Nighttime comes fast because it is winter. Windows are far and few in my office, and I cannot watch the night descend. It comes as a surprise when I walk out the door, the small, annoying, and predictable kind of surprise, if there is such a thing. As I leave the building I am not in a good mood because I have just “worked,” and I don’t feel one step closer to anything.
…
I close my eyes and feel my body rattle with the trains movement as we snake underneath Manhattan, headed downtown.
…
It sucks that downtown is such an annoying word to use, with all its connotations. “Oh, she’s so downtown.” Please, shush. People who feel the need to say things like that are so uptown.

Obsession

You forests, like cathedrals, are my dread: You roar like organs.

Winter Walk

While walking through Washington Square Park the day after a three-inch snowfall I crunch on New York’s famous sediment filled slush with the soles of my plastic boots. It makes a pleasing sound, like biting into a slightly melted popsicle. I walk towards good little piles of snow and step on them right in the middle, with purpose. I’m making my way towards my parents apartment on West 3rd. I live there, but I feel as if I am too old now to call it my home. There’s a stigma when college graduates still live with their parents. One must be independent, they say. It’s just another vagary to live by, another rule to guide you through the trenches. One must be independent, yes, yes, yes. I’ll look for apartments tomorrow. I haven’t looked up from the ground for a long time, so I do, and the change of scenery is refreshing: the sun is waning behind thick clouds and the silhouette of tall, bare oak trees against the grey sky is nice. In front of me is an old man sitting on a bench. He fits with the weather: grey face, black clothes. He pouts his lips at me.

Writing: My Craft, My Voice

Crafting a fine sentence is just so hot. Once my friend called me a "wordsmith." Such a compliment. The thing is: I'm stuck. I need to write in my "normal journal" (the one that is not on the internet) everyday until I unstick myself.

Sometimes I wish I had an audience. I do send my friends my writing (rarely) and people do ask to read my writing, but it's like, intimidating, embarrassing, and it makes me feel vulnerable. I don't know. And then I think: who the fuck cares, Sophia? Let it bleed. Be yourself. You'll never be good at being anyone else anyway.

I don't have nothing to hide, and if you judge me, so be it.

When I was a teenager I let it all out on my old live journal. I was so honest and so emotional. In some ways I was such a bitch. In other ways I was so self deprecating. I had an outer layer of tenacious self confidence, and inside I was just a softy, like a crab.

Sometimes it seems like teenagers have it all figured out. I mean obviously not. They're lost hormonal humans trying to assert their identity. But in that struggle to find themselves, to find adulthood, they end up seeming like they know it all, and with such persuasive confidence. It's convincing. Then you get older and you realize, oh shit, nothing's that simple. Or is it?

Nope.

My world is so different now, at 23, than it was during my teen years: I work, I make money, and I don't have homework. I can see true adulthood looming on the horizon along with all those things adulthood brings: responsibility, accountability, consequences, judgments, habit and the void.

Ah, the void. I'm no longer in a class of 100 kids, or 1,000 kids, or whatever. Now I'm in the world, with like, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 [+] former kids and it's clear everyone will either drift into something, or someone (whatever that means) or resign into no one (whatever that means).

And that's the uncertainty of adulthood: what does it mean? I guess you could boil it down to devoting your life to something you love, or not devoting your life to something you love.

But it's just so much more complicated than that. Or is it? Circles.

BLAH

I always go through these phases. Phases of inspiration, phases of idleness, phases of confusion, phases of frustration, phases of phases, through phases, around phases, into phases, out of phases, back to phases, learning from phases, forgetting about phases, wishing I was in a different phase, and then wishing there were no phases at all.

It's like I'm in a constant state of transition. A state of limbo between this and that, here and there, present and past, thoughts and reality, dreams and wakefulness, me and you. It makes sense, I guess, because I am just a blob of cells that are shifting and dividing and shedding and mutating until I've become someone else. Or until I've become myself. Growth. Decay. Growth. Decay.

I am so confused.

I am much more eloquent in writing than in speech. When words travel from my head down into my lungs, up my throat, and out my mouth - they so often become mush in the process. Like, gross mushed up banana's that have turned brown through oxidation. Ew.

Ah, The Personal Quarrel

One context of dialogue is the personal quarrel, characterized by aggressive personal attack, heighten appeal to emotions, and the desire to win the argument at all costs. The quarrel is characterized by bitter recriminations, a loss of balanced perspective, and afterwards, most often regret for excessive personal attacks that were not meant or deserved. The quarrel is no friend of logic, and frequently represents argument at its worst. The goal of the quarrel is for each arguer to attack or "hit" one's opponent at all costs, using any means, whether reasonable, fair, or not. Thus the quarrel is characterized by the fallacious ad hominem attack (attack against the person, rather than the agrument), and by emotional arguments that would not be judged relevant by more reasonable standards of argument. The quarrel is classified as an eristic type of dialogue (from the Greek word eris, meaning a fight or adversarial confrontation), in which each party tries to attack and defeat the other.

The quarrel represents the lowest level of argument. Reasonable standards of good argument should be designed to prevent argument from deteriorating into the personal quarrel.