Behind Bars

Society bars individuality. All of us are consistently pressured to touch upon a level of put-together-ness when really, we only need to appear better by comparison. Therein, the road to success is ultimately dominance (as demonstrated by a particular continent to the east). But there's hope beyond this, and it's called independence. Now, I realize that it's unavoidable that I'm influenced by everything around me, and that's not what I'm referring to. How we interpret this existence is what defines it all. This world's been fabricated purely out of opinion, so why should yours be any less significant? Voice!

Oh, and nice guys don't finish last. At the least, they finish. It's the hesitant ones that never truly begin.

"To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else— means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
~E.E. Cummings

Combustion

I'm making decisions that may or may not make any more sense of any of this.

Ghosts and shit.

I don't understand my body much anymore. My sleeping patterns are ridiculously out of whack. Because of work and my Astro field studies, I'm working late, falling asleep on the way home, and usually don't get there 'til about 12:00a. When I'm finally ready to crash, I can't. I lay there and my heart pumps like crazy, and I feel as though I need to get up and do something. I'm doomed at this point, because I need to wake up at 6:00a for school.

It gets better.

When I finally do pass out, I dream. I dream over and over again and wake up between each one. Sometimes I'm half-awake, and I trip out on people being in my room with me, watching me, talking to me; and I watch and talk back. It all sounds a lot scarier as I type this. Ghosts and shit.

A few nights ago, I experienced something..well, I don't know what. This one dream was strange, of course, combining a Chinese restaurant with the Matrix with me having Ichigo powers (woo!), but one part of it deviated from the story line and became one of its own. Hers was a face that I'm positive I'd never seen before, but she was beautiful. Maybe she was the product of every attraction, every fondness I've ever known. Anyway, that isn't the point. In this dream, I loved this girl. I felt her on my skin, pouring in, flowing through my every fiber. Sensations that had paled so long ago were (literally) in my dreams. Finally. I was already looking forward to tomorrow, (which I somehow had conscious knowledge about) and how I'd spend it with her. I remember thinking, still dreaming, that I couldn't wait for the world to know about us.

And then I woke up,

And for seconds, maybe minutes, I dreamt of her still.

But I realized that none of it was real.

And in that instant, I didn't want anything of any thing anymore.

It was an amazing episode, but I never want to see it again. With the consistent absence of such a thing would come unbearable intervals. I'm familiar with such essences.

Fucking dreams, man.

Vanity

I'm going to address a matter, well, a problem (not mine, maybe yours) that has hung over my head my entire life.

I don't choose to look the way I do. Yeah, I clean up, pay loads of mind to my hair, and am selective about what I wear. But being my size, as skinny as I am: I don't have a fucking choice. People (most of which I hardly know) will tell me "Jeez, you're so skinny" or "You've gotta eat" or "You're so lucky you're so skinny". Now, I understand that majority of the world conforms to modernism, tradition, collective social ideals, yadda yadda, but I fucking hate such ignorance. I know I'm skinny, I can eat most than most people in a sitting, and I'm not lucky for shit. My metabolism's strapped to goddamn jet-packs, and tied with the fact that I'm in constant locomotion, my body burns away whatever I've got. I don't have any fat to convert into muscle, so all I can do is preserve what I've got. And I utilize it better than fools bigger than me.

No, I don't mind being what I am.

So here, this is for you, reader, or anyone you know who believes in and conveys that crap: Would you do the same to an obese person? Approach an individual you barely know, or worse, someone close to you, and exclaim "Wow, you're so fat! You must eat a lot. I'm soooo jealous!"? How the fuck is this any different? How is it that people don't realize this? This fucking country is doomed to such vanity, and the population is unknowingly enslaved by it.

I've dealt with this straight up bullshit my entire life, so I'm used to it. Problem is, the rest of the world is too.

Gaze

I have to leave for work soon, even though I don't start until 6:00p. The H2 is apparently closed because of a Wahiawa fire that's been blazing for what, 2 weeks already? Some people excited about it, but shit, if their houses were anywhere near there, they'd be scared out of their minds.

Anyway, I haven't made an entry in almost a week, and I can't leave until I type something. School's been very entertaining, which is new for me. Archaeoastronomy is the only class that puts me to sleep, and will probably prove most difficult because of the lacking quality of the lectures. I need to finish the first 4 chapters of Psych UM in order to get bonus points, and I will do so. Evolution of Astronomy entails the Big Bang, nebulae, the intimidating Doppler Effect, and other cool complicated things. Religion's professor is very entertaining, and I'll more than likely get an A. I think I mentioned that before.

My favorite course, of course, is my Astro Lab. So far I've seen Jupiter, two of it's moons, 5 or 6 Zodiac constellations (Including Scorpio, aka Maui's Fish Hook. You know, Hawaiian Super Maaaan!"), the dippers, Polaris (the star aligned with the North Pole), and two nebulae. Fucking sick. Also, thanks to Sachi, I now have Google Sky Map on my phone, which allows me to view a very accurate map of whichever part of the Solar System I point it at. Oh yeah, and a shooting star for the first time ever! I can't believe I'm being graded on laying in the grass and scoping the sky.

Well, I hope I'm absorbent enough for this field. I'd never thought of myself as a potential scientist.

I haven't met anyone in my Religion lecture yet. My excuse is that the room is huge. The same goes for Evolution of the Universe, but that content's so interesting that I wouldn't want to talk to anyone anyway. Psychology, we only have one meeting a week, and it's easier for me to study on my own in this case. In Archaeo, I have Nikki to talk to and smoke with. I haven't seen her in..5 years? I felt bad for not recognizing her. Kaui's in my Astro Lab, and I met a few new people as well. Lee's from..I forget where, but he spent his last two years in Japan, which automatically makes him cool. Sarah always wants to ride in the trunk of my car, and it's becoming more and more of a possibility. Casey paints and unintentionally(?) but consistently delivers innuendo.

I've been listening to a lot of Norah Jones, and wish I could come up with the 300 or so dollars to see her when she comes here. My favorite by sound is Turn Me On, and favorite by word is Nearness of You.

She Took the Time

I found this piece just now, one I wrote a few semesters ago for a writing course. My style must've changed a lot since, because I had some difficulty explicating it. I really don't recognize anything from back then.

He knows he’s been had. He’d expected broken glass at his feet, or across the dash, or jagged in the upholstery like crooked teeth, but there’s just the spare set all snug in the ignition because she knew you couldn’t lose it there, and she did it to make you red. So you start to search because something’s gotta be missing. The radio knobs are all wrong. The wheel’s girdling your belly. You’d dust it all down if you could, or fog up the windows with some sort of steam-machine, like you two could when that lot was empty enough, but the prints on the windows’d be none but your own. Then you remember the backseat, but the emergency brake jabs you in the kneecap like she meant it to, so you slam it down and climb over. It still smells like smoke and gin all the same, but wouldn’t you know it, she’s made off with the perfume that you lifted for the anniversary, God knows for what price. Now only those stains remain, and she’d have taken those too if they weren’t so deep in the seat. So you start to ponder shampoos, and in a blink, you think you’ve hit gold, but it’s that damn spare flashing you in the corner eye. The sun’s come up, and she’s made you late for work again. You swing around to the front and turn the key, the spare, ‘cause it’s already there, and you’re late because of her anyway. The car rolls easy into reverse, and you wonder if she took the time to cut the brake line.

On Love and Likeness

Once you've been with someone, whether short- or long-term, you always remember the feeling. It pushes a craving into your mind, draws out preoccupation, and slams it all back home. You eventually recover. But the withdrawals are horrible. All of it will be there, ever-clung to the underbelly of your brain, shadowing the void where that little missing piece of you is meant to be. Instead it's resentment, depression, regret, regression. Sometimes it's nonchalance, but I think that's sadder than the former mentioned. Denial is the worst enemy of progress.

Above it all,

we cope

we search

we wait, we hope

for love.

Being single gives me a lot of time to myself. I'm focusing a great deal on school, work, and I mostly do productive things in my spare time.

But it's just..well, you know.