Trying to update a bit
So, I really haven't done an update in what seems like a long time. I think maybe I should. However, I feel . . . apathetic isn't right word and neither is apprehensive. I guess a mix of the two . . . apathensive, I guess.
you know what, fuck it. I was going to post about all kinds of things going on in my life but, its not really going to happen. I've been thinking about one thing and one thing only, tonight. This is likely to get HORRIBLY emo and I apologize in advance. Those of you with little stomach for said things should just go read something else right now.
still here?
I'll give you a few more seconds
I am fucking lonely
I have been thinking this for a long time and it has gotten to the point where I think I can actually breach the subject. I spent tonight with 4 great friends of mine. Four great friends that make 2 great couples, one of which I can hear vague sounds of them rejoicing in their relationship in the next room. This last bit doesn't really bother me. I lived on a college campus for 5 years, for fuck's sake, I am no stranger to others' sounds of love, lust, and just plain hunger. But, none of these things are what is making me feel this way. Its something else far more all-encompassing.
This post stems from something that has been seething beneath the surface for a LONG time, possibly years. Other people, far more intelligent people, have delved into this subject. Great minds from Wilde to Jung and countless others. However, the very nature of those communications drives me to add my pathetic attempts to translate my feelings on the subject to the heap. Once again, this is terribly emo. You have been warned.
Before I go any further, keep in mind that I have a wonderful and amazing girlfriend. A woman who is closer to me and knows more of who I am than anyone EVER did or seemed to harbor a desire to know. A woman who, if I am extremely lucky, will one day call me hers forever. This has nothing to do with her or what I feel for her.
My emotions for her run endlessly deep.
What all this has to do with is the limitations of human interaction. I am lonely and I don't think its possible to not be lonely. I crave and desire a type of connection that I feel is simply impossible to obtain. We are limited in our interactions by so many different things our own emotions and fears, our intelligence, and countless other obstacles. However, the main culprit here is the very tools we use to make communication itself possible. Language.
Language, in itself, is a barrier. No matter how fluent a person is, no matter how literate one is, no matter how skillful a wordsmith one might be . . . language will always be a bastardized translation of our true feelings and emotions. We don't feel in words and, at the very basic level, we don't think in words. We don't even feel or think in a language. Our thoughts and feelings are an amalgam of other thoughts and emotions. Thoughts and emotions gathered from a lifetime of thinking and feeling. Thoughts and emotions which aren't even vague pictures, sounds, and smells; but, at the same time so much more. Small, immeasurable things, whose meanings encompass entire worlds and universes. The concept of how we manage to translate those gargantuanly mini-universes into the agonizingly restrictive words is . . . inconceivable. But we do it every day.
My emotions and my true feelings are interpreted by the language center in my brain and, in an instant, it finds the best words to fit them. These words are, at best, a horribly rough approximation of those feelings, thoughts, and emotions. The word "beautiful" can never hope to convey how the first rays of a sunrise refract off the crystals of a fresh blanket of snow; nor, can it tell my Julie of the way the right corner of her lip curls upward slightly and her eyes burn a warm glow right before she breaks into that intoxicating laugh of hers. Those full sentences can not even convey the feelings and thoughts that make those things so important that we feel the need to tear them apart rapaciously in order to communicate their affect on us to another human being. No matter how great our vocabulary is, no matter how well read we are, words will always be words. And they will NEVER come close to being able to completely share the things we long to share with those around us.
This is only compounded by the fact that we use the same word and mean completely different things. When I say, "I need to go to the store," and when I say to Julie "I need to be with you," the meaning of the word need in these examples are so terribly different, they don't even seem like the same word at all.
Yet, still we strive to communicate. And, in that woefully inadequate act of communication, our feelings and emotions are subjected to translation not just once, but twice. Once by the obviously pathetic translation of our own brain and again by the thought-process of the person to whom we are struggling to convey those thoughts and emotions. Their life experiences will lend a similar; but, hopelessly different meaning and evocative response to the word we chose to describe our feelings. For example: when I use the word "agony" to describe how I feel when I wake up in the morning and find Julie not laying next to me (a hopelessly deficient approximation of that feeling), that word will not convey to my listener how I feel. It will convey to them only what they feel themselves to be the pangs of agony. While this interaction may lead to sympathy or empathy with my response, it will NEVER lead to a truly complete understanding.
It is that understanding, that level of communication which I am longing for. A complete and total impossibility. Our true thoughts and feelings will forever be locked in the cage of our own heads, to merely attempt flight on the clipped wings of spoken, written, or illustrated language.
It can be argued that the imperfections of language is what can make it such a powerful tool for personal growth and creativity. And, I am forced to agree. While the words I say to you will not adequately communicate my thoughts and feelings, your interpretations of those words' true meaning will spawn new thoughts and emotions in you. Which will then continue to another person and another person and another and so on into perpetuity. But as beautiful as those thoughts and emotions our intellectual fornication may have spawned might be, they will still not be the original. We can never hope to truly communicate to another our heart.
It is this unsatisfactory means of communication, of connection, that makes me lonely. What has made me lonely for years. The feeling comes and goes and when it comes, it leaves me devastatingly depressed. It leaves me feeling absolutely destroyed with no real means of recovery, other than the eventual (and blessed) ability of my brain to push it back to an unconscious level.
In fact, this very post is nothing but an exercise in futility. All of these words, all this time spent trying to find the right way to describe my feeling is for naught. After all, I will never be able to impart to you my desire for this kind of connection any more than my desire to once again see light flash a seductive dance across a sheen of sweat on my love's heaving breast.
More powerful than the pull of love itself and hopelessly impotent to truly serve their purpose, words will never be anything more than letters pushed into a recognizable pattern. And in that truth, lies loneliness.
you know what, fuck it. I was going to post about all kinds of things going on in my life but, its not really going to happen. I've been thinking about one thing and one thing only, tonight. This is likely to get HORRIBLY emo and I apologize in advance. Those of you with little stomach for said things should just go read something else right now.
still here?
I'll give you a few more seconds
I am fucking lonely
I have been thinking this for a long time and it has gotten to the point where I think I can actually breach the subject. I spent tonight with 4 great friends of mine. Four great friends that make 2 great couples, one of which I can hear vague sounds of them rejoicing in their relationship in the next room. This last bit doesn't really bother me. I lived on a college campus for 5 years, for fuck's sake, I am no stranger to others' sounds of love, lust, and just plain hunger. But, none of these things are what is making me feel this way. Its something else far more all-encompassing.
This post stems from something that has been seething beneath the surface for a LONG time, possibly years. Other people, far more intelligent people, have delved into this subject. Great minds from Wilde to Jung and countless others. However, the very nature of those communications drives me to add my pathetic attempts to translate my feelings on the subject to the heap. Once again, this is terribly emo. You have been warned.
Before I go any further, keep in mind that I have a wonderful and amazing girlfriend. A woman who is closer to me and knows more of who I am than anyone EVER did or seemed to harbor a desire to know. A woman who, if I am extremely lucky, will one day call me hers forever. This has nothing to do with her or what I feel for her.
My emotions for her run endlessly deep.
What all this has to do with is the limitations of human interaction. I am lonely and I don't think its possible to not be lonely. I crave and desire a type of connection that I feel is simply impossible to obtain. We are limited in our interactions by so many different things our own emotions and fears, our intelligence, and countless other obstacles. However, the main culprit here is the very tools we use to make communication itself possible. Language.
Language, in itself, is a barrier. No matter how fluent a person is, no matter how literate one is, no matter how skillful a wordsmith one might be . . . language will always be a bastardized translation of our true feelings and emotions. We don't feel in words and, at the very basic level, we don't think in words. We don't even feel or think in a language. Our thoughts and feelings are an amalgam of other thoughts and emotions. Thoughts and emotions gathered from a lifetime of thinking and feeling. Thoughts and emotions which aren't even vague pictures, sounds, and smells; but, at the same time so much more. Small, immeasurable things, whose meanings encompass entire worlds and universes. The concept of how we manage to translate those gargantuanly mini-universes into the agonizingly restrictive words is . . . inconceivable. But we do it every day.
My emotions and my true feelings are interpreted by the language center in my brain and, in an instant, it finds the best words to fit them. These words are, at best, a horribly rough approximation of those feelings, thoughts, and emotions. The word "beautiful" can never hope to convey how the first rays of a sunrise refract off the crystals of a fresh blanket of snow; nor, can it tell my Julie of the way the right corner of her lip curls upward slightly and her eyes burn a warm glow right before she breaks into that intoxicating laugh of hers. Those full sentences can not even convey the feelings and thoughts that make those things so important that we feel the need to tear them apart rapaciously in order to communicate their affect on us to another human being. No matter how great our vocabulary is, no matter how well read we are, words will always be words. And they will NEVER come close to being able to completely share the things we long to share with those around us.
This is only compounded by the fact that we use the same word and mean completely different things. When I say, "I need to go to the store," and when I say to Julie "I need to be with you," the meaning of the word need in these examples are so terribly different, they don't even seem like the same word at all.
Yet, still we strive to communicate. And, in that woefully inadequate act of communication, our feelings and emotions are subjected to translation not just once, but twice. Once by the obviously pathetic translation of our own brain and again by the thought-process of the person to whom we are struggling to convey those thoughts and emotions. Their life experiences will lend a similar; but, hopelessly different meaning and evocative response to the word we chose to describe our feelings. For example: when I use the word "agony" to describe how I feel when I wake up in the morning and find Julie not laying next to me (a hopelessly deficient approximation of that feeling), that word will not convey to my listener how I feel. It will convey to them only what they feel themselves to be the pangs of agony. While this interaction may lead to sympathy or empathy with my response, it will NEVER lead to a truly complete understanding.
It is that understanding, that level of communication which I am longing for. A complete and total impossibility. Our true thoughts and feelings will forever be locked in the cage of our own heads, to merely attempt flight on the clipped wings of spoken, written, or illustrated language.
It can be argued that the imperfections of language is what can make it such a powerful tool for personal growth and creativity. And, I am forced to agree. While the words I say to you will not adequately communicate my thoughts and feelings, your interpretations of those words' true meaning will spawn new thoughts and emotions in you. Which will then continue to another person and another person and another and so on into perpetuity. But as beautiful as those thoughts and emotions our intellectual fornication may have spawned might be, they will still not be the original. We can never hope to truly communicate to another our heart.
It is this unsatisfactory means of communication, of connection, that makes me lonely. What has made me lonely for years. The feeling comes and goes and when it comes, it leaves me devastatingly depressed. It leaves me feeling absolutely destroyed with no real means of recovery, other than the eventual (and blessed) ability of my brain to push it back to an unconscious level.
In fact, this very post is nothing but an exercise in futility. All of these words, all this time spent trying to find the right way to describe my feeling is for naught. After all, I will never be able to impart to you my desire for this kind of connection any more than my desire to once again see light flash a seductive dance across a sheen of sweat on my love's heaving breast.
More powerful than the pull of love itself and hopelessly impotent to truly serve their purpose, words will never be anything more than letters pushed into a recognizable pattern. And in that truth, lies loneliness.