January 2010
63 posts
Sometimes I think I can see right through myself.
“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is...”
“The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.”
...dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and...
These past few days I’ve grown more and more interested in William Faulkner. It started out with seeing a couple of his famous quotes, but after reading A Rose For Emily, I’d really like to read more of his works.
Too bad I left The Sound and The Fury at home. I’ll have to remember that when I visit in the spring, except there’s really no time to read what I like in...
“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
I'll let you get the best of me,
because there’s nothing else that I do well.
“Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?”
Why is there such a thing as alcohol?
I wrote this in the middle of the night almost two weeks ago. I never posted it, but after reading what my sister wrote, I figured I might as well.
That is the saddest thing I have ever heard my mother, or maybe anyone, ever say. It isn’t fair that she’ll never be loved and she is alone. Isn’t that what everyone hopes for someday? Someone to love them and share their life...
Weakness, sweet weakness.
Never again, never again.
This is no place to try and live my life.
Biology 101
I wish I could understand biology as well as I do music theory. It’s all just so fascinating - the processes of life. Especially how we came to make sense of it all. It really amazes me.
What I find most interesting is reproduction, and just how many variable outcomes are possible. There are 64 trillion diploid cominations possible through random fertilization, and that’s before...
The Thermo-Dynamic Miracle
JON: I don’t think your life’s meaningless. No. I changed my mind. Thermo-dynamic miracles… events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie odds for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations against the odds of your ancestors being alive; Meeting; Siring this precise song; That exact daughter… until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… That is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle.
LAURIE: But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
JON: Yes. Anybody in the world… but the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come… dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; The clay in which the forces that shapes all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes… and let’s go home.
“I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.”
The Ballad of Reading Gaol →
by Oscar Wilde
CARL SAGAN: We’ve arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements - transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting - profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.
“The fool looks at a finger that points at the sky.”
“Without you, today’s emotions would be the scurf of yesterday’s.”
I'll love you tomorrow if you love me today.
“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
Double Date
I’ve never really been a date, let alone a double date! It was really quite nice. I felt like a normal, outgoing person, and it wasn’t even awkward at all.
Towards the end of the night, Jeremy said something along the lines of how he doesn’t think he socializes enough, and yet there aren’t very many people he actually wants to socialize with. My thoughts exactly.
My...
The right to be ridiculous is something I hold...
anniele:
I have learned not to trust “feelings” because, by definition, they are momentary, fleeting.
Your heart is meant to pump blood.
“I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.”
If Only
V: Hush, child, hush. It’s over now. You’re safe. The past can’t hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But that’s not the real you. That’s not who you are inside. Just trust me, Evey, and we can wipe it all away. All the pain, all the cruelty, all the bereavement. We can start again.
Inspiration
Set an extremely specific goal.
You can have anything you want. You can not have everything you want.
If you want to reach your goal, have the same goal every day.
Live in line with your goals.
What Makes You Happy?
Tonight I saw a trombone recital given by Don Immel, a former graduate of my university. I have seen three professional trombonists this school year, and his performance has been my favorite. Afterwards he gave an inspirational talk about how to reach your goals, which is great because that’s exactly what I’ve been lacking lately - inspiration. These are the goals he made for himself...
And the words you fear will always be the words...
“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of...”
I’m not trying to be heard, but I have things to...
“I’m not one of you. I don’t have any questions (there aren’t any to ask). I...”
– 44801
Tonight I made my first snow angel!
Today I had no initiative whatsoever.
I love walking in the snow. I hate not working harder.
Defeated.
DEER: I can't settle down. I have to traverse the country. I have to keep running away from my problems.
MOOSE: You don't have to run away from me.
Dear Catherine,
There is nothing wrong with you. All those things you said you don’t like about yourself are all the personal traits you need. Just because they aren’t the norm or the best doesn’t mean they’re worthless.
I know you think of me as your role model, but I think of you as one, too. We’ve both been through a lot, but you’ve been through worse by far, and somehow you manage to smile. So many times...
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter...”