Instantaneous

Getting caught in a whirlwind is fun and dangerous.

I want to keep myself feeling open and to keep as many doors open as possible.

Stick that in a blender for a moment.


Within a rushed period of time, intimacy can become an unbelievable force. I think it is possible to find individuals and know instantly how important they are, even without speaking with them. Some of my best friends and love interests have had this sudden burst of mysterious instinct course through my brain. It has felt like deja vu, but instead of getting that zany "Ah! I totally dreamed this once upon a night and forgot about it until know," it feels like a random synchronization. Have you ever watched a row of signal lights on cars at a stop light, and it appears that they are all working at bizarre uncommon tempos but then just before you pull your eyes away they blip on and off in unison, if only for a brief moment? Imagine that secret moment of clarity and excitement that the universe is not so out of funk, but instead of inanimate objects finding a commonality the rhythms of two humans crossing paths match up in a sudden interlude. The timing has previously not been ideal and usually involves me gaping at someone walking by while thinking, "We're going to be good friends one daaaaaay...."

Once, I sat next to one of my closest friends during a meeting. Instantly I recognized that he and I would one day become important to one another. For some reason, it feels odd to rush this unique kind of encounter but once I feel that clarity in the moment I relax. Taking the let life bring us together approach has always worked. So, we did not speak to each other at all, but ate our free BBQ chicken wings while the meeting commenced. Nearly two years later, we became close friends following a random environmental activism trip. Strange how these things work out in the end.

It just makes me wonder. In addition to pheromones and instantaneous baby making instincts that are largely genetically based attractions, is there also something triggered physiologically while meeting someone who will be an important milestone friend? It would make sense. Humans need friends just as righteously as we need to make babies, perhaps even more so.

to be continued.

A Letter to Yourself

While I was in Portland, I realized that for the past several months I had not experienced pure joy in some time. In an attempt to capture that feeling, those moments of unbridled happiness I wrote a letter to myself. When I was younger, I never made myself a time capsule, but the idea was always appreciated within my imagination. The objects within carry such vast ideas and purposes. The time capsule itself seals the very moment and the entire exact replica of existence meanders through the years unchanged. The beauty in grasping time with all the complexities is transfixing.

That is what I wanted to accomplish within my letter. Once I would return to the dreary city of Ithaca, this letter would guide me to continue my trend of feeling inspired and love every day that I exist. For many months during the fall, I would wake up and just immediately feel like falling asleep again even after 12 or 14 hours of sleep. I longed for something else, a different environment, a different love, a different life. Portland ignited something within me and gave me purpose again.

It is interesting that "to be" is almost always one of the first words you learn in every language but we always have trouble doing simply that. At times, allowing ourselves to just exist and enjoy solitary moments is more challenging than anything we put ourselves through to achieve a serene state of mind.

Part of this way of existing involves living in more in a greyscale. The binaries of the absolute blacks and whites of a situation would tarnish any charmed experience. A brief romantic encounter can feel precious or delightful while at the same time inspiring great frustration. I wonder if it is healthier to simultaneously experience feelings such as being pissed and being blessed or to focus the mind on one individually.

This is what I meant to post before all that stream of consciousness slipped out, whoops.

An excerpt from The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.


... This is my life right now.

Sylvia Plath

Despite feeling absolutely no suicidal thoughts, I connect with Esther in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath in a way most people would not even recognize. I felt a taste of something bizarre that shook my perception completely. For weeks at a time over the past 2 years I have been experiencing these episodes during which I can sleep for about 20 hours a day and still feel incredibly exhausted. The entire essence of my easy-going friendly personality leaves the building and I become a crazed fiend with no morals intact. My grades have suffered tremendously and at times the anxiety of having another episode ruin my college career can become overwhelming. I felt isolated, completely lost my faith in many medical professionals who can only do expensive strings of tests which have all come back normal while I have felt completely abnormal. There is a medical record of me storming out of a hospital in a mad rage because I wanted a bacon cheeseburger, but not in the random act of comedy kind of way. I desperately did not want to talk to a psychologist in the hospital while I was ill. Nearly a year later, I spoke with a counselor who felt it was a medical issue. The professionals have literally been bouncing me around, with no answers in sight. I do not blame them or feel spiteful, they genuinely wanted to help me but could not offer any solution.

Esther reminds me of this experience. She walks around like a complacent zombie, feeling dead where it counts. Her descriptions of everything (excluding the suicidal and self destructive bit) match my episodes so rightly. It terrifies me to openly admit this, but those moments of pathological weary feel like The Bell Jar. One day I am my usual self, then out of nowhere I get hit with the urge to sleep all the time and when I am not sleeping a drunken marionette man strings me along throughout the day. The hours go by as if I am having an outer body experience and I can hear myself say phrases that are witty, but it's like I can watch all of it from a foggy lantern where the sounds of my life are muted, distorted. This is actually what I have been going through, and even some of my closest friends do not realize how severely this has plagued me. Braving a face of collection has become my guise, but it really has only separated me, strangely enough, from the people in my program. I feel like if they knew how strange my body reacts to who knows whatever is happening that they would see me as ill, and in the medical profession, undesirable. For that reason, having distorted thoughts for two weeks at a time is better than knowing there is actually something wrong with me.
(I would like to add that I have not felt ill in this way in several months and I feel wonderful right now, this is merely a reflection of the rougher times. I literally wake up each morning feeling an excitement for life and the experiences each day may hold.)