november 17the world has entered a calm state of uncertainty, which makes for good amounts of introspection and general funkiness. i blame it on the stars, on the meteor shower burning gashes across the sky tonight.
people have been showing me sides of myself that i normally either don't think they catch or i don't recognize myself. in photo class my prof noted that in most of my self portraits i am reclined or lying down. i'm not sure why really... i guess i have this urge to be grounded, spread out and not afraid of the dirt, stable and relaxed. i'd say it's not only an urge, but a tendancy, altho i definitely have my moments when i'm anything but these things. i was talking to a friend about painting and i mentioned that i'm kind of a perfectionist when it somes to art, of most things for that matter, and she said ya, she'd noticed, that it's not that i'm anal, cuz that's different, i just have that air of wanting control. shit, she's got me there... but isn't that in the back of all of our heads? without control and details we would be in a constant dream state which, altho nice for a while, ain't what we're built for, sadly.
at lunch i had this conversation with a gal who's an astronomy major. when i sat down she was already most of the way thru a conversation about the poetry of astronomy. they were talking about how most of the imagery is based around anthopomorphization of celestial bodies, and how it's very hard to get away from the breathing of pulsars or the birth of stars in a nebula. she wanted to write and use imagery made of human perception, the swirling of color or sparkling of points of light, somehow more pure or real than our human associations. i said that, since the scale is so large and the matter abstract, that we as humans have to make some sort of connection if we are to concieve of it all, and we do this by giving stars names and histories, motions and emotions. perhaps we like our connection with stars... we get from it a twinkle in our eye or a distant loneliness, a bit of wonder during our brief orbits. science is about the world that we live in, and in order for it to have importance to us, we have to find ourselves in it somewhere.
there really was a meteor shower tonight... supposedly the peak of activity, with streaks of light lasting 45 seconds sometimes. at least that's what i heard... i didn't see any.
i was inside reading, and at one point my mind drifted, slipped onto a sore subject, and i couldn't get out of it. i had to talk to someone who had not shared a word with me in about two months, who had hurt me by denying me my existence in some little way. it took me a half hour to read the last five pages of my reading because i was shaking so much. i went and talked to him, we sorted out a history, a reality, and a hope, and while we may never really be friends, i knew things would be better when i stopped shaking in his room. it was a big thing for me... it showed me how people can really be atuned to completely different worlds, which is sad but true.
i came to my room exhausted but lighter in some way, and sierra was there at my door, so i told her what i'd gone thru, and explained some of the way i blamed myself for not seeing things that i should have, how my world is at times overly simple, my model and ideal being the child-like innocence that we leave behind and are constantly trying to recapture. she helped me to understand that to live a good life is does not mean to be innocent and naive, but to realize certain realities and accept them, not struggle against them as a cynic would. after this you can reach a certain peace or quietude that appears like blissful simplicity but is really the full understanding of complexity and of yourself, what you need to be happy. we think it's kinda buddhist, altho i need to read more to really understand that.
then a bunch of us, all with troubles, went and drank some really good french wine... one had broken up with a longtime girlfriend, one had yelled at a friend, and i had gotten a kick in the butt. the wine tasted amazing. refreshing. i went to sleep with a slight fuzziness and pleasant warmth.
a rock in space travels a long way before chances to become a falling star and make a little light in all the darkness.
11.04 | november | 11.19