Brought to you by a belly full of champagne. Fuck cuts and proofreading.
Totally haven't been following through on the whole "writing more" thing but I don't think I mind. I've been out living and experiencing and learning and trying to not spend a whole lot of time sitting in front of some stupid screen absorbing this or that useless bullshit.
I read somewhere recently about someone that hated photographs. Or cameras in particular I suppose. I believe they were referring to the people that take pictures of eeeeverything. I feel like I used to be, if not nearly was, one of those people. Their argument went along the lines of "Why do you feel the need to capture this moment and try to hold onto it forever and become attached to it? Isn't it enough to just experience it and live it?". It got me thinking and I'm not sure I'm very big on the whole idea anymore. There is so much to a moment that can't be captured on film. Can't be expressed by some certain arrangement of bits and bytes on a screen. There is the indescribable feeling that one gets in the course of an experience. Think about the process that you have to go to trying to describe something that happened to you to someone else. This happened to me many times last night. Even just the simple words one uses to get across the feeling of the experience to someone else can never be fully achieved by an image. You can try to lay these words and describers on after the fact but it will never come close. It takes so much more mental power to really remember something, to really experience it, to create a memory if you will...
It calls upon our imagination much more urgently when someone simply describes a situation to you and tries to get across how they felt about it. The tiny little details and miniscule feelings that washed over them at the time. In a conversation all you have to go on is how they describe it, and your imagination fills in all the details and creates this mental scenario, a second-hand experience if you will, out of only the experiential reports from the other being. This is sharing. This is communication. This is one of the most beautiful things about being a human. About having a language. About having a means to convey to something or someone outside of you an idea, thought, feeling, or experience. This is such a precious gift. Why cheapen it with a fanciful arrangement of pixels?
The more I think about it the more I want to throw my camera phone out the window and never rely on photographs ever again. Take the time to really take in the moments in your life that mean something to you. Notice the things that you can use and relate to other people that explain in some small way how you see and feel this infinitely variable soup of individual experiences.
Nobody in the history of the universe has ever experienced things in the same way that you have.
Nobody in the history of the universe has the perspective you have gained throughout your howevermany years of "life".
How beautiful.
How amazing.
How unimaginably valuable.
Love is sharing.
My friend Kurtis got married today to his high school sweetheart Christine. I've known Kurtis since kindergarten, we had pretty much every class together throughout elementary school and we have been fast friends since the beginning of days. Today he gave himself completely and fully to a wonderful woman who I have had the pleasure to know in and after highschool. I couldn't believe the feeling of wonder and love that I felt sitting in that sanctuary watching the slideshow of their respective lives leading up to them meeting and how they fit just like pieces in a puzzle. Filling in the spaces lacking in the other and being filled in return by the strength and love of the other. The ceremony was beautiful, overwhelming. I couldn't stop grinning and held back tears by a herculean effort.
Afterwords and during the reception I was in the company of people who were (like myself) lamenting the lack of alcohol at the reception. At the time this seemed like a lame situation, who has a dry reception?? But later I realized that a wedding reception is the last place that I'd want to have an open bar at. It dawned on me that all the people that were up in arms about the lack of inebriates were those who had no satisfactory love life. Love doesn't want you to get trashed and forget about yourself and everyone around you. A love like I saw today was beyond all earthly intoxication.
I came to feel that the reason we strive to drink ourselves to numbness at celebrations of marriage such as this is because we want to erase or temporarily forget about our lackings and wantings in the way of real true love. We bumble and stumble our way through this relationship or that never touching what we know and feel is real and true. And we feel we must numb ourselves when we see an example of a true love. Even if it is but the chance for a true love. Because as we know not all marriages turn out to be happy fairytales, but just the hope and chance nonetheless excites us yet at the same time scares us. We see others in a happy hopeful place and it just makes us look at our own failings and loneliness in a more stark and exaggerated way.
So in a way I'm glad that there was a dry reception. Some people can't be helped, as some people I know ducked out, went to a liquor store and came back sloshed. As well as myself, having gone to a bar between the ceremony and the reception... As well as bringing a flask in (that I did not end up utilizing after all).
It gave us a chance soberly asses and appreciate the union that was presented before us.
Love is so much greater that the most glorious and blissful intoxication.
The driving engine behind most all human affairs.
Love.
Love.
I read somewhere recently about someone that hated photographs. Or cameras in particular I suppose. I believe they were referring to the people that take pictures of eeeeverything. I feel like I used to be, if not nearly was, one of those people. Their argument went along the lines of "Why do you feel the need to capture this moment and try to hold onto it forever and become attached to it? Isn't it enough to just experience it and live it?". It got me thinking and I'm not sure I'm very big on the whole idea anymore. There is so much to a moment that can't be captured on film. Can't be expressed by some certain arrangement of bits and bytes on a screen. There is the indescribable feeling that one gets in the course of an experience. Think about the process that you have to go to trying to describe something that happened to you to someone else. This happened to me many times last night. Even just the simple words one uses to get across the feeling of the experience to someone else can never be fully achieved by an image. You can try to lay these words and describers on after the fact but it will never come close. It takes so much more mental power to really remember something, to really experience it, to create a memory if you will...
It calls upon our imagination much more urgently when someone simply describes a situation to you and tries to get across how they felt about it. The tiny little details and miniscule feelings that washed over them at the time. In a conversation all you have to go on is how they describe it, and your imagination fills in all the details and creates this mental scenario, a second-hand experience if you will, out of only the experiential reports from the other being. This is sharing. This is communication. This is one of the most beautiful things about being a human. About having a language. About having a means to convey to something or someone outside of you an idea, thought, feeling, or experience. This is such a precious gift. Why cheapen it with a fanciful arrangement of pixels?
The more I think about it the more I want to throw my camera phone out the window and never rely on photographs ever again. Take the time to really take in the moments in your life that mean something to you. Notice the things that you can use and relate to other people that explain in some small way how you see and feel this infinitely variable soup of individual experiences.
Nobody in the history of the universe has ever experienced things in the same way that you have.
Nobody in the history of the universe has the perspective you have gained throughout your howevermany years of "life".
How beautiful.
How amazing.
How unimaginably valuable.
Love is sharing.
My friend Kurtis got married today to his high school sweetheart Christine. I've known Kurtis since kindergarten, we had pretty much every class together throughout elementary school and we have been fast friends since the beginning of days. Today he gave himself completely and fully to a wonderful woman who I have had the pleasure to know in and after highschool. I couldn't believe the feeling of wonder and love that I felt sitting in that sanctuary watching the slideshow of their respective lives leading up to them meeting and how they fit just like pieces in a puzzle. Filling in the spaces lacking in the other and being filled in return by the strength and love of the other. The ceremony was beautiful, overwhelming. I couldn't stop grinning and held back tears by a herculean effort.
Afterwords and during the reception I was in the company of people who were (like myself) lamenting the lack of alcohol at the reception. At the time this seemed like a lame situation, who has a dry reception?? But later I realized that a wedding reception is the last place that I'd want to have an open bar at. It dawned on me that all the people that were up in arms about the lack of inebriates were those who had no satisfactory love life. Love doesn't want you to get trashed and forget about yourself and everyone around you. A love like I saw today was beyond all earthly intoxication.
I came to feel that the reason we strive to drink ourselves to numbness at celebrations of marriage such as this is because we want to erase or temporarily forget about our lackings and wantings in the way of real true love. We bumble and stumble our way through this relationship or that never touching what we know and feel is real and true. And we feel we must numb ourselves when we see an example of a true love. Even if it is but the chance for a true love. Because as we know not all marriages turn out to be happy fairytales, but just the hope and chance nonetheless excites us yet at the same time scares us. We see others in a happy hopeful place and it just makes us look at our own failings and loneliness in a more stark and exaggerated way.
So in a way I'm glad that there was a dry reception. Some people can't be helped, as some people I know ducked out, went to a liquor store and came back sloshed. As well as myself, having gone to a bar between the ceremony and the reception... As well as bringing a flask in (that I did not end up utilizing after all).
It gave us a chance soberly asses and appreciate the union that was presented before us.
Love is so much greater that the most glorious and blissful intoxication.
The driving engine behind most all human affairs.
Love.
Love.