what is love? pt. 2

what is love? pt. 2

sometimes i need manly tears to affirm that my love is strong, like both the stable log of the redwood tree and the soft and delicate whimpers of joy from a small otter. is this the paradox of love? again my lips are desert chapped, begging for moisture but not burts bees.

i had put on my best dress shirt that night because i knew that anything else wouldn’t make me stand out to you. on the dance floor, i writhe, not dancing, but writhing in agony because i want to be with you. delicately, i see a small figure arise from the darkness of the auditorium, like an angel of darkness being borne out of countless years and schemes of dreams and desires. the other people around you fade away and start swirling around you like the stormy clouds of jupiter around its great red storm. in my heart you are that great red storm.

you are wearing white, untarnished, innocent and gullible. and i start ten feet away from you enraptured by your eyes, stuck in time wondering how to proceed. i want to be your dark knight — to keep you safe from the tyranny of evil men, to stay steadfast with two smoking barrels in my calloused hands protecting you fro those who don’t know who you are.

you look away and i gasp! your hair, floaty and angelic, defies gravity, unlike the gravity which tore me to my knees when i fell for you. and even now, i’m falling deeper and deeper into your aura — not vain or conceited like the others but pure and innocent like a cherry blossom drifting through the aurora borealis of my passions.

uncontrolled and unrestrained passion takes over my legs and i stop my writhing and i walk. steps pulsate against the dance floor thumping against the richter scale of my heartbeat. fast and deliberate every pace is measured. four feet away.. two feet away.. one heartbeat away. tsunamis of fire makes waves against the small towns and villages of my conscious and they are decimated to dust.

h… hey. ahem.

you pretend not to notice, but maybe you weren’t pretending! even so, the deafening stereos around us can’t mute the constant cannonballs thumping against the walls of my lungs. hey! i repeat, louder this time.. more akin to the volume of my heartbeat.

you turn, slow motion. i try to capture your movement frame by frame in real life and again, your straight black hair whips around the air, leaving behind traces of expensive chinese shampoos enter my nostrils like welcomed guests of honor to my olfactory. i suffocate — i literally can’t breathe. because you took my breath away like the silent thief you are. first my attention, then my heart, now my oxygen — what can i do without you, captor of everything that keeps me alive!

your eyes slowly get bigger and although both of us are exploding inside with passions, neither of us smile because happiness is a feeling fit for flings. this was not happy, it was divine and god inspired, just like your face. i always said i liked pale girls that look like foxes, but not like you! you are a white kitsune to the rest of these foul mouthed canines! our hearts and our eyes both dilate and you say:

hey. i.. i..

too slow, my patience wears thin and tense being stretched from galaxy to galaxy from all the moments i spoke to you in my head.  i cut you off:

would you like to dance with me!

the words escaped through the gaps of my teeth before i even knew what i was saying. the rush and torrent of gasp and sighs all condensed into audible words through which the envy and spirit of my love was solidified. the words had been let out and now let the most gorgeous jury in the court of my heart make her vote. i am guilty only of falling in love with you, but my heart is innocent. whether or not you take me as your captive sentenced to your body is a choice only you and god can make alone!

um.. o.. okay.

explosions! deafening screams of joy from my anxious heart crashing through the ceiling of my skull!

the saga continues later

a.p.v

a.p.v

My goal in life is to be as awesome as possible. I think things should be propelled by awesomeness, all the time. If things are not awesome, then the awesomeness of life becomes less awesome. I try to be awesome, but lots of times I'm not awesome because being awesome is not something you try to be but you are. So on a daily basis, through habits and small traumas, I engrain awesomeness into the core of my being, because being awesome is what life is about. Being awesome means being compassionate, being cheerful, being joyful, good to your friends and family, standing up for what you believe in, being kind to people who don't matter  to you, and having overall positive vibes. Super vibes, to be exact. Being arrogant or showing off is not that awesome. Neither is lying or pretending to be someone you're not. Awesome people get along with awesome people as well. So it only makes sense that in order to meet more awesome people, I should grow to be more awesome. The world will be filled with awesomeness and positive vibes then.

I like hanging out with people that have positive vibes. It's not necessarily that they're happy or optimistic or anything, but that the general aura that is emitted it positive and super awesome. I learn from my awesome friends such that I can take some of their characteristics and work them into my personality as well. I want to be awesome so that I can meet more awesome people and do awesome things. Some people are a proponent of same sex marriage, others pro-life or drag queens, etc. but I am a proponent of awesomeness. Positive vibes and super vibes constitute awesomeness. Awesome people make awesome things. Super vibes forever.

daydream

daydream

She leaned her head against the wall, and despite smiling, I caught brief moments of melancholy shining though the dark beads of her eyes. Timid creatures usually have more thoughts going on — maybe an obvious nature of shyness, but it lines up perfectly with the human desire for self knowing. When others don’t tell you who you are, the natural instinct is to search inside for possible elucidations about our true nature, who we are, and other big specific questions dealing with the nature of the universe. But this moment was not one of those moments. It was rather mundane, and filled with the typical daydream delusions of other moments. She was deluded (there was no more accurate word to describe her constant state of paranoia) — tapes of moments just passed constantly passed back in her head, wondering what if and why not over and over again.

It was possible that her melancholy came from these constant realizations of self inadequacy. To her, silence was not favored, just accepted over talking because she didn’t know what to say. And so she was rather timid, but to others, who knew what delusional thoughts ran through her mind all the time! And yet, maybe even mine, because here I am sitting across from her, thinking about what she might be thinking about — just something that moments of silence like this beget. And it’s funny, my observations about other people are always deeply driven by my own vanity. Nothing I do is really ever altruistic by nature. I just want to know her better so that I can understand her better, because understanding feeds my ego, as does difficultly acquired friendships. I don’t know. Writing this, I can only guess what is going through her mind, because she is real and the truth is I don’t know.

This inevitable barrier of true communication is what drives my real melancholy of life. Although for brief moments I can gauge her mind and have our thoughts freely flow between hers and mine, these moments are too short lived to be of any real consequence to affect the solitary nature of being sentient (whilst being limited to only talking and acting). After all, we’re not telepathic and neither does the desire for deep pain and empathy exist for most people. All I have with her are words and actions, and how much can you really communicate with those? A good deal perhaps — when she leans her head on the wall, looking at me with smiling eyes, maybe I can see some sort of sadness behind them, maybe boredom. Or when she talks to me, I can take those words and transform them into stints of understanding through my years and years training to be a empathetic human. An empathetic human — what a joke. It’s true, we don’t have to be always solitary, but most of the times we are, because communication most happens on a physical sonic level. Understanding a person’s heart, the complexity of her soul is something reserved for God maybe. Maybe that’s why he gives us comfort, because we know at least one being in this universe holds the capacity to fully understand who we are.

Daydream delusions running through her mind and mine. I know this because she told me. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

old stream of consciousness

old stream of consciousness

He always told himself, life would be so much more than it is right now, but these thoughts remain perpetually amiss. Every single thought of freedom is eventually drowned by time. They say time waits for no one. It's a sad reality, he told himself, but the sad reality was that he wouldn't do anything to help himself. Maybe in a year, when I'm off and away, then I'll be free. Funny, I heard the same thing four years ago, eight years ago. He started counting his chances in increments of four. He loved the number fourteen till he reached it, loved the number eighteen till it found him in his same purposeless thirteen year old mind, and when that number came, he loved the number twenty one, because it sounded like freedom, but when it came around, he lost interest. Everything was at the wrong time. If only he had been born four years before his interests, yet lived in the present. If his time frame of now was instead four years ago, in a body four years older. Wouldn't that be nice? He wouldn't be afraid to try new things, to talk to that pretty girl at school, to say 'no' once in a while, or to take that rock and throw it at that assholes car. But no, it was a shame he was stuck in the present, and the looming irony was that he was never living for the moment

He takes his heavy head and lifts it out of the dirt. Where is he? It must be a dream, he said, waiting for the presence of hopelessness to fade away. But it didn't nothing so out of place fades away like that. I wonder. Why, what? Well there's an idea, the imbecile says, his conscience taunts him. Where. Okay what a wonderful being you are to have the capability to have such superfluous and philosophical thinking! You are a truly, and utterly honest and amazing human being, much more than the ant swarm below us. I am. No, you aren't, silly. You're nothing.

And if I could play his conscience like a indifferent composer, I would. But I would do so much more than taunt him, because I can get away with everything right? I'm his conscience, I'm him, I'm not me, he's me so he blames himself. Take that back, he doesn't even know how to blame himself, so he lets others blame him for himself, a pleasant trade-off. Oh he's just silly, don't mind his blabbering. I suppose that gives him a colorful excuse to think whatever he pleases and get away with it. At the point where others let you think freely, they call you insane, or demented and twisted. If this was true, I suppose in a way it would be so much better to be demented or twisted amongst that flock of seagulls, the mediocre languid pile of dead Holocaust sheep.

Hey, aren't you someone special? Sarcasm feels so good on paper. He can't really move his body. Am I. What do you think you are? Anything worth anything part of any self loathing any any any? Real? Estate? You can't just throw a sentence out there and expect your conscience to understand. Hey you, you! Go to that fridge and pull out the orange juice. Okay, now drink it. Good, let the pulp drench the sides of your dirty, contaminated throat. Now put it back. Hm, this kinda feels good. He looks, but can't see anything. No, don't look or try to see. He stops. Now.. Go live.

From that day on, he was the happiest piece of flesh on the face of the crusty earth. If only we could do something like that ourselves. Just let that little voice in your head click, and off off you run away, into the beautiful, twisted and mental darkness.

*  *  *

I wrote this five years ago (Jan2011, before graduating high school) and I found it revisiting some of my older writing. It's always interesting reading older stuff because it gives you a window into the person you used to be, and you can judge how much you have changed, or haven't. It was called stream of consciousness.

escape

escape

Escapism for me comes in the form of wanting to escape the emptiness of soul. To do this, I can do one of two things: either fill my soul with permanent solutions — things that bring me a constant state of joy. A real relationship with God for example, and knowing that I have great purpose and hope for meaning. Or I could also escape my soul by ignoring it and actually parting from it. The scariest part about this sort of escapism is that fact that you can actually really escape from the emptiness of soul by parting from it — at least partially. For example, doing drugs and getting plastered. It’s true, I temporarily escape the emptiness of my being by unbecoming myself, but by doing so, I become slightly distanced with who I am. I think a person is most themselves when he or she is sober. This is the constant state of mind of which we are used to and most accurately represent our internal situation. The drunk state, the euphoric state is a situation in which we escape the drollness of sobriety by placing our mindset and shifting our perspective to something different. Honestly, for me, getting drunk is not fun fun. It’s fun because it’s different and I can be a more audacious person and solidify connections with people in more obvious and upfront ways. It’s not fun because it’s fun necessarily, but it’s fun because it’s different from myself — my sober and true self. Different drugs of different calibers take you further from yourself into a places that might not entirely be you.

I think the strongest sense of escape from self is suicide or death. You literally escape by separating body from soul. But you can experience temporary suicide as well, by dissociating yourself so strongly from yourself, that “you” don’t exist as your normal self, at least for a while. In a way it is liberating because you escape, but it comes at the cost of separating from your actual self for a bit. Repeated accounts of this will probably be detrimental for understanding your identity and who you are.

I find relief from stress and mundane routine of who I am on a daily basis by release, temporarily escaping from the dullness of everyday life. But that desire for escape can be filled another way, by realigning my goals for something more substantial and longer lasting than worldly values etc. I don’t want to be a monk, but I also don’t want to be empty inside. I don’t think a compromise exists between those two hyperboles, but there is a way to find inner peace by desiring something greater than conventional goals.

temporary hellos

temporary hellos

Do soulmates exist? Or do we just align with circumstances — affirming an idea that people usually just work out some sort of relationship and even when it’s not perfect (it just works). But where’s that attraction? It seems like relationships tend to lose fire over time, and people say “that’s life” because it happens in every single one. You learn to live with smoldering, but constant state of attraction.

Not sure what I want. Don’t feel any attraction either. I desire female companionship, but at the same time, don’t feel the desire for any real connection either. Understanding is too difficult of a feat right now with all the things I have to do soon that I don’t want to take the time to fully indulge myself in trying. My circumstances right now are boring, and boring circumstances beget boring relationships. My circumstances will change, when that happens, I’m interested in what new things come about.

Many times, we experience “temporary hellos”. You say hello, but it doesn’t mean anything besides the fact you’ve come in contact with another person, at least for a short duration of time. Temporary hellos are okay, because you don’t have to offer any substantial or vulnerable. There’s always a risk of meeting someone incompatible or untrustworthy and that could be draining. But on the other hand, new relationships with people always have positive potential as well. However, these days, I feel like as people get older, putting up risk is overwhelmed by a insincere laziness. I experience this all the time. For example, when I meet someone that has come to LA for a vacation, I will be absolutely uncaring about their life, but fake enough to demonstrate that I’m not entirely apathetic to their circumstance. And it’s cool, I might learn a new fact or something. But overall, I definitely feel that laziness and empty desire for the possibility of new friends. It has not much to do with my satisfaction with my present friends or loneliness, but really just laziness and disinterest in people in general. It’s like I’m trying to meet amazing people — when I myself am not so amazing at all. It’s ironic and it’s disrespectful to other people, really. And the worst part about it is that this sardonic realization doesn’t move my desires or inclinations a hair. I know it and I don’t care.

I guess the extent that it actually affects me is that I want to be a more awesome person. To be frank and conceited (because those usually go together for me), I honestly sometimes think I’m brilliant. But I could be cooler in my own way. Everyone has room to be cooler. On a statistically level, I’ll probably meet people who are in a similar cool range, considering that I’m not talkative or extroverted. I’ll try to expand that range.

permanent byes

permanent byes

Permanent byes are a little more different. Permanent byes don’t necessarily mean that you never say hi to that person again, but rather that you sever those emotional ties inside you to that person. You don’t necessarily say goodbye to that person, but you say good bye to the possibility of positive emotional connection with that person again. But often times, it’s better that way, because parting with emotional connections means that you part with both the positive and negative connections. Although new negative emotions may take their place, it’s often a placeholder for new chances and a willingness to take the risk for something more positive — for you and the other person. It’s hard but a better choice if negative things keep occurring, even if happy moments and real deep care is present. You wonder, is it possible to find that again? Maybe, maybe not, but probably yes.

People are so funny that these emotional connections mean so much to us and parting ways finds such a deeply rooted place within your brain and heart. Anxiety and stuff is overwhelming and the risk for new chances might be averted by the possibility of reoccurrence. But i think most of us want to find “the one” anyway and letting go of someone who “might be the one” seems like a reckless maneuver. Because who knows? Growing older has taught me that friends and close connections become slightly more scarce with each coming year and the idea and fear that “the one” might not be in my near future is troubling, perplexing and eminent.

We all do things to survive. We lie, we tell jokes, we laugh at other jokes even when they’re not funny — all this to survive. We have to survive, above all. Sometimes, although relationships have love in them, we are actually just dying. Slowly, casually, every time the same argument comes about and you think it’s fixed but it’s not and you just realize the unmalleable nature of people in general, there is pain that reminds us that sometimes we aren’t made for each other. In order to survive and be happy, sometimes escape is the better solution.

temporary byes

temporary byes

There’s a moment when you’ve been with a person so long and when it’s time to say goodbye, and you don’t want to, but you have to, and it feels like you’re losing a part of yourself. It doesn’t have to be a large part, the point is that it’s a part of you. Normally, we keep these parts to ourself every sacred-like, because normally when we meet other people, there’s a huge sense of restrain when giving parts of yourself away. In these situations you get them back, but when you’re saying goodbye to here-said-person-couple-sentences-before, you are parting with a part of yourself a bit bigger than that. Essentially a part of you, because those memories you’ve spent with that person are meaningful and have value to you. That moment, right when you say good bye, and you’re walking out of the train station and you feel so lonely. Not necessarily melancholy, but more like: oh, I’m back here again, back in real life. Because, normally real-life has a dull sense of loneliness to it. Even though it can be lessened by chatting and what not, it’s a type of loneliness you can’t really learn to cope with, because it has to be remedied through physical contact. In most scenarios, when you say goodbye like that, you will see each other again, even if it’s a bit of a ways off. You look next to you and there’s no one there and you talk to yourself and you’re surprised that no one’s listening. The air suddenly feels a bit more brisk, as does the bright light of the morning. And off you go, back into the world that made you cherish those moment so much, because they were so foreign to you.

joyful

joyful

Wanting to escape from something means that you want to be somewhere else.

I didn’t know what I wanted to escape. In high school, I found my solace long ago in foreign streets, where I wouldn’t be hindered by anyone telling me what to do. It was a simple, express freedom. Sometimes I would relieve stress in other ways, escaping through rebellion or whatnot. Now, although those freedoms are at liberty to me and I can go where ever I want, I still feel like I want to escape. it wasn’t always clear what I had to escape. This sort of desire to escape these days feel like the need to make money, or to live in a house. I want to be prominent or worthy. I want to make my family and peers proud, as well as having nameless faces look up to me. Other times, I want to escape loneliness. Not so vivid, it’s a dull emotion that I feel these days. However, something very deep within me tells me that one day, when I have all those things which I want today, that I would still feel that emptiness in my soul. For me, “wanting to escape” or “escapism” is just another way to say I want to fill the emptiness of my soul. I know I am at least partially an empty person because I don’t feel any lasting joy in my life.

What I really want to do is feel joy and be happy. What I really want to escape from is the emptiness of my own soul. Sometimes I fill this emptiness with temporary things that make me feel temporarily good. I get drunk, I smile and laugh, I enjoy time with peers and family. However, there is a dull throb within me that desires some deeper sense of emotional satisfaction and inner peace. This is not to say I’m not grateful, because I am. I feel deeply indebted to everyone around me for everything. But the problem lies within myself, because I know that what I have will not change or affect this emptiness I feel within.

I feel like I belong too closely within this world. I am already accustomed to it’s daily conventions. Years go by in the form of wandering hours. I desire things which I know won’t give me joy, but rather comfort or an ego boost. Relationships seem like a way to escape loneliness because that place with someone else, regardless of who they are, seems better than where I am by myself. But I know what I really want to escape is this emptiness in my self.

I am an empty person. I must be, because my happiness is governed by my surroundings. Inside, there is no real me which is happy or sad. My emotions are a byproduct of what goes around me, or a realization of this emptiness in itself. I think that this emptiness will subside in the near future because I will accomplish my goals and feel good and be with amazing people. But I know it will not, because the human is so adept at becoming used to circumstances. and reverting back to the mean primary emotion.

You can escape life by killing yourself. It is an irreparable move in which you escape, but causes everyone around you to feel sadness and loss. In a way you transfer your escapist tendencies into sadness to those around you. You escape life because it is too hard to bear and you realize that although things might get better, you won’t and maybe don’t deserve to be. Fear not friends, I would never kill myself because although I am not brave, I do think I will not always be empty. You cannot find peace by avoiding life. Instead of emptiness, you might find blackness — an unknown which might potentially be much worse than emptiness.

Innate sense tells me that I can find joy in God. However, I have not found it because my hope lies not in a desires for a heaven or salvation, but that things around me will get better. In many senses, although I have the capacity to rationally understand my place in relation to God, I choose not to, because I am a sensual person. I want to feel money, ownership, and accomplishments because those will make me feel good. I am cheating myself out of true joy because of this.

I don’t hate myself. I like who I am. It is not amazing but it could be a lot worse. And I sit here, knowing that no matter what I do, these hours will pass around me and go forth even I choose not to. I could sit here and do nothing for the rest of my life if I choose. But I want to be somewhere else —this is the nature of escape after all. But to where? Is fulfillment of soul found in a place? Perhaps in people or love. Or maybe it doesn’t exist and everyone joyful is pretending to be happy. I don’t think so, but it’s a possibility that the natural state for a person is unbelonging. Truthfully, I don’t feel like I belong. I want to be somewhere else, both mentally, spiritually and physically. Self betterment, whatever. But my mind will revert back to it’s emptiness. Not perhaps in the bitter and angry moments of my adolescence, but maybe duller. More boring and trite. The dullness of my emotions I attribute to this.

I value my life as well. I think I live very privileged and find myself a casually intellectual and fair person. Does something have to happen to get me to understand myself better? It is possible to push a human into forcing himself to understand himself. But there is no force in my life. Just the constant feeling of under accomplishment and desire for worth.

A statement I live by is: it’s not what you do, it’s how you live it. This means it’s not what or whose life you live, it’s how you live it. It’s not who you date or what your job is, but how you love and how you work which has importance. I already know, it’s not what I do that’s important, but how. But every ‘how’ is only as strong as it’s ‘why’. Why do you love, why do you work, why do you live, why do you breath, why do i write, why do I want to be happy will be the guiding principles behind how will i love, how will i work live breath or be happy.

All I know right now is that I want to be joyful. I have determined that this is more important than being great because greatness will only be great to me if I find joy in doing it. Everyone has their own perspectives of greatness but I have found mine. It is true that I want to be great, both for the world and for myself. However, being joyful in what I do is something I wish to communicate greatness through.

I don’t drink or do stupid shit because I hate myself either. It’s just a natural reaction to desire to be somewhere else. However, understanding where I want to escape to will be a worthwhile investment for myself.

all positive vibes

all positive vibes

One of the ways I know I am lacking in my spiritual life is because I do not feel a lasting sense of joy in my life. Although I am momentarily happy here and there depending on who I'm with and what I'm doing, overall I don't feel any sort of peace within myself. On a wide variety of levels, I am in discord with myself and my situation. And yet, even still, I don't feel angry or fearful. I really feel nothing much of the time.

I often wonder if I lack depth as a human. I desire to feel vivid and penetrating emotions, but emotions are brought about through outside change. This outside change lies beyond my control. Something must happen for me to feel something about it, whether it is in retrospect or in the moment. Yet, I am so quick to forget and let go of the past, the emotions I feel only linger for a moment. Feeling anger, sadness, happiness, etc. are what makes me feel alive. These days, my emotive plate seems somewhat drab. The lack of vivid emotions these days make the days tasteless and droning.

I remembering feeling differently. I vaguely remember a constant emotion during parts of my life. Feeling repressed, frustrated, angry, sad, heartbroken, anxious or whatever. Things would happen which would affect me deeply, and I would feel things. Feeling those things made me feel alive. It had nothing to do with my purpose or any sentiment of depth, but simply reminded me that I was a living person. A soul or vigorous spirit that exists within the present time. I know I am still that, I just don't feel like it right now.