Why would she do that?  Wait, let me guess, she doesn't have a reason.

?

Some of my posts on here just don't make sense.  It's all good.

Ugh.

Looking for a man but I really just need to work on myself.  Pretty cliche.  Pretty annoying to say.  It's a rainy day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FH0GzjNnV4

A book? A novel? Some prose?

So I've got some great stories buried in my memory.  Many great tidbits, crazy characters, weird insights.  But what is my issue with writing something longer than a page?  My stories are short and casual, while I long for something epic and grandiose.  I don't know.  I just know I've got to get the ball rolling somehow. It feels great to write, even in this medium.  In high school I would blog everyday.  I knew what was up.

Sometimes I feel like I used to have it all figured out, and then the world confused me.  People confused me.  I read something interesting about this I-used-to-not-be-lost-but-then-I-grew-up topic. It was in a comment on a gawker.com article (of all places).  The comment was in response to a post about a young man who committed suicide after his highschool expelled him for possession of some synthetic marijuana substance that is technically legal.  Some people were outraged about how the school handled the situation, some people thought the suicide was only marginally related to the expulsion, some thought the school administration had handled the situation correctly and etc. etc.  This one guy wrote something completely tangential but striking to me at the time:

"The greatest lesson ever might be learned from my wonderful three-year-old grandson Peej.  He studies for himself whether he wants to go up on the slide or into the deep end of the pool.  The decisions of others, younger and older, have absolutely no effect on him.

Rousseau says, in effect, we begin with the answer and work up to the question.

Most internal misery is in simply absorbing the opinions of others.  We are all fiercely independent souls who allow others to tell us what to think, in effect joining the audience of Faux Noise.  Who am I?  Will someone tell me, by dating me or accepting me into the club or the class or the school or ratifying my bloated opinion of myself for your own advancement?  These are called negotiating skills.

Some think socialization is a valuable learning stage.  It taught my old pal Scoob aggression in support of grub and it's teaching even Peej to whine about his mother, although he does it as a one act play.  It's insidious, nefarious, but necessary, gawd help us all."

OK.  Rereading this comment it seems so Holden Caulfield (oh no, the phonies are invading!), so weird (who is his old pal Scoob? Is it Scooby Doo?  And why are you letting your three year old grandson swim in the deep end?) and so unrelated to some poor kids tragic suicide.  But at the time it struck me.  Perhaps it was just the quote from Rousseau, the part about the cause of internal misery, and the mention of negotiating skills (which still remains sort of mysterious to me; negotiating what?) that caused me to save this comment to my phone.  Proof again that I am drawn towards slightly crazy people and their slightly crazy ramblings.

But anyway, born with the answer and work up to the question.  I'm not sure what that means in a literal sense (what the answer is or what the question is); but as I get older it does feel like I drift farther from an answer and more and more into a world of unending questions. I guess that's part of creating your own identity. I get lost listening to other people, each with such divergent view points, each making me question my own internal truth.  I'm too easily influenced, that's for sure.

A New Chapter?

So it's time to move out.  I've been contemplating moving, looking at scattered apartments here and there, but now I'm ready to get serious.  Living at home for the past few months has been the most mind boggling experience.  Aside from the natural anxiety produced by returning to the panopticon I grew up in (my mother secretly searching through my stuff, reading my emails, stalking my whereabouts), it's as if I've reverted back to some outdated version of myself.  The anger, the defiance, the need to assert my independence - all those familiar emotions have returned.  Behavior appropriate for teenagers, not 22 year old's.  I know, I wrote about this earlier. I guess part of me is just hoping that this weird emotional state I've dipped into is a result of my living situation, not mental arrested development, or the onset of some disease (I'm at that age, right? 18-24?).

A while ago my mother told me about something in Jewish mysticism, an "ich."  This is a mysterious figure that appears in your life during a crossroads and points you towards the next path to embark on.  She mentioned this notion when we were in a bookstore, and I, being in a state of despondency and searching for answers, was looking through the self-help section.  An older British man looked at me and said "You'll get more out of writing or doing photography.  Those books are crap."  I knew he was right.  And then he disappeared.  My mother excitedly told me that this figure perhaps materialized to tell me what road to take next.  To write a book, to do photography, or to even combine the two.  I was at a crossroads, wondering what direction to take, and here was a guide.  Looking at this occurrence from the "ich" perspective made it feel like divine intervention of a sort, rather than just a guy, giving me his 2 cents on the book section I was browsing.

I'm still at that same cross roads but now my mother wants me to be a lawyer.  Who knows.

Another possible ich whom I met recently over a game of chess in a bar told me that he likes people who inspire him, that he likes to live life with passion, because he knows how dull things can be with out it.  I thought this view point was a bit optimistic, a bit too cliche for my liking, but he's right.  Life becomes so dull without a passion.  And I keep thinking I'd at least like to try to publish. I'd at least like to try to write a book.  When I told him reading and writing were my passion he asked me, "When you're on your deathbed do you want to look up at a shelf full of books you've published, or what?"  and I knew he was right.  Although still a bit too optimistic.