It time to write that paper now. Yep. Just gotta start doin' it. Gotta start that writing. Allright. Here I go.

Infections; Advice

I think that I'll always remember 2005 as the year of the many infections. I spent all of Winter quarter dealing with an STD; it took me about a month and half trying to figure out what it was, and then another month and a half trying to get rid of it. Now the same thing is happening again, only with a new infection: I seem to have worms, crawling around my rectum, feeding and laying their eggs in and on me. I've only seen one thing that could convincingly be called a worm to an untrained eye such as mine, but the other symptoms are all there. So, spring quarter, 2005, was spent obsessing over my ass, worrying myself sick over what the hell was happening to me (just like I did in Winter quarter, except over my dick). Now, for the past few weeks, I've been working to get rid of the infection. Just like with the Chlamydia, the first attempt didn't cure it completely, so I have to do it again.

And, to top it all off, for the past couple of days I've felt little twinges in my dick that really remind me of the STD I had in Winter (of course, it also feels just like a urinary tract infection, which is why it took me so long to figure out that I had it the first time, back in Winter). If I really have gotten re-infected with Chlamydia, then I'm gonna be really pissed off: I only had unsafe sex two or three times since I cured my last infection. I had unsafe sex SO many times over the past 3 or 4 years, on a very regular basis, and I never got any sort of disease. Now I can't even do it once without getting something? What the fuck? I speculate that there's been an outbreak of Chlamydia in Ohio ('cause I got infected in Cincinnati too, not just Columbus), and a lot of folks who like to sleep around have it right now.

This is not such a serious thing to me: a simple, one dose pill takes care of it very quickly. More serious is what is says about my out-of-control sexual behavior: shouldn't getting this infection twice be enough to teach me my lesson? I guess not: rock-bottom is still, apparently, a long ways away. Even more annoying is the question of how I'm gonna cure it: I really don't want to go back to the clinic, and be subjected to the whole Q-tip-shoved-up-the-urethra song-and-dance again. That really hurts! I could ask my doctorish friend to write me a prescription for the medication, like I did last time (which, by the way, I'm extremely grateful for) but I'm so embarrassed: like most addicts, I like to hide the true extent of my addiction; and, like most people, I'm sure my doctorish friend is going to get all concerned about me, and start offering me helpful advice. Which I can't stand.

I don't know why I get so annoyed when people give me advice. I think that it's partially because they never, even those who know me best, ever understand what I'm really going through, and so advice always feels really misguided and misplaced, as though it is a totally alien imposition on me. It feels like someone is trying to subtly control me, by getting me to do what they think I should do: how much of it is concern, and how much is their neurotic need to impose their standards and morals on other people, and thereby validate their own sense of reality?

I have such a negative view of people: no one is good, everyone has ulterior motives, everyone is selfish.

I should see this concern for my welfare in a more positive light: yes, they are trying to impose their somewhat arbitrary standards of behavior on me, but the motivation, I'm sure, is not social control or neurotic insecurity, but real concern about my health and well-being. From outside of the system (the system being each individual's psyche) I can tell that their standards of behavior and conceptions of reality are not universal, and, while based loosely on logical conclusions, are more arbitrary than not; however, my friends really do believe that their standards of thought and behavior are the best, and that they apply to my situation. They are trying to help me be happier and healthier the only way they know how: by interpreting my situation in the context of their standards of what is possible, and then giving me solutions based on that interpretation. Thank you, everyone : ) (that last comment was not meant sarcastically, by the way).

And it's not like their advice is SO irrelevant; it's not like I'm some sort of alien, with a totally different perception of reality from human beings. I really just need to learn to accept advice from others, without feeling pressured to do what they say. If I'm secure in my own sense of reality, then other people having contrary views should not offend me. And why is my sense of reality so sacred, that I need to fight off all contrary points of view anyway? I'm the one who is so convinced that my standards (along with everyone else's) are mostly arbitrary, yet I fight to uphold those sacred standards with all my might. It's really ridiculous. And really, if anyone is feeling neurotic about people doing things against a set standard, it's me.

Wonder, Limitation.

Today, as I was studying outside, lying on the grass in the almost-too-warm sun, I looked up to the bright blue sky, with it's sparse and striking arrangement of isolated wispy clouds, and for a moment I felt my consciousness uplift with the understanding of greater things, and tremble ever-so-slightly at the sublime perception of my relative smallness and unimportance.

A moment later I was aware of the sky as a collection of gases, held close to the earth through a combination of gravitational and magnetic forces. I felt like I understood the sky then (though I'm sure I really did not), and it seemed very ordinary, graspable, and dismissable. I was rather disappointed; yet, at the same time, I was comforted.

I am getting older: the habit of being caught in wonder and amazment is being taken over by the habit of categorizing and limiting the world around me. I've learned enough about the world that I can feel as though I understand it, and I've grown complacent enough that I resist thinking beyond what I know, to more mysterious wonders. While this is less exciting, I believe that it is not a bad thing: it is impractical to always be in a state of excited ignorance, which can be rather disruptive. I have a life to lead, which takes place in a physical setting, not in some abstract nether-realm. I don't know how to put it into words, and I'm not sure that I'm actually right, but I feel as though limiting my consciousness to what I know to be true can make my life a lot easier right now, and will provide pleasures that are more subtle than I'm used to.

Another late nite revelation

I just realized something: I am a superflous person. Society has no real need of me; there are thousands more just like me, at least in terms of what I can do to advance our civilization. If I die, the only ones who will care will be those who knew me personally, and those specifically charged with performing the routine execution of my funeral services; the larger world will not even bat an eye. What is more, it is unlikely if the world will be changed by my presence, so if I die tomarrow I will practically the same effect on the world as if I died 60 years from now. I am, in the context of the world at large, irrelevent.

This thought is very comforting to me: because my life is meaningful only to me and a small handful of people, I can focus on doing that which I find meaningful on a personal level; I don't have to think about whether or not I am benefiting the world; it would actually be rather pointless of me to do so. I think, really, that the best thing that I can do for the world is stay out of it's way, and just keep periodic tabs on my life to make sure that I'm not affecting anyone in a negative way. In the meantime, as long as I'm alive anyway, I might as well entertain myself, and do what attracts me. It's not going to affect the world one way or another, so I'm free to chose my actions on the basis of personal interest, rather than on the basis of what is most important to the world around me.

Sexual Control

I think that it is reasonable that folks in general would have sexual fantasies that center around control and power, because the sex drive is both one of the most difficult things to control, and one of the things that society most demands of us to control. Not being able to fully control ones own sexual desires, and feeling like other people's sexualities are causing you to be out of control, are pretty normal feelings. Thus, it makes sense to me that someone would find having someone else taking control over a sexual experience very erotic, because it gives them the licence to no longer have to control their sexual feelings and actions. Also, I can see how controling someone else sexually can be very erotic, because you are giving yourself licence to do what you feel you need to do to control your own sexualtiy, but which society says you cannot do, i.e. extend your attempts to control your sexuality on to other people.

So seeing someone else attempt to control someone else sexually, if the other person is gratefully giving up their sexual control, does not bother me, or seem immoral or unethical in any way to me; that is, until I see a man trying to control a woman's sexuality, and then see that woman going along with it. This makes me sick. I cringe every time I see this sort of stereotyped heterosexual interaction. The reason this bothers me so much is not because of the fact that the man is trying to have power over the woman and the woman is letting him, but the fact that they are doing this within the context of thousands of years of female oppresion, torture, and servitude at the hands of men. These straight men take their desires to control women sexually (which, though understandable, is actually pretty neurotic) and extend that desire outside of the context of sexual interactions with women, and have based their whole way of interacting with women on that desire, so that is forms the basis of our whole society: women are slaves, men are the masters. It is, I think, really perverted that these straight people can't leave their neurotic sexual insecurities in the bedroom, so to speak, and instead feel as though they need to base all their actions on it. It's pretty sad.

On a related note, this morning I seem to be finding butch feminist women reallly attractive, even in a sexual way. I haven't been getting a woody or anything (my biology just doesn't swing that way), but of all the folks who I see walking around on campus today, the butch gals are the ones that seem to have the most psychological sexual allure to me.

Update!!

On Sunday, April 10th, 2005, in the entry entitled "Sitar Man; My Mother Moves," I reported that I had had a dream that my mother's best friend had left her husband and had moved in with her foreign born lover in a bad part of town. Well, the other day I called my mom, and guess what she told me? Her best friend IS leaving her husband, but not for some foreign guy (though she is actually moving to a worse part of town than she lives in now). No, she's leaving him for a woman (who, incidently, has a reputation around town for "stealing" married women from their husbands). It's really amazing. I mean, she's the last person I would have thought to be a lesbian. My mom, yes. In fact, I know she likes women. But her friend? Never.

Now, I'm not going to say that I predicted this event, especially because I dreamed it after the break-up had already officially occured (though she is still living with her husband); but it really is quite a coincidence, wouldn't you say?

Life sucks, here's my blog.

Wow. Okay. I just a really long, emotionally drawn-out entry, which I was really proud of; like I actually thought about what I was writing in respect to it's impact on the reader, and tried hard to express what I wanted in the most effective way possible. Then it got erased. Fuck the whole fucking world, and all the fucking computers in it.

The bare bones is this:

--I'm going to Chicago on Jun 6th. I'm going to Chicago in response to a dream that I had about it, which made me very aware of how much I'd like to see it again.
--I might meet a friend there, who is a potential lover whom I haven't met in person, from Minneapolis.
--An ex-lover of mine lives in Chicago, and I feel nervous and sentimental about possibly meeting him again.
--I might go to Minneapolis after I go to Chicago, to meet family and friends.
--If I do end up going to Minneapolis, then my journey will consist of one greyhound bus ride, one train ride, one car ride, and one plane ride (not to mention all the commuter trains I'll end up taking in Chicago). This, perhaps more than anything else, is sending me into a state of ecstatic anticipation.

As for the rest, it was just elaboration on the above points. But oh! it was rich stuff....

Whelmp, it looks like it's time again for another round of one of my favorite games: Musical Addictions. I drop whatever addiction is currently ruining my life the most, and then I have, say, about a week to find a new one, to meet the "needs" that the old addiction was previously taking care of.

This round I'm quitting smoking. I've been having some rather odd health problems lately, and I was wondering if they were caused by smoking. Well...I guess I could just be honest about it. I've been having horrible itching aroung my rectum, which has been really driving me nuts. At first I thought it was because of a new soap that I was using, so I went back to my old soap, but nothing changed.

I then did a little bit of research on the web, and figured out that I probably had a pinworm infection; the symptoms they described were really spot-on, except I hadn't seen any worms. Like they suggest to do, I woke myself up in the middle of the night a few times, to look in the mirror and see if I can see any worms. I set the mirror up on the floor of the bathroom, and squatted over it (by the way, if you're ever curious about how you'd look to someone on their knees in front of you, giving you a blowjob [or, if you're a woman, performing some other such sexual favor], set a mirror up on the floor and stand over it. It is a very interesting experience).

Well, I still couldn't see any worms. I went to the store anyway, and got some over-the-counter pinworm medication, which I took that night. I followed the instructions, and kept my bedding and clothing super clean for awhile, but still there was no change. Then I remembered that when this itching thing first started I was just about to quit smoking for some other reasons. I didn't notice the itching going away when I quit, but when I started again, about a week later, I definitely did notice that it came back. Well, now I'm trying it on purpose, to see if the itching goes away. It's been four days now, since wednesday, and yes, while it has not gone away entirely, it has diminished quite a bit.

Sigh...more "sex addict" stuff

There are times when I don't want to say anything about certain subjects, because I don't want to deal with how I think other people are going to react.

Yesterday I went to an SCA meeting for the first time in...maybe a month. It felt really good. I was suprised how much I relaxed there, how much tension just melted away from my shoulders. Last quarter, when I first started going there, I was very happy. This quarter, when I have not been going there so much, I have been quite down-hearted. I believe that this is because I was no longer dealing with this thing in the same productive, healthy way as before. I was trying to deal with it on my own, which sucked, though I did not realize it at the time.

The thing is, is that the people at these groups just get it. They just understand what I'm going through, in a way nobody else does. To them, I'm just another sex addict, trying to deal with this thing that were all trying to deal with. It's like we all have diabetes, but we're total junk food addicts, so we're all getting together once or twice a week to talk about how difficult it is to stop eating those hazardous foods; or we're just all major slobs, who really need to start getting our asses in gear and clean up once in awhile, so we don't get citations from the health department for creating an unhealthy environment, or some such thing. It's like...there's something that we're doing that's having some negative effect on our lives, and it's time to change. Change is difficult, so we get together every few days to talk about. This helps to relieve the tension.

It's just...I feel like eveyone who could possibly be reading this is just not going to get it. I imagine the thoughts of readers to be ranging from "what a sex-negative, homophobic, heterosexist, fanatic," to "I'm happy that poor, poor, dyfunctional, pitiable ADDICT is finnally getting the help he so desperately need, both for his sake and for the safety of society." Even more annoyingly, I feel as though some people out there are thinking "I see my exhortations to succeed have had their effect. I'm so thankful I could help this guy." Which is really just laughable. Everyone who's not inside this world of sex addicts is, in my mind, just totally outside of it and irrelevent to it. I should really just not talk about it with non sex addicts, because dealing with the extreme and irrational reactions of non-addicts is really just tiresome.

I went to a rainbow gathering once --in fact, I used to go them all the time, and occasionally considered myself a "rainbow"--and at one of them I decided that I would like to follow the hare krsnas, and see what they were all about. Well, I ended up agreeing with their version of reality for several years (I don't anymore...though I was thinking about them nostalgicly last night...), and, in fact, I first moved to Columbus to be closer to them. When I was still in Minneapolis, and I was in the final stages of preparing to move to Columbus, I ran into this guy that I hadn't seen in years, who had been at that fateful gathering with me. I told him what I was all about, and what I was planning to do, and he was like "Oh! I'm so happy. I knew I told you do the right thing!" And I was all like, "huh?" and he was all like "It was me, me who told you to go off with them. You asked me, and I said it would be a great idea, and then you ran off with them, and it was because of ME." I was amused, but I was also really annoyed: I had made this major decision in my life, which took alot of careful thinking and risk taking, and all of a sudden this controling egomaniac with delusions of influence is reducing that important step to be somehow connected to him and his little world, which, while I'm sure is very important to him, is totaly irrelevent to me. I mean, I don't even let people that I've known and loved for years have influence over me in that way, let alone some guy who, while kinda cute, was actually someone who really annoyed me.

So that's one reason why it can be difficult to talk to non-sex addicts about my addiction, because, if they react at all, I allways get some kind of weird control-freak reaction. Like, sex is one of those things that people have got alot of hang-ups about, and the idea of me restricting my sexuality always seems to strike people in some kind of overly extreme way. Like somehow sex is this dramatically important thing, and its SO important that I have sex RIGHT, i.e. according to their beliefs about sex. How about this: sex is NOT important; I can do what I want with it, and as long as I'm not coupling it with violence or manipulation, it really doesn't effect anyone but me and the people I have sex with. Am I saying "if you don't think about my sexual behavior, then you can keep your head in sand and it won't effect you?" NO. I'm saying that it actually does not have an effect on you. That is actually isn't important. That it's totally NOT A BIG DEAL. My descion to limit my sexual behavior in certain ways is actually NOT A BIG DEAL. It's not some non-PC rejection of the body, and it's not my immanent salvation. It's just something that I think will make my life a little bit better, which I think is worth the time, and so I'm doing it.

I am feeling contradictory emotions right now: on the one hand I feel warm, fuzzy, and content. On the other, I feel like I may have a nervous breakdown.

I have decided (though not with finality) that I will take Plant Biology this summer. I think that sounds pleasant; I'll spend lots of time on my bike, riding around town, looking at all the different plants, and thinking about them in terms of what I am learning. It has become quite clear to me lately that I'll never do anything with my degree besides just having it as a status marker, so I might as well enjoy the process of attaining it as much as possible.

Lately all my dreams have been rather bland. The other night, for example, I dreamed about the importance of using history to back up one's arguments. A friend of mine, the doctorish guy, was telling me about something or other, trying to make some point, and I thought "I see, he is using history to back up his argument," because that's what he was doing. This thought was comforting to me.

This morning by alarm kept going off, as usual, and I kept pressing the snooze button, which is totally normal. Yet I was still sleeping, for I was so very, very tired, and still dreaming. I had the impression that, every time I pressed the button, I was getting some sort of wisdom from the clock, some secret message. I became quite interested in the phenomenon, and was eagerly awaiting the next time it would go off. Eventually, though, I woke up enough to realize what I was doing, and the pleasant delusion was shattered :( It is sad to me, to give up delusions. Even when my life was completely falling apart due to my delusions, and was suffering greatly, I was still quite attactched to them. They made my life seem special, more magical and important. To give them up, and realize that my life was actually quite commonplace, was difficult for me.

Masculine Ambivalence

Freud, and those that believed in Freud, came up with complicated ideas about why boys choose to emulate their fathers and girls choose to emulate their mothers, usually involving some revelation about the difference between male and female genitalia, and some sense of shame about not having male genitalia (i.e. penis envy), or some shame about relating to those who don't have male genitalia, specifically mom.

I don't really agree with that. Boys want to be men and girls want to be girls because our society bases standards of appropriate behavior on what genitalia we have, and as intelligent, ever-adapting beings, we want to act appropriately, so that people will accept us, and give us food, love, and a place in the protective womb of society.

I have alot of conflict about being a man, and acting like a man. I would like to, because it makes me feel more secure about myself, but my main model of masculinity, my dad, is not someone that anyone should be emulating. So when I try to be masucline, I always start acting like my dad, which fills me with very ambivalent emotions. Also, I assume that everyone who is acting masculine is somehow really screwed up, like my dad was (or is...), and so I have ambivalent feelings about stereotypically masculine guys as well.

What I have been up to lately...

I spent all day cleaning, and all last night too.

I'm waiting for a CD to come in the mail: Fairport Convention's "Liege and Lief." I'm really looking forward to it.

I finally beat a video game that my friend has last night: Final Fantasy X. It was a little anti-climatic.

Now it is Monday, and time to get back to work. There are only three more weeks left of this quarter. I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Lately, when people have asked me "what have you been up to lately?" I've felt rather uncomfortable. I don't want to admit that I've been spending all my time staring at a TV screen, manipulating a pretend person to do pointless things in a pretend world. Or that I've spent a lot of time sleeping and eating, with little desire to do else. A friend of mine, The Pagan, told me that these are signs of clinical depression. Well, so be it. I'm fine with that.

I'm so happy: I just signed up for summer and autumn classes. This summer I'm taking nothing but anthropology, to fulfill general education curriculum requirements. I think that this will help me focus more, because it will feel like I'm just taking one big class, instead of all these little ones, all vying for my attention. So maybe the summer time won't be so bad after all. I just got an air conditioner too, so that should help out a lot.

Of course, if I know myself at all, I can be pretty much assured that when summer time actually comes around my schedule will look really different than it does now. I hope not, but it probably will.

I just took a test, on geology. I think I probably did worse on it than I've ever done on a test in my life. I didn't study at'all, 'cause we get to drop the lowest grade of the four tests we take, and I decided before hand that this one would be my lowest.

During the test, I was obsessing over the TA who was administering it (not the TA mentioned in a previous post), checking out his body, and concocting little fantasies about him. Actually, I haven't been sober for a long time. Today was the worst it's been for awhile though. I had sex with a stranger in a public restroom. It was totally unsafe, and I was being overly aggressive and insensitive with the guy (which he really seemed to get off on, but which still made me feel very guilty). Well...I'm not too happy with myself over this. I've stopped going to meetings, because I wasn't getting along with my sponser at all, and was kind of sick of the whole organization, and all the annoying people in it. But I need to start going again. It was really helping me keep my mind focused on sobriety issues, and making me pay attention to my behavior in a conscious, analytical way. So even if I hate them all, and feel incredibly uncomfortable in the environment, I'll still have to go back.

Interpretation from the Outside

Not in a very good mood today...didn't get much sleep, as usual for a weekday...I asked a friend out on a date last night, and of course I was rejected; politely rejected, with coherent, kind sounding excuses, but rejected nonetheless. I was pretty sure of myself about it, but I guess I was wrong...he basically said "not right now, maybe later," which of course is going to turn into "not right now, maybe later" at some point in the future, and then, later on, will magically materialize into "not right now, maybe later."

Then I had a dream about the guy. He had moved to a different state, to take some sort of media related job, and he asked me to come visit him there. I did so, and in his stark, dirty, all-white bedroom we tried to talk, get along, and make love, none of which was very satisfying. He had changed alot since when he lived in the same state as me, had become much more superficial, and actually really stupid. It was just annoying. He spent alot of time working, which annoyed me too, because I had come very far to see him, but which also relieved me, because we weren't getting along. After awhile, though, I found out that what he was really doing was hanging out with his new Asian girlfriend, drinking cocktails and coffee at swanky outdoor clubs. I found this out by accident, 'cause I just happened to be there for other reasons.

We, all three of us, played a game there: the guy was on the cover of some magazine/newspaper thing, and if he went away, to the place where the photo was shot, we could do things to the photo and he would feel them. Me and the Asian girlfriend made snowballs and threw them at the photo, and the girlfriend ground the photo with her black stilleto heels. I found this very gratifying, until I realized that he probably wasn't even positioned at the place where the photo was shot, and was actually happily enjoying a fresh mug of coffee, somewhere warm and bright, and watching us two on a video screen, quite amused at our shenanigans.

It always comes as a surprise to me, when I realize that people are not feeling the same things as me, or when it becomes clear that someone does not have the personality that I thought they did, or is not going through the subjective experience that I thought they were. In this dream there was both of those aspects, with me finding out that he's not the man he used to be, and that I can't effect him by attacking the superficial image that he presents to the world. I am outside of him, in many ways, and, what is more, he wants to keep it that way. If I have any love for him at all, on any level, even on the most universal and abstract, then I have no choice but to respect that desire.

It reminds me of another dream I had once, about a different friend, whom I was feeling romantic feelings about at one point: we were sitting on a couch, in another stark, white room, and I reached over and held his hand. This was very pleasant for both of us, and it seemed very natural to me to lean over and give him a kiss. Before I made contact, however, he pulled away, looking at me with a gently angry and offended expression, and I realized that I had misread him, and that he was not feeling the same romantic feelings for me that I was for him. This was very distressing to me. I was very seriously thinking about coming on to this guy in waking reality, but, upon waking up and reviewing the facts, it was clear that it would not be appreciated.

But the really annoying thing is that I'll never actually know whether either of these two guys really want me or not, unless I actually expose myself enough to ask them. My disheartening dreams are just as much a reconstuction of how I interpret their actions as my pre-dream assurance of their interest was.

On a related note, I finally got a certain answer out of my psuedo-lover: he just wants to be friends, which, for me, is a great relief. The way in which he told me really just underlined why it is so good to not be involved with him: I called him up, and he told me that he had started dating someone else. I had to ask him explictly: "Is this your way of telling me that you just want to be friends?" He waffled on that for a minute, but eventually admitted that it was. So now he is no longer my pseudo-lover, but just my pseudo-friend.

Well, I've had enough of this to last me quite awhile. The next time I get involved with someone, they'll have to come on to ME, 'cause I'm sick of playing guessing games, and sick of expsoing myself to ridicule.

Robot Artists

I was hanging out with a friend the other day, The Dolphin (not to be confused with the Dolphin from a previous post), who showed me a short film about a machine that was programmed to create "original" works of art. The programmer, a famous artist that I can't remember the name of, programmed the system by which a computer would make decisions about form and color, and then a machine was created that would accurately reporduce this work using actual paint. The elements of each work were chosen by the computer, but the subject matter available to it was extremely limited: mostly portraits of imaginary girls.

My friend said that what the machine was creating was art. I disagreed, but I didn't really have any strong reasons for it at the time. I think It was just a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that something created by something with no intelligence or consciousness could be considered art. I was not saying that works created using a machine as a tool are not art. The situation depicted in the fim was different than that, in that the programmer had programmed the computer to make it's own "descions", leaving the programmer out of the process of creating each specific work (though the creation of works in general was controlled entirely by the programmer).

The question, to me, seems to be how one defines art: is it defined by the intention of that which created it, by the consciousness of the one who views it, or a combination of both? This same problem occurs in literature, which has it's own genre of computer generated works. I would argue that the intent of the producer to create art is essential to a definition of art. My reason for saying this is because without the artist's intent the definition of "art" becomes meaningless. If one can call something "art" simply because one views it as art, or views it aesthetically, then everything can potentially be called "art", from a real landscape, to panel of drywall, to a pile of garbage (all of which, in my experience, can create a powerful aesthetic experience if the consciousness of the viewer is viewing it with that purpose in mind, and can impart great symbolic meaning if one is looking for it or predisposed to do so, such as a schizophrenic might do). Everything, objects in general, then all have the same level of artistic quality, and thus the term "art" is totally unnecessary and irrelevant. We already have terms to describe something as an object: we call it an object, or a thing. So, without intent of the creator, everything becomes art, and nothing is art any longer.

Knowing that the author purposely was attempting to impart an aesthetic experience, or intended to impart some sort of meaning, or was consciously trying to do whatever it is that he or she thinks art is supposed to do, lets us know that what we are looking at can be described as "art", and thus not the same as objects in general. I can think of a few reasons why one would want to define art separately from objects in general (not all of which I think are important for me personally). First, from a business point of view, one needs to know which things are actually art and which things are just being looked at artistically, in order to place a monetary value on the creation, to know what market to sell it in, and to know who to market it to. Second, if one believes that the purpose of art is to express things in a way that is somehow different than the literal expression of how-to manuals and so forth, then one needs to know which objects actually have an intended meaning associated with them, and which things are inspiring us to insights that originate wholly from the mind and emotions of the viewer. It can be argued that, even when we look at art with an intended meaning, we are still simply reacting to our own impressions, and that our subjectivity always prevents us from actually getting the meaning intended by an artist; however, the subjective reaction one has to art is based on the attempt of the artist to impart some meaning, and even though the communication is, in reality, quite garbled and inaccurate, there is still some level of communication going on, much more so than when one looks at, say, a rock, or someone's keys lying on the ground, after they fell out of someone's pockets. Third, if we view everything as though it were attempting to communicate something, then there's nothing to separate us from schizophrenics; and, contrary to the opinions of many radical-minded psychologists, schizophrenics are crazy, are very disruptive to society, and are furthermore not very happy people, who you would not really like to be.

I think that perhaps we need to distinguish between those objects which were consciously created to communicate an aesthetic idea, and which things we are simply using to provoke an aesthetic response. It is important to distinguish when our reactions are in the context of interacting with society, and when they are purely personal.

And, while I'm at it, I hate it when people say things like "we're all 'one'... there is no 'I', there is no 'you'; we're all 'one'." Obviously that's a crock of shit: If I punch you, I don't feel it. If you feel something, the only way I might feel the same thing is if I interpret your facial expression or body language correctly, and react in kind; and even then I'm simply feeling my subjective interpretation of the emotion that we call by the same name. What the Buddhists actually meant, as far as I know, is that the separation is much less than was once imagined, and that in reality we are closer to being "one" than it may seem. We're not "all one", we're just not all completely separate. Similarly, I hate it when theorists act as though everything is absolutely subjective, and there is not actually any possible sharing of communal experiences: it may be that I'll never really know how other people subjectively interpret reality, but we are all still basing our interpretation on reality using the same terms and such...and there is alot of connection there. People are so unbalanced...

Anyway...I don't know how much of that was just bullshit or what, but it seemed meaningful to me...

I feel so disturbed right now. We just watched "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in my Sci Fi class, which was quite odd, so maybe that's it. Or maybe it's because I ate a huge amount of rice noodles this afternoon, and now the rush of simple carbohydrates is making me feel high in a displeasurable way.

It's probably just the nice weather: everyone is so happy, talkative, beautiful, and totally outside of my existance. I guess you could say I feel "alienated", though that word seem rather loaded to me now, because we use it so much in my Sci Fi class.

Okay...4 more hours to go...then I can go home...

Learning and Growing :)

La la la la la. My friend is showing me how to make quality looking style links for the blogger thing. I'm going to put a link that has no real point to it here, to prove to myself that I know how to do it, and so I can look at it later when I need to figure out how to do it again. Enjoy!

For the past days I have woken up with the same dream: me and my pseudo-lover are in bed, holding each other. The first night he told me he loved me. The second night I told him I loved him. When I woke up and realized that he was not there, I felt rather sad and empty.

This isn't going to work. He doesn't love me. I have a feeling that, because of the life he has led, he can't feel love, either for himself or for others. I feel very strong feelings for him, but I don't think it's actually love; more like neuroic desire for that which I can't have. I do care about him alot. I see us as being quite happy together, but in reality I know that being with him is usually quite awkward and annoying, that it's never easy, relaxed, or fun.

He might be staying with me for a month or two. His room-mate is kicking him out, for totally irrational reasons, and he doesn't have enough money to get a place of his own. So he might be staying with me 'till he's got some money saved up. Honestly, I don't think it's gonna happen; he's really good at saying this and arranging that, but he almost never follows through. I told him that if he were to stay with me we'd either have to be actually, officially dating, or else be just friends, with no sex whatsoever. Anything inbetween would just be too frustrating, confusing, and unstable for me to comfortably deal with. I don't know which option I'd prefer...I'll be fine with either one, though. I just want things to be settled, at least for a short while, so I can know what options are ahead of me, and what sort of projections for the future I should be making.