A Cool Picture

This is a picture I really like of the Cologne Roman Catholic Cathedral, we were learning about it in history class and how it apparently took like 500 odd years to build...

Three Good Things

Yesterday after class I didn't want to get home earlier because I would have to study for Latin, so I drove her home. It was the first time I'd been in her little area during the day time and it looked alot nicer. (It was the strangest thing though, it was the first town I've seen without a Church). Anyway it was a nice drive home and I was listening to Weezer's Red Album. I really like Heartsongs (I think it's called that) and 2 other tracks I don't know the names of. But the country lanes were really nice and peaceful, I felt like I could drive anywhere and was free for a little while.

I got my haircut and it was SO weird having someone get paid to in a shallow sense a. Care about my appearance, and b. Be personally and physically involved in my life. I didn't think I'd ever get lonely to the point of having the girl cutting my hair be a good point in my day. But such is life. It was only like 10 minutes, and the girl was ugly, but it was just so strange. Now I know why prostitution is probably such a long standing tradition.

Last night I went for a walk and the stars were really bright, but it was almost pitch black out. I did a rosary as I walked and it was really calming. Also when I got to scary parts of the walk it reminded me of what real instinctual danger feels like and made me realize how stupid worrying about school is.

When you focus on your life and just the immediate present at certain moments in your day with all your energy, it's almost scary how "real" life is. But on the flipside of that, it's amazing how much I can drift through life just thinking and having my body on autopilot.

Hopkins Poem & Thought on Nature

(Felled 1879)

"My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene." - Gerard Manley Hopkins

He was a Roman Catholic poet and convert from Anglicanism. I like this poem, it reminds me immensely of Tolkien and the sort of awareness of urbanization that British academics were developing at the turn of the century (19th-20th).

I was just thinking the other day thought that no matter what happens to me in life, I will always be glad to think that Nature will go on. The trees are the true sovereigns of the world. When they're all dead, we will all die.

Another School Year

If you're tired of reading depressing things you can skip to the heading "Good part"

Sad/Depressed/Critical Part
I find it funny as I walk down the halls at Uni and look at girls faces because they always have this look of disgust when they see me. Like, not openly, and maybe disgust is too strong a word, perhaps disdain is a better word. They'll be smiling with their friends and walking as if they're modeling something and then suddenly they see you and their expression changes. It's like when people see a "differently abled" / handicapped person. They will immediately try to cover it, but there's that initial disdain. It's really kinda sad, but I'm sure I do the same thing.

That's the worst part ^ . When you realize that there's something terribly wrong with the world, only to find out you are an equal part in it.

The other thing is how girls dress. I swear that it's like they're trying to get you to look at them inappropriately. It's as if their own objectification is the goal...

I dress weird. I realize because one of the guys in my group of friends dresses weird and we laugh at him, and now I realize, about 80% of the time, I dress the same way. I have these giant ugly golf shirts that I wear. The uniform colours of them just accentuates the curvatures of my body. I used to look at my dad's friend who wore these types of shirts and think "wow, that's ugly" and then one day I realized, I was wearing them.

When I speak in class, I'm usually the mouthpeice for a dumbed down version of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whenever our teacher asks what we think about something, and all my cool-looking classmates start giving Nietzschean answers (which aren't original, but everyone thinks they are because they sound "rebellious", and then I give the standard Medieval Christian answer, and everyone becomes visibly antagonistic towards me. It's amazing to me how much I can love something Aristotelian and Catholic philosophy and how much other people can hate it.

Good Part
BUT - lest you think this is all depressing: I have the most beautiful drive to school everyday. Now this will sound stupid, but, it's true, it's an awesome stretch of country road to get to school. That's my favourite part of university I think. And the Newman Club that I joined this year is alright.

Life, WoW, and More Eudaimonea Cravings

About 3-4 months ago I quit playing World of Warcraft. When I used to play there'd be days where I would run from my car to the computer. I had the coolest system in the world worked out one time my parents went on a trip. I brought in a giant comfy chair and then got blankets and food and had my laptop and my PC set up. It was like Heaven on Earth. The sad thing is, that I'm not exaggerating the emotions I felt. Complete escape. Porn is nothing by comparison. WoW has left a hole in me in a sense. Not in terms of gaming, but something bigger. It's acceptance, friendship, community, entertainment, excitement. All of these things, through a game. No wonder it's so addicting.

After I would get everything done for school and work etc, and then go home, I could play and it would be Eudaimonea/Happiness. I am constantly searching for it, but at times I'm just trying to minimalize pain and gain a few shadow pleasures (to speak in the Republican language of Plato), but tonight I'm craving Eudaimonea. I need to escape from the grim reality, I need a new beginning.

But I'm just going to go to bed instead, and hope for the best, and maybe one day I'll find something else to give me Eudaimonea.

Music as a Cure

When I get depressed certain songs help. I've already posted a ton of zelda songs I like listening to, so there's no use in posting more of that.

A song that I've savoured for the last bit is the blue danube waltz by Strauss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4

One of my favourite games from childhood was called Earthbound for SNES and this is a theme from it that I played on a piano in England all the time. It's a part of the soundtrack of my life:

here's a remix of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQMsr3fStwE

I feel better already.

Loneliness & Despair on a Tuesday Night

In an episode of SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy satire they put the words "I'm so terribly lonely" in the mouth of Martha Stewart.

In a song I listened to recently the words were sung by Deathcab For Cutie "all the girls in all the girlie magazines won't make me feel, any less alone"

My favourite poem since high school (when we read it in Fahrenheit 451) ends with these words

"...the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night." - Matthew Arnold "Dover Beach"

On nights like this I usually agree with him. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up again.

God help me.