non-humans

Writing non-human characters who are similar to me is easier and less anxiety-inducing than writing human characters who are similar to me, because the latter are read as "really inhuman for a human being" but the former are read as "surprisingly human for a non-human".

Humans with mostly inhuman qualities and just a shred of humanity are scary. Non-humans with mostly inhuman qualities and just a shred of humanity are fascinating.

My Best

Between the hours of 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM today, I was happy. Not only was I happy, I was at my Best.

Do you want to know what my Best is? And I capitalize "Best" because it's very very good, very important, very rare. My Best is when I see the good in everything and the magic in the mundane and always have something nice to say about something. It's when I can interact with people without a struggle, like I'm personally interested in them. Which, on a cognitive level, I am. Not that I emotionally care about them, of course I don't and of course I can't, but I'm certainly interested in them cognitively because every human being is amazing. My Best is when I believe that every human being is amazing.

My grandpa and I were out to lunch at one point during those hours and he looked at the window we were seated by and said, "We got a nice view." And I'm sure he meant "this is a pretty big window and you can see a lot of stuff out of it", but I looked out and realized it was an amazing view.

It was a little cloudy out and we could see the street and a stoplight, a pharmacy on one corner, a shoe store on another, and in the distance, a series of apartments. A sidewalk, people walking past. And I thought wasn't it amazing you could see so many people in one place and see the places where they do things and live their lives? The places they go out of necessity, the places they call home? The stoplight was a place where people took a pause in the flow of their action. Or if the light was green, they cruised through and their flow didn't break, at least then. Seeing people going places. It was the now and the future and the moment, and action and motion, all in a human context. We were seeing tiny flashes of other people's lives, and when we were done here, we'd get in a car and we'd go on our own life and become like the people at the stoplights, moving where we'd move. 

And wasn't that amazing, to see people doing that sort of thing, the sort of thing we do? Taking a moment to be detached observers of the world we too inhabit? Like we were taking a break from doing and moving and we got the best seat in the house, where we could see others doing and moving themselves? That was amazing.

I also interacted with a person with little difficulty. The waitress we had was nice and one of the first thing she did was ask me what was on the pin I was wearing. (It's the letters "Ah", written like an element on the periodic table, with the phrase "the element of surprise" written on it. She thought that was clever.) She said nice things to us and we said nice things to her. She thought my drawing was good (I drew two musicians I like while I was waiting for our food and she joked, "When I have an art assignment, I'm coming to you." People I know from school make that joke, too.) Her name was Daisy. When she came to take our money, I told her I liked her and she was a good person, probably. She said the same of me. She said she works there on Sundays "if you want to see me again". Not sure if this was an actual "I want to see you again" or the sort of thing friendly people say (I've known enough friendly people to know that they say stuff like that - not even in an insincere way, it's just because that's the sort of thing they'd think to say). But it was nice. I liked that.

And that's what my Best is like. My Best is where I'm at ease with the world I'm in and where I see everything for what it is and decide that what it is is incredible and fascinating and amazing just by virtue of it being what it is. What things do and how we use places and how people do things. It's incredible. A miracle really.

It's 1:47 PM right now and I'm still feeling that way. I'm still at my Best and everything is still a bit of a miracle.

Publications

So I knew that today, my poem was going to be up on Leaves of Ink. However, when I checked my e-mail this morning, it turns out that some more poems of mine are going to appear in The Rusty Nail at an as-of-now unspecified date! Today is a good day for my writing.

in the middle of the ocean

I was writing my novel and I put in a metaphor involving the ocean. (Specifically, it was going off the "no man is an island" saying and suggesting that maybe people are islands, albeit islands that drift through the oceans and occasionally bump into each other, like people interacting with one another.)

I delved into that metaphor and had the narrator imagine if it were literal because that's the kind of thing he'd do and I figured it'd be a good metaphor to explore. And then I was suddenly struck with the realization that it would be absolutely terrifying to be in the middle of the open sea. Like that's what I thought of, being underwater in the middle of the ocean. I mean imagine you were underwater and could still breathe or something but you were in the literal middle of the ocean, like you couldn't see the surface or the bottom and you were just in the middle of that vast expanse of water that covers most of the globe.

This is the stuff that gave me nightmares as a kid and gives me nightmares sometimes now.

Compliments

I just realized that one of the biggest compliments I can pay something (a book, a movie, etc.) Is, "That messed me up."

Like when I say that something "messed me up", what I mean is that it made me feel a profound degree of surprise or confusion or amazement or fear that I am not used to feeling. Like it was very affecting. Which makes sense but it's still kind of strange.

I wonder if there's any noticeably percentage of people who think "messed-up" is a compliment or if it's just me.

Some acceptances.

I have some good news. I currently have two pieces of work forthcoming this year. One of them ("Belief in a Sky", a poem) is set to appear in Leaves of Ink (an online publication with a really neat name) on October 17, and the other ("Those with Faith, Their Reward (A Triptych)", a flash fiction piece) is going to be in Smashed Cat Magazine (another online publication with a really neat name) on December 12.

Rest assured I will post links to both upon their publication. For now, I'm just going to revel in the subsequent excitement and feelings of success, which is what I imagine most people would do if they were in my shoes.

I'm happy for my endeavors and to whoever's reading this, I wish you the best in your endeavors, too.

I write science fiction

I write science fiction because that's the only genre where "people like me" are portrayed positively.

And when I say "people like me", I mean "individuals who feel removed from humanity and everything that 'humanity' entails". It's usually because they're literal aliens and I'm only a metaphorical alien but I can relate to their situation.

And in science fiction, they're portrayed positively. Humans like me in fiction tend to be treated very negatively. Albert Camus's The Stranger. Hannibal Lecter. That kind of thing.

I guess it's a form of keeping my sanity. Because if I tried to venture into types of writing where the only people who reminded me of myself for meaningful reasons get labelled as sociopaths, it would mess me up even more than I'm already messed up.

metaphorical band-aids

Submitting poems and fiction has become a bit of a painful process nowadays. I think it's because I've done so many submissions that I'm beginning to fear literally running out of places to which to submit. The fear of having no choice but submitting to the sorts of places to which I was told not to submit (i.e. little-known online publications that don't pay) is becoming a very real and legitimate thing. I really don't have anything against little-known online publications that don't pay but during my training at art school for creative writing...well, I was advised against sending to such places and the idea's sort of become ingrained into me. Fighting that is difficult and it's not very fun.

It's become like pulling off a band-aid. We all know what that's like, we all know that metaphor. Needing to do something quick and painful for your own good and if you prolong the process for too long, it just becomes painful but you can do it with minimal pain if you brace yourself enough and are willing to accept it as a necessary but temporary pain.

I hate writing those submission e-mails and getting half the cover letter written but being afraid of formatting the document how they want it or choosing which version of my authors' bio to use and so I leave it for a bit to go make some tea or do some entirely unnecessary cleaning or play something on the piano that I've played at least a hundred times before or lay on the floor and talk to more light fixtures. But this is what we call "procrastination", and it only makes the process of pulling off the metaphorical band-aid harder.

I think a lot of things for me are like pulling off a band-aid. But sending my writing to other people especially so.

I pulled off a metaphorical band-aid yesterday and I've just pulled off another metaphorical band-aid today. I intend to pull off more.

More light fixtures.

So you know how I have a habit of lying on the floor and ranting at light fixtures?

I went into a room, lay down, looked up at the ceiling and saw no light fixtures. I ranted anyway despite my disappointment; it was one of my generic "what is life what am I doing what is the unfairness and horror of existence why am I dissatisfied with everything what do people even think they're doing why are humans even a thing what is this planet" things, with the added question of "why must I be in a room with no light fixtures". Because it's just not the same without light fixtures.

Well, I left the room, and when I came back, I promptly lay down in another part of the room

and I looked up

and there was a light fixture

and I just let out this constant stream of joyous laughter because yes there is a light fixture here, I can finally rant at an actual light fixture.

I just ranted in joy and there was a huge smile on my face as I just lay there and looked at the light fixture.

It's amazing what can bring happiness to certain people.

Zahnpaste

Yesterday, I taught a worker at Target the German word for "toothpaste".

I was there with my aunt and we were looking for toothpaste and I said something to her, just off-hand and conversationally, about how I like the German word for toothpaste. I said it aloud. It's "Zahnpaste". Said like "TSAHN-pasta". I then spelled it for him (because he asked) and then explained some things about how certain letters are pronounced in German.

His co-worker then came over, having heard what was going on, and the guy and I explained the thing to him. The guy who had initiated all this said, "I think I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life."

It's things like this that keep me going in life. Little opportunities like getting to teach the guy who works at Target the German word for "toothpaste".

Red Vines

So I'm going back to college next Monday. And I'm not going to have any friends. I'd be all right with this - after all, no one goes to community college to make friends, right? - but frankly, I've been experiencing a form of social isolation that's so painful it physically hurts me and I don't like it. So naturally I've got to do something about it.

Well, a few weeks ago, I'd read something somewhere on the internet that a good way to make friends in college is to bring candy on the first day of classes and offer it to people. You'll be known as "the candy person", which is a great thing to be, yeah? Yeah it is.

So I'd been wondering if I should do that (is it too weird? too out-there? too disruptive?) and I've come to the conclusion that yes, yes I should do that. What could it hurt, eh?

And you know what candy I'm gonna bring?

Red Vines.

I got this idea - well, actually, no, I was given this idea by my friend Arija. I was telling her about my resolve to be the "candy person" and she said to bring Red Vines.

I know why she said Red Vines.

It was because of the Red Vines thing.

Have I explained the Red Vines thing? No, I haven't. Let me explain the Red Vines thing. What happened was, when I was on holiday with my aunt last month, I made a joke about buying a thing of Red Vines at an office store (we went there for reasons). She said no. Because that's a lot of Red Vines and it's expensive. Four pounds of bloody Red Vines. Four pounds. Of Red Vines. Four physical pounds.

But guess what she gave me later, when we had gotten back home?

Yes. Red Vines. She got me four literal pounds of Red Vines.

We still haven't eaten all the Red Vines yet. I mean I've been eating lots of them and we're still inundated with Red Vines at my house.

So you know what? I'm going to take said Red Vines, and I'm going to take them to school.

Show up at my math class like, "Hi, want some Red Vines?"

Next day, to my English class. "Hi, want some Red Vines?"

And then to Political Science. "Want some Red Vines?"

Music Appreciation. "Red Vines?"

They're all gonna get Red Vines.

And you know what, that'll kill two birds with one stone! I'll get the Red Vines out of my house because how are we going to get rid of that much Red Vines AND, if what I read someplace on the internet is correct, I'll make friends by being the candy person!

Yes, this brilliant! I'll make friends by giving them the Red Vines we don't want.

Bless you, Arija. Bless you and your suggestion of Red Vines.

Messed-up and in-love

A situation came up in which the subject of love and messed-up people being in love came up in my mind. Specifically, how sometimes messed-up people fall in love with others and realize that they're messed-up and thus intend to change it for the sake of the person they're in love with. I mean, they could change it in a healthy way or an unhealthy way, but the point is that they think, "Oh, I'm in a relationship with this person, I'd better change for the sake of this relationship." Or sometimes it's not even because you're in a relationship with proper relationship dynamics, sometimes it's just because you love somebody and realize that the potential of the relationship with them or even just the fact of their existence motivates you to clean up the mess of your own life.

I'm aromantic and emotionally muted besides, so I can only look at these things and wonder about them. People like that, do they know their lives are a mess before love happens to them? If they do, then did they try to change before but couldn't, or maybe they didn't care to change until the extent to which they valued this person gave them suitable motivation. I can't imagine what it must be like to love someone so much that they would make you want to help yourself in ways you hadn't wanted to help yourself before, or hadn't been able to help yourself before. Or maybe it's not that you love that person an awful lot, maybe it's because you just didn't care about yourself. But that still dictates that you love that person 1. more than you love yourself and 2. to something resembling a great degree (even if it's only "great" by your own standards). Which is still something.

Or maybe you don't realize you were messed up prior to the other person. Maybe they serve as a sort of contrast to yourself. I hate suggesting that the literary trope of a beautifully uncorrupted person entering the life of an unhappy wreck, but imagine a toned-down sort of version of that happening. A realistic version. Someone falling in love and realizing that their state isn't the norm and wanting that to be different because this person's state has allowed them to see it. 

Or maybe this person finally makes you love something in this world and starts making you care. Breaks through a layer of apathy and lack of concern for anything, your own state included. Makes you realize you ought to change. Gives you the motivation to do so. Is that realistic? Does that happen? I've heard acquaintances of mine saying it's happened to them. How common is it?

My view of these things is probably quite tainted by notions I've gotten from fiction and music and stuff (I've been listening to the Magnetic Fields more lately, and their stuff tends to make me think more about love and romance and other things I don't feel, yeah). So maybe my understanding of how these things occur isn't even based in reality. But the reality I've observed does confirm that situations like I'm imagining do happen. So you know.

It's late and I'm thinking about things of which I'm merely an outside observer. Wondering how things are, really. How love is. How it changes people, maybe. Or how it makes people change themselves as well.

Pageviews and publishing

This blog recently got to 3,000 pageviews. Which isn't an awful lot, but for a no-name writer who knows that virtually no one reads this stuff anyway, that's kind of nice. I'm kind of glad about that.

Also, I'm considering compiling my previously-published poems and stories (and maybe a few photos too) into a book and self-publishing it. Probably using the website LuLu or something. So anyone who likes and who has the money can look at my writing and art. Would that be a cool thing to do? I think it would be a cool thing to do. It may be a thing that happens.

My kind of hero

I was thinking the other day about what a heroic fictional character whose ability to experience love, emotions, and fulfillment was similar to mine.

I concluded that such a character would be pretty depressive/nihilistic and not be able to experience love for anyone or anything. While they might have a few things that gave them superficial pleasure, none of it would be enough to motivate them to live or give them real fulfillment. All they really want is to not be alive anymore. Nevertheless, they would act altruistically because, for some reason, they didn't choose to kill themself and they chose to act for other people's happiness because they know that they'll never be able to achiever happiness for themself. Everyone assumes they act out of great love and selflessness but it's really the opposite. They act because they can't love or be happy. 

That's what a "good guy" character whose way of experiencing love and emotions was similar to mine would look like. I don't know every single fictional character out there, but I don't know of any who's like this. I doubt anyone would want that character to exist anyway. I mean, at best they wouldn't understand this character, and at worst they'd be repelled by someone whose way of perceiving the world was so alien and so counter to everything we think of as "heroic" and "good".

And thus I am stuck with relating to people who are bad for themselves or others because that's all people like me have. Perhaps I shouldn't be looking for validation in fictional characters because that's fiction, that's not real life, but...well, it's much easier to know things about fictional characters than real people, and I think that any real life people to whom I would relate for these reasons might be worse than some of the fictional ones. 

I would write a character like this, but to write a character, I need to be able to personally understand them, and frankly (maybe due to the lack of representation of such people in fiction, maybe not) I can't comprehend anyone whose actions consist mainly of good ones. Such a character would be a hero. I can't comprehend a hero enough to write one. Maybe that's reasonable, as the mere concept of a hero is a pretty idealistic one. Then again, cynicism is not always deep and idealism is not always dumb.

I don't suppose a story like that would ever get published anyway. I guess people like anti-heroes, but they don't necessarily want anti-heroes who are like that. They like good people who doubt themselves and have flaws but do the right thing in the end, and they like people who act in the name of good and morality but whose actions are a bit questionable, but I don't know of anybody who wants someone whose actions are altruistic but who's dead on the inside. Again, confused at best, repelled at worst.

This is what happens when you're such an uncommon individual. People may be interested to hear some of what you have to say, but much of it will be strange to them, and they will always look at you as an outside and never see themselves or the rest of the world as they understand it reflected in what your life has to say. 

Albertson's

My family and I are currently on holiday. My grandparents, aunt and uncle, cousin, and I have all gone to Ashland, Oregon, for the Shakespeare festival. We didn't go to see a Shakespeare play; we actually went to see a play adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time (which is my favorite book and which was adapted so brilliantly). In addition to seeing the play, we've gone around the town and to places in towns nearby. It's been nice. We've done fun things, the sort of things that don't happen at home.

But today, we did something that we don't normally do on holidays.

We went to Albertson's.

Now, this normally doesn't happen to me when I'm on holiday. Going to Albertson's, I mean. We don't normally find ourselves needing to get anything at the grocery store. But we needed one of those giant packages of bottled water, so we went to Albertson's to get it.

When we walked in, I just had to stand at the front of the store and process my situation. For reference - we had just come from the site of a Shakespeare festival, which had been preceded by a scenic drive through some farmland, which itself had been preceded by walking around a small town with old buildings and beautiful architecture and antique shops and suchlike. You know. Cool stuff. The sort of stuff you go on holiday for.

And here we were. At the most mundane place I can possibly think of.

Albertson's.

I wasn't disappointed. Truth be told, I was actually pretty entertained by the whole situation. I have a tendency to notice ironies and strange juxtapositions and...well, that's what the whole thing felt like. Stuff like this is what my life is all about. And I don't mean like it's the meaning of my life or what my goal in life is. I mean it's what the gist of my life's events are like. Basically, my life consists of me getting myself into things that are mostly mundane but have some sort of unusual quality that makes them amusing and a little bit surreal, and I just roll with it and have a good time while I'm at it.

I occupied myself by wandering off from the rest of the group to look at laundry detergent and window spray and stare at it and examine it like it was the most fascinating, amazing stuff ever. I was hoping that someone might come by and think, "Who is this person and why are they so fascinated by the laundry detergent and window spray?" I like making other people's lives a little more surreal. 

The others bought water bottles and some things that weren't water bottles. My aunt took a curiously long time ordering a Starbucks. My grandma suggested we get frozen dinners and my uncle suggested we not because this is our vacation and we eat frozen dinners at home all the time, vacation is the time to do things you don't normally do. He ended up ordering us pizza when we got back to our hotel.

I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that, of all the memories I'm going to have of this trip, the fact that we went to an Albertson's is one of them. I'm more than okay with that.

Four tubes of Chapstick.

I have four tubes of Chapstick in one pocket.

I am irrationally happy about this situation. It is bringing me great satisfaction and I'm currently of the mindset that nothing short of truly insurmountable tragedy could make me unhappy right now, because of the fact that I have four tubes of Chapstick in one pocket.

I don't understand this reaction to having four tubes of Chapstick in one pocket, but I'm not going to question it, because I have a history of responding strangely to small and/or ridiculous things like this.

It's sort of a paradox because I'm a naturally very depressive person when it comes to the large things (sometimes in a way that makes sense when the large things are viewed from a realistic standpoint, sometimes in a way that only makes sense when you factor in that I am in fact clinically depressive). But when it comes to the small things, I get happier than makes any degree of sense and it makes my whole mood one of indomitable joy. Like a feeling that the world is a good and happy place (or at least has a lot of potential to be) and that everything is right with the universe.

I learned long ago not to question happiness and to take it when I can get it.

Therefore, I will not question why having four tubes of Chapstick in one pocket makes me so happy.

Relationships, the past, and uncertainty.

I miss the way my friendships and relationships used to be, and I'm not sure if they aren't that way anymore because I just currently don't have around me the right people or if it's to do with the fact that I've gotten older and whatever made the old friendships so special is age-specific, one of those things you can't get back when you get older.

I'm okay if it's something I can't get back because I've grown up, I'll accept that if that's the case, and I'll accept it with grace. It's just not knowing that terrifies me. If and when I know, I'll be able to correctly understand and predict the nature of whatever future relationships I might have. I'll know if there's something in particular to look forward to. If I can expect things to be as they were in the past. Because things don't happen the same way twice, but sometimes certain events are repeated just because they're events that happen to people with a relative degree of frequency, so it makes sense it should happen to you again.

It's making me a bit nervous due to some writing projects that I've gotten myself into that rely upon the premise that I understand friendship and relationships well enough to write a fictional example of one that 1. reads fairly realistically (i.e. you can imagine it being real without a whole lot of suspension of disbelief), and 2. says some things about the nature of friendships and human interactions in general. It's because - and I think a lot of writers do the same - I tend to write examples of things to say something about the thing of which they're an example. A character serves as a reflection of humanity, a situation proves something about how humans react to things, a relationship says something about how people interact with and in relation to each other. It's based on relationships I've had in the past, which is all well and good (sensible, I should think), but I realized that I was much younger than I am now and much younger than the characters in the story when those took place, so...were they like the way they were just because I happened to be lucky enough to meet certain people? Was it because I was young and certain things happen to you only when you're young? Was it because I was young and thus not as jaded about interpersonal interactions as experience and time have made me, and that someone whose experience wasn't the same as mine might be able to experience something much like I did at a different time in my life?

What is realistic for me to imagine for the future and what has been lost with time?

I just wish I knew.

None of this would even be a thing if I didn't think of myself in terms of a case study.

Sometimes I think about how the way I think and the way my thought processes/emotions work are apparently so different from everyone else's that anything i learn that may be true of me is not necessarily true (actually, almost certainly not true) about humanity in general and that I'll never be able to use self-observation and self-analysis (which is one of the few things I'm actually very good at) to understand the species I live in (i.e. one of the things I want to understand and that I think is most important to me to understand - really, most important for any human to understand).

Sometimes I think about how my ability to understand myself will not help me understand the species of which I am by all appearances a part.

Sometimes I think about how one of the things I'm best at will not help me understand anything about anything but myself - i.e. the most selfish thing I could hope to understand, which helps no one but myself and maybe the few people who actually think I'm interesting enough to hear me explain in great depth. (No one is that interested in me as a case study to let me do that, to ask for that. No one.)

Sometimes I think about this fact. I got stuck with a human whose nature wouldn't tell me anything about human nature. I got stuck with such an outlier that I can't learn anything from it. The only thing it will teach me is about itself. And that's not important or vast enough for me to find this knowledge sufficient.

And when I say I got stuck with this human, what I mean is I got stuck being this human.

I don't like it.

Symbolism.

You know what? I as a writer have a tendency to keep putting bits of imagery or vaguely symbolic things in my stories, with no idea HOW exactly they're symbolic. But I don't do it to be pretentious. I do it because I like looking at my story halfway through writing it and then realizing that I'd been doing something clever all along without realizing it.

My mind works in a way that likes patterns. It likes seeing patterns in other things, and it likes working in terms of patterns. It likes working in terms of patterns to the point where it creates patterns without me consciously realizing it. And symbolism is a kind of pattern, really - a phrase or image repeated, meaning the same thing each time. That's a pattern, though I don't suppose most people realize that's what it is. People who look for such things realize it.

It's more exciting that way, anyway. It's like finding something that way. It's kind of like reading tea leaves or something; looking at what is and what wasn't consciously made that way with a meaning in mind, and finding a shape in it from which you extract meaning. Although in my case I'm placing the tea leaves on purpose without knowing what they're going to look like or what it's going to make. Finding images in places where they aren't. Seeing patterns in places when they aren't there. Making meaning. Like an existential reading of what I'm doing, like taking something initially apparently meaningless and then giving it meaning.

I don't know but that's what I like to do.

Help from a smoke detector

Sometimes, one finds oneself at one of one's lower points in life. It isn't necessarily one's lowest point, nor even necessarily one of one's lowest points. All one knows it that the point one was previously at was higher than the point at which one finds oneself now.

Sometimes, one doesn't even know why they've sunken so low. One doesn't know why one is no longer at the point one was at previously, the one that was higher than this current point. One might not know what it is exactly about this current point that makes it lower than the point that preceded it. One might not even know what point one is at - one might not even be able to describe this point, not just in a way that makes it clear why it is so low but in a way that makes it clear what it is at all. Nevertheless, one finds oneself here, and it is confusing and a little bit terrifying but mostly just accompanied by low feelings, the sort of feelings in every low point in anyone's life. It's just low.

I say all this because I found myself at such a point earlier today.

I'm not really sure what it was about. This happens with me - as much as I like to put forth an image of control over or at least understand of my emotions, and as much as this image is usually indicative of reality, I do find myself in situations where I can't explain to myself how I got where I am now, much like someone might find themself in their kitchen and think, "Wait, when did I go here and what was I trying to get?"

I don't remember what led me to sit on my bedroom floor and try to hold a conversation with a stuffed African wild dog, trying to justify to it the choices I had made throughout the day. I held its head and occasionally made it nod in agreement. I liked the illusion that it was actually communicating with me. Among the things I justified to the dog (and by extension - actually, as was my real intent - myself) were not doing anything productive all day, not wanting to write, being too afraid to do any writing submissions today, and making a weak cup of tea whose weakness I tried to disguise with excess amounts of orange extract.

At some point, I realized I was literally just sitting on my bedroom floor and trying to justify myself to a stuffed dog. And not even a sentient stuffed dog; this whole thing would have been justified were I in a speculative fiction piece where sentient stuffed animals existed, but I am to best my knowledge not in a speculative fiction piece where sentient stuffed animals exist, so it wasn't justified. 

I couldn't justify myself.

I gave it up and just lay down on the floor, putting the stuffed dog beneath my head. For a while, I lay there shouting at who-knows-whom (probably myself, when you get down to it). My shouts went to the effect that I didn't know what I was doing with my life and I was having a existential mini-crisis and I didn't even know what it was about and I was going to get places with my life but they wouldn't be places I wanted, and what was I even talking about anyway.

It was futile. I finally gave up and silently stared up at the ceiling. I've heard it said that sometimes you have to lie on your back in the dirt if you want to see the stars overhead. Or that when you find yourself lying on your back in the dirt, you can look up to see the stars. Or something like that. Something to the effect that, if you want to see something beautiful, you have to humble yourself and find yourself in an uncomfortable, undignified position, or if you're at the lowest point in your life, you have a better view of things than you would otherwise and somehow this is supposed to bring enlightenment.

However, I was not lying in the dirt, and I was not looking at the stars. I was lying on hardwood and I was looking at a plaster ceiling.

Sometimes, one finds oneself at one of one's lower points in life and then finds oneself suddenly lifted from that low point and back to a higher point. It can be through something that actually makes sense, like a solution to the problem that put one at that low point or a friend who actually has some sensible, helpful advice for once (unlike all the other friends who had offered unsensible, unhelpful advice). But sometimes, it is through something purely random.

Yeah, it was the latter of these that helped me in the end.

It was the smoke detector. I saw the smoke detector on my ceiling. I didn't know why I found it funny - by all accounts, I shouldn't find smoke detectors funny, because I have a small history of unpleasant experiences involving smoke detectors that didn't work and the tedious solutions to this problem. I should, by all accounts, find smoke detectors unfunny.

But nope. I found that smoke detector funny. I started laughing - silently at first, as though I were crying with no noise, and then out loud, raucously and hugely and sincerely.

I had found myself on my back in the dirt - or the hardwood, as the case was - and I was finally seeing the stars - or the smoke detector, as the case was.

I lifted myself from the ground. I looked at the place where I had previously been, shouting at life and its incomprehensibility and my inability to do anything worthwhile and my general inability to do anything, period.

I was back to a higher place in my life, figuratively as well as literally.

I could carry on.

The point of this narrative is that no matter how low you find yourself, you can almost certainly find a way back up, and maybe you can't help yourself back up but something will happen to help you get there, and sometimes that something is a smoke detector and the inexplicable amusement derived thereof.

I fell in love with a place

I was a little upset today; anhedonic, really. Good things were coming up, good things had happened, and I didn't care. I didn't feel a thing, really. Couldn't. It happens sometimes, where nothing in the world feels any good and I keep on living but not for the joy of living because joy's not a word I can understand.

I was at a place really near my house. It's one of those "old town" places that your town might have if it's old enough and small enough. All these antique shops and eateries. I probably sound like I'm making it out to be sort of phoney or dull but I really do love it, it's a good place. It's where the library was.

I went to the library for a meeting I was having there. The meeting didn't go nearly as well as I'd liked, and after loitering in the library thereafter and feeling like a miserable little git, I decided to solve my problem by going out for ice cream.

After some deliberation as to where in the area I should get ice cream, I settled for an Italian cafe that I've been to a few times but mostly with my family for the times they all wanted to go out and get gelato. It was gelato, you see, that I got in the end, not ice cream. It's similar but I liked it just as much.

I'm sitting here now at my computer. This place is beautiful. There's a chandelier and those off-yellow plaster walls that look like they're stained by something in a good way and soft glowing lamps along the wall at intervals and those windows who are made of regular panes and whose edges do that slopey sort of thing in relation to the iron surrounding the pieces of glass, so you can see out but it's distorted by the glass but that's all you need to know about what's outside you, that needn't distract you now.

It's very European for lack of a better way of describing it, and it's the sort of place that some might call "pretentious" and some might call "hipster" and that I would call "probably where Jean Paul Sartre stayed up til 2 AM writing his philosophical ramblings, which he turned in to the publishers unedited". Except Jean Paul Sartre didn't write in this cafe. He wrote in a cafe in some place in Europe. I don't know much about Jean Paul Sartre other than that he was an existentialist, he said "Hell is other people", and he wrote his philosophical ramblings in cafes at 2 AM and he'd hand his stuff in to the publishers unedited.

I had a bit of a breakdown at a coffee shop recently because I was with a friend and I read her the poem I wrote while we were there and she called it "pretentious". It made me think I wasn't writing with enough candor or sincerity or realness, and that's the only way I can tell if a poem is good, really, if it's real. Turns out she meant it as a compliment but I still couldn't shake the feeling of irony present in my writing and subsequently having an existential crisis in a coffee shop. 

I went for gelato and I ate it outside the place but I went in, figuring I'd loiter inside (where it was air conditioned and where the location of the electrical outlets was more convenient). I ordered an Italian soda. It's violet-flavored. They have an astounding array of flavors for their sodas.

I sat down at a table and did some poem-writing. There's no one else here save for the staff. Empty chairs at empty tables. I've chosen a place towards but not quite at the back where I can look at them all. Doesn't look like anyone else is coming, too.

It's pretentious as anything.

And you know what?

I love it.

I love it sincerely and non-ironically and with whatever sort of thing I have that passes for a heart. And because I love it sincerely, then it's not pretentious. And if it is, then it doesn't matter because it's pretentiousness that comes in earnest. It doesn't matter because I love where I am. I love it. And that's what matters.

Love at first sight has happened today. I have fallen in love with this gorgeous place and I will continue to see it as gorgeous and I will write here and I will submit my poetry here and I will bleed words onto pages here and my poems and stories will tear out of whatever foreign thing constitutes my heart and I will put them to words here.

I will drink their tea and eat their biscuits. I will drink their sodas whose flavors - violet, cinnamon, lavender - do not exist in most people's imaginations as soda flavors. I will drink these which surpass others' attempts at mundanity. I will drink these non-mundane sodas, I will drink them. On the warmer days I will order their gelatos and I will ask for the two most unlikely flavors mixed in the same cup and they'll give me what I asked for, and it will be delicious.

I will fall in love with this place and I will occupy a corner here forever. Even when I'm not here, my heart and mind will be. A funny thing happens to me; sections of whatever metaphor for a heart I have, they split themselves off and leave themselves in places. And sometimes those places are familiar and are the locations I visit every day and sometimes the bits of my heart stay in places to which I never return. But I fall in love with places. That's the one thing you could say I love. Places. And I've come in this short piece of time to love this place. That insanity called love - at first sight, even - has stricken me and my heart has immediately filled the room. A piece of me has lodged here indefinitely. Maybe even indelibly.

This is what love feels like. I've fallen in love. I will write here and I will love this place and I will be the most pretentious git imaginable.

And it will be good because it will be earnest and pure and real.

And these feelings counteract any of the pretension that is so often what we call it when one loves in earnest something beautiful.

Red Vines at work

Today, at my volunteer job, I did an experiment to see if I could eat a pack of Red Vines and work at the same time.

I could.

I kept fearing my supervisor would come and catch me and disapprove, but one of my coworkers was siding with me (i.e. she approved of my activity) so I felt vindicated. Besides, I was living on the edge. Doing things I shouldn't do. Veering into the realm of the unallowed.

And it was incredible.

(Also, my discovery was that yes, I can indeed do my job and eat Red Vines at the same time.)

Summer concerns

I'm a little concerned about the summer.

I finally figured out why I dislike being out of school, and it's because, when I'm in school, I have a way to judge how well I'm doing in my function in life (i.e. that of a student). When I'm in school, I get grades, and they tell me how well I'm doing, and thus I can judge my self-worth and my value as a performer of my function in life. But when I'm not in school, there's no grades and thus no way for me to understand how well I'm doing. And given that I essentially base my self-worth off of my grades, my way of thinking does not accommodate not being in school without experiencing a lot of dissonance.

And yet I don't want to take summer classes because being in school literally all the time does stress me. But even when I'm de-stressing and trying to enjoy myself (a monumentally hard task, really, I don't know how to enjoy myself), I don't know how to judge how well I'm doing at life. I could judge it by how much fun I'm having, but 1. I'm bad at having fun, and 2. it makes me feel hedonistic to judge myself over how much I'm enjoying myself (and then that makes me feel utterly repulsed by myself - like viscerally physically sick). I could judge it by how much I'm writing, which would actually be good, but I can't tell the quality of my work, only the quantity, and when I do my writing, I don't have OTHER people judging it, and I don't trust my own judgment, nor the judgment of my peers, so it's not like in school where authority figures validate what I do. Because I can really only feel validated by authority.

Basically, I'm having a small existential crisis because it's summer and I feel it's at least partly to do with how schools are run and how screwed by the system I possibly am.

Happy birthday, me (or, approach to life and identity and truth in writing)

I turned twenty yesterday. A few days prior, I was talking to my dad about what it means for me, now that I'm a "proper adult" (not the phrasing we used). His opinion on the matter was surprisingly simple - I should just continue doing as I have done previously. I have, he told me, consistently done my best at everything, and if I continue doing my best and continue doing as I can, then I will be a perfectly good adult simply by doing what I did to be a perfectly good teenager.

A few days prior to that, I had to give a presentation in my Human Development crisis about the developmental stage of adolescence and what goes on during that time. I talked about Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial stages and how adolescence is characterized by a crisis of identity versus role confusion. I learned in my studying and emphasized in my presentation that, while adolescents can't figure out who they permanently are at that stage (no one can, really; we're always changing and it's futile to have a permanent sense of identity), they can have an idea of who they are at the time and an acceptance of the fact that they will change, knowing that they can still know who they are during whatever stage of their lives they're currently in.

It's a bit like that for me now. I'm entering my twenties and I suppose some people might expect me to know who I am and what I'm trying to be in my life. And while I do have some understanding, there are some things I'm still trying to work out. They're finer points, admittedly, but they're important finer points and I want them worked out. Though I know I'll never fully have them worked out, or if I do, it'll only be for a temporary phase of my life.

I hesitate to talk here about the novel I'm writing, because the last times I blogged about my projects, they ended up going uncompleted, but the novel I'm writing coincidentally deals with themes of identity when coming to the end of an important phase of your life. It's funny; it was on total accident and yet here I am, asking myself questions (or not so much asking as watching them become answered) about something I didn't realize I was writing about. Writers often say their work surprises them, isn't that right? My work's surprising me by being very timely as far as my own life is concerned.

I've also heard it said that writers should talk about their own truth - that is, their own experiences, the things they know to be true because of their own lives. I've tried to talk about other people's truths for so long because I didn't think I really had a truth myself. Now I realize that I have a truth - multiple truths, really - simply by being a person and living in a world where everything that happens is true by virtue of it happening in a real place. The conclusions my reality have led me to come to are not conclusions that are shared by a lot of people, and they're not the conclusions that most other writers seem to have come to (judging by what people seem to say, or mean to say, in their writing), but I suppose that there's nothing wrong in writing my truth. It's the only truth I have, after all. It's selfish perhaps to write about a truth that no one else shares, just as it's selfish perhaps to want to do or talk about things that no one around you much wants to do or talk about, but what can I do?

If I understand who I am, I can write my own truth and the truth my experiences have led me to accept. Naturally I'll never know who I am really, who I am fully, I mean, but if I have a good enough idea, I'll be able to do that. And I think I have a good enough idea. I have a good enough idea of who I am to the point where I can write a novel about identity, and to do so on accident and then realize it, eh?

My approach to my life up until this point was to do whatever it was I was doing and do it well, even if I didn't want to do it or even if it was hard (or, in many cases, both). That's who I am, I suppose, a person who does what they're doing and does it well. It's worked for me through some of the more difficult times of your typical person's life as well as some of the more difficult times for me personally, and I suppose I can keep going like that as time goes on and I grow older and the things I have to do become harder.

It's an awfully funny way to say "happy birthday" to yourself, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is, happy birthday, me.

Decisions.

I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that my life is not characterized by bad decisions so much as it is by decisions that, while not actually bad, were not the best and did not get me to the best place in life overall but that were still understandable and even completely acceptable (and in some cases totally logical) when I made them, but I either wasn't thinking that far ahead into the future or else I couldn't have possibly understood what effect they would have had on my future given that my future hadn't happened yet.

That's how my life works. Or at least that's how my decisions work. And I know that I'm still making decisions like that, but what else can I do because how can I know what's going to be good to have done in the future?

Living the dream

I have an aunt who has three little children. I was at her house today, and I somehow ended up being encouraged to use the kids' puppets to put on a puppet show.

The result was a really existential thing regarding identity, states of being, and the concept of things outside our plane of existence and understanding and whether or not there is anything OUTSIDE outside our plane of existence and understanding.

Also, one of the kids joined in and the events that followed are the reason I now have a mental image of a koala bear with a stuffy semi-English accent reciting Shakespeare's "Oh what a piece of work is man" speech.

I'm living the dream. I'm convinced I'm living the dream. I don't know what sort of dream but I'm living it.

I had a stroke of genius this morning in the shower.

People should make shampoo bottles that have poems on the back.

I found myself reading the back of a shampoo bottle while in the shower this morning, because I was bored and I was showering and I like reading things to keep my eyes and mind occupied. (This is why I read the backs of cereal boxes when I was a child.)

Then I realized what I was doing, and I went, "You know, this is kind of stupid. Why have I stooped to reading the back of shampoo bottles?"

And then I went, "It's because there's nothing else to read."

And then I went, "You know, that's kind of stupid."

I then tried to figure out how to solve this problem. I immediately thought that shampoo companies should print shampoo bottles with short stories on the back, but then I realized that most short stories are probably too long to put on the back of shampoo bottles. Short stories that short are just not that common. But then I realized that there is an abundance of short poems in the world and an abundance of people who are willing to write them.

Think of it. They could have a different poem for each scent/variety of shampoo. And it could vaguely correspond to whatever impression they think the scent/variety of shampoo is trying to give off. And since everybody uses shampoo, it would be really great exposure for poets. It would be a really prestigious (or at least impressive) thing to get your poem on the back of a shampoo bottle. Maybe it would become a trend. Maybe poetry would spread to other sorts of packaging, and society would engage in a mass movement to put poetry in places where it wasn't put before.

Maybe I'm really onto something here.

What I'm doing

Working on a new novel right now. I haven't abandoned the previous one but I am writing a new one, and I can justify this because I'm young, I'm still trying to figure out what works, I'm still trying to figure out how I write and what I write and what I want to write and what conditions are best for me to write in.

Thus essentially everything I produce during this time is going to be experimental in some way, in the sense that I'm experimenting to try to figure out what I can settle down with. I think it'd be wrong of me not to experiment with my writing during this time because if I don't try a lot of things, I won't figure out which of them work best for me, and then I'd find myself stuck writing things in a way that wasn't conducive for me writing things.

I've been aware of this for a while and this explains why I've been starting a lot of novels that came to nothing (or nothing yet) lately. I'm aware of my situation. There's a reason for this senseless waste of writing. I just haven't expressed this fact until now.

I'm not indecisive, it's not that I can't finish things, it's just that I understand my current situation of being young and not understanding how I write due to my prior assumption that I already knew how I write and my refusal to acknowledge that I didn't already know how I write.

My acknowledgement of how young and immature I am is the most mature thing I can do right now and being apparently irresponsible with my writing is the most responsible thing I can do here. Through not knowing what I'm doing, I know exactly what I'm doing.

That's all.

Things that have Really Hit Me in the past twenty-four hours or so:

• Given that I have little if not zero capacity for empathy, I also have no frame of reference to understand what it's like to have empathy (with all my assumptions about empathy coming from either psychology-based material I've read on it, real or fictitious situations I'm aware of where someone's capacity for empathy was important, or my own assumptions or inductions about it). This means that anything I say about empathy or how it is expressed in other people is a little bit like someone who's been deaf since birth trying to explain a piece of music.
• There are people I know - my family, my friends, even people to whom I don't talk very often - who see me not as I see other people (i.e. animate objects, albeit ones with needs) but as most other people see other people. The fact that other people see me as an Actual Real Person is more overwhelming than you would think.
• Space is big. Vastly, overwhelmingly big. I have lately become more aware of the size of space than I usual and all I have to say is that it has Really Hit Me how big space is.

There is no reason I should be able to effectively have relationships

There are extremely self-centered and unhealthy things about my relationships and how I see the people around me. The qualities for which I appreciate my friends tends to be about how they interact with me (that is, qualities/behaviors that are actually good but that would not exist without me, because they regard the person in regards to me). I base many of my relationships off of things that are not mutual respect, concern, and intimacy; rather, I gravitate towards attachment and fascination in my forming relationships, like people are objects I'm familiar with or that interest me.

And yet last night, I was explaining to a friend that I "put up with her" because I'm familiar with her and I can interact with her well and not necessarily because I think she's a good person, and she was genuinely happy to hear that. And today, I was telling another friend that I appreciated how he understood me (and only specifically me), and it relieved his self-loathing.

I'm convinced I exist in this sort of bubble that makes its own little alternative universe where horribly unhealthy things can actually be very healthy and functional, and anyone who's in any sort of relationship with me is assimilated (at least in their interactions with me) into this bubble and all the things that are wrong with how I act and see people are actually completely okay.

Either that or maybe I attract people whose tendencies and perceptions are equally unhealthy.

It could be both.

Love

You know what?

I was thinking about some things and I realized that I've assimilated someone I know into my concept of "people who are associated with me". That is, the circle of people I've come to view as parts of myself, or as being "mine", or in some other way connected to me in a way that allows my lack of empathy and narcissistic emotions to feel for them.

And you know what else?

It occurred to me that this might mean that I love that person. There's very little logical reason for me to love them (we don't talk very much, we don't share any common interests of which I'm aware, we aren't close) but nevertheless, I could possibly qualify my feelings towards them as love.

And you know what else?

Since literally the only thing keeping me from loving them is the fact that I have not qualified my feelings as love - that is, I simply haven't said I love them - then maybe love is just saying you feel a certain way. Maybe it's not how you feel. Maybe it's just how you choose to view and describe the way you feel. So in theory, I could choose to describe my feelings towards literally everyone as love. If I called it love, and if I chose to view it as love, who's to keep me from saying that it really is love?

Maybe I just figured out something.

Easter and suicide

This Easter, I was struck with the weird realization that the true meaning of the holiday is the reason being suicidal is easier for me than it would be if I weren't a Christian.

I'm a Christian (as I may have mentioned in previous blog posts). I believe Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose on the third day so I'll go to Heaven when I die, all that stuff. All the stuff they talk about in church and especially during the Easter service, such as the one I went to this morning.

However, I'm also depressed and suicidal for reasons that mostly translate to "I don't really think life is very enjoyable and there's not too much I want to do, and even the things I appear to like are just distractions from the fact that my experience in life is monotonous at best and painful at worst".

This has led to the interesting situation where I wouldn't actually kill myself (1. because I'm supposed to live on this Earth to do stuff for God, and it wouldn't be very nice to Him if I quit my job before he wanted me to, so to speak, and 2. I don't really have the guts to go through something like that), but I'm still not very keen on life, and dying doesn't bother me because I know I'm going to go to Heaven when I die. Which, if you think about it, almost gives me yet another reason to not want to live. I'm too keenly aware of the fact that, for me as a Christian, I'm going to get something much better after life when I die. I'm keenly aware that the monotony of life is going to be followed by something better than the best Earthly life imaginable. Knowing that gives one hope in the face of death but it does not necessarily do a lot in the face of life.

Easter is the celebration of the day Jesus rose from the dead, conquered sin and death, and made it so that his followers don't have to fear dying. Easter is the celebration of the event that removed any kind of fear of death itself that might keep me from killing myself.

It's also why it's difficult for me to find a lot of anti-suicide arguments that help me. People say that, if you're trying to find relief from your life and you therefore want to commit suicide, you shouldn't do that because you can't find relief when you're dead. But that's not true. Well. At least it's not true for me and other Christians. I mean, when I die, my spirit will go on and I'll be in Heaven, where none of the bad things about the world will follow me, and...to be honest, thinking about what happens after death makes suicide seem even more appealing. Not like I'd actually do it. But it certainly blows giant holes in a particular argument against the act.

(Also, for those who are curious - I don't believe that committing suicide automatically bars one from going to Heaven, provided one had accepted Jesus into one's heart previously. Different people believe different things, but what I believe and what seems most Biblically-correct to me is that, when you're a Christian, God forgives you for every sin you committed previously and will forgive you for every sin committed afterward as soon as it is committed. Actually, it's more like what Jesus did on the Cross cancels out what you did in the past as well as what you'll do in the future, so you don't even need to be forgiven when you sin, because it's already been forgiven in advance. The argument that suicide automatically sends one to Hell hinges upon the correct assumption that murder is a sin but the less-sound arguments that 1. one isn't forgiven by God for a sin until one asks for forgiveness (you can't ask for forgiveness in your life if you're already dead), and/or 2. there exist certain sins for which God will not forgive you, ever. I don't believe either of these two things and I don't believe the Bible supports them, so I don't think suicide would automatically send you to Hell. Again. Not like I'm saying you should commit suicide if you're a Christian, but I'm just saying that certain arguments against suicide in Christians are inaccurate.)

I sat through the entire Easter service thinking about this and it gave me a kind of nervous freakout that I don't think anyone around me caught onto but that only subsided when I got home and took some of my anti-anxiety medication.

Everyone wants to celebrate today as a day about life, and I know that's true, but I can't think about it without thinking about death and wishing I were there.