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.