What the fuck happened to me.

Where did all my creativity go? My passion? My thought?

What the hell happened?

I'm in such a creative slump, I don't know what to do with myself. I keep searching for inspiration but find none.

What the fuck is the point of my life if I can't be creative??

"What are you reading?" Rob asks.

"Money by Martin Amis," I smile. "I just started it."

He's pleasantly surprised; I can tell by the jocular jump of his eyebrows and the smile that spreads across his face like an egg just broken. "I love that book!"

"I like the suicide note at the beginning," I grin.

"Hey, when's your birthday?" Alice asks.

I shrug, sinking back into the book. "Don't remember."

"You don't remember your own birthday?" Rob asks, incredulous.

I shake my head. Actually I do remember it. But I wish I could forget.

"How could you forget your own birthday?"

I shrug again. Actually it's not so much a shrug as some half-assed attempt to raise my shoulders before I give up halfway. "Birthdays aren't important anyway. Your life doesn't really begin when you're born. Childhood is a dream; your life doesn't actually begin until your loss of innocence."

In art, in life, in everything.

No limits.

I drove through another void today, this time a white one. Mist and rain as thick as ever, I could barely see before me. It was both peaceful and stressful. Alive but sleeping. Like being in heaven. An endless road through a white void.

I absolutely cannot stand it when people cannot support their arguments, when their whole agenda is based on faulty logic and unreliable sources.

"Over the course of the next decade, the government will borrow approximately $1.72 million every minute. That’s the equivalent of 5,733 flat screen HDTVs it cannot afford."

"It's called Keynesian economics, and where exactly did you read/hear this?" (me)

"defeatthedebt.com"

Okay, hold on. Type that into your address bar and you get this: a multi-million dollar anti-debt campaign organized by political hitmen trying to sway public opinion.

I wonder how much debt THEY'RE in.

"Dude, that is a website made by political hitmen built to manipulate your views and increase public hysteria in order to get people to vote Republican. Not a reliable source. By increasing government spending, according to the economic law AD = C + I + G, we are increasing aggregate demand, which helps defeat unemployment."

No reply.

My source? Economics class.

Hence, the importance of thinking critically and cross-checking your sources so that you don't sound like an idiot and spread baseless lies that only manipulate more and more people in the vicious cycle of misinformation.

Now, I'm not saying that the stats are wrong, because I can't find any other place where that data is reported. I can't find any easily accessible source that states the TOTAL number of dollars the government plans to spend on everything - and besides, most of these plans aren't even set in stone yet. But the website is maintained by the Employment Policies Institute, a name which would seem deserving of credit were it not for their creator and executive director Rick Berman, a man known as "Dr. Evil" who downplays the effects of obesity, smoking, mad cow disease, drunk driving, etc. (sources: wikipedia and sourcewatch)

Hm, let's let the guy who's telling us that "Hey, mad cow disease isn't so bad!" tell us what to do about our national debt, when he has no economic background. He's a LOBBYIST. He works for people in the food, alcohol, and drug industries. He does the dirty work so their names don't have to be hated.

So the next time you try to sound smart or politically inclined or whatever, you may want to actually BE smart and know a bit about politics and economics and cross-check your sources to make sure you're not being manipulated to spreading lies.

Last night when I was crossing the bay, the sky was so dark that I couldn't distinguish it from the water. It was foggy, too, so I couldn't see more than a few yards in front of me, save for the streetlights.

It was incredible.

Light reflecting off of tiny air particles, deep darkness surrounding the road. It was like I was driving on this perpetual bridge through a void.

Magic!

Today I received a text message from a good friend of mine with whom I've reunited recently, and it said this: "Close your eyes, silence your thoughts and open up your mind and to miss the answers you would have to be blind."

I couldn't find this in any song lyrics online, so I came up with my own reply based on the last word of his text: "Blindness is wisdom but you don't ever listen, so tell me, what are you searching for?"

[The blindness-wisdom thing comes from Greek plays; I thought of Teiresias from Oedipus Rex. :D]

He replied: "I question the questions like a resounding echo, all I look for are the next questions to simply answer them... with a question."

I rejoined: "The point of a question is never its answer, yet the answer is what we're all searching for."

More later. :D

She's dead.

I had a premonition of it before it happened, the unexpected. A little tremor before an earthquake.

I cried. It was like Dumbledore died all over again, only this time, it was a life intertwined with mine.

I will never forget this book.

It is an always within a never.

I hate time. That's why, when I learned of Einstein's special theory of relativity, I jumped on it - because it gave me a chance to dismiss the existence of something I hate.

But really, Einstein's theory does not disprove the existence of time, just depreciates its importance, because as one approaches the speed of light, time itself slows down. Therefore it is light, not time, that is universally constant, something upon which all life is based.

Time still exists, it's just subject to light.

Still, I like to put time down and say that it doesn't exist. Because what is time, other than another invention of mankind that helps us to rationalize the universe?

So then, what is it that causes us to age?

"Dammit man, I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" XD

And why do I have this aversion to the concept of time? Well, I should think that's obvious. It is not so much an aversion to time as it is an aversion to aging, to decay. Because no one likes decay; decay conjures images of death.

Time brings decay, which brings death. There we go.

And we dislike death because we cannot stand the idea of the unknown, because mankind has this insatiable curiosity and exaggerated fear of uncertainty.

Of course, that's where religion comes in, etc. Manmade answers to the unanswerable, answers that, while unable to be proven, make life more bearable.

Yadda yadda yadda.

(What frustrates me is that no idea is original. But that's beside the point.)

Ha! And I thought I had no fear of death. But apparently I do, it's just distanced in the form of time.

I fear that I won't have enough time to accomplish my purpose in life, whatever that purpose may be.

Art imparts to life not only beauty, but meaning.

Human beings are, in every essence, mere primates bent on acquiring power, wealth, and fornication (as much for its pleasure as its practical purpose). We play this game, trading one for the other in the pursuit of some illusory goal. And for what? On an individual level, it's merely a way to pass the time, to ignore the inevitability of death, decay, and meaninglessness. Remember that human life is very short, and we barely have time to grasp its full meaning before the final page is turned and life is wrested from us.

This is where art comes in. Art removes the veil, clears our lenses, wipes our eyelids and shows us what it is all about. It puts life into colour, dresses it up as good versus evil, sometimes even revealing the complexities beneath. It trumpets or stomps upon the pursuit of love, it introduces philosophy and debates the merits of civilization and of humankind itself. Art gives. Art molds the human spirit.

Without art, life would only be a series of actions. Without art, the human race would be like any other: that of the cockroach, the lemur, the dog. Without art, life would be reduced to its true form, one that is ugly and devoid of meaning.

Art lies. But we as human beings thrive on these lies.

Muriel Barbery is an intellectual superhero. I am going to adopt her; she can be my aunt.

I'm not even finished with The Elegance of the Hedgehog yet and I know already that it is my new #1 favourite book. It is incredible. It is mentally stunning. It is absolutely sublime.

You have to plod through it carefully and thoughtfully, though, because every single chapter, every page, presents you with something to consider, a little golden bauble to bounce around in your mind.

I've already purchased the companion piece, Gourmet Rhapsody.

Moreover, the book covers are really elegant in themselves, which is always a plus. :D

This book is changing my life and I want EVERYONE to read it!!

There are certain people who, to me, do not count as human. And there are certain people who simply deserve to die.

Unfortunately these people tend to be louder than the real human beings who deserve to live.

Not that it's my place to judge. The "allotment of death" is not my duty.

But oh, if it was....

Okay so I was going through some Vlogbrothers videos today and found this one, in which John tells us about an organization called Kiva. Basically, Kiva is a program through which people can lend money to third-world entrepreneurs (via Field Partners) to start their businesses and then later repay the lenders. This service helps alleviate poverty all over the world.

Now, I may only be in my second quarter of high school economics and my textbook and teacher may both be very predisposed toward the free market, but from what I can tell, the free market is pretty badass. Alleviating poverty is even more badass, like Batman level badass. So if you're old enough to do so then please go be a badass and save the world!

:D

P.S. I've also started up a new SocialVibe account because I forgot the e-mail I used for my original one. If you don't know, SocialVibe is a social network that is all about charity. When you create an account, you pick a charity to donate to, of which there must be hundreds. (My current one is Camfed: Educate Girls in Africa and my previous one was Stand Up 2 Cancer - and believe me, it is REALLY DIFFICULT to choose just one organization, so I'm thinking of creating multiple accounts. =P) Then, by completing activities and promoting sponsors, you earn points, and for every such and such number of points you earn, a sponsor will donate such and such amount of money. I personally have a lot of fun on SocialVibe, especially on the forums, because SocialVibe people, for the most part, are relatively intelligent, sentient human beings who like discussing things like religion and literature and films and who you'd like to punch, all of which I really enjoy.

I am swimming. I am pushing the water out in front of me, clearing it away so that I can make my path. I'm trying to remove this water that makes it so difficult to travel. I keep pushing and pushing and pushing at it, shoving it behind me so that I can speed along. But without the water, I wouldn't be floating.

For a long time I have been carefully arranging the delicate things around me. I've been placing these glass objects in the most visually pleasing fashion, meticulously cleaning and polishing them until they are all as close to perfect as possible. And finally, when I slide the last one into place, the most important ornament of all, they all fall. Crash to the floor. Shatter. Shards of glass fly at my ankles, leaving tiny pricks of blood. And I stand alone in the midst of this destruction. Once again I am reminded that I am the only person I can ever truly count on.

But they were only ornaments, after all.

I miss who I used to be. I miss being passionate and thinking deeply. I miss my constant introspection. I miss my wildness, even my insanity. I miss my uniqueness; I feel as if I'm part of the mold now. Like I've become this shapeless wad of dough that I never wanted to be. And I don't know how to get back to myself. I feel as if I've lost myself. So much of my time is now devoted to school and to other people that I barely have time for myself or my art anymore. I feel I need to suffer in order to make good art, and all this happiness is eroding my soul.

I need to go further. In art, in life, in everything. I need to dive into the rabbit hole and just get lost. Kill the Red Queen. Paint the roses red.

Looking at the work of other artists, at least of the ones I like, it's all totally nouveau. I need to push through the folds, squeeze through the cracks into a new world. And paint it in the most unique, outrageous way possible.

Unfortunately it's more difficult today because all the glass has been broken. We're getting on to the metals now.



Does anyone have a really big hammer?

I finally finished it. According to this livejournal, it took me about a month.

It's so hard to dissect! There's definitely the whole loss of manhood/anti-capitalist thing, obviously. But I, being so concerned with women and our place in society, am struggling to find how it relates to me. Not many girls want to start a fight club, and every guy I ask refuses to hit me.

I think it has something to do with me being petite.

In any case, the book was fucking brilliant. I wish I'd read it before seeing the movie, though. I hated knowing about the big secret of it the entire time.

I definitely recommend it. And make sure, if you get the copy I read, that you read the Afterward.

 I'm extremely, ridiculously stressed out. For the first time in my life, I can consciously recognize it as it hammers my head and slithers down my spine, setting every nerve aflame. I can't move, my limbs are stiff. The air is suffocating, and Alabama humidity doesn't help. I find my hair all over everything, like strands of sanity are simply slipping from my scalp. Yeah, and I've tried to say that ten times fast, too.

Of course I would be the one to take on a more than full load on her senior year. Three AP classes, one Honors, and no free periods. Writing Center, Activist, Movie, Mu Alpha Theta, and Sierra Clubs. My SAT is coming up on October tenth, and my days are full with big blocks of two-hour tutoring. The college I was so certain about is now groaning from side to side on the tip of a high needle point. I haven't even filled out any applications or figured out what I want in my portfolio.

My two best friends are leaving soon and I need to spend time with them. My tumultuous relationship with my ex-boyfriend and still close friend is inexplicably complicated, and everyone just gives me crap about how I shouldn't talk to him. Our future together is uncertain. I'm afraid of having to leave my father, paranoid his last moments will be without me.

And I'm terrified of being on my own. What if I choose the wrong college? The wrong majors? What if I can't get a job with the degrees I earn? What if I can't be an artist? What then? What will my life be, without that lifeline?

I am Atlas and the world is melting.

I am the mountain. I am God. I am your guardian angel, and you better do what the fuck I say.