Since I have given up thinking, I smile all the time. It must sound horrible, because you are undoubtedly an intellectual of some sort if you are reading my journal. I don't ever remember being this happy.

Nothing is really working out, and yet everything is. That is to say, my life situation hasn't really improved or changed in any really positive way. It is difficult to explain. Once I stopped thinking about everything, about all the stuff that I thought I was going to have to do one day, about all the things that I had to become, about all the stuff I couldn't find answers to no matter how hard I tried, I felt free. I felt free of any and all obligation or responsibility to this world to have to try and be anything. Being is something that is simply unfolding naturally from within now.

For the first time I am not worried about love. I am not worried about getting a job, I am not worried about finishing school or failing French. I have no fear, and being unclouded by fear, joy blossoms from within.

Found this on Al Suicide's journal:
Johari Window

Last night I was reading through the first book I ever owned on Buddhism, and I was feeling as frustrated with a lot of the stuff as I did the first time I read it, and then I just stopped reading and stopped thinking about it...and I felt great. It was such a relief, just to not think about it anymore. Maybe this seems like a weak way out, but turning away from the search gave me something that every religion has promised but none have delivered: peace of mind.

It seems to me I remember a story somewhere about Ananda trying really hard to become an Arahant, and just can't figure it out. He gets so frustrated and says "I give up, I can't make this happen" and at that moment he has become an Arahant. I don't know if the same thing has happened to me or not, but I feel a hell of a lot better. I used to have a friend named Ricky, and one time I asked him what he believed as far as religion and all that jazz, and he said "I don't really think about it." He was a pretty jovial guy.

I'm done with all the questions not tending to edification.

I've lived through 23 winters and this one isn't going to drag me down. The summer is on the way. When I woke up and walked to the store this morning, the sun was shining down on the vibrant green grass. The sun, my lover, is always there in the morning, and when the summer comes I will be close to the sun again.

Say yes to life, and then go outside and kick its ass at dodgeball.

I stopped and listened to the noise inside my head today. It is no wonder I have been so frustrated and on the edge. There was all kinds of buzzing, all kinds of needing and wanting and judging and dissatisfaction expressed through internal immature monologues. Most worrisome was Fenris. You know, the spawn of Loki, wolf of legend? I think we all might have Fenris in us, sometimes sitting right beneath the surface of our outward costume that the world gets to see. He sits, waiting for someone to come too close so he can lash out at them and bite them. I had to take note of his uneasiness, and pet him until he was calm again. Then I became weary.

I have been thinking too much lately, and not witnessing enough. The thoughts, the buzzing, the thinking, the noise; it is all enough to drive a person insane. I worry sometimes, that I am going to go insane, and that it will make it impossible for me to share love with another person. I sometimes fear that I am already at that point. But I don't know what to do, other than to be aware, to let go, and to let it be.

So much attention is wrapped up in getting somewhere. I will do my best to arrive. I feel that maybe my environment is a detriment to my peace of mind, but monks don't do the world any good cloistered away in monasteries, when there is so much in the world that needs their love and attention. It is hard because I feel so disjointed and distant from the people around me. I have read that this feeling is an illusion, and I may even think that on a logical level that it is, but I do not feel it. This implies that I do not believe it, with faith as it were. I can not feel my connection, my life, my love that I share with everyone else. This is a problem, because what else could there be to life than this?

I will quiet myself, and I will look and listen, and maybe then I will behold.

I was getting kind of bummed out last night because of Flowers for Algernon, which is pretty much the saddest story I have ever read in my life. Much like Charlie Gordon at the peak of his intelligence, I feel as if I have a wedge driven between me and most of the people around me. I slept on it though, and it is just one of those things that I have to accept. There are going to be different stratifications of people in life. I will find ways to relate to them, but unless you're on the same level with someone it may be hard to have any kind of deep connection.

I had a dream last night. My mom won 28 million dollars in the lottery. It seemed like everything was going to be okay for once, and then she died driving across a bridge that collapsed. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure Voldemort had something to do with it. Needless to say, I felt kind of funky when I woke up.

You know what I could really go for right now? Gratuitous amounts of physical contact with a woman. I haven't had anyone lavish amounts of (wanted) affection on me in a good long while.

Things are going about like I expected them to with the girl. I give a lot, and she is rather unresponsive. So again, I'm backing off. I always say it is for good, so I'll say it again this time and hope it's true. The part that bothers me is that she always initiates us coming back together and talking again. The whole reason I got all into this thing again was because she invited me over to watch a movie and have a two person sleepover. Being a creature of pride doesn't help either. I tend to take personal offense at a lack of reciprocation. Actually, any kind of response would be fine, even a negative one, as long as it just let me know where I stood. People, if you don't like someone, just shoot them down. Don't worry about hurting their feelings. Even if you are an ass, at least they'll have some sort of self-righteous anger, which is better than being sad.

I read my short story at a sort of open mic thing that the theatre department did tonight. It was relatively well received. I also won $8 at a pick-up game of poker, and 4 different board games, making the score now:

the world-- 1

Nolan_Void-- a bajillion

Fun with French

I don't think my French teacher actually reads the journals she has us turn in, so I began experimenting. Last week I turned in a piece that was supposed to be describing Montreal. I talked about how Montreal was partially subterreanean, and spent most of the rest of the entry talking about how disappointed I was that there aren't also mole people living beneath the surface. I scored 100 on that one. Today we were supposed to write a dialogue about two kids cleaning the house to get ready for a party. I took it upon myself to have the two kids being ritualistic devil-worshippers who were having a few demons over. There activities included:

--Feeding the vampire, so it wouldn't eat their guests' faces

--Setting the table, because Satan gets annoyed when his salad fork is on the wrong side

--Vacuuming up their pet loup-garou's fur, because Beelzebub is allergic to werewolves

--and last but not least, drawing a pentagram on the kitchen floor in blood.

Next week, I'm going to translate the lyrics to "Jesse's Girl" into French and turn it in as my personal journal entry. It isn't even about grades anymore. This has moved into the realm of morbid curiosity.

Things went about as well as I had expected them to with the girl last night. I'm fairly certain that the packages of gifts that I made her was the best Valentine's Day surprise she's ever had, so chalk one up for me. I told her I was still in love with her, which she already knew, and I knew she already knew. I don't know where I stand with her, but I know where she stands with me; at least I'll always have power over that. I told her that I wrote her a letter, but I didn't include it with the other gifts because it was really deep and thoughtful, and I wanted Valentine's Day to be really lighthearted. We watched The Corpse Bride and it was really fun. She said afterwards that I could give her the letter if I still wanted to. I wonder how to interpret that? Maybe it is best not to read too far into it.

I think I know what I am going to end up doing for the rest of my life. I am going to work an 8 to 5 job, and come home and practice writing and drawing for at least three hours a day until I have something that I feel is good enough to pitch to an independent comic company like Dark Horse or Top Cow. Then I'm just going to do everything I can to break into the comic book industry. I'm probably going to quit school after this semester, depending on how it turns out. This is what I want to be doing, so why wait?

If things end up working out with the girl, I'll find a way to relocate to Florida (which is where I've wanted to live for a long time, and where she happens to be from). I don't believe in long distance relationships in the same way I don't believe in a literal Santa Claus.

If nothing else, I'm trying to refrain from planning too much. I feel truly empowered in my life, possibly for the rest of it, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. If you don't know what they say, you can probably infer from context that they don't always work out. Empowerment comes in the moment, and the present moment is the only thing we ever have.

I added an entire folder of art pics. Check them out. I will write more later, when I get off of work.

So it's later, and I'm off work. On my way today I was listening to a techno remix of one of the John William's songs from Star Wars. I remembered this moment when Luke is fighting the Emperor and Vader, and he says:

"Never. I'll never turn to the Dark Side. You've failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

And then I started crying. It was that "I am Jedi, like my father before me" part that did it. Even now I'm tearing up. I have to ask myself how long I can keep going ignoring the very real problem in my life that I have abandoned my father. He is a crazy fuck, and I'm almost sure that he will make me crazy if I am around him, but nobody deserves the misery he has to be enduring. He was married three times. All three wives left him. His kids are gone away. He doesn't talk to me, and I don't know if he sees his little girls. I feel guilty about it. No matter how much he brought this on himself, something inside just isn't going to sit right knowing that I turned my back on him.

I didn't get any sleep last night. I watched
The Exorcist with my ex-girlfriend last night. I stayed the night, and layed in bed with her. I didn't sleep with her; I didn't really sleep at all. She didn't want to watch the movie alone (she had to watch it for a part she's playing where she's possessed), and she didn't want to sleep alone after watching. Even if we hadn't been jammed together, spooning in a twin-sized bed, I don't think I would have slept very well. I've been in love with this girl for four years. Whenever I'm around her my body tells me things that it doesn't say about anybody else. She graduates in May. I've been trying to work things out with her for a while now, unsuccessfully. I'm not giving up until it is done. Today I was thinking about her, and an inspired thought came into my head: the idea of loving someone courageously.

Loving another human can be terrifying, no matter what white-light religions say. You put yourself out there, hoping to end that quest that is built into the fact that we are incomplete beings on the level of form. We are trying to find the rest of ourselves, and for most of us, the act of sexual union is a very real ritual, a metaphor that fulfills that incompleteness. A lot of people love desperately, but that doesn't do anybody a damn bit of good. To be desperate, is to be weak and lacking, and love is something that needs to be held up. Love itself is like a child, and it takes strength and courage to raise a child right.

I don't know if this girl is ever going to take me back, and it won't be the end of the world if she doesn't, but I'm going to love her like I'm facing down the end of the world and nothing is going to scare me off. Throw that shit out the window. Fear ruins life, and you have to face it down. Fear itself is a fearful thing, and it will not stand up before the light of your Will. Love courageously.

I'm going to try to surprise her on Valentine's Day. I'm giving her some of her favorite candy, a picture I drew her (in my newly added "Drawrings" picture gallery), a short story that I wrote, and a letter addressing my feelings that I wrote today at work. When it comes down to it, you just have to be real and be brave about being real, like it has made you the strongest person in the world. This life is yours and you have to take it by the throat and make it go where you want. That doesn't mean you'll always get where you thought you would, but at least you'll be doing it the right way.

"For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has not
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows and did it my way"

--Frank Sinatra

Today I had an idea. I have lots of pictures and art on my walls, many of them of Suicide Girls. While I find great aesthetic delight in these pictures, I have decided that I would get even more delight from art of my own design. So I am setting a schedule for myself, and once a week I will replace something on my wall with a piece of my own artwork. I suppose I should start this project fresh, at the beginning of next week. That's going to be a tough week, because I'm also going to be reimplementing my self-imposed exercise program as well. Oh well, whatever doesn't kill me will elevate me above the rest of the lazy, quasi-literate masses.

I am currently at a point where I feel independent of the need to meet, mate, and procreate. As with all things, I am aware that this state is subject to change, possibly if the right person comes along, but the desire to search out and find this kind of person has given way to the more immediate need to deepen my own personality. I guess a part of me realizes how novel and fun it would be to have a loving relationship with a woman, but through all of my experiences I have come to feel that relationships are just not worth it unless you are head-over-fucking-heels for somebody. I am in doubt that I will meet someone in my current setting who can fulfill that need for me, and vice versa.

I have also come to realize that I have not even had the time to be in despair over anything, due to the willfulness that has taken hold of my thinking. At times people can be in a state where their will is not present in their thoughts. The contents of their mind is as a car without a driver, or perhaps a better analogy is that people listen to a radio recording of their memories that bombard them as commercials might, and then assume those memory-commercials are who they are. If it all possible, I would advise everyone to cultivate their will, that is their conscious and active mode of thinking. Grab ahold of the steering will and make the vehicle go where you want it to. There is nothing wrong with thinking often as long as you are actively engaged in thinking, and not passively allowing the thinking to control your life. The thinking is mechanical, but you are a fluid and imaginative force capable of mastering your own destiny. Do not confuse the two. Making the distinction will surely lead you to be more fulfilled in all you do.

I found this hilariously misogynistic quote from a Dungeons and Dragons player on a link from the PnP Roleplaying group and couldn't resist adding it to my post: