everything grows in places where anything goes

I didn't expect to find love here. She didn't either. We have a very clear picture of how our lives are supposed to go. Your soul is beautiful dear, but you aren't it.

But I'm sick of living in tomorrows. Hanging onto maybes. Now is all we've had, and all we've ever had. That's where I was born. That's where she was born. That's the world we've chosen to live in. That's the language we make a conscious effort to speak to everyone in our lives.

I can't say what's going to happen tomorrow, but I have to be honest. I can picture us getting old together. I'm afraid to hurt you, but I can't write off how perfect we are.

I didn't expect to find love here. But I have a feeling, that's exactly what I found.

First

"even if it doesn't last, it's one of the greatest things you can do"

There's a real inescapeable bias to advice given between people who have a relationship with each other. Any kind, really. Lovers, friends, business partners. It's shaped by expectations and perceptions of other people. Used as a tactic to steer the people around us into what we think they should do. Maybe not what's best for them really. Or truest to their heart. Sometimes, it's used to benefit the advice-giver.

People who hear advice, on the other hand, will ignore or pick apart any advice they get... cause they know what happens. Advice is biased. But sometimes you miss out on something you really need to hear because of that. It's too much to wrap your mind around sometimes.

I needed an outsider's opinion.

Probably the one living person that I most respect, and don't know personally said this.

Excerpt:

"Somehow, there's this tendency to think that even though you know this about yourself: that you're extremely complicated and to know the real you is really complex and no one really sees all your inner passions and reasons for doing things. Still we think it's not true about other people and we think we know them. Just remember how complicated somebody is. Even somebody you think you know really closely. There is always stuff you don't know."

from the morning

trickster makes this world

I got into a wreck with jordan's car. Didn't get a police report, I looked and I didn't see the guy coming from where he was saying he was. In retrospect... he had a lot of other people in the car and said he needed to be somewhere quick... he was probably drunk and trying to jet. Point of the matter is, I was not on the insurance. I'm now fiscally accountable for another several hundred dollars that I don't have. My fragile financial state, the last area of my life that was relatively under control (I use that very loosely) has finally been rattled by some cosmic "fuck you".

Changing gears. Finding a job has been a priority, just behind school and my fragile mental state. Now it's a desperate priority. I've sent in applications to jobs I'm not remotely qualified for. Digging up obscure past experiences like middle school office and library aide. Making sure I look the heads of department in the eye when I make an obviously unsolicited visit. Using my full name twice in the same sentence.

For better or worse, it did give me a complete set. Every aspect in my life is now in the same category: fucked. Not in my control. Absolutely cannot continue under any of these premises. It's going to derail my stated intentions to finish in four years like a good boy should.

But maybe that's good. Maybe why all these other things in my life are fucked isn't because I'm thinking about it wrong. It's not a misdirection of interpersonal relationships, although it seems to be bleeding over. It's because the person that I am can't fake it through another semester of $60 a week, no job, no car, professors and classes that move so mind-numbingly slow they are practically begging me to fail. If we got a spectrogram and did a frequency analysis on the drone of the lectures, I'm betting money the pitch would be a D or an F. Pretty consistent with my GPA.

Saturday. Piss drunk by three. Sobbed uncontrollably for the first time I can remember in a long time (thanks for the shoulder jordan). Drove down oak with all the glass skeletons of six packs we've been accumulating since sunday. In the pouring rain, we littered the creek with shattered glass, throwing empty bottles of red stripe, lonestar, and rolling rock into the sides of the bridge. High pitched shattering, a requiem for things like unrequited love, alcoholic mothers, impractical philosophies. Came home, passed out for three hours, then woke up and had nachos on the couch in my spiderman underwear (thanks andrea).

In the wreckage of the low point (high point?) that passed, I sat on my ass and watched ted talks. I raved about Lisi's "theory of everything" on another blog now gone, but comedian Emily Levine's take on it is worth watching too. Less metaphysical. Funnier. More practical.

She ragged on "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, which I coincidentally just read. Great book, but the way she made collectivism out to be a total mindless monster, which I don't think it ever can be- not the way it's growing with 21st century spread and accessibility of information. But she juxtaposed it well against the "ego", which is something I've kind of lost a sense of for a while.

Anyways, she basically said, "fuck that book. read this one," so I did. "Trickster Makes this World" by Lewis Hyde. I'm not through it yet, but it basically identifies what a trickster is, and how he can sort of dodge traps that are set for him in retaliation, remain satisfied, and continue to redraw borders. Perform exorcisms on people to find the great unspoken truths. Fuck shit up. Keep it moving.

Also later in the weekend (don't remember which one I found first) I was looking through my 10th grade journal. I said it below but I'll sort of re-iterate. I was, and am at my best, a spaz. Not giving a fuck. A trickster of sorts. I can say pretty confidently that all who read this blog have a bit of that in themselves. You'll have to look up on what Hyde and Levine define as a trickster. It has a connotation of deceitful that isn't totally true... but! That's when I was at my best. Re-reading old journals and earth shattering e-mails that I knew would be important later, I saw it. I had it down in 10th grade. I knew who I was, and what the world needed from me at the moment. The problem came when I got comfortable. Emily Levine put this phenomenon best in her ted talk. She said you have to walk a fine line to fill this role of a trickster in life. Don't get the balance right, you'll either slip into beauty or oblivion.

That's what I did these last few months. I did a lot in favor of bringing new ideas to new people, shaking things up. But then I got comfortable. I got tired. I wanted for everyone to sort of sign their name at the end of it and say "okay, let's just chill the fuck out now." But that was wrong. None of our lives are finished. Nobody fell in love with me because I had it figured out and was in retirement. All the affection that I got, that I deserved, came to me for the same reason my affection goes out to all of you: you keep things moving. You change people. You fuck shit up. Kill parts of people to show them how alive they are.

So now I'm at this place where nothing I have nothing. Nothing is concrete. I can take nothing for granted. It never was on a conscious level, but my behavior said the opposite. I stopped trying. Let's just sit down and shut up.

I'm twenty-one, and I tried anyway. That was bad timing. Will I grow old and settle down? Yes. But I can't let my soul get that way. There is a difference. We will all grow old, but I want to grow into it with someone.

It's all gone again, and it's so liberating.

transcripts of texts between me and my mom. It may seem boring to you guys, but her response is something I wasn't expecting, haven't heard from her in such clear terms, and made my day:

Find a purpose. Any ideas?

Plenty.

Which can bring you self-satisfaction and financial independence?

All of them would mean a cataclysmic shift, something I don't have the balls for this second. I'm going to fix this financial shit storm I got myself into, and taking the first plane out. Fair warning. I don't know into what, but it's not this. Too many lies, people pleasing, and degradation of my personal morals, beliefs, and independence.

Why do I feel you are pissed at me?

I'm not, you're just worried which is what you're supposed to be doing. I'm pissed at myself for getting chest deep in this thing thats made me progressively unhappier and more of a financially dependent child than I was when I started.

Sounds like you are finally in a place to start taking some positive steps forward for yourself. congratulations! and I still love you.

Thanks. Love you too.

and it was so awesome that I TOTALLY FLIPPED OUT AND KICKED MY MOTHER IN THE FACE

I dug out my old 10th grade journal. Going through puberty. Eccentric and belligerent. Probably should have been medicated. I was a total spaz, I ended a good number of journal entries with the phrase, included in the title of this blog.

This part of me has been sleeping for a few years. I gave less of a fuck about what others thought. I was obscene. Spaz, that's the best way to put it. There's a lot of stuff in here, a lot of non-directional open to interpretation stuff. I have no memory of what I meant when I wrote this one, but I put a lot of my present self into it when I read it. I feel like this entry is worth re-typing.

-----

5-13-2005

If a flamingo and seahorse keep changing between eachother, I ask myself, well which is which and who is who? The changeling has no true identity. It is as much of itself as water is ice? Is it the stuff we're made out of, or the person we choose to be? I sincerely bet that you could mix that with a half a pint of milk dust and it will come out all the same- on my foot. It must be grand- having no-one to drop in with. Or rather, needing no one.

If the sun wanted to give a part of itself to me so I could warm my ribs, that would make me happy. But the real one is- Is she already broken? If so - who is it?

-----

I put things on here in the hope that people will see what I'm going through, and be like "well this is how I got through it", or maybe have things that I say serve as something helpful to someone else.

The problem is, they are just words. Sometimes people in my life see more of this thing than they do of me. The result is just words, which can be dissected, disarranged and forged into an attack.

So, I'm taking everything off. I'm not taking anything back, nor do I feel the need to restate what I say. I meant it the first time and I'll mean it again. I'm taking it down because it wasn't serving its' intended purpose of sympathizing and connecting. It was being broken down into little rocks and used as ammunition. I don't think it's fair to me, but at the same time I don't want to stop. I stand by all I've done. The good parts, the bad parts, I take none of it back.

I was told that I shouldn't expect people to be honest with me, or to hope to ever really know anybody. I thought about it, and I'm going to refuse to do that. I know this, because I've seen it. It's a very small group of people. Smaller than I originally thought. And as much as I would want to make more people part of that now, it isn't going to happen so easy.

I took what you said into consideration, and I've decided this: I shouldn't expect it to come as quickly as I have been. It's never happened quickly before. But I won't stop expecting it, hoping for it, or working towards it.

It took me either growing into it, or a cataclysmic event, lots of crying, and still sticking by eachother through that to get to the point I'm at with these people. These people that we hold to this mutual standard of openness. We don't think twice about telling the truth. We don't play mind games with eachother to get what we want. We're afraid of a lot, but never of things involving eachother.

Because once we've done that, it's a much more fluid relationship. When you cut out this fake game where people think they can make things better by lying, we can work together on things seamlessly. We can prop eachother up. You get these crazy cross country feelings where one person will push someone to do something that does so much good for the world. Without talking.

You'll never guess what happened! You did that, didn't you?

Yeah... I was there. I don't know how or why but I was there."

I grew into it with some people. We had our hiccups, but nothing that happened was earth shattering. It was the longevity that did it. For the people that I've met more recently, we haven't had the luxury of knowing eachother the better part of our self-aware lives. It took a cataclysmic event. Baptism by fire. And it's promising, because a lot of this looks like the apocalypse. But wait... it looks like the apocalypse? Good. Pay attention. It's all starting in the most beautiful way.