girls

this may not hold for all guys, but it's how i see it.

when guys are in a relationship with someone we care about or respect, be it romantic or just friendly, sometimes it feels like we're on a pedastal with a not so sturdy base. the higher ur opinion of us, the higher the pedastal, and the higher chance we have to fall from ur grace.

when we care about u, we want to be your superman. we want to take care of u, help u out at least, and most of all, seem invincible. we (or at least me) get scared sometimes that if we show fear or break down in front of u, u'll lose respect for us, or get scared by our emotions, and leave. obviously, we don't want that, so sometimes we bottle up how we feel. we dont tell u straight out, but we still feel it, so we get sort of passive aggressive so that we can get our point accross without showing the weakness of sharing our turmoil. we're like little kids throwing tantrums or scowling in the corner just to get attention and to get taken care of.

but there's still the father figure in us who wants to provide and be a pillar of strength, who, even when the world is falling apart, wants to keep the children calm and look like we have everything under control, so sometimes we just shut down, and ignore or try to repress our emotions. completely. so we don't show how we feel at all, we just stop showing that we feel. we think we're protecting you by bearing our own burdens, because we don't want to whine and bitch to you, because we're supposed to take care of u, stay level-headed and stay strong for u.

but no matter how much we dislike it, guys do feel, and so we try to cope in those ways. with us, it builds up and builds up to, until we either burst out, telling everything, crying to ourselves, breaking down in ur arms, or emptying ourselves. it's like a sun in supernova. we have all this pent up energy, and we have to get rid of it. so we either burn, by ourselves, or burning others with us, or we implode and become vaccuuous, a black hole where we used to feel.

again, i could be wrong, and i may have gotten carried away with the metaphors, but to all women who get confused by men, i hope this helps.

blogsecret

jessy mentioned some post secret things with 6 letters, so i figured i'd give it a shot.

can i be anything without her?

am i just full of shit?

can i save them, and myself?

will i see what others see?

should i give in, or fight?

i dont know why i question.

stones and pillows

the more i think about these analogies, the more sense they make.

sensitive guys are like pillows: rather thin surface, not great at hiding wat's within, filled with feathers, which are the parts of birds which help them fly. think of it as hopeful thought and a sort of transcendence of spirit. our insides are the stuff of birds, soaring anywhere, up into the sky, yearning towards the cosmos, inside we feel and remember possibility, hope, and freedom. pillows can also take quite a bit of punishment, they feel the impact, but can be fluffed back up. people cry into pillows, they beat them. pillows provide emotional and physical outlets.

smooth, less emotional guys are like stones: tough surface, difficult to penetrate, but even when they get broken, they're still stone on the inside, just a smaller slab. inside, stones are compressed sediment, created over time by pressure, a condensed mix of experience translated into a certain structure. stones are formed by time, and how nature affects them, and they're hard on the outside and inside, but not hollow.

a stone

songs stick with me pretty easily. this one's about "a stone" by okkervil river.

so i figure, there are two "special?" types of guys: the heartbreakers, and the heartbroken. the heartbreakers are generally stones. smooth, but hard, nearly inpenetrable, strong, stoic, stony, basically. the heartbroken are different. this blog's mostly trying to define what they are. let's see, they're soft, sorta malleable (lead-on-able), emotional, easily broken or torn, but persistent...sponge? not quite.

hmm...maybe the heartbroken are like pillows. we're willing to sacrifice ourselves to break the fall of those we support, we serve the function of punching bags, projectiles, we're generally soft, we give comfort to a point, but its more constant and less appreciated than the safety a stone seems to give. i guess it makes sense when you think about it. pillows are nice and soft, but you can only make pillow forts, which aren't very protective. while stones can become castles, making you feel safe, and like a queen, and it seems just to protect you.

hmm, pillow still doesn't seem right. oh well, i'll give it more thought.

hero

i want to save, or at least help people. i see that as my noble mission in life. i have this self-righteous/selfless/wanting to be of service/self-martyring/tragic hero wish/complex.

i guess it started when i was younger, and still terrified of my mom. my sister still took piano back then, and she'd cry at the piano while practicing and my mom would yell at and hit her, and she'd cry more, and i'd sit terrified doing homework, too afraid to try and help her.

high school sorta rekindled this desire to save people. luckily, i soon became surrounded with people i thought i could save. unfortunately, i could not/still can not save them.

miranda: couldn't even get through to her, tried to make her happy, even fixed her up with chris davidson when she had a crush on him and i had a crush on her, couldn't do shit, gave up.
russell: isn't really self-destructive, but i tried to help him by fixing him up with julia. he said he wanted someone who'd like him for him, i thought julia would appreciate his relationship wanting and sensitive self. he ended up realizing that he's not the kind of person for relationships or something, she ended up hating him, or not, idk anymore. basically, huge backfire, guilt, emotional disconnect, couldn't help my best friend, gave up.
julia: had rough break-up with kenta, wanted a relationship and someone to take care of her. i thought russell would do that, tried to fix them up. things were great for a few months, she said we'd made her whole again, i couldn't be happier, even though at the beginning weird feelings for her started coming back. now she's smoking again, her and russell are on weird terms, i don't know if she's eating, she looks thinner and thinner, reminiscently so of miranda. she's stubborn too, so i give up.
jessy: just tried the little things, staying late afterschool, skipping classes to hang out with her. now i'm scared they'll kick me out of pl and my mom will get reli pissed, and i really want to be a pl. but i feel guilty because i want to save or help people, and i've already failed at that so much, with my sister, with my friends, even with my mentee. i feel like jessy's the only one left, so i focus all my stupid heroism on her. but then i'm scared of the consequences, and i feel like both choices, (hanging out or not, skipping obligations or not) define who i am, either the dedicated friend, or the good student, and i know i'm taking it too seriously, but i've always done that. thus, i feel like i'm sacrificing my time to save my friends, but neither of which seems to be accomplishing much, and my time isn't all that valuable, so i'm just being overly dramatic about missing classes and crap, but i still feel guilty if i neglect my friends for classes, or if i neglect my classes for friends, because that's how i see it.

so i want to be a hero, but i feel weak, and i want to sacrifice, cuz i feel it might make me more able to help my friends, but i'm not sacrificing much of actual importance, but i still feel like a martyr because my vision of good and bad is exaggerated, i guess.

and in the end, i guess part of me wants to be taken care of, not that my friends don't do that, but i feel like sometimes it's not fair to ask them to if i feel like they need saving, which most of the time they don't, and when they actually do, i don't seem to be able to do much. some hero i am. =P

the idea of god

i guess this really started a few days ago, when i had a lab with mr glassman about my thoreau paper. in walden, thoreau seems to see god, or some beauty semi-divine in nature, and it struck me as almost pantheistic, which i sorta subscribe to. more than any other religion anyway. i figure that the beauty in nature is so perfect and singular that its hard to believe its all a coincidence, that there's some divine force within it, if not behind it. maybe life itself is divine, god-given. that would be convenient. =P

so anyway, it turns out thoreau never had a specific religious belief. and that was a huge relief. because i really really admired how he thought, and felt, and wrote. he saw so much beauty in life, like i always try to, and he articulated it sophisticatedly, which i dont reli try to do, but it would be nice.

and it got me thinking. maybe some people dont believe in religion. i mean sure, everyone believes in something. (i've also been listening to that john mayer song belief some this week) if you believe in god, as creator, or guardian, or watever, that's wat u believe in. or if u believe in the devil, or that there's no god, that's still a belief. but during yesterday's service, there was a "moment of meditation" where we were supposed to reflect on god and his grace and blah blah blah.

i technically did that, well, i reflected on the idea of god, and the purpose of religion. i realized that religion, and the idea of god, is a catalyst. it triggers feelings in people. it causes direction, safety, anger, joy, and most of all, hope.

i had a conversation with my dad about this on the way back, and i feel it relates to jessy's blog entry recently. and now that i think about it, russell told me something like this before, when explaining how he's atheist/agnostic, cuz he says he respects others religions, but he doesnt seem to like the idea behind folloing a religion. religion gives people a sense of security. the idea of a god makes people think that, even though they're inperfect and flawed, there's some greater being who's in charge and he's perfect and wise and so everything will turn out ok because he's running the show, so all we have to do is follow him and not question his plan, because we're just humans, what do we know? god is a symbol of order, or direction, of stability for the universe, which is why people feel they have a purpose when they communicate with or follow what they believe to be god.

so god is like a giant, invisible security blanket. he reli is like the father or mother. strong, capable, and able to make everything ok. at some point. i guess we reli on god even more when we're unsure or unsteady of ourselves.

but sometimes religion seems blind. there's no real proof, so we reli on passion and fervor in our told direction to drive us down the path "god" has put out for us. now i'm not saying don't believe in god, just make sure you have a reason. i mean, sure, my reason isn't great, but i don't reli believe in a "god", persay. i like to think there's something, some natural intelligence simpler but greater than ours in all that's around us. the way the stars twinkle, the way the sun shines, the way the moon glows, the way leaves and clouds and the ocean catches all of these lights and reflects them so beautifully, and how we humans are constructed not only to see them, but to enjoy them. i guess i think god was like our designer. he wrote our blueprints, but had no idea wat material we each would be made out of, so left it for us to navigate the program he put in our minds, which includes infinite possibility. possibility for hope, fear, obedience, defiance, questioning, joy, sorrow, and most of all, uncertainty. =P

religion

i went to a church service yesterday. nobody i went with seemed to want to be there. not even my mom, which was a surprise. the music was good, uplifting, i guess, but the rest was pretty boring and seemed almost delusional. my dad's best friend's sister is a congresswoman from texas, and she was at the service, which is why we had to go, and she was only mentioned one time without the word congresswoman.

it was just like the last time we went to a church. my dad's best friend's aunt, and my dad's godaunt had passed. she'd had 2 heart attacks, traveled the world, and done many things to help people. i'd only met her a few weeks before she passed, and she seemed so tired when we met her. luckily she seemed ready to pass, and i think she was happy to see my dad before she did.

but anyway, at the funeral there was all this pomp and circumstance, and i now see the connection between pomp and pompous because of that. people performed, of all things. at a funeral. this woman sang a song "for val" (the woman who passed), and this guy who was supposed to have known her like a mother sang a song, and both of them smiled all through the songs. it was actually disgusting. i started to nod off during the funeral, which isnt a great thing, but im glad i missed some of the posturing. nobody except the woman's sister, who was my dad's godmother seemed to be sad, despite all the incredible things they said she'd done for the church and others.

and the congresswoman, how could i forget. CONGRESSWOMAN shiela jackson lee. it was so shallow. i was sitting near her brother, who we call uncle mike, and who was also nephew to val, but he wasn't mentioned a single time. congresswoman shiela was simply mentioned to be in the church that day about 7 times. ok, fine, apparently, she's accomplished and has made change in the world, but a funeral is not the place to celebrate her presence, and to ignore the presence of other relatives of the dearly departed.

but back to the church service yesterday. shiela gave a speech about washington, and hope, and change, and god, and how he looks out for us. it seemed kinda barack obamaesque, but not as good, and involving the conscious concern of a divine being. and i couldn't help thinking how much she believed of what she spoke. was she just posturing too? just putting in god because she was in a church, with people who felt that god was watching over them. it really made me wonder about the power of religion, and how it affects what people do and say, but i'll continue this in another blog. this one's getting long.