Playground.

This is how you know you're alive.

The scene is as follows:

A white room facing a large window, no pane, just glass. Can see the shadow of the room that isn't in the light but the room is too dim for you to know what is there. Your brain tells you that there's furniture. Light delicately streams through into the room as a figure walks into the light. It's just a beautiful sight. It illuminates the face. The eyes are closed. And then, the moment of humanity. There it is. A thought. You know it just happened because you can see the play of emotion on the face. Cringe. Sharp intake of breath. A flicker of memory. And then suddenly, it's gone. The eyes open. A blank stare. Lies down on the floor, a hardwood floor, you realize. Closes eyes. Dreams of moments past. You're sure of it. It's so human.

My absolute favorite times in life are the times that are real. So real, you can feel the humanity just seeping out of you, your life being consumed by the emotion, the moment...the fire slowly burning out. It's a moment that you can only relish and identify until after it's happened.

Only then can you know exactly what it was that you experienced during that small moment when you knew, when you were absolutely certain, that you were simply going to die. You felt death in between your fingers, you could grasp it and sense it overcome you. It was soft and terrifying and you wrenched and reeled away from it all at once. Your mind became ablaze with the greatest most overwhelming horror you'd ever beheld in your entire misery. You were a child again, I know it. You don't like to go back to that memory. In fact, this very moment you feel the fear again. It's horrible. I know you can feel it. It's your greatest fear. It's the unknown after. It reminds you of your worst moment as a small child, where you were powerless.

That's right. The times in life -the ones I call real- are the ones where the truth is just the truth. Where nothing is hidden and the power of the truth is in full force. You're not ten feet tall, you're not larger than life; you're pathetic, you're small. You're lower than the lowest being this earth has seen. Your misery, your exiguousness is older than time itself. It's more real than anything you're ever felt, more ancient than time. I can see it now. I can feel it. It's terrible. But it's real. And it scares you more than anything you've ever felt in your life.

It's a feeling like no other.

It's like a composition of music that touches you to the very core, that shakes your bones and opens your senses to the world that surrounds you. Your eyes are thus opened and you are in awe, and in fear. There is no sound, there is no reaction, there is no word that can describe the object of your disbelief. Because how can you believe that something this real, something so terrible and raw can truly exist? Can God be that great? Are you really that low? But you can't be. This can't be it. Denial. It's a lie. You refuse.

It's that feeling that you fly, that your skin is cold and numb. The world is made anew. You know that everything is wrong because it just seems so alien and undisguised. The bitterness of your eyes' wealth is simply too much to bear.

Oh this life, this world we live in. We long to corrupt ourselves beyond unintelligibility until we finally expire.

It's a playground, love.

So

I'm back home right now. Here are a couple of facts that I discovered recently.

FACT: Real friends are the ones that pick you up even when they are highly inebriated, and then when they can't find you (due to said inebriation) they don't get mad at you. And they don't die or get a DIY on the way home. And when they get you to their house, they make you pizza and chicken nuggets and offer you whiskey (which you graciously turn down because you can't go home drunk).

FACT: The Ugly Truth, while being a chick flick (and highly predictable) is also a very good movie. Furthermore, I really don't understand why everyone hates Katherine Heigl. She's nice. Also, I wish Gerard Butler would have kept the accent for the movie. I know it wouldn't have fit into the plot and all, but it would've been way hotter.

FACT: "Once you're finished with something; blow it up." 'Nough said.

FACT: The blues are great. Evidentiary support includes: Blitzen Trapper, Delta Spirit, Cat Power, Cage the Elephant, Dr. Dog &c.
Mark Ronson is too. But he's not blues. Still though. I should figure out how to put playlists up here.

FACT: Your sister really is your keeper. If she's a good sister. Like mine. Don't be jealous. She's one in a million. If you have a sister, love her. Be nice to her. If she's older, respect her. If she's younger, be gentle.

FACT: while home will always be where you grew up, a place you are familiar with, a place you love, the place where your family is...it stops being home after a while. It's curious the way this happens, but eventually it does happen. Then you find yourself asking "now what?"

now here are a couple of fallacies.

FALLACY: Men are all-powerful. They're really not.

FALLACY: Mexico is a horrible place. Oh you ignorant people! Oh ye of little faith! You're all so afraid of Mexico, you think that Mexico is full of crazy psychopathic drug lords (or incredibly impoverished and desperate people who are ignorant, supposedly you) who live and run rampant in corruption, and lacking in technology.
Mexico is great. Where else do you have VIP movie theaters where they make sushi for you? AND will serve you alcohol a-la-carte? Where else can you get the best tacos ever made? Where else can you not wear your seatbelt and speak the best kind of spanish ever? Salma Hayek? Gael Garcia Bernal? Diego Luna? The list is endless my friends...
Explain this to me.

I'm really big on movies, and movie quotes that are good. I memorize them. I have a really good memory when it comes to movies, quotes, music, images....little things. I've always been in the details. I often wish I could translate such a talent toward math or chemistry.

So here goes, now rest easy friends:

"The trick to not feeling cheated is to learn how to cheat."

I've got to learn how to make these things more engaging. I am trying. Please bear with me, for this is a novel endeavor of mine.

I'm about to

Take a nap. But before I do...

I'm going home tomorrow for the long weekend. Feeling very happy about that right now.

I'm really into this commercial. I love the Walt Whitman going on with the lighting and the way it's filmed. So emotive.

Huh.

I'm going to try and write with some frequency now. I created this blog about a year ago, and it was always just sitting there blank with some random name.

No longer. I'm not sure if this thing is going to have some sort of theme or if it's going to be really cool and I'll get picked up by magazines like Nylon or Foam or something (highly doubtful), however, it's going to be as true as I can possibly be (considering the circumstances).

Furthermore, I don't really know what I'll include. I guess I can include everything.

Alright then.

Well here goes Random Thing That Occurred Today Number 1:
It rained today. Most people around here check the weather every single day before they get ready for school. I don't. I should. It'd be wise. Not me though. Nah, I guess I'm just too cool for the weather because I got up at 6 AM (early for me) and decided to wear a v-neck and a little cardigan with my black jeans and lacoste shoes. Awesome. Right?
WRONG.
Nicole is so smart that she gets caught in the rain with a tiny little sweater and freezes so badly, she has to go buy a hoodie.

Cool Thing That Occured Today Number 1:
I started listening to Cat Power today. I always liked her but I hadn't really gotten into her until today.
Well, today I decided that she is amazing.
Really really good. Nina Simone good.
Give her a listen.

Cool Thing That Occurred Today Number 2:
They served Pozole in the DLG dining commons today.
Thank you Jesus. And some Apple Kuchen thing. Also good.

The end.

Some days.

I wonder about things. When I have time to really think about the non-mundane. About what I live for, what I stand for. What I believe in. What takes over my life sometimes, if I allow it to. It's funny the way we as people are so fragile. The Greeks saw it. Our lives literally do dangle from a thread. And it makes us so nervous, so scared, to even contemplate who holds the scissors. We fight, we debate, we kill.

I'm all over the place today. For now, I simply wish to lose myself in a jumble of words and feelings, emotions and thoughts going through my twisted mind. Oh these thoughts, those images deep within my minds eye, how they reverberate, how they flicker into something and disappear into nothing. Deep within the depths that are a mystery. I just want clarity. I want some beautiful effervescent light to overcome my soul and fill me until I am whole.

What is it a about human beings that is such a mystery?
Why does love cause us to become such psychopathic maniacs with strange habits and depressions? With our lusts and pleasures and lies? Is that not the perennial question? Probably not. But I know that it's definitely up there.

Despair. I have known despair.
Could you call it post-adolescent existential crisis in conjunction with unrequited -or perhaps lost- love-induced despair?
Perhaps. I know it's what everyone around me thought. I suppose it was the easiest thing to assume, the most natural path that any loss such as the ones I suffered -in succession- to be taken.
I like to think it wasn't just that though. Perhaps it's my constant desire and belief that I am different than all others around me.

My newspaper advisor -and friend- used to tell me that it was self-induced elitism. A desire to willingly segregate myself and my doings, my personality, from the norm. He may have been right, though I don't like to think so. Not exactly, at least.
Yes, my choices in apparel, music, even the food I eat are different, but I like to think that it's just because I am.
The despair, that was all me.

Not to say that others besides myself have known it, no, that would be incredibly high of me, I think. Though I know that there are few of us in the world. Kindred spirits are rare. When speaking to one who has known despair and utter hopelessness...it's comforting to find solace in the words of such a person. Old souls, that's what we are.
Old. Tired.
Perhaps that's why I have such a deep love for books; to know the history and stories of old...to know what they did in the past, how they dealt with what I deal with now. How they solved it. If only I knew. If only anyone knew.

But oh, the despair. I call upon that feeling now. I truly do wish to translate that biting emotion into a clear picture, into these words. I want you to feel it with me.
Not suffer, never that. I'd never inflict such a feeling upon another soul, not even one I disliked.
No. I wish us to be kindred spirits. I wish all to know that life is short, that love is out there, somewhere. That in our despair we may find solace in what is truly important in this short time, this short spark of life that we have in our hands. That we believe to hold in our hands, though powerless we are. So powerless.

It's awe-inspiring, though. True beauty in life. At times I laugh at the world, at what I see all around me, when I observe people in their quest to reach a certain ideal of what they believe true beauty to be.
If only we knew. We're so blind.
We're all little children running around helpless, looking for a hand to hold on to. Looking for direction, guidance.
We are lost.
Pound and Hemingway and Fitzgerald and all of them were wrong when they called themselves lost. They were just the beginning. We're in a maze and we're not getting out anytime soon.