I was going to post a quote I really like about how creating a "balance between exuberance and humility" is one of the keys to happiness. I can never remember the quote exactly, nor can I ever remember who said/wrote it. When I went to look for it tonight, the first thing that came up on Google sounded really familiar, and I thought I had found the quote. Turns out, what I had found was something I myself had written... something that I didn't even know was online. Kinda cool. (As goes the interwebs, this discovery led me from one thing to another until I was thoroughly distracted.)

After further exploration when I got back on track, I discovered the quote (really, it was more of an entire lecture...) was made by Vladi Chalupka, a University of Washington professor who's class I sat in with Matt when I visited him during our Freshmen year of college. Except, I hadn't heard the quote then. I heard it when Vladi spoke at Science Camp in West Virginia two summers ago. He's also apparently given the lecture at Evergreen too. (linkslinkslinks)

On a side note, Peter Mulvey has a song about drinking outside a bar, looking at the stars, and talking about the universe with Vladi, the astrophysicist from UW.
Now I miss camp (not terribly though, and I am still glad about my decision to not go this summer), and feel calmer... peaceful-er (ha) in general.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

i donno

Its sick when people can't recognize themselves in the mirror.
Today the mirror is a movie. But it's not just a movie...
When is a story ever really just a story? We must be just too used to believing that they are.

I guess I thought I could handle watching something so incredibly disturbing and dark in a roomful of other people. I guess I thought other people cared about the same things I do.

But no. They don't. They didn't get it. They didn't even fucking get it. And they don't fucking care.

How someone could leave the theatre saying "there should have been more blood...I loved it but it wasn't bloody enough" after the story they just witnessed, is absolutely beyond me. It took everything I had not to lose it at those people in the hall on the way out. "Don't you see that what you are saying epitomizes everything the movie was criticizing?" If I could have said it so clearly at that point, I would have, but I was shaking and would have just started ranting and cussing and crying and being hysterical, so I kept it in. I kinda regret it though...

I mean, fuck.. they might as well have been sitting at the "Capital" watching the actual "hunger games" and saying "yea, it's entertaining, but I want to see more blood." Isn't that the whole point of the story? That we are so goddamned desensitized to violence and people's suffering that we turn it into a game?

Or a movie... not as a story we should draw insight and thought from (of course not), but as a fucking form of entertainment where we can mock ourselves mocking ourselves about being inhumane, disgusting, oblivious, and monstrous, and then turn around and be inhumane, disgusting, oblivious, and monstrous about it; treat it as just something we can enjoy and then even laugh about and say "there should have been more blood" even though we just watched 24 kids completely slaughter each other... FUCK THAT

Real or not, if you can leave after that smiling or complaining about the entertainment factor, you clearly missed the whole fucking point.

The story got its inspiration from somewhere... lets look around...
hmmm
It couldn't possibly be our culture and our wars and our video game violence, and our complete lack of regard for the well-being of the people who suffer in order for us to have it all, and our inability to any longer feel the full weight of violence and death. IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE THAT. or our collective unconsciousness that allows the paradox to continue (even in direct response to it being mirrored at us or shoved through our eyes and ears for 2 and half hours).

I mean, we aren't analyzing Shakespeare here people. Its pretty goddamned straightforward.
It's a good story, and yes, its entertaining... because its an fascinating portrayal of...reality. It hits the nail on the head. We're all just too fucking numb to realize it.

Mom said it best: "its hard to feel much of anything after watching that."
but it did hurt me and it fueled my anger, because as far as I'm concerned, it is real. We are already there. We are already being taken from our homes to kill other people, and we are called to appreciate this as our only way to maintain freedom. We are already being suppressed through fear-tactics and police violence and lies on the screens. We are already separated into districts: "third world" "first world," "homeless" "in poverty" "middle class" "rich/1%." We are already being exploited and exploiting other for resources in order to continue the possibility of lavish lifestyles. We already mock and get pleasure from other people's real-life hardships on reality television. We already.... on and on and on.


meh, maybe I'm getting too worked up about it. maybe I'm expecting too much of people. i feel better having gotten it out there though...

"i feel walled-in. i pretend to know why, but i dont respond. i try. i am working inside to change myself, to feel more free. it must just been a state of thought... a state of mind. (i wish i could write what we talked about without feeling like an idiot. its so damn difficult for me to fee confident in saying what i have to say. i feel like everything i know is so rudimentary. and like its all something someone told me, and i dont know what to believe anymore.

im exhausted of being the person ive been being. i want to feel curious, energetic, alive, bold, joyful, fearless, daring, happy, interested, caring, loving, and on and on. i want to feel free. but i am terrified of freedom. i am scared of certainty and i am scared of uncertainty. i am terrified to explore new ways of being, but can't continue on like this. my thought process is that it might be better not to go to camp so i can dedicate energy to this self-discovery that desperately needs to happen. then i think "oh, maybe going to camp will remind me of things i'd forgotton about myself." maybe. maybe. but maybe i am just hiding in what is "safer" and "known." although i know there are parts of it that i genuinely dont want to go without, and there are people there i want to spend time with, and things there i want to do. but also parts that feel like a waste and parts that feel selfish, and parts that feel dreadful.

i want to feel strong but i dont.
i am terrified of changing. there are so many ways to be, and im afraid to choose. im afraid of not being able to go back. im afraid of not making the right choice. im afraid of regret. im afraid of the truth. im afraid of myself. im afraid of everyone else.
im afraid of time...not having enough. of having enough and wasting it. im afraid of what ie already lost. not just time but truth, reality, visions, values, pieces of myself. im afraid to lose more. to give more. i am afraid of my power... how much i have and the fact that i will never be able to give it all.
im afraid that i will never be able to do enough.
im afraid that i will get comfortable. im afraid of discomfort. im afraid of pain. im afraid of being numb to other people's pain. im afraid i'll forget or be forgotten. im afraid i'll never be loved the way i love or the way i want to be loved. im afraid of meaninglessness. im afraid of placing meaning on something that only i care about.

im afraid of the dark. of zombies. of corruption, anger, sadness, pain, loss, solitude, groups, being wrong, being right, interactions, comparisons, criticism, betrayal, change, stagnation, death, love.
i wonder if i will survive.
but of course i will....
what of all of this could end me before my time (unless i let it)?
but if i am so strong, as to be able to face these things then i will surely have to face them all, an that is daunting.
knowing this though, how do i let go of the uncertainty of everything? how do i enjoy while waiting to be sprung upon by my fears? (the same way i fall asleep each night, gladly, even facing the eminence of my frequent nightmares... thy are all adventures anyway and they are at the least good stories). i will practice now. i will embrace this ending and embrace the blank pages ahead, which will fill with questions, ideas, answers, and probably more lists of fears."

that i can grow wings if i want to fly.

"To me it is clear that the way of life encouraged and imposed on people by the dominant institutions of our society (eg public schooling, media and advertising, the extractive capitalist economy) is in many vitally important ways contrary to our natures and our abilities to mature. We are conditioned to develop into parts of the technocratic machine that is the dominant, globalizing capitalist society, a society that professes to stand above nature, to have transcended nature and its messiness and beastliness. But to me this sense of dichotomous superiority is simply hubris, alienation, and unexamined pain. This is not to say that humanity is not a distinct form of life in nature, or that it doesn’t have some unique set of qualities, but that these very qualities can only find genuine expression if they are voiced form the ancestral home, the ground, the context of nature. To me, being whole must mean being an integral part of creation itself, that which has sprung from source: the earth, and further back, the unimaginable mystery of the cosmic womb of the universe. It is all continuous; there is no dichotomous break between the human and all else, except that which we perceive." -Cam

I finished my climbing project!
I smashed the tip! I got the ear! I climbed the V5! and it was awesome!

and on Tuesday, I gave a good presentation in Spanish, which was also a huge accomplishment for me.

and yesterday I danced harder than I ever have in my life, probably.

was full! (im hyper and sleep-deprived and have recently made a commitment to myself to stop taking myself so seriously--ya know, sometimes--and to be more of the goofball i am. so this could be interesante. let the ridiculosity begin! )

yesterday:
blah morning (except the sunny-crispness of the day)