Sometimes I feel like our lives are essentially a repetition of the same moment, or feeling, over and over again. Maybe not repetition exactly, but like everything we do and experience revolves around that one sensation or intangible memory. It shapes everything we do, it's imprinted in our gray matter like our fingerprints on blank generic human flesh, and it becomes us and makes everything in our lives our own. It's impossible to escape, and probably virtually impossible to pinpoint exactly. It's hard to make sense of, but it can't be ignored. And sometimes I feel like the only way to be genuinely satisified with life, and still live productively and grow, is to recognize the necessity of finding variation in repetition. Like tracing the circles that emanate out from that intangible fingerprint memory.

There's never anything to eat in my house. I mean there's a ton of shit to eat, but none of it is ever what I want. We have Baked! Ruffles, a pineapple, real Canadian maple syrup, Saltines, tri-colored couscous, and assorted spices. Tasty.

Whenever I come home, it's like okay I'm hungry, let me cook something, and then there's a bunch of random ingredients but nothing that can come together and make a meal. Which actually kind of reflects the general family dynamic. I did not start writing this in order to make that observation.

Tonight I drove around a lot with Brittney and we listened to a shitload of music. I liked it. The great thing about our friendship is that no matter how far apart we go, we always come back to an undeniable connection. It isn't just about understanding the other person, it's about being more ourselves when the other person is around. It's about the conversation going anywhere, and bringing out things into words we wouldn't otherwise. At least that's how it is for me. That's what friendship is to me - it's about having things to say to the other person, having your world make sense when they're around, and being able to bring things back to your relationship with them that wouldn't totally make sense otherwise.

I feel like the 2.0 version of myself. I feel good, I feel like a complete person. I feel like I have things to bring into this world that are real, even if most people can't see what they are. There are some people who can, and those are the people I love.

Until I came to college, I was the kind of person people either loved or hated. I was very, very particular about my friends. It's absolutely a good thing that I'm not as closed-minded as I used to be, but my sharp ability to judge (and usually judge correctly) is something I'm glad to be getting back. I like to call out bullshit when I see it - it's kind of my thing, I have a knack for it. You might call me a bullshit connoisseur. Or you might call me by my name, which sounds a lot nicer...Anyway, something I respect about myself is my ability to call out bullshit when I see it but still get along with virtually anyone. I'm a people person and I love humanity, even if I don't respect most people. My chest fills up with something between love and pity when I hear hope-filled speeches about the future of mankind. I believe in our general capacity to Do the Right Thing, even if that belief is usually bittersweet. Or just bitter. Something I respect in other people is when they can call out MY bullshit, as in when they don't see me as a god, but still respect me and generally understand me as a functioning being. Those people are hard to come by, but when I find them, I don't let them go easily.

We can't expect or predict anything.

Love is not about possession. It's about knowing yourself well enough to have true faith in another person (who knows themselves as well), faith in the knowledge that you will both continue to grow, but that you have the strength within yourself to renounce your claims over that person and their growth - faith that you will always be able to support and comprehend the person they are continuously evolving into. Possession seems sweet but is ultimately bitter. A person has to know themselves first, and always consider their own continued growth a priority that will never end. And love has to know that it doesn't have to disappear to let a person grow - once that person lets possession go, and feels a weighted center that is purely their own within themselves, if the love (and the beloved) have grown with them then the love will continue to grow.

This is what we've always known and have never had to act on. This has never felt more true.

And there is nothing I could respect more.

I mean fuck it. If we don't grow up now, then when?

The poetry at the Bowery on Saturday night sucked. It was disappointing and frustrating. My nerves were heightened and ready to feel, and the bullshit just hung out and fell flat on its bullshit face. And then going to dinner sucked because I don't want to waste my time with people I don't feel a connection to. Kim and Madeleine are great. But I spent dinner texting friends from home because we had something real. I don't want to be in New York anymore because it's sensory overload. Everyone thinks they're interesting. Everyone thinks they're creating. It's better to have come out of Bel Air because I had to work for it. You'd think there'd be less to define myself by but it's actually more because there was no one to copy, I had to look at myself to get the words out and I didn't feel like anyone got it so I had to fight harder for my words to make them come out stronger so people might understand.

Like traslating yourself into an imperfect language that people are destined to misinterpret, but they might understand the gold at the center of the bullshit.

...And that said, I hope this doesn't suck. It will probably end up as multiple poems, or at least a better one:

I do not believe in signs.
I do not believe in numerology, astrology,
or the existence of an ancient script that can turn bullshit into gold.
There is no way to transform mediocrity into the shining prism at the center of a diamond.
There is no way that a middle-aged man with sagging eyes can look at my tiny solid thighs on the street,
and tell me I am beautiful
because not everything comes out on the surface.
There is no way for me to translate from my intimate internal language the reason why I curve the way I do,
the reason why the green in my eyes is so hard for most people to see,
but
what I can tell you
is that I no longer believe that I can rewrite a more beautiful version of myself
just by looking up and down the infinite maze of perfectly planned and articulately angular streetcorners that
even in the rotting abandon car lots of the Bronx,
where the wooden rowhomes are climbing down dirty green vines to prickle themselves away into the poisoned ground,
even there this city does not come out to me like home.
I do not believe the women who walk down St. Marks with children's costume jewelry sequins stuck to their face like it will make them pretty
or the young lanky boys who come up like they have something to say,
and force words to rhyme without a purpose.

Like the sagging men who say hey baby, you lookin' beautiful tonight
as they eye my thighs like some strange white-meat chicken dinner.

I have lost my faith in New York.
There is no answer here, because here
even the few who feel beyond mediocrity are constantly prodded and pressured by external interpretations of things
they only need to read for them, to make themselves a copy
but

I have faith that my voice can ring out golden and true among bullshit
because
it wasn't easy learning to speak in a land where the only voice was synthesized angel choirs
and screeching girls around youth-group puppet shows,
boys grunting over the sex of awkward chalkboard sweat and vodka with Gatorade
it wasn't easy, it came out hard like
an ancient intimate script from the hands of a divinely fevered monk
like the need to translate an internal language into plain, mortal English for a world destined to misinterpret
in the hopes they will, at the very least,
see the flecks of green in my dark eyes, or maybe even the shining prism at the center of the diamond.

The reason that having a roommate is so stressful, especially right now, is that when you're around someone else who you can't treat like a stranger or totally ignore you have to make room for them. And having to constantly fucking make room for someone in your personal psychological space is stressful because it makes you emptier, that part of you is vacant because you need a space to live without considering other people because two people can't occupy the same body. And by body I mean body, I mean a room that is supposed to be an extension of yourself where you can sleep and think and live and do everything having a body entails. College means never being alone, and I fucking hate it. My mom loved having a roommate because she's terrified of her own mind, of the things she might love or hate that she isn't supposed to. I am not a pussy like that. It isn't a problem with my roommate now, she's actually great as far as roommates go, it's just how things are. I need to be alone, to have my own space, to be comfortable and act like myself.

I know Mike is right because he can come into my space without invading it, without making me feel like I have to act differently to accommodate him. I genuinely think the unadulterated version of me is too much for most people, but we bring each other out, we do each other good. But this past year I've been constantly living like there's someone else around. I mean there is but it's a mindset too, and I can change that part at least.

I like to live by my likes and dislikes. It isn't a purely carnal thing - actually, it hardly is. It isn't about consuming. It's about tasting and either rejecting or taking in what's on the big appetizer sampler plate of my surroundings. It's about the power to do that, and the genuine desire to Do The Right Thing.

So today I realized that I haven't been enjoying college, like at all. As not insightful as that sounds, it's actually a huge deal for me to see that, because on paper I look great and it seems like I've made all the right decisions. I thought I was supposed to play by the rules, but what the fuck, I never have so why would I think to start now? And sadly enough, it's the typical bullshit too - I got too ambitious and I lost sight of myself. Last year I joined the crew team because I thought being busier would make me happier, and I wanted to get out of my internal bubble of ridiculousness, but it just meant not getting enough sleep or enough time to actually think about anything. It meant becoming an exhausted robot. And I didn't let myself quit the team because I'd already made the commitment, but to what? It's not a meaningful commitment if you feel like death whenever you think about it. This year, I've thrown all my energy into getting a 4.0 because I thought law school would make me happy and make me the person I want to be, but it won't because that kind of answer can't ultimately come from an external force. "Proving people wrong" and "showing them I'm better" are the emptiest fucking mantras I could live by, because clearly my problem was with myself, if I thought changing the way other people saw me would fix things. I would look at beautiful girls with beautiful clothes on and then look at myself and see that I could truly be that - beautiful, smooth, simple, correct. But when you hold yourself to an external standard, ultimately you're going to become as shallow as it. Cliche but true - I've been living like life has an ultimate ending point, which obviously we all die and that's the end but let's think a little more creatively and constructively here. There is no objective external standard of success to hold ourselves too. I never cared if other people thought I was crazy for what I said. I've always known that, so how the fuck did I forget?

The weather today is beautiful, and I am such a sucker for beautiful weather. I always have been, because there's a difference between measuring yourself purely by objective or external standards and gauging yourself as an entity that relates in a certain individual way to the things you experience. Not to be too fucking obvious here but the final most crucial thing to happiness (or contentment, because real happiness is not feverish, it is strong and intense and pulsating) is taking a step back from what is expected of you and not giving a shit what other people think.

How the fuck did I even get to the point where I need to remind myself of that? This is the kind of post I would read on someone else's blog and be like wow, that's the most obvious, the most shallowly contemplative thing I've ever read, give me a fucking break I could do better. But I can't right now and that's both stressful and ridiculous.

Today I saw a black woman in faded jeans and jean jacket with one of those annoying earpieces just breaking out all her fucking dance moves on the subway platform. People were looking at her like she was crazy, but I thought it was hilarious and awesome.

And that, my friends, is the sad sad point I've come to.

I hate the middle-aged men who fall asleep in Starbucks and snore, like Starbucks is their fucking marriage chamber and all the college girls in leggings and lipstick are their unwilling harlot brides. I feel bad for homeless people and all, but Starbucks is not a shelter, it's a corporation and when I walk into a corporation to drink my delicious corporate iced coffee I do not want to hear some old man snoring because this is not his marriage chamber and I am not his harlot wife. The only grinding noise I want to hear is the Frappuccino machine.

That said, I enjoy being in public and watching (or listening to) other people live their lives (or sleep them away in a Starbucks) while I live mine by taking it in and making (I hope) sardonic and witty observations about it.