"I lived for a moment in a world so lovely, so inept."

Can we all learn to ignore the things we don't want to know about each other? I know what it's about: accepting, despite this and this and this.

The point is: Can we accept?

And can we accept this world as it is given to us, or can we at least hope for a little bit of change, and for humans to act like humans towards each other?

Here's something I've been thinking about lately:

I've been thinking about why people join groups, whether it is a fraternity or a sorority or a club or a religion or a political party or whatever else people make themselves a part of. Everyone does it. And I've also been thinking about the dangers of identifying yourself solely within the confines a group, of only seeing yourself within the group, and not as a real person, an individual. When you do this, when you make adherence to the uniformity of a group your goal, then you lose yourself. It's easy to conform, instead of actually deciding who it is YOU are and what it is YOU want. It's so easy to join a group and mold your personality to it because of the lack of actual thought that goes into it; it's safe and not scary because you don't have to decide who it is you actually are and what it is you actually believe. It's all been decided for you. You don't have to think much about yourself, from what clothes to wear, to what your core beliefs and values are. But you're less of a person if you do this. You're just part of something, and you aren't a WHOLE anything. And when the group isn't there anymore--what are you then? What do you believe in? You aren't left with anything.

I just want to throw a challenge out there: start to see yourself as something other than the groups you belong to. Decide who YOU actually are, and take a second to think about why you believe what you believe.

This is a challenge for myself, of course. We all become too dependent on others to tell us what to believe.

So.

?

I'm going to the beach soon. This fact makes me very, very happy. I gotta get away from this campus for a little bit; I'm feeling claustrophobic. Do you ever get that way? Where your life starts closing in on you? It's comfortable, but you start to wonder if there's any more than this out there. If there are other things and people waiting to be discovered. It makes me get impatient, makes me want to leave and makes me want to be anywhere else than where I am. I can't say these things, so I type them and say I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know.

I think that if I run, maybe I'll feel more alive.

Like Catherine, I let Patty Griffin feel my feelings for me

"You know it's a mad mission,

Under difficult conditions,

Not everybody makes it,

To the loving cup,

It's too mad a mission,

But I got the ambition,

Mad, mad mission,

Sign me up."

We need to be able to reblog on this thing.

"In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws."

-The Virgin Suicides, Jeffery Eugenedies

Taken from the always thoughtful blog of Caroline Mitchell.

I had a weird moment.

I was driving home from Little Rock (which was awesome and much-needed, by the way), and I had this moment. I'll try to explain and describe it for you. Cause that's what I do, yo.

That picture up there: it's the album cover of "The Moon and Antartica" by Modest Mouse, which is a wonderful and dark album. And I was listening to "Third Planet," which is the first wonderful song on the album, and the road around me had some weird red lights for some reason, and the air was foggy and for a second, I felt like I had stepped into this picture. And it was magic.

The thing is, I can't really describe it. Like many things, apparently.

If you have not read

Slaughterhouse Five, then I suggest you do so as soon as possible.

"Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked him what he was reading this time. So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space...He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes."

I have officially decided that my life goal is to write a book. I can do this. I can't do it right now because I am happy, and there is no overflow of angst that forces me to write. But one day, when feelings make my fingers pick up a pen again, then I'm gonna write a book.

I think Wallace Stevens wrote this about me.

From "Sunday Morning":

"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among the water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across the wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find comforts in the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must life within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in lonelieness, or unsubdued

Elations on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul."

The italics were my doing. I'm loving modern poetry right now. I'm becoming more and more drawn into seeing God in the earth and in humanity (at the risk of sounding like a hippie). Hooray for hedonism. And it reminds me of that quote by D.H. Lawrence I used a while back, where he says he worships God through...his love of whatever, whether that is through poetry or through another person. How much more beautiful is this than hands nailed on a cross?

"I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, 'Is it an anti-war book?'

'Yes,' I said, 'I guess.'

'You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?'

'No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?'

'I say 'Why don't you write and anti-glacier book instead?'

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.

And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

I've been thinking a lot about the subject of war lately. I am definitely an idealist, and oftentimes not realistic, but certain wars just make me think, "Really??"

Anyway, Happy Valentines Day! I keep forgetting. I bought some Harry Potter valentines, which I plan on passing out to my loved ones if I can ever get off my ass to do anything today.

I've been juggling a lot lately. It's not something I'm apt to do, multitask. I won't bore you with the details, but I need time for naps, you know? I'm wasting away college being so freakin tired all the time.

On the other hand, I don't want to give up anything I'm doing, and I suppose I have to make up for all the lazy hours I've spent staying inside or watching TV or whatever it is that is keeping me from living life the way it ought to be lived.

I need time. I need more hours of sleeping without feeling guilty. I feel like, as a college student, maybe I should stop being so responsible and start slacking off, making bad choices before...the consequences get heavier? Sometimes I need more hours of playing music and I need more hours with my friends...all of us need more hours with each other.

I don't think there's anything better than laying in bed in the early morning when it's snowing outside listening to Iron and Wine on your Ipod.

Snow days in college are just wonderful. You'd think we'd be too old for pulling on boots at six in the morning and running outside for a snowball fight. Not the case.

And on a related note...

This poem gives me the chills. And usually I don't like stuff like this because I gravitate towards stuff that's less structured and rhymey, but this just works. But it's on the subject of permanence.

"Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,

And in the twilight wait for what will come,

The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some,

Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall,

But go, and if you trust her she will call.

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal--

Luke Havergal."

from "Luke Havergal" by E.A. Robinson

And this from something a bit more modern:

"...grateful for the world, which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences."

from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Catherine got me thinking about

permanence.

(That word looks like it's misspelled, but spellcheck tells me it's not.)

And I do wonder about this a lot...Why do we begin friendships and relationships if we know they aren't permanent? And is there even such thing as a person who will always be in your life? We grow out of people sometimes...and that makes losing them less painful. What we need from a person, and what we can give to a person, varies with the patterns of our lives, so the people who we need vary as well. It's a constant loss and gain. It's like, imagine when you were five years old, and the idea of ever leaving your family, going off to college, scared the shit out of you. I remember being sure that I would have to go to college somewhere in Little Rock so that I could stay with my mom. But you grow out of it, and you don't need your mom as much as you did at one time. This is how it works. These people might always be there, but in different ways, and maybe at a different proximity.

It's about having someone, here, now, I guess. That's the realization. It's worth it. Also the confidence that you can handle inevitable loss.

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

"It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said."

Something to think about.

I thought,

I should really be writing this shit down, you know? Remember to write the happy stuff.