A Dream I Just Had

So normally my dreams are too weird to record, but this one I felt had too many characters I knew and seemed fairly easy to understand, so I quickly wrote it down (I just woke up), and thought I'd post it. Here are my summary notes:

My best friend Dan and I, go on a double date with 2 girls (apparently they went to Eden - our high school - a few years after us). We arrive and my girl kisses Dan...even after they tell her it's not me, and then shakes my hand awkwardly. Her dad (who looked exactly like my ex-girlfriend Sarah's dad) tells us that we should try and act funny ease the situation and tells me to do something funny with a bowl of snack mix he hands me. I throw the bowl into the air, no one is impressed, and I have to crawl around picking up every piece. Neither of the girls seem at all interested, so Dan and I start watching movies (we watched Goldfinger for some reason) and I fall asleep.



I wake up, go upstairs, and find the girl I was supposed to be dating doing homework and looking bored and mildly angry. I feel like a total faillure and we leave. Dan tells me that I was making gross/weird sounds in my sleep while we watched Goldfinger. I tell Dan that Goldfinger is 'that kind of a movie after all' (I have no idea what I meant there). A guy I work with picks us up in a some Asian drag racing car. He drops me off at Eden (where I went to high school), and it's day again now, I cry on the sidewalk and everyone walks past me like the guy in the parable of the Good Samaritain...except no Good Samaritains show up.

hah. what a weird dream. Oh well, it turned out alright for Dan, that's something.

A Cold Walk, Twilight/New Moon, Wikihow, and Unfinished Homework

I was home alone tonight and I sat down to watch Top Gear with some Butterscotch ice cream. When I looked down at myself. I was feeling particularly obese, so I threw my ice cream out...all of it. I went through the act in my mind to evaluate it ethically. It was objectively a bad action (wasting food) but the motive (moderation) was good and the situation was good (I'm already morbidly obese). So I figured it was ok to do.

I've been reading Twilight and now am half way through New Moon. This officially makes me gay, I know, but I think it's just because the books are about love and beautiful girls and stuff, and I'm desperately lonely (in the words of SNL jeopardy's Martha Stewart). But they've been making me think I really need to find a girlfriend again. It's been a year and 2 months since I last kissed a girl and that's far too long.

In my sudden bout of self-hatred I did 2 stupid things. I went to my bathroom to try to throw up (I could never be bulimic if I don't even have the willpower to diet don't worry). And then I decided that instead I should try and exercise (so that I could get a Bella of my own). I put on my rosary, and went for a walk in the freezing cold. I prayed a pseudo-St. Michael Chaplet "O God make Speed to Save me, O Lord Make Haste To Help Me, Glory be...etc." x ? , as well as some of my usual painfully honest and blunt prayers which contain far too much Anglo-Saxon.

I finally got home and my legs were tingling from the friction and yet freezing from the weather. I read some more New Moon - a terribly depressing book , which isn't helping my recently returned Depression.

So then for some reason I looked and saw that I had twice as much Latin homework as I had thought. So I just decided to put it off, and looked on WikiHow for how to find a girlfriend.

One thing I think was hillarious, they kept saying "be confident" and "be yourself". What if your personality is self-deprecating and unconfident. Eh?! riddle me that !

Anyway, I think it was a waste of time as I already know how to talk to girls, and I think I'm pretty charismatic, it's just that if I was about 100 pounds lighter, wasn't Catholic / dogmatic, and cared about meaningless pop-culture stuff, i'd be fine. But I am all those things, so it doesn't seem like anythings going to happen for a while. I should probably get up and do my Latin.

Oh but 4 good things happened (so that it's not all depressing)..

1. I had an amazing talk with my philosophy prof about St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian Metaphysics, and Post-Modernism (the fact that those things excite me are a perfect example of my aforementioned unpopular interests).

2. I openly disagreed with a girl on Religion in the American Revolution and argued it was a Presbyterian revolt against the CofE and she actually said she respected my opinion and was glad I challenged her. A kindred spirit! (I bet she has a boyfriend).

3. I got to have lunch with my best friend today.

4. I got to have a good meeting with the Roman Catholic asst. chaplain and we discussed the faith and what I was learning from the Newman Club, and he treated me like a person/end rather than means to something.

Well. Another week chasing Eudaimonia via women, weightloss, and wishy-washy teen literature, as well as western philosophy

Swine Flu and Latin Loneliness

I wrote out a journal of random thoughts I've had over the last few days, perhaps I'll post it one day, but since it involves alot of personal names of people I won't put it up, but sum up the geist / spirit of what I wrote using 3 events/themes. And I promise: I've deleted all the Theology stuff.

I was in Latin today and my nazi prof was being her typical power-tripping self and catching kids unaware who didn't do their homework. I get really lonely alot, and sometimes irrationally fearful at Brock, and so I always "fantasize" (if that's the right word and doesn't carry too much sexual association) about girls sitting next to me in class. Well a girl sat next to me today and we were actually really close together. She was sneezing the whole time and coughing into her jacket, and as it turns out she had swine flu. I realized as she kept coughing that I had the strongest desire to rub her back and ask her how she was holding up. But then I realized that a: Nazi prof would freak, b: she would look at me and be awkward, c: that's the last time I'd ever have someone sit next to me.

This feeling of loneliness increased to the point that I actually wanted to hug this swine flu girl. Crazy as it sounds against all reason in a rare moment of pure emotion I almost tried to hug this girl whose name I could only guess at. Suddenly my Conservative Victorian Baptist upbringing kicked in and I moved a few centimetres away from her and resumed staring at the clock and avoiding the Latin SS/Gestapo...

I asked her how she was at the end of class and stuff but I think she just thought I was more of a creepy stalker than a concerned co-human.

I hate myself, I wish I looked and acted welcoming to other people. I wish I could be the person others feel compelled to hug and actually spread some humanity, compassion, and charity (love/agape) to our overly synthetic world, but it appears my lot by Providence to remain the desiring rather than the fulfilled, the becoming rather than the being.

I went home, read some theology, ate some chocolate cake (which is just compounding all my problems), felt guilty and self-loathing because I ate it, and sat down to blog.

Andrew remanet solus. *** Alone, Andrew remains

'All the girls in every girlie magazine can't make me feel, any less alone. I'm reaching for the phone, to call at 7:03, on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home.' - Deathcab for Cutie

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.

Latin, The Girl, and the Trip That Never Is

I switched my courses tonight for Brock. I decided to take Latin. I HAVE to learn it eventually for a masters in history or theology, so it was only a matter of time. Personally, I would've liked to put it off for a couple more years.

Languages are a funny thing for me, because I love them, I love the idea of speaking another language or reading it. But mostly Latin because it is the language of our history, the eternal langua Romani (Language of the Romans). I feel impowered when I know another language, I feel as if I could be a whole different person. For me, language is a many splendoured thing. But in honesty I suck at Latin. I tried alot, but never came up with enough effort to master the material. I hated the tenses and the necessity of precise endings, etc. I'm terrible at Latin, and so I'm conflicted, it's as if this door is open in front of me, and everyone tells me (including myself) that if I just tried hard enough I could get through it. But at the same time I'm weighed down with sloth and grammatical ignorance and I can't make it through.

There's a girl I saw tonight, the chances of her reading this blog are minimal so I don't mind posting it. Though it would be a typical chapter in my life if she saw it this one time. Anyway, this girl I saw tonight is a genius, and we have everything in common. I can't think of a time when I've been more foolish than when I tried to ask her out. It might possibly be the dumbest I've ever been. It was generic, obvious, and awkward. I was heart-broken for a while...actually I don't know if I have a heart, but I was very upset. In any case, she is not at all interested in me, but whenever I see her it's like the open door. I have this beautiful image of how happy I could be if we were even just friends, but I can't seem to make it. Again I'm weighed down and in my mind I keep telling myself ('it's your own fault' just like Latin). It makes me hate myself as I look at my gross unshaven gay-tee, and my morbidly obese sized t-shirts. I want to speak Latin, I want people to like me, I want to run again, I want to be healthy and suave and fit.

Finally, I have a trip that got postponed again, it's the 4th time now and I'm furious. I can't ask my boss for the 4th time to reschedule me. I'm so angry at my parents. It's totally out of my control, and it shows how little they respect me or my life. But obviously if I can't do anything right, why would they?

It's painfully clear to me what my Summum Bonum, my greatest good, is. To love myself enough to start running, to love my future enough to study Latin night and day and ace the class, and to then win the affections of the girl and live much more happily, for a little while at least.

God if you're listening, please help me. But I'm never as certain about anything as I am that I will fail. I will drag myself through latin, possibly dropping it, failing, or barely passing. I will embarrass myself infront of the girl and focus her annoyances on me into dislike, and I will remain the same blob, sitting in bed, crying out to God, crying out on this blog, crying out to the no one who is listening. Such seems my life.

But maybe everything will change, maybe I will acheive my Summum Bonum, that I will feel Eudaimonea. That small pathetic hope lives on somewhere in the cynicism and pessimism of my soul, and that is why I will wake up tomorrow, and read a chapter of my latin book, and go to work, and try to eat healthy. In the hope that everything might change. Tolkien taught me hope, and I don't know whether to blame or thank him for it.

Domine misere mei.

All Too inHuman & The Story of a Girl

If you don't feel like reading all this post just skip to the "BUT"

We have our extended family visiting our house this week (all the Mennonite Brethren folks). I used to be able to talk with my uncles and aunts about theology and my future as a preacher. But now that I'm of the 'peculiar Roman Catholick religion' (as Rabbie Burns would've said - ), no one asks me about anything or talks hopefully about my future.

In that same Roman faith there is a philosophy that is popular among the Pontiffs. It's the idea of "the full human person" or "the intrinsic dignity of the human person". It's the idea(l) that everyone who is born has intrinsic worth and value just because they are in existence. It's what Seneca and St. Thomas Aquinas said when they gave us the choice between "Being a beast, or being a human". The modern neo-Darwinian socialist materialist positivist atheism of today seems to treat us like we're beasts rated on our ability to contribute to the world (by us I mean morbidly obese grocery store workers and other valueless people).

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BUT

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Tonight after a long shift at work I was about to walk out as usual without much hope to my house to sit alone in the slanted room (I'm making the story a little melodramatic). But then a girl I work with asked me to help with a recipe and supplies for a meal she was making for her boyfriend, and so we went around getting the groceries and talking and then we drove home (she followed me 'cause we live on the same street, and i drove crazily). I then realized, as I listened to Radiohead and waved goodbye, that I felt like a human being.

Obviously I'm not telling the story to predict a 'deeper' relationship (she's like 5 years younger than me and in a relationship, and I'm just a creepy deli guy). But the reason I wrote it was because it was an example of someone just treating me like a human being, like my opinion was at all important, and that I could contribute something.

Anyway, that's my pathetically boring post you've wasted your time reading. But sometimes I wonder what life would be like to always feel like a human. Gah, all this introspection - blame St. Augustine and his Confessions, he started this Western philosophical phenomenon. Blogs are totally a result of him.