regarding the circulatory system

i've travelled far to get here. a long, winding path to get to the point i'm at currently. but i know i have a long way to go to be where i want to be.

home is where the heart is. should i set up my tent in my ribcage? or focus on the blood pumping in my wrists and neck... and what if i left my heart in san francisco? and what of when my heart skips a beat? or when the heart is indecisive and jumps around from person to person. am i nomadic?

i can't think straight when i can't sleep, and it's hard to sleep without you here.

there is no rule book for how to survive. there are no guidelines, no road map for what the next step is. i make lists. compulsively, i list out "things i need to do" "people i need to re-connect with" "pairs of socks by colour" "places i can go to in a snow emergency". stupid lists, but i need order, i crave a clearly defined set of rules, guidelines, whatever to be able to better comprehend things. the hardest part for me, bar none, has been what happens next. because i can't list it out, i can't map out where i will be in a year, in a month, in a day, in an hour. i just have to hold on and struggle, strive to be where i WANT to be, who i WANT to be in that time. the hardest thing is accepting that i have to make the choices. and sometimes, that means asking for help; sometimes that means taking four steps back to take one on the right path. sometimes it means completely turning around to find out i was where i wanted to be fifteen steps back, and how do i get there again? sometimes it means saying "i'm over it". sometimes it means striving to mean it.

i just wonder why. that's the root of humanity's problem right there. we question. everything. nothing can be taken at face value, we never accept the extraordinary, we run and fight and argue until the extraordinary is plain and simply defined.

i wish i was different. more flexible and accepting of the faults in myself and others. more understanding of the world as a whole. more easy-going and laid back. i wish i could be less strict and ordered. i wish i could survive without definition. but i can't. and while a part of me resents my need for order, a part of me loves it. that part of me that hopes to be the person you see in me. the person you love. the person you want around. i know i can be better, but there's a part of me that is happy right where i am, if the person you see now is a person you want to be around.

we all fight our own expectations of things. the world, people, ourselves. it's human nature i think to rebel against our limits, to push until we break through our barriers and come out the other side, past what we thought was the possible. some people are content to sit at the line of their abilities, to accept the status quo and love their own personal limit. some people are happy to push and set the bar higher and higher than they know they are capable of reaching. some people set no bar.

i want to be that person who stops expecting things to turn out a specific way. i crave chaos and spontaneity and disorder. and when met with it, i am terrified and demand structure. you see a side of me and make me meet the things i'm scared of. you hold my hand through the dark and the parts i hate about myself and force me to deal with it another way. i miss you being there to constantly ruin my schedule and order, to force me to be more easy-going. part of what i love about you is your ability to bring out a better me. how selfish does that sound...and yet it's true. you're very nature, everything about you is undefinable. and i love it. i can't understand how or why, i just know it.

maybe thats the very idea of love though. maybe we are supposed to find the person we can't understand because it make it that much more magical and confusing and horrible and wonderful all at the same time when we need to adapt our very definitions to try to understand another. maybe the people we're going to be happiest with are the people who inspire us to stop setting expectations for others and start loving the confusion.

and i may not understand. i may never understand. i just know, if home is really where the heart is, i want to be home with you.

regarding sailing

people can help you.

doctors, surgeons, lawyers; these people can save your life, your very existence. and they have studied, and worked, and tried so hard to get to a point that they can spend the rest of their lives helping others. they have spent countless hours laying awake at night working, worrying, struggling to reach the point they are at now. it takes a special kind of person to do something so time consuming and stressful on a day to day basis. waking up and being responsible for someone's life, that takes effort.

but what about the rest of us? it dawned on me today how much we as humans rely on interaction. maybe there's only one person, maybe there is a network, but we throw our selves on the mercy of other people. instead of thinking we can love ourselves, we search for someone to loves us and to love in return. instead of smiling, laughing, we seek ways to entertain ourselves, we hunt for something to cause joy.

and some people, we rely on to save us. we hold at them, clutch them, climb and fight to stay near them in times of need. some people we run to crying, we yell at, in an attempt to save ourselves from pain, from heartache, from reality.

and it must be stressful. it must be hard to wake up and know that someone loves you, wants you, needs you. it must be trying to be someone's entire support system.

i try hard not to sink. i buy water-wings, and take lessons in an attempt to keep myself afloat. sometimes, i get hit by a tide that knocks me under. and when i do, i hate accepting a life raft. i struggle and kick against the current on my own, even when i get sucked deeper.

i spent years and years getting pulled to the very bottom of the sea, refusing the hands that were offered until i eventually got so deep i couldn't see them. i became a creature of the dark, yet fooled everyone who saw me into thinking i was swimming fine.

i have learned. i know that no one can stay afloat forever. i know, deep down, that at times the current will sweep you away if you don't have an anchor. and sometimes, it's good to have a million anchors keeping you solid in a storm. i know that the waves will get so rocky you need to hold on to a boat, any boat, just long enough to see yourself through the storm.

i heard somewhere once that no one should ever be ashamed to cry; from the very beginning it has been a sign that you are alive. and yet i still turn away, i still scrape furiously at the emotion which can come from me. i still refuse to let people see me down.

and i am trying. i am forcing myself to hold onto you through this, though i know it is unfair to you. i am forcing myself to be open and let it out, though i know deep down that is probably not what you want.

people need to be human. and i am trying to be better at it.

regarding giraffes

sometimes i feel like an exception.

not exceptional, but an exception. the rules do not define me, i am not an easy read, this is not like riding a bicycle. most people get tired of it quickly.

i often wonder why. people are not simple. humanity as a whole is a vast and confusing group. we love, yet fight. we preach, yet judge. our values are an ever changing, constantly circumstantial set of morals. someone once told me humanity is the exception to every animal law. does that make me less human?

people can surprise you. a man you have known your entire life can turn into someone unrecognizable through their actions. a woman, a mother can turn her back on her own child. an infant can learn to read.

and sometimes, people can follow a pattern. people can become predictable. the man you love can continue to be the same person you fell in love with. the woman you live next door to can continue to live next door to you as she always has. and that predictability can be safe.

"i love you" he says. "you're most beautiful when you smile, but you're beautiful when you worry, or when you're sad"

emotions will happen. it's a guarantee that something in life will be un-planned. chaos theory dictates it. murphys law, everything dedicated to the study of predictability says "guess what? we know jack-shit".

but i think that's the trick. the only thing predictable is un-predictability.

we as a species rock. we are capable of intense emotions, empathy, love, malice, pride. our bodies are built with such finesse, such incomprehensible structure. and yet we still fail. a lot. in fact, there is yet to be a human on the planet you doesn't succumb to their body's weaknesses at some point. such strength and perfection contained in something so weak and perfect.

i have an appreciation for bones. any kind of bone, but human bones in particular. rib cages specifically, and the vertebrae of the backbone. there is nothing like us on the planet. and yet everything like us on the planet. humans are so unique, yet so so common. our structures are the most confusingly beautiful example of how not to operate, and yet we share dna as everything else on the planet.

there is no perfect line in nature. no straight point, no perfect curve, no smooth, unbroken, 90 degree angles. yet everything follows a golden ratio and can be compared to everything else.

and even that perfection is unpredictable.

i guess what i'm trying to understand is the massive contradiction of humanity and the world in general. no, understand is the wrong word.

love.

regarding citrus

there is an old saying that goes something along the lines of "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade"

i have no idea where i'm going with this, but that thought has been running through my head all day.

hard work sucks. it's called hard for a reason. while university is not that difficult if you know what your doing, the thing that kills everyone is time management. i have said often that my tuition doesn't teach me anything except how to better schedule.

because education is re-learning things. over and over and over again until it sticks. yes, you will be exposed to new and glorious things at a school that you have never learned. and yes, it's true that people find themselves and learn more about who they are as people. but the only lessons of any value that any school has taught me is how to communicate and that spitting on people is frowned on.

and then university, where i had to completely re-learn how to learn and how to manage my time. i was forced into scheduling, into planning ahead, into giving myself ample time to complete assignments. and i sucked at it.

it was a huge blow to my ego, after coming from such a small town where i coasted through doing nothing and managing high grades. suddenly, the things i was learning where the exact same, but the level i was expected to perform at was heightened. instead of a 3 page paper i could write out in a few hours, i was expected to research for a ten page monster. due in a week.

and then i got better. i slowly learned how to manage my wants and needs and school work, i began to realize i could survive and even overcome the challenges of time management.

and i found an ugly side to myself i didn't know i had. a judgmental, mean, snide little nugget of myself which suddenly reared it's ugly head. "if i can do this, why can't other people?" and suddenly, i found myself thinking i was superior and better than the people around me for not staying up until 5 in the morning to finish a paper.

this year has changed me. i have become more independent than i realized i could be. i have forced myself to be more accepting of the flaws in myself and in others. i have realized that i have a problem with organization and i can not always articulate my feelings well. i still snap on people, i still get too snarky from time to time. and a lot of the time, i bottle up what's upsetting me; move on, move through it until it is no longer an issue.

and maybe that's what my tuition is really going towards. maybe the goal isn't to learn things, but to learn more about who you are. maybe university is just a really expensive, lengthy therapy session designed to through our weaknesses in our face and flaunt them for the world to see. instead of worrying about the information i am actually receiving, 90% of my time is spent on the work and worrying about whether my thoughts and actions regarding classes will be well received.

if that's truly the case? i think i want my money back.

because i know a guy down the street who will tell you exactly who you are for about $50.

regarding felines

sometimes curiosity is hard. it keeps you up at night and can have you questioning things you would otherwise ignore.

we're told from a young age to not ask questions, to look before we leap, that curiosity killed the cat. and i wonder how much of that is meant to deter us, and how much of it is meant to make us rebel.

as a child, i was a rule follower. i asked nicely for permission to do things, i said please and thank you. but i was one curious little person. instead of ever answering my inane questions with platitudes and simple stories, my father would take the time to explain things in great detail in the hope that i would remember it.

i clearly remember being a child and sitting on the dock listening to my dad describe the intricacies of an outboard boat motor versus and inboard-outboard.

however, we grow up. and as often as our parents are our guide for life as children, they drift away from us. the older we get, the more independent we try to be. the more we call our families less for the answers and more for their stories. the more we want less technical explanations.

living away from home, i have done my best to make my own family. as callous as it sounds, i have searched, spoken to and selected specific people who i want around me. it took me a long long time to realize that my curiosity could be satiated by the people i wanted around and not the people who knew what i was looking for. it took me a long time to realize that just because someone wants you around, does not mean you have to be there.

and perhaps i've been quick to judge. i will admit that i often jump to conclusions and see too much black and white. in my mind, shades of grey are a sign of indecisiveness and a lack of commitment.

but then, every once in a while these snap judgments force an amazing interaction with someone i would otherwise avoid.

i think humanity is meant to experience a wide range of things. i think that pain and suffering is probably the most important thing. while each person will suffer through different things, the universal emotion of pain or sorrow is something which hits people very commonly. it's almost a unifier.

but the pain can be so intense that at times, we wonder when it will stop, will end, will let up for long enough to breathe. we fight our way through what can seem unending. because when it does end, it's amazing. we cherish things, we see the world in a new light. or so we say.

there is a lot of pain in my life. a lot of experiences which shaped, defined, molded me into the person i am today. i know that i have a long time left in front of me, filled with heartbreaks i can't possibly imagine. but at this point in time i hope i've seen the worst this world can offer.

when we meet someone for the first time, we don't ask them about their pain. we don't inquire to their worst experiences. it is only through knowing and speaking to people that we let them in enough to see our flaws and that they in turn hand us a key to their personal vault of imperfections. and when you get to know someone, it can open your eyes to an entirely new world of pain.

i have a gift or a curse depending on the day. i have an ability for attracting people to me who see me as a rung on their ladder upwards. i'm covered in the greasy hand prints of people clawing their way past me; covered in footprints of those wanting more than i can give. and it sucks sometimes, until i see where those people are and know that i had a small hand in that.

but i feel like this could be an exception. i feel like the words you continue to string together so smoothly are sincere. i know i may be naive, i know deep down inside that i am a horrible judge of character. but i feel that you could be a turning point for me.

i trust you. more than i'm willing to say aloud, more then i have trusted someone in a long time. i want to tell you things, to share, to be totally honest. and as much as i try, i still hold things back. i know that a part of me always will, but i hope to soon learn how to minimize that part. you're a good person, as dark and twisted as you believe you are. and i wish i could open your eyes to the amazingness that is you.

regarding sleeping dragons

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regarding scrambled eggs

motivation is a double edged sword.

it's particularly deadly when you have something pressing, that you know you need to get done, and you have no motivation to do it. and sadly, have the motivation to get a million other small insignificant things done instead.

which is another problem with motivation. it can mask itself as procrastination far too easily. you feel like you're accomplishing something, and like you're getting things done. but in reality, you have just stalled of doing that one thing in order to accomplish a lot of things instead.

the trick is direction; is path; is purpose.

it's not possible to stay one hundred percent on track every moment. we as humans falter, we trip. we look at the path someone else is on and think "oh, nice path." and change directions. we cut down trees and jump over walls to get onto paths we think will make us happy. we run blindly into paths that make our hearts race and our minds forget where we came from. we get scraped, we get burned, we get hurt. but we can also be healed, be loved, be happy.

and maybe that's the entire point of the path. that every wall, every tree, every burn, every love; they're all just masking the path burned out for us. we only think we have control, we only think we make the choice. maybe, every way we try to move off our directions, the directions have previously morphed to show you the right way to go.

everything is not pre-determined. occurrences do not happen for some golden reason. but maybe instead of looking back and regretting, we should look back and rejoice about the fact that sometimes, we made the right choice and that the wrong choice ended up bringing us to here.

there is no backspace for life, no grammatical checks for conversation. no editor can correct our mistakes before publishing. and i think that may be the point. we have to learn to make the mistakes boldly, to lear from them, before we can learn the right way of doing things.


and thats the thing about motivation. maybe we feel motivated to do the wrong things. maybe our minds are consciously showing us how to make mistakes and to learn from them.

which has led me to sitting eating scrambled eggs with a clean kitchen, bedroom and completed notes, and with an essay due tomorrow unfinished and barely started.