Weekend

So here I am on Saturday night, writing in my blog. This should answer a couple of questions. Do you have any friends? Do you have anything better to do? Do you ever think about suicide?

This weekend was pretty lame, but I get an "A" for effort. Thursday night, after a year's worth of excuses and deliberately missed calls, I finally got back to my friend and told him I wanted to party with him. So, he took me to his girlfriend's apartment for my third party, which could just as well be my first since it was the first party at which I knew most of the people there. No drinking for me, as always. I just sort of tipped up my Ice Mountain more frequently than someone dying of thirst and shook it suspiciously from time to time to mix up the imaginary booze. They might have bought it? Hm, I guess I don't really care. No one seemed to uncomfortable by having a tee-to-taller in their midst; they even let me play beer pong (my friend had to drink all the beer for our team.)

Though I appreciate my friend's charity for taking the social retard out, I can't say I really had any fun. Most of the night was spent squirming in and out of conversations revolving around the best ways to ingest heroin or who was about to make out with who, as if it depended on some kind of schedule. If I got anything out of the night, it was a comment from a girl. She had been filling me in on all the drugs she'd done- which ones were better, which ones were cheaper, which ones won't kill you. She finally got to vikodin, the pain killer. Turns out, she was prescribed it and then became addicted shortly afterwards. "God, that's awful," I said, and I really meant it. Stories like hers are usually the only ones that garner any sympathy for drug addicts from me. You know, the ones about hapless people in worlds of pain who, through their doctor's advice, came into contact with a highly addictive drug and then, overtime, built up a psychological and physiological dependence. Sad. "No, it's okay," she said. "Vikodin has made me a more interesting person." I really didn't know how to understand her. Was she being sarcastic and cynical? Could anyone be that empty and dry? Was she being serious? Did she appreciate her addiction for giving her something to talk about with people like me? Either way, I thought right then and there, this girl has made me sad. I talked to her a lot over the course of the night and got quite the eye opener.

Everyone says social interactions are where real learning is done at college, but I never believed it until Thursday night. It's not what people know or have done or have seen that we remember from nights like the one I had: it's how people view life, how they see themselves, how they see the future- their philosophy. The girl with the vikodin problem saw the world as a chemical playground of different highs and lows- adderall for studying, vikodin for pain and relaxing, meth for energy, cigarettes for the fills in between- and herself as a substrate for all the magic to attach to. She had other things to talk about, sure, but none brought out the same matter-of-factness, enthusiasm, or attentiveness as drugs. But hell, maybe that was booze talking. I'm still new to party conversation, after all. She might have give me a lecture on the politics of the Middle East if she were here next to me right now. Even still, I think I got a taste for something different, perhaps the first time I've done so this year.

Nick really spoiled my fun today. After years searching for the way to get my computer to speak the text I type for it, I found it tonight just as he was returning from his cafeteria job. "How was work, fucker," my HP said, robot-like. "Turn dat sheet ohf!" he barked. "It's annoying!" "Fuck you," my speakers replied. That's when his eyes narrowed. I fucking hate that ferret stare. So, "turn da sheet ohf" I did. I had so many obscene pick-up lines to run through, too! He really needs to start embracing this period in his life, I think. He spends more time asking me not to swear than saying anything of his own, more time making fun of me for my hobbies than pursuing, or creating, his own. I realize that I'm super ripe for all sorts of jibes and jeers, but it would be nice to have someone to laugh with and be complicit in my uncouthness with. My housing contract said nothing about a nanny. That's another thing. Since we have so little common ground, I'm almost forced to be a buffoon. I have to be very dramatic and animated around him, just to release the tension between two such diametrically different people. By knowingly being an idiot, I sort of anticipate the little insults and moralizing reprimands I get, which helps make it harder for me to be offended since I know I deserve them. But I can't keep it up forever. I'd love to tell him he's a philistine, boorish, indolent, spiteful, little fellow sometimes, but I seem to be the more diplomatic and aware of the two of us, which is probably why I'm putting up the facade of the perverted, crass, jejune, dunce to keep us from clashing. Besides, when the dust settles, when we're both quietly reclined with our head phones on, I like the bastard. He's just getting to me right now.

"Lost in Translation" was a terrific movie. I watched it on my computer about a week ago. I think it sums up EXACTLY how I feel when I'm at college. Bill Murray was stuck and lost in Tokyo, a city foreign to him in every way- culture, people, recreation, history, and food. I'm stuck and lost in MSU. But maybe, just maybe, I'd be lost at any university? Maybe I'm just not meant to be 19?

One thing would make this all easier: purpose. My least favorite quotes are the ones that are delivered by successful people and go something like this, "I do this because I just couldn't do anything else, or "I was born to do this." How convenient for you guys. I wish a legit-looking guy with a staff and beard would show up at my dorm room door and charge me with a quest. Purpose found! Dangerous, uncertain, or painful though it may be, I'd still have something to get me to say, "Oh yeah, that's why I'm wasting my time doing things that I can't stand for money I can't do without!" College needs to be a part of my purpose, my quest.

I talked to one of my friends yesterday about religion. I made sure to bring it up and move past it quick, since the subject tends to be sort of explosive, but I think most of the actual argument played out in my head afterwards. We really just listened to each other gloss over the fundamentals of our respective beliefs, nothing too controversial. But inside, I was wrestling with her. She is Catholic, one of the few TRUE catholics. Someone once said, "I'd be a Christian if I ever met one." What a great quote. Hypocrites, all of 'em. But this girl's different. She walks across the campus to church every Sunday. She went to Catholic school and DIDN'T become a mega slut afterwards. She's the genuine article. So, out of respect for her (I find Catholicism's standards pretty hard to abide by in this day and age), I let her speak her mind. Like her, I was raised Catholic, so she really wasn't telling me anything new. Still, it was quite a powerful statement she was making to me. American universities seem to be the place Catholics go to die. Most people here seem to be Protestant- the funloving Christians- agnostic, or atheist, and if they SAY they're Catholic, a quick conversation is usually all that's needed to show they're mistaken. "Wait, I'm not allowed to masturbate?"

After she was done, she politely asked me what I thought. I told her I was currently closest to being a pantheist. I like to think of pantheism as beautiful atheism. My "prophet" would have to be Baruch Spinoza, a philosopher I only stumbled upon last year, thanks to maybe the only truly neat course I've had here. The professor was a world renowned Spinoza scholar, so her bias might have had a hand in selling him. The metaphysical system laid out by Spinoza is so simple, beautiful, and comprehensive. I'm just finding it hard to deny. My roommate, a staunch atheist, says he "believes in nothing." I say, "I believe in this!" To pantheists, God is immanent in the world. He is everything in the universe. Everything is logically contained in him. You, me, everyone is a part of this God, this reality. He exists, we exist because he necessarily exists, like a triangle with three sides. A triangle MUST have three sides because, according to the definition of a triangle, all triangles have three sides. That's why God, or nature, or everything that exists, must exist. It's a little shaky, but it's such a logical solution to a problem that usually draws on some kind of religious or moralistic sensibility (i.e. everything exists because the Bible says God created the world). In this world, everything is determined, for God can't be any different than how it is, and freedom consists in knowing we are so determined and accepting it. Again, the world is simple, beautiful, and logical. The world is also perfect, and things like the problem of evil are only due to man's anthropomorphic errors, like seeing God as possessing the concerns of a human and mistakenly believing reality to be shaped around our existence as a species. In this type of world, science is good because it helps us adapt to nature, and the highest virtue is "an intellectual love of god", which I take to mean an ardent curiosity about how the world works and what it is. It seems like the best system to me right now, but that could change.

Phase Two

A terrible mood overtook me today, but terrible moods are often good moods for writing, so I'm going to get something out of the storm clouds in my head.

I don't understand the people who can stand fall, the season, that is. It is crunchy, russet-colored death. I don't exaggerate here at all. Fall is when everything dies! I mean, look around you next time someone makes you throw on your favorite hoodie (The hoodie being just one of fall's evil brood) to go outside and admire the leaves. Above you will stretch barren tree trunks like pieces of dead hair. "But oh that autumn smell!" you might say. Yeah, that's called decay, the very same process by which bodies become dirt. I know this is all kind of macabre, but I couldn't get these thoughts out of my head when I realized what day it was, the autumnal equinox. I even hate that word, "autumn." It has that strong "a" sound at the front, the same pretentious syllable that British school masters chide their students with, "You aught not to do that!" There's even a conceited branch of music that labels itself as "autumnal sounding," i.e. Death Cab for Cutie, one of the few bands that I just can't stand. Each member has the charisma of a rusty nail and a permanent frown. Stevie Wonder cuts their hair, and their "artsy" horn-rimmed glasses, which by now are so ridiculously popular that their existence has become foul irony -something that was supposed to mark individualism now made by the truckload and shipped to every reality starved, self-professed world weary "dreamer," who immerses himself in what he can only guess to be art- bug the hell out of me. And their music is so boring, so boring, so boring, so boring. But that's why it's so good for autumn. That's why it's "autumnal." That's why people are supposed to download it to their ipod and go walk amongst the dead things. It's fall's soundtrack. Well, fuck that.

Something else about autumn. There is NOTHING to look forward to. Every bright day in June holds the door for another . Autumn days only bring you closer to winter, to cold and darkness, while the sun rises later and later and sets sooner and sooner. When I hear people shout, "Oh what an awesome day!" in October, I'm reminded of this fact and become angry. It's like remarking, "Oh what a beautiful house," on the way to the guillotine. Those last couple of decent days are anomalies, tragically confused mixtures of climate and cloud cover that serve only to bring us pain as we zip up our jackets in anticipation for the end of the year.

I know I've said some awful, not to mention overly grotesque, things about what might be people's favorite season, band, and fashion article, and if I offend anyone for this, I'm sorry. I would say that it's just the way I feel if I were even certain of that. It's this mood that's pressing these keys, and since it's so intent on getting all this down, I'm allowing it to. I have a Death Cab album on my computer, I think.

And that brings me to my next point. I'm just a stupid mess. What I like, what I don't-things that are supposed to matter to me- just don't seem to count for anything anymore. Truth is, I've spent so much time with school and learning, that I've forgotten what I want out of the sixty or so years I have left here. Is it possible to lose yourself? I mean PHYSICALLY lose yourself? To have your soul just run away without looking back, leaving only what you SHOULD like, SHOULD do, SHOULD care about to serve as the glue holding you together? I've tried to sacrifice myself to grow up, like I thought all people must do to fully belong to a world so much larger than themselves, but it ended up being a very childish mistake, and maybe one that could keep my life mired in depression for awhile. I MADE myself like science, which I've always thought and might always think to be the world's only salvation, thoroughly drowning everything I thought to be selfish inside of me. What difference did it make if couldn't stand writing lab reports? The world is always one lab report away from feeding ten million starving people. But now, gradually, the wraith of personality left in me is drifting towards the surface and causing a lot of mental hell in the process.

I'm more alone than ever here. Maybe it's just a guy thing, but there seems to be an invisible wall around us all. The wall has one hole for a cord to run between two phones on each side of the wall. Through the wire race snippets of laughter, questions, exclamations, compliments, and stories, but the sender and reciever of them could be as far away as the North and South poles. To quote Patrick Bateman, I'm just simply "not there." When I think about it, I've never really had anyone that could just clap me on the shoulder and tell me exactly what I was thinking, what my face looked like on the other side of the wall while I chortled, shouted, and sighed with deceit. I've had good friends, great friends, sure, but they were all great without really breaking the glass wall, and I've never been upset about that until now. In fact, I always kind of liked the isolation I kept myself hidden in, a sort of cloud to float me above the others so that I could view them, objectively and truthfully, while at the same time generating the same sort of trepidation that said clouds do. No one ever knew if I was going to burst with lightning or life giving water, whether I'd just pass or hover a bit over them, as if interested. I liked being a little mysterious, maybe because it fueled my imagination, as might be evident frome this cloud metaphor (haha, who do I think I am!? Next I'll be a burning bush!).


Phase two starts the day I feel goose bumps on my leg, September 22. From here until March, I'll be relatively moody, petulant, illogical, paranoid, self-righteous, lonely, judgemental, suspicious, and, of course, cold as hell. Lucky you.

Life Contd.

I had a weird day on Friday. This whole week was confusing, actually. Whenever I wasn't half asleep in one of my classes, I was on the phone with my mother holding a miniature libra with guilt on one side and my brain supplying the counter-weight on the other. You see, I just had the whole family over at MSU last week because I got them, through my scholarship, tickets to a football game. Damn good tickets, too. Needless to say, that kind of flushed my saturday down the john. Shred my man card if you have to, but I just can't stand football. There's more camera shots of fat dudes with headphones than of tackles and passes. Also, the zebras launch those yellow flags almost automatically, as if actual action on the field triggered the response: A much needed delay for the referee to karate chop the air and earn death threats or hallelujahs from the mob in the stands. Not my kind of game at all. Anyways, I thought I sort of paid my dues by hooking them up with tickets and wrongly believed that I was free of them for at least another three weeks (I mean "free" here in the best possible way), but, as my mother pointed out during every couple hours over this week, so frequently that there are cancerous moles all over the burned, cell phone-side of my face, my siblings wanted me to see their complete marching band half-time show. Come on in, Mr. Guilt. So, I ended up letting my dad pick me up at 2 o'clock last Friday, seeing their show at 7 o'clock, and watching tv back in my dorm room at 11 o'clock. I don't think a cheese head would have driven that much to see Brett Favre immolate himself on a 50-yard line pyre. I wonder how long I can show this kind of football devotion and still rather eat the lumps of charcoal from every tailgate ever than watch a football game.

I love how classes are sort of structured, divided into zones and circles, regions, if you will, of kids. In the front, of course, sit what I like to call the hand-hefters. You know, the kids that salute the teacher with a crisp swish of the hand whenever a question mark escapes the speaker's lips, their flourishes sounding like a fleet of arrows zooming through a grass hut. Despite their enthusiasm, I can't really tell what it is they seek. They could just sit there, still, saving the burnt calories and ligament pain of their little charade, and ace the class. Correct answers are marked with a pencil, not a salute. But no, they seek something else. Maybe the speed of the gesture is just a point of pride, you know, like how it was for the gunslingers of old. Maybe they see themselves striking down queries like John Wayne striking down bandits- an epic showdown following every amnesiac, pedantic tangent of their instructors. Well, after the vigilantes in the front are the normal kids- taking notes, showing up 80% of the time, daydreaming through the fluff. After them come the solitaire players, and after them, the facebookers. I consider the facebookers a little more impudent. Solitaire is mindless, just something for the body to do to keep the pen away from the jugular, while the mind actually tries to learn, much like toe tapping or head scratching, just a tick. Facebooking, though, is an activity, and for some, a hobby. After them come the sleepers, the people who prefer a ninety-degree slump on a folded out wafer of stone to a warm bed and pillow. Last of the zones contains the crowd of true imps. The newspaper readers, the bearers of the ultimate "fuck you". The paper is like a wall that halts all of the bull shit from the podium, sound-proof, opaque, and littered with sports stats. As in the case of the sleepers, this class of student could get the same effect of their chosen behavior in the classroom by staying at home. But NO! "Fuck you"'s must be made in person. Reading a newspaper in class is saying, "I came here to show you how boring and useless your ranting is. I am consciously and deliberately ignoring you. Now stare at the front page and feel around in your pocket for booze and kleenex money for later."

When I went home to see the game, my dad said his new electric tooth brush "made his balls jiggle." I laughed pretty hard at that.

As far as the life development department, I've tried to get serious about narrowing my interests and program of study, but I just can't. The kids who have a goal, a distinct path, a ladder to adulthood, they're climbing towards a light, bright and constant, sitting calmly atop their assigned ladder. Then, there's the kids who have NOTHING to climb towards, who have consigned themselves to drudgery, crime, or laziness and dependency. They see only darkness. Then there's me. The light I see is blistering, coruscating from all directions, blinding me to the ladder and all it's rungs, as well as everything else. It's beautiful, but so bright that I'm scared to even begin on ANY ladder. I'm blinded to the rungs, making me indecisive, overly cautious, and alone, for no one else is visible above, below, or alongside me. There is only the light. Climbing towards anything is feckless. I think this metaphor fits the dilemmas of a lot of kids (Plato would agree with me). What I, what everyone in this situation, needs is someone. Someone wise, older, seasoned, pragmatic, sensible, and maybe even a little cold and calculating. We need someone who's already surmounted his ladder, someone who can throw some shades down to those of us at the bottom to help us find what truly shines, which ladder belongs to us.

Exit Deluge

It's rained for three days here, three days straight. The Red Cedar River is a bog, creeping dangerously close to the bike path alongside it. It's not that I'm afraid of getting wet, it's just that the small river, now bloated and still, is doing nothing but hoisting nasty shit next to the bike path. Instead of ducks to look at, I have chip bags and water bottles. The grayness is kind of taxing on my soul, too. I know this entry is dry and boring, but after being stuck inside all day with nothing to do but zone out to the staccato of a three-day downpour, I'm just a little reluctant to sit here and think, but I'm determined to write as much as I can. In his guide to writing, Stephen King recommends that all young writers dedicate five to six hours every day to reading and/or writing, and I think his advice is well grounded. Writing is a skill that needs to be practiced in any way possible, whether it's a blog about stupid shit or a formal paper. I don't care if this is good, it's something.

I saw a shirt today that read, "I love boobs!" It had to be the best "support breast cancer research" shirt ever. I think it has fad potential. They probably have a "I love penises!" shirt in some liberal European country already. Other than that, my day has been restless, desultory, and quiet. My focus washed away, I've been drifting between the internet and my book constantly. There's even a pace-path between my bed, where the book is, and the computer. We have a couple of highways already embedded in this damn fine rug. There's the one already mentioned as well as one from my roommate's desk to his banana cache, which he guards like a Doberman. I think he's losing his prehensile thumbs.

I guess I should talk about him since he's really the only person I see on a daily basis, but I don't think I can do his character justice so offhand like this. Suffice it to say that I like him and our arrangement seems to be working. He hasn't whipped any vodka bottles at me or spat any sunflower seeds on the carpet like my last roommate. Really, if he walked around stark naked all the time and drew pentagrams on all my posters, he'd still be an improvement.

I've seen almost as many Obama tables as hoodies on this campus. Politics... It seems to be the most popular topic on these blogs. Politics, though, seems to be more of a grim reality than a freaking hobby, and I wish that kids, especially, would agree with me. My generation has all their lives to worry about what happens to their taxes. I'm not saying we shouldn't care or remain ignorant of politics, just that we should have an educated opinion without the avid attentiveness of a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. There's so many things that we and only we can really appreciate, for ours is such an awesome time to be alive! Movies are better, music is louder, people are friendlier when you're in college. Cynicism, which I think is inherent in all things political, should be years away, and welcoming it in early is both a shame and a burden. Even if the kids at the tables are on a fast track to responsibility and adult sensibility and financial stability, God help them.

But what am I saying? Being insecure, confused, and naive is no picnic either, but I'd take it before being a slogan-quoting, convention-taping, zombie, or, even worse, a smug asshole who hates both candidates, but backs the candidate who he believes will be more influenced by congress or his party and, thus, who will be more in line with the asshole's wants, as if the kid himself were manipulating the Big Cheese.

First Post

Like a lot of first posts, I have to fit "I stayed away from this for so long" somewhere, so I might as well stick it here in the first sentence. So, there it is. I watched everyone else pull everyone else's hair over livejournal and get love from their blogger buddies in pick-me-up comments , but I somehow stayed away from it all. I thought I caved when I got a facebook account. Even now, I wish I hadn't. Facebook, to me, has completely spun the life cycle around. You see, after high school is over, as your walking off the podium with your diploma, everyone is implicitly required to think or say, "I'M NEVER SEEING YOU GUYS AGAIN! HELL YES!" but facebook, has, if nothing else, controverted all that is meant and implied by this declaration. EVERYONE you've ever met is suddenly a click away, sending you bumper stickers and poking you like some inquisitive kid pokes a dead bird, making sure you're there, that you're well, that you're pursuing the same major, that you hate "the new facebook" as well, and much else besides. Facebook is having all aquaintances on speed dial, and, more horribly, it let's everyone know that you remember them. So, every day that goes by that you don't drop Mike Smith a line is a day spent consciously ignoring them. Time and space can't offer any cop-outs anymore.

I was thinking today about the music I listen to. I took a long, tortuous path to all the acts I have tucked away illegally on my computer. I never liked Rock in the first place. I was a teenage jazz cat. Yeah, I know...Only two musicians have changed my life- Frank Sinatra, and Coheed and Cambria. Before Frank, I hated most all music, or, rather, what I liked I didn't like enough to remember who wrote and performed it. I heard Frank's "I've Got the World on a String" when I was about 14, and laughed when I found out whose jazzy, nuanced voice I was hearing. "The Crooner?" I said. "The skinny ass-dude that had all the bobbysoxers cooing and swaying and shit? Music was the last thing on his mind." There's this popular misconception that the popular is a vulgar contamination of the good, something watered down, slid down the assembly line to be packaged and shipped to the masses, and, just maybe, it holds true in most cases. Music can be overly slick and commercial. But, I think Frank is one of those rare cases that just made the whole world fall in love with him. His songs had a goodness that didn't have to be analyzed on Pitchfork blogs. It was earthly and common, sure, but isn't that what music is all about? Art is usually prized on how well it "connects" with the perceiver. Anyone who has ever had a bad day, a girlfriend, or a lonely night can rightfully sign their names underneath the song listings for Sinatra's albums. He sings the human story, if I can let myself get a little lofty here.

Alas, it didn't take too long for me to understand how fucking lame I was. Rock was here and now (since 1950-something, I think), but I just couldn't really get into it. That's what I get for letting my sister work the radio, I guess. That all changed one fateful day at a Guitar Center. I remember going in with my dad and brother, looking for a new bass pedal or something for my brother's set, but being too distracted by all the posters to really help. Man, was I behind, I thought. Every square inch of that warehouse had a album cover glued to it, and some were really impressive. The art was epic and sort of morbid, a far cry from Frank's tipping of his fedora-the iconic, omnipresent photo on each record and poster. Intrigued, I worked my way to the center of the store, my journey sort of adopting a chronological progression, a walk through time to the present. I passed British Invasion bands, then punk pants, then glam bands, then emo bands, until I arrived at the center where a tower of brand new albums waited to be bought. "Coheed and Cambria: Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV," they said, and I remember being instantly annoyed. Bands only make up bizarre, quirky names like that to get attention, I thought. Music should speak for itself. I had a feeling that Coheed and Cambria just wanted me to check out their myspace and buy their shit. Well, that feeling became doing. The first four songs I heard in order were, "Once Upon Your Dead Body," "Wake Up," "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth," and, last, "Welcome Home." The first was funky and strange, the second was touching and catchy, the third was haunting and heavy, and the last was a bombastic metal explosion. Coheed, then, was really the beach head for my later forays into good rock. I started listening to prog, progressive metal, post-hardcore, electronica, and indie stuff.

I don't know what brought all that on, but I'm glad I found something to write about. Stay tuned?