If you can’t eat you got to

smoke and we aint got

nothing to smoke:come on kid

let’s go to sleep.

if you can’t smoke you got to

Sing and we aint got

nothing to sing;come on kid

let’s go to sleep

if you can’t sing you got to

die and we aint got

Nothing to die,come on kid

let’s go to sleep

if you can’t die you got to

dream and we aint got

nothing to dream(come on kid


Let's go to sleep)

Alyonka came over yesterday and we were going to watch three sheets (anyone? I didn't think so), but I asked her about a show in her library called "Search for the Next Elvira" (...anyone? I will be very very impressed), which she then insisted on turning on. I can't... I can't even describe it. The best-worse puns ever. American Idol, except instead of trying to be pop stars, everyone is trying to be a kind of slutty horror film star who cannot act. Her two co-judges are drag queens picked from the potential contestants who are more like her than she is (they're called her "menions"). In the vein of Elvira's bad puns: If you think reality shows are scary, tune in for something horrifying. What's funny about all of this is that if you imagine this whole episode as a scripted satire of reality shows, it would be the most genius thing ever created.

Candace's lesbian (non-)roadtrip story is the most beautiful thing ever. Candace, what I was and am going to say in your feedback (which is triple-layered, because it is now posted on facebook and livejournal and later will be emailed to you) is that I love that the characters took over what was a totally plot-driven or at least message-driven idea, and that that reflects exactly what is needed in the politics of the issue itself- a focus on the actual people involved in love. Lena's reaction (and Kate's, which is pretty much a lack of reaction in anticipation of Lena's reaction) is perfect, to the point of being painful- it makes me remember how upset I was; so mad, and I hated it because I hated people for it, no matter how hard I tried not to. And Kate's reaction to being proposed to is completely realistic also. Gah. I love your characters.

 

Because I know you want to read way too many Einstein quotes, I am posting about ten where I intended to quote one. I think Einstein is just about the coolest person... ever.

 

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Some indistinguishable form of expression just shy of a journal entry. Not really any new ideas. But I'm bored. So I'll go pick a new theme, and hopefully my comment box won't be white on white any longer (this is how organized I am. It has taken almost two years to remember to check what was making my comment box white on white).

I keep tearing all of the pages out of my sketchbook on request and hanging them on various walls around the house. It's a cool idea and if Gabi and Mythreyi start doing it too, it'll look cool enough for how sad my sketchbook looks now. But I already regret not having all of my thoughts in order and recorded in my own lazy, usually untidy way.

Anyway. The... thing. I don't know what to call it.

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If this is going to work
I am going to need time
to study you,
without restraint or interruption,
unabashedly.
I am going to need time
to work up to that.
I am going to need time
to even want that.

I don't know how
I could ask anyone
to manage this with me.


The problem isn't that I can't feel. The problem isn't that I don't want you. The problem isn't that this won't work.
The problem is that before I know you, before I've even met you, I am already thinking about these things.
I need time to exhaust my mind and insecurity before I can feel anything fully. I need time to be comfortable enough around you to stop thinking of myself and actually focus on you.

Everyone else loves before I know and loses interest before I've even begun to feel.

- Candace, your letter will be in the mail shortly. It is very... well, I started it at 9:00 this morning and finished it in 4 separate classes whenever I could manage to not get caught. In it, I complain about a professor, attempt to explain my reaction to "I do not love you as if you were salt..." by Pablo Neruda, only to realize that the feeling that I am describing is actually that I am hungry, and confess that I am not  in love with my best friend at SB. Which is a confession, as in, something bad that I need to admit, even though... actually, I'll just let you read the letter, since I already wrote it and everything. Haha.

- ‘tuam matrem’ in Latinā possum dicere. What now (Quid nunc)?
 
- I need funny pins for my bag. Because I bought a few the other day- one says “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings- I was aiming for your balls.” Then there’s “I have no idea what I’m doing out of bed.” Plus a chinese-looking symbol, and the english translation “Fuck off.” And finally, a rainbow one that says “All Families Matter.”- anyway, I bought 4, and I want to put them on my bag, but the problem is, when there are only 4, I don’t like them. I feel like if I have a collection of pins on display they should reflect who I am as a person, and I get very self-conscious of each pin if there are only 4. So, I need more. Suggestions/donations?

-If she does it like this, will you do it like that? Yeah if she touches like this, will you touch her like that? And if she moves like this, will you move it like that? Shake shake, shake shake, sh-shake it.

- Katy is not a very usual name- er, not in spelling, anyway. I was re-reading Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, and surprise, there’s a Katy. Surprise, she’s a lesbian. I have heard of two other Katys spelling their names that way- one is gay, and the other is Katy Perry (the one who sings ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ for those of you lucky enough not to know that). I am debating informing Katy of this.

- I probably would’ve like the movie ‘The Color Purple’ if I hadn’t already read the book, and didn’t know that it could have been 80 times better.

- My Native American Religious Studies professor is apparently very well-respected/basically famous in the field. This is what my T.A. assures us as a class every section, when she is trying to work some discussion out of the professor’s lectures that do not involve telling all of us exactly how we are wasting our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that our society is overly material and disconnected, I just… got that the first lecture, and I still don’t know anything about actual native american religious customs, which is what I wanted to learn when I signed up for the class.

- There is a common trend in every single book we have read/are going to read in my Women’s Studies class for the rest of the sememster. I want to talk about the trend but I have just tried unsuccesfully for ten minutes to phrase the question in such a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being ignorant and offensive. So I’m not going to.

- I’m not in love with you? Oh my god, I’m not in love with you. …Isn’t this supposed to feel like relief?

- What is this casual dating thing that people think of, and how on earth does it work? (Um, what is this dating-of-any-kind thing that people speak of… and how on earth does it work?)

- Something has come full circle. I can’t tell what it is, but there is definitely a cycle and I definitely recognize this view. Fortunately /unfortunately (?), I only recognize the view on the pretty part of this circuit (because I only remember the good parts?), and so at times when I can see how it works, I have no desire to change it. Besides, attempting to change it usually causes something which feels pretty much like the cycle kicking me outside and making me sit there until I get cold and bored, and then I come back in anyway. Or maybe those are the parts of the view that aren’t pretty, and that I therefore don’t recognize as parts of it. I don’t know. But anyway, it’s come back to this point again and I am going to let it be for as long as I can. Because this is the easy part, and this feels something like a home. And sometimes if I let it be, it feels like it lasts longer.

- I hate rings. I like this ring. Thank you.

About five or six times a day I repeat a thought over in my head, wondering what kind of story would follow if it were the first sentence of a book. Random thoughts, usually, quirky and particular but with some sort of appeal that I think might attract somebody else; obscure but just enough so that someone else will be intrigued by the fact that they understand it despite its obscurity.

I mostly only write first chapters, and I mostly only notice those thoughts that could be first sentences, that would serve to make me interesting and trick you into thinking my perspective could be important, or at least entertaining. There are things that are so random and so complicated by factors personal to me that I don’t believe anybody could ever have thought them, and yet make so much sense that I feel everybody must think them, at some point or another. Irregularities that show us the shape of the pattern. A thought so unique it is infinitely close to a prime number, irreduceable and irrelatable, and yet in which you can feel the effect of so many normal patterns of thought that it seems like something you could offer to someone else. An gift engraved with intricate details that incorporate so many universal, basic designs that it seems at once elaborate and elementary. Have I lost you in these thought spirals yet, or can you relate to this turning, twisting search for empathy and connection in some way?

I am going to take the easy way out, and I am not going to hide that this is completely about me, or that I mean nothing without your understanding. Here are these thoughts that resonate in your head and the space between your heart and your gut, that nag and pull at you like little children, unabashedly starving for attention, wanting comfort and confirmation of their own importance, significance, existence. If I do this right, they will touch you. If am doing this wrong, you have probably already stopped reading.