Non Picturesque Picture

"A picture is worth a thousand words", so goes the saying. But I cannot make out those 1000 words, I can see only what is there. But is there really something wrong with me? Or can we all relate to not being able to see what others can? When others said that she was to good for me I believed in what they said. But I asked her what she thought, and she considered it just the opposite. While I see only what is there on the surface, she seems to look deeper, inside of me. Piercing the rough skin on the outside and somehow gazing deeper into my soul than I ever thought possible.

What limits some of us from looking inside of somebody? That keeps us from doing what so many other people seem to be able to do? I only see a void when I try and look into her. She sees something completely different in me then I could ever imagine seeing. She sees somebody who is caring, nice, intelligent. While I see myself as someone who can be an ass, someone who can be deceptive. Somebody who is greedy, and ambitious, but she sees something else that no matter how hard I try. I can never find. Why can't I find this in myself? Or find anything in her that is not actually in her? Why are some of us doomed to the fate? To suffer through not knowing what comes next and what she feels? Until I get blown up at for being to insensitive, to careless. Because I can not do to her what she has been able to do so many times to me.

I wish that I could see the words the picture tries to tell us, yet there are some of us that can not see them. No matter how obvious or easy the message is, I still can not understand

Here's a letter to the object of my high school affection that I'll never mail.


I don’t love you anymore, Kristi.

I will no longer be your emotional chew toy, crutch, or excuse. For the first time ever, I’m going to admit that I was wrong. You aren’t worthy of my undying affection. You manipulate me into obeying your every command. Until this moment, I dreamed only of you, and I realize now that that’s exactly how you wanted it.

You are conceited and spiteful. You wish all to serve you, but are unwilling to serve any but yourself.

There is, however, a love I will always feel for you, and that is as my friend. I value my friends above anything else and regard them as my own blood. But that is the only honor I will give you now.

I know it isn’t entirely your fault. If I could change what your father did to you, I would. But after five years of knowing you, that is no longer a valid excuse. I’ve told you how to fix it, but you ignore me. I’ve threatened to make you fix it, but you pump me full of lies and false hope.

It’s time for both of us to grow up. I need to move beyond my schoolboy adoration of you, and you need to poke your head up into the real world. The world I’ve been living in for so long now.

I’m tired, and I’m jealous of your men, and I’m lonely, and I do wholeheartedly miss you, but I no longer love you.

Impressions come together; memories fall apart.

My thoughts of times past break into an array of glinting raindrops as waves against hard stone. They are gone. They exist as an illusion; a shaft of light careening through my awareness that is gone again before I can rightly focus on it. It is as if my environment elludes me, forever shifting beyond my grasp, and I am left reaching for a sense of the concrete that I will never find.

Soft, translucent brown hair appears copper in the sunlight which falls through slats in dull miniblinds. Her face is alight with the glaring midafternoon sun filtering through the kitchen. Warmth shines from her widely open eyes, as she gazes at the sun directly, a sun that I have to squint my blue eyes away from; I will always have to.

        "I might one day go outside when he comes to pick you up and talk to him," her eyes dull slightly, and her staring contest with the fiery sunlight breaks suddenly.
        "I wouldn't blame you if you didn't." I stare at the coffee cup that she clutches in her hands. It is chipped, along the handle: underneath; I can barely see it.

It is anger underlying; it is anger surfacing.

I sat, scrunched; my fourteen-year-old body cowering in the face of the expected, the feared, the imminent. It came; the thunderous rolling from the ceiling overhead. I charted his progress, my eyes flying to the ceiling above as if he would somehow sweep through it; a demon hawk from the underworld that could defy any material bounds.

I heard an ominous crash in the foyer, which lay a mere 10 feet from my position. He had thrown something large and cumbersome down the stairs. I could not see it; it was there. A steady, pulsing drumming sounded his decent down the staircase. My breath caught; I was caught; I was certain of it. I felt him pause just at the entrance to the living room where I lay curled beneath the small corner table, my presence clouded by the cloth that cloaked it. However, I was not aware of any protection from his piercing gaze, so much like my own, so much more terrifying. Steps away. Motion down the hallway. He was retreating, away from me, slowly; he would return.

Future comes too soon; uncertainty is its bearer.

Her coffee cup was empty. Wordlessly, I rose to fill it.

        "I don't know what to say to him, Mom." What could I say? What could words possibly do ... now?
        "Say the truth, Lauren."

The truth.

Yes.

It's strange to see the sunrise after years of not waking until (at LEAST) 11:00am. I've generally been sort of a night owl for a long time. This is not by choice, but is dictated to me by my mixed up internal clock. It worked out well for me once I got to college and didn't have to go to school at 7:00am. I could get up at a reasonable hour, go to class and work evenings. However, I have finally crossed over into complete shadow.

I started working night shift full time this week and I feel darker then I have at any other time of my life. I am a CNA at a nursing home so on my shift I get to see 70-100 year old women at there absolute worst; you know hair a matted mess in the back, night gown tangled, wet with sweat and urine and needing to be changed or to use the bedpan. It's got to be uncomfortable and embarrassing to them because I know it's no barrel of fun for me.

All in all it's not an awful job. I get paid well with benefits and I have my days to myself. However I always have that wierd sleepy feeling (you know the one you get when you've slept too much) that I can't seem to shake even though I sleep about as much as I did before I started this shift. I can't seem to shake the whole "I'm becoming a vampire" feeling. I keep having dreams of being "born into darkness". I've also started becoming obsessed with vampire and other dark gothy movies. I'm actually not even a goth, but I feel that sick sweet feel of death pulsating though my muscles and bones.

Maybe it's time I went vegan...just to be on the safe side.

The grey wizard smiled. Ever wonder if the stars in the sky are actually candles? A pair of soul mates split up and each left earth at the speed of light. When they returned, who was older? Fait waited for an answer and listened to the radio. The grey wizard decided to start his own tribe. He filled it with radio DJs, TV broadcasters, and actors. Teachers flocked to join this new tribe by the thousands. Some students did too. All were accepted. Especially the mathematicians. It was a dreary life, but what did we know of their geekhood? They were unknowable, at least on Saturday nights at piano bars, set with candles, glimmering in the cool warmness.

I awoke to the thought of Candle protecting me while she was dreaming. It was reassuring to us both. It still is. Old habits die hard. Some we just didn't want to change. Candle learned to recycle herself throught me by forgetting her bad memories. I smiled. We had planned it this way all along, we insisted. We decided not to tempt Fate for much longer today. It was the page after the center peace, the Eye of Tranquility, and all around it felt enlightened. We even thanked Pseudo_Intellectual for naming it before us. A true pioneer. He too winked at us. Yet another member of Gandalf's tribe. The fifth tribe. We were awed. We tingled.

Cute, very cute, Candle said in mock disgust. She patted me on the head. You little onion think you can turn yourself into a rose huh? Well, sometimes my thoughts are much too loud as well. We remembered each other. We exchanged snapshots. As many as we could. Tendrils of life from the only two dark stars in the sky. We joined the dark matter even, if we had to. We knew what to do with the Universe, we finally decided. Or did we? Gandalf had the last laugh. Then Candle turned out all the lights, yet again. We made the sun rise together this time. It went by majority assumption. Not too hard for Seattle-ites. They winked at us, like stars in the sky, flickering.


It was breathtaking. Beautiful to watch the sky.
Jaz gave the Serra Angel back. "Thanks, but no thanks," she said. The mark of someone from the tribe of Candle. EDB had joined Eden's tribe temporarily. Eden petted him. Cheeky monkey. I knocked on the door three times and left snow under the door. It looked like the vote was in. All over Seattle, people rejoiced and wished for snow and a snow day. Kids rejoiced.

Well, well , well. A disastrous day that is.
First, a definite and ultimate fight with a female friend of mine over the internet, she knows very well what hurts, because I did my share too. Second, a fail on my last exam. Meaning: I WILL NOT get the degree I was hoping for, whatever I do from now on, I will probably get one, but not a reasonable one. I wasted 4 years of my life and my parent's money on that, and now what?

My ego is sinking. My future looks muddier than my garden at the end of a raining week. I feel like shit. Quick, Quick, "if an ego emergency occurs, open the pack", what's in? A picture of home taken by Voyager 1, 6.5 billions kilometers away; a note: "Can you see yourself on this picture?" Uhh no, earth is less than a pixel. I turn the card : "put things in perspective". Great.

I breathe, well after all, the degree you get only appear on your CV, most of the time, in my branch, employers look at your portfolio straight away. Is it the only thing I can do anyway? Mmmh no of course. I often questionned my choice of studies, what was the point in it. Keep a cool head man. You need dis-ci-pline. Fine

Back to work.

I feel the world caving in on me too sometimes, particularly as of late. The structural make-up of society is fucked up. I don't understand it. It seems like the world does not consist of individuals anymore, only consumers.

I don't want to be a consumer anymore.

Today I woke up and I started thinking about my life in a major way, or rather I started thinking about life in general.

I hate it.

I hate the fact that my whole life I have felt rejected by everyone and everything that society presents to us as reality. And now I look back on all my years of self-loathing and self-centeredness in disgust because I have now gained an awareness for the world around me, and I appreciate what I do have to the extreme.

But I question everything about myself and about other people on a regular basis. I feel like I have just been molded by society to feel certain things and react to situations in a certain way.

I hate the fact that I feel that I need someone in my life!

I hate the fact that I have never been able to look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what was looking back at me.

Why is life like this? Why the fuck do I care about this shit?

I especially hate the fact that I have allowed myself to become a product of all the bullshit that is fed to people by magazines, movies, music, and television. None of it is real in my opinion, none of it is genuine. It's all just a part of this great big marketing scheme, this great big form of control.

What bothers me the most about it is my inability to escape it. It seems like everytime I get close to stepping out of the bubble, I am sucked back in by something, or by someone. I have no answers for myself either.

I want to give up so badly most of the time, and yet I feel guilty for even thinking that because I know there are millions of people that would die to have the chances I have had. I know this, and yet I also realize that they shouldn't necessarily desire all this shit.

I try to live in the present, in the moment. So today I am going to try and take another step back from the massive web that I have become wrapped up in.

Today I will try and not focus on myself, and all my bullshit. Today I will attempt to increase my awareness to the world around me. Perhaps I shall find some answers there. Or maybe I'll just have "nice cold glass of shut the hell up" instead.

I almost did something rather amusing. I decided to write up a day log for today so I typed in January 28, 2001 in the search line, which gave me the node. As I was looking at what others had written up about today, I realized most of them were talking about the end of the weekend and superbowl sunday, which got me rather confused, it being a monday and all. I was just going to ignore these facts but then noticed that all the writeups had been writting in the year 2001, and that it is in fact the year 2002.

Maybe I'm in denial about the year 2002, too me anyway, the year just sounds stupid. We had 1999, which was awesome in itself let alone have a song named after it. Then we had 2000 which was our first year in the 2000s then 2001 which definately told us we were in the new mellenium (I don't care if a person thinks it was either 2000 or 2001 that was the beginning, but either way definatley by 2001). So, now in 2002, what is there?


Anyway, my annoyance of the technical details of the calender system is not why I came here today. I am, right now, procrastinating the tons of work I must eventually start and complete by the end of this week. And how best to procrastinate then write up a day log and tour around my favorite site, everything2.

Even more, it is one of the most beautiful days I have seen for a while. I am in Ithaca NY, attending Cornell Univeristy. When I decided on this university my friends laughed telling me I was crazy and had I heard about the winters there? I nodded and said yes, I had heard of the winters but that I'm sure it's not that bad. Well, apparently I'm right, since it's nearing the end of January and it feels like spring. Granted, we are supposed to get snow later on this week, but I mean sheesh.

My friend from Hawaii thinks he was jipped since he wanted the snow, it's not fair, he says. I mean, not that I'm complaining since I love this weather, but I have a warm parka that has not been worn and was quite expensive waiting, folded in my closet.

So things seem to be going pretty well so far, I don't have too much work... yet. And my friends are awesome. I'm still working on some boy issues but those never get resolved anyways. I'm about to give up, in fact.

So, I hope everything had a good Monday! Enjoy the rest of the week!

From Ithaca, with love, Queequeg.

Part of my occupation is to assist people with video conferences. Today, I met with Dr Shaid Yaman, who was expecting a video conference call from Austria. The call ended up not taking place, probably due to incompatible equipment. The 40 minutes we spent waiting for the call were not wasted, as he told me about his passion for fishing, and how he tries to teach Masters of Business students and company CEOs the value of patience. A nicely Zen experience for an early Tuesday morning.

There's two things you should be made aware of before I get to The Funny. One, I enjoy being too protective of my thoughts. And two, I do 90% of my most productive thinking in bed right before I fall asleep.

During the 14 hours or so each day that I am away from home, I'm bound to have an interesting thought or two (or three), something I don't want to forget because chances are I will sooner or later. In order to preserve these thoughts, whether they be ideas for a new project or an interesting way to implement something, I write them down on scraps of paper. I don't have a PDA (nor do I plan to buy/obtain one) so this is the most convenient way for me to remember what I was thinking of, preserving that thought till I get some more free time to dissect it more thoroughly. I've never had any problem with this method, if you don't count dozens of scraps of paper piling up in your pockets a problem.

Only a small portion of useful thinking goes on during the day. The bulk of my most productive thinking gets down as I lie in bed, in complete silence and darkness, waiting to go to sleep. I usually go over what I have done during the day, coming up with dozens of ways I can improve my own work, sometimes having to get back up and write down my suggestions to myself so I don't forget them in that blasted 8-hour interim between night and morning (sometimes the other way around). Again, I have no complaints about this method. I've found it works fine and helps me stay focused (albeit at the wrong time, but I'm not going to mess with a good thing).

Now, finally, to last night. I remember being particularly tired at around 3 AM when I finally decided to get some sleep. I pondered for what could have been a half hour, maybe a whole hour; finally, for whatever reason, I decided to make use of the pen and notepad I keep on the nightstand next to my bed and jot some notes down. I wrote down two words, in barely-legible penmanship (I was writing in the dark, you know), as that was all that I assumed was necessary to remember what thoughts were going through my head (usually it's one word per thought - I take all of my thoughts on one topic, use a mental version of pkzip, and that's all that is required to jog my memory the next morning). I woke up this morning to find my notepad read:

Initiate Supercunt

I can't find a way to end this node that wouldn't ruin it. It pretty much speaks for itself. Needless to say, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell I was thinking about.

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