Monday

I used to feel like I was on fire, bursting into flames from violent emotional discord.  I turned every external rejection inward, amplified my misery, felt worthless.  These days, not so much.  Classify it under the condition of "growing up."  At some point we all have to realize that we're all just here confused, trying to do the best we can with the little time we have, and life is hard on everyone.  It helps to remember that free will is something of an illusion, considering we are all programmed by our peers, parents, events, etc. to act just like we do...things in the universe aren't random, just very large, intricate and subtle.  Galaxies move in spiral patterns, with revolving solar systems and planets inside them, with humanity somewhere on a dust mote in that vastness of space, living our little lives like clockwork.  So, when I'm feeling blue, or angry because of other people, I just have to step back and remember that we're all just operating like we're programmed to...we're being true to our natures, even if those natures are hurtful to others, or ourselves. If I took every blow as I perceived it, I'd break apart into nothing before too long, or the friction would set me on fire...better to look at life like it is: intangible...so when the hurt comes, it just evaporates into smoke and blows past, making me effectively untouchable.  What concerns me lately is Time...utilizing it effectively, being productive, changing, growing, moving...I've been a prisoner of imposed fears and familial obligations for the past two years, and I think my sentence is almost up.  Maybe some people are naturally lonely, I'm not sure, I think I may be one of those people...not that I mind, really - it's a sign of strength to be alone with yourself for long periods of time...you really get to know yourself.  Perhaps, though, it's a matter of numbers and geography, and one has to get up and move and just trust in oneself that loneliness is just an isolated incident that can be overcome eventually.  I've gotten over feeling sorry for myself and screaming into the dark.  I'm cutting my strings and going for a walk.  I think I might be walking for a while.

A world of beautiful women

I fall in love with women daily.  It doesn't always last the same amount of time, it doesn't mean I'll love them, or some aspect of them forever (perhaps unconsciously), but then again, I may, and sometimes think I will, even though I haven't gotten to that point yet, that vague blur of possibility.  I'm a great admirer of beauty.  I'm wrapped up in aesthetics.  I have a wealth of vanity.  Balancing girls like spinning plates while I'm walking to nowhere.  Feeling like a spectator.  Talking talking talking.  To the casual observer I'll be moving and speaking and entertaining, natural as a river running, but a river whose bed is frozen, where only the top is moving, but even this is an illusion.  Being alone with someone.  Looking at them, letting the images crystalize, face, hands, a rug, oblique light, music, smell, a vague crystal of memory.  Desire.  Ambiguity.  Pictures.  Walls of pictures...cities...civilizations of images of women.  And at night, I dream of people who I have never seen, and may never, and I wonder if they're alive, or were alive, or will be, and if I'll know them, or whether I've met people and I just can't remember.  I walk around the world of beautiful women, and they affect me, they all affect me, every one, the kind and the cruel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9So-TLZwXmA

Books Needed

The Painter of Modern Life & Other Essays by Charles Baudelaire
Petersburg by Andrei Biely
The Foundation Pit by Robert Chandler
Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schultz
The Microscripts by Robert Walser
Dance With Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya
Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
Run River by Joan Didion
The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
Tintin in the New World: a Romance by Frederic Tuten
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens
Away by Jane Urqhart
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz

Chartomancy

Divining motives is a curious business.  There are obvious, broad strokes of intent, like Van Gogh, and there are conversations that seem oblique in the moment, as if you were looking at le Grande Jatte from three or four inches away, but like a work of pointilism, the picture becomes clear from a distance, with time.  And then you have the unclear expanse of uncertainty....a dark place where you have to feel your way out, like some endless hallway in the night, skimming fingers along the wall for doors, looking for scraps of light, or familiar sounds to guide you where you want to be.  And these indefinite markers could be so subtle as not to be noticed, the way a book was held, something flickering behind the eyes, a text message that came from nowhere and the specific words in it, or all the myriad things you saw but didn't remember, passing into the oblivion of your unconscious mind.  And the things noticed, you dissect them to try and understand.  Was there anything to understand?  Reading into nothing and imposing reasons.  Lighting a fire of meaning in the darkness of mere being.  Writing yourself a story.  Though maybe intuition trumps logic and takes us through alleys and hidden doors otherwise unavailable or jammed, to take us where we need to be, or, more like wayward detectives, maybe we're drunk on curiosity or  hubris or whiskey (most likely all three), and find ourselves suddenly in one of those alleys, poorly lit, about to get beaten bloody and knocked out.  Still, you keep going on, in whatever instance, ready to deconstruct, to pick apart, to find the bones, how they fit together, the elusive reason.

Archimboldo

Random

I think it may be possible (though I am not entirely sure) to gage someone's loneliness by the amount of frozen pizza they eat.