I don't think I'm going to write in this blog anymore. I have started another blog. I think this blog has strayed too far from its original purpose, and it's not really that helpful to me anymore.

If anyone really wants to know the address for the other blog, email me or post a comment on this post. I am not sure if I am giving it out yet, but if you're interested, I'll think about it.

let go...

I guess there probably aren't that many people reading this anymore, so I am going to try to quit treating it like an emissary to the world, and I am going to try to start treating it like the journal, self-analysis thing it started as.

I still miss Josh a lot. I just miss talking to him. So that's always there. And then I went to Canada with Erin, Siobhan, and JoAnna. One night they told me I make them feel stupid. So I tried to quit talking, but I ended up pushing them all away, or maybe they pushed me away, so by the time I got home I felt completely unwanted and unlovable. It hurt the most coming from Erin. There was this wall between us.
Then the night I got home Pat and I broke up because of some difficulties Pat has been having in his own life lately, and that made me feel unwanted and unlovable as well. When Pat walked out the door that night, I felt the most alone that I have ever felt in my life. My friends were gone. Josh was gone. Pat was gone. Everyone was gone. I felt like there were no longer any strings, any reason to keep from hurting myself, to keep going.

I had to go rafting the next day. I felt empty and numb. Brittany came, but I didn't treat her fairly because I was lost in the chaos in my own mind. My life felt like it was over. I was thinking that I'll never have friends again, never date anybody again, never trust again, never be safe again, never be loved again. At first I really mentally tried to fight it. I felt despair. The first few days of rafting were pretty rough. The whole time rafting I really just didn't want to be there, and it was exhausting having to act and put on a show for everybody.

I kept talking to Pat though, because I still cared about him a lot obviously, and because I felt like he was all that I had left, and he's the only person I can really talk to. I think that that kept me a little bit sane. I dreamed about smoking marijuana, and I decided that I would get drunk when I got home. A bunch of people from Utah in their twenties came rafting from us, and they had the lives that I want. But I felt this strong conviction that I would never have the life that I want, because my life is over. All of the love in it is over, friendship over, relationship with God or happiness or anything, over. I know that getting drunk is against my religion, and I think that I do believe in my religion. I don't feel close at all to God right now, though, and I felt like it didn't matter if I drank, because I was already lost, and nothing I could do would ever make God love me enough to give me the life that I want.

I felt okay for a little bit every morning when I got up, but over the day the disillusionment always set in, coated in intense self-hatred, and by the end of the day I was again resolved to do anything, including drugs or alcohol, to escape the loneliness, abandonment, and despair that I felt. I didn't want to feel anymore. I didn't want to care. I wanted some numbness. I felt like I would fail at college, and the inevitability of it dulled the panic a bit, but I needed, somehow, to forget, even for a night, the certainty of that failure.

I drove home today in that fog. I put the bottles of wine that my mom uses to cook in my purse. I knew that my mom would eventually see, but I had a stort planned to tell her that would worry her for a while, but that she would get over. It could all work out. It would all work out. I went and sat in my room. The real estate agent came. My parents sold our house, the house I have lived in since I was five. The world turned. I stared at the bottles of wine.

I hit a wall. All I wanted was to drink those bottles, to let go. I dreamed of getting drunk, of feeling okay and blurred, of forgetting. I felt suffocated by the absoluteness of all of the despair in my future. I knew that all of my friends were gone, and those that loved me had turned away from their love. I knew that I was completely alone in some things, in many things, standing alone in the blackness of my mind. And all I wanted was a short respite, a night away from the terror, a padding for the sharp edge of loss. I wanted desperately to fall apart, to let go in the way that I have never been able to let go, to give up, to drown all of my obsessive, self-defeating thought in that alcohol. All of my life I have held myself so perfectly together, and for once, I just wanted to be like Craig. I was sick of being the good child. I wanted to do something wrong. I wanted to drift away. I wanted to crack open irredeemably and fall apart.

But I stared at the wine bottles, and I hit a wall. Some part of my mind kept fighting the soothing thoughts of getting drunk. Something inside of me was fighting. I tried to smother it, and I couldn't. I was so angry at it for disrupting this evening, this event I had planned for all week, this anticipated relief. I couldn't fall apart. I couldn't let go.

This furious battle inside of me ensued between this idiotic aspect of me and my entire mind of despair and negative emotion. I knew that the second I reached out to somebody else, the battle would be lost. I knew that if I told somebody, there would be no getting drunk, no going back, becaus I would have given that aspect of me enough levrage to do what it always did: get me going again.

I lost. I say I, although both parts are me, because the dominant, conscious part of me tonight really did want to fall apart and drink those bottles of wine, no matter the consequences, no matter the significance. I just wanted to escape the way that I have been feeling lately, the loss that has been aching in me.

After dropping Brittany off, driving home, I thought, 'you drive alone, you love alone, you cry alone, you lose alone, you fight alone, you live alone.'

But in the end, I conceded to the possibility that maybe I don't have to be alone. I thought, 'I want to fall apart, but I don't want to drink.'

So I texted Pat, and he called me back, and we talked for an hour. I think that it made me remember what has always been in the way between me and falling apart. I just can't fall apart. I can't give up, because some part of me that I quite often hate refuses to capitulate. It keeps fighting, even when I feel like I have absolutely no energy left. It struggles against all of my decisions to self injury, all of my unhealthy coping mechanisms, all of my desires for apathy. It wants to live. It wants to feel. It wants to be happy.

Tonight, I hated it. I wanted to rip it out of me so I could get the relief that I needed. But I couldn't. It was in me, beating, kicking, struggling. And I knew I couldn't drink the wine.

Pat came over later for a while, and I feel a lot better now. I still feel in despair, like almost everyone has left me, like I am somewhat alone, like I will not have the life that I want, like I will fail in college, like nobody will love me or be my friend. But some part of me is still fighting for an alternative that my consciousness refuses to admit. So I guess I haven't given up yet.

I put the wine back in the fridge. I don't know what I'll do with myself now, but I hope it's a step in the right direction, in the direction that the optimist in me advocates, and not a step deeper into despair.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fudge.

I wouldn't say fudge. I don't feel like saying fudge. But that still matters to me, my language.

"That's life. If nothing else, its life. It's real, and sometimes it f**kin' hurts, but it's sort of all we have."

don't pay attention

What I hate the most is the way I'm powerless to dictate my own moods

If I prayed I'd pray for order

Love hurts, but sometimes it's a good hurt

And he thought about how everyone dies someday
and when tomorrow gets here, where will yesterday be

When it pours I'd much rather get wet
than shelter my thoughts from the rain

Porcelain
are you wasting away in your skin?
are you missing the love of your kin?
drifting and floating and fading away...

Everything that held me together is falling apart, I've got
this thing that I consider my only art of f**king people over

And Sarah screamed your every breath is a gift
if you weren't so selfish then you might want to live

And my stomach is sick
and it's all in my head

Always felt like I was outside looking in on you

Oh my Go* this hurts like hell

And even though the moment passed me by
I still can't turn away
Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose
Got tossed along the way

Love is watching some one die

I saw a film once
where all the airholes froze up
a killer whale swam
under the blue ice
'til her heart stopped

Hopelessness is your cell
Since you've drawn out these lines
Are you protected from trying times?
Dig a ditch deep enough
To keep you clear of the sun
You've been burned more than once
You don't think much of trust

I am covered in skin
no one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside

I once had Marygolds for eyes
I'd seem to fade on sunny days
When it's cold as the rain outside,
well then, so am I

I am wasted but I'm ready...

This is the first day of my life

pondering one's existence: everyone should do it!

I love this comic. To me it captures something really intriguing about humanity.

Everything that keeps me together is falling apart

I like Modest Mouse a lot, and admire their incorporation of astronomy into their music, but I find them scientifically inaccurate:
The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were
That's not really true. Positively curved spacetime is an idea that has been explored, and this idea, the idea of a geodesic, has been considered, but recent measurment of the acceleration of space taken by contrast to super novas has shown that the rate of acceleration correlates to a model of spacetime with no curvature, infinitely flat.
The interesting thing is that these lyrics could still be partially correct though. Although the universe isn't necessarily shaped like the earth, (and the idea of wrap-around on the earth is wholly two dimensional while universal wrap-around is three dimensional), flat space can still wrap around, so if you go straight you could still end up where you were, the way that old video game screens wrap around.

I think that knowing and thinking too much really kind of ruins things.

I'm starting to become more partial to Morgan's idea that blogs are somewhat signs of self absorption, so I may quit writing as many personal things in here, or writing in here as much. I don't know.

I played my violin after not playing for over a month. It was like breathing after holding my breath since May.
Music is life.
Also, yesterday was the most symmetric day of the year.
Symmetry is the universe.

I don't feel good.

thirty-six months

Three years ago on the fourth of July, right around my brother's wedding, I laced on my running schoes at about midnight, snuck out the backdoor, and went on my usual nightly run. I was running into a thunderstorm, so there was lightning all over the western horizon, and the air was really electric, but the rain was still far away, so it was perfectly still except for the rolls of thunder. Behind me, the sky was this really beautiful indigo, and every few seconds a huge plume of pyrotechnics would explode, further contrasting the clear horizon with its dark, cloudy inverse.

And I ran into the storm and away from the fireworks in the still darkness, and it was before the real problems with bulimia (or I guess when they were right beginning), and it was before I'd really gone out with any boy, before I met Josh, and I hadn't cut in six months or so, and it was before I had begun to think about college. I had no idea what was in front of me, but I existed perfectly in that moment, caught between two kinds of beauty, both deadly, in the still stasis in the middle.

I like that memory. I can imagine my silhouette clearly, dark against the lightning, dark against the sparks, dark against the night.

Although the laws of classical physics are time symmetric, the extremely low entropy of the just-born universe has imprinted the cosmological arrow of time based on the second law of thermodynamics.
Which means:
eggs fall off the counter and break but don't gather themselves back together into perfect white spheres
coffee mugs crack and shatter but cannot pull themselves back together
memories are created in a haze of entropy but not forgotten, and only of the past
if something breaks, it can't unbreak. if things fall apart, they stay apart.

why, why, why?

infinities

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
Andre Malraux

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts into the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for int he deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radience and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking...
What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?
-The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K Leguin

I am back to the chair, the question, the infinity of infinities, the tower of possibilites that stretches through thought and emotion and dimension and space and ends always with the singularity, the singularity of one human life that somehow, in the pale face of every infinity, defies nihilism enough to have infinite meaning, infinite worth.
I am back to the chair and the pills, red pill or blue pill, matrix or lie, perceptual reality or objective reality, the ocean or the air. The mind, in the ocean, blunted and blurred by the waves, finds its place in the power of lies, in the strength of subjectivity, in the obsoleteness of one life among many. It's easy to believe in the water, the life-force, the completeness of that world. But there's more... there's more, and as the mind awakes from the numbing lies that make every day possible, it has to face the possibility of something so great that it could break. There is more than the water; there is the air. But what happens to one mind waking?

The universe is expanding, and the expansion close to us is somewhat negligible. It is easy to believe, then, that the unverse cannot be infinite, because the speed of light sets the limit, and the universe has an age, determined by ancient microwave radiation. If the universe has an age, and matter cannot go faster than the speed of light relitivistically, then the universe must be finite.
But oh, it expands. And the farther away two objects held together by the strong and weak force get, the faster the expansion is. It's not a relativistic expansion, but the expansion of space. And if at a point very far away from me space can break the speed limit that light sets (light only sets a relativistic speed limit, relative to the natural expansion of the universe; spacial expansion can exceed it), that means that space can be travelling faster than the speed of light, so that if something is infinitely far away from me, maybe I will never see it or have any knowledge of its existence. That means I can't justify the finiteness of space with the age of the universe; it means that maybe space isn't finitely curved, either negatively or positively, maybe curvature is zero and space is infinite.
I am at the whims of infinity. I have no powers against it.

If string theory is correct, or even M-theory, and there are dimensions beyond the dimensions I can experience, and the symmetry of large and small is observed, maybe the entire infinity of my universe is at a point of infinity, infinitely small, and maybe in its miniscule nature, it is curled up into the almost infinitely small dimension that a single string or brane vibrates through. Maybe if you zoom out of infinity, it because one infinity in a holistic ocean, an ocean of synergism, an ocean that is made of water molecules that constituently envelop my entire universe, and maybe in that ocean there is one mind floating...
Maybe in my mind the strings that make up my subatomic particles contain worlds in their manifold dimensions, universes in which there are worlds with oceans in which there is one mind floating...
It doesn't end, of course.

There is the infinity of quantum physics, the infinity of the many worlds theory, the infinity that every possibility within a probability wave is actualized in a parallel universe, just like a brane of our world is suspended in parallel to more dimensions.

There is the infinity of perception and quantum reality; maybe only my perceptions make my world real; then what is there when I don't look at it? An infinity of nothingness...

There is the infinity of science. Maybe it's all a futile explanation. Maybe none of it is real, and the idea that our temporal-entropy-defying universe is just an aberation in my mind, and all of this expands from me, and there is nothing objectively real, nothing that can be determined outside of my thought and my calculation, so that no matter how hard I try to reach out to an objective world that may even lie parallel to the chaos of my mind, I can never reach it, my hands hit the absence of possibility. I am isolated from everyone and everything, but everyone and everything is just a characteristic of the infinity I generated from my mind, from the aberrations of my brain cells, from the lack of objectivity.

It is one mind emerging from the ocean of comfortable lies, emerging into the Freudian ocean, emerging out of a facsimile of order into the blurred light of disorder. I am faced with the choice of pills. Either the external world guided by physics is just an infinity of infinities, and each idea is a three-dimensional guide of a four-dimensional function, or the external world is projected from the chaos of my mind, that could, (another quagmire) be projected because I am an aberration, and the entire real world does exist above the surface of the waves, or because there is only me, and my mind, in the universe, and the facades of symmetry that it spews are just attempts to realize meaning in the nothingness.

Or maybe philosophy and science are the real diseases. Maybe I run from the possibility of order. Maybe I find solace in the idea that nothing is real, it's a fluke, there's no meaning, every infinity is stacked on infinity. If I run away from order and embrace this idea, isn't it far safer than trusting order, only to find out eventually that it's all a lie, a fluke, with no meaning? Philosophy disengages me from the world; if I am disengaged from the world, nothing can hurt me. Anything that turns out to be unreal and chaotic cannot hurt me because I have already predicted it; I have never trusted it.

Maybe that happens with people, too. Maybe I can't trust my mind, I can't trust my image, I can't trust these infinities or these projections. Maybe it's safer to obsess over them endlessly, to hold them at a distance, to doubt to protect myself from the possibility of the realization of my doubts (it's so much easier if I create them than if I discover that they're true).

Love is an absolute belief in something. Even the act of completely loving is an absolute belief, an absolute vulnerability. If I love, I admit that maybe there is some sort of order, maybe it's not a lie, maybe it's real, maybe even if chaos exists, love is enough to defy it. If I love completely, I abandon the possibility of phenomenology; I abandon the belief that nothing can be secured in the haze of quantum probability; I abandon my passion for obsessively planning the positive paths of a photon as it is split either right or left, so much that the plotting becomes the reality, and the photon is not even split, not ever, and that is okay, because I have a theory for that, too.

What if, growing up, I learned that something absolutely terrifying and devastating could happen to me if I believed in something and engaged in something? What if the act of believing was the act of giving up my control over my beliefs about the world? If I believe in something, without thinking, without obsessing, then I don't have plans for all of the alternate realities, the diverging universes, the hazy probabilities. I don't have any safeguard if my certainty is thwarted by uncertainty. But if I think, if I separate myself from everyone and everything by an ocean of thought that I can't even begin to express (thereby ensuring that nobody will ever make it through the moat, and I'll never lower the drawbridge), nothing can hurt me. And I'm so afraid of being hurt; I'm so afraid of being wrong.

What if, once upon a time, before all of the battles and all of the walls, I believed and loved absolutely? What if I put all of my trust in someone, and never doubted, and never thought about the possibility of them hurting me, because I was too young maybe, back then, or hadn't learned? What if then, subsequently, when I was the most vulnerable, when I completely loved someone, they betrayed me? What would that teach me?
It would teach me that opening up is stupid... it would teach me that getting hurt again could destroy me... it would teach me that there's something wrong with me, so that I can't be like everyone else.

It would be safe, then, to distance myself. Everything bad that everyone could think about me, I'd think it about myself first, and therefore if they ever thought it about me, it would only confirm my thoughts, not destroy my security. It couldn't hurt me, because I'd already hurt myself.

It would be safe, then, to believe that nothing's real, to deny meaning. Because it would hurt far worse to believe in something completely, to trust it, and then to find out that it was wrong, to find out that all of my hopes were built on a false foundation, and there was nothing left.

It would be safe to hurt myself so no one could hurt me. It would be safe to never love completely so that no one could hurt me. It would be safe to read about physics and philosophy and doubt everything so that nothing could hurt me.

Do you know what would also be safe? Writing a blog entry about my innermost emotions so I can expect them before they surprise me, so they can't hurt me.

It's all a loop, and a loop extends infinitely.

summer

Now that everyone has left, maybe I can return to some of the integrity of my earlier posts.

I've been in Washington DC for the presidential scholar program. On the surface, it was really fun. We had a lot of fancy catered dinners; we were spoken to by a lot of high-up government people; we listened to a performance of the arts scholars at the Kennedy center and looked at their work in the art museum; we ate a lot of dessert; we were shuttled all over DC for workshops; we met with the president.

The president, despite everything he's doing that I don't agree with, seemed like a really nice guy. He was really nice to us. I know that's his job, but I believe that it's genuine. No matter how badly I think he's screwed things up, I do believe he has integrity.

I signed a petition the morning before we met him (Monday) that ended up causing a lot of problems. I don't really want to talk about it, but here is the link. It's also in the UK news, and the kids appeared on the CNN morning show.

I guess that all of that is important, but it doesn't really matter. The petition was an attempt to make a difference which may or may not have had the potential to be effective or been in the appropriate forum. Ultimately, it had both intended and unintended consequences. I guess it's probably the most political involvement I'll have in my life.

I went to the program in a pretty messed up state. I was starting to lose it at the end of the week in Wichita, and when Amanda etc. had to leave me alone in the hotel for a night, I was really worried. I kept myself extremely occupied though watching "Heroes" and reading The Fabric of the Cosmos. I got myself to the airport in the morning, and I got myself to DC. Things were better after that.

Everyone in the program was really nice. They were a really smart, talented bunch of kids, but noboday acted supercillious in any way. It was the inverse of CPW. It was really easy to make a lot of good friends quickly. I was doing a thought experiment the whole time, pretending I was at MIT, and I wouldn't see any of my friends for months. By the end of the four days, I realized that I had built a friend group for myself that I could settle into and be happy in. That was important to me, because it meant I'll be okay in the fall.

Of course, things have still been up and down. Most days I get urges, and I fight them for a while, and then I decide to give in, because it feels like the buildup of pressure is unendurable. I try to think of ways to explain it to people that will find out, but I quit caring about finding an alternative. All I want is to release that pressure. So far I have successfully wasted time until the magnamity of the urge faded, but it still feels as if all of the cumulative pressure is building. Lately about once a day I have gotten really suicidal. It's never really for any reason. It just happens. And for a few hours or however long it takes, I struggle in some tangible, sticky darkness, waiting. I always have to wait. I just have to wait for it to go away, try to have that it will, do things to keep myself from acting on it while it's happening.

On the bright side, overall things are going pretty well, I think. I'm working a lot, which sucks, but whatever. I'm being really social as well. I'm also going to teach myself AP physics and try to get to the end of my linear algebra and differential equations books so I'm ready for school. I'm wasting time on Facebook. I got a checking account today, and the guy wouldn't believe I was eighteen until I showed him my ID (but I was wearing my glasses, which make me look younger). I got a free telescope with the account, which I tried to use to look at the near-full moon tonight, but the moon went behind some stupid trees. I'm going to Canada with Jo, Siobhan, Erin, and Kyrstin in three weeks, and apparently I'll be the only one not drinking (which should be interesting), although they don't plan on getting drunk or anything (they'd better not). I'm spending a lot of time with Pat, which is fun. I still live with the guilt of everything that happened with Josh everyday, but I'm learning to deal with it. I don't think it will go away for a long while yet. I'm still working on forgiving myself so I can really live with myself again. I've quit drinking caffeine.

I was really worried about my weight with all of the desserts I ate in DC, but I weighed the same when I got back. I met this girl in DC from Arizona that was the same height as me, but she was really thin, I thought. Then I saw on her drivers' license that she's the same weight as me, which was really weird, because I don't think I look anywhere near as thin as her. In fact, the whole time I was gone, and I thought I was losing weight, my image of myself stretched. I looked fatter and fatter... now I know it wasn't accurate, because I weighed the same. I don't know what I can trust. I don't know if my images are distorted. It's so frustrating.

I went running today, three miles, at 12:30, and it was about ninety eight degrees out. I think I almost got heat stroke or something, because as I was finishing the last mile I really felt like I was going to pass out, and with every step I took the whole world became really tilted and have-black around me. Apparently midday is not a good time for running.

if i could tell you, i'd say this

The little boy on the hill
with his eyes as green as grass
and his hands like pale, blue-veined leaves
sees wolves every day
slip among the sheep,
their dark gray forms
bleeding into the white.

His voice used to shatter
the early morning silence
in the village with the roofs
of thatched, crossed hay.
The people woke up with bleary faces,
stumbling out of modest homes,
fear like blazed glass.

WOLF WOLF WOLF!
and then the echo against the sea
WOLF
WOLF
WOLF........

The all stood next to the boy
on the emerald-grass hill
and looked down on the sheep
in the quiet breath of dawn.
There were no wolves that they could see,
and the boy with eyes like grass
stood alone against their ridicule
and cried at the memory
of gray against the white.

It happened six times,
the terror-driven mornings
and the boy silhouette framed by the sea,
the white of the sheep and the white of the waves
but no gray, no fur, just wool.
He felt alone then,
and crazy,
and every time he swore was the last.

The little boy on the hill
with his eyes as green as grass
and his hands like pale, blue-veined leaves
sees wolves every day
slip among the sheep,
their dark gray forms
bleeding into the white.

He doesn't tell them anymore.
He knows they cannot see.
But he lives every day with the reality
of his own terror,
the metronome of his fear
against the quiet drone of sea.

When I didn't break yesterday after I was somewhat expecting to, we talked a lot about whether it's better to be really close to something you really want, or to be a long ways away. Namely, four of the six people I debated broke, and the prospects for my number of ballots were rather grim. I was thinking about whether it would be worse if I had gotten two ballots or seven (one less than the required number to move on to double eliminations). I finally decided that although I would be really frustrated with getting seven ballots, it wouldn't be worse than getting two.

I went into rounds five and six yesterday pretty confidently. I was sure that I'd at least split round five, and I was almost 100% sure that I'd won both ballots for round six. From my estimates, I thought I probably had eight or nine ballots. I think I probably deserved eight. I didn't deserve any from the first round, but after that I think I did a lot better.

Amanda looked at the numbers of ballots today. I split the first round (got one ballot). I won the second round (two). I split the third round (one), won the fourth (two), split the fifth (one). So going into the sixth round, I had seven ballots. I only needed to split the sixth round, and so far I hadn't lost a single round. But of course I didn't know that at the time.

I was my usual self in the sixth round. I went fast; I read a lot of cards; I had a lot of evidence and examples. One of my judges didn't write anything down the whole time, but one, a former policy debater, was flowing. My opponant was spread in her rebuttal, and she didn't have time to address the majority of my points. Objectively, I think that I clearly won the debate on many fronts. There were many debates this tournament that I definitely didn't clearly win. But I think the two that I did clearly win were round two and round six.

But, alas, it doesn't work out that way, does it? The sixth round was the only round that I absolutely had to win at least one ballot, and it's the *only* round that I lost. It sucks.

I'm okay. I'll move on. Amanda got ten ballots at nats, and I got seven. All I wanted was to make her proud, and I think I was close enough to her ten ballots. I know I should have broken, but life doesn't work that way sometimes. For the first time, really, after a frustrating thing like this happening, I feel okay. My very last round of LD ever kind of sucked, and high school debate is over, but it's okay. Really.

All I can say is, those judges from sixth round had better have a dang good reason to drop me.

So far, so mediocre. Things are going alright. I didn't throw up during the first round, which was posing as a significant possibility before I went in. It's so hot here and so easy to get dehydrated that it's also easy to feel like you're about to throw up or faint if you add the stress of anxiety.

I won't venture to tell you how I think I'm doing just in case I am not doing anywhere near how I think, but I have an idea that I think is accurate, and I think I'm doing alright.

People at nats aren't any better than people in Montana. Some are worse. At least of the people I've hit.

rock that crap...

T minus eleven hours and forty-three minutes...
I can believe in myself. Sure. Sure I can.
I can risk doing my best at the cost of losing. Sure. Sure. Sure.

leaving

I'm off to NFL's and national recognition week.
If I meet the president, I'm not kicking him in the shin. However, if I am unable to suppress my whims, you will most likely see me on the news.
:-)

It is a whirlwind of bird's wings
and the hollow bones that whistle
the songs of humanities
that have lived and died for this...

I want to find one child
and give her everything she deserves
and protect her from the maelstrom
and keep her eyes dry...
I want to find you in the wind
and pluck you out
and protect you from it all

I want to take last summer
and the way the sun set in your eyes
to fill your cheeks with the blush of nighttime
and give it to that child inside of you

It is a whirwind of bird's wings
and the hollow bones that whistle
the songs of humanities
that have lived and died for you...

[I want you to be safe here
in the eye]

free falling

I see that I haven't written much lately.
I haven't quite gotten the skydiving pictures ready, which is why I haven't posted, so I'm just going to post without them. I'll get them eventually.
As for skydiving- yes, I think it helped symbolically with my fear, but not as significantly as I had hoped because I wasn't really afraid. The only time I felt any sort of fear clenching in me was when the plane was one hundred feet off the ground, because I looked out the open door at the country side near Kalispell and I thought, this is the last thing those people saw before they crashed. I felt very close to them, for an instant, to be experiencing almost exactly the last thing they experienced.
Being close to death is almost a spiritual experience for me, because I think that the moment I am closest to death is the exact moment that death seems the least real. All of the times I have come close to killing myself have been times when my own mortality has seemed so superficial. I felt kind of the same way on the skydiving plane. It is as if when I am closest to death, I can't see it, can't feel it, can't sense it in any way empirically, but can only try to convince myself of the knowledge of its existence in the absence of any proof.
The plane went a bit higher though and the strange feeling went away, and as we climbed up until the air blowing into the plane was cold, all of my senses seemed to deaden and I was washed over with calm. It wasn't dissociation (I promised myself I wouldn't let myself dissociate), it was just that profound disconnection that I experience occasionally when I am looking in the mirror and realize with a start that the reflection is supposed to be a reflection of some aspect of me, when in my mind it seems so alien and disconnected. The whole skydiving experience was a bit alien and disconnected. I didn't feel any butterflies in my stomach or anything as the instructor tightened me to him. The inevitability of jumping out of the plane at that point was comforting enough to assauge my fear. We shoudln't fear the inevitable. There is no changing it.
As we scooted to the door of the plane and my legs hung out over like 11,000 feet of nothingness, I felt that displacement that I feel whenever I fly. We had no location. In our movement, we were positionless, just as an electron is bound by the uncertainty principle. I was about to drop out of a plane, and for about five minutes I would almost cease to exist.

The fear was never there. My instructor counted to three, and I waited, excited but not nervous. We were flung from the plane. We flipped a few times before stabilizing. My hands shot out. I was suddenly, in a great wash, reminded of everything I had to love and live for. I realized how much I care when I felt how terribly badly I wanted that parachute to open. There is nothing like the possibility of death (more real as I fell than it felt in the plane) to make you appreciate life more.
Free fall was fun, but I didn't feel like I was falling. Nobody has, as yet, offered me a plausible explanation for this. If I close my eyes on a roller coaster, I feel as if I am falling, even if I don't have my eyes open for the frame of reference. With my eyes open or closed skydiving, I don't feel that falling sensation. I logically know I am falling, and the air pillows up around me as with each second my velocity increases by 9.8 m/s, but I don't feel it. There should be no difference between that and the roller coaster with my eyes shut. If anything, I should feel more like I am falling while skydiving because I am going so much faster. But I don't. Why?

I got a little a motion sick under canopy, but not terribly, as I had taken Dramamine (forgive my tense inconsistencies; I feel like my narration should be random today). When we turned, the leg straps kind of hurt my thighs, but it was okay. It was like parasailing at that point; fun, exciting. In fact the whole experience was fun and exciting, but not really a thrill. Some people I know get a big thrill out of skydiving; my brother and my aunt do, for instance. It wasn't really that exciting for me. It was something I am glad that I did, and something that was fun, but it was not nearly as fun or exciting as bungee jumping.

As for life since then... it's been fun. I only have a few days before I leave for Kansas for nationals, and I honestly am nowhere near ready. I have written three cases and started plowing through some articles on color revolutions, mostly contemporary ones in former "states" of the USSR, but other than that, I am extremely behind. I should be making briefs right now, but I can't get myself to. It's like with graduation came the cessation of any kind of work. I have mostly just been hanging out with Pat and Erin and other people and neglecting any semblence of work (except my actual job) entirely.

I still think about Josh a lot, and about hurting him the way that I did, and I try to reconcile it all in my mind but I can't. The passion or lust or whatever that I had for him kind of faded away with the intensity of our relationship, but I wish I could explain to him that I still care about him infinitely, that I still love him intensely in the way that I love Erin. I'm not sure how I can fix any damage I have created, and I don't know if it would be fair if I did know how, but there it is. Life's like that, sometimes, I guess. That's what my counselor said when I was lamenting to her about hurting Josh. She said, sometimes it just goes like that.

I sincerely hope that it doesn't "just go like that," that hurting people is never inevitable or necessary. I never want to hurt anyone again the way that I hurt Josh. But I guess I have to find it in me to keep going.

I have been feeling kind of off lately. I'm still sorting through the causes within myself. I have felt a lot of urges to self injure, but I have been fighting them valliantly. I hope that they go away though. It seems as if they are just increasing in intensity sometimes.

I'm going to go cut out briefs now. Really, I am.

eerie

Skydiving was fun. I'll write more and post pictures later.

Right now I decided to investigate something really eerie that I have been noticing: the number of plane crashes in the past year or so. I have been noticing that there seem to be a ton of plane crashes recently, and every time I comment on it to someone, another plane crash appears in the paper the next day.

So here's the role:
ComAir Flight 5191, August 2006
Brazilian Boeing, September 2006
Private plane in NYC, October 2006
Nigerian plane, October 2006
Indonesian Boeing, December 2006
Great Falls Mercy Flight, February 2007
Bozeman medical plane, February 2007
Indonesian jetliner, March 2007
Russian plane, March 2007
Blue Angels crash, April 2007
Kenya crash, May 2007
Dillon Cessna, May 2007
Ohio midair crash, May 2007
Kalispell Skydive plane, May 2007
Malstrom Snowbird, May 2007
Peru civilian plane, May 2007
Canadian acrobatic plane, May 2007
Elkhorn private plane, May 2007
Medical Transplant plane, June 2007
California plane, June 2007

Those are just most of the local and significant global and national plane crashes that have occurred. Maybe I'm not right in this, but it seems like at least locally the number of planes that have crashed this year has been quite a bit higher than in previous years. I remember that about a month ago (slightly more), I told Pat I thought a lot of planes were crashing this year, and the the next day the Blue Angels crash was in the news, and then the Kenya crash, and then the skydiving crash here, and then the crash in the paper this morning.

It seems weird to me.

facing fear

I'm going to go skydiving on Monday. I am afraid because just a few weeks ago a plane from the skydiving place I'm going crashed, killing four or five people, two of whom Erin knew. It seems bizarre to me that real people die in plane crashes. Actually, maybe it just seems bizarre to me that real people die.
But I want to go, not only because I've heard it's really fun, but because I cannot live in fear. When it comes to things like cliff diving and bungee jumping, I have always been terrified, but I have found that some logical corner of me is stronger than my terror. I'm afraid of heights, but I still do these things.

I think that I believe that if I can conquer my fear of heights (and plane crashes and the parachute not opening and just jumping out of a plane), I can conquer my fear of going crazy again this summer by thinking too much, going crazy again in general, being alone next year, moving across the country, etc. Skydiving is symbollic. If I can skydive, I can live, no matter how frightened and panicked life makes me.

Tomorrow is my graduation, and I guess that in a long-term way, I'm kind of frightened of that as well. It is also symbollic. I am no longer a child, no longer protected. Never again in my life will anyone have the obligation to take care of me (but myself). And I think that scares me, because in a way I feel nobody ever did take care of me, and now that I am an adult, it will for sure never happen. I never got a chance to be dependent. I think I needed that.

On the materialistic front, I got some Birkenstocks that I've wanted for four years, some headphones, and a lot of money for graduation. I will probably save the money for my Canada trip with my friends in July.

I don't want to be afraid anymore.

recount

I don't have the energy to adequately explain what has happened over the past few weeks. So I will briefly go over it.

I'm assuming Josh is no longer reading this blog. Josh, if you are reading it, I am assuming from now on that you are not.

I broke up with Josh because it wasn't working. Maybe it was never working, but my undelying love for him was so great that it was able to overcome the problems. Things just broke after prom. I couldn't do it anymore. I hit a weakness inside of me that I was no longer willing to overcome. I was no longer willing to be exhausted, pushed aside by my self-created obligations. I cried for a long time before I told Josh that I needed to take a break.

I started dating Patrick, and I was happier than I'd been in years. I felt free, liberated after years of imprisonment. It was hard because I felt terrible about Josh, but I felt like for the first time I was doing something for me, not Josh. That made me feel both terribly selfish and terribly in control.

One night I talked to Josh, and I was able to try to explain the way I had always felt, and I think that for the first time, he really understood. We agreed to just be friends. The days after that felt absolutely complete. I could finally talk to Josh.

However (and this I will probably never explain on this blog), my relationship with Pat ended up hurting Josh (understandably), so that the pain I guess overcame his friendship for me. Last night he got justifiably really upset, and he called me a whore and said I never cared about him, that I'm selfish, that I don't listen to him, etc. It really hurt, but I listened because I believed he needed to say it. He needed a purgation. He told me he wasn't going to talk to me for months, and I didn't want him to not be able to tell me these things before he left. So he said them, and I said sorry and good bye. I felt like my mom was talking to me. It made me feel the same way.

Today I have been oscillating between anger at Josh for calling me a whore and those other things, and great sadness because some part of me believes I am a whore, and all of me knows that he said it because I really, genuinely, truly hurt him. I hurt him very badly. And that thought is almost unbearable.

I cannot regret what happened/is happening with Pat, but I do regret the way I handled telling it to Josh.

I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone today. I can always talk to Erin, I guess, but I was with her and JoAnna this weekend when the news began to hit, and they were there for me (along with Pat) then when I first felt the pain. I knew Erin was sick of hearing about Josh, as he has been the standing topic of conversation since she met me. I couldn't exactly call Pat, as it was the middle of school. So I retreated within myself and struggled to reconcile the things that Josh said with my own emotions, feelings, and fears. I realized that I have to forgive Josh for calling me those things, and I have to forgive myself for hurting him. The only real solution to any sort of offense is always forgiveness. Animosity, anger, revenge... they get you nowhere. Josh hurt me. I feel that he completely abandoned me in a way that I would never abandon him. But he also feels hurt, and he was just telling me what he really thought. It was the truth, which I would value over a reconciling lie. I can find it within me to love Josh no matter what he does. I wish him the best. I can find it within myself to let go of my anger and to move on with my life.

It's not easy though.

I saw Pat after school, and he helped me. Ariel helped me, Rylee helped me, Erin helped me, Jen helped me. I will get through this. And I hope Josh will too.

last few days

How surreal it is, to walk these hallways for the last few days, to attend my last Friday of high school. Ever.

I started working last week at the snow cone shack. It's been fun. Some days are busy and full of flying syrup and ice. Others are slow and full of me cleaning and listening to the radio.

I haven't been sleeping much. I must confess that many days have been fueled by caffeine.

Today was the last day of seminary, and I slept through half of it.

I'm still happy. I feel more honest than I have felt in months. Years, maybe.

This is my last high school weekend.

I think I'm mostly excited. I still feel so much paranoia and anxiety, but I know there's a lot more out there than is contained in my high school hallways.

possibility

I think that maybe everything is going to be okay.

And that idea, that everything could be okay, after years of confusion, is so much that I can barely stand it.

I'm eighteen today.

*sigh*

I'm happy.

nothings

I haven't slept much this week.
I worked Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today at Tropical Sno.
I spend my tip money on energy drinks so I can stay awake at work.
I'm sick of school.
I stepped on a nail yesterday, and it didn't hurt even though it went in half a centimeter.
It hurt this morning.
Things always hurt in the morning.

And I can't be honest on here anymore. When did that happen?
When did I become capable of destroying people?
Why do I feel free?
I do feel happy. And hopeful.

I will have to start posting in cryptic poems since I can no longer say what's happening.

event horizon

At some point I realized I'd lost myself, and I wasn't happy.

I don't want that.

Nobody wants that.

to think about

Because the earth is round, if I stand one foot away from you, I am both one foot away and almost an entire world away.
Because space is a grid of geodesics, if I stand one inch away from you, I am both one inch away and an entire universe away.
Every time I step one inch closer, I also step one inch backwards.
Every time I get the closest to you one human being can possibly get, the universe in all of its immensity stretches between us, prying us apart.

why i have to stop searching and to learn to just be

CLOSER TO FINE- Indigo Girls

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.

We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

Cloture invoked on AP government

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No more government!

And the test went extremely well.

Sometimes I just don't feel like I'm cut out for this.

cool stuff

Today I have gone up and down and up and down, just like, as my Facebook status says, an undamped harmonic oscillator approaching resonance.

I was having a really crappy day involving AP English and government essays and molecular orbitals, and I thought I didn't get the writing award for that stuff I posted a while back, so I was rather grumpy when I went to Carroll to take my math semester (which I think went well, by the way).

After the semester, though, I found out I am a presidential scholar, meaning that my parents and I get an all expenses paid trip to Washington DC this June that is actually not during national debate! (It's the week right after.) Only 120 people got the academic presidentail scholar status, out of the whole nation. It was first based on SAT/ACT scores, and then I had to fill out this long annoying (but well worth it now) application in January. Now here I am! I get to see Washington DC for free, a city I've always wanted to visit! (And the fact that it's free makes me feel better about not going to Australia/New Zealand.)

After that I found out I actually did win the Harrison writing award, which is what I was applying for when I posted that story and those poems a while back. This means I get $250, which is the most money I've ever gotten for writing a few poems.

So that was happy, but I'm still stressed to the max and I feel like I'm drowning.

Today I was the uranium, plumped up and quivering, and life was the slowed neutron making it's way towards my center, preparing to commense a fission chain reaction that would destroy my universe.

I'm stressed and exhausted.

it's official

The letter's in the mail. I am officially, after two years of angst and indecision, going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and I have learned how to spell it!). Whatever the repercussions, for good or for evil, I am now a fearsome MIT beaver.

Now back to trying to study math/AP gov/AP lit/Ap language... oh dear I still have an essay to write...

In exactly one month I will be entirely done with high school, forever.

Wow, Justin sent me this link and I'm kind of in shock. I just listened to her speak at CPW! I really liked her too, and what she was doing with the admissions process... weird.

Anyway, tonight I was planning on studying for Wednesday's math semester, but I ended up just staring at facebook for an hour. Maybe I shouldn't have joined. I was messaging the kid from Flathead that I debated in my final round at NFL's though. I noticed the other day that he was a presidential scholar finalist, and I wanted to tell him I really liked his determinism case (and all of his cases), so I messaged him, and he responded. He's very nice, no matter what anyone else on my team thinks.

The topic comes out in... TWO DAYS! Woah.

It's time to send off letters to colleges about where I am going. I still don't know. I'm thinking probably MIT, but my parents don't seem very happy. And I know it's because of this remodeling craziness, and I know it's happening because of me going to MIT. And I don't know how I can knowingly do that to them, no matter how badly I want it. I have to decide within the next nine hours though, which means like now, since I do plan on sleeping (and probably not studying for math).

Yikes.

dual worlds

I think that I am rarely clingy. I avoid it like the plague, because I know that clinginess can really annoy people and cause them to leave, and because I don't like being dependent on people (it's emotionally dangerous). But today I was really clingy and really dependent. More than most of the time, I really needed people. I just needed to be with people I loved. I really needed hugs. I don't hug my parents very often, but I hugged my dad today (the last time I hugged him was almost two years ago; I should probably work to make those time gaps shorter).

I am quite hypomanic today, bordering on manic (but not quite that bad). Everything just feels kind of weird. I have been thinking so much about physics and such that everything concrete has seemed really far away, and the world in my mind has seemed much more immediate. I was trying to pull myself back into the "real" world today and away from that crazy, dangerous bit of my mind (it is dangerous because I can see easily how I could retreat into it and cease to need the outside world of things at all; it's like retreating from imperfect reality to a dimension of Platonic forms). Subsequently there were a lot of conflicts going on within me, and the hypomania made me full of tension and charged energy. I think I really needed people because I needed an anchor to keep me from buzzing off into all of the kinds of insanity that pull at me.

When this happens to me, I can describe my day in two ways. I can describe the reality of mind, or the reality of my surroundings. For instance, today I went to school, I went to work on my semester math project with Tony, I went to cello, I played at a violin thing, I went to my cello recital (which went pretty well), and I went out to "coffee" with Erin and Jill. Now it is 10:40 and I have three hours of homework in front of me (at least), including studying AP government for the test tomorrow, finishing my math project, and writing two essays.

Seems real, right? But in my head today I thought about branes and the idea of our dimensions existing only on one brain and exchanging gravitrons with some parallel brane. I thought about string theory and M-theory. I thought about symmetry. I thought about how AP government was a waste of my time when so many more mathematical metaphysical things were more important. I thought about meaning. I thought about our lives, and the way they look. I thought about the hologram idea, that maybe our universe is just a projection (like the shadows on Plato's cave wall) of a higher dimensional world. In this reality, everything feels like it is on the brink of fitting together into some supreme grand unified theory, but it is not quite there. I'm missing something. There's something bigger; there's more dimensions.

When I get too lost in the second world (which is ironically about the big picture idea of matter), I lose a sense of all of the matter all around me. I drive through stop signs. I trip a lot. I take government quizzes that I can't remember taking. I can't think about people, and the relationship they have with me as an individual entity. Erin is physically in front of me, but it doesn't seem like there can possibly be a real relationship connecting us.

I think my dependence today came from the fact that I had been existing primarily in the idea world for the past few weeks, and the reality of people had begun to fade away. Today I kind of jerked into the concrete world, and I was starved for human contact. I was starved for details, like how pink the blossomed trees are, so pink they hurt my eyes. The relationships, the hugs, the blossoms, the holographic world, reminds me that there is something important in this world that I don't get when I get lost in the other one.

In a way, it makes me nervous to be dependent on my friends and surroundings when I am going off to MIT in August. But I can't push everything away. I can't get lost in my mind so that I cease to exist physically.

In the concrete world, I now have a job. I work at Tropical Sno. I start May 14, and during the summer I will work about four days a week for four hours each day. I get a free Tropical Sno every time I visit or work. In the concrete world, state music festival is coming up in one week, and the AP government test is coming up in less than two weeks, followed closely by the AP literature and language tests. Mixed in is the Vigilante Parade and prom. The topic for debate nationals comes out on May first, so I will have to start practicing a lot, and I have to organize and carry out a fundraiser at Taco Del Sol. I have friends that I love and a boyfriend that I am so excited to spend infinity with. Some of these things don't really matter. Some of them (like my friends and boyfriend) are really important.

At the same time, though, I am thinking thinking thinking. If T-duality exists in which really large things become the same as really small things, and the either six or seven unseen dimensions (depending on which theory you look at) exist as manifolds within our usual spacial dimensions, curled up within tiny circles that are smaller than the smallest quantum particle, and our universe is expanding in a radial fashion, as our universe expands and the manifolds remain consant, is there some point at which T-duality applies so that our huge, radial universe is physically the same as a tiny, circular manifold, so that our universe of ten or eleven dimensions becomes entirely curled up in a manifold smaller than the smallest particle of a higher-dimensional universe?

It's a cool idea. Almost as cool as prom.

frustration

As my mind wanders further into the insanity of physics, math, psychology, and writing, I write more and more poems about math, fusing the the parts of my mind. What is frustrating is that nobody that reads them (or will ever read them) understands them.

For instance, this poem. I know that everyone can get the main idea about going crazy within society, but there are a lot of intricate symbols and allusions that I really want to explain.

RESONANCE
[it doesn't matter if you scream.
at some point in the discontinuity
you are lost.]

three dimensions aren't enough
for the insane
who vibrate against the forces
of normalcy

on either side
the numbers approach
the point at which it all breaks down

oscillations grow wider and wider
cognitive cells stretch at points
we cannot touch with our fingers
that can be described
with so few coordinates

beat
beat
beat
(the drum of the insane)
RESONANCE
this is when you fall, when you fall,
when you fall
beat
beat
beat

they come in floods,
the men and women
whose minds tear through the tissue
of the known

every string against the system,
damped by reality.
every heart breaking haltingly
with the swaying of the bridge.

it happens slowly, you see.
three beats, one rip in time,
one fall into a place where no one
can reach you.

[you never existed.
pick the lefthand value.
pick the you that never was.]

Yes, the poem was written when I was feeling kind of crazy and thinking incessently. The idea of the poem was that you could describe the oscillations of string theory with a differential equation. I know now that this may not work for what the poem is about, because a string theory equation would require partial derivatives due to the multiple dimensions. There's a few other problems as well. But the poem still holds its basic idea.
For a forced undampened second order differential equation with a first coefficient of one, as the imaginary square root of the first coefficient (1) times four times the third coefficient times negative one approaches the # of the forcing function sin/cos(#t), the oscillations develope beats, and finally when the two numbers are equal, resonance occurs, creating wild oscillations that just get bigger and bigger.
So the normal three dimensions aren't enough for a string or something that vibrates through multiple dimensions. Symbollically, this means that our society's assumptions etc. aren't enough for some people that sense something more. On either side the numbers approach break down because the numbers describing the vibrations of the insane people approach the forcing function, at which resonance, or complete insanity, occurs. As the oscillations grow wider and wider, the insane stretch out of ordinary four dimensional (described with four coordinates) space time. Beats occur close to resonance. Reality can act as a damper, because damped second order equations don't exhibit resonance. The swaying of the bridge is the swaying of reality, but it also represents the equation, as dampened second order equations generally describe bridges. The beginning and ending part in brackets is because the function isn't consistent at resonance, because the oscillations spike to infnity. When trying to calculate the limit of a function at a point of discontinuity (like in Dirac-Delta functions), you're supposed to use the left hand value, which means, since oscillations are essentially a function of time, you choose the value of the position at an earlier time. At a time early enough, the insane poeple cease to exist. So you have to choose the time before they are born.

It all makes sense to me, but nobody else gets it.

essay i found that i vaguely remember writing

I wrote this last year for English, I guess. I don't remember writing it or turning it in, but I remember thinking these things, and I still agree with them, so I thought I would post it in case it gets lost in the ether.

The Means Are the Ends We Seek

We exist in a society that lives for the future. The illusory goals of humanity- happiness, utopia, freedom, individual worth, equality of power- can never be achieved under the current American psychological complex, the wavering conviction in the realization of tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow’ never comes, and in that truth lies the excuse for the stagnation of human ideals in America.

So often Americans seek utopia through consistency; however, the only real consistency in life, the only real control, is not found in the ends we seek, but in dystopia, the antithesis of the ‘perfect’ society. Only misery allows a real sense of security. People can count on the companionship of depression in a way that they can never count on the ends they seek. Because of America’s reliance on what is reliable, what cannot be lost, the ends of a utopia can never be found in the American psyche. We have convinced ourselves that we are fighting for freedom, for happiness, but are incapable of attaining it. We use this imagined fundamental shortcoming as an excuse to remain unmoving in our consistent existences. Americans continue to relapse into immobility, and we have convinced ourselves it is because we don’t have the self-control to abstain from dystopia. However, because in our great search for happiness we are constantly choosing to be unhappy, we are falling short of the ends we seek and finding comfort in bondage and a wild inconsistency in our concept of freedom.

The remedy to the situation is the diametrical opposite of the pseudo-utopia America seeks: letting go of the unattainable end and finding consummation in the means. Genuine freedom, individual worth, and equality of power are not an end, not a destination. The American interpretation of a utopia really is inconsistent; it really is untrustworthy, and it isn’t a utopia that could ever accommodate our goals; however, there are alternate versions of a utopia that are not found in the ends, but rather in the means. We plan for the future. We do everything we can to be happy tomorrow. We have forgotten today. Now is the only time we will be alive. If we aren’t free now, we will never be free, no matter how hard we work for it. Freedom isn’t simply an end; it is a way of life we choose. It is not something we can own but something we are.

We seek utopia, happiness, freedom, individual worth, and equality of power. America has placed these ideals in tomorrow. We have made them a reward we can earn from living; however, these goals are inherent in the very act of living. Happiness is found only in the search for happiness. Utopia is found in the constant struggle for excellence- not perfection- today. Freedom can only be seized by living, not through it. Equality of power and individual worth can only be actualized by the individual’s decision to live on the same plane as his peers, not by a government struggling to arbitrate it.
There is the possibility, every day, of all of the ends we’ve ever desired, but the only way to achieve these ends is by absorbing them into the action of living and denying the contemporary American psyche. If we conform to the habits of society, we will never reach the future and never repeat the past. We can exist only in the moment, and only in this moment, through the means of living, can we achieve the utopia we seek.

incomprehensible

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."
-Albert Einstein

I read "A U.S. Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 has crashed in an "enormous fireball" during an air show in South Carolina, killing the pilot as his family watched."
Can you imagine watching someone in your family crash like that? I can't imagine that kind of helplessness.

One of the most powerful bits of a film that I have ever seen was the part of Bowling for Colombine when it shows all of the people dying while (Ray Charles?) sings "Oh What a Wonderful World."

The craziest thing is that it is a wonderful world. It really is, despite it all.

(meanwhile in my tiny life, I got superior ratings on my cello solo, violin solo, octet, and duet with Erin, but a 2 on my piano solo.)

District music festival

I had my piano solo today. The propanelol that I take to keep me from shaking uncontrollably from nervousness when I perform is a double-edged sword: sometimes, if I don't concentrate on it, it prevents me from putting emotion into a song. And let me tell you, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair by Debussy requires emotion (go listen to it- it's amazing). Usually I play it quite well, but I was kind of blah today, and my attempt to get around holding several notes did not go unnoticed or, I suspect I will find out tomorrow, unthwarted.

So I don't think I got a superior, which means that repeating last year's superiors-on-everything district-state sweep is impossible already, now in the first stage.

Blah.
I'm really tired. I've been staring at Facebook, reading blogs, posting in forums, checking my email, and reading XKCD comics rather than studying or doing my homework, so I am up very late every night. It's my fault I know.

Tomorrow is senior skip day (stoner day, Colombine day, Hitler's birthday), but I'm going to school. :-( I skipped school once in eigth grade to go to a peace rally protesting the Iraq war right after it started. My mom wouldn't or couldn't excuse me, so a few friends and I just left. I'm glad I did it. I've never regretted it. But it dropped several of my grades because work from unexcused absences can't be made up (I got my only C that quarter, ironically in orchestra). I can't do that now, because my grades actually matter, and I don't have a noble cause for missing school. And having your parents call you out really is cheating.

Nothing left to do now but go dominate Pat in Mario Kart. He doesn't know yet how amazing I am.

rough start

Okay, so I didn't really have fun at MIT this weekend. In fact, it was mostly traumatizing. It was a very rough start, but I'm still alive I suppose.

I got there, and the first half of the first day my mom stayed with me, but then she said she was going to leave me for the rest of the weekend so it was more of my experience, which was alright and necessary, I suppose.

I really like the campus, and I really like the education there, and I know it's what I want academically, and it turns out that the kids there aren't really smarter than me (and by the way I'm a semifinalist in the presidential scholar program, top 500 in the nation, but I have to make one more all-important cut; I'm still waiting on the NMS). I went to a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities) presentation for the astronomy/planetary sciences UROP's, and I started getting so excited because there are so many astronomy opportunities there (like upper classmen can go to Arizona every spring break to use their awesome telescopes to do research), and I felt that great pressure of excitement in me. So I liked the school a lot (although it was rather cold there).

Everything else kind of unfolded and fell apart. I met up with my host, who took me back to where I was supposed to be staying, and the girls that were staying with all knew each other really well from a summer camp. They were really nice, but all the time I was with him I was this awkward third wheel. All they talked about was how they were all going to get a suite together next year (obviously not including me).

I'm not going to go into everything that happened during the weekend, because much of it just isn't important. I stayed with the girls from my dorm for part of the time, but I ended up getting shuttled all over the place, sleeping in this girl's dorm who they knew from their summer camp etc. It was just really weird, and I was very unincluded, and I felt so alone.

I was trying to be really outgoing for the weekend (and I really was being outgoing). I introduced myself to a lot of people, and I hung out with different people for long periods of time. But everyone, no matter how nice they were, seemed to know each other, and none of them really clicked with me at all. And the more energy I put into being outgoing and trying to find friends, the more desperate and drained I felt when I really didn't get much out of it but that familiar third-wheel feeling.

I always feel inferior, to everyone, in almost every way.

It was better when I just didn't try to be outgoing, and just did everything on my own, and didn't try to fit in with a group of people that I really just didn't know. I never could really figure out how or why everyone knew people, but part of it was that most of them had other people from their city get in, and I was the only person from Montana to even get into MIT this year.

So 4 a.m. on Friday morning I got dragged with them to talk to these stupid fraternity boys next door that were really annoying, and everyone was kind of ignoring me and the fact that I was falling apart, so when I realized I was going to break into tears because everything felt like it was exponentially increasing every instant, every bad thing and insecurity and fear in me, and I told them I was going back to our dorm, and my host told me to just ring the doorbell, which was really inconsiderate of her since she knew the combination and it was only like twenty feet away. Had anyone really looked at me, it would have been obvious that I was losing it, but I guess I'm glad they didn't, but the point is that whether I was losing it or not, they just didn't look at me at all. I was just this ghost that followed people around and tried to strike up conversations that weren't really my own. Every conversation with anyone I talked to all weekend felt fake to me, because I felt like everyone I talked to was either very different from me, or really just didn't care about me and wouldn't have noticed if I'd suddenly gone away, or at least wouldn't have bothered to come back to find me.

On friday morning my mind kind of lost its last shred of sanity, and I just thought screw it all, and I found my way back to a bathroom, and I sat on the toilet and cried for a long time. It was mostly because this CPW thing is a preview at college, and what I am afraid will happen, what I know will happen, at college happened this weekend. I was alone and I fell apart. I felt so suicidal that night. I realized I can't do it. I can't go to college, whether it's at MIT or MSU. I was losing it so completely that all I wanted that morning was for someone to come and take me away and put me in a hospital. It was so terrible, because again there was no escape. Killing myself would be worse. Not going to college wouldn't work (all my friends would still go). No matter what I do, I have to leave, and things have to change, and I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.

I guess that is the crux of the issue, and it is what pushed me to fall apart again last night while trying to suppress the pretty terrible memories of my emotions this weekend. I really just don't think I can do this. And I'm not sure that I have an alternative. And I'm not sure what will happen to me when I am forced into a situation like I was in this weekend, but it is permanant. I'm not sure where I will go or how I will cope. I need people to take care of me sometimes. They can still do that over the phone, but nobody will be there to notice or care when I'm falling apart in the frat house at 4 a.m.

I can't go to college. I can't do it. I'll fall apart. I'm not stable enough.

If I have to go, it will be to MIT. But at the end of this weekend, I didn't feel like I could get out of the shower, much less out of th door, much less out of my state and my friends and my life and into oblivion.

bad news for us Star Wars fans

Being the nerdy person I am, I have been reading about particle physics, and an alarming truth has been called to my attention.

All particles are either Bosons or Fermions. Fermions have to obey the exclusionary principle, meaning to Fermions can't be in the same place at once or pass through each other or anything (the same way I can't move my hand through the book or walk through walls). Bosons, however, don't have to obey such an exclusionary principle.

If you shine a laser in the air and shine another laser through it, because photons are Bosons, the beams will pass through each other.

Therefore, if light sabers are really concentrated beams of photons (as can be assumed by the word light in their name), it doesn't matter how advanced the technology is, physical laws demand that the beams of the light sabers would pass through each other rather than clash. They could still be dangerous to flesh the way that lasers are, but they would be terrible weapons because you wouldn't be able to block a blow or do any of those cool Star Wars moves.

It's so sad the way illusion dies. :-)

Anyway, I'm going to Boston tomorrow morning. I'm nervous, but I'm also really excited. I'll be there until Sunday night.