|
| phasing out of xangaso i'm slowly phasing out of xanga. i will keep this blog around for old times' sake, but i'm moving on to blogspot. i will though, finish those 10 topics eventually. for now i'll be working on my food blog, which can be found at:
hungrycricket.blogspot.com
it's got some stuff up already. come top by and take a look! i will be opening up a more personal blog on blogspot eventually--i'll publicize that as soon as i make it.
cheers,
c
| | |
| quiet nightsexercising that other muscle. havent written this style in a while. one of the good parts of having a xanga that nobody reads.
She stands precariously enfolded in your arms, looking at you as if you mean more than you are. There is beauty there, though you dare not get close. The night speaks quietly to you as you wait for your friends to appear.
When she speaks, she speaks of love, the future, of wonderful things you don't have to offer; things she won't remember. Her arms on yours is a touch, a connection of the sort you might have wanted years upon years ago. You dare not get close, but she falls into your arms, unstable in more ways than one. A waft of her tickles you, though there can be no pleasure in the face of such guilt.
For you feel responsible, though you know you're not. You feel responsible for the situation she's in, lying against your chest, her arms against yours. Moreover, there is guilt in you, because the feeling of responsibility won't fade. This situation is not right, you decide. And you choose the gentlemanly course.
Distance you decide. You put distance between you and her. You set her down at one end of the dais and place yourself at the other. You engage in conversation, lift your eyes off her, and gaze out at the darkened world below. She tells you wonderful things. Undeserving things. She tells you that you are special; that you are different. She speaks of love in the earnest and beckons to the future. She tells you she loves you and it hurts you. And you plead to her. You plead the otherwise and your eyes escape to the open darkness, wondering when your friends would arrive.
She appears next to you, though you know not how. Her arms are around you again and this is not right. She who was--is--your friend. You cannot but feel responsible.
Her lips find the skin at the nape of your neck, but you don't notice at first. You assume it's rain. When you do notice you are shocked, surprised, and most disturbingly, amused. You cannot but feel amused because some part of you finds the circumstance funny, ironic, poetic.
Part of you lets it go on because you don't know what else to do. The other part couldn't bear pushing a friend away. The part you deny wants more. You keep on talking, hoping that what you felt was a mistake, a happenstance as she buries her face into the space between neck and shoulder. You don't know what you're saying, but you speak on anyway.
And for a moment it's ok. There's quiet and a lull. But she finds your cheek once before you can pull her away. She looks up at you and you can see her eyes. There is beauty there. There is a friend as well.
"I didn't deserve that" you tell her.
You think she smiles at you, and you feel her arms relax as she pulls away from you ever so slightly. But this time, her hands find your face. She tells you what you deserve.
The space between your faces close before you can react, before you can slyly pull her into a platonic embrace, like you did before. Her lips collide with your conscience, and you wonder to yourself, is this right?
She melts into you as if you meant something. And all you do is wonder if this is right. Her lips beckon onto yours, and you wonder if this is right. You open yours because you think--you trick yourself into thinking--that courtesies need be reciprocated. And beneath a small instance of pleasure there is a deluge of guilt.
You wonder why, why would you find yourself here in such a situation when the hardened heart might have solved things earlier. The hardened heart would have kept things the way they were supposed to be. Yours is not that kind of heart. Yours, like hers, is
Lonely.
| | |
| who is me?
All the driving I've been doing recently has given me far too much time to think. That and that I've been steadily working on my medical school essays have led me to an unhealthy amount of introspection. Enter xanga.
So I'm thinking that I have this problem with self-expression. I think that I'm not really living up to my beliefs as I should be--part of the reason being because I have this very problem. Another reason would be that I've never really taken the time to articulate my ideals properly. I've found that it's much easier to live something if you've articulated it yourself once or twice. I believe it's why people who write journals seem to be more "figured out" than those who don't. They've taken the time to reflect on their actions and reinforce or refine their belief system. I don't think I've done enough of that.
With any luck, I'm going to write ten rant-ish entries discussing the ten topics listed below. Thankfully, nobody reads this xanga anymore so I can be as whiny and pathetic as I want without concern of lowered opinions and shenanigans like that. Here goes nothing
1. Death 8/4/07 [Link]
2. Sex 8/18/07 [Link]
3. Faith 8/20/07 [Link]
4. Culture 1/12/08 [Link]
5. Friendship 3/17/08 [Link]
6. Family 4/11/08 [Link]
7. Love
8. Duty
9. Morality
10. Death
Because death is more important. Duh. And because I already wrote one on death. When I was thinking about this in the car, I had a rationale as to why things came in a certain order. Too bad I can't remember it now. By the by, if you are reading this, I think you should do this too. I want to see what you believe. I want to be surprised! Shocked! Terrified so much as to force me to unfriend you on facebook! Yes. Indeed.
[originally posted circa 8/16/07]
| | |
| ohhhaaannaanannana?
part 6/10
family
Family: friends by obligation.
We don't really have much of a choice as to who are brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers are do we? Of course, our parents don't really have much of a choice as to who we are--as much as we are raised by our moms and pops, we're raised by our environments--something only under marginal control of those everpresent parentals. As little control as we have over our families, I find it kind of heartening that the family unit, very generally speaking, seems to work.
It's pretty cool isn't it? You'd think that sticking a handful of people together would end up in disaster, but the family, the problems a family faces, and the goals a family strives to achieve serve to form funny little bonds. Surprisingly strong funny little bonds.
I love my family. I do. But when I wonder why, I'm at a loss for words. They've always been there. My feelings for them were never earned, but assumed.
What it comes down to is responsibility. One of the very first burdens we assume as we are born into this world is our immediate dedication and relation with our families. Quid pro quo, as some would put it. They give to us and we give back. A certain special form of love drives a mother to suffer through gestation. Moreover, it takes a special kind of unit to support that woman through 9 months of ardour. And we find in that immediate investment that we are indebted to our families in ways we can never actually pay back. Quid pro quo.
| | |
| fly awayyy
part 5/10
friendship
I'm sitting in lab as I write this, waiting for a bird to wake up from its drug-induced slumber.
I suppose it's kind of appropriate then, to start writing about friendship. That was a joke. Kind of.
In my eyes, there aren't very many things more important than the relationships you hold with other people. When you think about it, the 'you' that one presents to the world is substantiated only by the relationships you keep--'you' are your relationships. It's a bit of a delusion to think that the soul, the inner you, your personality is the most important part of your social life. The direct influences you have on people will not be through your soul, but through the relationships you have with them. Furthermore, when all is said and done, the instances of 'you' will dissipate, and all that will remain are the relationships you've held and the stories those relationships will generate.
In simpler terms: we're known by how we're known, and only indirectly by who we are. (Perhaps that isn't so simple...). To that end, you are your friendships. The personality, the identity that you hold so dear can only be reflected into the world through your interactions.
Speaking further than ideas of self-identity, we also have the idea of loyalty, good acts, what constitutes a friendship...
Just a minute. My bird woke up. She's had a relatively bad day. I'm going to take her down to her colony.
3/28/08 It is now a whole 11 days after I tended to this entry. The bird is doing well. My successor/protege/apprentice/bitch is working on another as I type this. Had you asked me two years ago, or perhaps even a year ago, I would have called friendship something magical, then invoked some rainbows and hearts bullshit, said something about eternal relationships etc. etc. etc. No I haven't had a traumatic turnaround. Nor have I been betrayed by a trusted individual. My realization is this: relations with people are better considered sporadic instances of shared experience as opposed to consistent, undeviating intertwined fates. The latter of course, is quite possible in today's age of instant communique, everpresent cellphones, and the little known phenomenon that is the internet. The question though is, is it practical? I like to imagine a world where our relationships are permanent, where the close friends you've had for two years will remain in more or less constant contact for the rest of your life. The reality of the situation is that many relationships are built on the situation itself. My sophmore year hall-mates for example: as a group, we were near inseperable. Two years later, I share the infrequent instant message or random run-in, if that at all. I remain in close contact with two--a small fraction of the eight we once comprised. Honestly, it is due in large part to myself that such relationships have fallen to the wayside. I am, I was, too lazy to tend to such a thing that was bred upon a situation (proximity) that no longer existed. Putting that aside though, could there have been anything I could have done to preserve the same relationship we once had? I doubt it. I think it is plenty natural to have sets of relationships reach peaks and dwindle away to some asymptotic value. To that end though, there is something magical--or at least persistent--of one's relationships: a well tended friendship has an asymptote. A value that the relationship will not dip below. From this, we have the reunion, renewals, years-later-coffee meetings. There really is nothing sad about a friend who has fallen to the backburner. And so I've talked myself into a circle. And I've got to go. Birds are calling. Kaw kaw kaw. Just kidding.
| | |
|
|
