“And how many have you truly loved?” she asked.
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Sunday, 14 August 2011
The site of grey
“And how many have you truly loved?” she asked.
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
Friday, 22 April 2011
A reevaluation of (two kinds of) relationships
First kind
Last night, I had a weird set of emotions flowing through me - weird only because they were new, not because I thought they were wrong. First, I shared with T???? the short passage I'd written with 83 Ms. Perhaps it was me hoping to strongly that she would remark (directly) upon how it compared to V's monologue from the movie 'V for Vendetta'. Now that I think about it, T???? may have only been the usual inappropriately-unpredictable bitch she usually is, but I don't care: her response drove me wild. I hope it stays that way, too.
I don't know if I look like a merry-go-round on legs to some people, but I've had it. Some people are not worth it irrespective of how much I might need them. Be it M?, P????? and A????? for what they know about me, be it T???? for whatever I may have needed her for, be it anyone: I've realized that I've been a top-order fool to let myself be cowed down by my need to please others. More than the realization, more than the decision to "turn over a new leaf", what's important is that I continue to understand why it's important to feel that way, to live that way.
Second kind
That, in turn, prompts me to think how honest I've been with my diary, how honest I will be. I who write this diary – is that "I" different from I who embrace the reality, the interpretations of the interactions with which fills up the diary? A day ago, since when the questions have been lounging in the back of my mind, I had this fleeting vision of three layers of existence that I may interact through with reality (at least as I perceive it): the Outermost layer, which is composed of all sorts of spontaneous activities that I must perform, do perform, with any or little reflection; the Middle layer, which is composed of elements such as honesty, reliability and punctuality, amongst others – those entities whose evaluation for the sake of the self involves a comparison against past precedents (or, those entities that exhibit hysteresis by way of being 'path-dependent'); the Innermost layer, which constitutes (and is not composed of) the basal emotions such as joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy, etc. – those emotions that are directly influenced by variations in the quantity and quality of the spontaneous activities.
Why then don't I place these emotions in the Middle layer? Because the constituents of the Middle layer influence my immediate responses to the spontaneous activities; it is the case of an extended cause-effect linkage. Just as in thermodynamics, where there are mass-dependent (extrinsic) and mass-independent (intrinsic) properties, in this structure of the psyche, there is the segregation of response-inducers (RIs) into low performance-dependency (LPD) responses and high performance-dependency (HPD) responses. The LPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Middle layer and the HPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Innermost layer.
The LPD responses that contribute greatly to the formation of my long-term goals are less easily influenced by day-to-day activities (likewise for HPD) and their subjugation in favour of the HPD responses has kept me happy, etc., on a day-to-day basis but has taken me nowhere I want to be in the longer run. Further (?!), I need to be reliable unto myself first, punctual unto myself first, honest unto myself first, and so forth.
And, to answer the question first asked, this blog (transcripted), I hope, remains both immanent to each layer and transcendental.
Last night, I had a weird set of emotions flowing through me - weird only because they were new, not because I thought they were wrong. First, I shared with T???? the short passage I'd written with 83 Ms. Perhaps it was me hoping to strongly that she would remark (directly) upon how it compared to V's monologue from the movie 'V for Vendetta'. Now that I think about it, T???? may have only been the usual inappropriately-unpredictable bitch she usually is, but I don't care: her response drove me wild. I hope it stays that way, too.
I don't know if I look like a merry-go-round on legs to some people, but I've had it. Some people are not worth it irrespective of how much I might need them. Be it M?, P????? and A????? for what they know about me, be it T???? for whatever I may have needed her for, be it anyone: I've realized that I've been a top-order fool to let myself be cowed down by my need to please others. More than the realization, more than the decision to "turn over a new leaf", what's important is that I continue to understand why it's important to feel that way, to live that way.
Second kind
That, in turn, prompts me to think how honest I've been with my diary, how honest I will be. I who write this diary – is that "I" different from I who embrace the reality, the interpretations of the interactions with which fills up the diary? A day ago, since when the questions have been lounging in the back of my mind, I had this fleeting vision of three layers of existence that I may interact through with reality (at least as I perceive it): the Outermost layer, which is composed of all sorts of spontaneous activities that I must perform, do perform, with any or little reflection; the Middle layer, which is composed of elements such as honesty, reliability and punctuality, amongst others – those entities whose evaluation for the sake of the self involves a comparison against past precedents (or, those entities that exhibit hysteresis by way of being 'path-dependent'); the Innermost layer, which constitutes (and is not composed of) the basal emotions such as joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy, etc. – those emotions that are directly influenced by variations in the quantity and quality of the spontaneous activities.
Why then don't I place these emotions in the Middle layer? Because the constituents of the Middle layer influence my immediate responses to the spontaneous activities; it is the case of an extended cause-effect linkage. Just as in thermodynamics, where there are mass-dependent (extrinsic) and mass-independent (intrinsic) properties, in this structure of the psyche, there is the segregation of response-inducers (RIs) into low performance-dependency (LPD) responses and high performance-dependency (HPD) responses. The LPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Middle layer and the HPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Innermost layer.
The LPD responses that contribute greatly to the formation of my long-term goals are less easily influenced by day-to-day activities (likewise for HPD) and their subjugation in favour of the HPD responses has kept me happy, etc., on a day-to-day basis but has taken me nowhere I want to be in the longer run. Further (?!), I need to be reliable unto myself first, punctual unto myself first, honest unto myself first, and so forth.
And, to answer the question first asked, this blog (transcripted), I hope, remains both immanent to each layer and transcendental.
A reevaluation of (two kinds of) relationships
First kind
Last night, I had a weird set of emotions flowing through me - weird only because they were new, not because I thought they were wrong. First, I shared with T???? the short passage I'd written with 83 Ms. Perhaps it was me hoping to strongly that she would remark (directly) upon how it compared to V's monologue from the movie 'V for Vendetta'. Now that I think about it, T???? may have only been the usual inappropriately-unpredictable bitch she usually is, but I don't care: her response drove me wild. I hope it stays that way, too.
I don't know if I look like a merry-go-round on legs to some people, but I've had it. Some people are not worth it irrespective of how much I might need them. Be it M?, P????? and A????? for what they know about me, be it T???? for whatever I may have needed her for, be it anyone: I've realized that I've been a top-order fool to let myself be cowed down by my need to please others. More than the realization, more than the decision to "turn over a new leaf", what's important is that I continue to understand why it's important to feel that way, to live that way.
Second kind
That, in turn, prompts me to think how honest I've been with my diary, how honest I will be. I who write this diary – is that "I" different from I who embrace the reality, the interpretations of the interactions with which fills up the diary? A day ago, since when the questions have been lounging in the back of my mind, I had this fleeting vision of three layers of existence that I may interact through with reality (at least as I perceive it): the Outermost layer, which is composed of all sorts of spontaneous activities that I must perform, do perform, with any or little reflection; the Middle layer, which is composed of elements such as honesty, reliability and punctuality, amongst others – those entities whose evaluation for the sake of the self involves a comparison against past precedents (or, those entities that exhibit hysteresis by way of being 'path-dependent'); the Innermost layer, which constitutes (and is not composed of) the basal emotions such as joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy, etc. – those emotions that are directly influenced by variations in the quantity and quality of the spontaneous activities.
Why then don't I place these emotions in the Middle layer? Because the constituents of the Middle layer influence my immediate responses to the spontaneous activities; it is the case of an extended cause-effect linkage. Just as in thermodynamics, where there are mass-dependent (extrinsic) and mass-independent (intrinsic) properties, in this structure of the psyche, there is the segregation of response-inducers (RIs) into low performance-dependency (LPD) responses and high performance-dependency (HPD) responses. The LPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Middle layer and the HPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Innermost layer.
The LPD responses that contribute greatly to the formation of my long-term goals are less easily influenced by day-to-day activities (likewise for HPD) and their subjugation in favour of the HPD responses has kept me happy, etc., on a day-to-day basis but has taken me nowhere I want to be in the longer run. Further (?!), I need to be reliable unto myself first, punctual unto myself first, honest unto myself first, and so forth.
And, to answer the question first asked, this blog (transcripted), I hope, remains both immanent to each layer and transcendental.
Last night, I had a weird set of emotions flowing through me - weird only because they were new, not because I thought they were wrong. First, I shared with T???? the short passage I'd written with 83 Ms. Perhaps it was me hoping to strongly that she would remark (directly) upon how it compared to V's monologue from the movie 'V for Vendetta'. Now that I think about it, T???? may have only been the usual inappropriately-unpredictable bitch she usually is, but I don't care: her response drove me wild. I hope it stays that way, too.
I don't know if I look like a merry-go-round on legs to some people, but I've had it. Some people are not worth it irrespective of how much I might need them. Be it M?, P????? and A????? for what they know about me, be it T???? for whatever I may have needed her for, be it anyone: I've realized that I've been a top-order fool to let myself be cowed down by my need to please others. More than the realization, more than the decision to "turn over a new leaf", what's important is that I continue to understand why it's important to feel that way, to live that way.
Second kind
That, in turn, prompts me to think how honest I've been with my diary, how honest I will be. I who write this diary – is that "I" different from I who embrace the reality, the interpretations of the interactions with which fills up the diary? A day ago, since when the questions have been lounging in the back of my mind, I had this fleeting vision of three layers of existence that I may interact through with reality (at least as I perceive it): the Outermost layer, which is composed of all sorts of spontaneous activities that I must perform, do perform, with any or little reflection; the Middle layer, which is composed of elements such as honesty, reliability and punctuality, amongst others – those entities whose evaluation for the sake of the self involves a comparison against past precedents (or, those entities that exhibit hysteresis by way of being 'path-dependent'); the Innermost layer, which constitutes (and is not composed of) the basal emotions such as joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy, etc. – those emotions that are directly influenced by variations in the quantity and quality of the spontaneous activities.
Why then don't I place these emotions in the Middle layer? Because the constituents of the Middle layer influence my immediate responses to the spontaneous activities; it is the case of an extended cause-effect linkage. Just as in thermodynamics, where there are mass-dependent (extrinsic) and mass-independent (intrinsic) properties, in this structure of the psyche, there is the segregation of response-inducers (RIs) into low performance-dependency (LPD) responses and high performance-dependency (HPD) responses. The LPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Middle layer and the HPD responses are actuated by our "sense of the self" in the Innermost layer.
The LPD responses that contribute greatly to the formation of my long-term goals are less easily influenced by day-to-day activities (likewise for HPD) and their subjugation in favour of the HPD responses has kept me happy, etc., on a day-to-day basis but has taken me nowhere I want to be in the longer run. Further (?!), I need to be reliable unto myself first, punctual unto myself first, honest unto myself first, and so forth.
And, to answer the question first asked, this blog (transcripted), I hope, remains both immanent to each layer and transcendental.
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