Tue, 27 Dec 2005
topthe turning of the year
As I get older, I think I get more resistant to learning anything new, despite the fact that I know that I am currently in an extraordinarily maladaptive state.
I give up. Just let me lie here and rot for a little while. I'll figure everything out later.
But, as they say, time waits for no one, and I figure I've got to look back sometime.
You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from.
It's soon time to make resolutions, to ring the new year, to start with a new slate, but I know myself too well. I've never managed to keep a resolution past January 31, and is futility really all that bad if you accept it for what it is?
Never before have I been caught in a horrible loop of "been there, done that." It is all too easy for me to look ahead and prognosticate that any changes that are bound to happen are also bound to be bad.
Is it really that healthy to always prepare for the worst? I am reminded of a particular passage from Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (which I blogged about once upon a time.)
With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out.
"Long-term or short-term?" she asks.
Both.
"Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after."
Really?
"Really," she says. "So don't sweat…. Can you just relax and let things happen?"
I ask, does she mean, like disasters, like pain, like misery? Can I just let all that happen?
"And Joy," she says, "and Serenity, and Happiness, and Contentment…. You don't have to control everything," she says. "You can't control everything."
But you can be ready for disaster….
"If you worry about disaster all the time, that's what you're going to get…."
The whole world is a disaster waiting to happen….
"No matter what happens," [she] says, "no matter what you do… it's the right thing."
And I think I've said this before, and it just continues to worry me: I can't feel a goddamn thing. I mean, I can sense misery and pain and suffering and hopelessness, but I don't think I can experience them anymore. Sure, it's a coping mechanism, but the sad fact of the matter is that I can't seem to experience anything. Oh, sure, I've had momentary lapses of joy now and then, but you know that sort of contentment that gets you humming, makes you look forward to the next dawn? That, I don't know a damn thing about. That carefree, innocent glee that all kids at least are capable of. I don't remember the last time I felt that. Deep down inside, I know that once upon a time I did, but I really lost the habit of it. I've been worried about the future for so long, all I really know how to do is worry. About things that I have absolutely no control over.
The first step to dealing with tragedy is acceptance. But I think there's got to more than that. It's like watching your house burn down, or something. I mean, yeah, at some point you have to accept it. But what is it, what is that emotion that makes you determined to move on, to rebuild? That's what I'm missing. I've learned the trick of living with the ongoing tragedy of the universe, but I haven't picked up the technique of starting all over again with full vigor. We all know that all things go to shit eventually, but I feel like most of the human race is able to build anyway. Sure, some of these people are probably deluded or insane, but I think there is something wonderfully innately human in that—the ability to keep going, and not just survive, but excel, even in the face of horrible setbacks. I really don't know how to do that. Sure, I can keep going, but it's nothing more than short-term survival. The long-term is nothing but this bleak, featureless haze, of the same thing over and over again, death and decay, and the long black darkness of eternal sleep.
You know there's something wrong with you when you're only 29 years old and the only thing you really have to look forward to is death.
But I'm too jaded to think that I can turn things around in 2006. I mean, yeah, you've got to start out small. Tiny steps.
There's gotta be more to life than this, right?
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Tue, 20 Dec 2005
topone step at a time (it's all about small, non-threatening things)
Probably around January, I'll have cleaned out of my apartment. Maybe. If I remain strong-willed and devoted. It's times like this that I wonder if I haven't got some sort of subtle brain damage. I've been reading Descartes' Error by Antonio R. Damasio, which deals with how, contrary to popular belief (and Vulcan culture), it is necessary to be emotional in order to make sane, rational decisions. He begins by pointing out certain brain-damaged individuals whose abilities to reason, to communicate, to manipulate abstract ideas, and to process information, are in fact intact, and yet they display the inability to navigate through normal life, often making monumental errors in judgement.
The interesting thing is that this hearkens back to my little soliloquy on executive brain dysfunction. I had also read The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind by Elkhonon Goldberg (which I've touched upon tangentially once upon a time) and times like this, I really feel like I should get an MRI. Or maybe treat myself empirically with amphetamines. (To the DEA agent who may be reading this entry: I'm totally kidding!)
I don't know. My brain is just serious mush right now.
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topchaos
As I sit here in front of my computer in my underwear, unshowered, and unshaven, procrastinating about going to work, I stare at the detritus of my living room, with weeks-old mail strewn across the floor, and tangled up wires all over the place.
Times like this, I can't help but wonder: what the hell am I doing with my life?
And then I remember this: It is far too late for regret.
It's 53 degrees outside right now and there was a very recent time in my life when I would've classified this as a heat wave, what with it being December and all, but now that I've completely readjusted to sunny Southern California, all I really want to do is bury myself under my covers and wait until spring. I kind of wonder if seasonal affective disorder is simply a genetic anachronism from some mammalian ancestor that used to hibernate. Whatever it is, I've got it, and it sucks.
And why is it, that when I'm feeling really low, whatever the reason may be, I always find myself dwelling on the fact that I'm alone. Oh so very alone.
Ha.
It's time, meet me on the sunny road…
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Sun, 18 Dec 2005
topdying days
burnt out, trampled, bruised and scratched up tattered and shredded into bits was it dark purpose, cruel design as the daylight waned and darkness usurped the land that I was made against my will to face the dying and the dead made to be Charon rowing the rickety boat across that lifeless river
I will remember their lifeless eyes the heart still beating, the lungs still drawing breath but the soul knew no more, trickled out, evaporated in that final agony that is wordless the only cry a weak whisper escaping from my lips in that bleak despair of those sterile rooms the darkness of bitter morning looming outside the windowpanes reminding me that we are, in the end, just lifeless meat
I have mastered the art of crushing hope stamping out the sparks of miracles to offer nothing more than a peaceful death (but it is as I have always known it the dying may suffer, but it is the living who must bear it) send sweet nepenthe dripping through your veins and it is I who must remember who will whisper your name in the dark quiet night in the silence before dreaming in the space between spaces
It is the weeping of the still-living that wound me thousands of tiny needles and knives and the dreams and hopes of what might be shredded and mangled by cold, hard science the mathematics of probability and Time's unstoppable arrow even the stars are torn asunder, obliterated into soul-sucking darkness given enough time
Those final breaths, hard, and labored, the body, unthinking, still aches to live but all I can promise is unending sleep
It is in this quiet moment the cold silence of dark winter night hanging over me that I catalog the names of the dead whisper their names like a litany and pray for dreamless sleep.
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topemiliana torrini "sunny road"
I think I have a thing for Icelandic women. I stumbled upon the single "Sunny Road" by Emiliana Torrini I think somewhere on the iTunes Music Store. The album it's on is "Fisherman's Woman" which juxtaposes her sweet gentle voice with pretty acoustic guitar accompaniment. I don't know why, but it makes me think of the California coast, and light rain.
> /playlist > permalink > 0 comments
Sat, 12 Nov 2005
toplow score
found on eye.8.infiniti
clearly my life is a goddamn mess.
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  2.9 |
| Mind: |  2.8 |
| Body: | 2.5 |
| Spirit: |  4.2 |
| Friends/Family: | 2.7 |
| Love: |  0 |
| Finance: | 2.9 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
although, as Charles Bukowski once said, "if you don't have much soul left and you know it, you still got soul."
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Thu, 10 Nov 2005
top525,600 minutes
The heart may freeze or it can burn The pain will ease if I can learn There is no future There is no past I live this moment as my last There's only us There's only this Forget regret Or life is yours to miss No other road No other way No day but today
does time really move this fast, like a flickering flame, slow and steady when it's first lit, then burning harsh and smoky as the tallow softens and melts, years dripping downward like spent wax, faster and faster until the flame at last flickers out?
it is approaching 9 years since those dark and dreary days when I lay trapped in my self-wrought impregnable prison of fear, making decisions and succumbing to indecisions that have irrevocably altered the arc of my destiny, and just a snippet of a song from good old B flings me back to older realities just as well as a fully working time machine would.
Without you, the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows.
Without you, the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play.
The stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you.
The earth turns, the sun burns, but I die, without you.
Without you, the stars roar, the breeze warms, the girl smiles, the cloud moves.
Without you, the tides change, the boys run, the oceans crash. The crowds roar, the days soar, the babies cry, without you.
The moon glows, the river flows, but I die, without you.
I've been trying to wrap myself in the darkness of autumn, but looking back, I see that this is the time when things, great and small, tend to fall apart, from my minor pathetic tragedies to the horror of the fall of great nations.
seeing death face-to-face day-in and day-out, dealing with her like a familiar customer, I have been swiftly punished with harsh guilt for my failures, and taunted with false hope to remind me of the futility of my Art. I have been forced to accept the tenous fragility of life, how easily the fire of life can be smothered and snuffed out. And I can't help but think about that one final autumn in the not too distant future that won't have spring to follow it.
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Sun, 30 Oct 2005
toptoo early
so I forgot that we switch back to Standard Time today, therefore waking up an hour too early, which is, I suppose, not as bad as waking up an hour late. and now for some reason my stomach is tied up in knots.
I really think that I'm pretty much losing my mind.
yesterday I fell asleep right after work, which is a shame, because I actually got out around 3:30 pm (I could've gotten out earlier, but I was slacking off too much at work) and the sun was still shining pretty bright. of course, it was a saturday, and since I'm essentially anthrophobic, it was doubtful that I would use it to good purpose anyway.
anyway, I woke up feeling all depressed for some reason. it's not like I had a bad dream or anything. I mean, sure, I was kind of bummed that I had to work the entire weekend, but this is not anything entirely new. I suppose I should be happy that I even get days off. but that wasn't it.
sure, there's the whole existential angst thing, the whole "I'm doomed to die all alone" meme that I've been obsessing with as of late. but I don't think it was really any of that crap.
mostly, I think that I certifiably have an Axis I diagnosis. I have lately been not wanting to do much except go to work, eat, and sleep, and sometimes not even that. unopened mail has been piling up again, and my apartment is in worse disarray than usual. dirty dishes have also been piling up, and it has been a supreme effort to throw away the garbage.
but I managed to extricate myself from this hellhole known as my apartment and sauntered on down to the nearby Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, had myself a dulce de leche latte, then moseyed on over to the also nearby Borders.
once upon a time, I had dreamed of becoming a writer.
ah yes.
now don't get me wrong. I really like what I'm doing now. I like taking care of people, and I like teaching them about health matters and how to manage them.
but there's always that feeling—I suppose it is merely greed—that I wish that I could do both. I almost (but not quite) wish that I could do both things half-assed rather than do one thing well and the other thing not at all. but here we are.
the thought is that soon enough, all this madness will end. In three years, I will (in theory) not be working 80-100 hours a week anymore, I'll have time to actually have a life. I guess the thing that freaks me out a little is that by then I'll be 32, just one year younger than when Jesus Christ was crucified, and what I'd really like to do is have a life now, while I'm still nominally in my very late and waning 20's.
I don't know. days like this, I'm afraid that twenty or thirty years from now, I'll look back at my life, at all the suffering, all the loneliness, all the dark despair that I've put myself through, and I'll wonder, was it worth it? and that answer will be, no, but there's nothing you can do about it now. hell, why wait twenty or thirty years, sometimes I think that now.
and it isn't so much that I don't like where I am now. what I regret, and what I resent, is what I had to let go in order to get here.
although "letting go" is perhaps too optimistic a term to use in reference to that which I never had. but I digress.
at the least, my depressive mood lifted a little bit.
still, what worries me is that despite the fact that I will no longer have to endure sub-freezing temperatures, I have a feeling that this is still going to be one long, hard, cold, miserable winter.
> /soul > permalink > 2 comments
Tue, 25 Oct 2005
toplosing touch
maybe it will get better when I'm done with this ridiculous lifestyle of working, on average, 80 hours a week (and sometimes even more than that) despite getting paid essentially peanuts. but, knowing how my life has gone so far, I'm not going to hold my breath.
I found it amusing that dear S thought she should try to bolster my courage and encourage me to meet women. She serendipitously reiterated BD's mantra of mathematics, which is, if you get rejected enough times, inevitably, at some point, you are going to succeed. It is at once a very optimistic and yet very fatalistic belief system.
now, never mind the fact that I am hypersensitive to rejection. maybe I don't really quite try. it's more like I blunder into situations. this is, after all, how I got together with N all those years ago. I suppose that the words are not enough. instead I need to suffer and bleed to convince people that I really want and need them. and, sadly, I can't do it any more. at the first sign of pain, I stop and give up. which explains my massive failure rate, but I don't quite understand why it doesn't seem like it's quite that painful for everyone else.
I still reminesce about that time I told A that I really like her, but then left it at that, which I guess she was OK with, which is, I suppose, better than her saying flat out, no way. it is bizarre how a relationship that never was haunts me perhaps even more than when N cheated on me and slept with some other guy. I think my inability to show A how much she meant to me, how much I wanted her to be part of my life, just epitomizes my lack of agency in this world. thinking back to that time, I realize how helpless I am with trying to get my life going in the direction I want it to go in. Instead, I am doomed to tread paths that have already been laid out for me, and no matter how much I resist, I get inexorably pushed down these roads that people long dead have already paved for me.
I think, also, that it is funny that I also told S how I felt about her, and she discouraged me quite ardently. I think we might remain pretty good friends, but she will be married some time soon, and I'm just going to hang out in the shadows, watching other people be happy.
it isn't quite that I don't try. it's just that my attempts really, really suck.
witness the latest minor disaster. it isn't necessarily the end of the world, that I woman I am interested in fails to call me back. one out of many, I suppose. but I don't know if I can really do this mathematics thing. I can't really see myself doing this more than four or five more times without it hurting really badly, and I figure the number of times I need to try are more in the hundreds range—or worse.
heh. if I didn't hate the current Pope so much, I should just get it over with and join the seminary.
it was interesting the choice of songs my iPod decided to play on the way to Tuesday night dinner with J and friends and back again:
- "You're the Only One for Me" by Allure
- "It Might Be You" by Roberta Flack
- "Everything" by Material Issue
- "Little Heaven" by Toad the Wet Sprocket
- "High and Dry" (cover of Radiohead) by Mike Moore
The first song reminds me of the time my sister tried to OD on Tylenol, after which I visited her for the first time at UCSD. The second song makes me think of all those times singing this song on my dad's laser disc karaoke machine. The third song was mine and N's song, which, ironically was covered by Fuse around the time I was hanging out a lot with S. The fourth song reminds me of my elementary school—this was one of the end title songs for the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie starring Kristy Swanson, Luke Perry, and Paul Reubens A.K.A. Peewee Herman, and they shot some of the scenes near my elementary school. The fifth song is one of my favorite Radiohead songs, and sort of embodies my plainitive demand from the universe at large. So far the universe doesn't seem to give a damn.
I don't know. I think I'll just listen to whatever iTunes serves up to me right now. Like I've managed before, there is something about music that just makes me feel better, even if nothing else seems to be going right.
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Mon, 24 Oct 2005
topchrono trigger
for some reason, I am fantasizing about time travel right now. sometimes when I grow weary of my life, I wonder if I somehow missed an important flash point early in my life. you know, like there was a decision I was supposed to make, but I didn't make it.
sometimes I feel like I am seriously going the wrong way.
but I think of a super nintendo game that me, my brother, and my sister would continuously play way back when called "chrono trigger". the premise of the game is that the heroes have to travel across time to make certain things happen and prevent other things from happening so that the world doesn't get destroyed. on the way the heroes are faced with the bleak hopelessness of the future and the dark desolation of the past. an ancient, magical utopia is destroyed, like all other empires, by mad, ruthless power grabs and greed, and the future is annihilated by nuclear war, the planet left to rot like a hollowed out carcass, a world not dissimilar from the world of mad max and the thunderdome, or the horrific future envisioned similarly by both "The Terminator" and the "The Matrix." and the Enemy that must be defeated is revealed to be a thing that feeds on despair and destruction, and only an awful sacrifice by the main character saves everything.
not that I hallucinate that I'm going to save the world or anything.
I just wonder if I was supposed to go in a completely different direction. I kind of regret that a lot of my life has been spent in acts of wanton self-destruction, and as I start cresting the hill known as Life, I don't particularly look forwards to the ride down.
there is a subplot in the game about a man who gets torn out of his own proper time and into the hellish future, where he lives the rest of his days all by himself trying to build a time machine so that he can get back to his proper time. in the end, he fails, and dies, and days like this I sort of feel like that guy. I sometimes feel that my chances for happiness were somewhere in the distant past, if only I had made the right decisions instead of plunging headlong into the abyss, where I am alone and forsaken, and the worst thing about it is that it's all my fault.
of course, time travel makes me also think of John Titor. I had a dream about him once. I dreamt that I had successfully discovered the secret to time travel and that on the way to the future, I passed him as he made his way to the past.
my fantasy is kind of ridiculous, though. if I really did discover time travel, would I, instead of using that kind of power for the Good of Humanity™, use it instead to fulfill my own petty desires? I'm not sure I would even screw with Fate that much. after all, we are all here by the coalescensce of a trillion billion million different decisions and indecisions stretching all the way back to the big bang, and for me to screw with even one of these choices would mean not only possibly the difference between life and death, but the difference between existence and non-existence.
in the end, I content myself with the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (on which the cult classic series "Sliders" is based.) Even if in this world I am doomed to loneliness, there is probably at least one or two worlds where I found fulfillment and happiness. all I want to be able to do is to be able to see what those worlds are like, to know that even if my future is desolate, that maybe it could've been all right if I had just made the right decisions in the past.
ah, whatever. I don't know why I imagine that it's all down hill from here. although I'm getting closer to it, I'm not quite half way through this life quite yet. surely there's still time for a change. or not.
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topautumn
the days are getting short now, and I never really understood how people can claim Southern California doesn't have seasons. (I think I've waxed philosophically about this before, but anyway.) sure it doesn't get mind and limb numbingly cold, but there is still a significant, palpable change in the air.
I always seem to become extra-reflective during the autumn. (as if I weren't extra-reflective already.) my mind gets drawn deep into memory, as I wonder at my folly, at my mistakes and missed chances in autumns past.
I can't get to sleep. it's fucking 2am.
and whatever it was that I wanted to say seems to have slipped my mind. ah well. forget it.
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Fri, 21 Oct 2005
tophow low are your sex standards?
Is this really any surprise at all?
| Up for anything You had sex with 17 out of 21! | ||
| ||
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The How Low Are Your Sex Standards Test written by chicken_pot_pie on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
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Sat, 15 Oct 2005
topunattainable
why do I dream of things that cannot possibly ever happen? I know, I know. BD explained to me once in a drunken and blunted state: I seek the unattainable because it's safe. There is no fear of failure when you already know you are going to fail.
I'm not talking about unattainable as in "there's no way she'd ever be attracted to a fat slob like me, no way she'd ever fall for a big loser like me." I'm talking about unattainable as in "she's been with this guy for like nearly a decade, they're practically married," like utterly, damnably hopelessly unattainable.
and yet still I dream.
> /soul > permalink > 1 comments
Wed, 12 Oct 2005
topvoiceless
so it seems that I have lost my voice. I woke up this morning and didn't realize that I didn't have one until I went to buy coffee. Huh. I guess that's what is unique about living alone (this is the first time I've ever done it) I can go for nearly three hours without having to utter a word to anyone. Even in the household where I hated one of my roommates, this wasn't really possible.
it is, I suppose, a little sad and pathetic, but, hey, we're not going to dwell on that today.
all in all it's been one kind-of fucked up week. Depressingly, I again had to stand by while a little kid died. I had traded a Saturday call (because I was deathly ill) and this past weekend I had to pay it back.
now I realize I can be disgustingly blase about death. It is truly a defense mechanism. I made it through the night by not thinking about it, even as I wrote orders to increase the morphine and start Ativan, and OK'ed not getting labs and even not getting vital signs. I even slept for a good three hours. But then I got up, wrote 8 progress notes, when the attending let me go home, and thanked me for taking care of the little kid who was dying, and I know I really didn't do too much. The aura of depression was palpable in the unit, and I walked out of there sadly, and by the time I made it to the cafeteria, it hit me.
I realize that my life has been stripped bare of emotion for a long time now. I don't remember the last time I cried, I mean, really cried. And, yeah, it's all a defense mechanism, because I'd probably be crying continuously about how fucked up this world is. But that's all I really wanted to do, with all the busywork done, and all that was left to me was to go home with another little bundle of sorrow tied to my heart. Even then I wouldn't let myself do it. The tears came, but I squeezed them back. How else are we supposed to survive this stupid life otherwise?
I find myself thinking about that little kid for a little bit every day now. I didn't even really know him or his family. I met them for like 15 minutes, and I blundered into their room with all the grace of a blind, ataxic elephant. And here's this kid who can't breathe, who is suffocating because of malignancy, and there's nothing I can do about it but stare like a stupid oaf. There's nothing I can tell this family that has suffered horrendously. I'm completely useless.
I can't even bear to think about that kid's family. It tears at the flesh of my heart. It's physical pain, and it's not even my own pain. I just can't imagine it. It sucks. That's as articulate as I'm going to get about it.
But yeah. I guess I had to vent that. It sucks not having anyone to talk to about it.
So, yeah, this is why I say with regards to a lot of things that it doesn't matter. Because if it did, then it would just hurt way too much, all the time.
> /soul > permalink > 1 comments
Fri, 07 Oct 2005
topis it friday already?
the thing that sucks about my job is that for the most part I only get one day off every week. This means that, for the most part, Friday doesn't mean jackshit to me. Probably because I have just recently been let out of my cage and have actually been cavorting in the World Outside™, only to be penned back in again, I was acutely annoyed by how much fun the rest of the world seems to be having.
for sheer companionship and affection, you can't beat having a dog. the week I descended down into the Pit of Despair™, I had my sister's dog Pazzo as a constant companion. being that for the most part he is cooped up in my sister's apartment, she usually takes him out twice a day. this task devolved to me while I was in NYC. Man, sometimes I can't help but feel envy for the life of a dog. you don't have to worry about food or shelter, you can sleep all day, and the best most wonderful thing to look forward to is the daily walk.
Pazzo is rather well housebroken, and he exhibited supreme bowel and bladder control, to the point where he would whine in agony rather than soil himself. He would always remind me that it was time to go for a walk by headbutting my leg and trying to climb up me and claw at my face. So, at least, that was one thing that was fun, and which I miss.
When I got back to L.A., we tried to start walking our family dog Angel more regularly as well. Unfortunately, unlike Pazzo, Angel is extraordinarily antisocial. He has bitten people with little provocation (luckily he doesn't know how to rend and tear flesh—it's like his teeth don't work properly) The other thing is that, unlike Astoria, where my mom and dad live is on a decent sized hill. It makes for one good workout, but it is difficult to convince me out of my lazy stupor to go.
I've thought of getting a dog, but I realize that I wouldn't have the time, energy, or patience to housebreak him. And, if the condition of my potted plants upon my return to San Diego are any harbinger, I would probably end up guilty of canicide.
fuck, I have to work tomorrow.
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Thu, 29 Sep 2005
topsympathy for the damned
So I actually made it out today and went to the Strand, where I immediately purchased way too many books. One of them is a book I've frequently stopped at and even flipped through but never before felt compelled to purchase. It is called The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, and the very first paragraph sort of captured how I've been feeling the past few days:
Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself. Love, though it is no prophylactic against depression, is what cushions the mind and protects it from itself. Medications and psychotherapy can renew that protection, making it easier to love and be loved, and that is why they work. In good spirits, some love themselves and some love others and some love work and some love God: any of these passions can furnish that vital sense of purpose that is the opposite of depression. Love forsakes us from time to time, and we forsake love. In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident. The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance.
It's sad and tiring to realize how easy it is for me to slip into this state, when I don't have the structure of the work day to keep my mind occupied, despite taking medications. And I suppose that's the flaw. I'm basically just hanging on, killing time, getting by. Subsistence. Hence, the lack of growth.
Another part of me believes I simply can't communicate what I feel to anyone who has never been depressed before, which is, I suppose, inevitably true. I just feel like I've been staring at this hole in the Universe for a greater part of my life. I haven't yet fallen in, but I'm definitely in a decaying orbit. And, sure, I can make some things still happen in my life. I have somehow managed despite sometimes crippling bouts of this malady to obtain an advanced degree in something, and in some ways even managed to excel in the field. Miraculously, despite many hiccups, stutters, stumbles, and outright falls, I've somehow held my shit together long enough to achieve what can perhaps be objectively described as a modicum of success. But looking at it from a distance, it's obvious that in some ways, I'm just breaking even. What is easy for many, perhaps a majority, of people is often a grueling task for me. Someone who possessed my inborn talents but who lacked my propensity for melancholy might have become Someone Great. Someone who might have already changed the world for the better. Me, I'm just doing what I can to keep getting sucked into that Utter Darkness, to keep my flickering candle flame lit.
I suppose the experience that I have no capacity in communicating to others is the process of surviving this state. In some ways, I feel like I've endured a mental anguish that most people are lucky enough to not have to ponder. As Solomon alludes to in the above paragraph, non-depressed people typically don't ponder their own staggering insignificance to the universe. Me, I've stared that fucker in the face night after night, until the notion that everything I do means nothing has been burned into my soul. So every fleeting emotion, every measure of excitement, every infatuation, sort of just fizzles out, because in the back of my head is the belief that nothing permanent is going to come of it. It's like I've been trapped in Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex[1][2] from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and much to my dismay, my brain didn't get liquified to goo, and I'm forced to live with this knowledge for the rest of my life.
At this point, it's no longer a matter of ignoring this thoughtstream, of forgetting about it. At this point, I would have to be brainwashed. Re-educated. Made to believe that what I do is not meaningless. I mean, right now, intellectually, I know that's true. That everything I do has some effect on the universe, as infinitesimal as that effect may be. And regardless, there is the ethical beauty of just tending the garden—the task itself is its own reward. As Gandhi put it, "Whatever you do is insignificant, but it is important that you do it." But it always rings hollow. I do take my job seriously and somehow find it within me to sincerely give hope and comfort to others, but for some reason, I can't get my advice to apply to myself.
I've long realized that it is one thing to know, and another thing to understand. And yet again, it is completely another thing to believe. I know that what I am putting myself through is a destructive process that I don't need to go through. I think I even understand what I have to do to get out of here. But the thing that is holding me back, the thing that is sucking me down into the black hole is that I can't for the life of me get myself to believe any of these things.
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topreality continues to ruin my life
I don't know what to say. Is it the weather? Am I simply having a premature episode of seasonal affective disorder?
I remember last year when I was on vacation, I was kind of dreading having to go back to work. Now granted, this was probably because I was new to everything, and didn't know half of what I was doing, but, really, it's not like I'm so much smarter now. I think that one of the maladaptive rationalizations I've learned is that confidence isn't so much a matter of being able to do things right, but more of a matter of not giving a shit. It isn't so much that you get better at things—it's simply because you care less.
But, yeah, another pathological aspect of my psyche today is that I almost can't wait to get back to work. What kind of sick fuck would rather be at work than on vacation?
The main problem is that I certainly have way too much time to think, and all the paths I know always seem to lead me to deep, dark places full of despair, with no apparent way out. I think I succeeded in the strategy of not-thinking for the past few months, what with family crises and being busy with work, but this break has got me thinking that maybe this isn't such a great strategy, since everything I hadn't been thinking about has suddenly reared its ugly head in my face with at least twice as much soul-sucking strength.
I'd like to say that I'm OK, that, sure, there are lots of things I want from the world right now, but I just have to be patient and tend my garden, and as time marches on, I'll discover the difference between what is important and what is not. But on deeper inspection, it becomes clear that I am all sorts of fucked in the head, and the notion of becoming even remotely unfucked is somewhat laughable, and I suppose the noble thing to do is to try not to drag down too many people into my whirling vortex of decrepitude.
Right now I think it is appropriate to quote Tyler Durden: "Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction…."
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Wed, 28 Sep 2005
topapproximating sanity
a summary of the rather depressing conversation I had with BD the other day:
so he indicts me for having a rather boring and empty life, which I can only agree with. that's just how it is. the thing that is troubling is that I really don't have the wherewithal to do anything about it. now I know that no one is going to rescue me from this downward, toilet-bowl-flushing-like spiral, so as far as I can extrapolate into the future, I'm just pretty screwed.
sure, it's a defense mechanism. because I'm pretty much done with dealing with rejection, having had extensive experience with the process. so I've pretty much decided that I'd rather not meet any new people. solves a good percentage of my problems with dealing with humanity. my rationalization is that I'm barely able to keep up with the people I already know anyway.
but they say no man is an island, and I know deep down this is pretty pathological. I guess I try to cope by trying not to care, by detaching myself from the situation. so if someone doesn't want to hang out or talk to me, oh well, such is life. it's not like I'm not usually busy anyway.
so BD hopes that things will be different in 5 years. for one thing, he's sick of hearing me tell him the same old shit. definitely in terms of my emotional growth, I haven't changed for the better in the past 5-7 years. in 5-10 years, he anticipates embarking on what CB once called the hetero-normative consumer pathway—the American Dream, the lifestyle that includes 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, a 2 car garage, and 2.5 kids. ah, married with children. he'll be telling me about the not-sleeping-because-the-kid-keeps-crying, the dirty diapers, the teething, and all the stuff that I'm bizarrely familiar due to my job, but which I don't really anticipate being able to put into practice in my own private life. now I'm not one to call anything impossible, but I wouldn't exactly bet my life savings on the possibility of being in a similar position in 5-10 years. (Lord have mercy on my convoluted sentences.)
the reality is that I know that this can't possibly continue on for that much longer. realistically, something drastic is going to have to change, or I'm probably going to be dead. sucks, and I hate to be alarming, but I can't envision much else happening in the long-term future.
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topwaste
so I ended up not doing anything today. I was another of those days where I wonder how I may have offended any deities or if I was an evil bastard in a past life. it didn't help that I didn't sleep very well last night (although, likely, that's part of the reason why today was such a waste.) I moped around all depressed for no rational reason, although I did get out to walk my sister's dog. I wasn't able to find replacement razors for my Mach 3, so I just said screw it and decided to get another razor. after shaving off nearly a week's worth of beard growth, I thought I was finally ready to head out to the city, around 4:30pm. then I couldn't find my 7-day subway card. after much cursing and frantic searching, I gave up and decided to shell out some cash. what made me finally surrender was that my iPod battery gave out. it was just not meant to be.
I don't know. I suppose one of these days, perhaps my temper will flare and I'll be insane enough to not accept failure, and rail against probability even if it kills me. Times like this, my thoughts stray to the Battle of Maldon.
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topnothing meaningful or constructive
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
OK. I feel a little better now.
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topreeling
my tarot card reading was rather ominous today. basically the gist of it was that everything is fucked up in your life and will continue to be so in foreseeable future, and that the only recourse is to go with the flow. the creepy thing is that my horoscope for today basically said the same thing—that despite things failing to go my way, there's no use getting pissed off about it, and that I should just roll with the punches.
great.
if I wasn't certain before, I'm pretty goddamn well certain now that there is something chemically wrong with me.
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topinsomnia (how i hate the night)
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infrared, How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night.
—Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyso you know you're in trouble when you wake up and then immediately regret it, mostly because you must now consciously face some fact that you wish weren't true.
how is it that a recriminating conversation indicting me for emotional stagnation, coupled with a relationship status change on someone's profile on Friendster create sudden emotional turbulence, the likes of which I would hardly be able to foresee even just a week ago?
in other words, why can't anything ever stay simple?
but I recognize that it doesn't matter. or, more precisely, it does matter right now, but since it won't kill me (I'm pretty sure), in the big picture, it doesn't matter.
or some such solipsistic rationalization as such.
feh.
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Tue, 27 Sep 2005
topi am so fucking doomed
so I watched 2046 with BD today at the Sunshine Theaters. it wasn't what I was expecting, but I found myself engrossed by it anyway. the protagonist is a writer who churns out smutty science fiction. the time frame is the late 1960s. the setting is hong kong. he is a seriously damaged character, basically unwilling to let himself get attached to anyone, and even when he realizes what he's doing, he just lets it tragically go on anyway, resigning himself to eternal loneliness.
or maybe I'm just projecting.
anyway, in Old English, doom didn't have the negative connotation it does today. it was basically a synonym for fate, for destiny.
sometimes those are just cards you get dealt.
whatever happens, happens, even if it keeps happening fucking over and over again.
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topnyc: revisiting the big city (continued)
in some ways, gotham has been on my consciousness for a slightly longer time than the windy city has. the first time I came out here was in January 1993, and from what I remember, it was not yet fully giulianified. me and others from my high school were only there for a night, I think, on an east coast college tour. I remember being cold, staying in a place infested with roaches, with holes in the walls where some guy on probably pcp decided to take out his aggression on the building. ah, those were the days.
the second time wasn't until 1997. this was when I became enamored with the irrational tangle of steel rail and electricity known as the new york city subway system. me and my family did the whole tourist thing—the empire state building, the statue of liberty, the world trade center. we even watched les miserables.
third was in 1999 while I was on the way to farmington, connecticut to interview for medical school. BD was living out in jersey city at the time. I got lost looking for the port authority and it was snowing. I remember wondering if I could actually die out there.
fourth was again in 1999, after I had made my move out to chicagoland. it was interesting to compare and contrast the two cities. JdG had just moved out there at the time, to Brooklyn Heights. BD had moved out to Astoria. I had an interesting adventure navigating the N and R at 3:30am coming out of Brooklyn. I finally emerged on the Queens side by the time the sun started coming out.
from that point on, I think I may have come out there pretty much every year. in June 2001, JdG graduated from the New School, and a bunch of us from college came out, mostly from Cali. I came back out in late July 2001 with BS, JT, and C. That was a lot of fun. it is somewhat eerie to think about that time, right before the WTC was destroyed.
seventh was in late June 2002. Me and Y decided to go on an insane 15 hour road trip from Chicagoland to NYC, leaving inexplicably at 12am, finally rolling across the GW Bridge around 3pm. BD was in Hoboken at that time. That trip, I think, set the tone for my lifestyle the rest of that academic year.
eighth was in late january-early february 2004, when I was interviewing at mt sinai for residency. I had flown in from chicago, where it was 2°F without windchill. I remember coming up from the newly reconstructed WTC subway station and catching sight of a temperature reading of 18°F and I remember rejoicing for how much warmer it was.
ninth was just last year, after my sister had moved out here for law school. she now lives in astoria. that trip was less eventful, spending most of my time trying to catch people in their spare moments, or hanging out at the museums. I really dug the Cloisters and am thinking of going back up there just for the peace and quiet.
so this is my tenth trip to this city that doesn't sleep, the city between two rivers. at least collectively over the past 8 years, I've probably been out here for a total of two months or maybe more. I still fantasize about moving out here some day, but it seems less and less likely. I am too in love with the eternal california sunshine and the desert. but, never say never, right? (even if I've just said never twice… anyway.)
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Sun, 25 Sep 2005
topwaking the sleeping dragon
so I guess the weather really does fuck me up pretty good. I've got to make it a point to move to an apartment that gets better sun exposure than where I live now. hopefully with air-conditioning, especially since direct sunlight will only heat the place up a bit.
but I didn't leave my hotel room until about 2pm today. I had my Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's, and I decided not to go up to the Signature Lounge since the weather was so shitty.
so I let my solipsism get the best of me. as soon as I walk out onto the street, it started raining, and then quickly pouring. if I didn't know any better, I would take this to be a sign, a bad omen if you will. the grey sky really depresses the shit out of me. I doubt I would last very long at a latitude any farther north than Chi-town—I barely survived as it is, and not without probably lasting mental scarring, but what are you going to do, live and learn, I guess. in any case, once again, my decision to move back out to sunny southern california is reaffirmed.
I am still impressed at how coming back to a place can dredge up all these long-submerged thoughts and emotions. I mean, maybe it's just coincidence. it has, after all, been a while since I've had a chance to sit back and re-evaluate my life. I suppose the only true difference is that I'm a lot more resigned to my current lifestyle (or lack thereof.) Except for brief bursts of incapacitating depression and moments of excruciating sleep-deprived suffering, I really don't dwell too much on leaving for Tierra del Fuego or the Himalayas. it's entertaining, no doubt, but probably a little too fantastic for a reasonable Plan B™.
the cold hard truth is that I will be expected to continue to be sleep-deprived and angst-ridden for at least another three years, and, as people are wont to say, it's only going to get much worse before it starts getting better. Oh goody. the deception is the idea that somehow life after residency will be all peaches and cream, and yeah, I'm probably going to make more money, but most of that it going back to pay my debt to Satan the banks, and I'm definitely going to have to work my ass off to earn it. as far as I can tell, I really don't work that many hours more than a junior attending physician. (The only thing that will definitely be nice is that I won't have to sleep overnight in the hospital.) but this is, I suppose, a worry for another day. Hell. I'm on vacation.
I guess I'm just being wistful about not being able to rest on my laurels.
that and the stark realization that I'm an emotional cripple, and there's nothing I can do about it that won't involve lots of pain, suffering, tears, and sweat.
c'est la vie.
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Fri, 23 Sep 2005
toptrying to envisage my future
it is moderately distressing that every time I come home, my mom(!) bothers me about my love life (or more accurately, the lack thereof.) it is painfully obvious to me that she wants to be a grandmother rather soon, and it baffles me how this is supposed to transpire.
I don't know, call it rationalization, call it sophistry. whatever the case, a string of disasters has rather damaged my ability to want to pursue romantic relationships. call it avoidance, call it whatever pathology you want, but I have a feeling that this is more than a transient thing. you know how people can have strokes, but how some people just have neurological deficits for no more than a day (a transient ischemic attack, or TIA), others have it for a couple days or so (a reversible ischemic neurological deficit, or RIND), while others, it just continues forever and actually gets worse over time (a cerebrovascular accident, or CVA) I'm beginning to suspect that, as far as my romantic abilities is concerned, I've entered the end-stage. as far as I can tell, there is no rehabilitating this cynicism and fear. I've closed off all possibility, and whenever there is a faint glimmer of hope stirring somewhere in the corner of my mind, the vomit reflex kicks in, the way someone with leukemia tends to throw up every time they come to the hospital, even if they're not even going to get chemo.
in short: as far as finding true love, getting married, and having kids is concerned, I think I'm pretty much doomed. I've crossed myself off of Darwin's list.
Again, rationalization. Sophistry.
so it is that subconsciously I tend to linger in the friend zone. Instead of pursuing possiblities, I deliberately let them go. abandon all hope, all ye who enter here. what the fuck is the point?
so I don't really now why I bother. there is not enough alcohol in the world that would get me to jump off this doomed train of thought, at least not enough alcohol without outright killing me.
drunk? who me?
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topmemory lingers in the streets
in today's trivial minutiae: I am typing this on my brother's Toshiba Satellite, horrifically missing MacOS X. It's really just the little things. Like how I don't have to reboot the stupid computer every time I wake it from sleep because I can't get back onto the Internet. Like how I don't have any built-in Firewire ports and therefore can't charge my iPod (because, like the scatterbrain that I am, I left my stand-alone charger in San Diego.) I've had to sort of shoehorn a UNIX like system onto Windows XP (by installing Cygwin) feh. the spacebar is screwed up for some reason, and I have to really pound on it to make it type a space.
anyway. I wandered the streets around the Mag Mile today, and I couldn't help but reminisce about all the times I've done this, usually in misery or loneliness or both. for example, I started thinking about that time when S left me in the Friend Zone, her rejection burning in my chest like Drano, all the while listening to M trying to rationalize a way to forgive her ex despite the fact that he had likely fathered a child with someone else (all the while stabbing my heart with little pinpoint daggers. ah the joys of the Friend Zone™) and here I was wandering these empty streets under a grey, dreary sky (I can't even remember what month it was because there were so many grey, dreary days over the past five years) chain smoking cigarettes and imagining how my life was going to turn out, how I was probably going to alone for the rest of my life, and how every day was the same, this low-level of mediocre misery. not the incapacitating grief of full-blown major depressive disorder, to be certain, but certainly as annoying and as draining as a case of infectious mononucleosis.
and it's interesting how when you go back to places that you haven't been for a while, all of the sudden all those emotions you left dormant come up to bite you in the ass, or at least make you trip as you're trying to step onto the curb.
what is interesting (and not a little bit pathetic) is that nothing has really changed. I just have a lot less time to wallow in self-pity these days. I mean, yeah, as soon as I'm done with residency, the rest of my life pretty much looks like that black pit of despair that imagined that one gloomy day as I strode down Michigan Ave, burning cigarette in hand. it's not a little pathetic that the one bright spot of the exhausting work I'm doing is that at least there are attractive, intelligent women there who talk to me and give me smiles of recognition, this despite knowing that (1) it scarcely means anything, and my desperation is merely a symptom of being single for far too long and (2) relationships among colleagues have this tendency to become far too complicated and volatile.
so here I am on day 2 of my vacation, whiling the time away in my hotel room, typing about how sad and pathetic my life is. as usual. I don't know, like I said, I'd rather not think about it, because the future, frankly, looks horrifically bleak on a more global level, and currently, I am from at least a purely monetary point-of-view, worth more dead than alive (because if I die or am killed, the insurance on my loans will cover my debt.) while, certainly, I could theoretically start making money once I am done with this particular stage in my life, the thought of working for the next ten years merely to bail out this sinking ship known as my credit rating kind of leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, and it's times like these that I feel like picking up and moving to Argentina, or preferrably somewhere where I won't get extradited for defaulting on my debt, or maybe joining a remote monastery somewhere, but oh well, whatever. As they say, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
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topchi-town revisited
so to be honest, I decided to come out here because of a girl. now M can't say I've never come out to visit.
but I was also intrigued to come back to this place, to see if anything has changed since a year and three months ago when I left this place, likely for good, except for times like this, perhaps.
I have discovered, much to my chagrin, that, without free plane fare and without leeching off of any of my friends, Chicago is an expensive place to visit.
I don't know if it's simply because I don't get out anymore—at all, but cruising down the Blue Line from O'hare after all the airport workers got off at Jefferson Park, I noticed that there were a lot of young people out. not that there's anything surprising with young people going out on a Thursday night (after all, everyone knows that the weekend starts on a Thursday) but, I don't know. I suppose it's just where I am in my life. All the people I hang with are either my age (circa 30) or older, and, sadly, most of the time, it is work-related. Man, I can't believe I am calling early 20 somethings "young people". Still, I'm kind of stuck on the notion that anyone younger than my little sister is pretty young. This despite my "baby sister" turning 24.
anyway, I realize I miss the big city. I miss the ability of being able to walk a couple of blocks from where I live and be able to find something interesting to do. I only actually lived in the city proper for 2 years (and out of that I spent nearly 6 months out of town) but I was in Chicagoland for 5 years total, and it's strange to not be able to think of this place as home, as much as I bitched and moaned about being stranded out in the Midwest.
although, I suppose that was the interesting thing. I fully recognize that growing up in Southern California separates you from reality de facto, simply by the fact that you have to get in your car to go anywhere. Hence, trapped in your little bubble universe travelling at 15 mph down the 405, you really don't get the same sort of city vibe. Mike Davis talks about the irony of artificial, Potemkin city centers dotting L.A.—Universal City Walk, Downtown Disney. Hell, that's what malls essentially are—prototype arcologies, privately owned pseudo-public spaces.
I dunno. I'm starting to leave stable orbit and head out into the vast blankness of outer space, but it gets me thinking about the so-called "culture war," which in some senses marks the divide between the people in the rural areas and suburban hell, and the people who live in the city proper. Sure, you can't ignore the notion of race when discussing this, but to focus on that alone is oversimplifying. The so-called "Sun Belt cities," of which L.A. is the prototype, and which easily includes San Diego, are really just hundreds of suburbs and private artificial developments that, after forming some critical mass, were amalgamated into these hellish places of big-box Walmartization and cookie-cutter tract housing with no true city center, no true central business district to speak of. in what may not be coincidence, these kinds of cities dot the landscape of the red states. I mean, the whole premise of suburban living is that is somehow approximates the wide-open spaces of the countryside and combines it with the consumer-convenience that civilization (i.e., city centers) traditionally provide. In my mind, it doesn't work. Decentralization and hodge-podge unregulated development simply lead to the stagnation of youth (since they don't have anything interesting to do or go to when they're not at school except for the mall), the obesification of American people (since you have to hop in your car to get anywhere, and no one walks—there aren't even any sidewalks sometimes), and widespread environmental destruction. There is also a sense that this disdain for natural ecology practiced by many developers leave unsuspecting suburbanites at the mercy of not-so-merciful Mother Nature. While New Orleans was destroyed, and Houston awaits the tender ministrations of Hurricane Rita, you can see every year how parts of Southern California routinely burn down (see most of San Diego County and the mountains in Ventura and San Bernardino Counties in the Autumn of 2003), and all those rapidly (and cheaply) built hillside developments tend to slide into the sea. (See Ventura County, Malibu, Laguna Hills.)
Not to say that the supremely centralized schema of urban development pioneered and well practiced by Chicago is the end-all, be-all. Chicago has had it's share of eco-disasters. After all, a year or so before I ever came here, nearly a thousand people died one summer from heat-related conditions. But there is something about living in a city like Chicago, or New York, or San Francisco, that is missing from places like San Diego. (Oh, sure, L.A. is the prototype of sprawl and decentralized private development, but in it's early history it developed more like traditional cities, and you can still see faint glimmerings of that when you wander around Downtown or K-Town.) The wackos on the religious right see the centralized city as fortresses of depravity and the libertarian disciples of Ayn Rand find the centralized city as the epitome of the welfare state, but it's hard for me to relate. After all, the centralized city is the basis of civilization—without the city-states of Mesopotamia, without urbanization along the Nile, the Indus, the Yangtze, et al, what would life be like?
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Tue, 13 Sep 2005
top29
Uugh. Hard drive crashes. Very sucky. My iBook lies on a Apple-certified repairer's workbench. The hard drive is actually no longer the problem, since I successfully tore open the plastic case, unscrewed 30-40 screws, popped off the aluminum shielding, took out the clattering 40 GB factory-installed hard drive, and popped in a fresh 100 GB 2.5" hard drive from (you guessed it) Fry's Electronics. The iBook actually works OK. The problem is that (1) I've managed to render the CD-RW non-functional and (2) the latch has snapped off, so that the laptop fails to close. I won't even mention the lack of audio. I had accidentally torn out the wires that connect to the built-in speakers. (I had also accidentally torn out the wires that connect to the power switch.) I managed to fix the power switch, but since I didn't want to go screwing around trying to figure out which wire was live and which wire was ground, I just remnants to the inside of the case and let it be. That's what external speakers are for, anyway.
In any case. What did I do today, one more year closer to that notable epoch, that dreaded age? My sister thinks I'm insane for thinking a year ahead (and I probably am) but I tell her, no one cares about turning 29. the only reason anyone cares about turning 29 is that it's one year closer to 30.
Not that 30 necessarily has any significance personally. Sure, society at large seems to make a big deal of it, but in reality, I find myself using 32 as a rough guide, the age at which my father married my mother. Then there is 33, the age at which Jesus Christ was crucified. And then finally there is 36, which is currently the half-way point if you subscribe to the putative life expectancy of an American human male, which is 72. Of course, since I'm a person-of-color, that is probably lower than that, and because I'm overweight and borderline hypertensive, probably even lower than that.
Ah well, I'd rather die young anyway.
In any case, all I did today was turn in my poor battered iBook for attempted resuscitation, then got sucked into the vortex known as Target. I now have two unassembled fusion maple file cabinets sitting in my living room. I then went to Fry's because I felt a little antsy not having at least two working computers in my apartment, but I managed to stave off temptation and actually left that godforsaken hellhole empty-handed.
After that, I went into a bit of decline…
I did manage to tame a few meters of the unwieldy wires traversing my apartment. Right now, it looks like my front door is booby-trapped, what with the thick ribbon of wires running up and down the siding. There are eleven different-colored cables, and it is quite aesthetically displeasing to look at, but I can't figure out an alternative. I need a Feng Shui expert's opinion on how to run my multitude of cables through my apartment. In any case, the decreased amount of entropy in my apartment is actually almost palpable.
Definitely not my worst birthday, though. People called, I chatted and caught up, and I hung out with a few folks for a little while. I've decided that my worst birthday is probably when I turned 23 (nobody loves you when you're 23) and I was all by myself stranded a good couple thousand miles or so from anyone who gave a shit about my existence, and I managed to miss everyone's phone call, and I didn't talk to anybody, and all I did was cower in my apartment, completely overwhelmed by being marooned out in the Midwest.
Heh, this is the first birthday in a while where I haven't been delirious and/or drunk. (Last year I didn't even blog my birthday because I was on-call, and while I wasn't drunk, I was certainly delirious, not to mention the fact that I literally passed-out and I was offered IV rehydration.)
But, yeah, I'm in a contemplative mood now. The fall has never been my favorite season. It's always bittersweet. On one hand, September heralds my birthday, on the other hand, it means summer is over. And in the past few years that I've traipsed over this earth, September always seems to be the time when really bad things transpire, or when things I hope dearly for fail miserably.
Ah well. Good times for a change. See the luck I've had would make a good man turn bad. So please, please, please, let me, let me, let me, let me get what I want…. Heh. No cake, no candles, but I'm making wishes anyway.
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Sun, 11 Sep 2005
topcatch up
a lot of crazy, fucked up shit has gone on in the past three months since I fell off the blogosphere (and, remarkably, none of them have anything to do with unrequited love, for once.)
"Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up… — Iñigo Montoya from "The Princess Bride"
now if you've read this blog for any length of time whatsoever, I'm sure you're familiar with my penchant for melodrama, but, to put it in 25 words or less, a loved one had a near-fatal event, another relative is in the middle of a long drawn out messy divorce, another relative apparently deliberately failed to invite me and my family to a wedding, another relative is getting married rather soon.
In the midst of this all, I have stood at the bedside of two babies, watching them die, without me being able to do anything about it. My stupid dog bit someone. An American city has been destroyed, not so much by nature, but by sheer, brutal incompetence. And for the past couple of days I've probably sleep nearly forty hours. Yesterday I was literally awake for only 4 hours.
Ah, yes, let me vent my hypochondrism before I start believing my own paranoia. Yesterday it was about 12pm. I had gone to sleep around 8pm the evening before, so I was kind of hungry by now. I hopped into the car, crossed a few intersections, then realized that I really couldn't turn my head without wanting to puke.
Fun times.
So, my peripheral vision severely curtailed, somehow I manage to get a bite to eat and make it home without either crashing or puking. Thank God for better living through chemistry. I've been popping meclizine like breath mints, and while it keeps me horrifically sedated, at least I haven't spewed barf all over my apartment.
Naturally, I am forced to wonder, do I have viral meningitis (because it can't be bacterial, otherewise I'd be dead by now) or do I have a brain tumor? Realistically, I should wait until next Friday before I jump to conclusions and demand brain imaging. As it is now, I probably deserve a spinal tap, but I don't have much desire to have a three-and-a-half inch large bore needle shoved into my back. And, unless it's herpes (which is unlikely, because, again, I'd otherwise be dead by now), there really isn't anything I can do about viral meningitis except bitch and moan.
In the interim, I have zoomed through a few books by Tom Holt, a British fantasy writer whose prose has made me laugh out loud in quite inappropriate venues. So, yeah, it's funny. It's pap and filler half the time, but if you're a fantasy freak, how can you not love references to Gollum?
He does, however, pack a mean melancholy ending. One of the books I read Little People ends with the guy not getting the girl. Pretty much the same thing happens in In Your Dreams where the hero saves the girl who had once loved him, only now she doesn't because the bad guy (or, bad girl, to be exact) sucked it out of her brain.
It really is nice to know that someone else can relate.
But what else is there, really? My mom keeps bugging me about meeting someone and getting married, which really isn't anywhere on the agenda. It's at best around number 125, right up around brokering world peace and being one of the first Filipinos on the moon and/or Mars.
Anyway.
That's really the sum total of the past three months. I could go all out into deep meta-analysis and illustrate just how these events have completely warped my mind, but suffice it to say, if you thought I was weird before, you ain't seen nothing yet.
> /soul > permalink > 2 comments
Sat, 23 Jul 2005
topquestions for miss manners
now I'm no etiquette nazi—far from it—but the following wedding goings-on strike me as just a little gauche:
- A 32 year old man does not get his own invitation, but is instead lumped in with his parents—with whom he does not live with. Bizarrely, his sister and her husband are not invited at all.
- The bride-to-be's aunt is invited, but not her husband (and, no, they are not divorced.)
- Acquaintances are invited over close family members.
- Many people—including close family members—are invited to the bridal shower but not to the wedding or the reception.
opinions?
> /soul > permalink > 2 comments
Mon, 04 Jul 2005
topsingularity
compelled to distill some sense from the gnarled mass of thoughts like a tangled skein of yarn convoluted into incomprehension pathetically conflating this sensation, this phenomenon of not feeling any pain merging this concept with happiness
knowing it is hollow, a dessicated rind of delusion enclosing the horrific, intrinsic void
this nullifying nadir of my existence at the hopeless bottom of this gravity well embraced on all sides by impossibilities
what more, indeed, what more can a man ask for? as I stifle my desire, crush it like a spent, empty beer can against my forehead
because what is desire but suffering? but still knowing that stillness is death
can my soul ossify, perhaps? fossilized, smashed down by the weighing strata of fear fraught with failure I think: Atlas with the world on his back the doomed caryatid falled under her burden my soul crystallizing into dead, still carbon (you ever think of diamond as the sad remains of some creature? some sad creature as myself crushed down into something that sparkles at last)
times like this, I wish I could implode like a star shining bright my heart blazing like a hellacious furnace committing violent acts of creation raging with the tempest of a stellar wind illuminating the aching void of the cosmos
Oh.
I am but a man alone, and doomed to die and days like this I wonder if that is all I have left to look forward to.
> /poetry > permalink > 0 comments
Sun, 03 Jul 2005
topstrings of memory
(disclaimer: all that I understand of m-theory is what I have read from Brian Greene's excellent popular texts The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. I am hampered by my inability to do calculations more complex than integration, and in reality don't really use much more than basic algebra these days.)
As I zoomed up the I-5 from San Diego (for some reason, having lost almost an entire day to sleep) I pondered how I was tracing a three-dimensional path through four-dimensional space-time (not even wanting to ponder the other six to seven dimensions postulated by m-theory) Realistically, I was really just thinking about a two-dimensional path through three-dimensions, considering only two of my own dimensions crisscrossing space-time, a la "Donnie Darko," where the titular protagonist can see an object smearing across space-time, being somewhat able to anticipate the near-future. And given the continuous nature of the threads that make up my individual atoms, I was wondering, why wouldn't it be possible to send signals to myself back in time?
Clearly I have been influenced by Kage Baker's The Life of the World to Come which is about a corporation called Dr. Zeus Inc. (AKA the Company) which has a time travel machine and uses it to retrieve treasures that were otherwise believed to be destroyed (for example, the books lost in the Great Library in Alexandria when they burned it and Hypatia, hitherto unknown works of Shakespeare, etc.) The one limitation is that they discover they cannot actually change the past—everything up to the 24th century is already known and thus preordained. (Why this changes in 2355 remains a mystery)
There are metaphysical theories that use M-theory as a springboard that posit that the phenomenon of consciousness occurs in the hidden, curled-up dimensions, thereby explaining the difficulty of tracing the exact neurons in the brain that should contain "the soul." But even without this hypothesis, if you imagine the (very flawed) analogy of a particle's wavefunction/worldline/fatemap as a continous thread tracing space-time, given the contiguous structure, why couldn't you send a signal along this thread, regardless of which direction it goes with regards to the arrow of entropy?
(What would it mean to be sending a signal through the time dimension only? Is it forbidden because of the inability to travel faster than c? )
Clearly I have not successfully done this yet. I don't have future thoughts intruding into my head as of yet, nor do I recall any instances of this occurring. Or maybe I could be wrong. Maybe that explains many of the extraordinarily vivid dreams I sometimes have—bits and pieces of the future getting garbled as I send them down my own wordline.
Would this explain my frequent sensations of deja vu? (Although I suppose Occam's Razor could simply point to psychosis, but is not a productive line of thinking.)
Could this explain my current sense of ennui? I have no desire to try anything these days.
Mostly, I am extraordinarily wary (and perhaps not a little paranoid) about falling in love.
Not that there's really any risk of that happening these days.
But seriously, the days have been passing with a sense of "been here, done that" that has been quite alarming. When you start losing your desire to eat, and your sex drive, that's got to be a sign that something is not right, and while I'm probably just clinically depressed, I like the exercise for my imagination.
I'll keep trying to fling memories back to my former self. Everything predestined, but with a very convincing, very harrowing illusion of free-will.
Maybe.
And that's the best we can do until all the qubits decohere.
> /physics > permalink > 0 comments
Thu, 30 Jun 2005
topGNOME 2.10.1 build order
updates revised 28 June 2005
GNOME 2.10.1 was released on April 17
- glib 2.6.4
- atk 1.9.1
- pango 1.8.1
- gtk+ 2.6.7
- at-spi 1.6.3
- libart2 2.3.17
- libglade 2.5.1
- libgnomecanvas 2.10.2
gail 1.8.3libIDL 0.8.5- ORBit 2.12.2
- libbonobo 2.8.1
libgnomecups 0.2- libgnomeprint 2.10.3
- libgnomeprintui 2.10.2
- gconf 2.10.0
- gnome-mime-data-2.4.2
- howl 0.9.10
- gnome-vfs 2.10.1
- audiofile 0.2.6
- esound 0.2.35
- libgnome 2.10.0
- libbonoboui 2.8.1
- libgnomeui 2.10.0
- gnome-desktop 2.10.1
See Beyond Linux From Scratch for a more definitive build order
> /computers/gnome > permalink > 0 comments
Mon, 27 Jun 2005
topi am a nerd
> /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments
Wed, 15 Jun 2005
topthe future is now
As I waxed speculatively the other day about the development of a topographic symbiosis between the virtual and the real, apparently I've missed the boat because it's already here.
> /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments
Wed, 08 Jun 2005
topradiohead "creep (acoustic)"
Interesting flash animation set to the melancholy strains of Thom Yorke.
> /playlist > permalink > 3 comments
topmatrical metaspace
I skurffed a random essay through Blogdex about Los Angeles and the way it is depicted in various media. The author in particular talks about the abstracted representation of Los Angeles in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and how strange it is to have been to a real place and find it recreated in a video game. I imagine the emotional impact is quite different than if one had grown up in L.A., where one becomes naturally trained to appreciate the gradations between "real-real," "fake-real," "real-fake," and "fake-fake." (Or maybe it's just me.) I tend to assume that the rest of the world tends to simply dichotomize experiences between "real" and "fake," since that seems to be the most useful distinction.
Anyway, it got me imagining a merger between geocaching and virtual reality, where, in cyberspace, there is a near 1:1 construct of the real world, where your movements in the real world are completely mirrored by the movements of your avatar in the Matrix-like world. For example, say I'm going down Hollywood Boulevard in the real world. Say that once I got to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, I decide to log in to cyberspace. In cyberspace, I'll still be at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, but instead of the monstrous megamall that stands at that intersection, there is instead, oh, a space elevator. Or some other structure that is easy to program in cyberspace but essentially impossible to create in the real world. So you would have these two symbiotic paradigms: the real world, and a meta digital world, which would for the most part remain identical except for some magnificent modifications.
> /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments
Wed, 01 Jun 2005
topthe killers "mr. brightside"
but it's just the price I pay Destiny is calling me open up my eager eyes…
the chordal and rhythmic structure of this song makes me think of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
this song so exemplifies many excruciatingly painful episodes in my life, and yet I think of it as a happy song. while I'm not exactly a glass-is-half-full type of guy, I think I do have the ability to find the silver lining in even the blackest, most ominous cloud.
it's always darkest just before the dawn.
and if it can't get any worse, then that means it can only get better.
> /playlist > permalink > 2 comments
Mon, 30 May 2005
topnowhere but nowhere
Currently Playing: "As Long as I Can Dream" by Expose Mood: generalize dissatisfaction with the universe at large
The only time I felt at peace during this weekend was (1) when I was asleep (and they were sleep periods of epic proportions—I do not doubt that I slept more on the three days of the long weekend than I have in the two weeks preceding) and (2) when I was in transit.
These days, it seems that nothing makes me happier than being unconscious, and barring that, barrelling down a 12-lane freeway at 90 mph.
I seriously need a vacation. I need to go somewhere where no one can bother me, where I can just brood on my own, and, as usual, stare at the sea.
I really don't understand why I let my mind get totally fried like this.
> /soul > permalink > 0 comments
Fri, 27 May 2005
toppause
I sunk into a depressive mood this afternoon. Maybe it's just adrenalitis or something. All of the sudden I was exhausted despite it not being a strenuous day at all. The stress of the past 11 months, especially of the last four, has finally caught up to me, and, frankly, I want nothing more than to pass out saturated by tequila catching some sunlight on the beach.
I had a bizarre epiphany while listening to my iPod as I drove home from work: I am probably going to die John the Baptist-style (figuratively speaking) with my head on a silver platter.
(Yes my mind is truly arcane. I have long equated dying like John the Baptist with dying lonely and insane.)
The Playlist of the Damned:
- Green Day and Oasis mixed by Vin Vicious "Wonderwall of Broken Drams"
- Sarah McLachlan "World on Fire (Marius De Vries Mix)"
- Norah Jones "Shoot the Moon"
- Ben Folds Five "Don't Change Your Plans for Me"
I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known Don't know where it goes But it's home to me and I walk alone
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
And all the roads that lead to you were winding And all the lights that light the way are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you but I don't know how
And maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me…
The world's on fire and It's more than I can handle I'll tap into the water (I try to pull my ship) I try to bring more More than I can handle (Bring it to the table) Bring what I am able
I watch the heavens and I find a calling Something I can do to change this moment Stay close to me while the sky is falling Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone
The summer days are gone too soon You shoot the moon And miss completely And now you're left to face the gloom
Will you think of times you've told me That you knew the reason? Why we had to each be lonely It was just the season
Sometimes I get the feeling that I won't be on this planet for very long I really like it here I'm quite attached to it; I hope I'm wrong
All I