Heart

It's coming to the end of 2009, so I think it's time to call this blog to a close as well and reflect on what exactly this thing called "heart" is.

Heart is different for every person. For me it's something terribly private and individual. It's something that requires I leave myself alone at night frequently until I come back and find safety in myself and the fork that leads in either direction to sleep. The journey continues on either or both paths. As sleep takes over the distinction blurs and I no longer know whether I walk on one path or two. Then I understand life more generally. Then, I wake up, and sixteen hours pass where my understanding of life decreases gradually, and my heart is the caller that aches for that understanding to return.

But sometimes I can't sleep so easily. This semester hasn't been so bad for that, except for the times when my stomach simply would not let me sleep. Yeah. I guess. Usually sleep is the cure, but sometimes it's not.

Why am I so tired that I can't concentrate on anything anymore? I guess three and a half years of concentration have gotten to be too much, much like they did four years ago, when I was applying for undergraduate schools. Back then the stress played its tune differently on my brain, though, and I just fell into a pit of depression that lasted through my college interviews. It figures that the only one that was any good was the one with a mathematics major. That guy was a student at Tufts, and I know who his advisor was too. Tufts was good for me, though, and I hope that I can magically find my way into the proper school for my brain and heart (and other parts) for grad studies.

This freewrite is drifting, much like cars on an icy highway. More like bumper cars on an icy highway, the crashes turned into bounces. With bumper lanes on the side like a round of kids' bowling. Thoughts bounce against each other, on a two-dimensional plane with no three-dimensional motion despite a three-dimensional existence. Let me jump within that third dimension.

I had intended to mention this thought since around the seventh freewrite here, but I never remembered to do so. Well, here it is... Okay. I speak two languages very fluidly, French and Japanese. And I know only a few words in either of the Philippine dialects my relatives know. Putain is a word in French that means "whore." クソ (Kuso) is a word in Japanese that means "shit." But put the two swear words together, and you get "Puso" - a word in Filipino that means "heart."

I guess that's my story. Very little more needs to be said. You put the moments together that you grind through and cuss through and obliterate yourself through even though you never intended to and emerge as something else that's still you, because you made sure to respect yourself all through it - that's heart for me. Coming out of it knowing that you respect yourself for all you can be. And not grinding yourself down simply because other people are grinding themselves down. But I've done that. Even through this most recent semester I was doing that the whole time. And how do I avoid that? I guess the wrong way to do that is to avoid it by refusing to acknowledge it. Telling myself not to grind too hard doesn't work when I don't realize that I'm grinding myself down anyway. This past semester I was doomed from the start with my schedule. Or maybe I was just doomed period and didn't want to accept it. Maybe I still haven't.

Well, the best thing I can do is forget and come back to it. That's the procrastinator's way, haha, but here it applies to something I've already done or felt like I've failed at doing. That thing I failed at doing is 2009. 2009 can go bye-bye. And it will. All I know is this: I've written a lot, and all that I've been telling myself hasn't told me too much. It's like an alternative rock album with nonsensical lyrics where every song is long. It's time to let it rest.

Let it rest, let it rest, let it rest.

-Alex
明けましておめでとうございます！

Charity

A common problem with libertarianism's preachers is that they often do not explain what'd happen to people dependent upon welfare and other government programs if such programs were eliminated. Sometimes they end the argument with something like, "Instead of continuing inefficient government programs that are unsustainable in the long run and encourage dependency, we should turn to our local communities, charities, and churches for help." But this statement is not necessarily going to be convincing. In fact, it shouldn't be. An alarm should go off in your head somewhere, especially with the part about churches.

It is true that the Roman Catholic Church is one of the largest suppliers of charity money in Massachusetts, and it was apparently the largest not so long ago. Thus churches in themselves are considerable resources in the battle to provide (food, water, shelter, clothing, counseling, medical care) for people who cannot provide for themselves. But of course, when you think about the idea of church missions, you'd also think about missionaries. The world's history of missionaries is not pretty. You can very well look at it skeptically as religious organizations' exploitation of the desperate poor to expand the size of their membership. It may not have been the story everywhere, but it certainly is a common one. And looking back to today, is there not something reprehensible about fake abortion clinics that keep a woman in consultation until it's too late for her to get an abortion? These exist! So imagining the picture of an America where religious organizations provided all welfare, and government programs provided none of it, I would be nervous, and you should be too, regardless of your religious convictions. I have to ask myself the question as a libertarian: Should poorer citizens have to sacrifice the liberty of their religious convictions to obtain resources or care that they cannot afford to pay for? The answer is a no that resounds off the variously contoured inner surfaces of the skull encircling my brain.

The funny part about my mentioning the Roman Catholic Church, however, is that they apparently don't bug you about your religious beliefs if you go to them. That's obviously something I like. However, to look on the ugly side, there are probably a lot of parents who wouldn't want their kids alone with a priest nowadays, even for a minute in the confession box. Trust is a big issue here. Can you trust charities, churches, or even your local community nowadays? Could you ever have done so in the past as much as you wanted to?

But as long as there are significant economic (and social) incentives against breaking the law or doing bad things within the scope of the law, you can worry a lot less. There's another problem: this precondition is met with less frequency during a recession, such as the one we are in now (don't believe Ben Bernanke if he tells you we're not). So the argument at the start of this paragraph (which is one that libertarians make all the time!) fails during a recession. Not good. So what else is there?

There's the government. Can you trust that government? Bush 2001-2008 (and I'd say Obama 2009, although you're not supposed to say that yet because you can't criticize Obama and be respected by his supporters at the same time, much like it was for Bush during the previous period or how it is now for Palin during the same period), endgame. Well, there's the state government, which is more accountable to the people (sometimes. Not in Massachusetts) and I'd argue more trusty as a result. Nonetheless, I'm going to argue that there is an alternative to trusting the government.

Asking the government to take care of welfare is like asking Mom to wash the dishes when you know she's tired from working all day. It's neglecting a basic personal responsibility. The problem is that for the general welfare case, we often call this "social responsibility." But the CEO from Whole Foods is right to call it "personal responsibility" instead, and we need to start looking at it this way. It's easy to claim that putting the government in charge of ensuring food and water is a reasonable way of doing things when there are way too many people to take care of. However, there is at least a flaw with saying it's the only way of doing things. What if instead of asking bureaucrats to take care of welfare agencies, we empassioned ourselves to put on the shoes of the people who don't have enough, and all worked to stop it? While that sentence sounds idealistic, it in fact isn't. The strength of charity is remarkable as it is, and inspires admiration in those who aren't self-deprecating enough to be jealous of such people for what they perceive to be selfish heroism. I'm still amazed that there are people willing to go to the worst regions of the world and work for nothing but the knowledge that they are doing something good. What we need to work on is strengthening not just our confidence in the power of non-governmental charity but also our belief in genuinely participating in charity endeavors consistently ourselves. Yeah, us.

And that's something that I personally have to work on myself. I haven't done anything charity-related since high school. I think I just did it because it was right, something to do, and let's be honest, something to put on my resume. (There was plenty of stuff to put on my resume back then, though, as there is now. I did enjoy the work I was doing more than just knowing it would help me, but the resume part was there too.) But how can I claim that there can be a transition to less reliance on government programs without acting myself to help people who need something to rely on? That's something today's libertarians have to talk about. And it would help, of course, if libertarians were to establish organizations that offered help to all with full respect for personal liberty. If those Christian fundamentalists who believe in libertarianism united with those libertarians who are scared of fundamentalism to create an organization that provided services to people along with a guarantee of expecting nothing in return and accepting people without looking badly at them for who they are or their current personal situation, that would be a huge step. None of the politicians I see nowadays who epitomize libertarianism have underlined what they would personally do in situations where Americans do not have the government programs they have relied upon for so long. Yes, Ron Paul talks about putting a freeze on cuts from Social Security and so forth, but what about afterwards? Capitalism isn't perfect. No, it's not the politicians' role to start charities in the meantime, but if they're to be the only leaders, they're going to have to do everything. I guess that means political leadership needs to extend outward from politicians themselves. But that's something that our current political mess could've benefitted from anyway, with Cindy Sheehan being one of the few people I can name in the category of political leaders who aren't politicians.

And in that sense it all begins at home. We've got to have faith in ourselves, because putting it in governments is just keeping the faith further and further away from home, and sooner or later that is all gonna crash. And that faith in community I'm talking about begins with faith in oneself.

Creativity

I've found that many things in 2009 didn't turn out to be what I thought they would be. But I also didn't realize what I thought they would be. That is, I had this expectation down inside of me that for some reason didn't come to the forefront of my conscious realization. It was just there, in its dormant state, and I was dormant uncomfortably. Like I was last night when I had a dream that one of my Japanese teachers (of the gender I'm not attracted to) was licking my entire face and trying to make out with me. I didn't even sleep much more than seven hours, either. Could it be really said that last night I slept well?

I'm writing a lot more fluidly and imaginatively than I have before, a lot less mathematically. It's amazing how much 25 pages of reading a novel in one day can do for your/my imagination. And it's amazing how I got that from re-reading a book. Or maybe it's because I just ate something with butter on it. You never know with these things. Nah, but maybe I know. I'm also elated about my first song, still, even though I'm not so elated at the same time over my either slight or big mess-up of a love situation down at Tufts, not to mention the fact that I continue to feel insecure about my relationships with people there, save one person and one person only, God bless her. That's what happens when you don't put yourself out there enough, which I didn't this semester. I didn't go out enough on low sleep into social situations like I always have, afraid that low sleep combined with high expectations would lead to low outcomes. Now I'm talking like an economist again, so let me drift back into the world of the writer. I've hesitated too much on my social life at Tufts, and I guess I've just gotta remember who I am at home, the me that I am when I'm most comfortable with the world and with myself: the I who starts things, brings people together, and in doing so brings himself together. I guess I tried too much to abide by the philosophy that I literally wrote down to myself as being important my freshman year (my very successful freshman year, my best socially): charity begins at home. Begin with yourself and then you'll improve your relations with others. But what I've learned now is you can't necessarily complete the course each time by yourself without other people's help. In fact, for me as a person sometimes that's impossible, if not most of the time. Maybe less than most of the time. Either way I have to keep this in mind, and put out a little trust into the world. I have to admit that with elections swinging the way they did and the political discourse recently and with my own inclinations I've lost a little faith (which I magnify in my head when I think about it) in the world around me. Politics isn't everything but it can eat you up when you don't have a really, really good sympathizer.

Wow, that paragraph was too long. May the reader forgive me.

I wonder what the average HTML color of my skin is. What better, more precise way to characterize it? I also wonder how each little mole got there - what was each and every little one's story? where did they come from and what purpose do they serve that I'm unaware of? What purpose could they serve if I only used my imagination? Well, I think here's one: they remind us that we're only human. There is nothing so ridiculous as the idea of a perfect look, especially when you consider that the perfect look changes depending on the time period. Even the natural look is indefinable.

I am taking a rest with defining myself as a mathematician. I can't really say that I am until I go through grad school, really, at least some would put it that way, but it's not about that. It's just that at this time in my life I'm not really feeling it as much anymore. Math has really been hammered through me like a nail this past semester and in order to improve my relationship with it it's time to take a spiritual break, if not a physical one. It was a little troubling over the past junior year of school to see myself as a mathematician more and more even as I was abroad doing mostly things that weren't math. And now I feel like math is gaining on me while I'm shying away from it. Math to me is instinct. Most of my time is spent doing other things, and to change that right now would be out of place. When I go to grad school (obviously this is an assumption), I will be perfectly willing to let math be my life. In fact, I welcome it, as one of the things that's bothered me about Tufts is that I've never really been able to concentrate on one thing, because I have so many avenues open for my various interests, and... well, I guess I have no excuse there. But I'm ready for it.

If anything, I'm ready for 2010. That's going to be a good year. I can feel it.

Embarrassment (恥ずかしさ) and Why I Like T-Pain

I am a very easily embarrassed person. Sometimes I just let the embarrassment eat me. I realized this as I was taking a shower a couple of hours ago, and I decided I'd make a list of things that embarrass me currently.

-I got an 82 on my algebra final
-I improved to 600 on the GRE subject test. That's still 40th percentile.
-I haven't sent out my rec forms to my rec writers for grad schools
-I have very little social life at Tufts so I don't really know what to say when people ask me what I did or what I'm gonna do tonight, or I just make up some excuse
-I wonder how the above bodes for my romantic life whenever I have a chance at some guy who likes me, although my chances haven't been as infrequent as I thought

That's basically it, I think. Oh

-I forgot to send my GRE scores to USC by the deadline, and that was Dec 15, and I still have not contacted them about it.

When you look at this list, it doesn't really seem that bad. But then I generalize this into a semester of mediocrity in my head. I feel that way. And then it makes me feel bad.

-I guess that in itself is embarrassing.

------------

Why I like T-Pain

T-Pain is an amazing artist. Not necessarily for the typical reasons. You know how every great artist has something wrong or quirky with him or her that comes along with his or her art? Like how Kanye's ego gets the best of him? Well, with T-Pain you could argue that what's wrong is inside the music itself. In other words, the music isn't as great as it could be. But that in itself makes T-Pain a very interesting artist for me. Maybe the most interesting.

If I feel down then T-Pain's music always makes me feel like there's something in the world in harmony with how I feel. I can hear an inherent sadness in his music, that exists despite the lyrics or the autotuning. I can hear it there. That's why I generally don't care too much about lyrics in music - because there's so much more to hear than lyrics. But yeah, I feel it there. I can't pinpoint where it is, but I feel it. And I hear it alongside something that's beautiful but separate. It's separate from the sadness. I don't like the idea of beautiful sadness. Sadness sucks. But I like the idea of beauty alongside sadness. That's how I really feel like things are in life, at least for my head. I can be instantly happy if someone finds the solution to something I'm sad about quickly. Like this kid from elementary school who suddenly forgot he was in dire pain after bumping into a pole or something when his mom told him that the food from Wendy's was here. Beauty too close to sadness is something that scares me. Well, no, that's not true. It's beauty that is sadness that scares me and I hate. Maybe.

When I listen to music in general, well, it's often "bad music." But when I hear something that I myself think is strange but bad in music, and it's alongside something that's very good, I am immediately interested. T-Pain does this to me every time. He managed to make art out of "Cyclone" and "Low" (he uses something called a "mode" in music theory terms in the latter song). It's clear that without him, songs like "Kiss Kiss," "Shawty Get Loose," and "Freeze" (all of which have Chris Brown. I'll admit that the last one is one of his own rather than one where he's a featured artist) are nothing, outright boring. But basiaclly, how does he do it? And what's missing?

Well, what's missing is a classical background or a proper training in music production. He could probably smooth a lot of things out if he gained a little bit of experience in either of the two. But as it is, he's doing really well. And that's something that excites me - someone who can get by WITHOUT the traditional hierarchical systems of learning. There are very few who can do that, because the hierarchy is just that strong. And he basically made his own way with the autotune trick, which has been used before but never so prominently. Finally he's an innovator in an industry that is so utterly lacking of innovation. And he's funny and he knows it and how to be funny.

So it's really interesting to see him grow and experiment. I think it's notable that he hasn't jumped on the dance bandwagon just yet. With my own music I'd do that, if I knew how. He probably doesn't know how and just is gonna go along and do his own thing. I do that. He's totally like me in that respect, if that's what it is. He started a trend in hip-hop without even intending to. I mean, his music isn't JUST autotune. It's music. Whereas 50 Cent is just a monotone bumbling thug, Soulja Boy a yelling dance instructor, and Eminem an annoying screeching boy who rhymes about unusual topics. And Lil Jon... well, he's the best example. Look where he is now - a producer getting production from RedOne. And that RedOne-LilJon song is GOOD, yes, but it should tell you about the lastability of his kind of work.

Can't wait for the next few T-Pain singles. I also can't wait until he actually makes a good album.

Sadness

Sometimes I feel as though I don't have the time to exist.

Sometimes I feel as though all the yesterdays where I saved up and worked my way haven't accounted for anything at all today. What's the point of saving and building up? I don't believe in living for the day generally. I believe in living for the year. I like the philosophy "live as though tomorrow exists" rather than "live like there's no tomorrow." Because when it feels like tomorrow's too late, I just feel terrible. The worst is when it feels like yesterday was too late. That's the worst. Like when you messed up the day before, yesterday you couldn't do anything about it. That's the kind of atmosphere that's descended upon me.

I want to live as though tomorrow I have another chance. But when I feel like I'm living like there's no tomorrow, I quite properly feel like I'm dying. So many things and situations in life can get me down, but it takes one of them above all else to get me down, and that obviously has to do with love (or lack thereof) and sociality (or lack thereof). Without that little problem in my life (my lack of a social/love life), well, the others would be trivial. But pile them on and you get a nonabelian hellspace.

(I can't believe I'm being self-respecting and making a metaphor as mathy as that. Forget pithy, mathy's the new in.)

I'm going back and adding parentheses later like I'm writing a math problem's solution. Or proof. It's probably more the proof mentality, actually. Like I'm trying to prove something new to myself. But here I don't know what it is I'm trying to prove. Or I just forget.

You know, proofs are hardest to prove when you forget what it is you're trying to prove. And I do have to remind myself of these things all the time. That's why I'm writing this. What I'm trying to prove to myself, or prove that I can prove, is that there's another tomorrow where I have another chance. I messed up today but I can sure try again. The odds were biased unfairly against me and I deserve another chance.

And you know what? Math has put something else into my mentality: the idea that everything in a math problem you see in a textbook can be proved with stuff you've learned previously. So to a certain degree I don't want to learn anything more, because I'm under the subconscious impression ingrained on me by math classes that it will just get in the way. But this is no good if I want to succeed in grad school. It's funny that I'm thinking about this now. Maybe I could write another personal statement and point this out about grad school research and my frustration with math at the undergrad level. A frustration which I haven't realized was there until now.

It's not just a frustration about math, though. It's more about frustration with what I've produced, in general, in life. It feels like I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. My show felt like that tonight. My lack of romance felt like that tonight. My lack of party felt like that tonight. And my tired main playlist of songs feels like that tonight. Even this blog smells like that tonight, but I have a feeling right now that I'm finding something more than I found before.

And I've got to learn. I've got to learn. I'm hungry for it. I want to try new things, find out what the hell else it is I can learn to solve novel problems in life. Because they're there, and you can either go about denying that they are problems or go out and solve them. I choose the latter.

But now I have no choice, for I must sleep. That's the worst.

Loaded love

I guess working in my room just isn't working anymore. I'm in Eaton Computer Lab and already I feel much better about life.

Tonight I'm going to come up with a list of grad schools that I might apply to. Got a few hours.

I'm a little concerned that my work schedule hasn't changed since high school. I always, always, always work better when it's past midnight.

I wonder whether differential geometry could be considered a subset of functional analysis. PROBABLY NOT! I wouldn't know. Both of them would probably be interesting fields to me. Mmm, analysis.

I'm rather tired from the gym, again. Again, what's the point of physical fitness if it doesn't net you any hoes?

YOU'S A HOOOOOOO

I'm so tired. I'm going to bed grad school. Knock on wood. Let's get this going, 自分.

It's Sunday again?

Can we skip Sunday?

Sundays make me feel bad. I almost never do work on them, and yet everyone else spends all day doing work on Sundays. Again, God enforces the Sabbath on me on Sundays. It's just true.

I have something due tomorrow, and I guess I have to do it. Well, I will probably end up finishing it before class from 3 to 4:30.

Or "go to Armatich and Pulaski, to touch some big ass."

LOL, funniest song ever.

bored......................

Spearheaded steering wheel

It may look cool, but once you grab the top and try to look backwards it doesn't feel cool.

Energy dissipating. I'm home, not at Tufts, it's a Saturday night turned into a Sunday morning, though you won't know that for another few hours. "Eight hours of work, eight hours of relaxation, eight hours of sleep." One hour of getting ready for work, eight hours of work when the sun's up, the sun's gone, one hour to drive home, six hours of tasks, eight hours of sleep maybe. The average working family would see that more likely. Sometimes I wonder why we don't all just try to move as close to the equator as possible.

I wonder what I'm gonna do. The instant I realize that I want a way of life that isn't completely arbitrary--the instant I make that abstract generalization about my thought process, I turn around and want my future to be arbitrary. I don't see myself as possibly being as driven as so many people I know. Still, I don't like my lack of drive. But I know I can drive hard, and when I do, you couldn't say I'm not driven.

And yet I don't want to narrow my horizons. I guess you could look at it like trying to get through that warp in Sector X in Star Fox 64--- that's a bitch of a warp to fit through, and completely arbitrary, but the instant you get through it you get a huge reward: Sector Z without Kat there, which makes it much, much easier to get the medal. That's really cool. The whole game is really cool.

I guess I haven't really been powering on my intellect too much this year. I want to blame the world for not inspiring me, but what good is that? Just makes me look like an asshole. I've been searching hard for something and haven't found it. I know part of it is love, part of it is something else too. I've been trying to get by with the minimal (amount of whatever) and see how far I can get, but that was just a bad idea. I think I did learn something in the process, though, other than that it was a bad idea. One, that it's possible but not completely desirable, and two, why am I trying to be someone I'm not? Answer: because that's part of who I am.

And who everyone is. For instance everyone's so easily controlled by the media that the least I can do to object is to avoid it generally. But man, it gets confusing sometimes.

You know how it became cool to wear socks that go below the ball of your ankle and it just stuck? Well when I was aspiring to be equally cool I didn't know it had to be below the ball of your ankle, as opposed to right above it. What's the difference? How about my version is comfortable, the other's not? And how arbitrary is this?

I'm out of vocabulary, and I need more. I guess these past four years have been four years of translation, more than anything else. From math to English to French to Japanese to music and just not much otherwise. Still that's enough to get a 620 on the GRE verbal, so whatever. (Why can't my GRE subject math score be 620, though?) I did not learn a single English vocabulary word in college and I can't resist saying that. Math vocabulary doesn't count.

It's weird what I've become. I don't feel completely different from my old self, either. Not really. Sometimes I wonder where I've become too mature, and where I haven't matured enough. It's a hard question to answer. Then again all of the questions that I have to answer nowadays are hard (except in comp sci) so I guess I should try to obliterate the question like I have to for abstract algebra. Some of those questions are just fucking boulders. Especially the ones that want you to specify an isomorphic group and don't tell you about their secret desires.

I can't wait for Christmas.

戦って 戦い続けて 行くことは つらいでしょ

I'm tired, nearing the end of a long week. But it isn't over yet. I guess it'll be over Saturday.

My title means, "to attack, to keep attacking, and to keep going... that's hard, isn't it." Well, that's almost the meaning. It's a song lyric from a free Japanese song called "There is..." by raggio dorato. You can find it on muzie.co.jp. It's a wonderful track.

But man, I'm tired of listening to the same old things. Either that or I'm admiring how prolific certain people's music libraries are. If that makes any sense. How extensive, rather. I, myself, feel like I spend all my time listening to the same stuff. Which is true, actually. It's been that way forever. How else would I become so familiar with the song "Wowowee" enough to lay down hot DDR steps if I didn't listen to it 48 times (I swear that was the number)? Oh, high school...

Not sure where my route will lead me. I guess reaching for the top can be done later. That's the lesson Pilates has taught me. Keep stretching regularly and eventually you'll get there even though it seems like it's ingrained in your nerves for that to be permanently impossible. It's not. Weight training might be teaching me the wrong lessons, though. I don't know. But I feel like I've spent most of 2009 obsessing over things physical, physical pleasures over intellectual ones... I guess that's been my big flaw recently. But I had to solve the puzzle of the heart, or at least resolve it. Just like that one guy laid out a proof of the Poincaré Conjecture with things that he couldn't prove within it. (That's just about the one article about math I have read recently.)

I'm discouraged, I guess. Slightly. And distracted, again. But man, does the brain eat energy. No part of us is as powerful as the brain we've got. No wonder it drains food faster than anything else. I guess I shouldn't pretend like I'm a cheetah, or a lion.

My perfect pushup grips lie dusty in a dusty shelf that doesn't really spice up the room. But without it, I'd feel a little more insecure than I do now. And the same goes for the pushup grips.

But man, I wanted a better body. And I've got it. Of course you can guess 50% of the reason why I wanted it. That 50% has not reaped its expected rewards. So it goes. So I wait until the next morning. Nothing else to happen this late at night. But the night is my domain.

Where's my codomain?

Haha, I guess you could say I cared too much about my image when really I should've constructed myself to look at the whole codomain. Enough math jokes.

I can't wait to go home and feel comfortable eating chocolate chip cookies again. Because I won't be eating them by myself.

It's so weird how those things have to do with each other, and no, this has nothing to do with my weight. More to do with the caffeine, and not frequently staying up late hanging out with other people here. What's the point of the caffeine I guess is my question.

31

When I came to college, I decided that I was going to live a life for myself that I was able to live. No more trying to meet unreachable expectations, none of that. My success rate tends to be a curve that looks like 1/sqrt(1-(x-n)^2), with n being the moment where success most needs to hit. Aw, hell that's not even the curve I want. You know, the one that is flat pretty much except at the origin, where it dips off suddenly and hits bottom? Put in a -n for horizontal shift.

This is not a good point. I can't really work because I fucked up. And I know I'm behind on things even though I tried my usual to get ahead. Trying beyond my usual would probably end with me getting hurt down the road. And nowadays that "down the road" generally means whenever I'm put to the test. Then what's the use of preparing?

The professors I talked to when I told them about how I did on the GRE didn't really know how to make me feel better about it. One said nothing and the other just said something about which colleges I could apply to. No "it's okay, you've worked hard and they'll see that," nope. I still don't understand what the GRE was testing, aside from utter ridiculousness. I think that goes for both tests. My mom was like "that's not the score for November," oh, that's encouraging too. I only answered 4 more questions that time; what are the odds of doing better on that?

If I do better I'm gonna have to thank the swine flu.

The three other guys in the music lab are from Pakistan and Iran. I wonder what they think about this country's indifference.

That has nothing to do with anything, sorry.

I've started celebrating Christmas early. I've been listening nonstop to a great Christmas song I found by Elise Estrada and been playing and singing Christmas songs by myself on the pianos downstairs. Lonely Christmas, but I get the feeling that a month from now there might not be much to celebrate. I remember when in Japan Baskin Robbins had a Christmas ice cream, and my friends and I ate it together (well, we ate different things), Wadey, Trey, Tiki, Katie... oh, memories.

It was almost Christmas when I left Japan. Almost. So close, but so far.

At least don't nobody know how to be myself. I can say that. Could use a few more compliments about that, though, make me feel better.

This has not been a good 2009. Good thing there's no more than one.

Living fast

That was a nice party! I actually enjoyed it. Nice and chill, no dancing with people or myself, just chill.

Also I went on Facebook today to check if someone told me something about meeting to practice something. Nope. I probably should've asked her though, as we've gotta get going and she doesn't have much free time. Man she's intense.

But so am I, to a certain extent, just not as much. I just worry about everything and then do it at the last minute. I should stop doing that

Parties might help, actually, if they're as chill as this. The beer was very, very good too. I want to know which one it is so I can drink it more often (instead of Guinness or some shit, ugh)

Let's see what I'm going to do - submit a form to be a grader, another to be a tutor (I know, I know, and I know... that I shouldn't do both.), work on my final music project, work on my not-final music project, do abstract algebra homework, study the ishh out of abstract algebra, do my comp homework, grade engineers' math homework, go home. I keep wanting to type "go home"; I just want it over with. Well, it will be over and done with no matter how much I worry about it so I guess I'll just do it. I will just do it.

Oh, and compile a list of grad schools via investigating them all. And do my degree sheet. And successfully go to an appointment to get my photo taken 45 minutes after pilates on Thursday. That's not good. How will I eat lunch and after that not be sweaty and disheveled?

Yeah, difficult week ahead. It just means I have to do work. I still should be able to go to the gym on Friday again, which was the major success of this week. Getting ripped is hard business. I fully acknowledge the possibility that by the end of this school year, I will not be "ripped," or "ripped" to the extent that I want to be. Next semester it will take some dedication, as I don't plan to take weight training. And at this point I probably can't get into one of those classes. Lemme check to see if the classes for this semester (this fall, the one happening) ended up being full or if people dropped (because I think several did)... Nope, all closed, wow. Not good for next semester if I end up wanting to go. However, since I want to maintain my Monday-Wednesday(-Friday) schedule, and weight training is only Tuesday and Thursday next semester, that's not gonna work.

Anyway, I've got to say I think I've accomplished something this semester. Not everything (certainly not a good score on the GRE, or a boyfriend [I'm taking from the Japanese 恋人ができる, which literally means "be able to [accomplish the fact of having] a lover"]), but I've done a fair amount. And that's good.

I guess more than anything, without someone who will constantly pat me on the back, I've got to do that myself now, which I'm doing. The guy I like from one of my classes does that all the time. Some might find it cocky, but I don't think he's quite there. He knows where he's overstepping, but he's got the personality where he knows he's also got to not be afraid to encourage himself. Out loud.

And that's great. More of us should do that, so that we all do it.

。。。かもしれない。

-Facebook + face + book

I've subtracted Facebook from my daily equation for now. It's only been like less than a week but it feels better already. I do know I could be missing something "important" but I hope whatever it is it's nothing that can't wait a couple weeks or however long. This basically stems from me not really wanting to see the replies to my last post in my complaint over healthcare legislation passing. It was 2 long and 2 AM meaning that I'm not really sure what I posted and it probably didn't elicit the most sympathetic replies. In any case it gave me an incentive to avoid Facebook in a somewhat cowardly fashion. But really is it something to be afraid of?

Either way I think Facebook has not been the best for my self-confidence and subtracting it has added some of that self-confidence back. That's the face part. Plus I've had a real hankerin' to read a good novel lately. Once I find one I'll tell you, mysterious reader.

In any case, I haven't done any homework since Tuesday when I rushed my abstract algebra problem set that was suddenly magically due on Tuesday and not on Wednesday. I don't know how that happens but that happens when you try to live life fully. I guess I have to put homework into the equation somewhere.

One thing I have readded, however, is Super Mario World. Ever since one of my housemates brought in his Super Nintendo and played that shit, I decided I had to get on that myself. I beat the game on the way to Springfield (where I stayed for a night at my friend's to try to beat the GRE, which didn't happen) and back. What a great game. Of course I skipped the hard parts but hey who's counting. Recently I just completed what's that Bridge level called (the one where you go from the Vanilla Secret levels) while getting all the dragon coins. It took me like 35 tries. So hard. The level never stops moving and there's some seriously close jumps you have to make. In the process (because this is ironically how the level works) my lives count went up to like 52.

What have I been doing since abstract algebra went away? Well, abstract algebra (ok, two of the six homework problems, the ones I found easy), math grading, cooking, piano, music (oh I forgot I had a homework project in that), and not really much apart from that. There's only so many hours in the day.

I won't list the things I have to do. That's too many and I'll get afraid of them.

But now I would like to read a really good book. Any suggestions? (Any comments, first of all? I haven't had any legit comments. One spam comment.)

And I don't want any sarcastic, pessimistic shit. I read too much of that as it is. Yes, I like Vonnegut and Hemingway, but I encounter enough sarcastic, pessimistic shits as it is every day (I think more at Tufts than at home, but, and this is of course, much less than in Paris) that I'm not really interested in that in my reading right now. I want a fantasy novel (that doesn't name everything like Llelewyn or Agnrothe) or something that's just a fun adventure. With beautiful descriptions and a low amount of brain-straining vocabulary. Sometimes I just want to [can't say this online, sadly] the people who rub their vocab dick all over me in the literary stuff published on campus. But some of the stuff in the Observer literary issue was very good. Some of it made no fucking sense, why did they even publish it? Maybe if they get famous someday it'll get analyzed. I guess there's always that to hope for if you're a misunderstood artist. Aren't we all misunderstood artists?

This guy was really drunk so when I showed him where the bathroom was he failed to turn the light on and (at least he hit the water in the bowl) pissed with the door open. I was giggling because I realized I could've stayed and watched and he probably wouldn't have realized the difference between that and waiting for someone at a urinal.

I'm glad I'm not partying right now. Where would I be Saturday morning? Not awake. Add alcohol to me and I can't sleep. At least, not alone.

The calculus problems wait for me to solve them. They're so easy, relatively speaking. The abstract algebra problems also lie in wait. That's what office hours are for. Except I have a Putnam problem session I'm supposed to be going to. They put me on the Team, bad idea.

If I think too long about people who are partying it makes me want to lose it all. I'm not sure what that means.

Oh well, at least my GRE General scores are good. I wonder when the subject test scores come out except I don't really want to know. It makes my stomach turn a little. Why couldn't the test be as easy as the practice test they uploaded?

I think the gym work is starting to show, at least. It's the one thing I'm fully satisfied with here at Tufts. Even though it hasn't done too much for my chest, it's done a lil' lil' and I like it. Plus knowing how to use the machines is amazing knowledge to have. If only I could have a benchpress partner, or a general gym partner. That would make things better. But of course it's Tufts so people are "always working." Except when they're partying.

Sigh, only Tufts. Thank God I'm only taking two classes next semester, one of them pilates. I contemplated signing up for differential geometry so I could have something to flush the abstract algebra from my body but I don't think I'm going to do it. It meets on Fridays. Why??????

Not that I didn't get up today at 11 AM so that I could finish grading for my 1:30 PM appointment. Oh well.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving. And I think I'll have something to be thankful for - that I've held up despite this. All this.

A different look

I visited my closest friend since childhood over the weekend. I needed a place to stay so that I could take the GRE in Western Massachusetts (Boston's schools' spots were filled) and he turned out to live only 10 minutes away from one of the testing centers. Of course I didn't know that when I registered; even then I wanted to spend some time with him and I thought this'd be a good time. So yeah.

But I've become realigned. It might be also because of getting the swine flu (supposedly) and because the GRE is over, at least for this year (but why would I need to take it again?), but I think it has the most to do with finally visiting a friend that I haven't seen in ages (3 months is ages to me - but has it been longer? I can't recall). My best friend. And when you get this old you realize that the word "best" shouldn't put the best friend above others or, and this is important, others below that best friend. But it's a certain relationship that just doesn't reproduce itself later on in life with anyone else. That's just the way it is.

And I realize that.

--

I also realized something else, lying in bed. People have told me to shoot for the sky. I've just been shooting for an atmosphere where I don't burn. And I like it that way. I can get pretty close to what they call the sky, and then just miss - but that's part of who I am. Almost amazing is good enough. The trouble is, what goes up must eventually come back to earth (or go soaring away), and unfortunately I can't say I tolerate burning temperatures any better than most people. And I won't come back down charred up.

I'm up at 4:10 AM on an early Monday morning again. I couldn't sleep. Can't say why it is but it might have something to do with not having eaten enough. More than likely it's because of my usual lack of social interaction on Sunday. This has been a common theme throughout my life and 2009 especially. Tufts has failed me for Sunday interactions. Man, I need to talk to the people in the band Taking Back Sunday - if you're named like that, you have to make your name into a mantra.

Speaking of meditation I've been playing Game Boy recently. I honestly don't have enough fun in my life - the failure is that I've been trying to keep things at an even level of fun, but that level of fun has been below the proper threshold. Man, I'm talking like Galen. That's no good. So yeah, I brought a box of my Game Boy games back with me and I beat Super Mario World on the trips to and from Springfield. (That's not that hard - know where all the secrets are and you won't lose too much time. You get to skip all the annoyingly hard levels that follow the Vanilla World. Fucking bridge zone)

I realize that I've lost my spirit to study somewhere along the line and it hasn't come back. Maybe it will. I just think that what I want to study now I can't study in school - non-Keynesian economics. Thought too radical for a typical university. Hence I'm probably going to continue with my plan to only take 2.5 classes at most next semester (the half credit being pilates, which meets twice a week as opposed to the cheaper Tufts Student Resources course that meets only once a week), probably 1.5 or even 1, and maybe work two-three jobs (more likely one) and just chill out and enjoy life for fuck's sake. Lord knows that after I graduate I'm going to be going somewhere else, so let's just enjoy being here for a bit.

...
How on earth did that fucking enormous bug get back in this room?

Les chants qui ont bercé mon enfance

When I think of the songs "qui ont bercé mon enfance" comme chez Nerval, I think of Timbaland. I was half-dozing-off in the car when Timbaland's new song came on, "Morning After Dark." It features French singer SoShy (who really fits the song well) and Nelly Furtado. But Timbaland's beats are hypnotic. So relaxing to doze off to. Just like when I was a kid, and I would doze off as Aaliyah's "Try Again" came on in the car. That was (and still is) one of Timbaland's best productions, no, works. He's an artist. He does have the tendency to sound the same, but he's very careful at what he does.

Yeah, Timbaland's the author of the main song that rocked me gently to sleep when I was a kid, Try Again. And "Morning After Dark" reminded me of enfance tonight. My childhood.

5:13 AM

My body started doing some really violent things internally when I tried to go to bed at 2 AM. I guess this is what you get when you nap from 4 to 7:30 PM.

The GRE is on Saturday. Again. I got a 620 on the last practice test I did, which is okay but not good enough for me. I know I can score higher, if I only started studying. I hope this isn't gonna be another disaster. I guess I don't care enough.

That's not really true, though. I do care, but it's just like, how on earth do I memorize everything I've ever learned again, on top of regular schoolwork? That's just not going to happen.

I guess I'm gonna sleep until about 1:30, hopefully. And then I'll call my parents and ask them to take me home so I can be somewhere where the temperature doesn't swing so wildly thanks to a heater that doesn't work.

The ResLife-police are gonna come in and inspect the rooms of everyone here from 1 PM to 4 PM to check about "safety concerns." It's like, no thanks. They better not complain about where I put a copy of the Tufts Daily to insulate my house more, because they failed at sealing the walk-in closet properly from the outside. It's going back up there whether they like it or not.

Ugh, I guess I can't go home right away. I forgot that I have to also grade homework and get that into the math department, and finish my Math 145 problem set (late) and give that to my professor. Plus I'm going to miss a class. Missing 145 is a very bad thing. I don't expect the one person I'm facebook-friended with in that class to actually attend the class, so I'll probably just bring my camera to class on Monday and ask someone if I can snap pics of his or her notes. By the way, my camera is not doing well anymore. It does not know how to properly absorb energy from new, fresh batteries. I can only imagine the ones at Soria (the １００円 shop) not working either.

Well, I guess this means I'm staying here for one more night... this blows. Maybe not. I don't know. I don't think this is the (non-swine) flu but does it really matter?

Illness notification form is a go, I guess.

It is 5:26 AM. The few birds remaining shiver in the branches of the tree where they sleep.

Running away from MYself

This is one of those rare times where I run to everyone and no one seems to be able to help me. Then the only person I can run to is my destroyed, destructive self.

I hate Sundays. It's always Sunday that this happens. Nobody ever helps me on Sundays. Is this God calling me again and telling me nobody can help me except God? That's great.

It's nice to believe in something that confirms a complete disbelief in people, though.

Right now I'm not sure I believe in men. I certainly wish I were straight. Oh well, then things would be too easy and I'd probably be one dick of an individual. I take pride in being gay, but when I say that, I mean I take pride in getting over the shitpile of shit you face just necessarily from being gay. The fact that 90% of men will not be attracted to you just because of your gender outright. That's the big one. How about the fact that 80% of men don't want to hear any talk about it? There's another big one. And around the world, probably 50% of them wanna kill you.

You know, I never had too much faith in men anyway. We're insecure shits, we know it. It's in our blood, it's in our hormones. They go fucking berzerk and there's nothing we can do to stop them except acknowledge that they're there. And all of a sudden, it becomes such an important realization... even right now as I'm writing this.

Whoremones.

I'd have more faith in myself, but you're asking me to do shit I've never done before. And large magnitudes of that shit. How do you expect me to cope? Don't tell me to plan in advance when you know I'll never learn unless you show me how you're planning for something in advance. I learn by example.

Not enough examples. Not enough vitamins.

I'm trying to cultivate my own, for others to follow or to avoid. The hardest examples to cultivate are the ones you make for your own understanding.

Hmm, why do I like math? I like it because it's simple. At least I find it that way. Yes, it's deep, but a simplistic deep. I like that. I'm arguing in my personal statement that I like math because of its being the fundamental for so many other things, but it's more because of its fundamental simplicity more than anything.

Why couldn't I just write that? Because it's hard to build an entire essay on that idea. Or prove that you could help people based on what you find so good for yourself. So you write about how you help people in more directly obvious ways.

But never forget this-- the way you help people the most is by being yourself. Yourself unashamed, yourself as you really are. And that's the study you should be into the most. I know that's what it is for me.

I wrote this over the course of a couple hours intermittently. After a bit I cleaned up the intro of my personal statement a little bit, now I'm going back to clean it ALL up and then put a conclusion. It needs to be more cohesive, but I'm sure cohesion can find itself in the essay pretty readily.

Freewrites cohese better than anything anyway. What they want isn't real cohesion.

Music

I'll be uploading some of my music here, stay tuned.

Here's the situation

Okay, here's the situation.

I've got effectively a week to start and finish a scholarship application for grad school. I will effectively have no input from my advisor because at this point that's not possible. Plus, I have to study for the GRE. I'm so fucked.

Romantic life: nonexistent. That'd be okay except it would be nice to have a human teddy bear (with less hair) that I could hold onto at any necessary moment right now. I just have to remember though that that's what friends are for, not just "boypren."

Homework: deadly abstract algebra, plus I can't solve one of the problems I'm supposed to be grading. Oops!!! I put in the correct values for the solution the Integrator gave me and it's giving my rocket a negative distance traveled. great.

Health: Okay, but if I don't sleep well tonight then it possibly won't be okay. Undergrads (according to Galen, not grads) all around here are sneezing up a cyclone.

GRE study: Have not restarted. Need to do that!!!

T-Pain: music soothing as ever

I don't understand how everyone does this. I don't think it's sustainable to imitate everyone either, considering that this is swine-flu season. Maybe I should just go to bed. Yeah right. Five more math problems? That's not a good idea. And none of the ones that are going to my professor for grading are done. Or really gotten anywhere on. I hate this class's homework. The textbook is trash as well.

I wonder who I could fall in love with here, specifically who wants to fall in love with me but who I'd also be equally interested in. That'd be great to know. Anytime's fine. I gotta just keep telling myself that anytime's fine, even though I just made the comment sarcastically.

Why is everything so fucking hard here?

新たな自分

毎日新たな自分が作られる。

昨日のような理解でなく、僕は今日どんな性格かどんな人か聞くことだ。あの髪が長くフランス語でも日本語でもどっちでもしゃべるのが好きだった去年の僕は、同じこと感じてた？１３ヶ月前の日本語がずっと速くしゃべれた僕は、今日の僕に対して世界を理解するようにしたことはどう違ったのだろうかな。。。こういうことを考えていて、書くのだ。でも日本語で説明するぐらいで大変になっちゃう。。。（笑）

実は最近、短めに髪を切ってもらったが、あれはジムで長い髪がちょっと迷惑になったせいだ。でもそれだけでなく、僕の想像した自分の体に似合う様子も変わった。つまり、自分をジムに行く人に比べて、「さ、そのような人になりたいね」と考えた。だけどね、僕は本当にあんな人になることができるか、あるいは何でこんなことを思うのかな。。。

さらに、いつも頑張っている自分はいつまでも頑張るのかな。。。

Desperate 10/20/09

It's midterm season. It's also fall, though. I don't like the fall at all, highly preferring the other three seasons (and summer most of all). It's beautiful, sure, but if it's gonna be cold, stay cold, so that I can feel the coldness in all my heart and rebel against it, well, wholeheartedly. How's that for an isomorphic sentence.

There's this one abstract algebra problem I can't solve and it's driving me nuts, just like most of the class generally does. I'm not good at this (relative to the other areas of math) and I don't have the energy anymore to be single and a mathematician at the same time. That's essentially what it comes down to, and I'm glad to admit it. I remember so many of those grad students getting married when I visited UChicago and Northwestern last summer - why do you think that is?

As far as getting married in grad school, I highly doubt I'll be that successful. If that's a definition of success. If I'm with some guy in Illinois of course it doesn't matter, unless he or I absolutely insist on getting married in Massachusetts or Iowa, or some other state where they pass laws through the courts nowadays. Haha, I'm so skeptical about government and protest movements nowadays that it relieves my skepticism on everything else. At least usually.

But yeah, this is getting tiring. I'm currently waiting on someone to stop leaving me hanging and be brave enough to call me back, whether his answer is "okay" or "no." He has until Friday, or probably tomorrow at which point I will probably call and smooth talk, which I may or may not be 上手 at. Either way, I'd find it amusing if he answered. It's like I don't exist. No-- it's like he doesn't exist, that's the right answer, but for some reason it gives me an awful feeling like I don't exist.

And this is the big problem that I'm stuck on that prevents me from attacking easier problems, which might lead me to never end up solving any of the later problems, and then solving the big one when it's too late. This is isomorphic to my abstract algebra homework. Why won't this fucking statement get proven? And yet I know the problems ahead of it are totally manageable... just like my NSF scholarship app.

Someday, I'll learn.

Out that sofa jump

You remember how 3 years ago, they weren't playing I Gotta Feeling every 3 seconds? Instead it was Sexyback, or Hips Don't Lie. That was what we jived to our freshman year of college. And that's how it rocked.

That year is long gone now, the year of innocence and swellness. Of Primary Source upheaval yeah, but still, on the other hand, a half-snowy Christmas? I can't remember. It was a nice Christmas regardless.

Tufts isn't the same now. Gay freshmen seem to have it much easier now, as the last three years alone for some reason have channeled a lot more lgbt acceptance than I could've foreseen. Maybe they haven't, but I think they have. I don't know why, or how. But I feel pretty good out and about here. It's all I can do to prevent myself from being blatantly obvious and/or horny and wearing my favorite blue pin on my favorite blue jacket, that is, the pin with the two male bathroom figures on it holding hands. That shit could get me laid really fast, maybe, or demonized real fast. Either way, I wore it at the coming out day rally, and I hope the guys I wanted to see it saw it. They probably didn't.

I'm waiting on someone who won't respond to a friend request, he's probably embarrassed about what went on two nights ago when we met at a dance, and wondering why I'm not. Haha, truth is, I was embarrassed right after it for like 5 hours and I'm not anymore. He was drunk so of course it didn't hit until the morning after, if he remembered. Damn, I hope he remembered.

That's at the top of my mind right now, and everything else is buried and refuses to rise again. I don't want that stuff to rise again; scholarship essays, math homework that won't get solved, all of that is a group of voracious zombies hoping to devour my essence in flesh and in spirit. And here I sit listening to another pop song hoping it will ease my nerves. It won't. Only sleep will.

Sleep, though, is hard for me to approach. Just like a limit you can't find; you know it should approach something, even if it's infinity, but you can't ever approach it yourself. It approaches it without you. Your job is to hop onto that fucking arrow onto the infinity sign, or to zero, or to wherever the limit takes you. But you can't slip into the arrow's dimension, and it fails.

Then the arrow enters your dimension, you devour it, and you dominate in the world of sleep. The arrow twists, floats off, upward, upward relative to two vectors somewhere, the cross-product... gone, the arrow takes off, and this isn't even in three dimensions or in seven dimensions...

Math dreams like these I never have. Only dreams of other things. Math isn't behind the dreams, I don't think. Maybe it's buried somewhere in there.

Dreams are things that are so lonesome if you invent them consciously. But when you're really alone - no one can dream the same sleep dreams you dream - they're never lonesome. At least not for me.

Maybe none of this is true, though. But in a dream world, true and false dissipate.

Do you ever feel like...

The wind whirrs too machine-like for you to feel human?

Your cries are just dust in the wind?

Wind is just dust in the world's howl?

Melodramatic words are necessary?

That's what I feel like when I'm told I cannot access the music lab because it is Columbus Day.

Never seen the lights go out on Broadway

One of Billy Joel's earlier singles was entitled "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)." I was reading something some fan wrote about the song online. He or she talked about how Gerald Ford refused granting funds to "save" the city, and talked about how despite Ford's cold-heartedness, NYC survived and thrived again after all. I only realized either this or last year that maybe it was partially because of his refusal to grant funds that NYC started prospering again.

That would probably be the better lesson to learn from the song. Now apply it to Detroit and California, and to fat-ass companies that need to go bankrupt so you can save the efficient parts and throw away the bad ones. But that's too controversial.

I wonder

I wonder if you have to learn life's most important lessons yourself. That is, unlike what most people say, the set of life's most important lessons is not equivalent to the set of the ones you learn yourself. But you have to expand the set of lessons you learn yourself so that life's most important lessons become a subset of it.

Anyone currently taking or who has never taken a course involving set theory will hate me for writing this, including probably this sentence.

Personal

I just looked at the men-seeking-men personals on Craigslist, thinking that they would partially be dating personals. Nope. Nooooooo way. Nothing of that kind.

And man, how can guys our age be so horny, and willing to take such big risks just on that basis? I don't get it. Thought it was a little sad. Though maybe I just find that anonymous online shit much more dangerous than other people do. I guess it isn't necessarily more dangerous than some club.

It's hard to not be anonymous if you're gay, though. I mean, being attracted to the same sex is part of your personality in that case anyway you split it. So to hide that part... is like concealing your own name. Murakami (Haruki) runs a motif of namelessness through a large part of his early works and that was part of what got me hooked on his novels. In Japan, namelessness in a novel is a huge elephant in a tiny, Japanese-size room: over there, after you and a person have introduced yourselves to each other, you address each other using the other person's name. Murakami's basically calling attention to the question of how much you can really introduce yourself to a person, and to the fact that even after you introduce yourself to someone else, in a sense you can't claim to really "know" that person. But of course that's only a small part of it, since otherwise his stuff wouldn't be so mysteriously intriguing. Ordinarily I don't tell people to read shit because I hardly ever read what people recommend to me, but Murakami's stuff is a must. For a great, heart-stopping short novel, try South of the Border, West of the Sun. For something equally great and slightly longer, try Norwegian Wood. If you want to go straight to his epic masterpiece, read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I don't really recommend the Kafka-prize-winning Kafka on the Shore, but it's not a bad novel; it's certainly not his best, though. Unless you have to be the overly esoteric "I'm reading this one first because it has to do with Kafka" intellectual, go with any of the other three I mentioned or After Dark which is slightly shorter than Norwegian Wood.

I think part of the reason a lot of present rights movements like the gay rights movement don't have as much success as they potentially could is that they do a poor job of abstracting their arguments. The reason I'm not into gay literature or many other things associated with gay rights (or with even just being gay) is that being gay is a hard enough distraction in real life; there's no reason why I'd like to dwell on it too much in my spare time. A lot of gay people do not want to stick out or flout "gay pride," finding the latter awkward and as for the former, well, what is the gay rights movement for if not to stop the societal fate of sticking out like a sore thumb for being gay? Anyway, I'm being too wordy and have probably lost the logic I was following.

But yeah, one thing is that "gay rights" is a misnomer in itself. "Equal rights" would be better. Hell, "human rights," which is why I think the Human Rights Campaign or whatever has such a great name. Because that's really what it's about. The right to be treated as others are also treated, and to be left alone when it's really not someone else's business.

And, yes, "individual rights." But what I like about Murakami is that his novels don't put the individual in a battle against his society; they show the individual lost in his society. And society reduced to the level of other humans floating around you, nothing more.

Self to note

Note to self: Always gotta be outgoing and believe I'm outgoing, and try to be outgoing, no matter what I actually turn out to be relative to other people. Or else I and other people suffer.

What?

Looking back = good. 4 year cycles.

Back before I went to high school, I used to pretend like I was really interested in making games and participated in the "klik" or "click" community that made games using software published by the British company Clickteam, including Jamagic (dunno if they ever continued making that, or if ANYONE really used that) and the program I used, Multimedia Fusion (MMF). These were meant as a kind of WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get; back then EVERYONE knew what that acronym meant) tool for creating applications, or, more specifically, games. Instead of wading through lines and lines of code and testing it out all the time to see whether what you coded really did what you thought it did, MMF provided you in a somewhat Powerpoint fashion with a frame for each level (or different screen, as it may be in something that isn't a game), and you would input the "code" on a separate screen, where basically everything would be written out for you in English. This opened up doors for many people who just weren't enough into the coding part to put the time into it necessary to get all the way to making a game (seriously, with MMF you can make a Pong game in about 3 minutes from scratch if you're really fast).

Anyway, I never really made that many games. I started a decent amount, but in some of these I never got past the menu screen, and by the time my hard drive crashed and I lost all my files, I didn't really care enough to get them back and just decided that maybe some other time I'd try to recover them. Then my PC, with apparently that hard drive (?? it was physically damaged, worn out; probably I had two hard drives and just moved all the stuff that could be salvaged to the other one), and probably newly wiped (ok then that other hard drive was probably wiped), was sent to the Philippines to be used by my relatives in probably Calbayog. Lord knows if it's still there.

But yeah, I pretended like I was really interested in making games. In reality, the social community is what amused me the most. I was the number-one poster on the "Total Klik" forum, where I had 1500+ posts, until someone else somehow bypassed me later on, and he actually made games a decent amount. That was probably back in 2002, if not earlier. I liked that forum, packed with elitists as it was, but yeah. I learned never to insult or criticize the elitists, because that was sure social death, and the social part was all I cared about, even though this was just the Internet. (They're real people, you know!) Bad games would come out that were great graphically but stupidly hard with pixel jumping in platform games (e.g. you better land on this pixel or else you lose) or... well, the problem was generally the difficulty, and if you criticize that then your skill gets criticized and no one listens to you. I just wouldn't review those ones. Also, graphics were overvalued and the people who made them the best generally got the best reviews. I, myself, never had graphical talent and stuck to my guns of not making anything anyway.

Man, that was a great time I had in that community. Making games and/or talking about it for, well, about 4 years. And then I got into DDR.

That's the community I'm currently in now, but in case you haven't noticed, DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, if you didn't know) is fading into obscurity as Rock Band and Guitar Hero take over. More specifically the community I'm in is one where you make DDR steps for whatever song you like, and play such DDR files by other people. It's been a lot of fun, but it's getting a little old. Especially since I'm not really an active DDR player, since a really good DDR game hasn't been released since two years ago. A lot of people will disagree with me on what I just said, too. Communities of people who just play DDR are very hard to find whereas a few years ago they were all over the place.

But playing DDR was my main hobby during high school. I didn't have as much time to do so as I would have now (if only I could do so with my metal pads at college), so I didn't really consider it my main hobby. But then I started really getting into making my own DDR steps. This isn't as simple as it seems. It involves cutting songs to a shorter length, using math knowledge to do that and other things, and decent musicality, as well as an eye for visual aesthetics on the graphics that accompany your file when you present it to other people to be played. And of course you have to be fit enough to play the steps you put down.

Wow, what a great thing to write about!

But alas, I didn't realize that before I had my college applications come in. It's seriously something I had to learn basically from scratch on my own, as no really good tutorials were out there, and though it's easy once you get the hang of it, it's not really clear to the observer how to do it, or to some people (especially professional dancers) what on earth the aesthetic is. But there is an aesthetic to it, and it's a very unique aesthetic. It's an art, and if it weren't I and so many other people wouldn't have ever been so into it.

Why didn't I write about that when I wanted to get into Columbia?

I didn't recognize the hobby for what it was at the time. Truly something unique, hard to explain but man, at that time DDR was still a growing trend, and one that made its mark in schools all around the country who implemented it as part of their phys-ed curriculums. That was great. Er, that would've been great had I stopped and thought about how much it suited me. But nah, I wrote about piano instead of this, something I had gotten into pretty much myself. And yet it was my relatives from the Philippines who for some reason sent me a (bootleg) copy of DDR 3rd Mix along with two crappy pads from all the way over there, and that was the start of something I couldn't have foreseen, no way no how. What a lovely hobby.

But you know why I didn't write about that? I hadn't discovered myself yet. That's it, really.

And so things go like this:

4 years (5th-8th grade) - click
4 years (high school) - DDR
4 years (college) - my own DDR files

What will the next 4 years bring? What do I have to recognize, now, so that I don't mess up a college admissions process?

Haha, probably nothing. That's the great thing about graduate school. And furthermore, even if this were a different world where grad school admissions were as bizarre as undergrad admissions, I think I've come to understand myself a lot better since being free of high school. Yeah, "free of high school." I said it.

But yeah, and if I were to think the above were just simple 4-year cycles independent of all other influences in my life, that'd be dead wrong. Pretty soon the cycle system is gonna break. Still it's bizarre how we basically divide everything into 4 years up until this point (dude, 5th-8th grade were on the floor above 1st-4th grade at my school) and expect people to work in an environment free of this arbitrary organization immediately after... it's weird.

I guess it's why the Catholics were so determined about free will.

Black and white

The screen displaying the words I'm typing is mostly white, with a white rectangular input box surrounded by a huge white box framing it. The border of the screen is black, because the cover of my laptop is black, pitch-dark but shiny black because of the reflection of the white flourescent light above it. Yet I feel like this desk is dimly-lighted, because even the white wall behind my laptop seems dark, not gray, but dark white. Beside my laptop where my hands are resting and working simultaneously is a black book that lies closed upon an open journal, the paper a dulled white. I have to read that book, whose pages are a slightly less dull white, but instead I am looking into another shade of white. Were it not for my purely brown desk, this would remind me one hundred percent of my room in Paris, with the wall pitch white and my black laptop with its screen frequently displaying white. Here, at least, there's a window to my right. Look out of it and you see pure black, except for a lone light in the distance, which is nothing but... white. On the wall I have affixed six papers with various kinds of information, all white with black teext. Only the silly putty used to attach four of the papers is yellow. The tissue box is yellow, but my view of it is obscured by the laptop, so most of what I see is white. The small stereo that my uncle gave me a couple Christmases ago, I think the one before college, perhaps, is the same shiny black as my laptop is. An Abstract Algebra textbook, black, but at least buried under books with yellow and blue covers, a picture with a purple frame, and a book called "My Mother Is the Best Gift I Ever Got," whose cover is a faded pink that looks rather white. The modem for the Internet connection in my house is on my desk; to an ant it would look like a skyscraper behemoth. To its left is another shiny black object, this time the router. It at least has the decency to flash blue. Oh, and my mug is black.

Somebody give me some color!

Smile

Sometimes it's just the simplest thing to do. Smile.

That's what my aunt tells my grandmother as she eats her oatmeal or whatever that chocolate-looking liquidness is. One, two, several times. Sometimes it's just what I need to do more. And what we all need to do more.

Like it does for my grandmother, it'd keep me healthy. I guess I just forget sometimes, or I think it's not honest. But a smile can turn things around, make everything much better.

There's not much to say. Just smile!

Thursday energy

Siphoning itself into the night, my energy departs from me, including the energy I need left to figure out what will get myself into bed without my stomach complaining at me like it has the past few nights. I need a food to fill it up but that won't be too easy or too hard to digest. Maybe I don't need to eat anything. Maybe I need to refrain from eating! Whatever, this conflict having happened before I don't know why it's come back, but it has. The worst problem, though, is the fact that I recently have not gone to bed before sunrise. No incentive strong enough to prevent that. The irony is that the incentive will probably come immediately after my summer class ends. But anyway, I'd like a food that has very little sugar but that still has a lot of content, that is, that's sufficiently large to give my stomach enough to be satisfied yet won't have enough energy in it to keep me awake much longer. As in, virtually anything in the fresh pastry section of any Japanese convenience store. What the hell, America? Apparently we give Japan 80% of its soybeans nowadays, so what's preventing us from using some of that stuff ourselves? THAT'S how you solve the problem with our food being a) bad and b) completely unhealthy. Use more soybeans. Hell, if we don't grow red beans, we should be. But if we are, we have no excuse for not making an pan (アンパン) all the time. The problem with eating that stuff, though, is that the shock of having that much red bean in my body (I'm very slightly allergic to soybeans) takes my stomach about a day to get used to. So I need to be eating that stuff fairly regularly in order to enjoy it without any displeasure afterwards. Meaning that if I go into Porter Square for an pan, I should get like six of them and put them in my refrigerator and hope they'll last.

And yet that, as it'd be for any perfectionist who can't find anything he knows he's made perfect recently, is not the only thing keeping me up. What can put me to bed more easily? Well, probably having a topic for my Japanese history research paper due whenever is one. I noticed about four people stay later today because they wanted to get their topics approved the class before the original due date (which is this upcoming Tuesday). Oops. I should've been working on that before, but you know me. Or maybe you don't. Well, I put things off as much as possible. よくこんなことを後回しにするね。(I just learned that phrase today from a Japanese song; I'm proud of myself for that.) And there's yet another one.

But I also put too much on my plate. And I've picked up the mentality (from certain people, well, a certain person, and it's not his fault) that I have to eat everything on it. So I try to do that, and I end up having a lot to shit out later. (You knew I would choose this image, not the ones that are all for the squeamish.) That's the story of things, and the story of America. Well, Americans can have bad metabolisms too, and that's another problem. This country...

At least that's the current story of America. Way back when (in the 70s) it was different. Now people are probably gonna look at us badly for having an overweight surgeon-general. What's the surgeon-general's job anyway, though? I don't know. If it's to suggest regulations on doctors, then I've got an easy solution for you, which is to follow the Constitution and take away that power, but nobody wants to hear that one. If that's not the surgeon-general's purpose then there's no easy solution.

It's hard to support positions that differ from what most people see or from the status-quo when you're just as ignorant as everyone else. Then again, I do believe we're all just as ignorant as everyone else in that we can only know a finite amount of information, no matter how infinite our power to memorize can seem. Still you've gotta fight to know.

And hopefully, that's still the story of America, or if not, it can become the story again. Fighting to know rather than to kill, or to continue past mistakes just to cover our collective ass whose size has been insulted. (And in terms of our influence abroad, rightly so.)

I don't want to end this freewrite on a foreign policy note. I do want to end it on something relating to myself. That's how it started and that's how it should end. But I don't know what to write, and that's cool too. So I guess I'll just leave a period here, and I'll make it open in the middle。

Santa Claus is coming to town!!!!

They always had Christmas in July specials on Disney when I was younger. I figured it was because there was nothing else going on in the summer, not too many holidays (NONE in August!), and really you can't keep your audience in a summer lull, or else they'll find things to do outside. Especially if they're kids. (Hopefully that'll still be true, that one of our American values is that kids can always and should play outside no matter how much we modernize our society.) But yeah, a summer lull.

That's what's wonderful about summer. If this were any other season, I wouldn't be studying shirtless right now. But I am, and it doesn't feel strange; instead, it feels at one with the environment. My shirt is in its proper place: discarded. This is summer. The wonderful time to relax, throw back, and relax again. Frisbee, pizza, summer songs, echoes of your voice as you yell it down the deserted street. The street where you can't understand why it's deserted, because who wouldn't be out like this on a summer night? Mosquitoes, yeah, just run around! I guess when you grow up you start taking night bedtime seriously? I would think that growing up would mean being able to go out all night and do what you could do as kids at night when you've got the chance to do it, having worked all day while the kids played. Well, I haven't been working all day at all, no, not anything close to it, but this seems to be the typical story among people I know. Work, go home, go to sleep, work, yeah. And why that during the summer? Every waking hour should be spent appreciating the best, the freest of the seasons.

I just wish that where we live wasn't so infested by mosquitoes and other anonymous flies; I'd love to swim through the heat of the summer darkness, first parallel to the plane extended from the flat sole of where my shoes were positioned, and then down my driveway, down into the cul-de-sac, and then up, above the construction (why are they building new houses when nobody can buy them?) and off to the sky, to Japan and back, and then once more to Japan and back, and then to four years ago and back, to that summer where I first learned what Japan was all about, then to the Atlantic Ocean, alongside Salisbury Beach, Crane Beach, Good Harbor Beach and Rockport, and all along Cape Ann and down to Cape Cod, back to where my grandmother used to live, back four to six more years to when she and my grandfather were still alive, and back to that point in my childhood where I would play with the new cheap (but infinitely golden in my imagination) plastic toys my grandparents had bought me and placed in that magical cardboard box, that magical cardboard box. That was always there... and forward, forward into time, forward into this present where I sit at my computer, and then back into my soul, the gust of wind returning like Japanese representatives on the Iwakura Mission in 1873 telling all their friends and superiors about their trip to Europe, about the wonderful things they saw and how it's still better back home anyway.

Someday I will have a dream like this, perhaps. About a whisk of wind that leaves my soul, departs, sails away, through the four dimensions I know, and comes back to me, and rejoices and fills my body with a vigor I haven't known in any sense, and relaxes with me, within me, all this before I wake up.

What a wonderful summer.

Bored aggravated degravitated

It's hard to say I've never been this bored and frustrated in my life. Actually, no it's not, that was every Sunday in Paris. But I'm both right now.

One of my ways of relieving these feelings (it doesn't help otherwise I wouldn't be on here right now) is by throwing away stuff and deleting stuff. I wish I could just delete my whole fucking computer, only that would satisfy me. Then I'd suffer the consequences later. But imagine how awesome it would be if you could delete the Recycle Bin, never mind the nerds who already have.

This isn't how summer is supposed to be. Summer is supposed to be hanging out with your friends all the time. But my friends are all gone or working, I don't have anyone to do that with. Summer sucks like this.

July sucks like this. I hate July, for some reason. Just like March, July and I don't get along, as well as things like Wednesdays. Oh look, today's Wednesday. Sundays fucking suck too.

I have a class to do reading for but really? really? in the summer? No.

I've run out of original new shit. That's my real problem. It's a real problem too. Next thing you know I'm gonna be looking for a boyfriend. BEFORE the end of this month.

Uh oh, here it comes...

Strength

Strength is something you don't know you have until you exert it. True strength, on the other hand, is the ability to know you're strong... what am I getting at here?

Run

One of the reason I do almost - oh, wait, most people won't necessarily know this. Yeah. When I'm on my computer(s) I almost always do everything from the Run menu. Well, I mean, I do things like this: I hit the start key, r, and then type iexplore google.com and hit enter. Or just google.com and hit enter. There are times where I type iexplore dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sinuous or for whatever word whose definition I don't really know.

One of the reasons that this is appealing is that I like the concept of running. But not like actually going running. I stopped doing this after coming back from Paris because I realized running is actually quite boring and not that healthy. Either I'm breathing in gas exhaust or the ridiculous amount of shit in the air - nature shit - that comes from the surrounding forest and swamp land. I found an alternate exercise anyway, with the pushup grips. But something's missing.

DDR's missing. I'm not finding it as fun as I used to and that's because of a lack of good new shit. This is a big problem. I'm also not producing it as easily as I used to anymore, which is puzzling and not fun.

I know I've titled a blog post "Run" before, and I know it's probably not on this blog, but if it is, well. There you go.

But I like the concept of running. Of being free from everything, of being nothing but movement with the wind. Like a feather in the floating world. Well, I wouldn't use the words "floating world"; maybe the "swimming world." Swimming as a notion is more peaceful. But I'm talking about running.

My world is a world of mixups and contradictions, too, just like mixing images of swimming and running, two things that you cannot do at the same time. They say that you can't listen to your favorite two songs at the same time and enjoy it, but what if the songs are two Nickelback songs? In any case, I am a walking contradiction. Most people don't get it. My friends do. Colleges didn't. I'm a "various strokes" kind of guy, different strokes for not two but ONE folk.

Hey, what you know about that? I know all about that...

I'm up until 4:30 AM again, aggravated. At myself, and at my current situation. Nothing's easy anymore. Every single thing requires I do it 100% perfectly or else I'll undergo severe annoyance. That's not just growing up, that's the approach of senior year. GRE Math and General GRE, my question-mark interest in Japanese (which leads to the JLPT and continuing the language class, though I guess I don't really have to study it seriously this summer; instead I should chill out and give myself a fuckin' break), grad schools grad schools grad schools, what to concentrate in for grad school (they don't call it "major" in grad school, which is kind of like how you can use the word 専門 (senmon) for specialty, concentration, or major but 専攻 only applies to college major), more lists and lists like this, on and on and beyond, I could go on but I won't. Hmm, that's basically it isn't it? It doesn't sound that bad I guess. Then there's the current class I'm taking, I guess.

I intend to go to the beach no matter what after I wake up.

I'm listening to the music of longing that I listened to during sophomore year, which was a year of longing. It wasn't too long of a year of longing but it was a longing year nonetheless. This list of music includes "Shawty" by Plies, "Bed" by J.Holiday, "Kiss Kiss" by Chris Brown, "Me & Mr. Jones" by Amy Winehouse, "What You Know" by T.I., "Hypnotized" by Plies, "Elevator" by Flo Rida, "Daylight" by Kelly Rowland, ... If you look at this list, it's not obvious how these songs communicate longing. No, I communicated longing through these songs. What I hear in all of these songs (and in all of T-Pain's songs, notably) is an undercurrent of longing, for instance, found under the raw masculinity of Plies's ridiculously ignorant-sounding voice. That undercurrent was so real to me, because I never really allowed my longing to express itself outwardly to the extent that I feel it. That's my problem, since that's still true today. And it's true most nowadays in terms of romantic longing, as it was sophomore year.

I'm venturing into unknown territory, and I'm not exactly thrilled to be doing this at a time when I need to solidify a switch of life for after-undergrad. But I need to do this, because if I don't I'm going to fail.

And that's not an academic fail, that's a me fail. Actually, probably the best translation from what I just said into English is that if I don't start looking around I'm going to fall.

How do I ease up enough to look around and step into the hot jacuzzi of sizzling romance? Ugh, it's definitely not by listening to Nas as my music player's shuffle sets me to... Yeah, I need to ease up. Cure my everpresent nervousness.

And it looks like daylight...'s gonna make me sleep shit again... man, I can't make it through the night anymore. I don't know why.

Social issues, our generation, this generation, and beyond

As I watched Bruno yesterday, there was one moment in the movie that made me more uncomfortable than the others. Now, when I watched The Hangover, the worst movie I've seen this year (out of 4), the whole first half of the movie made me more uncomfortable than anything in Brüno. But in the latter, anyway, the point that made me more uncomfortable when I watched it was Ron Paul saying about 4 times things like "the guy's queer," "more queer than anything possible" or something like that. It hurt a little to hear that. Plus this was a day where I was irritated for seemingly no reason, probably because the caffeine acted as a depressant or something we don't realize, or because I didn't really want to be in Medford where there's tons of people, I dunno, but yeah I'm a little gotten-to right now. And I don't want to say that it's this. But this is the key that's gonna let me out, with the 下記 (below-written stuff).

Ron Paul is my favorite political figure. There is no one that even comes close to him in my mind. I agree with him on everything, period, relevant to politics. Including the Defense of Marriage Act. Opponents of Paul claim that this support is hypocritical to what he says about states' independence, and is unconstitutional with respect to the fourteenth amendment. That makes no sense. What DOMA protects against is gay couples getting married in a state that recognizes gay marriages and returning to their home state and asking the home state to pay the benefits that straight couples get from their marriage contracts. People argue that this is hypocritical, that the state is refusing to acknowledge the contract. It's not, because the contract is between the couple and the state where it was signed, NOT the state where the couple actually lives. In other words, it's the state that agreed to the contract that has to pay the benefits (and of course I don't see why it should have to if the couple isn't living in the state). It makes no sense and isn't constitutional to force the state that didn't agree to be part of the contract to give up the money.

This is what I call cheap activism, or better worded, dishonest activism. Like it doesn't make mathematical sense for a theorem to be true in all dimensions of a space just from being true when reduced to the case of the first dimension, it doesn't make sense to say that legalizing gay marriage in one state (where it wasn't even properly legalized, through the LEGISLATURE) is the equivalent of legalizing gay marriage in all states. It's totally dishonest for heads of gay rights organizations to claim this, or just uninformed.

Now there is a separate issue with the Massachusetts lawsuit claiming DoMA prevents Massachusetts from giving benefits to gay couples. If that's actually true, then that is something that needs to be fixed. Either that or Massachusetts is being sloppy itself and doesn't understand that it actually can do what it's doing. But if they're federal benefits, well... I've got news for you, but nobody should be getting those benefits: where does it say in the Constitution that the government has the right to award money to groups based on marital status and not to others? And that last thing I said is something Paul would agree with.

Anyway I've digressed a lot.

One of the biggest social issues of 現在 (genzai, the current time) is homosexuality. This was not so much true during the 60s. Yes, we're 40 years after the Stonewall riots, but before those there wasn't much attention that I know of on the issue. Now, in the US at least, homosexuality is one central social issue, with issues on homosexuality being heavily contested, although I'm not sure how seriously debated. This is an important point to souligner (emphasize). Whereas our generation almost takes it for granted the idea that homosexuality is normal. (And note that my statement also only applies generally in northern regions and among people who are more liberal or politically correct or who go to schools where they're expected to conform to people that are liberal or politically correct.) Those who take it for granted will necessarily have a lot of trouble understanding a) people who don't like or understand homosexuality and b) people who can understand the existence of people who don't like or understand homosexuality. I fall into category B and nobody has ever given flack to me on this knowing that I'm gay. I know, however, that such people might exist (and that I might be wrong on the last part).

When I generalized about our generation, what I said's probably not right. I tried to come up with another generalization about our generation, but I really couldn't. Because it's not right to make such generalizations, and in any case, they aren't true. But on the social issue, I think there's a great divide.

What I'm continuing to write is something that's very important for me to understand, given that I'm gay and my parents didn't like what I told them when I came out. We haven't spoken about my being gay for four years, almost, and that's a long time. Since then I've been trying to grow. I know that some things are best thought over before they're said, and I know that my patience on some things hardly ever wears thin. In fact, sometimes it's so thick and sloppy that it trips me over and I can't get out of it. But I think the letting the issue fall silent is a good idea, and best for me. I need some more resolution within myself. And what I'm trying to resolve is the idea that my parents couldn't understand me being attracted to men and not women.

I mean, that's all it is. And I have trouble preventing myself from dodging the issue, I have trouble pinpointing what it is I need to do. But charity begins at home, and home begins at understanding, so I can't really begin to talk to my parents in any charitable or kind spirit about this without some understanding first. Everything starts at me, because this conflict is fundamentally about me. It's not about some lofty ideals and which ones to choose, it's not about the social situations that we each grew up in, it's about the understanding that each one of us has as individuals, and I will not concern myself over their understanding before I get my own straight. Haha, "straight."

Here's what I've grown to get. One, I am masculine and will always act like it even if people see me otherwise. Two, the definition of gay is "attracted to men" and that's the only one I'll accept. Three, I value the values of my father and mother, more concretely my father's because it's much easier to understand what they are, and more intricately my mother's because they are also useful and artistically fruitful. Man, what am I even talking about? Three, I love my parents. I don't see why this should have to conflict with that, and they love me, I know. I've had a really good life with my parents and I don't think anything should interfere with that. I need to know why they don't understand me. In mathematical and musical terms, I need to prove the title of a song by the Fresh Prince.

Ron Paul has helped me do that, a lot.

Let's keep in mind how old he is. He's 73. That's really old. Wow, something just gave me a really warm feeling in my feet.

It's understanding that I can be loved even if I'm not understood. It brings a slight, undetectable tear and an invisible change of emotion to my face.

What you say. My explanation:

If you look at Ron's comments on homosexuality on Youtube, it's clear that he has reasoned (remember Al Gore's book title An Assault on Reason? No such assault here) out the position that homosexuality isn't wrong. But there's obviously a conflict here, between reason and belief. And it's fundamentally a conflict for him, not for us, not for the political sphere. That's something we all have to understand. Here's his conflict as I see it:

He obviously goes to a church that isn't very liberal, and has trouble with a liberal interpretation of the Bible. He stated that he and his family left the Episcopal Church because it was getting too liberal. If you have trouble with this, well, that's all good, but it's a separate issue from the political sphere and has done nothing malverse (did I make up that word? is it French?) to his political positions. That's something I respect beyond respect. I digressed again, argh. The conflict is this: one between what he's figured out via reason and what he's learned and been taught through all these years, what religion has taught him, what society has taught him, what the South has taught him, what EVERYTHING he was used to has taught to him. Voltaire wrote something called a Traité sur la tolérance (Treatise on Tolerance) and he was extremely tolerant to pretty much everyone... except homosexuals. But I have the utmost respect for Voltaire, as an artist (writers are artists, see Gérard de Nerval who was a journalist who badly wanted to be as free of an artist as the writers around him but was always constrained by his own inclinations towards precision and conservation of old details derived from his journalist mentality) and as a human being who made his mark on the progress of the world.

The fundamental truth here is you can't apply the same expectations that you would to friends your age as you would to your parents, your grandparents, an old man in Lubbock, Texas, or Voltaire. My dad always told me this - you can't expect the same things out of older generations that you could of present ones. Jefferson was a slave owner but I still have the utmost respect for him for the good things he did. Finally, hearing Ron Paul loudly state how Bruno was "queer" four times hurt, it really did, and he's probably instinctively homophobic, but he really doesn't want to be. I know that by things he's said before. And his way of solving the gay marriage rights issue is the only one I will accept for gay marriage to progress as it should in our society. Otherwise, with all this business of the courts legislating as they aren't supposed to and trying to get a federal amendment recognizing gay marriage (that part's not feasible anyway), expect a backlash like that after Reconstruction or after Prohibition that'll turn back everything the gay rights movement has tried so hard to fight for. And we've already had that backlash! When Massachusetts legalized gay marriage through the courts, conservatives got scared that similar things could happen in each of their states and got amendments passed against gay marriage that'll take years and years to unroll.

One thing that draws me to Ron Paul is that he seems like a better expressed version of my father. Yeah, I see a lot of my dad in him. And what hurt the most about my attraction to men being rejected was that my dad didn't understand, for some reason I knew not to expect such from my mom. But from my dad that was the ugliest of ugly surprises. Now I understand it. The thing left is for me to understand it instinctively.

For my dad it's possibly too late for that. He's 63. Ron Paul's 73; for him it's definitely too late. But if I can get my veins to believe it, my blood, get my heart to understand what I know my brain will always run around like girls running around a mulberry bush singing ring-around-the-rosie acting as though it doesn't understand it when it does but is just frustrated about my heart... if, only if, I can get that to happen, I think I might be really beyond happy. Is that my nirvana?

It's one, at least. There isn't just one, though, and I don't think of my future in absolutes. That's another thing I've learned to start inputting into my heart, like a new chip on a good motherboard. Should've figured that out in Japan, but I didn't, and I went to Paris. Should've figured this all out all along, but I haven't, and it's been four years since I last talked this over. I guess the time is now, whenever "now" is.

We'll see what comes up. But for now, one step is resolved.