, and eating me, and on a serious note:  even gray fades.      

I  am a gradual me.  I have been in the making for some time now, 23 years.

 I sometimes get the feeling that I am a product of my past.  Mental imagery- So many thin strings attached to me, one for every moment of my life, (not that moments can be conceived of as individual events, but we talk of many inconceivable things every day), trying to change my actions and ultimately the course of my life, seeing what I want out of life, and struggling to achieve it, but there are too many strands pulling me. I am a puppet of the past.  The worst part about the whole situation is, that I believe that there is a chance that I can actually do the things I desire to, despite what reservations I might have about disappointing self-expectations.  Someday I might realize to what extent I am responsible for the creation and attachment of those strands.  It's a slow process, I'm sure of that.  In most cases at least. . .

Do you pity someone who becomes a victim of their own creations?  I don't. 

I have so many things on my mind, I suppose it'll have to start somewhere.  Where we'll end up, _____ (insert overused, abused, word with an infinite number of definitions) only knows.  So like any conversation, eventually, we end up discussing questions of a philosophical nature.  What the specifics are isn't important.  The conversation always steers one way no matter where you start, it all comes into question.  Doubt is an interesting thing.  Self-doubt.  Go back a sentence and read it again, and think about it.  I am not steering in any one direction, I'm being directed myself by myself, if that makes any sense.  Then again, there aren't many things that make sense to me, including how many times I've deleted and rewritten this sentence.  Most confusing of all for me, is my inability to convey descriptions of what I am thinking to my own satisfaction-by ear.  That would include typing, I suppose.  But we all find things to comfort us, whether it be accepted or rejected by society, local law, or any government or faction.  Sleep is always a good friend, but not for everyone.  I stop to appreciate it now, thinking about how peaceful it is, forgetting all the superficial wounds that might have been inflicted on me throughout the day.  Resisting any temptation to compare someone else's seemingly larger problems to my own, allows for self-pity.  I am no friend of myself.  There is a studio in my brain; the final product is always in the making,  released well before I would like.  Perfectionism is synonymous with self-critical.  Go back thirteen sentences and read it again, and think about it (yes it's the same one as before, now you won't do it).

    New paragraphs make it easier to read.

    Someone might find the above comment funny, if they had an extremely dry sense of humor, or if they knew me personally, maybe not.  I'm  not very good at transitions.  Yes, it is fun to make light of yourself.  Just how many times in a row I can do it I'm not sure.  This is becoming an ongoing joke.

    Death is fascinating to me, to many people.  Some people are unafraid to die, other's will do anything in their power to avoid thinking about it.  Is it a coincidence that the elderly seldom leave their homes?  In our fast-paced society (of course I'm being USA-centric (I make up my own words (and now I have likened this sentence structure to that of a math equation (as in layers)))), it is difficult for the experienced, so we create resorts, casinos, and even reserve a state for them-Florida.  I myself don't have a fear of death, at least I don't feel like I do.  I envy people who get to leave this world, my curiosity ensures that.  I've had many conversations with people about what happens after you "die."  As everyone has I'm sure.  Death is a word for the living,  funerals and wakes are for the survivors, tombstones are there for the living as well.  Bodies are given back to the earth, empty husks.  At any given moment your thoughts could be directed to all of those bodies 6 feet below ground rotting, and not even realize that you, impersonal as it sounds, didn't know them in life, flicked them off at an intersection, exchanged glances with them at some point in time, stood next to them in the bathroom staring at some tiles on the wall.  In and out of your life, with much or little effect on you and yours.  And what part of that person that is no longer "here" is gone?  They are no longer part of your life, routine, no two-way conversations, no new experiences with that person will be forthcoming whether they be long or short..  It's all extremely obvious of course.  Fear of change.  Another chain to lug around everywhere you go, you get used to it.  It's all very melodramatic, but you can't blame anyone for caring.

    Physical representations of emotions and their effects on us (if we have them at all).  Some of us are too cold to have sympathy, we nod and frown, apologize as is custom.  So how many hours of the day are you on automatic, only during the emotionally challenging times?  It's safe for me to say, that in all of my life, there never seems a time (planned time) where I stop what I am doing enough to just be, without something nagging me in the back of my mind, some weight on my shoulder that other people can see, a chip on my shoulder so large as to be visible, a crooked smile, a dry laugh, or some conversation I'm not listening to and replying to automatically.  Sometimes I wake up at night for reasons I'm not aware of, my eyes shoot open, and I feel like I have just been born into this world.  My mind has been somewhere else, my worries are gone for the moment-there are no seeds of sorrow or anger waiting to burst that I carry, it's just me and that ceiling I'm looking way beyond.  And I see that I am. I am actually aware of myself, intensely aware of myself.  I emphasize that I cannot explain the feeling by using italics.  Laugh.  I once knew a friend who saw red often.  I'm willing to admit that there are times that I jump for the opportunity to be destructive in some manner, for venting purposes.  Anger has played an important role in my life.  The point here is relation.  It's already overly obvious that my writing any of this is for my own venting/expression or a way of trying to sort through my own confused ideas.  And here I am sharing things that anyone visiting could care less about.  I used to chew on my fingernails, have thinning hair, sleeping is a hobby for me, I dislike it when people are  politically correct because they fear reactions of the opinions of those around them.  

    Useless information about me.  What a lead in that is to the useless information that people crave about Hollywood stars.  Does anyone want to buy a piece of french toast I nibbled on yesterday morning, I could sell it on E-bay.