the following is a testament to the advancement of my social retardation, which has, unfortunately, progressed to the point that i am unable to speak intelligently and must instead write obscenely long posts in a web journal, above which you can very conveniently click on a box to see my tits.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
just checking in to let everyone know that i am alive and well, well being a term of debatable definition which i am finding myself less and less interested in defining these days. the goal now is to achieve some sort of clarity. i am not striving so much for understanding and acceptance of the situation as i am for acceptance that i will probably never understand it.
the events of the past few months have left me feeling quite uncomfortable with the affair of living, of life, of living this life or a life, respectively. the manifestation and subsequent contemplation of death seems to be a pandora's box of the most awful variety; no thought or notion is satisfactory, each one lending its own string of tangents to which there seems to be no end, nothing to appease a weary mind desperate for resolution.
i decided the most logical way out of that mess was to turn from death and instead contemplate life, which seems easy enough, but is turning out to be more confusing than i had expected. lately i have been doubting whether i am actually here. a difficult thing to define, as i am not an especially intelligent individual on matters of the metaphysical (a word which i may in fact be misusing. but fortunately, that would prove my point).
sometimes its the sensation that i am watching a movie about someone elses life. actually, 'sensation' isnt nearly strong enough a word. there are moments when it is so real, it occurs to me that i may be able to reach into my pocket for a remote and control the situation. when im driving, i am often convinced that i could let go of the steering wheel and nothing would happen; i am not really controlling the car, im watching someone else do it. sometimes i sense that there is more than one of 'me'. i often feel so detached from the world that i remove myself for brief periods of time and watch the people around me, as though i only have to be present if i choose to be. some days i am certain i am going to find out that i have actually been living in a sort of simulated world, that i am simply living for the day when i discover everyone around me is a robot. and i really, truly do not mean this metaphorically.
this isnt an entirely new experience for me (though i will admit that the spiritual experience on my hotel bed in detroit after a long nite of drinking, crying, and naked women had been largely written off as a result of the drinking, crying, and naked women), but the intensity and the frequency with which they are occurring is a bit unsettling. i am hoping to make better sense of it. or perhaps i should just stop trying to make sense of things and accept the possibility that i have completely fucking lost it.
other things going on in my life:
i am planting a small organic vegetable garden in my backyard - suggestions/experiences welcome, as i am solely going on information from books and the internet.
i am in the process of planning a 2-4 week stay as a volunteer on an organic farm in wisconsin in the fall.
im thinking about moving to texas
i am purchasing a used canon 20d, which should be in my possession within the following month. yes, i know ive talked a lot of shit about digital. but the fact is, there are times and places where it makes more sense. the technology is there, i see no shame in taking advantage of it, provided i never abandon my dear 35mm. the 20d will never make my heart as happy as my elan, but it will hopefully help to pay my bills sometime in the near future.
i started taking yoga classes a few weeks ago, and really couldnt be happier about the decision. it is the highlight of my week; i only wish i had done this years ago
i am limiting television viewing to a preset list of programs (new episodes of house, a few nature shows, and cosmology programs) a few times a week, and am filling my time with books. i loved to read as a child, but somewhere in my early teenage years developed the obnoxious habit of typing all of the words on a typewriter in my head. this, combined with a nearly non-existent attention span, has made reading more than a few sentences painfully difficult over the years. i have recently decided that i am no longer making excuses, as i desperately want to be a literate person, and have wanted this for quite some time. i decided to try tactics other than furiously suppressing urges and tendencies. ive found it to be enormously easier to begin reading in a completely relaxed state of mind (with which the aforementioned yoga/meditation has been of great assistance). i am also trying to visualize the scene or the subject, as opposed to the words themselves. it would be nice to not have to do either, but ive accepted that this is simply the way my mind works, and its silly to try to fight it. perhaps most importantly, i am not beating myself up for having to go back and read a paragraph or page a second (or third or fourth) time. my frustration with myself seems to get me into the most trouble nowadays.
i dropped off a few mystery rolls of film today, and will be picking them up tomorrow (i am not able to develop my own prints for the next few months... i dont want to talk about it). maybe i will share some tomorrow, if there are any worth sharing.
ive got to go to bed
my condolences if you actually read that whole thing
live kindly and intelligently, perhaps ill be back in a few weeks
