Oct 29, 2001

Oct 29, [Enya, "A Day Without Rain"]

I’m so close to just a total complete breakdown right now. I can’t fucking

study, I can’t think at all. I hate my roommate. I’m doing a shity ass job

in my classes. I just hate it here. It’s only 1 and already today I’ve broken

down crying a few times. I mean, I just can’t handle it. I can’t study in

this environment, and I can’t find anywhere that I really can study. It

doesn’t help that my roommate just sits in here and watches those damn fucking

annoying TV shows all day, have you ever tried studying with MASH, or some

other stupid comedy central show playing in the background? It just doesn’t

work. And this morning was just the last fucking straw too. I got my Bartelby

paper back and I got a fucking "F" on it. I mean I worked my ass

off on that damn paper. I worked hard on it, you know what she said, she

said I didn’t follow the directions at all. I followed the fucking directions,

I did what I was supposed to. I explained why that mother fucking lawyer

was "an altruist." Maybe if she would have spent a little, just

a little bit of time explaining what it was that she wanted then, or giving

us an example, or maybe had she given us more choices on what to write about

in that damn paper. I just want to give up. I want to drop out now and just

go away somewhere. I don’t want to fucking be here at all.

Next week I’ve got another paper due in that class, a paper that she just

handed out the directions for today. I called the writing center to see

if I could get help in there, and they told me that I had to call a week

in advance to get in. Fuckers, what kind of help is that? I have to call

a week in advance to be able to get help? What about when the fucking teacher

doesn’t hand out the directions until less then a week before the damn paper

is due? Huh? What the hell are we supposed to do then? God damnit. I’ve

got three tests next week, a quiz. I can’t handle this, everything just

fucking piles up and piles up. It’s just to much for me to handle right

now.

Oct 26, 2001

Oct 26, [BBMak, "More Then Words"]

ONE YEAR OF RANTINGS!!!! Yep, that’s right, one year ago today I started

this page!

Ya know, WinXP has only been out one bloody day and I’m already sick of

hearing about it. M$ is promoting it as the savior of the world, and really,

it’s just a piece of shit. Win2k Pro will work just fine for me thanks.

Bastards anywho. I want to switch over to a total linux box, but there’s

just a few things that I don’t want to risk losing. Maybe this summer I’ll

work on that and save up some money for copy of Win for Linux or something,

that way if I do have to use Windows for something, I can just use that.

Or maybe I’ll just buy myself a Win laptop, that’d be nice.

So it’s Friday as well. Tonight Adam and I are going to my G&G’s, fun

times. We’re going to hang out with David, which should be fun. I’ve been

looking forward to meeting him.

Ok. I have to be going to class now, See everyone Sunday….

Oct 25, 2001

Oct 25, [Eddie Izzard, "Glorious"]

Notes to self: A) Must start remembering to wear a coat each time I leave

the building, just because it looks nice out doesn’t mean it is. B) Must

not start listening to something amusing when there’s homework to be done.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, and even though it looks as though it

should be like 70 degrees out, it’s bloody not. I got up this morning, and

looked out side. It looked nice. Yep, looked nice, so I thought to myself.

It should be a good sweater day. Well I headed out towards my first class,

and I got outside and it was bloody fucking cold, I was like, holy buckets

it’s cold outside. So yeah.

Now I’m listening to Eddie Izzard’s Glorious, and it’s funny shit. I can’t

think about my Homework now. I’m supposed to be writing a summary of this

paper thing. Grrr. Ok, I’m off…

Oct 24, 2001

Oct 24, [Elton John, "Can You Feel The Love Tonight"]

The trouble with intimacy is that it means vulnerability. Everyone wants

intimacy but few of us are very good at vulnerability We pay lip service

to "openness" and "trust," but usually these are mask

words which we use to hide ourselves and to keep others at bay. Get too

close to me and I’ll beat you over the heard with my openness and trust.

With the vocabulary provided by Freud and his followers, and the time provided

by increased leisure and life expectancy, our generation is the first in

history to set out self-consciously and in massive numbers to search for

the joys of intimacy. But there is no evidence that we have much progressed

over our predecessors in our skills at vulnerability. We attempt to make

bricks, despite the biblical lesson on the subject, without straw.

How much authentic vulnerability — as opposed to the synthetic kind acquired

on encounter weekends — have you observed on the expressway to intimacy?

The vulnerable person is strong enough to risk getting hurt — not pointlessly,

not irrationally, not as an inverted defense mechanism, but as part of a

reasonable if not altogether rational risk. He can give himself to another

human being not like a dive bomber crashing into an aircraft carrier or

like a Mack truck crumpling a Volkswagen, but rather in a gentle and subtle

process by which the other is incited, indeed seduced, to give himself in

return.

How many such people do you know?

The vulnerable person takes a chance on having his heart broken. He strips

himself of his defenses in the hope that when the other sees him as he is,

the other will find him irresistible. In such a defenseless position, he

can very easily be hurt, badly hurt.

Furthermore, he will be hurt. The lesson of all our experience is

that the vulnerable person does indeed have his heart broken, he is indeed

ridiculed, rejected, made a fool of. Sometimes the pain of such a heartbreak

is healed as reconciliation restores the violated intimacy. But only the

most naive believe that all stories have happy endings. Some broken hearts

remain broken.

Yet the deadly paradox of intimacy is that either we strip away our defenses

in a continuing process or we build them up in a similar process. We either

let the other get closer to us and thus get closer to him or we push each

other away. There is no middle ground. When push comes to shove, most of

us push instead of surrendering.

In our pseudosophisitcation we try to persuade ourselves that we are no

longer troubled by the shame of physical nudity. It is an act that normally

does not work. But physical nakedness is a symbol — indeed a "sacrament"

— of psychological nakedness. We are "shamed" when we take off

our clothes because we have nothing left under which to hide, nothing to

protect our weaknesses and deficiencies, we are defenseless, easily hurt.

Psychic nakedness is much more terrifying — and hence much less frequently

attempted. For if the other can see us as we are, then we are open to being

destroyed by him.

So we hedge our bets and protect our own apparent worthlessness. The cynical

"Why take the chance?" — rarely spoken but more a barrage of

words claiming that we are not afraid. It is all the other people who claim

to be "open and trusting" who are kidding themselves.

The theologians used to call this fear of the other "original sin."

The name may be out of fashion, but reality is not. Blessed be he who does

not take chances for he will not be hurt. Woe to him who risks giving his

whole self, for he surely will be hurt.

But then it may be worth it. And the name of that thought, according to

the old theologians, was Grace.

Oct 23, 2001

Oct 23, [Savage Garden, "Hold Me"]

When one cares for another, they may buy flowers for that person. The flower

will wither and die yet stay in a fragile yet dead existence, just as the

feelings as the person who gave the flower long ago. After much time, that

person will find the dead flower again, only to touch it to see what was

there after all. The flower crumbles to dust, leaving no trace of it’s existence

or the existence of the flower-giver’s feelings for that person so long

ago.

Ryan

Sometimes I don’t know why I even try to explain myself to people, they

just get even more pissed off. I just want everything to be happy, I want

everything to be the way that it was. But it’ll never be like that again,

not with that attitude…..