Peace, Love, and Understanding

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand. 

-The Simpsons

The Best Laid Plans

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

-Woody Allen

Promised You A Miracle

If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.

-Mark Twain

I Sometimes Spell Check My Shopping Lists

I was thinking of remarkable moments in my life and in 2/2/2009 came up with this very random list:

In one pickup half court game at UCLA in the early 90’s I was unstoppable. Every ridiculous shot, drive, anything, it went in. Given my limited basketball skills, all my friends and I were left speechless.

Had to convince an elderly patient with a lot of health issues she needed to go into assisted living and it wasn’t such a good idea for her to be home alone. She didn’t listen to anyone, not her family, not her doctors, but to me, a lowly junior medical student, she called Zack. I felt proud and sad all at the same time.

DJing a New Year’s Eve Party ushering in 2000. We were expecting 10 – 20 people, but ended up with a crowd closer to a hundred in a tiny wood cabin in Tahoe. People dancing everywhere, inside, outside, and even on top of the kitchen counters. One of the greatest moments was when I tossed on "a risky track" for the dance floor, Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” and much to my surprise the whole place erupted!

Following the infamous ’00 party my roommate and I drove thirty hours straight from Tahoe to Milwaukee. Towards the end we were stopping every 20 minutes or so to trade shifts and were probably hallucinating along the way. We also saw a guy en route who had a 13” TV on his passenger dash, on which he was catching a sporting event while driving.

Studying with a friend and getting slap happy around 4:00 a.m. we decided it was a great idea to go to Vegas for the weekend. Hopped online, got tix, and a hotel room. One hitch, flight was out of Chicago and we lived in Milwaukee, 90 miles away. Get in the car, speeding like mad men to get to the airport and along the way we spot a McDonald's in the middle of the freeway. Not on top of the freeway like an overpass, no right smack dab in the middle of the road between the north and southbound lanes. Had it’s own dedicated entrance and exit. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity and ordered some grub. We finally get to the airport after one of Shag’s all too famous ‘detours,’ run to the gate only to find the gate has been moved, with about 5 minutes till take off. They call ahead and we run our asses off, they re-open the door and we fly off to one of the greatest Vegas getaways ever.

My freshman year @ UCLA, I wrote a scathing anonymous evaluation of my Chem professor, going on and on about how unfair and arbitrary the grading system was. I ended up getting an A in the class and a really nice letter from her, lauding my efforts and volunteering to write me a letter of rec. I felt so guilty, I never took her up on the offer.

As an Alex P. Keaton conservative in undergrad, I wrote a surprisingly elegant treatise on the virtues of the Nixon administration and it’s handling of the Arab oil embargo. To this day I shudder whenever I think about that.

Popular

-That was hard!

-If it was easy, everybody would be popular.

-Modern Family

How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

Oh how I fucking hate the South Bay. I hate the South Bay with a burning passion. I hate the South Bay with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. I can feel my blood pressure rising every waking moment I spend in that God forsaken hell scape. And it's not just the obvious association between the South Bay and whatsherface. Oh no, my hatred for Hades predates her appearance by at least a decade.

The distortions in perspective frustrate the life out of me. A counter intuitive mishmash of identical storefronts that flaunt a style neither classic nor modern. Massive diagonal streets that run for miles and miles from the 405 in either direction, intersecting the streets that intersect the ocean and wait for it... the fucking ocean! It's like fucking Halstead!

The highway that's named for a distant coast not to be seen...the constant congestion...the mall named after a street a half a mile away...useless little access roads lined by cookie cutter blander than bland houses. I HATE them all.

Of course as the months pass, I will not so readily recall the breadth of my animus for this shit hole, and once again will convince myself that THIS time, it will be different.

Well it won't be, and for my sake I hope that THIS time I will commit my boundless contempt to memory.

Catch Me I'm Falling

-You fool! As if it matters how a man falls down!

-When the fall’s all that’s left, it matters a great deal.

-The West Wing (adapted from The Lion In Winter)

Leap Before You Look

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

-W. H. Auden

All You Have To Do Is Dream

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

-W. Shakespeare

Cry

Something eerily poetic about the topic of my 500th post. The melancholy and isolation that inspired BHE six years ago is still with me today. I feel like I haven't really changed that much, but in that six years I managed to get a job, briefly dabble in a relationship, start grad school, as well as hone my photography and prose.

Of course in the same span, I've managed to kill said relationship a dozen times, forgo my zeal for a healthier lifestyle, and grow frighteningly more comfortable in my solitude and despair.

I feel like I'm no further along in my frustrating journey towards self-acceptance and my most recent swan dive into depression as a result of a completely predictable set of circumstances is a testament to that very fact.

Even the Heavens Are Weeping in Solidarity

There's only so much family and culture a man can endure.

Breaker-Breaker

I talk a lot, so I've learned to just tune myself out.

-The Office

Head Games

I've plunged again into the darkest depths of insanity. Anxiety and depression seep from my every pore, physically manifesting in unpleasant and inconvenient deficits. In a manner of speaking it is all just in my head. But somehow that is of small comfort to me. And just when I feel like I've turned a corner, I awake from my wishful slumber and struggle to confront my most distasteful traits.

Learned Helplessness

I feel more lost than ever before. With the aid of my omnipresent LCD companions, I manage to find even newer means of dissociation, all the while ignoring my very own sermons about the pitfalls of its menacing grip. I've never felt like such a hypocrite. I struggle to maintain my tenuous hold on reality, as I desperately flee from the distasteful clutches of self-imposed anxiety. Momentary distractions allow me all too brief an escape from my betraying brain. I ache to be functional, but I succumb to the inescapable allure of denial and avoidance that haunt me even in my dreams.

Night Time

I am and have for most of my life been a creature of the night. As I find myself listening to the reverberating tones of The XX, I think about the emotional depth of that nocturnal connection.

I guess it's always held some mystique for me. When I was a child I envied the freedom the night afforded the adults who went to "dancing." I always imagined what heavenly place this "dancing" might be, this lair to which our parents fled and from which all the children were forbidden. Only as an English speaking adolescent did I realize that "dancing" was not a "where," but a "what."

I've struggled with longing far longer than I care to remember. I recall hanging out on the steps of my boyhood home staring out into the summer night's brilliant sky. Sitting with my boyhood mates talking about boyhood things, all the while consuming the dotted sky with a strange yearning to which I could not lend a voice. A yearning to belong and not be alone, a yearning all the more ironic as I actually did "fit in" then.

I guess night has always represented freedom to me. The normal folks are at home and in bed, but we kindred spirits rule the night. Be it dancing, cruising PCH, or even poring through mounds of scientific text. Can't overlook those unforgettable late night early morning cafeteria study sessions in LA and Wisconsin.

Something refreshingly sedating about the night. It's like borrowed time, like I'm cheating sleep. It's sanctioned dissociation from reality and a respite from all its responsibilities and pitfalls. It's like a giant pause button allowing me a break from anxiety. That insomniac high, that rush of feel good chemicals that elicit laughter even from the least deserving of topics. That freedom to be goofy and brutally honest as the tale of loves lost adorn a cafeteria chalkboard.

To quote Mr. Charles, "The night time is the right time." But it's more than that. It's my time. It's the time when it's ok to be unavailable. Ok to be narcissistic and childlike, because no one is awake to care. The banks are closed, the traffic is light, the food is fried, and TV is mind numbingly inane. All as consistent and predictable as the night itself. No surprises, no need to adjust the set, no need to be on guard.

In a word, free.

Slug

Nobody would ever help a slug with food like they do with ducks and monkeys. A slug's life is pretty bad. The only time they come out of their den is when it's raining. So even their days out are depressing.

-Karl Pilkington

Possibilities

I never thought it possible to further isolate. Yet here I am sitting in my steel cage thumbing away at my digital escape and mourning the loss of @MayorEmanuel.

It's The Time Of The Season

It goes Christmas, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day. Is that fair to anyone who's alone? These are all days you gotta be with someone. And if you didn't get around to killing yourself at Christmas or New Year's, boom! There's Valentine's Day. I think there should be one more after Valentine's Day just called, 'Who could love you?'

-Laura Kightlinger

I'm Not An Addict

Addicts Lie.

-House

Disappointment

There's nothing worse than loving someone who's never going to stop disappointing you.

-House

Revenge

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

-Confucius

Guess I've got some digging to do...

Curly Hairs

Causal determinism: we are hard-wired to find answers. A caveman who heard a rustle in the bushes and checked to see what it was lived longer than the guy who assumed it was just a breeze. The problem is, when we don't find a logical answer, we settle for a stupid one. Ritual is what happens when we run out of rational.

-House

If Only

I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, then I move on.

-M.A.S.H

Story of My Life

You cannot outsmart crazy.

-The Daily Show with Jon Stewart