Quote of the week-end:


"Hey Sarah, let's go to San Francisco."
"Okay."

More forthcoming...

Is it possible to find contentment in discontent? I don't mean to propose a paradox exactly, but I do mean something along those lines. For all intents and purposes, life at school has picked up where it left off. Classes move along, assignments are given and accomplished. Life such as it is flows contentedly. And yet I am unsettled. In class, reading through the material, talking immediately after class I am for the most part happy. And then I want to talk about it all with someone, one I know will see things with the same excitement and from a similar direction as I do and I am at a loss. I can't. It is quite simple really, and painfully miserable. So in attempts to distract myself I shift the mess around in my room, or flake out of other things and hide in a cafe, or wander around the market places of the internet looking for the things I've been meaning to buy all summer. I will tell you honestly that none of it works. I want something I cannot have. I want to be content in the midst of my discontentment.

So I will go and try another distraction, another thing to pour myself into for the time being and not think about the coming up short at the end. Because that is life...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Plato

"The unlived life is not worth examining." - Mr. Collins

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." - Jesus Christ


It is so odd how things work out. I've been musing and pondering much of late on what it is I want more than anything. For many, perhaps even most, the answer to this is simple, they want to be happy. I don't. Now don't get me wrong, I do not want to be unhappy, but that is simply not the most important thing for me. What I want more than anything is to live. Just that. The real question comes when you ask what it means to live. At first it seemed as though living were seeing and doing and experiencing with a passion (which of course leads to more discussion.) But that left something lacking, it was not enough. With that definition you are lead to (or left with) a hedonistic approach to everything. No living - truly living - consists of finding truth, the Truth. And not just finding it, but seeing it, knowing it, making it part of who and what you are in your deepest self, until you are no longer, but only Truth. And this causes pain. Because in this life that is simply not possible. We can come close, so close but we can never fully die to ourselves before the body dies so that total union is never achieved in this life.
Now the odd part of it all is that though I've been pondering and considering all of this for the last two year (or more) it didn't all come together in something resembling coherence until last night after watching Garden State (very good movie, the cinematography is amazing and the plot line is nearly as good) after meeting and hanging out for hours with a group of local poets. At one point in the movie Sam says to Andrew " I know it hurts. But it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it fucking hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we got." It's life and it's real, truth is a reflection of reality and reality of the Truth. And He is pretty much all we got.

I wandered into my self a little while ago and ambled over to the curio cabinet that holds bottles filled with stuffs like extra time, the dreams I don't remember, and, as I discovered, things that I've learned. Not school-ish lessons, those go into a neat filing cabinet or are piled in the desk in a heap to be sorted at a later time. No, these lessons are the life-ish sort, the ones we learn without noticing right away. I took them down one by one, opening each and reading the lessons in turn. Amoung them were:
~Pain is not made meaningless or paltry by laughing at it. At times that is exactly what is needed.
~True love takes many shapes and forms and they are easy to confuse.
~ There are still things I want to do for their own sake, like write and learn to play classical guitar and wander the country alone and perhaps learn to skateboard...
~It is not hypocrisy to pass on advice you are not always able or willing to follow yourself.

I pondered them, holding the scraps of paper in my hand. I will not soon forget.

I thought for a bit about posting random bits of thought that got caught on scraps of paper that happened to be handy at the time they wandered out of my head, but have decided against it. The last month or so of this summer has left me rather discontent with my style of writing - I seem to either be depressing or, as one friend put it, stuck in "middle school". I have no desire to ramble about the little things that make up the day to day of my life (it would take a far more talented writer than I to make it interesting to any degree). So I am left with the inner workings of my self, which does not come off very well either...
This being said, I am going to continue writing in whatever fashion whimsy leads me at the time, hackneyed metaphors, middle school poetry and all and hopefully the summer of my discontent will pass...

It is possible to have trust without hope? I feel comptetely lost, stumbling in the dark, only knowing the ground is beneath my feet because I keep bashing into things, clinging to the thinest thread of trust. I know as surely as I know anything that I will be given the strength to find my way out of the dark, but I have no hope of when or where, just the scarlet thread of trust...

Picture this: Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, just as you are leaving the city, you drive through a couple of small tunels. As you emerge from the second you are presented with the Pacific ocean and the coastline laying itself down before your eyes to the lyrics of this song...

Take a long drive with me
on California One, on California One.
And the road a-winding goes
from golden gate to roaring cliff-side,
and the light is softly low
as our hearts become sweetly untied
beneath the sun of California One.

Take a long dram with me
of California wine, of California wine.
And the wine, it tastes so sweet
as we lay our eyes to wander,
and the sky, it stretches deep.
Will we rest our heads to slumber
beneath the vines of California wine?
Beneath the sun of California One.

Annabelle lies, sleeps with quiet eyes
on this sea-drift sun.
What can you do?
And if i said, O it's in your head
on this sea-drift sun.
What can you do?

California One, The Decemberists

Funny how things work out sometimes...

it's friday, the work week is over. the sun is setting resignedly over the hills. this past week I have carried the wind on my back (it was heavy) and perhaps remembered how to smile. dreams and plans for futures loom and withdraw, like the ocean tides, and I am left standing on the shore.