Reasons to Be happy

1. I love Take.
2. He loves me too.
3. We have nice animals friends who are fluffy and adorable and happy .
4. They make us laugh.
5. Cozy closets.
6. Weird items that are oddly comforting.
7. Chocolate
8. Ice Bat – ugly doll
9. Middle finger kitty
10. T: Finding your clothes mixed in with mine .
11. T: Waking up and taking showers
12. Tea
13. Coconut oil
14. not feeling sick.
15. When technology works
16. Overwatch
17. Cozy blankets
18. Jobs
19. Friends
20. Good Weather
21. Happy Memories
22. Singing
23. Learning an instrument
24. Soft skin
25. Sweet touches
26. Kissing
27. Cute outfits
28. Hair cuts.
29. Neighbors
30. Stoner Pits
31. New places to hang out
32. Familiar paths through the tiny woods.
33. Moss
34. Green.
35. Old creaky buildings.
36. TBC

Reasons why I love you and Why you drive me crazy

1. I have to remind you to breath
   1. I love this because the old as time saying “You take my breath away” is real for us. As cheesy as that is, I’m happy about it. But it gets a little weird when I’m laying on your chest and it stops moving for a little while and I look at you and say “Breath” and you let out the bits of air you were holding and start to inhale slowly. I always kiss you when this happens, and it starts all over again.
2.  You hate waking up.
   1. I do too, but lately when I wake up I can’t drift back to where I was and I’m so frustrated by it so I just want you to be a wake too so we can cuddle and talk.
3. You make me food.
   1. one of the three items on the “Happy Zanthia” list, that must be completed daily or else I die, and you do this so well and happily…. I hate when people do things for me that inconvenience them or make them annoyed but because you love to cook and I love your cooking, everything is copasetic.
4. We barely need alone time.
   1. Because both of us are so close and we don’t need to be having conversation together when we are together we barely need alone time. I mean occasionally both of us need to go and recuperate but I love being alone with you most.
5. You are as curious as a 3 year old in a thrift shop.
   1. I watch you pick things up and touch them and feel how they work and it’s so entertaining watching you be fascinated so easily by random objects you find. Sometimes I’ll catch you playing with an assortment of weird metal bits and I’ll ask “Where do you find those?” and you’ll look up at me grinning and laughing like a kid and say “I don’t know!” and shrug your shoulders defensively.  It makes me smile now just thinking about it.
   2. But at the same time, you make messes because you find things and never put them away or organize them. You go from one discovery to the next with no interludes or productivity, simply letting your brain lead you places physically without you consciously understanding that I can walk in your room without finding the most weird and disgusting assorted piles of items.
6. You are a rolly polly baby.
   1. When you are stretching, frustrated, tired, concentrating, or simply laying down at all, you roll around in your bed on your stomach and become the cutest bundle I have ever laid eyes on.
   2. This also means your covers are always a mess, and your hair. But I love it.
7. You are a furnace.
   1. I need this. Chronically cold feet and hands because of my health issues is a curse, but you are my savior with your very hot skin (in more than one way).
8. You like to sing in the stairwell
   1. `Going along with your hilarious curiosity, you discovered that the echoey noises your voice makes in the stairwell is really pleasing and you go in there to sing just for fun… I don’t know a single person who would do this just purely on their whim.
9. To be continued.

Being

As I sit here crying because I’ve just rewatched my favorite film “Cloud Atlas”, I am reminded of change and dreams.

For a long while now, maybe a year, I’ve been in a slump. I’ve been thinking over and over about how my life is a “drop of water in an endless sea”. Pondering over how tiny I am, how mortality is so finite how could any of us bare the idea of immortality? How I will die inevitably and everything in our waking world is a distraction away from this death, it’s a monolithic movement toward a fake idea of eternal life. It doesn’t come from the Christians, although they now propagate this idea, and it was before the Greeks, before the Babylonians (pre-Judaism), and it was before writing. Humans lie. We lie to ourselves about our fate.We try to block it out, pretend death isn’t lurking under every rock, waiting to trip us up and break us, we shout “DANGER” so quietly.

I’m trying to be honest to myself. Telling myself of my death, that whatever I do, I will die. I’ve been giving up hope, I’ve let all my dreams go. In my depression and in my turmoil I have said “It’s impossible, I’m 1 and 8 billion+ and I am nothing.” I am nothing because I choose to be, but not because I am.

In Cloud Atlas Sonmi said “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”(David Mitchell, author). When she said this, she is staring at a room full of fighting. Everything knows death is inevitable but they are fighting for a better life. Dying for a better life for the other.

My eternal best friend Savannah said to me: “You aren’t great because you are great, but because I say you are great so you have to be, because I want you to be.” Now this sounds very backwards, but I knew exactly what she meant. She meant that even though I don’t think I’m great, or have purpose, or meaning, I am great because she knows so. Then she said “You may think you don’t have a purpose, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give yourself one. Make one up!!”

A few hours later a woman came out of an Irish bar on to the sidewalk where Savannah and I were standing, I gave her a light and she said to me “I want to be your mothah!” and then “Go do something amazing, change the world.”

More than all the religious and socio-political philosophical truths, I know that humans are only human with other humans. And we can only change when we step into the view of the other. The moment we see the point of view of someone unlike ourselves who is apart from us can we begin to understand we aren’t so different. The only way we can learn or affect the world is by changing ourselves.

I heard once that you don’t have to change the whole world to be marvelous, you only have to change one tiny world of someone else’s to make an impact.  I hope to change a few, even if those worlds are just my immediate friends and family, I can be ok with that.

I won’t give up though, I’m revisiting my dreams of being a writer, a musician, an archaeology, a teacher, a lifelong learner. I am finding another path and I don’t walk alone, but I am connected with those I find, everyone’s whose path touches mine.

Those who are great most of the time never knew they were. They died, maybe for a cause to fight for the other and are remembered as great because they changed one tiny world, that created a wave to affect many.  They weren’t great because they thought they were great, they are great we because we think they are. We think. Present active Indicative plural. We are plurality and individuality and we are being.

So be.

haha ^^

 

A work in progress

05/30(or the 31 since you are in Japan right now.)/2016

How we met: well it wasn’t quite meeting at first, really. You stared at me (checked me out) from two rows back on the other side of the class room of our Econ 111 class in Xavier room 150. I knew your name and who you were, and I ran into you often with The-Girl-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. She was something else (and a whole other story) and you and her seemed to be best friends from my point of you. Until I began to pester you.

I thought you were (OMG kill me now for saying this) THE cutest Asian kid I had ever seen in my life, and I was down for the chase.

I made a mistake first hand though by the telling your “Best friend” what I thought of you. She had  a bit(a little more than that) of a fit and she said: “You got, Tomas, and Kiya, you can’t can’t canttttt by any means have Hiro.” And I told her I would respect her wishes, but there was a big piece of me that I certainly was not going to ignore that said “ignore her, he is a catch… even if he ends up just being a good friend” which of course made my reply to her be: “Oh of course, he is your best friend, I would never!!!” (one of the biggest lies I have ever told). And here we are. You are my man.

You ask me to make lists.

I love this. (but you know I love making lists so it isn’t exactly work to me. )

What we should do:

1. Travel the world
2. Go to every San Pellegrino 50 best restaurants in the world.
3. Go to Japan – like everywhere
4. Take a bath – not too long of one, I hate being pruny
5. Go to an owl cafe
6. Go to a cat (neko ねこ　猫)  cafe 😀
7. Feed each other nutella
8. Stay at a ritzy hotel and splurge on room service
9. Keep each other motivated
10. Keep each other healthy
11. Couples Message
12. Take a train over night somewhere, hopefully Europe
13. Swing Dance
14. Shop for undies in Tokyo
15. Ice skate in Rockefeller center in NYC
16. Build an igloo in Alaska
17. Pray at a temple in Japan (Nara)
18. Bake

TO BE CONTINUED.

Anecdotes: #1 Strawberries

As per request from wonderful friends, I will write my stories and little notes I’ve taken from my experiences.

In highschool, I –for some strange reason– became the Guru of anything pertaining to romance and sex for couples and friends. One of my closest friends, Minecrafter of Aphrodite (we will call him MoA for short) asked me to teach him to kiss since he had just started dating his first girlfriend. It was his sophomore year of highschool and my Junior year, so I took his request. I thought for a while about a way to verbally teach him and came to the conclusion that strawberries would be the best analogy.

See, giving someone step-by-step directions going through how to move their lips, tongue, and cheeks would be a disaster and I’d end up just making a bunch of weird faces at him. I didn’t find this an attractive way to teach or a useful way for him to learn how to handle another person.

I ended up telling him this:

“Imagine you are holding a succulent, juicy, strawberry. You don’t take the strawberry and rip into it with your mouth like an animal, nor do you lick it all over with your tongue and rub its juices all over your face. No, you gingerly press it to your lips and then take it slightly into your mouth between your lips and put pressure down on it. Don’t get complex or you won’t be savoring the taste. Start slow and then if you find out the strawberry isn’t reluctant, move forward. Silent communication.”

Now strawberries are not essentially sexual (like a banana) or romantic (like chocolate), but I think they are perfect for this situation since kissing can be either very emotional or apathic. Kissing is what you make it and what you put into it. It’s a way of communicating your intentions and feelings, or the lack thereof.

 

 

 

Belittling

Every stage of my life has been belittled and the next oncoming stage glorified. Why? I think it may have to do with the idea of constantly chasing the carrot held out in front of us. It’s a terrible way of forcing us to progress because we feel small and worthless.

In each era, you are told you will soon meet the “real world” as if you aren’t experiencing it yet. What really is the “real world”? Is it the constant grind of sleep, eat, work, pay bills? Because I don’t think that means “real world” that just means capitalism. The “real world” is never the same for any singular person. Everyone has a different experience and according to the laws of philosophy: no one is ever wrong. Reality is relative to your experience, upbringing, culture, and beliefs.  My “real world” is totally opposite to the “real world” of someone living in Mexico City, Berlin, London, Beijing, or Dubai. My “real world” consists of hobbies, family, friends, activities, personal art, and adventure. Yes I work, yes I go to school, yes I pay for things, yes I eat and sleep. But these things do not make a “real world” these things are characteristics of living in our western culture.

So who came up with this stupid idea that telling kids while they are trying to develop themselves that they aren’t even close to being in the “real world” yet? They weren’t born yesterday, they’ve experienced what it’s like to be hurt and be happy, to see pain and heal. Just because someone is younger than you or experiencing something that you’ve already experienced doesn’t make them lesser to you.

I’m 19, to most people I’m a fetus. Meaning, my development as an adult is so small and insignificant I mustn’t be capable of understanding things without a guide. I’m not a fetus, I know how to walk by myself.

I say all this because every step I take, I am told is not enough. “You’re not there yet! You don’t know what the real world is like!” Sure I dont have a full time job, my permanent residence is listed as my parents house, and my bills are paid. But why do these things make me less of a human? Why do I appear to others as if I’m useless or purposeless?

Let me ask you this: What is so special about your life that makes it worth more than mine? What makes your “real world” experience better and more “real” than mine?

Nothing.

I’m Sorry About Today

I’m sorry about today.

I know it felt off. I was off.

Honestly, when you walked in, my heart skipped a beat like it was February still and we had just met. I was awkward, and I didn’t know how to look at you.

I think my page refreshed in my heart or something. Like I’m falling in love with you over again. Not as if I had fallen out of love with you, but I had fallen into stability with you before, and then disaster struck it’s usual course with me and I fucked up. And I told you.

And maybe it’s better now, I’m honest, I’m here, I’m trying my best but I feel like my best isn’t good enough. Like my best won’t ever be good enough.

And I know you know that too, you said it yourself today. “If only it were easier”.

Simplicity is unattainable in a relationship, nothing is simple when it comes down to human emotion, there are too many variables and inputs you can’t discern one from another because they are inseparable. Life is tangled in us, like I am with you, and I get farther and farther drawn into your life the more I think about you and keep you.

So I’m keeping you. On one side, it is because I am so tangled into you that I feel like to be without you here in the wilderness of the world I’m putting myself in I need you, more than I’ve needed anyone (other than my family). I need you to be here to love me, to help me, to make me feel like I have a home, to make me love someone else like I know I can but thought I never could, you’re here to watch me fuck myself over but still love me after it’s all done.

On the other, I am keeping you because I’ve never tried so hard for a relationship ever before you. I’ve never put my all into someone like I have with you, I do you know? I gave and continue to give everything to you. And maybe that’s a bad thing, maybe it’s a good thing, but those words don’t actually mean anything. Good and bad are the worst descriptions anyone could ever use.

So let me try again.

Maybe it’s gonna kill us both. Maybe staying with you will tear my insides apart because everything I have is all in my head and other than  that I’m worthless. Maybe it’ll kill you to put up with that. It’ll bring you to the point of madness because I’m so damn difficult.

But maybe it’ll teach me how to be here. Maybe it’ll teach me how to edify and not feel superfluous and actually do what everyone says the right thing to do is. Love you, love you forever, love you for always, as long as I’m living, my man you will be?

Sometimes I just cry though, cry and cry, and cry and I can’t stop and I don’t why I’m so sad. So I blame it on the fact that my freedom that I used to know is gone and I feel guilty for everything and I feel like the smallest slip with shatter the world I’ve built with you and it’ll be over and I’ll have to go home because I’m such an emotional wreck.

I think without you I would be suicidal. But you already know that.

I’m might be either way, but I know post-you, I don’t know how I feel.

Because obviously, right now, I’m not in post-you mode. I’m present-you. I’m here, I’m honest, I’m trying my best, and you are too. I don’t know if you are honest, but I’m pretty sure you are, I know when you lie. I don’t know if you are trying your best, because I know you are in a slump right now. I’m hoping you can come out of it and get yourself in the right direction, wherever that may be.

But now, I’m present-you and I’m crying every time I see you, and I’m crying even when I’m not seeing you. And  I was crying in the beginning when the curvature of the earth was separating us and I was crying because I knew what I would come to, but not knowing what the future held scared me so goddamn much I couldn’t even voice my fear because I knew you wouldn’t understand.

It’s not easy having a brain that never stops, a mind palace that is infinite. I’m stuffing my closets in my brain with things I can’t say to you because they will upset you. I’m hoping when I’m with you and I’m in my head that I don’t walk past them and smile, because that happened today and I knew it would make you mad to know about the things I stored away in there. They are becoming blue memories because of you, when they used to be golden, funny and light.

I don’t want to ignore all the good things, but right now those are too easy to see, which means they are in such plain view they are hiding the things I probably need to pay attention too. I’m trying to pay attention.

You can’t pay attention. I don’t know how I’ve adapted to that, I guess adaptability truly is one of my greatest strengths. But with your ADHD I don’t have to change my personality and DNA. I don’t have to change my frontal lobes neuron language. But being monogamous, that is trying to tell me to change my DNA. I don’t think that way. I never will.

Since you told me you didn’t like red, I haven’t worn a single thing red. Some how that small phrase you said months and months ago stuck with me, and I recalled this:

I’m not saying this is true, but I’m finding it hard to not relate with.

I know you have changed me, which isn’t a surprise. I’m glad you’ve influenced me. You’ve helped me to see that life can be simple and you can be happy. You’ve helped me understand street smarts and how to avoid scary things. You’ve helped me see what I dislike. You’ve helped me learn how to trust.

But you’ve also instilled the knowledge that I know a simple life will never satiate me. I’ve tried. I’ve pursued the simplicity of monogamy, the easy life of school, job, boy friend. Which would evolve into : Employment, marriage, children. Retirement, settlement, grandchildren. I don’t think I want those things in the white picket fence, sepia filtered sense that you do. Life is rainbow too me, everything is something different than you thought it was, I don’t see things as black and white with rose colored accents. I see it like a flower child from the 60’s would. Like someone tripping on acid but retaining a sense of self.

Deanna pointed out something interesting last night, she said: “It’s funny, how you like being caged by things, but not by people.” She referred to my love of clothing and obsession with belts and accessories; the fact I can’t sleep without my retainers (AKA teeth cages). Being caged by people, or restrained physically, (as you well know by now) makes me fall apart and have a panic attack. Then she said to me, “Take this and apply it to what is happening with you and Shane.”

11.22.15 I can’t be caged. I knew this before with Cameron. See, he and I started our relationship right before he flew out to school his freshman year to Stanford University in California. It was magical and amazing and I was in love with him. But I also knew that I couldn’t be with him if he was away, and it would be wrong of me to keep us monogamous. I also knew inside me that I would never stay true to that anyways. I was 15, but that feeling hasn’t changed.

Fast forward four months and he is back from school, we see each other and fall back into the pattern of things, we are intimate and it’s wonderful, but we also talk for hours and simply enjoy one another. It’s nothing comparable to you of course, you are the absolute opposite of him, which is honestly great. If you were anything like him I wouldn’t truly love you, I would love the shadow of you but be holding onto the memory of Cameron.

Back to  2013, Cameron left, he went  back to school and I was alone. We didn’t discuss our terms, we didn’t need to. He knew I would be with other partners, and I knew he would too. At the time I was 16, and I wasn’t interested in getting any more involved with someone longer than a night. Maybe a week. The point of dating was lost on me.

That summer, Cameron returned and he asked me to be his girlfriend, but he already knew my answer, I think he just wanted to show how he felt. I said that when he was here, and we were talking affectionately he would be my boyfriend, but when he was gone, and we had space he wouldn’t be. But this did not mean monogamy. No, I was with other people, and I told him that. He knew and knows that I am a free spirit that won’t be tamed. I even told him stories and struggles that I had with other partners and friends and he shared his, as my friend.

Friendship comes first, if I can’t talk about the intimate matters that happen with others or the intimate thoughts I have I am not fully expressing myself. As strange as this may seem, I find that story telling is my way of expressing, sharing, and showing my loved ones what is going on inside me and around me. I don’t know if this “socially acceptable” because as you say, “Kissing and telling is just wrong” and the like… I don’t see it as “kissing and telling” I see it as having an experience and telling someone about it, just as if I had climbed Mt. Hood with you and I told my mother. My definition of kissing and telling is like being a huge gossip whore and involving people in your business that shouldn’t be involved. But you see, by my definition, telling you the experiences that I’ve had isn’t being a gossip whore, it is sharing my life with you, a person who is very much in my business and I in yours. If you considered yourself not involved in my business I would be offended and run off dramatically like in the movies (or like a twelve year old).

So Cameron and I continued in this way. No labels, no monogamy, no terms and conditions, just that we were friends, who loved each other very deeply, and knew that without each others support (in what ever way we gave it) we would be sad.

The summer before I met you, Cameron was very entangled with me, but I had no idea how to feel. I went from “please stay” to “I never want to do this again” to “come back”. These emotional swings are still baffling to me, but maybe I was just tired of the condition-less conditions. Our unspoken rules were eating at me.

Now I told you that Cameron and I were still “on” when I met you. I mean you can’t tell me I was doing something wrong because Cameron and I weren’t monogamous. And for all purposes I would have stayed “on” with him even after you asked me to be yours because he was just south of you on the other side of the country. He wasn’t going to fly to see me, no way, but he and I  being “on” just meant that I was still hearing “I love you”‘s from him. Because he loves me. Me, me. He isn’t like my crazy x that is in love with the idea of me as a pony, fetishized and objectified. Cameron loves who I am, and I love who he is.

Then I told him one fateful night via text (because I am obviously the worst human being. Hypocrisy beyond compare), that I was trying monogamy out. Let me emphasize trying.  Not to be confused with doing and achieving. I’m still trying.

11.24.15 Whatever decisions we talk about, whatever thing we are working on, it is always your way or the high way. Sex, food, sleep, conversation, anything. Everything I do is to accommodate for you. I can’t be changing all that I am and all that I think about for you. I need freedom of thought, I need freedom of speech, I need freedom to be the person I am without being afraid I’m going to hurt you by telling you something from my past. I can’t go on accommodating for all that you can’t handle or refuse to handle. I am complicated and difficult, I recognize that, but can’t you comfort me? Can’t you understand that I love you more than I’ve loved any one else in my lifetime and I want to be with you, but I can’t because I am not who I want to be with you.

I’ve thought long and hard over this, and delicately so. I thought about how I would feel after, post-you. I know both of us will be fine. We will live on. Life goes on. I will always love you. I will always love the taste of your skin, the feel of your arms around me, the way you smile when you are truly happy.

I made my choice to be post-you. I’ve decided and you can fight back all you want. But I’m taking the highway option.

You say I can have you and be monogamous, or be without you and be polyamorous. Well, there isn’t an “or” for me. I AM polyamorous. I DO love more than one person this very instant and  I will always love more than one person because that is just how I love.

One day, maybe a few months from now, maybe a year or more, I’ll say hello to you again. And I want you to know I don’t want to cut you out of my life, my heart, my soul, and my mind, no I want to stop the cycle of pain I’ve been experiencing. I want to heal us. Because ever time I’ve had suicidal inclinations, every time I’ve needed support, it never really went away. It isn’t your fault that I have these feelings but it is your fault for triggering them.

I’m not saying this to be awful, I’m saying this because it’s true. Every time I “make a mistake” that I know will hurt you or could hurt you I feel like I’m worthless. I can’t feel that way, it’s driving me to the edge.

I want the best for you, which I know you might think “It’s you! You just need to change!” Well if I need to change to be with you, then I am not what is right for you.

1.2.16 So I love you. That’s undeniable. I have been trying to sort out all the things left unsaid and all the thoughts I had.

I’m thinking of the plans we made together, that look like old memories now. Obviously, neither of us know what the future holds, but we can at least write an outline.

When we met, you said you wanted three princesses, and my heart immediately jumped and I responded in a way I had never reacted to that future thought. In the past, (I know dredging it up again) I had always cowered away and scoffed at people’s proposals of children and marriage. I thought it was nasty. But, when you said that you wanted children in the sweetest way I’d ever heard someone talk about children, I had a feeling I was going to enjoy you.

It was the first time I let myself contemplate a future with someone. The first time I let my mind and heart wander over a thought and actually commit to this fluffy cloud idea. I call it a fluffy cloud idea because it is unpredictable and can change fast. I like those kinds of ideas though, as you know.

I know this must suck. I write and write, and write… It’s awful. I hate to do this to you, but I’m trying to find closure. Which probably doesn’t exist. But I’ll keep trying for our sake’s, I don’t want to lose you.

^^gross, “I dont want to lose you” is the nastiest— I take that back, the nastiest phrase I’ve heard is the one you told me while we were in your bed: “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed” HOW COULD YOU? we talked about that god awful phrase and cursed its existence and then you go and use it! In all seriousness.

Don’t you dare tell me that again. Don’t tell me you are disappointed. Find a better word.

Exemplia gratia/για παράδειγμα

1. Crest fallen
2. Despondent
3. Dispirited
4. Discouraged
5. Disheartened

You get the idea.

Anyways. I want you to know I don’t hate you and I don’t want to cut you out of my life like I have done to so many soul-sucked person. Being soul-sucked doesn’t suit you, I prefer you being soul-filled.

 

When Our Thoughts And Prayers Are Not Enough: School Shootings In America + How we all Miss the Point

Kovi Biokolo brings a really good question to the front of the new page: “Why do we continue to do violent things when there are so many positive philosophies with in religion, culture, and politics? why do we continue to self destruct? Why do we keep giving sorrow to each other over and over again?”  Its a conundrum people have been trying to answer since the beginning of time.

Culturally, and by human nature, all of us tend to shove thoughts away that are hard to understand to save them for a better time, a more suitable mindset, because its hard to think about difficult things. Our brains and souls are made uncomfortable by big questions such as “who is god?”, “What is love?”, and “Why do bad things happen?”. Some people take the route of letting religion explain everything for them, and by religion I mean interpretations of holy manuscripts in ways that reassure us that we are doing the right thing. Not questioning information helps us feel more comfortable, acceptance is peaceful, settling. Coming face to face with blatant fiery red violence and  a clash of morals and the questions come up again, “Who is god?” “Why do bad things happen?”…. Maybe you think you know.

Mark Manson’s post on school shootings in America was very edifying:

“Then there are those who are simply ignored. Dylan Klebold was suicidally depressed for over two years. He fantasized and wrote about killing himself liberally. Despite getting into trouble with the law, turning in school assignments that glorified murder and suicide and failing most of his classes senior year, his parents and friends claimed that they had no idea something was amiss. George Sodini, a middle-aged Pennsylvania man who shot up an aerobics class full of women, wrote in his journal that since he spent the past 20 years of his life alone and miserable, there was no reason to think that the next 20 wouldn’t be lonely and miserable as well. His mother had been emotionally abusive. His father hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with him in over 30 years. Simply put: he had nothing to live for. So why not take some revenge on your way out?

Gun control gets the headlines. Mental health care gets the headlines. Violence and video games and misogyny and internet forums and atheism — the list is endless at this point.

Here’s what doesn’t get the headlines: Empathy. Listening to those around you. Even if you don’t like them very much. We have come to live in a culture where it’s taboo or unacceptable to simply check in with people emotionally and offer some empathy and understanding. I’m not saying this would magically fix all gun violence. I’m just saying that all of these things — the lack of gun laws, the lack of health care, the inability to have basic conversations with friends and neighbors about what’s going on with them, these are all extensions of a callous and self-absorbed culture that lacks any real empathy.”

(http://markmanson.net/school-shootings and http://markmanson.net/terrorism)

Some food for thought today.

If you are really listening; an ode to silence

The lost art of really listening to people. The secret to it is we communicated with our bodies. Open stances or closed stances, fiddling and looking away, shifting glances, wild gestures or uncomfortable arm crossing. The saying “Actions speak louder than words” is a lot of the time true. That’s why reading body language helps tell us when we are being lied to or how people really feel versus what they are saying. A good listener can see these things. A true listener can start to understand someone better by these things. Seeing how a person responds physically can communicate their insecurities and their confidences, the things they like and dislike, and also whether they are extremely selfish or are relaxed and loving. Someone who really listens can see right through people.

Then sometimes silence (or the lack of action) speaks louder than words. Whether that inaction is someone saying one thing and doing another or being completely passive and not communicating at all.

That’s why I wrote a song called “Silence is death”

I wrote this because the lack of communication is a huge scream in itself. Crying silently, suffering in silence, sighing silently. It’s all a way of showing a burden, communicating pain or indifference. Especially indifference. “The silent treatment” is a way to communicate my pain that doesn’t need words to describe it. Everyone knows what it is. Everyone understands why. It’s because sometimes the amount of weight I’m carrying inside me is boiling under my skin and its turning my eyes red and soggy, its breaking me so much I can’t even speak. Sometimes the silence is necessary because I’m screaming so loud on the inside I can’t bear to speak anymore. Or maybe its the opposite, maybe it’s because the world and people around me are so loud I can’t handle the noise anymore so I stopped trying and shut down. Maybe I’m too tired of this sick mess to speak anymore. Words fall short of the things I want to say.

This is why people say things like this:

“If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders.”
― Andrew Harvey

Sometimes its really hard to be bursting at the seems like this always. I take a chill pill and reseed into a happy numbness, which sometimes solves the problems and I start to see that I don’t have to hate and hurt from all the noise around me and inside me. I can let it out and in and breathe and be one with it or separate my self from it. Nothing is permanent. But I do wear my anger on my heart and not on my skin. I wear it on the inside where it festers and starts to boil again and I start my silence.

There’s a difference between serenity and being numb.

anonymous

Communicating like this isn’t all there is though.  Sometimes small talk and social interaction in the trivial pursuits can be a fueling ground for socialites or a draining all-consuming pit of terror. Sometimes I love to gossip and joke with my friends, and other times it tears me apart inside to hear idiotic and pointless words. I get so upset I give a silent tantrum and stop speaking to people.

‘Cause I’ve seen more spine on jellyfish
I’ve seen more guts in eleven year old kids

Have another drink and drive yourself home
I hope there’s ice on all the roads
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt
And again when your head goes through the windshield

Is that what you call tact?
You’re as subtle as a brick
In the small of my back
So let’s end this call and end this conversation

Read more: Brand New – Seventy Times 7 Lyrics | MetroLyrics

A Stream of Consciousness List

Inspired by Barbara Ann Kiper’s book “14,000 Things To Be Happy About”.

1. That thought niggling in the back of your head for weeks about that one thing you wish you could avoid

2. Unavoidable situations

3. The inevitability of confrontation and circumstance

4. Both the calm and the rage

5. Emotions that are tangled together like the ball of yarn in the back of your grandma’s closet from 1958.

6. The moldy bread that disappoints to the point of anger

7. Hatred for hatred

8. The inevitability of them finding out

9. Resolving to repent

10. Relentless self doubt

11. Self hatred

12. Self harm

13. Verbal inner abuse

14. The torture of guilt

15. The relief of a pent up word.

16. Anxiety

17. The realization that every human being is living a life just as complicated as your own

18. Sonder

19. Understanding humans are almost unjudgeable. Morals, ethics, and human rights are all a concepts of our cultural consensus and collective attitude in an individualistic universe striving against itself in its hypocritical ways.

20. Chaos and Order aren’t quite as dissimilar as they seem.

21. Love and Hate are not opposites, but simply one is the softer version of the other and the harsher version of itself

22. The feeling of flying after breathing slowly

23. Doubting if anything ever said is truly unique

24. Doubting if “unique” actually exists.

25. Jazz recordings from 1938

26. Discrepancies.

27. “Ubiquitous” is still one of my favorite words, unfortunately, it is not ubiquitous. (hehe)

28. Pressing the repeat button to listen to my soul song of the night.

29. Him. Who is always on my mind.

30. Him. Who is often on my mind.

31. Him. Who is sometimes on my mind

32. Him. Who I would like to pleasantly vacate.

33. Him. Who should really blow this taco stand.

34. Him. Who needs to kindly fuck off.

35. Her.

36. Telekinesis

37. Telepathy.

38. Best friends

39. Know-it-alls

40. Synonyms.

41. Ecce. ego sum mortem.

42. How uncool people are

43. The idea of “cool” being such a vague term I wish I could forgo ever using it in a colloquial sentence ever again in my existence.

44. Extensive vocabulary.

45. Mother fucking scholars

46. Anticipation

47. Mother Fucking Stupid Ass Bitches

48. Uncultured tongues with a plethora of explicit content.

49. Not having to explain what that sentence means to someone

50. Carpal tunnel

51. Bad conditions for creativity.

52. Comfortability

53. Affordability.

54. The reason I am writing this

55. “Goal setting”

56. Careers are for losers who don’t play instruments

57. “I’m a writer, I need my fucking space.”

58. Hidden genius’.

59. Fucking diseases of the soul

60. Humans are an infection upon the earth

61. Mother nature

62. I WISH I DIDN’T LOOK LIKE THIS

63. I write poems because I’m sad.

64. I’m sad because I write poems

65. I write songs because I can hear them in my head

66. And they wont shut up until I sing them

67. I write lists because they write themselves on the insides of my skull

68. And they only way to wash them off is to get them out through my fingers.

69. This is why I have carpal tunnel.

70. This is why I stay up all night

71. This is why I think too much

72. This is why I hate myself.

73 This is why I can’t believe you.

74. I thought I was good at this

75. A list longer than 612 pages.

76. Numbers can’t write themselves

77. But I wish math could solve its own problems.

78. Girls who are too innocent to understand they are innocent.

79. Sexaul repression.

80. Parental sheltering

81. Misunderstandings.

82. Compound words ^^

83. Antecedents

84. Vague pronoun use

85. Nathaniel Hawthorne

86. Song lyrics quoted on social media no one understands

87. Likes.

88. Dislike button

89. Disaster

90. Fucking it all up.

91. Cheating the system

92. Realizing the system was made up

93. Making up your own rules

94. Pointless laughter

95. References too advanced for your knowledge of history, philosophy, and literature.

96. Books written in 430 B.C.

97. Hieroglyphics

98. Happiness

99. Nerds

100. A list that will hopefully last forever.