05 Sep 2009
What if life is death is life.
And happiness is really unhappiness is happiness.
And love is really hate is really love.
Maybe we wish and hope for good because we are bad because we are good,
and living – even dreaming about being good is enough.
Maybe we’re all living in death, living, waiting for closure;
waiting for a start, for a glimpse at something different.
What if life is our way of coping; a way to make the intangible tangible,
because to feel the tangible pain
would validate and make life real and death real,
so that love and happiness exist and are true.
And then we wake up, realizing nothing is really as it seems.
That we are all happily alone and unhappily together.
And we’re enlightened that both good and bad,
happiness and sadness,
are created to conflict and to feed off one another.
To make each other real.
To validate life, to validate death.
Having seen Synecdoche, New York for the first time last night I was blown away by the truthfullness of it. It was ugly and beautiful and sad and happy all at the same time. It emphasises the imperfections so much that the perfections become imperfect because they’re abnormal, if not rare, if not non-existent. It makes one realize the beauty in connectedness and it awakens the soul, the mind, and the heart by shoving the fact that, unless we as individuals make life meaningful, life won’t mean anything. It’s bold, brash, and to many probably quite offensive.
It makes you realize that every second counts. I know I take seconds as nothing. Like pennies I usually toss them out or throw them away because they’re pointless. But what if I put every penny into a jar rather than tossing them out? I think that pennies are such a small amount that I’ll never acquire enough to use. Life presents us with a limited number of seconds to use. The more we throw away and toss out or pass by and the more we don’t use is a second we’ll never ever be able to reclaim.
Call me emotional, I’ll admit it. I think people tend to shy away from emotions these days. They stuff them in bottles, or bury them or hide them… It’s emotions that make changes in life. Emotions are the start of anything great and anything terrible and it’s the emotion that people remember. I’ll definitely remember this film. It’s truly life-changing, but only if you let it. I’ll close with some quotes that really stuck out to me.
“We’re all hurdling towards death. Yet here we are for a moment – alive. Each of us knowing we’re gonna die. Each of us believing that we wont.”
“Knowing that you don’t know is the first essential step to knowing, you know?”
“And they say there is no fate, but there is. It’s what you create.”
Life is beautifuil because it’s ugly because it’s beautiful.
03 Sep 2009
I’ve never been a huge fan of strip clubs before, which is probably why I’d never been. But a few weeks ago I went for my first time with my friend Melissa while she was in town. I gotta admit it was pretty fun. But being there just made me realize why I’m not really a fan. I’d never suggest a trip, but if a group of friends decided to go I wouldn’t be opposed.
Melissa comes to visit pretty often and we’d heard stories about the girls at the club downtown here, about how the quality goes up with the cover charge. “Don’t go Mondays,” they’d say. Suddenly, visions of the three breasted woman from Total Recall flashed in my head. But the Monday that we went, I’m happy to say all the girls have two rather normal breasts. In addition to having not three, but two breasts, the girls were decently attractive. Now, I’m not the kind of person who’s gonna think a stripper is hot, because well, a lot goes into me thinking someone is hot and a lot of it has to do with personality and character. No offense to the poor girls who are just trying to make a buck, but I’m sure there are more respectable ways to make money.
Okay, all that aside our trip there was actually pretty fun. No, we didn’t sit in front (close though) and no we didn’t stick dollar bills in their panties (though there was this one older Japanese guy…) but it was a fun time. A trip to a strip club isn’t cheap though. Beer (we drank cheap) was like $3 a bottle and I could easily see why people could easily spend a lot of money on other things too. Especially when…
So Melissa uses the bathroom so I decide to drink my beer and watch a little, mostly out of curiosity but a little out of uncomfortability of being in front of a lot of people who think this is normal and I’m just trying to “fit in”. I lean against a wall and before I know it, this fairly attractive blonde comes up and puts her arm around my sholder. She’s chewing gum and has no shirt on (I really don’t mind either). “How ya doing sugar?” she asks. I tell her I’m doing rather well and thanks for asking. I told her it was my first time, partly to see her reaction and partly out of honesty. “Thirty dollars in the back for a private dance,” she says, “forty and I’ll suck your ____”. While the offer is just slightly (okay, above slightly) tempting I felt sorry for her. If I actually did take her up on her offer though, the thirty bucks would be out of sympathy, not for my enjoyment.
I’m just not into that kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love a kinky woman, but strippers just don’t turn me on. A stripper might enjoy what she does but my bet is that it’s forced, kinda like having a nice waitress – while possibly genuine, it’s sugar-coated for tips. Is that weird? I could easily find something better to spend thiry or forty bucks on, like say, bills or beer or paying off credit card debt or something like that – something that’d bring a lot more satisfaction than a stripper.
Read Melissa’s story here.
26 Mar 2009
It doesn’t matter how tough we are trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives; trauma messes everybody up. But, maybe that’s the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap; maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It’s what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up.
- Grey’s Anatomy
06 Mar 2009
Recently (though I don’t know why recently) we’ve discovered that high fructose corn syrup is bad for you. Well duh. Do any number of internet searches to find out the details, but basically it contains mercury. “Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered …”
We’ve become a people that prefers a lower cost to higher health. While organic foods are becoming more prevalent, they are still a bit more expensive. Rather than spending the extra few cents to a dollar for the higher quality food, we’ll cause long-term damage and health effects to our bodies, choices that are most likely taking away from how long we live.
And this might sound far-fetched, but consider what we’re doing to our DNA. Our bodies react to things we put in it much like a virus adapts to antivirals. It becomes more tolerant. After suffering initially it learns to accept the opposition. When we catch a cold, we fight it off and eventually become immune to that particular strand of rhinovirus. We are forever immune to it.
Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” is clearly shown when we fight a cold. We suffer initially and, if we’re strong and able, fight it off. Viruses are living things just as we are and we adapt and evolve just as they do. So imagine what consuming copious amounts of mercury does to your body. And then, once we’ve adapted to it, think about what it does to our offspring.
We are cheap now but we are paying for it with our health and the health of future generations. Isn’t another 5-10 years of life worth the extra $.50 – $1.00 now?
Check out this pretty cool break-down of the ingredients in Mountain Dew:
http://nerdparadise.com/science/chemistry/didyouknow/mountaindew
01 Mar 2009
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. … A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. …
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. …
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. …
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. …
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
This is me. I make mistakes. I am not perfect. This is me, for better or for worse. Take it. Leave it. Love it. Hate it. This is me.
Edit: It was brought to my attention that this sounded angry and defensive while it wasn’t meant to. It was one of those in-the-moment thoughts and I don’t remember exactly what that thought was.
Read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “Self Reliance”