well, that was obvious

I had a dream the other night that I had asked Adam if he wanted to get married and he had asked are you serious and i said yes and he said yes. it was only until afterwards that i questioned my certainty. I began to get scared and wondered what if I was making a horrible mistake and I thought this is a big deal and we talked about how we were going to tell my parents. I don't know what happened next but the next thing that I knew was that Tony had somehow become confused and was telling my parents that I was marrying him and my parents seemed uneasy and Adam showed up and thought that Tony was telling them that Adam and I are getting married but I explained to him what had happened. And so we ran away and hid from Tony and from my parents and that was the end.

I did not mean to post this; my project

reconstructing a dream

how thoughts interlace with reality which interlaces with imagination

algorithm of a dream

More recently, around 1973, researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley set forth another theory that threw out the old psychoanalytical ideas. Their research on what was going in the brain during sleep gave them the idea that dreams were simply the result of random electrical brain impulses that pulled imagery from traces of experience stored in the memory. They hypothesize that these images don't form the stories that we remember as our dreams. Instead, our waking minds, in trying to make sense of the imagery, create the stories without our even realizing it -- simply because the brain wants to make sense of what it has experienced. While this theory, known as the activation-synthesis hypothesis, created a big rift in the dream research arena because of its leap away from the accepted theories, it has withstood the test of time and is still one of the more prominent dream theories.

random generation of numbers

numbers coincide with a certain noun, verb, adjective, adverb (with accomodating picture/video/sound) which create a dream mad lib

When I look back

on my life, I find it hard to believe that I've been doing this whole thing for two decades now. I feel like although plenty of things have happened, I haven't really lived. I think this feeling is aided by the fact that my life has been fairly structured, especially with school. I think it's strange that how I perceive my life in retrospect is largely constructed by school. It's weird that our lives are like this -- that from childhood to adulthood we are engaged in these systematic institutions. It makes sense for the sake of efficiency because there are so many of us but it's also easy to get lost or consumed by it. I think these thoughts have become realized for me because of how I've been feeling about these past two semesters. I think because I didn't want to be overwhelmed by the bigger scope of things I lived so that I could focus on the day to day or the week to week. Except I became so engrained in this way of thinking that I should focus on the short term that I became ambivalent about what was going on just as long as I could get the day over with, so I could get the week over with. I mean, I think that's how plenty of people work -- especially people with heavy workloads. It's hard to see what is going on or even want to bother with what's going on when you have something to do. Not that this semester was terribly difficult, but I definitely found myself just plowing from task to task with nothing in between. I would fill the time between with senseless, mindless things merely to pass the time. For a while the monotony was comforting. It was placid and stable. But now I realize that a little turbulence is good to keep your mind active and alert. Because if you're life is a flat line, you may as well be dead.

Despite everything

that I've been unsure about these past couple days
I am happy because all of this excitement (whether
it be good or bad) has woken me from my state
of sleepwalking that I have been in for I don't
know how long now. It feels good to feel something
even though the feeling wasn't necessarily a good one.
I think my productivity had been reduced to a minimum
and so had my desire to do anything. I felt like I was
merely passing the time. I feel like it will feel good
to have to be productive. I feel like I'm living again.


I went over to Yasmin's house and we cooked a delicious
pot full of shrimp pasta salad with feta cheese and tomatoes
and peppers and cucumbers and downed a huge bottle of
wine between the both of us. It was so good to just lounge
and cook and eat and talk and just exchange our thoughts
and grievances freely. It was a good way to reiterate
how I've been feeling and the changes in my perspective
as of late.

It's strange

to see how we approach the subject
mostly because we do so with caution
i'm not sure what to say because i don't
want you to take it in the wrong way
you don't know what to say because
of the implications that are involved
i don't know what i'm supposed to do
or how i'm supposed to act
or what i'm supposed to say
or if there is anything to do or say

adam is going to join the navy unless his brother-in-law offers him a job on his tour. one or the other. no ifs, ands, or buts.

what i did

i have trained myself to be unaffected by people
i have done this to preserve myself as a person
what has happened instead is that i've become less of a person
or maybe a less formed person
i have found that the form that i tried to preserve was not fully formed
and that it is hard to hold together something that isn't really there

I had gotten lost a month or so ago and I was walking in circles trying to find a familiar bus or street that would take me home. I thought I would be more concerned or scared. Instead I realized I didn't feel much of anything. I don't know if it was merely a state of delirium but I remember thinking that if something bad happened to me I probably wouldn't care all that much. I don't think I really feel that way all of the time but the severe case of detachment kind of puzzled me. I guess I had known that I am like that as a person but to see it taken to such an extreme made the feeling so much more lucid.

what happened to me
don't i care about anything anymore

the strange thing is that i'm not depressed but detached
i don't think i've always been this way or maybe i have
i really don't remember anymore

i think that who

i have become as a person
has been defined by
my need to be as
inoffensive as possible
i don't have any boundaries
to bump into
because i don't want
to block anyone out
and because i don't like
the discomfort of friction
instead i dodge
weave and spin
around your borders
or let you pass effortless
pass mine
thinking this is what it is like to
be human(e)
what has happened instead
is that, yes, you have been
let passed the wall
but because that wall
was so thin you didn't
feel it and you didn't
feel the impact
as you passed on
through to the other side
we might turn to look at each
for a moment but only to wonder
whether it had all really happened

i have always

wondered why i am so callous
how i could be so detached
today i found that maybe it is because i never
really cared about anyone before
yet you made me sad today
because i cared. you made me
cry because i couldn't believe it
i worry because maybe i am like those
people you talk about that maybe
it is just fleeting and that it could
just be anyone. it is strange only
because i have always thought
that way too and sometimes i
think it about myself. i don't
want to hold you back nor
do i think that i could or would
ever will it. i just wanted to say
these things but i couldn't.
i wasn't sure if it would come
out in the right way. i feel like
maybe i shouldn't. why do we
even bother then at all?

it is strange to me

to think of you
as someone like me

that you might
see me and think that
it is strange to you
to think of me
as someone like you

the tension

between you and i
is the pretension
from you on my
open mind
and open eyes

it is my apprehension
of your disguise
of your sly eyes
that see me
that pretend to not
see me

that is the tension between you and i

it is 'tween our lives
that there is a great divide
that we find
when they are side by side

that is the tension
between you and i

(something is wrong with the rhythm here that I can't quite peg)

And then it occurred to me

what I had known all along
what I had forgotten
which had withered away
which would have withered away
had it not resurfaced
it became real again
instead of just a vague memory
with dotted outlines
and faded colors
its pieces became whole
its edges became sharp
and i was stung by the edges
once again

I think what I like about you

is you put it all out there
you don't hide
which is so hard to find
people are always hiding
because people are always scared
are you not scared too
i am scared too
yet you make me want to come out of hiding

Sitting on my bed a little tipsy still head still rushing from the lights flashing the bodies dancing

and yet all i can think of is that one phone call that predicts the coming days the one phone call i'll hear soon

&c

I think that sometimes people notice that I may not be as emotionally open and that is probably true. What I have noticed though is that it is not merely because I reserve my emotions for myself and shy away from sharing it with others but also because the emotions themselves are unclear to me even. Is that strange? When we think about how we feel, our sensations, emotions, &c., these seem to be concrete things -- concrete being that they are rigid not material. And rigid being that they are defined and not ambiguous. I sometimes find myself confused trying to decipher them -- my own feelings. Why must I have to decipher them? It is common to have to decipher other people's emotions and feelings, but to have to realize my own seems like an unusual undertaking.

And yet even as I sit here, I can feel something within me but I do not know what it is. I want to let my fingers glide across the keyboard as if they were not on a keyboard but a ouija board, moving from letter to letter as if beyond my control, transcending the physical limitations of the biological, neurological, and electrical processes within myself and outside of myself that must ensue in order for the thoughts to become realized on the screen -- as thoughts become processed into neurons and neurons become processed as muscle contractions and muscle contractions become processed as typing and typing becomes processed as letters and letters become processed as words and back and forth and through and under and around and backwards -- the pathway is too controlled. I want to free myself from these processes because what I want to read may become filtered or dissipated or altered in some way without being conscious of it. I want to breathe onto the screen and purge directly from source to destination. The brightness of the screen blinds me and I find myself caged within these 10 x 13 square inches.

And now my hands are frozen yet my fingers are tingling with anticipation. They wait for their commands but there is none. Nothing but heavy breathing and the sound of silence.

Push/Pull

I feel as though the last semester, hell, the last year has been taking me by the hand and pulling me forward and I have let it. I have let the colors whizz by me as well as the people. I see their faces in the distance but really all I see is a blur as my eyes try to focus -- I'm moving too fast. I look down and I see that my feet are moving me along, reminding me that it is still me that is running yet when I look down at my feet I realize that they are blurs too. I remember wondering every now and again whether I should slow down and see what is happening around me, but then I feel my hand being tugged away again and I become caught in the mad rush as I had been before.

Now. I have finally stopped. No, I've slowed down. I look down and I see my feet again. They are still moving but I can see them distinctly following my legs up and seeing that yes, indeed, they are my own. I look up around me and I see what I had been missing. Really what I see now are not what I had been missing before because those things are already passed. Those blurred images are forever gone. Now these are new faces and new things yet they serve as a reminder of what had been there before. I see it now and even though I wonder what it had been like, I am still too busy looking for more.

Improvised creative writing

The air seemed unfittingly cold for the day as it had seemed when it had been framed by the white trusses of the window that morning. She thought it funny that she would look outside and trust how she felt it should feel instead of looking at the passersby who would probably be more reliable indicators of the present weather. She noticed them now as she walked by huddled in her own masses, which were not people or warm bodies but her books and her bag. She was walking briskly in a rhythm that the force of the wind coerced her into adopting as it pushed her body, her face, and her arms back and as she felt she must push the wind with her arms, body, and face forward. The immediate pure force of the wind made her feel as though if she did not push back that she might also not live. She found it funny to think that this is why she pushed so heavily against it. Thinking these thoughts made her also think that if this force had instead been her father, her life would have turned out much differently.

(What this is, I do not know. Intro to a short story perhaps? Felt the need to stir the flow of those creative juices that have since stagnated and coagulated to become a lumpy unidentifiable ball of crap that resembles something that I used to know long ago)

{Also doesn't the style remind you of some American Literature novel about a girl who experiences some sort of awakening or coming of age)

A new feeling

Being the detached person that I typically am when it comes to opposite-sex relations, I have surprised myself by feeling that I might, dare I say it, "like" someone. I rarely lust or pine or obsess or even crush on guys. Although I have had the tendency to fall into situations where it might seem like I do. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I just don't give people (and by people, I mean male courters) a chance and close the options before they can become realized. Or maybe I just have not met anyone that I had felt deserved my time. However, this time around I feel a genuine interest and even a genuine longing to be with him when I'm not with him. Whether this is just an illusion that has placed a veil over my eyes and confused my senses from the stimuli of hand holding and lip locking because for once they do not seem sheathed as weapons of seduction, I do not know. For now though, I am holding these reservations aside and letting things fall as they may.