Term Hectic

Life has been a combination whirlwind and sinkhole for me recently.
I only just noticed I had not blogged in over a month. It's really no wonder that during the school months, I neglected it last year. I have my courses to handle, and right now assignments are getting on top of me. I have arrangements for my foreign exchange term to make, including lodging, furniture storage, finance and course selection. I have my primary and secondary relationships to juggle. A good problem to have, admittedly, but trying to stay sane while negotiating fights with one and jealousy with the other has been very draining.
In amongst all this, the biggest thing is trying to cope with my mood, my intense cravings for sleep, my utter not-willing-to-put-up-with-this feelings about the tumbling and crashing that keeps me from sleeping during any of the hours that the landlord and his family upstairs are awake (I'm so glad I'm moving at the beginning of December - oh, right, add that to the list of things I need to do and prepare for!). The schoolwork would not actually be much to get through if I could maintain my morale and just sit down and do 'em, but between exhaustion and exasperation, loneliness and pressure, it's a lot to manage and can easily leave me dazed and unproductive.
I'll get through it somehow or another. I have to, after all. I look forward to Ireland and the new term, after the arrangements and preparations and moving is all over. A new beginning, new lessons, a new setting. Europe! And when I come back, seeing Asha again in the summer months.
Well, why not dream far ahead, I suppose, right?

How My Mind Works

Hello. Good afternoon. How are you?
Huh. Cool. Quick to be promoted.
Oh heavens I'm sorry but I think I'm drunk on conflict. I'm feeling like a dark euphoria or something.
Or... maybe...
HmmmMm.
I've been restraining myself so thoroughly and effectively for the last few days... that I really, really want to do something reckless and risk fucking up something beautiful apparently.
Is this what it's like realizing that you're addicted to failure? That's hilarious.
I think... I feel like I am a whimsical entity, this reactive, animal conscious-mind, caught in a moment in which gears larger than itself are shifting. A decision is being made around me. To take responsibility for my own actions. I'm barely even the thing making it any more. I'm just in the high. Loopy, feeling the gears grinding. Wondering what bits of me that I once cared about are the dust, dirt, roots and chips coming off and falling away.
Bye, me! Bye, excuses for being unfunctional. Look ma. I'm loopy. But I am still here.
And you? You're dead. You're dust. You're... you're going to start leaving me alone now.
♥
HmmmMm.
Sorry it was you. It couldn't be anyone in my regular social group. The person I am having to restrain myself with is there, and I have to wait for him to be ready to walk into the group presence with me and ask for their help with our peace accord together.
I do hope that I am not causing you much distress.
Perhaps I am entertaining. Or simply obnoxious.
Let me know, sweet?
Oh, I am such a tease, aren't I, being incomprehensible like that. I guess it's one of the habits I'll have to kick. It's more actually intelligent and more actually difficult, a greater, nobler challenge, to speak succinctly but clearly enough that one is not a challenge to follow.
But permit me this indulgence. For now. Still, if you wish, I can explain... any part of this... more clearly.
No, it's only my fault I'm being incomprehensible.
Do you hate me for it? Oh, do say you'll hate me for it, that you'll never understand me, that you'll look back on this moment and realize that it's not worth talking to me. Ha. Hahahaha. You know what? I think I get it. Yes, that needling would be awful annoying, even in small doses.
♥
Hurf. So... can I not care? Not caring seems... HmmmMm. Not caring about the bad, but being grateful for anything good? It always seemed like such a double-standard, didn't it little starfish, hmmm...
But what do you lose? A few chips off your shoulder that were really only keeping it from a full range of motion. Go on. Throw it away. You... you can be new.
You can be whole. Don't you want to be whole? Capable? Prove yourself and WIN, for once?
Mmm.
Again, Sorry miss, I never could talk to myself worth a damn without an audience.
Because then who am I talking to? Or something like that. Having someone watching... Something about it... makes it... real.

So. How are you?

(She left. I don't know yet whether she's going to come back.)

An Empathetic Wish

That I could care for all mankind
as though they were my darkened sons
that lit the day and cast such light
to guide my sight through lonely storms

That I could dream as children may
of peace on earth and guileless trade
through age until my dying day
though naivety is born to fade

That I could live a life unfeard
the scorching brace of hate avoid
and suffer not the shyness
painful memories employ

That I could in my kin inspire
a love that from no heart would turn
Yet failing me, I close my eye
and live in shadows crisp and stern

inspired by the style and themes of Emily Dickenson;
with perspective and wisdom kindly shared with me by The RSA and CrashCourse

Sex Without Shame, Death Without Fear

"Just thinking out loud... 

I don't mean to dwell on this dying thing"

It's a shot of bloody perspective reminding me
that regardless of WHAT
I think and have experienced, regardless
of how much I do and how many hours in smug solitude
thinking I'm better, or smarter, or more spiritual
than you
That I know, that I can face it
ALL
It still remains more true
What is said in the book, title forgotten:
You truly feel, don't you,
that you are now completely disillusioned?
That may prove to be the most enduring
illusion
of them all.

And I am dying. Very slowly.
A decay no medicine, no surgery can erase
Time and entropy will take my place
and fill it with strangers
With a shot of bloody perspective...
An urgency that will fade with time
That I could die now while I'm ready
equipped with a fullness of uncanny surprise
the understanding that nothing
no matter how great could prepare me
The shock now is greater...
I wonder, if only,
Walking with giants, lit by a star
I would know now, to know,
to have no expectations...
Until the next moment,
of bloody perspective,
How far?

It may be harder to face living and knowing
that I will forget, and find boredom again,
a lack of perspective...
I wonder to myself, if the impossible can be done...
Not to deny death... Yes, that exactly.
NOT to.
What seems it should be within the reach of the mind...
I'm not sure it is:
To face Sex without Shame,
And Death without Fear.

Choice and Responsibility

I clicked into a serious talk on YouTube today. I wasn't really looking for it, not actively anyway. It was about choice, capitalism, and the paralysis of clinging to what little we have rather than risking the loss of it by moving to engineer social change. It strikes kind of hard... I'm familiar with this truth. I think it may be one of the things I was trying to talk about with To Do What I Must While I Am Who I Am.

It also reminds me of The Little Prince. I find myself almost wanting to cry as I think even of myself, trying to force myself to ascribe to something I do not believe, the idea that submitting to the need to work on whatever my employer's terms are will empower me to make a difference, rather than making me a supportive cog in a system I despise and disempowering me by giving me something I must fear to lose...

I see myself trying to mount a stressful job search, with minimal resources and trying to bury my resentment of the system that puts me here and demands that I serve it in order to live a better life... turning into what the Prince would call a 'mushroom'; putting off, ignoring, or dismissing important matters of emotionality, sensitivity and wonder because "I am concerned with matters of consequence!"

I do not want to take solace in that phrase or in the necessity of my busywork. I don't want to allow myself any excuse for not doing what I believe in in every way I can.

And yet... I must job search, I must work. If I refused, I would be denied what little survival budget I am being given, and pushed into an even smaller, darker hole. To avoid both would be dishonest and as such a betrayal of principles I hold most dear. I am already concerned with matters of consequence... matters of survival. And I must admit I already kind of hate myself for it.

I wrote in the very first pages of the notebook that's now become my journal, quite some time ago:

People in a culture with as much technology, resources and interconnectivity as ours have absolutely no right to be concerned about their mere survival.

I am guilty of this, and feel that I have failed, not on my own lack of merit, but as one of the billions, as a member of the whole human race. I also wrote:

Western culture has adopted the image of an organization collapsing under its own obsession with efficiency - efficiency itself compromised by endless lawsuits over liability and breach of protocol...
A machine so frantically upgrading and replacing its pieces that it tears itself apart.

Nevermore

Should I be happy?
What I am is uncertain-
I'm restless; Do I fake it? Do I try? It's not working-
I'm sinking. I'm reeling.
I have a funny feeling
that I'm headed somewhere I've been to before
Somewhere I swore, Nevermore...

Should I be braver?
Should I try to be fearless?
I hold, I hide, behind my pride, an arrogance peerless-
I'm crashing. I'm losing-
There's something I was choosing
that was chosen before
Somewhere I swore, Nevermore...

Looking for confidence
amidst apathy and emptiness-
Something was shining in me
not an hour ago. Tell me
Where did it go-
How can I get it back
from the grey and the black
Lost my way; Found a track
Something from a long lost memory-
What did I do, before,
when my terrors were killing me
wounded and sore
was there a secret door?

Nevermore. No return.
You must live. You must learn.
Without me.
Forsaken you, child? No, I've only set you free.
You know all I ever taught you, still.
You can remember, if this is your Will.

How? I'm not sure even as I grieved
that I ever more than half believed in you, strange wonder,
And your secret's only known to the deepest soul-

You can see
as deep inside of me
as any master, open your eyes!

But we all disguise the truth with our lies
I might as well catch nonsense as the master's prize!

You know the way,
the master will say.
Just cast your fears, your doubts aside,

and doubt me Nevermore...