beauty is truth, and truth beauty. . .?
Today's Date in the Shire: 6 Blotmath, T.A. 3018 - Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin rest in Rivendell.
Wearing: bathrobe
Mood: guilty
Music: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," Green Day
Green Day sings laconically from my laptop: "But it's only me and I walk alone."
A garbage truck rumbles on the ground, three stories below me, outside my window.
My eyes hurt, I blink furiously against the articial light, a blinding, unwelcome flourescence. My head pounds dully.
I am sick of people here seeming to think that I am interesting, seeming to respond to a charisma that is 90% effort, 90% calculated smiles, loud laughter at the right times, well-chosen witty comments, overacted and yet somehow convincing sincerity. Really, there is nothing interesting about me--I have the potential to be interesting, but I am failing.
On some level, I have been receiving the recognition that I always wanted: I wanted to be seen and admired by people whom I hardly knew. I wanted a discernible and distinctive image. I wanted to walk shrouded in my own mythology. That is what I wanted in high school, when I watched people who did possess these qualities in resentment and envy. Now, I am beginning to achieve that--and to realize what a hollow lie it is. Those people in high school, I used to say scornfully, weren't really interesting; they just duped people into thinking they were! Did this observation stem from shrewdness or insight on my part, or merely from jealousy? Or perhaps a little bit from both quarters? I can't say. All I can say is that I am now the one doing the duping.
All my time trickles away into nothingness. I seem to spend my life sitting in class, not even listening to the material or attempting intellectual involvement. I mostly just watch other people, take in here the curve of a jawbone, here the stray hair that falls over the forehead, wonder why those shoes with that shirt, wonder what this person's favorite song or movie is. And while in some way this is intensely rich, intensely rewarding for me, I did not have to pay thousands of dollars to come to college in order to practice this science--Pearl Street served well enough!
And then the nights, when I should be studying, tucked away in the stacks with my brain buzzing: well, instead I am here, sprawled across a dirty, unmade bed, wasting my life on the phone, on AIM, on compulsively revisiting the same Internet sites over and over, hoping that this time when the webpage loads, something will have changed. It is ridiculous.
Even the wonderful philosophical conversations I have with Terry sometimes feel stale--mostly because at times I come away feeling small and utterly without skill in rhetoric and logic.
I don't know how long this life can go on. Some day soon, the facade will crack. I won't be able to prevent it. And I don't know what I'll do.
This is wrong, the way that I have been receiving B+s and As with only minimal, mad-dash, procrastinating effort. I seem to have no priorities at all.
I was reading my old diaryland diary again last night. It was my birthday, and I wanted to take a moment alone, a moment for reflection, and think about all that has past and changed and gone in the last few years. And reading that diary was scary. I almost cried, sitting here, and perhaps would have if Elena wasn't babbling cheerfully away on the other side of the room. My dependence on Natty, my over-dramatization, my utter spinelessness, the never-ending suicidal comments, the shallow way that I strove to lump everyone into some sort of Breakfast Club-esque category--I always thought I was smart, and yet somehow, I managed to be about as stupid as a person can be. I was only thirteen and fourteen years old, but still. I read entry after entry and thought: why, why, why?
And I'm so afraid that while perhaps my outward behavior has changed, my core values and sensibilities have not. Terry, in discussing spirituality, says that there are two types of people in the world, souls and horizons. Souls develop as people, but, in their essence, do not change. Horizons are always changing, seeking their souls. And somehow, I think I am a mixture of both, a possibility that Terry was forced to acknowledge after a long talk we had, during which I cried all over his shoulder.
I feel so wonderful when I am with him, but I'm afraid I feel wonderful for all the wrong reasons. He would say that he wants to make me feel whole as a person, that he wants me to love him and commune with him as a person. At least, that is what I believe he would say. But almost, I do the opposite. When I am with him, I feel deliciously free and beautiful and light and fantastical, because I seem to transcend myself: it as though something inside me has taken flight, leaving my body behind, leaving all of my inner complications behind, and I become a different person: a person who is somehow more simple, more direct, more pure in being. And sometimes there comes that dizzying high where thoughts aren't even necessary, and they are replaced entirely by feelings.
Is that what "love" is? Amazingly enough, perhaps yes.
But I don't want the relationship with Terry to turn into the Natty obsession. I don't want to need Terry to make me whole, to make me beautiful.
I will find my soul when I figure out how to do that on my own. I don't need to find the answers to life's greater questions right now: for me, it is enough that I have the mental facilities and desires to even think about or question whether objective, sentient Truth exists in the world. I don't know if I will ever actually find that truth, and hey, that's OK with me. I am only seventeen years old. If I knew what Truth was already, if I felt certain in my beliefs, where would I go from there? In any case, I still maintain that Truth is purely subjective. Truth is prey to cultural relativism; because in the end, truth is, well, a concept, not a static idea just existing in the universe on its own and waiting for animals with minds sophisticated enough to discover it.
I think that without realizing it, the sort of Truth that Terry is talking about is God. When I talk to him about these issues, I always think of the Enlightenment: Terry uses syllogisms, rational paths of logic, to attempt to prove the existence of truth--the existence, perhaps, of God. On some level, he is a Deist, though he would probably not welcome that observation.
He keeps saying that I am espousing nihilism when we have these debates, but no, that is NEVER what I mean! I believe in life very strongly, I believe in truth--but I believe that the truth I seek, or the truths that I claim to have already discovered, are not necessarily universal truths. They are my truths. And perhaps I will find others who share those truths, and we will be kindred spirits, and connection will be facilitated between us. Truths can overlap. As can universes.
In Donnie Darko (which is now on my computer, yay!), Roberta Sparrow whispers to Donnie: "Every living creature dies alone." I certainly don't have such stark beliefs. I actually think that frankly, that's a bit impossible. It's impossible to go through life without touching the life, transforming the universe, of at least one other person, even if you don't realize it. And so if even one star overlaps, is shared, between your universe and someone else's, you are not alone. So no, everyone does not die alone. But if we did not reach out to people, we could alone. The potential exists, even if it is hardly possible to realize. Whereas Terry believes so innately in "humanity" that he would not even be able to acknowledge such potential.
And perhaps I can't explain my beliefs logically. Perhaps I never will be able to. Perhaps I don't know exactly what I believe yet.
And that is the joy of life, of being here at college.
I almost feel like I have not paid thousands of dollars to attend classes--I have paid thousands of dollars to be in the right place at the right time to meet the right people to have these conversations.
And these conversations are priceless.
Wearing: bathrobe
Mood: guilty
Music: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," Green Day
Green Day sings laconically from my laptop: "But it's only me and I walk alone."
A garbage truck rumbles on the ground, three stories below me, outside my window.
My eyes hurt, I blink furiously against the articial light, a blinding, unwelcome flourescence. My head pounds dully.
I am sick of people here seeming to think that I am interesting, seeming to respond to a charisma that is 90% effort, 90% calculated smiles, loud laughter at the right times, well-chosen witty comments, overacted and yet somehow convincing sincerity. Really, there is nothing interesting about me--I have the potential to be interesting, but I am failing.
On some level, I have been receiving the recognition that I always wanted: I wanted to be seen and admired by people whom I hardly knew. I wanted a discernible and distinctive image. I wanted to walk shrouded in my own mythology. That is what I wanted in high school, when I watched people who did possess these qualities in resentment and envy. Now, I am beginning to achieve that--and to realize what a hollow lie it is. Those people in high school, I used to say scornfully, weren't really interesting; they just duped people into thinking they were! Did this observation stem from shrewdness or insight on my part, or merely from jealousy? Or perhaps a little bit from both quarters? I can't say. All I can say is that I am now the one doing the duping.
All my time trickles away into nothingness. I seem to spend my life sitting in class, not even listening to the material or attempting intellectual involvement. I mostly just watch other people, take in here the curve of a jawbone, here the stray hair that falls over the forehead, wonder why those shoes with that shirt, wonder what this person's favorite song or movie is. And while in some way this is intensely rich, intensely rewarding for me, I did not have to pay thousands of dollars to come to college in order to practice this science--Pearl Street served well enough!
And then the nights, when I should be studying, tucked away in the stacks with my brain buzzing: well, instead I am here, sprawled across a dirty, unmade bed, wasting my life on the phone, on AIM, on compulsively revisiting the same Internet sites over and over, hoping that this time when the webpage loads, something will have changed. It is ridiculous.
Even the wonderful philosophical conversations I have with Terry sometimes feel stale--mostly because at times I come away feeling small and utterly without skill in rhetoric and logic.
I don't know how long this life can go on. Some day soon, the facade will crack. I won't be able to prevent it. And I don't know what I'll do.
This is wrong, the way that I have been receiving B+s and As with only minimal, mad-dash, procrastinating effort. I seem to have no priorities at all.
I was reading my old diaryland diary again last night. It was my birthday, and I wanted to take a moment alone, a moment for reflection, and think about all that has past and changed and gone in the last few years. And reading that diary was scary. I almost cried, sitting here, and perhaps would have if Elena wasn't babbling cheerfully away on the other side of the room. My dependence on Natty, my over-dramatization, my utter spinelessness, the never-ending suicidal comments, the shallow way that I strove to lump everyone into some sort of Breakfast Club-esque category--I always thought I was smart, and yet somehow, I managed to be about as stupid as a person can be. I was only thirteen and fourteen years old, but still. I read entry after entry and thought: why, why, why?
And I'm so afraid that while perhaps my outward behavior has changed, my core values and sensibilities have not. Terry, in discussing spirituality, says that there are two types of people in the world, souls and horizons. Souls develop as people, but, in their essence, do not change. Horizons are always changing, seeking their souls. And somehow, I think I am a mixture of both, a possibility that Terry was forced to acknowledge after a long talk we had, during which I cried all over his shoulder.
I feel so wonderful when I am with him, but I'm afraid I feel wonderful for all the wrong reasons. He would say that he wants to make me feel whole as a person, that he wants me to love him and commune with him as a person. At least, that is what I believe he would say. But almost, I do the opposite. When I am with him, I feel deliciously free and beautiful and light and fantastical, because I seem to transcend myself: it as though something inside me has taken flight, leaving my body behind, leaving all of my inner complications behind, and I become a different person: a person who is somehow more simple, more direct, more pure in being. And sometimes there comes that dizzying high where thoughts aren't even necessary, and they are replaced entirely by feelings.
Is that what "love" is? Amazingly enough, perhaps yes.
But I don't want the relationship with Terry to turn into the Natty obsession. I don't want to need Terry to make me whole, to make me beautiful.
I will find my soul when I figure out how to do that on my own. I don't need to find the answers to life's greater questions right now: for me, it is enough that I have the mental facilities and desires to even think about or question whether objective, sentient Truth exists in the world. I don't know if I will ever actually find that truth, and hey, that's OK with me. I am only seventeen years old. If I knew what Truth was already, if I felt certain in my beliefs, where would I go from there? In any case, I still maintain that Truth is purely subjective. Truth is prey to cultural relativism; because in the end, truth is, well, a concept, not a static idea just existing in the universe on its own and waiting for animals with minds sophisticated enough to discover it.
I think that without realizing it, the sort of Truth that Terry is talking about is God. When I talk to him about these issues, I always think of the Enlightenment: Terry uses syllogisms, rational paths of logic, to attempt to prove the existence of truth--the existence, perhaps, of God. On some level, he is a Deist, though he would probably not welcome that observation.
He keeps saying that I am espousing nihilism when we have these debates, but no, that is NEVER what I mean! I believe in life very strongly, I believe in truth--but I believe that the truth I seek, or the truths that I claim to have already discovered, are not necessarily universal truths. They are my truths. And perhaps I will find others who share those truths, and we will be kindred spirits, and connection will be facilitated between us. Truths can overlap. As can universes.
In Donnie Darko (which is now on my computer, yay!), Roberta Sparrow whispers to Donnie: "Every living creature dies alone." I certainly don't have such stark beliefs. I actually think that frankly, that's a bit impossible. It's impossible to go through life without touching the life, transforming the universe, of at least one other person, even if you don't realize it. And so if even one star overlaps, is shared, between your universe and someone else's, you are not alone. So no, everyone does not die alone. But if we did not reach out to people, we could alone. The potential exists, even if it is hardly possible to realize. Whereas Terry believes so innately in "humanity" that he would not even be able to acknowledge such potential.
And perhaps I can't explain my beliefs logically. Perhaps I never will be able to. Perhaps I don't know exactly what I believe yet.
And that is the joy of life, of being here at college.
I almost feel like I have not paid thousands of dollars to attend classes--I have paid thousands of dollars to be in the right place at the right time to meet the right people to have these conversations.
And these conversations are priceless.