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.