Beautiful and Damned

2012-01-31T08:07:00.001-05:00

Your journey has molded you for the greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be. Don't think that you've lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time.
-Asha Tyson

A blessed unrest that keeps us slowly marching...

2012-01-26T12:30:00.001-05:00

I can't believe it has been 6 months since I've posted anything. Terrible! I used to be so good about updating frequently...but it's been slipping slowly for a while. First it was lengthy and opinionated posts, then it became just quotes from others, and then just cool pictures I'd find on the internet (isn't that what Tumblr is for! So lazy). Anyway, here's another image stolen from elsewhere (http://fuckiminmy20s.tumblr.com/) that speaks to me these days. Yes, I work all the time, but my to-do list barely gets chipped away at. More important to let yourself be happy each day though.

Despair in the Rose Garden

2011-07-20T14:27:00.001-04:00

Taken by me in the Boston Rose Garden with Hipstamatic for iPhone app

Josh Ritter has blown my mind again

2011-06-26T13:41:00.003-04:00

At his Daniel's Street concert in New Milford, CT, Josh played this new song, and it blew me away. I can't find any lyrics online, so I did my best to transcribe them from the live video of the preformance.

Here we go:

It's like I'm haunted by a ghost; there are times I cannot speak your name for the catching in my throat, and if I dont sing this song it's out of fear of silent notes.

Oh I feel like a miser, oh I feel low and mean for accusing you of stealing what I offered you for free. Oh it beggars the belief sometimes what thieves we lovers be

Oh i dont know who you're with these days, might be with someone new, and if you are I hope he treats you like a lover ought to do. But whoever makes you happy, it dont really matter who, I've got a new lover now, I hope youve got a lover too.

Praise the water under bridges, praise the time we...

Perhaps the fault was mine, perhaps I just ignored who you're always gonna be, instead of who I took you for. I've been treated worse it's true, still I expected more.

But I will not chase your shadow as you go from room to room, droppin' handkerchiefs and daggers, smokin' guns and other clues for what someone did with someone and who did what to who. I've got a new lover now, I hope you've got a lover too.

Got a new lover now, she knows just what I need. When I wake up in the night she can read me back my dreams, and she loves them though she never needs to tell me what they mean.

I got a new lover now, I know that she's not mine and I only wanna hold her, I don't need to read her mind, and she only looks like you when she's in a certain light.

I hope you've got a lover now, hope you've got somebody who can give you what you need like I couldn't seem to do. But if you're sad and you are lonesome and you've got nobody true, I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me happy too.

Just let it all go...

2011-04-29T13:00:00.002-04:00

I'm not in a bad mood, but this song is rocking my mind right now.

2011-04-27T12:59:00.002-04:00

You and I, we may look the same, but we are very far apart.
There're bullet-holes where my compassion used to be, and there is violence in my heart.

Into fire you can send us, from the fire we return.
You can label us a consequence of how much you have to learn.

You can try but you'll never understand.
This is something you will never understand.
Can you hear it now? Hear it coming now?

You have set something in motion much greater than you've ever known.
Standing there in all your grand naivety about to reap what you have sown.

Time will feed upon your weaknesses and soon you'll lose the will to care.
When you return to the place that you call home, we will be there.

-NIN

All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights

2011-04-23T12:15:00.001-04:00

She's as easy to know as a broken mystery.
Water under the bridge is never coming back.
-Anne, Josh Ritter

I can't read it without getting tingles.

2011-04-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. Excerpt, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

The Atlas Shrugged movie was comically bad.

2011-04-19T10:07:00.002-04:00

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. | S3C2

2011-04-05T09:22:00.001-04:00

"To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell."
— Marquis de Sade

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. -Einstein

2011-03-23T11:56:00.002-04:00

The other day, while driving around the poverty laced backwoods of central Connecticut and listening to Nine Inch Nails as I am wont to do, I started thinking about what makes humans so amazing. I'm not a fan of most people, and I don't think most of them are particularly impressive - both intellectually and physically. But the kind of "amazing" I decided on is applicable to pretty much everyone.

From science to philosophy, we seek an answer to the question of what sets us apart from the rest of the animals. There's a pretty fair consensus among rational and non-combative people (so, likely not most philosophers) that we have something that goes above and beyond what animals are capable of. The simple answer is, well, "Humans can think. We have bigger brains and we're capable of cognitive functioning that entails learning and memory. Most importantly, we are the only creatures that are self-aware."

The conclusion I came to in the car (the place where I am most lucid) is that humans are unique because of our ability to change. We morph, we repair, we become damaged, we despair over the past, and we hope for the future. And all these emotions are driven by our ability to alter ourselves. We choose new clothes, ditch old friends, choose to forget the most painful memories (or perhaps replay them over and over, forcing ourselves to feel the sting of self-loathing) listen to different music. No other creature engages in these behaviors.

Not only can we do all this changing, but there is some strange property in our minds that allows for change but also never lets anything quite slip away. The Nine Inch Nails song I was so enjoying, Somewhat Damaged, used to speak to exactly everything I felt about life and myself. I really felt a connection to it. Yet somehow, the other day, I was able to appreciate and love it, but the sentiments expressed no longer exist in me actively. They're still present, and I can still remember what I felt; sometimes I still feel that way, but it's just...different. I've changed! Humans can change. It's what makes us different.

Edward Gorey

2011-03-12T11:56:00.003-05:00

Edward Gorey was such a fantastic eccentric. He went to every performance of the NYC Ballet while Allegra Kent was a dancer there, wore floor length fur coats, and kept his empty medicine bottles on the window ledges because he thought they looked pretty with the light coming through them. I guess part of my wants to be that type of nutty, although my kind is entertaining too.

A book was written about his home, The Elephant House. I met the author at Gotham Book Mart by chance, and while clearly in awe of Gorey, I don't think his book ENTIRELY captures the author's whimsy (at least as I like to imagine it).

Today's visiting demon is the realization that I must leave Alex and beautiful California today, and face the challenge of finding a job that might actually result in a career and success. Not to mention the fear of getting back my Metaphysics paper, which might be one of the more disjointed papers I've ever turned in. It's a graduate seminar and I'm out of my element.

Funeral Blues, W.H. Auden

2011-03-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Burnt Norton (excerpt), T.S. Eliot

2011-03-01T19:28:00.001-05:00

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot

2011-02-23T17:26:00.001-05:00

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

         A penny for the Old Guy
    
            I
        

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

        
              II
        

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

        
              III
        

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

        
              IV
        

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

        
              V
        

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                  Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Wanna know why you're fat?

2011-02-08T21:51:00.002-05:00

Diet Coke is my favorite beverage...and I'm a sucker for a gimmick. Click to donate.

2011-02-08T20:52:00.001-05:00

The Brothers Karamazov

2011-02-08T10:18:00.000-05:00

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky

Playboy used to have the best interviews...

2011-02-01T13:48:00.002-05:00

Do not dwell on dreams and forget to live

2011-01-30T16:32:00.001-05:00

Memories of warmer days...

2011-01-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

Bronx Botanical Garden...

What a great way of putting what I thought was impossible to express clearly

2011-01-23T16:02:00.002-05:00

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've been depressed. I've felt awful - awful beyond all, but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me.

In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?"

Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidfy themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!

-Charles Bukowski

2011-01-17T01:08:00.001-05:00

Prufrock distilled to its finest parts. I love T.S. Eliot

2011-01-16T15:02:00.003-05:00

Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions.

And indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?'' and, "Do I dare?''
Do I dare disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Should I have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.

Would it have been worth while to have bitten off the matter with a smile, to have squeezed the universe into a ball to roll it toward some overwhelming question? It is impossible to say just what I mean!

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Wuthering Heights

2010-12-24T16:32:00.003-05:00

There's a new Wuthering Heights film adaptation coming out in 2011! It's in post-production. Directed by Andrea Arnold and starring my latest favorite young actress, Kaya Scodelario. It also features the first black Heathcliff. This is very exciting...

2010-12-04T18:36:00.002-05:00

"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith."

— Robert Ingersoll

Death Cab for Cutie Lyrics

2010-11-18T12:14:00.003-05:00

I'm always on this great photo sharing website, and there are alot of cool pictures that have been combined with quotes. It's kind of like photographic versions of Quotable Cards. I love it. But there are quotes I want to see but never do, so I decided to make some of my own.

Liking what Stephen King has to say...

2010-11-17T16:12:00.002-05:00

"If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you."

Some NIN to ponder....

2010-11-07T13:29:00.002-05:00

What if everything around you isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know is an elaborate dream?
If you look at your reflection is it all you want it to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks?
Would you find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world's inside of your head - just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods, all the living and the dead, and you're really all alone?
You can live in this illusion; you can choose to believe.

Asparagus by Margaret Atwood

2010-10-29T22:08:00.000-04:00

This afternoon a man leans over
the hard rolls and the curled
butter, and tells me everything: two
women love him, he loves them, what
should he do?

The sun
sifts down through the imperceptibly
brownish urban air. I'm going to
suffer for this: turn red, get
blisters or else cancer. I eat
asparagus with my fingers, he
plunges into description.
He's at his wit's end, sewed
up in his own frenzy. He has
breadcrumbs in his beard.
I wonder
if I should let my hair go grey
so my advice will be better.
I could wrinkle up my eyelids,
look wise. I could get a pet lizard.
You're not crazy, I tell him.
Others have done this. Me, too.
Messy love is better than none,
I guess. I'm no authority
on sane living.

Which is all true
and no hep at all, because
this form of love is like the pain
of childbirth: so intense
it's hard to remember afterwards,
or what kind of screams and grimaces
it pushed you into.

The shrimp arrive on their skewers,
the courtyard trees unroll
their yellow caterpillars,
pollen powders our shoulders.
He wants them both, he relates
tortures, the coffee
arrives and altogether I am amazed
at his stupidities.

I sit looking at him
with a sort of wonder;
or is it envy?
Listen, I say to him,
you're very lucky.

The Apparition of these Faces in the Crowd... (Ezra Pound)

2010-09-09T14:06:00.002-04:00

Considering the shockingly global economy and social world we live in today, how is it possible that so many people seem to look the same? I walk around campus and see people who look just like people I have known before. And yet, these are entirely new people in a new community.

There are specific "looks" that seem to be repeated more often than others. Horsey faces, those kinds of mouths that don't naturally close; the upper lip is always raised and the teeth exposed. Chubby girls with receding chins also seem to pop up frequently. Often these "look" types are so similar from person to person that they could be siblings.

Yes, we are all descended from some common glop of sludge, but so much change and evolution has occurred since then I wonder why we aren't more varied. It makes sense in the years before easy travel because the farthest breeding partner was usually from a couple towns over.

Is the issue just that wide spans of travel have only become possible in what is really quite recent by the standards of humanity's time-line. There just hasn't been enough time to get a higher variety of appearances.

But why do a few specific "looks" appear so often, instead of us just all looking similar? Lots of people look quite unique, but there are three or four types that I always notice.

Additionally, what is the significance of the recent discovery that some of us have Neanderthal blood running in our veins? Are these people some of the ones that look so distinct and yet similar to many others in their own set? Are all the horse faced girls the ones with Neanderthal heritage?

Robert Frost

2010-07-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.

2010-06-20T21:35:00.000-04:00

You see, I have no intention of breaking down her prodigiousness. I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage and still not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her.

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with. And in the end, I've distilled everything to one single principle: win or die.

-Dangerous Liasons

Nine Inch Nails

2010-06-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know
Is an elaborate dream?

And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want it to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world's inside of your head?
Just creations of your own
Your devils and your gods, all the living and the dead
And you're really all alone

You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe

Another New World, Josh Ritter

2010-05-19T09:34:00.003-04:00

Clearly I have none of my own words to share, so I'm forced to share others that I find touching.

The leading lights of the age all wondered amongst themselves what I would do next; after all that I'd found in my travels around the world was there anything left?

"Gentlemen", I said, "I've studied the maps, and if what I'm thinking is right, there's another new world at the top of the world for whoever can brave through the ice."

I looked round the room in that way I once had and I saw that they wonted belief...So I said, "All I've got are my guts and my God"...Then I paused..."and the Annabelle Lee."

Oh the Annabelle Lee, I saw their eyes shine; the most beautiful ship in the sea.
My Nina, My Pinta, My Santa Maria, my beautiful Annabelle Lee.

That spring we set sail as the crowds waved from shore and on board the crew waved their hats, but I never had family, just the Annabelle Lee, so I'd never had cause to look back.
I just set the course North and I studied the charts, and toward dark I drifted toward sleep, and I dreamed of the fine deep harbor I'd find past the ice for my Annabelle Lee.

After that it got colder the world got quiet; it was never quite day or quite night, and the sea turned the color of sky turned the color of sea turned the color of ice, 'til at last all around us was vastness, one vast glassy desert of arsenic white. The waves that once lifted us sifted instead into drifts against Annabelle's sides.

The crew gathered closer; at first for the comfort each morning would bring a new set of the tracks in the snow leading over the edge of the world... 'til I was the only one left.

After that it gets cloudy, but it feels like I lay there for days or maybe for months. But Annabelle held me, the two of us happy just to think back on all we had done. We talked of the other new worlds we'd discover; she gave up her body to me, and as I chopped up her mainsail for timber I told her of all that we still had to see.

As the frost turned her moorings to nine-tail and the wind lashed her sides in the cold, I burned her to keep me alive every night in the lover's embrace of her hold.

I won't call it "rescue" what brought me back to the old world to drink and decline, and pretend that the search for another new world was well worth the burning of mine.

But sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unknown tropical bird, and I smile in my sleep thinking Annabelle Lee has finally made it to another new world.

So Runs the World Away

2010-05-12T21:52:00.004-04:00

This man is a poet through and through. How can any one person be so multiply gifted?

It's a hungry world out there; even the wind will take a bite. I can feel the world circling, sniffing round me in the night. The lost sheep grow teeth, forsake the lambs and lie with the lions.

The living is desperate precarious and mean and getting by is so hard that even the rocks are picked clean. The bones of small contention are the only food the hungry find; where the thistles eat the thorns and the roses have no chance. The sky's so cold and clear the stars might stick you where you stand, and you're only glad it's dark because you might see the master's hand; you might cast around forever and never find the peace you seek.

For every cry in the night somebody says, "Have faith! Be content inside your questions"
Tell me, what's the point of light when you have to strike a match to find?

So throw away those lamentations; we both know them all too well.
If there's a book of jubilations we'll have to write it for ourselves.
So come and lie beside me darling, and let's write it while we still got time.

So if you got a light, hold it high for me.
I need it bad tonight, hold it high for me in that lonesome place.
With all the hurt that I've done that can't be undone, hold it high for me.
Light and guide me through; I'll do the same for you,
Hold it high for me; I'll hold it high for you,
Because I know you've got your own valley to walk.
Though it's dark as death and then gets darker, though your path is blocked, I'll hold it high for you through the thieves and rocks and keep you safe from harm.

-Josh Ritter

What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see that all I want now is happiness for you and me. -Elliott Smith

2010-03-30T14:25:00.002-04:00

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

-- Stephen Crane

8 Months

2010-03-29T00:17:00.002-04:00

Bring me a love that can sweeten a sword
A boat that can love the rocks of the shore
The love of an iceberg reaching out for a wreck
Can you love me like the crosses love the nape of the neck?
-Josh Ritter (seeing him may 20th!)

Btw: I FUCKING HATE cops. Fuck anyone who disagrees with me because they say they're the salt of the earth. They're fuckwits on a powertrip and I can explain why if you want. They've been there for me when I needed it and I appreciated it, but still.

Also, people who drive minivans SUCK and I plan on exanding on this point, but it's true.

A Poison Tree, William Blake

2010-03-15T21:20:00.000-04:00

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

2010-03-10T10:59:00.001-05:00

I don't think Ok Go gets enough credit for thier humorous and intelligent lyricism:

The demon's in the design; seemed like a good idea at the time. How it all went down, only Pilate knows - the only thing I ever asked of him was when the bars were closed.

The Usual Suspects

2010-03-07T22:34:00.000-05:00

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Yay Josh Ritter!

2010-02-18T16:52:00.002-05:00

Seeing him May 20th...can't wait.

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2010-02-03T09:03:00.001-05:00

She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her, toward other children and adults alike. She took it as a regrettable accident, to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull. She had caught a glimpse of another world and she knew that it existed somewhere . . . She had to wait, she thought, and grow up to that world.

The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found challenging; it was ineptitude-a gray spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible. She could find no answer.

Through the years of her childhood, [she] lived in the future – in the world she expected to find, where she would not have to feel contempt or boredom.

The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn’t any.

The Magus by John Fowles

2010-01-25T21:40:00.003-05:00

"if a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence. But I am not talking about God. I am talking about science".

2010-01-22T21:04:00.003-05:00

Ok unfortunately my computer is broken hardcore so I can't type all I want to say. But Bills present to me was the most thoughtful thing anyone has done. I got to see Josh Ritter live! And now were going again in may and I am so excited. I will probably die. I especially want to see him perform "Kathleen".

How great are his lyrics?!! This is part of "Rumors" off his newest album.

He plays pianos with fistfuls
Of broken Belvedere crystal
And he's trying to forget you
But the music's never loud enough

So you're gonna have to show me
How that dance is done
The one where somebody leaves someone

He's impaling the front row
Fighting fires with arrows
And he'll act like he forgot you
But the music's never loud enough

And this is from "Man Burning" off of "Hello Starling". Not only are his lyrics amazing, but the music itself kills me it's so beautiful.

Don't stand so close to me
Don't be another tragedy
I've burned everybody who had a hand to lend
No one put me in this hell
I lit a fire underneath myself
Now I'm blazing the same old trail back to you again

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. -Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Grey

2010-01-11T18:12:00.002-05:00

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
— Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)

"Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice. "
— Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)

"What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.'"
— Søren Kierkegaard (Either - Or)

"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others."
— Oscar Wilde

"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."
— Oscar Wilde

"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"Those who do not like you fall into two categories; the stupid and the envious."
— John Wilmot

"I regret nothing. No woman with any self-respect would have done less. The question of good and evil will always be one of philosophy's most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. I'm not quarreling with your choice of issues, only with your intellectually diminished approach. If evil means to be self-motivated, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. "
— Janet Fitch (White Oleander)

Cool "Invite-only" shopping

2009-11-13T12:09:00.003-05:00

Ridiculous deals...Kate Spade coming up! Today was men's Vineyard Vines ties for 30 bucks.

Check it out-Click here!

He who was living is now dead. We who were living are now dying. -T.S. Eliot

2009-11-01T12:34:00.004-05:00

I can't even explain what an amazing and lucid thought process I had on my drive home this morning. It felt fantastic...I was so excited to get home and get it all down, and I was scared I'd be too tired actually do it once I got home. Of course, that's exactly what has happened. I hope I don't lose it all to sleep....

I've been awake for 33 hours consecutively.... but I feel like I've detoxed my brain from it's muddled chemistry. I also am having some SLIGHT auditory hallucinations. And lost some basic verbal skills during the last half hour of my shift...which is probably why they sent me home an hour early (thank you!)

Topics:
Real world vs. "our world"
The demographically differentiated angst of youth (noticed this last night)
Emotions and fear
Subtleties of snobbery (real life example from work)
Why we should never say no to anything (sort of)
Humorous motivations to finish school
Dichotomy of personality (ongoing)
Existential breakthroughs (mock if you want, I really don't care)
The madness of genius
Rooftops

This is why I liked my private blog...I could really slam it all out. But if anything, it's good for me to learn how to tailor my thoughts to an audience and a point. My ramblings written down are no more useful on "paper" than in my mind. I always have a larger point in my head, but when I'm not forced to filter it it all becomes useless. There's so much more beauty in a clearly presented argument than a shamble of conclusions.

Ugh part of me really wants to stay up another few hours and write...but that seems like a terrible decision that has little to offer in benefits.

P.S. Let's all go to Hell in a fast car and keep it hot!

If evil were a lesser breed than justice, after all these years the righteous would have freed the world of sin.

2009-10-29T21:59:00.002-04:00

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

2009-10-28T20:21:00.002-04:00

The Usual Suspects is a really good movie. Thank you, Bill, for the recommendation. Work at 6:30 am, oh joy! But guess what? It's money. And money is the root of all material enjoyment. Which is fun.

30 Rock is the greatest show ever, even more than Arrested Development. Because Arrested Development is genius, but every single episode doesn't fulfill my soul the way every single episode of 30 rock has moments that do. Maybe that's a horrible reflection on myself, but Jack Donaghy is probably my hero.

I seriously cannot wait for New Moon to come out, and I'm really excited to watch Twilight with Bill in preparation (for him).

I wanna pull it apart and put it back together

2009-10-21T16:04:00.002-04:00

Isn't it funny how when life is sucking I write in my blog constantly, but when life is good I ignore it for months? How emo of me. Anyway, I'm trying to reverse that habit. So much has happened since I last posted...I decided not to go back to Hamilton (which was one of the healthiest decisions I've ever made), I got a boyfriend who is AWESOME, I got an actual job because I realized I needed more funding to continue with the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed, I (mostly) pulled my life together and stopped being an alcoholic on a downward spiral, and of course I caused trouble and pissed people off most likely because we wouldn't be human (and I certainly wouldn't be me) if things like that didn't happen.

I'm super happy right now because I got my Saturday work shift covered so now I can actually celebrate Bill's birthday and not have work at 6 fucking am the next day. Hallelujah.

It always astounds me how much happens in the span of a few months, and how much we can't predict about where life might go. SO MUCH has happened since college began; even since last summer. wowza my small human brain can't quite handle it. Good thing I'm a philosophy major because I spend most of my time being existentially dumbfounded.

Also, FYI to the world: I want these shoes. And I will get them. Soon...because I have a job, and no sense of reasonable spending.

poems

2009-07-16T12:55:00.003-04:00

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

TO DO

2009-06-27T22:48:00.002-04:00

Going crazy trying to keep track of things in my head. Yet I don't need to worry about them for a long time, so I need to chill.

When I get home:
Get WestConn transcript
Buy plastic bins

When I get back to Hamilton:
Submit Cal transcript to registrar
Submit transfer petition for WestConn
Print and fill out add forms
Make a schedule with the classroom numbers

The number is up to 6

2009-05-12T15:43:00.002-04:00

It is so important to live in the moment. That's the problem I always return to...I'm always thinking about the future, worrying about the future. Both long and short term. I'm constantly thinking about it, even though I've never had a problem and everything always gets done. I'm worrying right now about packing up the room, even though I know that when the time comes, it will get done. It' not like I'm going to sit in the middle of the floor doing nothing and wait for campus safety to remove me. So why am I fucking stressing about it? I need to overcome this problem.

This also goes along with the frequent crushing boredom that I feel. I'm always looking at the clock, thinking ahead, wondering what I'm going to do next or whether time will pass. Well guess what? It's always going to pass, even if time is relative, and then I'm going to die. So I might as well fucking relax and enjoy. Enjoy this moment. I'm writing, I'm sitting here, I'm listening to music. And everything will get done, exams will be over, the room will get packed, and suddenly I'll be sitting on a plane to California. So just embrace the paper writing, embrace the feeling of taking exams, because one day I'll probably feel nostalgic for it all (which is totally absurd, because taking exams sucks haha).

Down in it

2009-05-10T20:00:00.001-04:00

And I was feeling some feelings you wouldn't believe.
Sometimes I don't believe them myself and I decided I was never coming down.

I was up above it.
Now I'm down in it

So what what does it matter now.
I was swimming in the hate now I crawl on the ground.

I used to be so big and strong.
I used to know my right from wrong.
I used to never be afraid.
I used to be somebody.

I used to have something inside.
Now just this hole it's open wide.
I used to want it all.
I used to be somebody.

And all the world's weight is on my back and I don't even know why.
And what I used to think was me is just a fading memory.

Baudelaire

2009-05-06T22:50:00.000-04:00

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters;
that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's
horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without cease. But with what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.

But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,
all that which flees,
all that which groans,
all that which rolls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks,
ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,

they will all reply: "It is time to get drunk!

Closer, NIN

2009-04-28T13:46:00.000-04:00

You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you.
You let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you.
Help me I broke apart my insides, help me I’ve got no soul to sell.

Help me get away from myself.
My whole existence is flawed.

You can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings

Help me tear down my reason, help me become somebody else.

(S) AIN'T

2009-04-27T21:39:00.002-04:00

I've got an F and a C and I got a K too
And the only thing that's missing is a bitch like you

Para-Noir

2009-04-27T21:10:00.001-04:00

I fuck you to control you.
I fuck you to fuck you over.
I fuck you 'til I find someone better.
I fuck you because I can't remember if I already fucked you before.
I fuck you out of boredom.
I fuck you because I can't feel it anyway.
I fuck you to make the pain go away.

Fuck you because I loved you.
I don't need a reason to hate you the way I do.

I fuck you so I can feel something instead of nothing at all.
I fuck you because you're beautiful.
I fuck you because I am your whore.
I fuck you because you are a whore.
I fuck you for fun.
-Marilyn Manson

2009-04-15T21:29:00.001-04:00

Watch Disney Templates and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

Ebb; Millay

2009-04-07T09:46:00.001-04:00

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Thin Blue Flame

2009-04-05T21:37:00.002-04:00

Got in touch with Garrett yesterday night.

Kinda I Want To

2009-04-03T18:05:00.002-04:00

i can't shake this feeling from my head.
there's a devil sleeping in my bed.
i cannot make this feeling go away

i know it's not the right thing.
and I know it's not the good think.
but kinda i want to.

i'm not sure of what i should do.
all of my excuses turn to lies.
maybe God will cover up his eyes

maybe just for tonight.
we can pretend it's alright.
what's the price i pay.
i don't care what they say.
i want to.

Portrait of a Lady

2009-03-24T23:06:00.003-04:00

“I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,	5
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins

Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.

And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”

“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?

With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

The Waste Land

2009-03-24T22:55:00.003-04:00

Sometimes something as simple as poetry excerpts remind me there's a point to living and that life is beautiful. I used to worry that that was a dumb reason to live, but now I realize there is NO reason to live, no point in life. And that's not depressing, it's wonderful and liberating. My brain has been thinking the wrong way all alone; it's time to reprogram. Every time i feel a stress about a decision, or try to make a choice for the "right" reason, I need to stop and look at what I'm doing and thinking, and why. This is exactly what Ayn Rand meant by selfishness.

I sat with Jason drinking wine, listening to a beautiful song, sitting in the sun, and I realized that's exactly what I want an thats exactly the point of life. Everything I love, everything I want to do..I should do it, embrace it, and enjoy it. Of course, there are limits to consider which is where it gets tricky. But that's okay.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.


What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble

The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.	7

After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

I've got mood poisoning; it must be something that I hate.

2009-03-06T10:13:00.001-05:00

Slept 15 hours between yesterday afternoon and today.

Novelization

2009-03-05T14:09:00.002-05:00

My cold stare isn't watching you, it's literally penetrating you. Going right through, as though you don't exist. Because, to me, you don't. Or I wish you didn't. Either way, I'm not interested in who you are. I sense that there could be something interesting on occasion, but this is a rare flicker in the darkened swamp of my daily rounds. I can't describe what the waitress looked like, I don't know what color shirt the girl next to me had on this morning.

And yet, when I want to, I can turn on the charm. Make you intoxicated by me, curious for more, feel lucky for the opportunity to know me. The cruelty that exudes from my pores gives me some sort of allure and mystery. This is how I catch my prey...they come to me, but only when I want them to.

Oleanders in a glass of milk

2009-03-03T22:55:00.002-05:00

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
— Janet Fitch

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.
— Janet Fitch

2009-02-26T14:04:00.001-05:00

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

2009-02-25T22:15:00.003-05:00

Am I still tough enough?
Feels like I’m wearing down.
Is my viciousness losing ground?
Am I taking too much? Did I cross a line?
I need my role in this very clearly defined.

I need your discipline; I need your help...
You know once I start I cannot help myself

And now it's starting up, feels like I'm losing touch.
Nothing matters to me; nothing matters as much
-Discipline, NIN

I hope they cannot see the limitless potential living inside of me.
I hope they cannot see I am the great destroyer.
-NIN

"I'd rather die than give you control." — Trent Reznor

2009-02-25T18:56:00.004-05:00

"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." — Oscar Wilde

"When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune."— Albert Camus

"Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. " — George Gordon Byron

"Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad." — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell." — Oscar Wilde

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? " — Oscar Wilde

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."— Oscar Wilde

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." — Robert Frost

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." — Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)

"Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second."— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

My head is filled with silvery stars -Wilco

2009-02-25T10:48:00.003-05:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about God. I know that no matter what happens, I will never believe that God is real. There is no way that God, if he existed, would allow the world to exist as it is now. Unless he's a sociopathic freak who enjoys watching pain. But I doubt that. I don't know why we are here, or how the universe got created. Part of me thinks it has to be a miracle of some sort, but part of me also thinks that it just happened. There was an explosion or something and now after much evolution we are here. We aren't special or important, we're just animals that evolved from some cells, and we aren't the be all and end all. Humans are here for now, but eventually we won't be. We've only been here a short time, but we think we're the most important thing ever.

I guess that's part of why religion irks me. Because it feeds into the notion that we are so very special. The earth is young, we were the first creatures, and the earth is here for us to "subdue and have dominion over" (Genesis). This is just wrong. We don't matter any more than the lichen on trees matter.

This does not mean that I don't find the world amazing and beautiful and complex and fascinating. I can bring myself to awed tears if I think hard enough about the fact that we are here, and the universe is infinite. Human beings cannot even comprehend what infinity is, because we are finite beings.

Lately, I've been trying to grapple with how people can live their daily lives with certainty that God is an actual man or entity. I'm willing to concede some sort of spirituality, but I could never ever believe that there is an ACTUAL real God. And the idea that plenty of people, many who are quite intelligent, think God is real astounds me.

Am I missing out on something by lacking any sort of faith in a higher power? I really don't know. But I'm too rational and set in my ways to ever accept God as fact. I don't even like capitalizing the word God. It annoys me. I don't think that having faith necessarily makes you a better person or happier. It surely can, but it isn't a guarantee.

I'm trying really hard to evaluate my life and understand who I really am. But God is not going to help me do this. Other people might look to God, but I look to myself. And what worries me is that by always looking to myself, I will never grow into a less self-centered person. I have the ability to love very deeply, but I also have the ability to hurt very deeply, frequently without real remorse.

But so many great minds and great thinkers have been atheistic, self-serving, and messed up that it makes me think I don't really want or need to change. Even if I manage to grow and manage not to hurt people directly, I think I will always still see people as insignificant in some way. There is a very limited number of people who I would truly put before myself. Everyone else is secondary to me, my goals, my desires, and my life. Half the time I don't even see other people.

Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head. -Elliott Smith

2009-02-22T23:11:00.005-05:00

I keep collections of some of my favorite quotes.... so here is one collection of similar themes. Next post will be my favorite happy/love/nature quotes.

God is dead and no one cares
If there is a Hell, I'll see you there
-Heresy, NIN

Truth be told, I'm lying.
You wonder where it all went wrong...the list goes on and on.
-Gives You Hell, All American Rejects

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
— Oscar Wilde

I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.
— Charles Bukowski

Lying's the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do.
-Closer

The blackest sea
And it runs deeper than you
Wave goodbye
To what you were
The rules have changed
The lines begin to blur
She makes you hard
It comes on strong
You finally found
The place where you belong
-With Teeth, NIN

Work is the disease of the drinking classes.
-Oscar Wilde

On the surface, all is calm.
-Swimming Pool

You can do what you want to, whenever you want to, though it doesn't mean a thing...Big nothing.
-Elliott Smith, Either/Or

I am so all-American, I'll sell you suicide.
I am totalitarian, I've got abortions in my eyes.
I hate the hater, I'd rape the raper.
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.
Let's just kill everyone and let your god sort them out.
-Irresponsible Hate Anthem, Marilyn Manson

Remember what you said
You know the part about life,
Is just a waking dream
Well I know what you mean
But that ain't how it seems right here, right now
How can this be real?
I can hardly feel
Anymore
-NIN

You're distant and cold, and a sight to behold... everybody just sighs. But no one gets off with you very long, cause you don't feel bad when you lie.
-Shooting Star, Elliott Smith

Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.
-Robert A. Heinlein

First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.
-William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard

Hatred, the mischievous delight in the misfortune of others, the lust to rob and dominate, and whatever else is called evil belongs to the most amazing economy of the preservation of the species.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I am the voice inside your head
I am the hate you try to hide
I am the high you can't sustain
I am the need you have for more
I am the bullet in the gun
I am the truth from which you run
I am the silencing machine
I am the end of all your dreams
And I control you
You let me do this to you.
-Nine Inch Nails

Listen carefully....... That's the sound of me not caring.
-Pretty Persuasion

So once again the way you feel will never ever stay the same and I'm to blame. I wonder just who made the rules up for this game. Well I guess I just don't understand about what you want and what you need. And I guess I just don't understand about how it has to be.
-Nine Inch Nails

I'm drunk, and right now I'm so in love with you. And I don't want to think too much about what we should or shouldn't do. My moral standing is lying down. This is the only time I really feel alive.
-The Only Time, NIN

Who's my next victim? You?
-Nola Rice, Match Point

If you want to lie with me
You're going to be a liar
-Marilyn Manson

But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.
-American Psycho

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
- Ayn Rand

All it amounts to is a tear in a salted sea
-10,000 Maniacs

MEOW!

2009-02-21T17:52:00.001-05:00

Can't we all just get along?

2009-02-21T14:30:00.001-05:00

If evil were a lesser breed than justice, after all these years the righteous would have freed the world of sin.

2009-02-19T17:05:00.007-05:00

When they finally come to destroy the earth, they'll have to go through you first. They'll have to deal with you first, and my money says they won't know about the thousand Fahrenheit hot metal lights behind your eyes. That crushing, crashing, atom-smashing, white-hot thing... It's invincible. When they finally come, what will you do to them? Gonna decimate them like you did to me? Will you leave them stunned and stuttering? When they finally come, how will you handle them? Will you devastate them deliberately? So, please use your powers for good. You're invincible.
-Ok go

Chaos? Check. Dancing star? Getting there.

2009-02-18T12:53:00.008-05:00

Having spent your entire life exactly where you are tonight in the valley between intent and deed, you must have mastered this, the fragile art of a good excuse, the little things that get you to believe. You've spent your entire life quick-tongued and always right. Hasn't being right just let you down? Don't you think that maybe, this time, you were wrong? -Ok go

I may know the way to comfort and soothe a weary face, but turn away indifferent

2009-02-18T12:31:00.008-05:00

Sit back, matter of fact, teasing, toying, turning, chatting, charming, hissing, playing the crowd.
Play that song again, another couple Klonopin, a nod, a glance, a half-hearted bow.
Oh such grace, oh such beauty, and lipstick and callous and fishnets and malice.
So precious, suspicious, and charming, and vicious. You're a million ways to be cruel.
-Ok go

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair

2009-02-17T12:59:00.002-05:00

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more
-Lord Byron, from Canto IV of Childe Harold

Heaven is just a rumour I'll dispel

2009-02-16T10:36:00.004-05:00

Those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid and the envious. The stupid will like you in five years, the envious, never.

-The Libertine

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
-Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life.
-Mary Manin Morrissey

You and I, we may look the same, but we are very far apart. There are bullet holes where my compassion used to be, and there is violence in my heart.
-NIN

Fall in love or fall in hate. Get inspired or be depressed. Flunk a class or ace a test. Become a slut or be reborn a virgin. Get fit or get fat. Make babies or make art. Speak the truth or lie and cheat. Live happily ever after or get divorced. Dance on tables or sit in the corner and be shy. It doesn't matter. Nobody’s actually watching. Life is divine chaos. Embrace it. - Solbeam

I may forget you, but not forgive. -Natalie Merchant

I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.
-American Psycho

She makes the depression business look surprisingly novel.
Paradise isn't lost, it was hiding all along.
There's the ones that you love,
The ones that love you,
The ones that make you come unglued.
-Marilyn Manson

Just Relax...Permit yourself to enjoy the "gentle indifference of the universe"

2009-01-29T10:08:00.002-05:00

Children's Books That I Wish Existed

2009-01-19T18:42:00.003-05:00

You've got a pretty picture in your head, a pencil full of poison lead, and a sickened smile illegal in every town...

2009-01-06T11:05:00.002-05:00

Even after all these years (it's been 7), Elliott Smith is still my favorite and the most likely cure when I'm feeling terrible. I don't listen to him nearly as much as I used to, but every time I go back to him, he's just as good and just as helpful.

Clearly, I was right to select my name from one of his songs. It wasn't a high school crush, it's true love. And I think this name fits me, and I think it always will.

As the years have passed and I've grown up, I've learned things about Elliott Smith that are kind of funny. For example, his song "St. Ives Heaven" is about the cheap malt liquor St. Ives. I never knew that, just listened to the song and wondered what it was about. Now, since being at college, I've found out about what it is, and now the song makes a lot more sense. It's also sadder (but isn't that the essence of Elliott Smith anyway). As a mark of my adult life, I've seen just how gross malt liquor is...I've sat in the middle of a field in the middle of the night, wrapped up in a blanket, smoking hookah, and watching a drunk girl chug "hobo wine" out of a bottle. I've dated a frat boy who got so drunk on none other than St. Ives that he kicked me out of his room and then didn't remember doing it the next day. Ahhh, growing up.

After doing some research, I learned that "hobo wine" is the downfall of the homeless, and around the Skid Row district in California, the sale of malt liqour is actually banned. Go read Elliott Smith's song and you'll understand just how damaging the stuff is.

The other artist who I tend to seek solace in is Trent Reznor. Nine Inch Nails has some fantastic lyrics and angry beats, but Elliott Smith wins in this department. His lyrics are incredible, and always make me stop what I'm doing and want to write them down. Once, in high school, for an assignment I thought was stupid (we were assigned to write our personal Weltanschauung...for anyone who has seen Annie Hall, you know just how pompous and moronic this is) I just turned in a collection of Elliott Smith and NIN lyrics. Needless to say, I put myself on that teacher's shit list. Oh well... I still ended up at a great college. But that's another rant for another day.

Go listen to some music.

Toxic Girl

2009-01-01T16:38:00.004-05:00

She's intoxicated by herself
Everyday she's seen with someone else
And every night she kisses someone new
Never you

You're waiting in the shadows for a chance
Because you believe at heart that if you can
Show to her what love is all about
She'll change

She'll talk to you with no one else around
But only if you're able to entertain her
The moment conversation stops she's gone
Again

-The Kings of Convenience

A Poison Tree

2008-12-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

-William Blake

You can't have the elite without the proletariat...

2008-12-24T22:25:00.001-05:00

Rape is a Word With a Face

2008-12-17T21:00:00.002-05:00

"Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, from far away."
-Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee

Love Will Tear Us Apart...Again

2008-12-16T23:21:00.001-05:00

Albert Camus is my hero

2008-12-10T13:33:00.000-05:00

"Charm is a way of getting the answer 'yes' without asking a clear question."

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."

"Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre."

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

The Velvet Underground

2008-12-10T13:29:00.003-05:00

This is a great song...good for studying too (because that's all I do lately!)
Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground

Here she comes, you better watch your step
Shes going to break your heart in two, it's true
It's not hard to realize
Just look into her false colored eyes
She builds you up to just put you down, what a clown

'Cause everybody knows
The things she does to please
She's just a little tease
See the way she walks
Hear the way she talks

You're written in her book
You're number 37, have a look
Shes gonna play you for a fool, yes its true

The Spirit is the True Self -Cicero

2008-12-09T16:18:00.000-05:00

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.

F.I. Tyutchev
/translated by Vladimir Nabokov/

Funniest Shit Ever

2008-12-09T09:03:00.002-05:00

This was passed along by my friend Bill. It's a mix of an actual Nick Jr. program and a rap video. Anything that perverts something intended for children is great in my book. Plus this is so damn catchy it kills me. Just look at her face!!

Gossip Girl was so good tonight!!!

2008-12-08T23:04:00.001-05:00

So Beautiful, it Almost Makes Me Cry

2008-12-03T23:11:00.001-05:00

Sonnet 17
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

in which there is no I or you
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand
so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close

Pablo Neruda

Blair Waldorf is My Hero

2008-12-01T13:45:00.002-05:00

Several posts back, I shared Chuck Bass' theme song and promo from the CW. Now Blair has one too! Thank God...

Be Un-apologetically Yourself

2008-11-30T18:18:00.002-05:00

Witty

2008-11-25T16:48:00.002-05:00

Maddox Makes Me Laugh, Even Though He is Most Likely a Balding Pedophile Writing from His Mother's Basement

2008-11-19T13:44:00.002-05:00

From the thebestpageintheuniverse.net:

When I see people wearing Crocs, I know immediately that we have nothing in common, and that we could never be friends or have any meaningful kind of relationship. They come in every color imaginable yet look bad with every other article of clothing ever created. The only thing that goes with Crocs is social ostracism.

Wuthering Heights

2008-11-18T23:46:00.003-05:00

One of the many, many quotes that I consider to be the best ever and capture something about my soul (there are so many...they all bounce around in my head constantly, and both drive me crazy and keep me sane).

Also, before I share the awesomeness, I need to brag and say that I am going to double major in Philosophy and English Literature, and minor in Environmental Studies. Which means I'm going to have a ton of work every semester. But at least I'm working towards a goal! Yay!

Ok here you go:

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be. And if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger -- I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath -- a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind -- not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

2008-11-13T23:20:00.004-05:00

Fun stuff I found:

Definition of sapiosexuality :.

(sā-pē-ō-sĕk-shü-ăl'ĭ-tē)

1.

1. (n.) A behavior of becoming attracted to or aroused by intelligence and its use.

Origins: From the Latin root sapien, wise or intelligent, and Latin sexualis, relating to the sexes.

Example: Me? I don't care too much about the looks. I want an incisive, inquisitive, insightful, irreverent mind. I want someone for whom philosophical discussion is foreplay. I want someone who sometimes makes me go ouch due to their wit and evil sense of humor. I want someone that I can reach out and touch randomly. I want someone I can cuddle with. I decided this all means that I am sapiosexual.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Terry Pratchett

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. --Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Atlas Shrugged