August 17, 2009

Her name reminds me of a flower.

I'm trying to figure this whole thing out, but I think I might be going at it from the wrong angle. A broken-off engagement two winters ago, and the subsequent 'throw yourself at anyone who will open her legs for you' phase as I trod through the rubble of the home we would share, and here I am, thwarting 4 billion years of evolution and however many kajillion base pairs of nucleic acids in my genome, all of which are aching, just aching to duplicate themselves towards ends more noble than mere damage control. Pheromone receptors in the olfactory bulb, just aching for the molecules that would unlock their neurochemical cascades. Alpha waves and appendages. But the quiet part of my mind that wants it to stay quiet for a while whispers: "Wait a minute --- what do you want, anyways?"

And all is still. The moment you stop looking, you find more than you can ever ask for.

She's older than me, not so much in years, but in everything else that counts. She's patient with my aloofness, understanding me better perhaps than I understand myself. She saw me get misty-eyed at the poetry reading we attended ---

"You, you got the best of me / And now I pity the one who gets the rest of me..."

--- so I guess she saw something in that.

This might just be the much-dreaded state of being 'just friends', but honestly, I don't think I want much more than that. Our lives are diverging at the fork in the road we're standing at right now, and honestly, after a lifetime of being emotionally stunted and holding the world at arm's length, I finally feel like a human being. I'm emerging, and she's been around the entire time to see it happen.

So she's moving up North to work on a farm. I'm moving to South America, if all goes well, where I'll shit my guts out and, hopefully, do it in the latrines I help install before the amoebic dysentery gets too bad. She once mused that all her past boyfriends all go off and do amazing things thousands of miles away, and she never sees them again. This happened to me as well, I replied. Maybe she's realized something, too. I wish her well, but not without the hope that one day, our paths will cross again.

So, in conclusion: I don't think there's a decision to be made here. There is a lot of appreciating to do, however, and I better get around to it before she sinks under my horizon.

I woke up at 10:00 after falling asleep around 2:00, which is pretty good for me (getting less than 3 hours sleep the night/morning before probably had something to do with it).

At 11 I got a little stoned and it really motivated me (somehow DARE never mentioned that as a side-effect). I thought that it was kind of pathetic that I spent a whole summer and all I had to show for it was that I "expanded my mind" a little. Maybe most people never even get close to doing that, but I could've at least done something else while I was at it.

I think I'm going to actually...try in school this year. I mean I always tell myself I could get straight A's, but I never prove it. If I do, I think I'll tell my parents it's from smoking weed. What are they going to do, be mad that I got good grades?

It was at first, a malignant machine, a lugubrious edifice that was the whole of reality. This was the third layer, beneath that of the human condition and the superficial, mundane exterior layer at the surface of the strata. This was a terrifying assemblage of cogs and wheels that lent our world its callous algorithms and disquieting superlatives. This was the screaming foundry, and we were unwittingly stoking its fiery heart with the kindling of our rotting civilization. The machine was constantly undergoing vicissitudes of evolution and accumulation; it grew like a cancer and yet jettisoned much of the slime that it consumed, always looking for more novelties of progress. I cowered, feebly hoping that the monstrosity would somehow shut down, or be irreversibly mutilated – or better yet, utterly annihilated. For although the precise schematics of the immense contrivance were far beyond comprehension, I slowly began to understand the deleterious purpose of the machine – total, absolute control.
I knew then that we had abandoned our freedom long ago, when this device was first constructed. We relinquished it willingly, perhaps believing that this existential capitulation would ultimately lead to enlightenment. Instead, we remain in a perpetual dark age, hopelessly lost in our gormless fabrications.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I let go… I fell for an eternity, falling in all directions at once, traversing dimensions and realities. And so, the elusive fourth stratum unveiled itself with exorbitant grandeur, and at once I was hurled into the deluge of infinity.
It was sublime, resplendent… it was madness, lucidity, ecstasy… it was the entirety of actuality reduced to a dazzling singularity of radiance and color, forever spiraling into itself, out of time and out of space. I was totally immersed in existence, I was naught but being and consciousness and immanence, pulsating like blood through the hallowed veins of the cosmos. All points were all other points, and all was all else. Distinctions of rationale, design, form, disparity were disregarded – all was pure, innate energy and supreme significance. It was the everlasting river of God, gloriously interwoven with existence. It was the only truth one could ever know for certain – everything as it was, is, and will be, for all things at all times and in all places.
I realized, only then - it was the reason to live.

Do you remember this commercial? "Yo. Technology boy." … (smile) "That's a really nice computer!"

When I moved to my new laptop (a week or two ago), I got the smallest hard disk available, which is about triple what my old laptop had. To set it up, I considered using the user and file transfer thing that comes with a Mac. I highly recommend that, because it's easy, plus automatic, plus effective, which equals magical. But in my case, I had messed with the guts of my old laptop too much, and the thought of bringing that mess with me didn't feel good. So I schlepped all the files I thought I needed over my work's wireless network into a single folder called Inbox.

Let me tell you about an inbox. <-- There, I wrote an article about it.

Since that one file-copying step, I have been using my computer normally, and now and again I take something out of the inbox and put it where it belongs. A few days ago I did my photo library, for instance. It has been the fastest, cleanest move from one computer to another I've ever done.

By the way, my Inbox folder has a custom icon. I used the icon from a Mail.app mailbox file. In OS X it's easy to do this, but you'd never guess: Get Info on a file that has the icon you like, click the icon in the upper-left of the window so that it highlights in blue, and Copy. Then Get Info on a file or folder whose icon you want to set, click the icon, and Paste. This is also a great way to pull a quick prank on someone.