the habit of being

I spent the last few hours trying to make up for sleep lost last night while I was exercising my right be to an emotional wreck. It’s happening too frequently now and I’m wondering if maybe this is more than just the dark side of the moon that is creativity. Perhaps I should be popping happy pills like the rest of my generation, though I know I won’t ever go there. But the thing is.. Not Okay doesn’t constitute brilliant and fascinating, being miserable won’t get me anywhere, and my ability to pinpoint my Issues won’t dispel them. When they invent a pill which will make a person Grow Up, someone let me know. None of my attempts to wash the mildew of adolescence from my skin have been fruitful, though I’ve left my body all inflamed and red from the scrubbing, and the same are my eyes from the crying, and the same is my heart from the lies. There’s a war being fought here, in my head, and at times, I think nothing will escape existence as a Casualty.

As I finally resolved last night, leaving myself to suck away the last few restful hours left, great Questions don’t amount to much. I am so concerned with these great and mighty ideals of Love, Beauty, Enlightenment, Understanding, the horrors and consequences of Indulgence and Sin, that I miss what is sincere in my experience. I even attempt to turn sincerity itself into something of that haughty and Capitalized race. Some things are better left untouched by amateur swordsmen. At this point I am no more ready to think than a four month old child is ready to accept his faith. I wonder how many people who would have become wise philosophized themselves off the edges of tall buildings in the years following puberty.

Socrates said ‘Know thyself.’ Jesus said ‘Deny thyself.’ I’m confused, but I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me to figure it out.

. . .

Perspective from this morning:

Sitting here, pretending to take notes on a physics video (waves), it seems unlikely that just a few hours ago I was in such a state of miserable hopelessness I could do nothing but cry and shake and mourn an unviable fantasy. How many more children stayed up all night paying homage to the impossibility of love and unrelenting consumption of lust? I want to keep faith in higher planes, the feasibility of enlightenment, yet when I strain myself to reach for something of a pretty (petty?) ideal, I cannot keep my eyes on the fig tree and it somehow uproots and moves farther and farther away.

I must learn to accept. I must learn not to hate myself. I must learn not to exalt myself. Great changes must come. Growth has fallen dormant. I must stir it up again.

Ignorance is not bliss.

You shouldn’t hate the choirboys or the wearers of two pound crosses; they’re probably more sincere than most.

. . .

Something I wish I could describe in words is that sometimes-random timewarp when I can truly go back and see Then. For a slit-second the whole atmosphere returns to me. There’s a tension in my crest and nervousness all about, and I think this is part of what they mean when they talk about someone making someone else’s heart beat faster. There’s your scent in the air and it amazes me how at home it makes me feel, considering we were never completely comfortable. I can remember at these times the exact texture of your hair, the temperature of your skin, the way you breathe. It makes me wonder if I store up such details about every event in my life and just don’t know how to access them.

That feeling is what is most important to me about being Together. I could wallow in that for years and never speak to you, if it were necessary. Conversation is overrated sometimes, I think. We worry so much about what does and does not constitute a meaningful conversation, when the meaning is buried so far underneath topics. I can’t remember what we talked about, I really can’t, but I can put together the whole scene in my head. It’s a silent film.

A moment like that so greatly overshadows our little word problems