On Saturday a few friends and I took a road trip to Pittsburgh to participate in the nation-wide Displace.Me protest against the war in Northern Uganda (“Every war has an end”).  I was an addition to the car pool at the last second, and the event wasn’t at all what I expected.  There was a video from the event last year that I had seen that showed people lined up side-by-side in sleeping bags, and that was what I had expected to happen this year as well.  However, after climbing in the car I noticed there were stack of cardboard in the back.  In the usual celerity of  fast-paced conversations I have with my friends I asked what it was for, and they said something like, “For sleeping in,” or a similar ambiguous statement like that. 

We arrived early and volunteered for a few hours at the hilly park on a windy, misty afternoon in Pittsburgh.  Soon, the masses of people began arriving to sleep in the park for the night, all with cardboard in hand as well.  The whole thing just really didn’t click in my brain.  However, a few hours later after everyone had arrived and settled down in the designated area, I was truly marveling at the sight.  In a matter of hours these people had created a makeshift city of cardboard forts.  It was like a tuscan raider encampment.  All the little hovels were crowded closely together, and varied in quality and style.  Walking through the miniature village was really surreal, like I couldn’t believe that people had built all these mini houses to sleep in for the night.

It was like a massive project to induce childhood nostalgia.  I loved it.  The whole night went brilliantly, and supposedly president Bush is supposed to be reviewing the actions of the Displace.Me projects sometime this week.  For those of you who do not know, many young children are abducted from their homes in Northern Uganda to fight in a rebellion against the government.  That is the premise behind the political group called Invisible Children, if you have ever heard of that. 

Anyways, I was sick today, which I suppose is from sleeping outside Saturday night.  It was, nevertheless, a great adventure.  Hope you all had wondeful days, though!

“You have a big adventure planned, but then with college you accumulate debt that you can’t pay off until into your twenties.  And by then your married, and you have to pay for a house, and then kids, and you have to work to put them through college, and soon it’s late in your life, and it’s gone by without the great adventure you had planned.”   

-Roy Bobbitt. My wise neighbor who makes waffles for everyone on Friday’s.

The day I was born changed my life forever.   Things just really haven’t been the same since then.  So now, what does life seem to be? 

Words

Eventually words prove to be insufficient in describing the awing reality of life.  Writing may produce traces of emotions or hints at the reality behind the writing, but it is never the same as the real thing.  When life creates in us a feeling of consuming wonder, we know that the realness of life exists only in that moment, as we see the world in color through our two eyes, and any written acount of life simply falls short by nature.  In all the volumes of writing the greatest poets have ever produced, all words are merely hopeful attempts at showing the thing of life itself, which is sorrowfully shown to be impossible.  Those words die away as we realize that those are merely shadows of the existence of others, and all that we know is life as seen by us each and every moment.    

Conflict

The world is no place for complacency.  Every human is born into life with a battle cry, signaling the influence and noise that human will make while on earth.  Conflict waits hungrily around every street corner.  When this reality is seen, that no one agrees on matters under the sun, tremendous grief fills the searching heart.  As the great importance of the truth is realized and the more and more a human demands he has it, the more he feels the frustration of existing.  If an individual in a world of conflict is not conflicting with himself, then he is not dealing with reality.  To live is to be in conflict.  

Beauty

Initially the human is nothing, for his life has not yet taken place.  In the end, he knows he will be somewhere, and all that he will know are the memories of his life.  Yet his life’s course has not yet been carved, and so frightening it is to know how capricious its twistings are.  Every day is continuous succession of seriatim decisions on how to be, how to think, how to live.  The options on which way to be seem infinite, in that the man may do this or that, or say this or that, or be whatever he pleases.  At the beginning of life humans are informed of all the great things that other humans have done, and thus realize all life could be.  They are told of the value of virtue, of the possibility of adventure, of the beauty of this life.  All of the potential for life terrify them, then; what will my life be?  In all the world many great lives have been seen, will my life be counted among them?  One momentary course is given to us, and we feel the need to make out of it the most beautiful of sights.  Life must be the most beautiful thing, so what fear overtakes the young human as he stares at the empty canvas! 

Discovery

Every moment is a new discovery of that moment.  The human mind should really be in a state of perpetual shock at its consciousness and ability to experience moments.  Most exclude this thought, however, and simply live through the moments without realizing how ridiculous it is that they are doing such a thing.

There was no preparation for life.  I was put here and am here for good, as far as I know, until I die.  For all the fantasies and playful games we’ve had in our imagination, this, actual living, is not only real, but the full encompassing idea of what is real.  All the other humans are here in the exact same way you are.  They hold no advantage over you in position or knowledge.  We are all improvising reality.  No person was here before the Earth was created to oversee its construction.  We are all here for the first time. 

Time

Time only adds to the frustration of existence.  In life people tend to forget about time because life has the illusion of being eternal.  I am infinitely present to myself.  I am always with myself.  This makes time just seem to not even happen.  Time only becomes apparent when one stares it in the face.  For the great portion of life, time is creeping by like a thief tiptoeing by the window.  But when confronted, time is really criminal taking your possessions out the front door of your house.  It is not hidden.  It is as clear as the sun is shining that time is ticking.  As I watch closer and closer and I forget about all things on earth but time, it seems to go faster and faster.  Time is going now and now and now now now now now now.  It constantly flows and sucks the life out of us every moment.  It is a great and immediate reality to mourn over.  We are not dying slowly.  We are in the corner of the ring being beaten to a pulp by time itself.  All one needs to do is realize that absence of mind does not erase reality.  I do not live because I am in the world of time, I live in spite of being under the influence of time.  Trying to beat time is like a person drifting in the ocean who says, “Instead of me drowning in the ocean, I will try to drown the ocean in myself.”

Immensity of Life

There is too much life to be lived; surely, I will die an unsatisfied man. 

Staying Awake

Life is what happens when we are living and not realizing it.  When a person reaches old age and is near death they may look back on their life and recollect all that happened and what they think of it.  Thus, in looking back on their “life” it is like they are looking back on something that happened as an underlying story to their daily actions and pursuits.  It is almost as though while growing up there was a ghost of myself standing in the corner of every room I was in, watching, always watching, to observe and record.  Now that I am here, past all that has happened, my ghost reports everything to me, and what was happening while I wasn’t realizing it.  This phenomenon is of course the result of the nature of the memory to seem like it is viewing past life in the third person. 

But I can’t just cruise life on its rhythms and routines.  Can we really allow ourselves to glide through life unnoticed by ourselves?  Oh, all the wondrous realities waiting for exploration!  Oh, all the days waiting to be lived!  We must not fall asleep.  Stay awake, stay awake.  We cannot simply pass through!  This is the ultimate thing, what you and I are in presently.  We must not fall asleep! 

How sad it is to be a person that does not realize the singularity of life.

A Conversation

I had a conversation with my friend Nathan earlier today that really made me afraid.

Nathan: Only three weeks left ’til we graduate.  You ready?!
Philip:  (quietly laughing to myself) It’s funny, you know, thinking about moments like these.  When you are in a moment you had anticipated before it happened, it’s so surreal.  You realize all the times you thought about how far off that time was, and yet it’s now happening.  We thought this would never come, but here it is.  Earlier in high school we would constantly think about how far away this very moment was.  It’s scary because that’s the way we view death right now.  We are graduating like we never thought we would be, and right now we feel like we’ll never die, that’s so far away.  But soon you and I are going to be doing the same thing we are now.  We’ll be old men drooling in chairs saying, “So we’re here now.  Where did it all go?”  
Nathan:  Yeah … you know what I’m scared of?  That I’ll get into a routine in life.  Then twenty years later I’ll be wondering, “What just happened?”
Philip: Yeah.

Stay Awake

never silence better still than the dark was then
when the moment beat its last
and clothed in glorious death I was given to the world.

peering through two eyes, beauty appeared
and pierced the dead soul 
of this weak and helpless state

but how swift and lost become lives 
tossed, stomped, and crinkled
flotsam in the alluvion of the bloody tide

for the great tent of effort put against it
nowhere has nature moved
and its tandem uncracking in consternation

time, death, the all-consuming forces
numbly steal without return
from the creature of beauty, to mar his perfect pride

smaller than the stream, a soul inside
all things are, but one thing is
because thoughts are not seen, life is a thing alone

what eyes see, but only the heart can know
is the beauty of this world
and all I can scream is stay awake, stay awake.

stay awake: to keep alive during the only time I’m alive
to not miss hope in its time
for true life must be hidden to be true

how uncertain we are, except we stand condemned
if we only hope in this life
we are to be pitied more than all men.

Conclusion

I think being a kid is the most unique and amazing experience in the whole universe.  Today I turned eighteen. 

First I need to tell you some background information.  My condition for saying something is that if I think it, I say it.  In school, by myself, with my family, I am usually rambling about something or other, and sometimes it makes sense.  My condition for singing is that if I am in a proximity or social setting where I feel people aren’t listening directly to me, then I’ll sing.   This means I sing in my car, in the hallways at school, and around my house.  On a normal day I’ll sing about ten full switchfoot songs, fragments of other switchfoot songs, and other miscellaneous songs that aren’t as important as switchfoot.

So, one day I thought of an idea that I decided to propose as a bet to a good friend of mine, Alex (a friend who knows all too well my proclivity to sing and talk, I drive him to school). 

Alex found my terms agreeable, and he bet that I couldn’t keep silent for twenty-four hours, from 12 A.M. to 12 A.M.   Terms included: no intelligible communication, sleeptalking doesn’t count, and I was allowed to laugh. 

It started this morning at 12 A.M, and all I can say is, it’s hell.  Once midnight passed, I felt an invisible gag cover my mouth, and my brain become very terrified at the fact that it wasn’t allowed to release its thoughts glibly for so long a stretch of time.  Trying to not do something definitely makes you want to do that thing.  Perhaps I would have been silent for much of the time I was silent for today anyways, but I wouldn’t have minded should I not have taken an oath of silence.  But now, the moment-by-moment frustration I experience is that although I possess all the equipment and the desire to speak, I cannot!  Ahh!  My mind’s thoughts are like a small child kicking to get out of a sack they’ve been put in. 

Technically, I didn’t make it.  Fourth period for me is AP English, and we were spending the period writing an essay quietly (how convenient!).  However, in the middle of the period a girl in the back of the classroom asked, “How much time is left?”  As a runner I carry my watch around everywhere and love timing things, even stuff like the time it takes to different classes.  So I glanced at my watch and blurted out, “Twenty-three minutes.”  My teacher, who knew I was trying to be silent for the day, is shocked and says, “Philip!”  And then the painful realization hit me and I began violently twisting around in my desk, and I may have uttered a “dangit” afterward.  It’s ironic that the class that should have been the easiest ended up being the class I failed in.  But then again, I was focusing on my writing, so I wasn’t really thinking about staying silent, which is the main reason why I didn’t check myself before speaking.  It took only a brief utterance, and the perfection of my task was ruined.

However, I have kept silent since then to see how silent I can keep for twenty-four hours.  The difficulty and consuming frustration that accompanies willfully denyone oneself the faculty of speech cannot be emphasized enough.  So many times in classroom conversations I wanted to say something.  There were sometimes where I would notice something that would have helped people to understand something, and I could only watch.  When only other people can talk, you can watch what they are thinking without your own moderating interjections, and it becomes extremely annoying when they are drawing wrong inferences and you cannot fix the misunderstanding.  Tomorrow I’m going to spend all day calrifying things for people who didn’t know everything.

Out of the abundance of his thoughts a man speaks.  What humans look to be doing from an overhead perspective is waking up each day, talking, then going back to sleep.  Disabling the speaking function on a human is really a fundamental deprivation.  It’s like a bird resisting flight for a day.  It’s just so natural. 

One potential problem with remaining completely silent is that people might think you are being a jerk.  “Hey Phil … Phil? … PHIL!!” Thus, I printed out little cards that said, “Sorry I’m not talking for 24 hrs. for a bet.  But I still love you.  Please tell the other people around you … I don’t have many cards.”  It was funny to hand a person one of these cards and for them to immediately begin asking me questions.   

Not being in social situations doesn’t help the frustration either.   I think I realized today how much I talk to myself by wanting so many times to mumble things to myself when I got home from school.  Simple thoughts want to be said quite badly sometimes, just like, “Ah, it’s time to go,” or “Well, that doesn’t make sense,” or “Now where did I put that thing?” 

If you ever think your life is going too fast, take a day of silence.  Today has felt like several days.  I still have two hours until I can speak and sing at will.  It is going to be so freeing, so wonderful, so amazing to have my ability to speak back.  Also, I now realize how much what I say matters and that all my life I have been able to say anything I want, and that it really is in my power to say this or that.  Words were never a trivial thing. 

Sorry this was so long, but I’m sure you can understand my want to communicate right now.  Gu’bye! 

P.S. I just realized what this means.  This whole experience has given me a slightly deeper understanding of Jesus healing the mute.  I can’t believe how shocked they must have been. 

I have four distinct styles of writing: analytical, emotional, profound, and silly.  Representing the scarce quantity of things that have served to help document my life is this journal that I have not even used faithfully.  The actual places I’ve been, things I’ve said, and thoughts I have had have predominantly passed out of my conscious knowledge.  Instead I have glimpses into what was and is, and other than that I have my present self as testimony of my life’s existence.  Capturing life, the actual experience and details of being a human being, is not easy.  Accurately describing life’s interworkings is like trying to paint a realist painting off of a picture that is a complete blur.  Life just isn’t very simple or neat.  How many writings have I scrawled that do not even somewhat describe the original thought behind them?  Indeed, a description of life is very elusive. 

One thing I have noticed about the confusion and inexpressibility of life is that “confusion of thought” is a state of mind that occurs when I am trying to sort through life and its ideas.  It’s a state of mind that is the opposite, obviously, of clarity of thought.  It happens so often.  It’s actually a bit present right now.  Its symptoms are having many partial thoughts all wanting attention, and my thought sifter experiencing an overload that causes a vague cloud of frustration to settle in and for nothing to be accomplished.  It is simply an overload of thoughts that eventually leads to them all canceling out in merit.

This happens so often, in fact, that I barely ever have recorded an element of life very accurately. 

But it does add an enjoyable element of difficulty to the process of writing about life.  If one could just say, “This is what life is,” and everyone agreed, I admit that would take a great deal of value away from writing.  Instead, the perfect words elude my ever-reaching grasp, so that finally, when I do find the proper sequence of words to express an idea’s essence almost perfectly, I can triumphantly blurt, “Ah, there we go.” 

An imperfect memory also seems like a necessity for memory to have any value at all.  If my memory worked as perfectly as videocamera, would I really spend my time just watching things over?  Or, even worse, would I spend all my time reviewing events that had already passed, so fixed on their unchangeable condition, and their implications that I am too afraid to change?  Thus, the inadequate nature of my mind and words work to make the hunt of accurate expression worthwhile. 

This continuous flux of ideas and feelings called life is surely a great and wondrous thing.  A recurring thought of mine is that animals, beyond their instinctual desires to survive, only think one thing, which is, “I wonder what it is like to be a human.”  That is how severely extreme and different human life is from that of animal life.  Suppose you were born and ”I wonder what it is like to be a human,” was your first thought.  Your ensuing existence and time on earth would answer that question, and indeed, it is the only accurate answer, and it is even an incomplete one.  Life dramatically varies even from human to human.  It’s really fascinating how complex a thing life is.   Every moment is a new discovery of that moment.  The human mind should really be in a state of perpetual shock at its consciousness and ability to experience moments.  Most exclude this thought, however, and simply live through the moments without realizing how ridiculous it is that they are doing such a thing.

I think every human is supressed in some form or another, and much of my writing is a description of that supression.  No human, I think, desires for the world to be the way it is.  Everyone desires some sort of change.   But theories on what that change should entail are as plentiful as a very plentiful thing.

One thought I have repeatedly had is wondering about the dichotomy of actually living life on one hand and thinking about life in the other.  Living is what others see and thoughts are what no one sees.  We live in response to thinking, and we think in response to living.  And the two happen concomitantly.  It is like driving a car on the roads while also constantly being at the mechanic.  Or it is like being a sports team playing a sport and being the announcer in the booth describing and analysing everything that is happening.  It is training and racing at the same time.  It is living in a house that one is building.  It is being the pilot and ground control simultaneously.  It is being a spy on a special mission and taking orders from headquarters, which is also yourself.  It is being you while listening to yourself.  It is being and changing at the same time. 

Why could we not have had a period of time to research and plan for life before actually entering it?  Would that not have made life much simpler? A long period of thinking and sorting out what the best way to live life is, and then we enter life.  Of course this is an unworkable solution: how could one think about something that one has not experienced? 

Ultimately, this whole thing does come to appear to be undeniably absurd.  Coming into existence out of nowhere—literally, just nowhere—as an aggregation of particles of matter that replicated themselves until I arrived at this state of consciousness, has really blindsided me.  The most profound thought one can have in life is this: I’m here.  What a marvel!  Shocking!  I have been placed inside of reality!  There is some sort of huge system of things that “are” and I am inside of that paradigm!  This seems highly improbable.  I’m a breathing, talking, thinking thing that is very small and fragile in a huge place called the universe that does not know what is inside itself and has two eyes through which it sees one color screen that shifts at its command.  Past that, I really don’t know what is going on.  It seems the absurdity of all of this is so obvious that third graders should be challenging their teachers on the spot when learning about the solar system.  While looking at a diagram of the solar system I imagine one of the kids raising their hand and asking, “So we’re on that piece of stuff there?  That one, right there?  Um … why? Isn’t that sort of strange?”

Of this startling fact of existence, which no one could have predicted would happen to them, is the realm of concepts.  The startling fact of existence does not affect one badly, it just fills one with wonder.  But as I look at the quantity of things, at all of the potential concepts and thoughts and I burn with wonder and I desire to drink it all up, I find a numbing paralysis stultify my mind.  The medium of thinking and being able to contemplate thoughts really brings up a predicament.  If one’s desire is to know everything, where does one start?  There are so many things!  There is an infinite potential arrangement of words.  Of the number of humans who have lived, there is an equal number of ways of thinking.  Most people just think what naturally comes to them, but when one, out of the fear of the unknown and a pervasive wonder, wants to deliberately contemplate everything, how does one even being such a feat?  Is the indecision describable?  It is as though one sat down to eat with a menu infinitely long.  This decision is clearly overwhelming.  This is what results when one realizes their condition of freedom.  One may do anything.  I can do this or that, think this or that.  But time is pressing and consequences are unavoidable.  Conflict then arises from these competing ideas.  Coming into existence with the ability to think is giving a person the world along with its concepts and saying, “Here.  Sort them.”  On top of the impossibility of thinking to one’s satisfaction is the even more tantalizing thought that one may only be one person.  Life is not like trying ice cream flavors or buying a new car ever so often.  It is having one lump of clay to form.  It is being in the center of millions of mountains and being given the order, “Climb one, and only one.”  Especially to a person who loves climbing, this decision will render tears. 

Time only adds to the frustration of existence.  In life people tend to forget about time because life has the illusion of being eternal.  I am infinitely present to myself.  I am always with myself.  This makes time just seem to not even happen.  Time only becomes apparent when one stares it in the face.  For the great portion of life, time is creeping by like a thief tip-toeing by the window.  But when confronted, time is really an overt operation by a criminal using your front door to continually take possession from your house.  It is not hidden.  It is a clear as the sun is shining that time is ticking.  As I watch closer and closer and I forget about all things on earth but time, it seems to go faster and faster.  Time is going now and now and now now now now now now.  It constantly flows and sucks the life out of us every moment.  It is a a great and immediate reality to mourn over.  We are not dying slowly.  We are in the corner of the ring being beaten to a pulp by time itself.  All one needs to do is realize that absence of mind does not erase reality.  I do not live because I am in the world of time, I live in spite of being under the influence of time.  Trying to beat time is like a person drifting in the ocean who says, “Instead of me drowning in the ocean, I will try to drown the ocean in myself.”

Thankfully, the concept of a “day” gives some ability to strategize against the acrimonious subterfuge of time.  If one can learn the best way to live each day, he has mastered some evils of time.  But what is the best way to live each day?  Well, upon realizing the remarkable situation we are in, I suggest we committ the day to as much investigation into the matter as time will allow.  Here is one concept that is unarguably correct: concern yourself with reality.  In the Matrix, Cipher decides that he wants to be deceived and live in the Matrix instead of knowing that the Matrix is not real.  That decision is so irrational that nothing could be worse.  Reality is what must be dealt with, and nothing less, for that would be to fool oneself.  Fear the unknown, for it could be anything.  If you can think of one thing in the category of “anything” that you think would be important to know, then you should investigate reality to see if that is true.  In the end, reality is all the remains, and all prevarications are swept away.  Thus, even if it means groping in the dark for anything at all, search out reality.

The truth is really quite a desperate concept.  It is not something to think casually about, as though it could be compartmentalized.  “Looking for the truth” could not be scheduled in between brunch and a trip to the park.  The search for the truth pertains to each and every activity and thought.  In all things one must be constantly wary, constantly aware, that the truth is all that matters.  It is not something we hope we will get.  It is something we must get.  We will schedule certain events, plan on occasions and future, and undergo preparation for that which we need to be prepped for; but this is life.  No preparation preceded being oneself, and yet truth concerns all of it, and we must always pay attention to its domain, which is everywhere.  (entry 2) Life is the overall set that contains all other sets. 

A controversial maxim that I have personalized is considering every point of view.  At least initially, all claims are equally valid.  In looking for the truth one must think when they comes to an option, “This could be true.”  This works as a neutralizer to help one think clearly in comparing ideas and will keep one ruminating facts and concepts in terms of their merits, instead of how one “feels” about it.  What rotten luck that would be if one innately had a negative attitude towards the truth!  Thus, moods and impressions simply cannot be valid variables. 

Along with the idea that anything may be true, I also hold that no one is exempt from being responsible for what they think is the truth.  There is no neutral grounds where people are not involved in the search for the truth and simply have no position.  If you don’t believe anything, then that is your take on the truth.  If you believe this or that, that is your take on truth.  Everyone is in the world and has the exact same position in regards to the truth, which is that they are the judge, they are the decider, internally, of what they believe to be true.  Even if not-belief is what a person chooses, it is still an option chosen from the vantage point of a human on earth, which is the same circumstance of all the other humans as well.  If one human decides, “I will believe proposition A,” and another decides, “I will not believe in anything,” then both have equally decided on a truth-view.  Suppose life is a race and all the humans are the runners.  A human cannot simply declare, “I’m not in the race.”  If you are in the race by definition, then you are in the race.  Everyone will finish someplace in the race.  Similarly, on earth no one can say, “I have no view of the truth,” or “I don’t believe anything.” Of course you do; you’re a human.  Everyone is participating, and every one has a current position.

One of the distinguishing trademarks of the greatest men in history is that they all cared about the truth.  Somehow, amidst a world too sleepy to care, there have been a few who have risen to speak about the truth on the deaf ears of man.  It is not an easy vocation, caring about the truth.  Every day becomes a violent seastorm of resistance, of your body wanting comfort, of other people wanting to be left alone, of the mind wanting to despair.  But there is no other choice.  Either a person must relapse into society’s murky water to be drowned, or one must fight furiously to stay about water, to not collaps from fatigue.  Stay awake, stay awake.  Over and over one must tell themself that this journey is one-way, and nothing else matters, once you have lost the truth. It is hard to live a day in which it seems like every single bit of speech coming from every single person’s mouth contained no direct relevance to the truth, and then to go home and tell yourself that the truth is all that matters.  But deep within every person I believe, is the honest desire to know the truth. What else is life worth living for?

Socrates:  How is your search for the truth going?
American:  Um, my search for … the truth?
Socrates: Yes, aren’t you looking for it?
American:  No, I’m not.
Socrates:  Well then what are you looking for?
American:  I’m not looking for anything. 
Socrates:  Ah, so you have already found it?
American:  No, I haven’t found anything.
Socrates:  Well, if you aren’t looking and you haven’t found anything, then what do you have?
American:  Well, my life, I suppose.
Socrates:  So you have your life, but you do not have the truth neither are you looking for it? Don’t you think the truth might pertain to your life?
American:  No, I don’t think so.  It doesn’t seem to be an issue of large concern to anyone.
Socrates:  Have you asked it?
American:  Well, no, I haven’t asked it. 
Socrates:  Because you haven’t found it, right?
American:  Right.
Socrates:  So maybe you should find it and ask it just to make sure.
American:  Perhaps.  But what if I don’t want to look for the truth?
Socrates:  Why wouldn’t you want to?
American:  Well, I have a good life.
Socrates:  But don’t you want to know? 
American:  I don’t know if I want to know.  It depends on what the truth is.
Socrates:  Well, then it seems like you should take the risk to look for the truth in case that once you find it, you discover that you wanted to know it all along.

So we ought look for the truth.

Sometimes I wonder about when humans will become extinct.  If atheism is true, then humans were really part of one large sham.  They were animals that “woke up” and started talking and demanding the universe give them a meaning, and they became very angry, and then eventually died off.  Who will fall prey next to this practical joke of a universe?  Will rabbits be the next species to wake up and start wondering what they were put on earth for?  Will they start killing themselves out of depression?  Will they start playing dress up?  Will they invent religions too, in hope of a next life, not realizing the universe just is and no one knows why?  Will the universe watch as the rabbits pathetically squander to find a reason to live, amusing itself over the fake realities they invent to cope with the dark and heartless universe?  Or perhaps on a different chunk of rock millions of light years away humanity will evolve all over again and invent everything the same way again.  Perhaps that is happening right now.  To be creative, maybe they will invent a different set of ideas that are bizarre and implausible theories to us, as ours are to them.  And eventually, after throwing fits of rage wanting to know what existence was all about, they will pass away and be no more.  And all over the infinite universe the same process will happen over and over again, all for the apparent reason of producing a good chuckle for the thing that is watching it all. (entry 3) Which is nothing.

My thoughts are either trash or treasure.  If naturalism is true, then my thoughts are worthless probably incorrect cognitive smatterings that don’t exceed the value of sticks on the forest floor.  Why would they matter at all?  Not only have my cognitive faculties probably not evolved to be reliably useful, but the fact they evolved means they are still valueless because they don’t even serve a purpose.  If theism is true then my cognitive faculties are reliable and they serve a purpose, which is knowing the Lord and living consciously among other creatures here on earth.  My thoughts are trash if they aren’t reliable and mean nothing, and treasure if they help me know the Lord. 

My eighteenth birthday is a little more than a day away.  The universe has existed for millions of years, and I for eighteen of them.  What I think about that I am not quite sure.  That’s one problem with existing in such a place: with all the forces, I am a very incredulous person.  Decisions take a long time, commitments are rare, and my maxims are not in high supply.  If God is an invisible force that wants me to love him, then he must realize that I am expected to choose him from this noisy and crowded earth, and that makes it very hard.  Must I affirm your existence and live for you, and deny every other noise in the world?  This world is not clearly defined; it is a whirlwind of chaos and a droning roar of noise that is the amalgamation of all the noises combined.  From this hectic melee I must reach out to take hold of you? 

I think being a kid is the most unique and wonderful experience in the whole universe.  (entry 4)  What could describe it? 

People today were wishing me happy birthday after Brooke announced it was tomorrow, although I implored her not to.  Birthdays are a relative cultural phenomenon that I do not lionize mindlessly.  The day I was born changed my entire life.  It was a freak accident as far as I know, and I don’t know if I want to go about celebrating just yet.  Life ought be celebrated for various reasons, but should it in itself be glorified?  Clearly birthdays are generic in form, and not specific to life and its particular attributes.  

Life is what happens when we are living and not realizing it.  When a person reaches old age and is near death they may look back on their life and recollect all that happened and what they think of it.  Thus, in looking back on their “life” it is like they are looking back on something that happened as an underlying story to their daily actions and pursuits.  It is almost as though while growing up there was a ghost of myself standing in the corner of every room I was in, watching, always watching, to observe and record.  Now that I am here, past all that has happened, my ghost reports everything to me, and what was happening while I wasn’t realizing it.  This phenomenon is of course the result of the nature of the memory to seem like it is viewing past life in the third person. 

There was no preparation for life.  I was put here and am here for good, as far as I know, until I die.  For all the fantasies and playful games we’ve had in our imagination, this, actual life, is not only real, but the full encompassing idea of what is real.  No one is controlling all the other people.  They hold no advantage over you in position or knowledge.  We are all improvising reality.  No person was here before the Earth was created to oversee its construction.  We are all here for the first time.

Right now I know this moment exists.  I am here and feeling it, in this room, knowing the whole world is in this precise present moment, all doing different things.  And yet, as time continues, the moment that is so existent to me will soon fade away.  Even as I write, the initial moment of writing this piece is being shoved further and further back into the dark corners of my mind to make room for new moments.  The day’s thoughts, actions, and events have all preceded my exact existence in this moment, which is called the “present.”  And yet, as real as all of that is to me now, time’s steady influx mounts higher and higher until this moment is buried underneath it all and then, astonishingly, I will not remember it.  It will be as though it never even happened.  This day, which I could explain completely should someone ask me about it right now, I will, in a matter of only a few days, forget the small details to, and then perhaps the larger details, until soon all I know is that today was a date in history and I was alive for it.  This is truly remarkable: the very real present will soon become the forgotten past. 

Juxtaposed moments seem similar, but over a broad gap of time, we become different people, although we were living along a continuous line of successive moments.  Time has tricked us all into changing from what we had forgotten we were into what the present tells us to be.  For the present is all there is.  Yet, would we agree with where the track of time has led us?  Is this the destination we were anticipating?  As we look back from whence we came, has time made us forget one dream too many?  On the infinite track of time, which rolls on without appeal, our lives steadily progress, either consciously or unconsciously, through moments of the wondrous state called life.  As the the track unmercifully thrusts us forward we may kick and scream and beg for it to stop — all in futility.  Demanding that time relent its cruel trick of being an inescapable, unending reality is as pointless as drinking a drink that brings about thirst.  Turning to view the past, I see my life as a massive blank canvas with splotches of paint here or there; but the memories are incomplete and vague.  I certainly cannot recall the way things were to me in the past as I am experiencing them as they are now in the present.  Perhaps a scene flashes from a random summer day, or I remember a certain expression of a face, or the general feeling of a moment, or a hazy picture of a place I have been, but these moments, compared to the entire quanity of time that has composed my life so far, are so insignificant they are but tiny specks in a sea of white oblivion.  I must face it: what life I have had so far is basically gone with the passing wind of time. 

Time wastes us all away.  That the present is always here, and that we cannot remember things past, is an illusion of our own transcendence, that we will always occupy the space where we currently are.  Wherever I go is where I am, an unescapable self is what I am; I think.  But that one day that that reality will cease to be is the most unthinkable end.  No matter how much time goes by, I am always here.  That is what it is to be in the present.  But that this was really one large scam, one that does not follow the same pattern forever, and that one day the present just stops, is the great trick that time and death play on us.  Does this trick even happen slowly?  Or is it fast?  I arrived here quickly: time must be going fast.  Thirty years old is so far away: time must be going slow.  Oh, Time, how you are the ultimate magician!  Right before our eyes you play your sleight of hand, and no one can understand the trick!  Over and over again we watch in amazement!  Time!  It never stops!  Time is the air of death that we are all breathing in and out unavoidably with every passing second. 

This very moment will soon be gone forever.  It will not live on; it dies like the rest of them.  Time collects its due from us without our consent from the pockets of our lives.  My life is a infinite refreshment of moments until one day I will lose my moment-experiencing medium.  But what would I have done with the next moment after the moment I die anyway?  Or the next two?  Or another one and another one, until perhaps I had a few more years of them?  Would I be satisfied then?  Alas, it is seen: if I am not satisfied in this moment, I am not satisfied in any of them.  Either the present is mine and I own its deadly glare, or it owns me.  For despair is what it wants of us; but upon viewing its sinister plans and being aware of them, I find a great rising force within me to leave the clock’s bitter stare, and to, as the great apostle said, “make the most of every opportunity.”  Is that not all there is, in the face of such an immovable reality? 

“Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”  - The Apostle Paul

Life is in the next thought you have.  It’s in the next conversation you have.  It’s in the next temporary emotion you feel inside you.  It’s in the next moment you slightly shift the view as you see it through your two eyes.  Life saturates every moment. 

[MAT]  WELCOME  [/MAT]

A person is only a face to us at first.  Perhaps we greet them, and they respond with a hesitant hello.  Now we know what that person would do in that very moment in time should we greet them.  Suppose we then say that we are reading a book and the person delightfully responds that they love reading books.  Thus, two strangers, each from a place which the other does not know, have collided in time and have seen, greeted, and said something of books.  This process does not signify a trivial minute in the day of a person in public.  It is really a crack in the picture: most every person is lost in a crowd, looking all around at nothing but strangers, seeing faces, faces, faces, everywhere!  But here there is contact, a breach into the system.  Two souls say hello and say something of a book and then books.  Thus, through a trial, we learn something of the whole crowd: they are not indifferent specimen crawling around to create scenery.  They are there and real, and interaction creates depth of relationship.  The crowd is floating on water, the conversants are swimming deeper and deeper.  Down together they go to see what depth of soul there is in others.  As we travel into the mind of another person we must learn all over again that they too are in this weird game, and they too think, and they too have souls.  Though strangers be a face at first, we must not forget a soul lurks beneath those unpleasant brows. 

I will wear my clothes far beyond them being worn. 

This is true frustration: that I am too warm with a coat and too cold without it. 

Only when attempting the impossible is a person’s true will summoned. 

Thanks for coming over!  Bye now! 

We are the inventors of history.  With every passing moment we are improvising the story of mankind.

If I have a daughter I’m going to name her Mystery, so then people will ask her, “Why did your parents name you Mystery?” and she will answer, “I don’t know.”

As time goes by, memories multiply, and yet I am always here.  But if to my past self I was there then, which was here then, then I am not here now, but merely thinking I am here, while always not being and being here.  Here is merely a place I am passing through to get to here.  For I will always be here, yet here will also disappear.  Here is always going and always coming.

Our lives’ actions must be commensurate with what we know.

Life is too fast for the memory to record and too big for words to describe. 

Every person is obsessed with their own opinions.

A man answers every question according to his own motives.

The way I found the world is not my responsibility, but the way I leave it is. 

Farebye!  Goodwell! 

Sorry last post was so long.  I’ll try to not do that so much.  Now, some more random things from the day:

I want to know others’ thoughts, but for no one to know mine.

We only see the words that are written; the author may have been thinking something more.

It is dangerous to speak one’s mind, for what one man may admire, the next man may disdain.

Are the quality of a person’s thoughts really to their credit?  Do not thoughts seem to come to us without our prompt? 

It is not dishonest for a man to make up his mind about things that he cannot know.  Instead, he is being honest: it is in man’s nature to decide on matters of importance.

Sometimes in my sadness I find that I am only sad because I am wanting the impossible.

All but one of man’s organs work naturally.  Hist heart, his lungs, his liver all work automatically every day. But oddly enough, the most powerful of his organ’s, the mind, the one he can choose to use or not use, remains dormant.

Synonyms are like a word’s friends.

This night is finite, so why not have a fine night?

As a result of something less than my own pure volition, I have a Facebook.  It was a simple process really: I clicked a few buttons after someone sent me an invite to get a Facebook via email, and I now have one. 

Basically, Facebook is an amelioration of MySpace via changes in orginazational structure and overall lineaments.  To put it more simply, Facebook looks like MySpace if a sanitation crew cleaned it up and a guy with a brain redesigned it.  If MySpace is the glittery closet of a teenage girl, Facebook is the desk of a white-collar employee.  If MySpace is a messy coloring book, Facebook is a Da Vinci masterpiece.  If MySpace is a dump, Facebook is a sanitation center.  Well, you get the idea. 

However, as I will explain, I am not a fan of Facebook.  Besides, it really isn’t much of an endorsement to say something is good compared to MySpace.  MySpace really is the worst idea since the electoral college.  Somehow, however, through shiny colors or what not, it has gained popularity.  But since Facebook has been steadily growing, and MySpace has been gradually declining, my attention now turns to Facebook as the heir to the throne of Blogdom.  To see my thoughts on MySpace go here:  http://www.xanga.com/StrokeofThought/515134787/item.html

First, a brief description of the unique aspects of Facebook.  There are two main defining features that separate Facebook from the rest of the Social Networks.  First, in sacrificing a small piece of customization, Facebook has withheld control of background preference from the user and has preset every single Facebooker’s page to the default color of white.  Everywhere you go it is white from top to bottom, almost as though Facebook were trying to induce a feeling of a Heavenly blog where all we have to do is imagine the angels and harps to complete the experience.  This is where the analogy of Facebook as a sanitation center comes in.  Its pristine white visage glows in your face incessantly, like having dinner with a true Irishman. 

The second of Facebook’s two defining features is its tell-all “News Feed.”  When you sign on to Facebook, the News Feed is the first page that appears.  Somewhat like a Buzz Lightyear mission log, the News Feed is a detailed account of all your friend’s recent Facebook activity.  That is what it is definitionally, whereas literally it is the ceaseless inpouring of a seemingly infinite amount of banal minutiae: it reports all your friends’ activities from picture changes, to “favorite music” changes, to group changes (leaving them/joining them), to mood changes.  It’s like being a police officer with a police radio, only you’re a Facebooker with a News Feed.  Could information ever be more accessible … or mind-numbing? 

Like MySpace, and in opposition to Xanga, Facebook is centered around the profile and personal information.  Whereas in Xanga the viewer’s immediate attention on any site is directed toward the Xangan’s most recent post, in Facebook it is directed toward mostly the same things as MySpace, with a few trendy additions: the typical is showing your sexual preference, hometown, relationship status, what sort of relationships the person is looking for, political views, religious views, and then the massive listings of activities, interests, favorite music, favorite TV shows, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite quotes, and then (ironically), an “about me” section.  But wait! Beyond all that you may also know the person’s educational and employment history and description.  With how many favorites of this or that people have, reading them becomes much like reading the daily stock market changes in the paper. 

An implication of the vast sea of information included on anyone’s site is that when any of it is altered it will (conveniently?) show up on your News Feed.  Thank goodness for that.  Fear not, your friend Liz took ACDC off of her favorite music, but you know about it.  This is a serious thing.  Such actions need to be exposed publicly and be put out in the open so that all her friends can know of the occurrence of Liz’s dramatic actions.  Why does Liz no longer like ACDC?  Does she need help?  Is she changing her life’s direction away from such “things” as ACDC?  I must speak with her about this.  And WHAT?  Why on Earth does Mark no longer like Lost in Translation as one of his favorite movies?!  Has he lost his MIND?!

However, the News Feed is not the primary reason I dislike Facebook.  Rather, it is the pervading sense I get when I am on the site.

Whenever I am on Facebook, as a total effect of the features I mentioned above, I feel vaguely like I am inside of a scientific experiment.  It’s almost like Facebook is just one big scientific laboratory. It’s reminiscient of the huge germ-free, white room where government scientists in labcoats work with microscopes and rats.  Think about it.  Everything is white, neat, systematic, pristine, organized, and monitored.  Needless data about every Facebooker exists abundantly everywhere I click.  The status, i.e. current mood, of every Facebooker is available directly on their page, and if it changes it is reported directly to my omniscient “News Feed.”  It’s like every Facebooker is not even an actual human being, but rather a “test subject” that is being systematically catalogued in this rigid paradigm called “Facebook.”  It’s a huge orginizational machine of information and systematized data.  In fact, on each Facebooker’s page is a personal News Feed called a “Mini-Feed” that shows specifically all the recent activities of that Facebooker.  Of course, times are reported for when all reported activities occurred. 

What MySpace underdid, becoming an anarchy of stalkers and sexual perverts, Facebook has overdone, becoming a totalitarian Social Network better organized than the D-Day invasion of Normandy.  In a fashion disconcertingly similar to a laboratory documentation, every person’s page is their closely monitored and registered “personal file” in which the slightest adjustment of information will be automatically reported to every one of their friends.  On your friends’ pages are the dry facts of the amount of mutual friends you share, how you know that peson, and what groups they have joined.  Facebook is the ultimate culmination of the history of science and the social world, all compressed into one website.  Strangely enough, with how prevalently white and systematically organized Facebook is, the closest comparison I can find to it is an insane asylum. 

Replacing the endless quest for “friends” on MySpace is the unspoken competition for “wall posts” on Facebook.  Each test subject is given a wall, on which the other test subjects may then write their peculiar sayings.  Some accumulate thousands of wall posts.  As usual, this is all reported to the all-knowing News Feed.  Or perhaps you would like to look at the test subject’s photos.  You of course know the test subject has photos, since the addition of photos was reported to, yep, you guessed it, your News Feed.  And, if you should so choose to comment on one of the test subject’s photos the exciting news bit of you commentng on a photo will in turn be sent to every one of that test subject’s friends’ News Feeds.   Yes, exhilerating, I know. 

Besides the endless informational log and white contours to give the site the feel of a scientific laboratory, each Facebooker is grouped into a “Network” based off of their school or geographical location.  To me, the test subjects are being grouped accordingly.  It’s like they’re the different test groups.  Categorizing people geographically by such an exact method should be the illuminating sign to people that they are in a pedantically organized system, one freakishly like a scientific experiment.

But perhaps it works for some people.  If you’re the sort of person that has always wished to get reports on the daily growth of your grass, and on other equally important items, then Facebook is for you.  If you overstock on school supplies every year and have your closet organized into obsessively neat sections, then you will like Facebook.  If your walls are a bland white and you clean things out of instinct, then Facebook will suit your taste.  And finally, if you’ve always wanted to write an autobiography, but would settle for paraphrasing your life story via a complete listing of your favorite music, TV shows, movies, books, and quotes, then Facebook was made for you.  

As for me, Xanga is my home.  I am not running an enterprise here, as I feel I am on Facebook, but rather I just write my thoughts.  That is truly a beautiful simplicity.  Just thoughts.  Facebook seems to be approaching the limit of trying to replicate actual real-life friendships as closely as possible and putting them into an ordered system.  Anything that appears to be attempting to simulate real life, or even arguably outdo it, makes me instantly skeptical.  My Xanga is not me.  I am not words on a page.  I am not my favorite things.  I am not my interests.  I have never used Xanga as a replacement for real life, only as a place for recording thoughts, which makes its role strictly supplemental.  But it is not me.  You want to know me?  Maybe I’ll run into you in a bookstore sometime and we can chat. 

Facebook seems to me like a controlled scientific laboratory.  In history, most interaction has been face-to-face.  Now it’s facebook-to-facebook.  This is a major shift.  Actual faces are now perhaps coincidental in our interaction.  What would history think of this?  What would medieval peasants think of this?  This is the first generation to do this.  Before we dive in headfirst, what should we think of this?