Late Night Fiction One man’s adventures through life

11Mar/100

A Big Change (in self)

When I most recently decided to stop smoking, I realized something I never saw the 10-something other times. Sometimes we willingly make a large change. It's easy to live in hypothetical land ("this option is good because ... and bad because ... "), but the real strength comes out when you actually decide to go with one or the other. Then a step above that is actually sticking to what you've decided and going with it 100%, whether it's right or wrong. This is what makes confidence; and you a person.

So I've fought going to the store and buying a pack these past few days; this time it wasn't as easy simply dropping it as it has been times before. Right now I'd love to have some to smoke as I drive around with the sun setting (as it currently is) and all the windows rolled down; something I'm used to doing in this nice weather. If not that, I'd like to go stand outside for 7 1/2 minutes while I smoked one, just to be out of the house.

But my blind stubbornness is keeping me from doing that. Stubbornness usually gets a bad rap when it comes to other people, but when it's internal it is an important element for your own growth. And so what am I left with? Well, since I'm not so fond of feeling like shit (for any reason), I need to adapt. Since this new cigarette-less environment is my current one (and I don't want to be a miserable bitch), I might as well get used to it and see what I can do with where I'm at.

And on the larger scale of things (since I like the big picture), this is an extremely fundamental element for life. Change is what keeps minds, countries, planets, the universe moving. If anything remained the same for some amount of time, it would die (in some way) because it no longer has any use to the environment it is in. Atoms constantly move; stars that seem so far away are moving even more so; galaxies are forming; people are thinking; and when the forces that keep these things going cease to exist, the universe outside of it will as well.

Upon accepting what "is," whether in or outside of you, it becomes easier to move on; to keep the forces within you moving and ensuring you don't "die" from a lack of expression or stimulation that otherwise keeps your mind (and you) going.

I think I'll go for a drive.

25Jan/100

Something Solid

I've realized that the only reason I like to be crazy and go meet people and make sure I don't slip into a world of "everyone else" while I'm in public is because people are what make me who I am-- in the sense of, their perceptions of my actions are what assign a certain personality to me. They're all there is in the world; I can dance crazy alone in my room and sing loudly alone in my car but if I'm quiet when I'm around others, I'll be perceived as shy and other related personality types and not the person I really like to be.

Of course I know who I am when I'm alone. But "who I am" really has no meaning to me because I have no need to be one way or the other when there's no one else to pick up on which "way" I am. So if I want people to see me in the same light I see myself, I need to carry that personality consistently throughout all parts of my life.

So tonight I put on a wife-beater and went for a walk in the rain. I made a point to walk past some people in the hallway to make sure this craziness was perceived by someone other than myself. I don't need their verbal validation; I don't need them to tell me I'm crazy or that I'm sane-- that I'm stupid or doing "okay." Proving anything about myself to myself or anyone else is useless. I just need something solid in the world. Because I can see from any perspective, I can think about an infinite amount of possibilities and positives and negatives. But life is no fun when I do that. I become a ball of neutral-- no light, no darkness; no sound and no silence. I live in this world of hypothetical; this alternate dimension that exists but produces nothing useful.

It's this universe of nothingness that I try to avoid daily. In fact, not living in the way I want to is the only thing that depresses me these days because frankly, I'd rather enjoy my existence.

20Jan/100

What I Believe

This is a common question and a concept that tells a lot about a person. So, as if everything I write here doesn't already do it (obviously I wouldn't write it if I didn't believe it), I'll spell out what I believe right now, at this point in time.

I believe the universe we see, feel, hear, taste and smell, is an entity much like our own individual minds. Thoughts and life-forms go through the same cycles: everything grows. A thought is started by the perception of an outside force or idea, and it grows even when it can't grow anymore. A real-life example would be: anything you feel passionately about is something that has grown bigger than the other ideas in your mind-- a huge galaxy, if you will. And, as is the nature of our mind and more than likely the universe, this promotes more growth-- almost the most basic requirement of existence.

On the flip-side of this example, if you worry about being accepted by other people (other universes), you will do anything to make sure you are and even change your behavior just to make sure this happens. This perspective is interesting because it essentially creates a black hole; it can keep an entire galaxy of ideas in perfect balance around it. However, allowing this worry (about things that are completely out of your control) to completely engulf you will put the surrounding galaxy of everything you know out of balance and take it to another realm. I try to avoid black holes.

Another function of the brain is communication; neurons and axons and synapses, at the basic level. They form ideas that communicate to form new ideas which form new ideas and so on ad infinitum. So the universe communicates in the same fashion through energy. We perceive information visually through the energy in light; we feel through the energy of heat; sound, motion, even words (the most blatant form of communication) are broadcast through the manipulation of matter that travels through space fueled by energy. In other words, we exist in this larger "brain," which dictates that everything, including our own mind, behaves in the same way.

So. These thoughts would be useless without some kind of meaning to me.

Since I deal with my own mind more than I do with the universe, I like to do anything that makes me enjoy myself. I don't like to hold on to any one idea for too long, because there's no telling how long it will hold up before it collapses; as with everything in the universe, thoughts essentially "die." And when you don't hold on to things, the world seems to flow; instead of seeing individual snapshots over time and analyzing and hoping that each one stays, they all flash by you to form a moving picture that makes sense, in its simplest form. From your own universe's perspective, you get to look down on all your perceptions and thoughts and bask in your creation. And that encompassing and ever-present beauty keeps all instability stable and unlogic logical and, more than anything, everything simply makes sense without it "making sense."

And I like that.

6Jan/100

Seeing the Beauty

I like to think of any actions I take as this: something is bound to happen. Anything happening is good (and certainly better than nothing happening). So there's no balance to maintain-- everything becomes worthwhile.

This goes along with constantly thinking positively-- seeing the beauty in everything around you. I just recently took an 800-mile trip to the midwest because I felt trapped at my parents' house in my hometown. It snowed in Ohio and Indiana. Normally I would be upset, cautious, etc. But I enjoyed the light dusting on the road, the slight loss of traction I would encounter at 60 mph as I changed lanes, and even watching a semi jackknife off the road and barely avoid hitting an overpass' column head-on.

It goes along with the idea that nothing bad will ever happen to you if you avoid viewing it as such. This world we live in is too perfect to view anything negatively. So when there's something like a bag laying in the road, it's almost a decoration-- instead of a black segment of roadway (similar to the rest of the road), it's a more interesting piece of road in the world because it now has a white blob there.

It's a different view on life. Something that has, for the past month or so, been bringing me back to something happy when the world around me isn't working out in the way that I thought I wanted it to. We're just a tumbleweed in the wind, it's literally you and the world. And everything in it is, in the right light, beautiful.

4May/090

Making Decisions for the Best Outcome

We all do this. Most of us do. Before making a decision, big or small, that's going to involve a possible risk, we try to gather all the information about the decision and do our best to have the greatest outcome possible come out of our decision-making. Let me be more specific.

I've wanted to stay single for over a year now and I've been quite successful at it. Over the past month or so, a girl has come into my life that was no more than a friend at first, but recently became more. And then she wanted commitment. Now I thought, why don't I want commitment? Well, I didn't want to potentially waste my time with a possible badly-chosen girlfriend. I didn't want to be tied down while I'm in college (of all places). I didn't want to risk losing a good friend. I didn't want the obligations that usually come with relationships to enter into my life again. But, after a bit of deliberation, we decided to date.

What's the moral here? I was so concentrated on making a good choice with this girl that I couldn't make one at all. I was focused on all these intangible things that really shouldn't have any bearing on who I choose to date. Essentially, it sets you free from yourself. You get chained down by your own mind and free-will becomes non-existent. I took a completely uncalculated risk: I decided to date her, without truly knowing anything about whether or not the relationship would be one I wanted. The other week (before all this), I had to pee in the local fountain at 3am (without being under any substance) to feel the same kind of freedom. For one thing, there was no reason for me to pee in public, in clear view of all the surrounding buildings, with cops riding around on bikes; and I didn't even have to pee that bad. But I did it because it was complete 50/50. It could turn out good or it could turn out bad.

Coincidentally, the day after I decided to go out with my (now) girlfriend, we started to talk about Zen Buddhism in my philosophy class, and the theory of "aiming but not aiming." Basically what this means is being able to set goals for yourself and find the best way to achieve them (the first aiming), but at the same time, avoiding focusing on the outcomes so much that you fail to enjoy/fully experience the present. And that's what it is truly about. If you spend all your time focusing on the outcome of your decision, you'll never be able to enjoy not only the risks, but everything else that comes with them.

By the way, it's been a week, and it's looking like I made the right decision.