We're the lost dreamers, the last dreamers. We're the ones whose hearts still beat out of love, not fear. We live under the stars, these concrete boxes are not for us. We remain alone in every massive crowd, and when the electricity flows through us all only we can feel it.

I know there are more of us.

Why can't we find each other?

I'm here. I keep waiting. Come find me.

If only I could

step outside

 

evading the lights, of course

and find a place far away from those wanderers

to sit and watch the world turn

 

A little SL-induced rant.

Sweeping generalizations have no place in discussion of a specific situation.

You cannot make an overarching statement such as, "Attractive people always get promoted first," and expect to apply it blindly to every situation you come across. Sometimes, you and the rule will be wrong.

Now, if you were to throw out the name of a black man and the name of a white man and tell me they both lived in Birmingham in the 1960s and then ask me whose life was better, I wouldn't be able to answer. And then you'd look at me and say, "But that's such an easy question." And I'd look back at you and say,

"Okay. No one can deny that the black man hasn't had an easy life, what with him being paid a whole dollar less per hour at the auto factory where he works, and not even being able to take breaks in the same room as his white coworkers. And even now, he's still scarred from the stories his grandma told him as a child, the ones about watching her childhood best friend's father be lynched in his backyard. But at least he's inherited the family house, small though it may be, and his wife brings in some money too with her sewing. They're raising their daughter alright.

Now, the white man may have a house three times bigger in a gated neighborhood, but he's about to lose that just like he lost his job, and his wife, and his kids. Because white picket fences couldn't keep the flu out, and now he's afraid he has it too. There's nothing more tragic than a man left all alone to confront his own mortality, especially when he's afraid he'd done injury to God in his younger, carefree days.

Which one has it better? In this case, I think that's an easy question."

Now, if you had spoken of the general population of blacks and the general population of whites, that would certainly have been an easy question. No one doubts that segregation affected blacks much more adversely than whites. Yet attaching names that tie to individual people can reverse the conclusion, because while an institution deals with masses, each individual in that mass has his or own set of circumstances that are shifted at the forefront when the situation changes to center upon them.

And regardless of what the trend may be, you don't know shit about an individual case unless you know about the specific situation. It could well be a white man who had it worse during a time of segregation, it could be a thin girl whose self-esteem takes the greater hit from modern beauty ideals. Even when "better" and "worse" are measurable, for example in economic terms (just don't get me started on how you cannot determine how much emotional pain a person does or should experience), it is impossible to know exactly which scenario is the most problematic when all you're given is an identity and a generalized rule. Yes, maybe one side is favoured institutionally or has privilege, but that doesn't mean individual variances are now nonexistent and every member of a class suffers the same amount, in the same way. There are always exceptions to the trend.

Let's stop passing judgment on whose issues are worse, better, or more deserving of redress. Suffering is not a competition.

Did you ever walk up
to the edge of a cliff,
stare into the abyss
as your mind wonders if

you should take one more step
further into that night?
Well your mind says you won't,
but then, this all is your life,

your life,
your life.
This all is your life.


Damn it, TSO...

Such clarity.

Someone help me not get caught in the pit of this-has-no-meaning again.

I should really be not so awake

Random freewrite from English class.

... for everything that rises must converge...
[Pierre Teilhard de Chardin]

Isn't that a falsehood of physics though, as everything moves toward chaos, moves toward disorder? The second law of thermodynamics, that the universe's default tendency is toward randomness? So how can the ascending few converge against the nature of their own physical existences when even the most minute particles cannot? How can they ever be united? For at the top, one is always alone, drifting, unable to attach, unable to do anything but look down at the masses remaining below in pure envy for those who did not dream, did not seek something better that never came? How can one aspire when this is the result?

But nothing ever changes.

NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

Undine - Arthur Rackham

"Damn Victorians," my Fairy Tales professor would say.

Your obligatory incoherent rant.

I. Do you ever get the feeling that everything is so contradictory
I mean, how can something or someone appear one way but be so another?
are they all just lying to me? Or is it something more...
and I mean, we're all the same, but how is it that they're the same as me?
and really there is no truth at all
(besides that I'm a solipsist worse than Descartes, but really that's all I know)
but I mean, how many can one person hold?
and why am I worrying about the nature of humanity, I have much more pressing concerns like my physics grade and tomorrow night's plans

II. and I come to write, but the concreteness of words dissolve the iron resistance of that feeling

III. If you've been here for long enough, you may notice that certain posts are conspicuously missing from the sidebar, don't try to find them because they're done with
and it's too bad you still won't forget

IV. and when things are over
they're over
and it's kind of sad

unless it's not

V. but it could just take me, right now
I really don't understand why it hasn't yet

source

My life keeps turning into Tegan and Sara songs.

Bluebeard is a FedEx truck driver.

Isn't insomnia great?

Damn you fucked up circadian rhythms, it's 5 am, shouldn't I be tired? Even Emilie Autumn only mentioned being up at 4...

Wh- what is this feeling? I haven't felt it in months...
I don't know...
It's peace of mind.

The first bird began to sing at 4:24 am.

Want to hear some life-changing music? Listen to MCR:

Because metal can't be beautiful.

 

no, symphonic is not cheating

I suppose it says something that I'm completely unafraid to go out and wander unfamiliar streets in an unfamiliar city past dusk, after all the shops have closed and the streetlights have turned on, alone.

(Or that I'll publicly challenge a conspiracy theorist standing on the street handing out anti-CIA propaganda.)

Just call me the Ladye of Shalott.

Insomnia.

who needs sleep

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8473389@N03/5191948277

when you're here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13382424@N00/4946934291

but there are so many people outside

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8749778@N06/2353500128

that I'm stuck here again

but I really just want to wander


http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/6577429683

I don't like spending this much time inside.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/45651718@N08/4699775305

Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed, but still I am the same.

You can't run and you can't hide from the demons eating you from the inside.

Anyway, I'm sitting on the step of Wigglesworth H at Harvard and typing while listening to noise off the street. No, I'm not locked out, I'm just sick of being locked in. Thank you for your concern.

I love it here. Everything is so much more human, and it's impossible to feel like you're not. I really am learning here. I've become that person who sits in classes they're not even assigned to just because they're interesting.

You know, the best things about knowledge and imagination are that they keep you company when you're virtually confined in a box. Boxes include, but are not limited to, dorm rooms, lecture halls, classrooms, houses, any place with four walls and a ceiling.

Why do I need an escape from my escape?

Here it becomes circular. I'd like to talk with my philosophy professor about the nature of escapism. I think it would be an interesting discussion.

This is why I can't become attached to anyone or anything here (sorry). I don't want to make it harder to leave when it's time to. I don't want an anchor anymore.

Day by day, I fight the fever alone.

all the bright lights in the world
cannot illumine what's burnt out in me

... And here we are.


 
Funny thing is, I actually used to be able to do that.

Oftentimes a person who posts inspirational cliches is just trying to convince themself.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

I laugh at my past because if I didn't, I might cry.

"Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!"

I've learned that it's not usually worth sharing your feelings because of how fast they can change.

Why can't I have been born free.

My internal monologues are poetry, the kind that disappears when I open my mouth. Now all I have is a handful of useless metaphors, would you like to hear them anyway?

We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.

Anyone?

"Music is the only academic subject that combines and reinforces all the other academic subjects. Why are we cutting it in schools?"

#CUT4BIEBER?! What the fuck is wrong with people?! Really, the concept that young girls with loving families and less than two decades of life experience behind them will compromise themselves physically and psychologically as a "sacrifice" to offer their beloved idol? This is something that happens in primitive, extinct societies. Not 21st century America. I can't blame the music itself, but the sensationalism surrounding teen stars like Bieber eats at the souls of naive young girls. I blame our fixation on our perfectly airbrushed stars. And my goodness, being into this is considered normal?!

Rock out and stay sane. I say this with pride. \m/