06 July 2004 Tuesday

I feel really sick

...but it’s just a feeling. I’m sure it will go away, and be the only thing that does.

I’d really like to write something.. but what would I say? I don’t want to talk about how I feel.. I don’t want to talk about this week, and especially not yesterday and today.

It’s really hot in my room. Even with three fans blowing. I’m not thinking very highly of these fans.

I’ve eaten a lot of blueberries in the last few days. While on a plane ride over to Asia a few years ago (I forget where in Asia) I sat next to a gentleman (British/American..I think American..keeps an apartment in Bangkok) who was reading a magazine article about surprisingly most-healthy foods.. He and I talked about it for a while—tried to guess them and then remember them and.. I’ve forgotten most of the conversation. It was pleasant. One of the foods was blueberries.

Showers don’t make me feel better. I don’t suppose they make me feel worse, though. And my room isn’t getting any cooler and I’m still sweating as I sit here—I despise sweating indoors.

Most unhappiness and disatisfaction and hurt and disgust and … anyway, it’s mostly in one’s head, right? That is, what happens to you is what it is, and how you choose to feel about it is what you make of it.. right? Well, I guess I’m choosing to feel like this paragraph is crap.

I guess I’m feeling beaten. So this is what it feels like. To be treated with open disdain and insult, and to be told to accept it, at the pain of being told I am selfishly complaining and responsible for making everyone unhappy. Live with it, as it lives carefreely around me as if nothing was nothing and neither am I. I don’t choose to feel like this. There are few other things I feel so badly about, and nothing that feels this bad. I think this feeling is worse than heartbreak—if that isn’t combined in it to begin with. My face hurts. If I stay, this is what I stay with. If I leave, I’m accused of running away. And I didn’t want to make anyone cry.

I feel disgusting and disgusted.

I’d look more forward to tomorrow, if I didn’t remember that that’s what I was doing yesterday when today happened.

27 June 2004 Sunday

I've Never Really Been Alone

I can argue it both ways.. I probably have. Well, right now I’m inclined to accept that I just really have never really been alone. Not for very long.

I don’t mean being left alone in my house for a few weeks, or travelling and living alone somewhere for several months.. I mean..there’s always been someone else in my life.. someone particular and constant to turn to, to be relied upon by, to compromise for, to depend on, to drain and be drained by, to trust, to love, to be loved by.

I’ve also mostly never been in a ‘real’ / ‘official’ / ‘committed’ relationship.. but that becomes more and more technical and argumentative as time passes, and it’s cleanly not true anymore and….

It’s not been the same person for all my years, either.. And many were brief. ..but I’ve never..
this is all coming out very choppy… that’s partially because I haven’t thought through any of this yet, and mostly because I’ve tired myself out from trying to fix the CSS on this site towards a rework of the current design. It’s late. I forgot to eat dinner. I’m not sure what I started to write here.. I know that it’s not really new thoughts for me.. I also know that it’s not coherent to me right now… I think my general point was/is that, for better or for worse, simply, I have never really really been alone for very long. That’s arguably partly my fault, and arguably unavoidable as a consequence of myself. I doubt anyone would accuse me of being a clingy person; I’m not going to assert that I am not insecure; I am certain that much of my comfort and self-assurance has been drawn from those particular people who landmarked my life.. All of this irregardless (EDIT: ‘ir-’ specifically fit my mood at the time of writing. but i concede this time. notice appreciated.) regardless of what impact I must have had on them. That whole ‘space’ thing was never popular with anyone I knew.. though it has come to pass that individuals have become very very sore with me and leave me be for a while.. that’s scarcer than the toes of most birds, and usually doesn’t last unbearably long.. usually.

But I have felt alone.


...


I cope. It’s kinda pretty much what I do.

‘Wonder who this writing is for. It’s not written descriptively enough to be particularly informative. It’s not speaking to any one of few people who could possibly have any inkling as to what I am talking about. And it’s .. well, it actually is rather written in my general journal style, I suppose..what with the context being clear only to me and the nuances of mention specific to my understanding and future memory..—just that rather than written in notebook, in English or personal language, or typed in passworded hundred-page document (which I have not opened or appended in a year or more..how sad) it is posted online in a collective of my other rambles.. the other rambles, btw… all these entries, both on this Textpatterned site and the MovableTyped one back at rasasayang.net, are all what I would consider ‘pre-launch’.. in journal terms: they’re all scattered notes, written unfinishedly in sub-treasurable notebooks—waiting for the real journal with the real entries when I really write. But that’s not how it all works. Not one bit.

I used to read over my works consistently, when I was younger. In the past several years, not so much. I write it, I hand it in to the teacher, or close the book and read it next year. So if any of this could have been made more sensical or proper or thorough or discrete or whatever else I might have liked it to be, then.. it simply will be as it has been written and I’ll give it a read tomorrow and say, “uhhuhm” to myself, and that will be that.

I’m hungry. And rambling. And goodness knows what my point is right now, let alone what I could possibly have been writing about for the past 20 minutes.

My mouse has been dropped (falls off of the desk/the side of the seat of my chair/my thigh) so many times, I think it’s finally breaking. *shrug*

01 June 2004 Tuesday

final stretch of workday; as it might be, as it is

the last hour of work is generally always either the fastest, or the slowest.
my i’m an insightful one today, neh? no..? ..oh..
what am i in the mood for right now?… grapes. that would do it. no grapes here. you know, knowing there are no grapes here is one thing.. but if i were to look around for grapes, and then furthermore find for sure that there are no grapes available to me here, then i’d be quite extra disappointed.

“Two words, Mr. President: ‘plausible deniability’.“

30 May 2004 Sunday

simplicity

there’s really a whole lot to be said for simplicity. more and more i think i am running into that truth. my room wouldn’t be a basically unusable mess if i had less stuff; i’d write in my journal if i didn’t have a dozen of them; i’d have already registered all the domain names i intend, if there weren’t so many ways to go about it. quite furthermore, i’d have built this site to be much futher along to where i’d like it to be, if there weren’t so many different ways to do it; CMS’s with which to do it; other sites in mind to build.
but.

i’m suddenly feeling terribly lazy. i want a clean slate on a lot of things… my packrattish nature is not caring overly much today. clear the slate and find the choices and go the worthwhile ways.

i’ve been at this computer screen too much the past few days. i’ve learned a lot and enjoyed a lot; and i’m not done with most of it, even if some was accomplished, and much much more was gleaned. but i need some time away. where’s my head? it’s on this stuff, in a way… it’s on the ideas that grow, particularly when i’m alone.. but they’re ideas that push through with motivation. motivation, for me, has usually always been someone else. i like myself fine, but i don’t terribly need anything from myself. ... so, so many ways to go. and i finished the cookie dough ice cream today.

25 May 2004 Tuesday

it's enough after long past too much

When is enough, enough?
Truthfully, usually long past ‘too much’.

Quasi-recent personal experience disallows me ever the straightforward answers:

• If you love her, fight for her.
• If you feel like you’re being a fool, you probably are.

it’s usually both.. necessarily both, whether to win or to lose.

If you love/want someone who doesn’t seem to love/want you back the same way/with the same intensity/intentions, then you fight for the person’s attention/affection, or you walk away (there are in betweens, but they are all pretty miserable if your feelings are strong for the person, and they’ll all lean/end with the one or the other.)

If there’s someone else in the picture.. a third person…
Then everything is compoundedly more complicated/confusing/frustrating/agonizing/painful. And in turn, as each of those are so terrible, one must convince themselves that the opposites have a fighting chance.. such that the hope is greater and the desire for the person is stronger.
And the loss will be all that more awful.

When is enough, enough?

05 May 2004 Wednesday

photographs of tortured iraqis~

imported from email conversations:

From: alicson
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: RE: washpost (sent to me from another friend)

this article talked about how what they’re doing is terrible.. and i get the gist of what’s going on. but i haven’t actually seen much of these photographs (not really any) and i only really know what’s going on beause of the big scandal that was discussed on the radio one morning on my way to work… and about military action on this militaryguy who had probably suffered a cruel doctored photo prank… i know the sexual stuff is extra bad to them.. i don’t actually know what’s being done to them of a sexual nature, tho.. besides photos with them naked… honestly? i’m not really surprised about any of it. what outlets are really offered to these soldiers over there? the behavior is unacceptable, but who’s responsible for educating them/ curbing them, anyway?

From: Alberto
Subject: Fwd: washpost
Sent: May 05 2004 12:34:24

It’s really rather terrible. The worst part is that in the Islamic religion, modesty is highly revered. It’s a sin and a shame to be naked in front of another man.
It’s wrong to be a homosexual or to be involved in homosexual acts. So the military people are having them do these grotesque things to them and it’s doubly bad for them.

I’ll send you the new yorker article about it that goes into a lot more detail.
really well written too.

-me

From: Alberto
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 2:09 PM
Subject: RE: RE: washpost

http://www.newyorker.com/online/covers/?040510onco_covers_gallery
Pictures.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
The Article.

The now infamous Taguma Report was drafted in February, so this has been going on a while. What doctored photograph are you talking about? Re: The not being surprised part…first of all, you pride yourself in not really being surprised by anything, so I guess that isn’t new. And what else is being done besides these pictures?

“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

It’s a systematic process of breaking them down, humiliating them, and sodomizing them. And in terms of regulation and oversight…that’s the question, isn’t it? How high up does this go? Who encourages/discourages this? Why was the report issued in February…3 months ago, and why is nothing being done until now?
But the political repercussions are serious. In the Arab world where the Bush Administration has been trying to state time and time again that we’re here for their own good…to liberate them, to give them freedom, to make their lives better…and then something like this gets out…as if there weren’t enough people to view the Americans as being hypocritical. We’re here as liberators…and then we make the Iraqis simulate sex acts on one another. We say that we are sensitive to their religion, and then hit mosques and do this to the people.
On an international level, Americans pride themselves on being a beacon of democracy. “But Americans are still as capable of torture as anyone else. Rumsfeld said yesterday that it was “un-American” to abuse prisoners—as if Americans were still somehow exempt from the passions that grip the rest of the human race. But we aren’t, and because we aren’t, we shouldn’t dispense with rules that have been designed to contain them.” (washingtonpost/A2328-2004May4)
It’s also about the mentality that rules shouldn’t apply to us because we’re better. On an international level, that’s what pisses everyone off…
it’s a big deal, and though it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that people are capable of doing this to prisoners…a lot of people believe that American’s aren’t actually capable of this. The Administration is also really trying hard to point out the fact that it’s a limited variation of the norm when the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t look so limited. Several of the prison systems in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo are under investigation for this very same thing.

It’s one thing to strive for a higher ideal that is beyond one’s reach, it’s another to deny the facts and issues and to keep the world as black and white as one thought of before. That’s Bush and his Administration’s tragic flaw. Regardless of all of this, we’re still liberators and anyone that doesn’t see that is on the opposing side. We’re good people, and therefore we shouldn’t follow any rules.

-Alberto

From: alicson
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: RE: washpost

so what do we do?

war is bad.
torture is bad.
revelling in other’s suffering is bad.
and we’re not gods and are without God’s powers.
so what do we do as a nation; government; species?—short of what is currently being done.
do you attack the motivations, or stengthen damage-control, or enforce strict policing?
we’re fans of the ‘every angle’ approach, neh?
and why isn’t it being done already, if the answers are reasonable, if not basically interpretable (i started to say ‘obvious’.. but i suppose i can’t) ?

right and wrong. good and bad. circumstances beget motivations beget circumstances…
they hate us. we hate them. why do they hate us? because we didn’t like them enough to treat them accordingly. now we don’t like them because they didn’t like us and treated us accordingly.
and of course it’s not even that simple, but if you’ll step back for a bit… well, it is.
“why should i care?” i know you understand that sentiment.
that can be accordioned short, or long so many times in so many different directions that it doesn’t matter how many things you manage to fix now.
some people.. some things… ..some ideologies.. they just cannot coexist.

human beings become more and more complicated all the time. we ‘evolve’. and we become more complicated. we learn more; we’re aware of more; we’re capable of more.. and that simply translates to bigger, badder bads….—which also allows for greater, gooder goods… (i wanted to say ‘greater, gooder God(s)’.. but offhandedly i’d venture that God has not become much gooder in the past fifty/hundred+ years.. and i wonder whether the desperation for Him is greater now than before,..or not…. a lot of terrible terrible terrible things have occurred in our (human) history. how horrified and indignant and despairing and frustrated and confused and hurt people must have been then—just the outsiders looking in at atrocity—not even the tortured and murdered and mutilated and the innocents so terribly trespassed upon and those from who all grains of decency and human kindness were stolen from… ‘human kindness’.. it’s a whole idea… it’s one word by itself… there simply must be stake in it. and there is. but that’s not what we’re talking about here, is it? now where did this parentheses start..?...) ...yes… greater gooder goods… balance and day and night and all of that… more complicated… bigger… our crimes become farther-reaching, and potentially deeper.. and we have the increasing capacity to be aware of the crimes on a larger social scale, rather than just an individual one. when are you people going to read Grapes of Wrath?

humanity.
constant struggle for good triumph above evil—however we find it/interpret it/label it/create it.

we take very personally the things that we know. our country. our people. our species.
you take personally your news articles.. your knowledge: composed/collected and delivered en masse. of course there’s beauty in that. that with which you are unfamiliar, though, you grimace at.
and that’s prejudice.
and you know that your way of thinking/doing/being is better than others.
and that’s bigotry.
that, my dear, is missing only means, for exercising ‘good’old-fashioned oppression.
and how far away is torture from there?

but you know all of that.


so what do we do?

how absolute is absolute power?

...cont’d from ‘divine right’:
i’ve not yet considered the subject much, but here are some shower thoughts on it…

it depends (of course). what does having all the powers of God actually mean? can you tap into all beings’ thoughts? can you change their memories? change their emotions? know all their pasts and intentions? and if you can do all that, you do know essential futures—how many of those can a god hold in mind, i wonder.. _{predetermination is a whole other thing to talk/think about}

04 May 2004 Tuesday

'divine right'

who do you love most in this world, or out of it?
who do you trust? who do you completely trust? who do you trust most?
what would you do if you were God, or had all the properties / powers / non-limitations of God?
if you had that absolute power, would you share it?

who is your foremost responsibility to? yourself? the person / people you love? to humanity in general? to the world in general?
with absolute / Godlike power, would you live for yourself—living your life as fully and thoroughly and self-fulfillingly as possible?
would you disregard your powers in the interests of preserving humanity as it is and has been?
would you dedicate your purpose and lifetime (eternity) toward reshaping the humanity and the world / universe in your best concepts of a utopia, or otherwise better existence?

btw.. i can’t imagine Max Faraday in Divine Right (though i’ve not seen or read a word of it yet) can really be omniscient. he should already know the consequences of his actions, then, shouldn’t he? as an entirely omnipotent being, does he still have the mind of a human? cuz he probably shouldn’t..
that’s probably why he’d run into so much conflict, actually. not that there wouldn’t be any, anyways, but having the total mind of a human but all the abilities of something more powerful… well… it’s like having an ant a roach a..cicada that’s the size of a… bus. the havock it would wreak, just doing its own thing, or even doing what it consciously believed was right…
at any rate, he (Max Faraday, or someone with all the powers of God) should have a deeper insight into everything and be able to think in the 10+ dimensions necessary and the infinite+ realities possible that his actions might influence.
at least the world keeps turning without him. that’s good.

would you share power?

would you keep anyone eternally safe?.. —from you?
: cont’d at ‘divine how absolute is absolute power?’...

03 May 2004 Monday

to remember me

6:30am is just too early to be sitting at work already, more than twice a week. i’m sooo sleepy. and i’m actually more awake this morning than i’d expect to be. i’ve gotten myself to bed so very late the last two nights.. trying to do several different things.. mom and dad also keeping busy with their very particular projects. work is getting a bit interesting because i’m actually doing the start-to-end of several things now.. truth is, i’ve really not been meeting my potential for a while now. it’s been kind of nice, and kind of guilty. ‘was a time when i would take anything on with confidence that i could reasonably compete with—and probably outshow—anyone on it, no matter their background or mine on the subject. i haven’t really done any such thing in a while. several different reasons i guess.. but i’m starting to get uneasy that i’ll be found out for not meeting the expectations of the world, sooner than later; even though i always know that later, ultimately, the world will owe me more than it even expected to. i wonder how much of a rush i am in, though, or should be. *believer* that, essentially, eventually all things are done and known* so i’ll find me—if i have been any lost, after all. but (when) should i start looking..?

23 April 2004 Friday

moving along / moving on

memory is most always clearest by the person who was wronged, rather than the person(s) charged with the wronging.

that in mind or aside, it is a terrible frustration to realize that: a) whatever your hurt stemmed from, the perpetrator does not recall the incident that so terribly impacted you. b) whatever your memory tells you of the thing that caused you pain, it turns out to be, or is alleged to be, false.
it really is a terrible continuance of fundamentally unmendable frustration.
fascinating how you can fall out of being enamored with a person, but still be bound to all the wrongs they caused you. the strife is where the passion collected and remains, at the end, neh?
i wish i understood more. all of it, from the different sides and the stages of growth / movement / interpretation / evolution…