So I had time between classes today and I decided to go out to the quad and see if any local bands were playing. I could hear the echoes of someone’s voice on a microphone. As I got closer the voice seemed desperate, and pleading. I came down the stairs of founders and realized the voice was speaking about Jesus. The man talking stood with about five other people in front of a table. The quad it’s self was probably ¾ empty…some boys were sitting along the concrete benches, there were a couple of tables set up, and a group of typical Humboldt hippie folk sitting on the stairs. People walked through, some stopped and listened most however seemed to be avoiding people with flyers and scurried off to their next class.

I sat down on a bench for a moment to listen to what the preaching was all about. The man (I decided he must be the preacher at the church) was talking about his story of converting to baptism. He said things like, “I used to hate Christians, and I used to party all through college”. To this the hippie group applauded which surprised me. He then talked about how he heard this song at a “pagan dance party in Daytona Beach Florida” which he claimed told him his life did have meaning and to seek the lord.

I was listening a little and then a man in a blue Hawaiian shirt approached me he said, “How ya doing?”
”I’m alright.” I smiled politely.
“Would you be interested?” he handed me a pamphlet. I hardly had time to look at it, I didn’t really want to deep down, and I was just about to say no thanks but he said, “You know Jesus loves you.”
“So I’ve been told.” I looked around uncomfortably; the man’s eyes were so intense as if he was trying burn the fear into me. If he weren’t so well dressed he could have passed for a homeless person on the 3rd street promenade. His voice had this ounce of craziness in it, resembling the “poor souls” as my British mum might call them wandering the streets.
“He cares about you. He can save you, guide you and give your life meaning.” He said leaning over so that he seemed to be bending at the waist towards me. I forced myself to look at him, but I couldn’t keep his gaze and I fiddled with my scarf. I said an uncomfortable, “okay.”
“He can love you deeper then any man could.”
This made me feel really strange. It was a little creepy, I didn’t like the way it seemed to roll of his tongue, and it was as if he used it to pick up girls in a bar. I didn’t say anything hoping he would get the hint and walk away. We were silent for a moment and he said, “He’ll be there when you’re ready.”
I said “thanks”, trying to force the tone that accused him of being crazy out of my voice. He walked away.

When I had time to think about this after hurrying out of the quad I decided that I didn’t like that the hippie’s were attacking the preacher, I thought that a true genuine hippie would be more tolerant. I also didn’t like that he used the word pagan in his description of a dance party. It sounded like such an ancient Christian thing to say about anyone not Christian. I liked that my school had allowed them to come out and preach. I believe my summer experiences and my growing awareness about religion in general over the past few years had made me curious to stay there and listen. I can definitely say that I am more positive towards people and their faiths then I have ever been in my entire life. And I know my encounter with the Hawaiian shirt man could have been a lot worse if it were earlier in my life. I told myself that he was only preaching his belief and that I must respect it. And after all that deliberation I still had the feeling that I have in all my encounters with religious folk throughout my life that he wanted to say “you’re going to hell”. I know that in the Christian faith I’ll go to hell because I have not accepted Christ and God and other stuff, (that I’m lacking the exact knowledge in) even if I am a good person. It automatically makes me feel inferior to Christians, like I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough for these Christians and I’m stupid for not believing. Does this mean I’m never going to be good enough for others I met this summer, maybe even him if I don’t accept God? I don’t want to ask because I’m scared of what the answer will change. I love him though, there is nothing for it I just do. I think I am too young to decide anything about higher powers. And for all I know my thoughts about these folks are false. If you refer back to my Aug 4th and June 8th posts I am still questioning everything, I am still learning. At the moment I would rather learn about all religions and then perhaps take from each one to help guide me in this life- I’m looking for my path to wherever I’m going. Isn’t that what life is all about the journey?

Read more...

A Couple Of Things From The Past Week...

Ominous
Originally uploaded by skinnymalinkee.

-When you dip below the clouds life pretty much becomes agonizingly routine in the worst ways... For a couple of months i've been high above them where most people strive to be. And i still go there, a lot, and a week from today i'll go there everday. But below is still there being ever so much like four white walls and stacks upon stacks of paper.

-Only a week, i imagine the airport all the time. There's butterflies and smiles and i'll never let go.

-From the Buddhist perspective one should not devote himself or herself
entirely to one person but to every person. Single devotional love is the
ultimate form of attachment, and in buddhism there should be no attachment to any one thing becuase everything is fluid. When you devote yourself to one thing the scariest moment is when the feeling is not reciprocated. Then love often can be transformed into chaotic confusing rage, even violence quite easily.

-You and me flying on a jetplane, dont know when we'll be back again.

Read more...

I walk to school everyday, and on this day it was foggy as usual, the treetops disappearing in the mist. My hands hurt from the cold; I can’t seem to stay warm here. Sitting in the big lecture hall I was restless, I couldn’t focus on the video about Buddhist monks. Usually the topic would envelope me, usually I would be fascinated with trying to understand how completely different their lifestyle was. In fact the only thing that I seem to have comprehended at all from that class was breath deeply. 10 deep breathes. I went to lecture for Mapping Sciences, and thought I was going to be sick all over the floor-the more I go to that class the more I feel like I’ve reverted month, years to my former high school self. Shy, insecure, feeling completely inferior. The more I go the more I want to run and never come back, but now I can’t. Now I can’t just half-ass it. I’m supposed to enjoy all of this more then anything-and the only thing I enjoy are the things that have nothing to do with this mapping sciences crap. What if I get out of this place and I haven’t retained anything?

I sat and I called my voice of reason. I took ten deep breathes and I listened to him tell me that he loved me, I reminded myself that was all that mattered. It helped to keep my mind from shattering. Later in lab we met in the courtyard, it’s one of my favorite places. You wouldn’t believe the quiet there, it’s enclosed and at the highest point on campus. Zoë and Colin sat down next to me. Zoë who is my lab partner of choice in that class, and Colin who I have history with but am now quite over and friendly towards again. I was just sitting there talking to Colin, asking him about his climb up Shasta, trading weekend stories- pretty normal chitchat for Colin and me when Prof. Cunha asked us all to gather round the transit thing for measuring something or another-something everyone else seemed to grasp but I had no idea about. So up Colin got, ready to show off all the knowledge he keeps in his damn big head. Zoë, whom I recently met in lab and have become buddies of sorts, practically grabbed my elbow and asked, “Are you trying to hit on that Colin guy?” I said, “Who Colin,” giggling under my breathe at the irony of it all, “No. No way”. I said. She laughed a little, and then she said, “well if you were, I was gonna say your going about it all the wrong way.” And she went and stood at the center of the group. I was sort of caught off guard by this last comment. It only seemed to add to my need to repel my damn toast and strawberry jam. I stood there, trying to focus on the Professor as she diligently explained how to triangulate our position. But all I could think of was, wow do I look so young to you Zoë? Compared to you, do I stand out that much? Is this what I looked like all through high school, this clueless kid that everyone wants to cradle and protect? I could hardly believe that she was telling me I was going about hitting on people the wrong way? I realized she had no idea about me. None whatsoever. And I had no idea about her, as I was soon to find out.

After lab, I was sitting on a bench in front of Founders Hall looking out to the bay and the bottoms where the fog still earth seemed to be sopping up the fog. Zoë sat down next to me, we talked a little, and I asked her when her next class was. She said “Oh I don’t have one, I’m just waiting for my boyfriend, well my now ex-boyfriend to come by. Yeah he just broke up with me yesterday.” I said “oh my gosh why?” She said, “I actually don’t know, he didn’t tell me.” At first I was still suffering inferiority complex, I felt like I was 15. I wanted to say, don’t you dare let him get away with it, and don’t you dare. Late I would wish I had said “I know why he did, especially if he didn’t give you a reason, it’s because he’s damn scared”. I vaguely remembered all the feelings I felt last February when it had happened to me in much the same way. I also thought about how this must have influenced her random choice of comments earlier in the day. I wanted to laugh again at the irony of it all.

I wanted to tell her about my experience, tell her that I was madly in love with someone now. That back in February I was confused, hurt, how I forgave and forgot and eventually loved again. I wanted to be the older and wiser one; I wanted my security back, my damn newfound confidence back. But it didn’t come. I just sat there and listened to her, and then she got up and left. I checked my phone to see if any messages had come in from the person that mattered most, from the only thing that made any sense.

Now I’m infested with anxiety, I feel sickish anytime I am in class, I keep going though. I know I’ll be ostracized if I just give up. But I’ve never felt in such a hole in my entire life. What am I doing here? What the hell am I doing?

Read more...

"The sexual excitement we feel is related to the way we look at the other person. To clarify the notion of the objectness viewing position, we shall contrast it with another position referred to as tenderness. When we feel tenderness we look at the other's body as a whole. Our gaze spends most of its time in the head area and within the body boundaries. However, this position involves penetration for the other beyond the object characteristics. The body is experienced as a whole rather than as separate parts. It is perceived as embedded in its natural environment. For example, the reflection of sunlight off the hair, the grass one is sitting on, or the creek that one is near, all facilitate the tenderness orientation. There is a desire to place one's arms around and embrace rather than to use one's arms as instruments to maipulate the other." -James Barrel

Read more...

So if you dont want to read a sappy lovey dovey thing, dont read this-fair warning:
I always get what I least expect in dreams. This one the morning of September 12, 2005 was particularly nice. I was at home, walking around the Marina Del Rey parking lots. The parking lot was lit by the street lamps and it seemed to be misting like Humboldt might, so the light came down in sprinkling shafts to the wet pavement. And as dreams do I was suddenly inside a huge dome, much like a barn that had been built over the parking lot. Hundreds, no thousands of people were waiting in line for something. There were fake flowers all over the walls. I decided to leave, not being much of a person for weddings at this time in my life.
So I turned walking opposite the direction of the line. And I saw you. But it was as if I had seen you everyday for the past three weeks, and I walked up to you and simply asked, “What are you waiting in line for?” You replied, “I’m waiting to kiss the bride.” As if everyone in the world waited in endless lines to kiss the bride. I said, “Oh boy, well in that case I’m getting out of here.” I turned and kept walking.
Somewhere in the depths of my mind I saw you step out of line, you were wearing a brown 1970’s prom suit and your hair was longer then I remembered last. I realized I had never seen you with hair that length before, and that I had not seen you in three weeks. And I turned 180 degrees in a 180’Th of a second and ran back over to where you were. How could I just walk up to you and be so oblivious to it, I felt like I was in shock. However I couldn’t find you because you had already left. But then I saw you, sitting on a bench. It was dim, like candle light. Your face was in your hands and a bouquet of flowers upside down at your feet. I knelt beside you and pushed your hands away and quickly pulled your lips to mine. We kissed intensely, and I pulled you over on to the floor on top of me, never letting go of you for a moment. You held me close to you so that I could hardly move. It was like in Chocolat when the mother thinks her daughter is aboard the flaming gypsy boat. She literally tackles the little girl to river bank and squeezes her so hard it hurts, but nothing else matters, not even the mud they are in. It felt the same for us. We were both alive; we had both not seen each other in ages. So in this moment of meeting again, there was neither time nor space it was just us, as cliché as that might sound.
We lay like that kissing each other and holding each other not caring about all the people still waiting in line to kiss the bride. Callan randomly came over dressed in a Santa outfit. She brought us caramel fudge, we thanked her, and I pulled the covers up over us and I wouldn’t let anyone in. We looked at each other laughing and eating caramel fudge and I wouldn’t let anyone in.

Read more...

IS THERE NO PLACE IN THIS WORLD TO ESCAPE FROM FREAKING ADVERTISING! COULD YOU PLEASE STOP POSTING SILLY PHONEY COMMENTS ON MY BLOG, WITH AN ATTATCHED ADD LINK. THANK YOU!

Read more...

A crazy thing has come up, a crazy and possibly the best thing of my life has come up...you'll have to deal with my uber abstractness today-any questions just ask!

First things first I must take things lightly-like how they pump air into the ice cream, in the end that's all your paying for. What I mean to say is if I am too serious about this, if I am too heavy I will be too worried i will work myself into the anxiety state my family is known for, I must think of the air-the lighter side of things. For in the end that is what i am doing this for- the good parts!

Then there's this… a continuation of my thoughts over the past few weeks, in fact ever since he left.

Looking for you light I went out:
It was like the sudden dawn of a million million suns
A ganglion of lightnings for my wonder
Oh Lord of Caves, If you are light
There can be no metaphor

It's a Yogi's poem, about his meditation experience. Shiva-Ultimate Yogi, God of destruction (and creation) in Hinduism. The rebel who above all upholds that all the physical shit is not worth anything, while all the mental consciousness is all that your effort should be fruit off.

So these damn lectures are all coinciding with my life's happenings, is someone trying to tell me something here? Am I too set in the physical, too unexposed since birth to notice?

Read more...

So I’ve recently been told I’m stronger then I think I am, by someone I deem to be the strongest person I know. Is he right? I happen to trust him with every ounce of trust I have. You know I guess I believe him. I mean this past week my computer's hard drive failed, as in it is official I’ve lost everything but what's posted on my blog and my photo pages. It's amazing how hard it is to not function without it, but I’m making do on my roommate’s computer. Probably the main thing is that I’ve been cut off from the light, and only seeing it in the distant undergrowth of the dimmed forest is enough to make someone crazy chasing after it. When its there, the color comes back, the color of his eyes comes back to me. I feel like I’m half alive, like nothing makes sense when I’m not in its divine wake. But I’m still going...I haven’t just fallen over, I think it's because I know someday soon it'll come back to me. Secretly I wish for it to just suddenly catch and set the world ablaze again. I’m vaguely reminded of something from The Silmarillion- the two trees of the Valar. I can’t ask that of certain people though…it’s an intense thing to think about. Would hardly be fair, not something people do. But the more I think about the alternative-the waiting, the longing and the ultimate scary part the getting used to shadows-the more I’m frightened that I’m not as strong as he says I am. I just don’t know what to do. Is it right now? Is it too soon, is it too late? Can I go on? Is it a good idea for the physical, for the mental? Yet ...It’s dark, I’m cold…and I love him.

Read more...