"You know I once met someone who had self-actualized.  Boringest conversation of my life," Jason said, sipping his glass of wine. 
"Mmmm," Aly began, "I imagine only having one actual person in a conversation would make it quite boring."
"Do you see that?" Jason said, his eyes suddenly vigorously wide.
"What?" Aly replied nonplussed, glancing around at other people at the party.
"That man is thinking about me."
"What? How do you know?"
"I can tell," he replied, still staring fixedly at the man.
A moment later Jason shot himself like a torpedo across the floor.
"Wait, Jason, don't!" Aly cried.
"Hey buddy, you got a problem?" Jason cried, enraged. 
"Excuse me?" the man replied innocently.
"Oh don't play that game with me," Jason fumed, "You're clearly thinking about me."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"But I sure know what you're thinking about! And—GAH—that is so rude. Why don't I just go back across the room and think awful things about you all night? How would you like that? That make you feel good?"
"Jason. . ." Aly whispered, pulling at his sleeve.
"Well it's quite clear that you already have been thinking about me," the man riposted.
"Yeah, well I TOLD YOU ABOUT IT.  I think that's pretty obvious by now," Jason bursted sardonically, "But you know what I don't do? I don't walk around, thinking all sorts of things about people, killing them in my head, imagining them in blue dresses and running frantically around the place, and then leave it.  That is just rude."
"Well I don't know how far that philosophy has gotten you in life," the man said with a wide grin on his face, "but I can tell you that not having my thoughts be co-extensive with my words has served me quite well."
"I don't care how well it's served you, it's SICK!  You are a monster.  Hiding entire worlds of hateful propaganda, enraged citizens, and a whole rabid army—all slashing other people to bits every moment!  That is a monstrosity, and it is a shame on you and everyone else who does it."  Jason raised his voice near the end so everyone else at the party heard him.
"I'm sorry about this, thank you for your patience," Aly said as she pushed her livid friend away from the man. 

Magic is built on a paradox, because we are dazzled into wanting to know how the trick is done, yet to reveal it would ruin everything.

Relationships aren't altogether unsimilar, because we often desire greatly to know people, but once we do things become lackadaisical and routine.  Over time they settle into the "picture" of life.

But magic tricks are minutiae and if we forget them, it doesn't matter; but when someone who has been stitched into the fabric of your life rips themself out, you realize what it means for people to mean something.  What a bleak place the world becomes when they're gone.  Stars lose their luster, waterfalls everywhere stop, there doesn't seem as much reason to talk.  Who knew that another human could be so key to the functioning of the universe?

The thing about friendship is that it means your life exists somewhere else; it exists in the memories of your friend.  The great part of having a friend is you don't need to tell them stories, they are your stories.  And when you're around each other, you can assume all that has happened.  Go around strangers, and it's like you have never existed at all. 

Friends are what make it so we can believe our lives are real.

Ever feel like not being real?  Like hiding for good?  Maybe we should go deep into the woods and bury our life in the ground, then build a behemoth fortress on top of it, complete with enhanced fortifications and an army fit to defend a king.  Then even if people find the fortress they won't even know we are in it, and if they do they won't be able to break in.  Did I mention there's a moat?

People get buried anyway because of bad memory.  Our life of a kindgom inside of us lasts centuries and centuries, our past selves really being kings of times long ago, but there are no historians in the kingdom, so we are really only the presently reigning king.  This present king is really the only king people get to know when they meet us.  The rest are dead and gone; somehwere back in the dark ages probably.  It is only our friends who can keep us accountable to the kings of the past.

Thus as your friends disappear, so does your life.  They are the ones who bring to life all the rich and varied nuance about you that has accumulated from times past.  Without them, at most, all of that is a ghost in the room.  Spend enough time away from people who know you, and it vanishes completely.

And that is how you hide.  The masses are plentiful enough; hide amidst them.  Do not spend too much time around any one person; they may begin to fit things together.  Spread yourself thin, as though you are already disseminating your dead body's ashes over the Caribbean, like you will someday ask the children you never had to do.  Never speak to people directly; always send an emissary from deep in your castle to give them a note with an entirely formal and perfectly vague reply written out on it.  Act normal enough about it and they will not catch on.   In fact, act normal enough about it and eventually you will not even catch on that you don't actually mean what you say anymore.

That is how you stay safe: play dress up everywhere you go, and always go someplace new.  You will eventually be a person who has only lived for ten minutes.  But that's okay, because no one's heart ever broke in their eleventh minute.

Most people, it seems, do this accidentally.  Over time they get further away from who they wanted to be, because they have no friend to be an anchor at that past self to keep the dream alive.  Soon we are lost at sea, not even sure whence we disembarked. 

I'm feeling rather sad and cynical tonight, but I do have to say this: it only takes one moment to realize it's all worth it.  When you meet with that friend who can instantaneously disarm you, and the world flashes bright as you see that fantasyland you once conquered together on your many imaginative escapades as daring adventurers in the universe, you know that not existing and the pain it would save doesn't measure up to the glory of a good friendship.  I'm not feeling it right now, but I know that's true.  I'm really tired and I need to get to bed.  I hope everybody has a good day. 

Sometimes I have to write down what I think because otherwise I forget who I am.

There are many joyful parts of the world where we are all silly and stupid and have lots of fun, but other parts of the world are dark and terrifying.  Sometimes it is terrifying to be around people, because after all, what if they don't like us?  It is terrible when people look at you and think, "(snort) What an idiot!"  It is like they are casting their vote that we shouldn't exist. 

Sometimes I can hear myself worry . . if enough people cast their vote against me, will I not exist anymore?

It is also terrifying that we might end up having lived the wrong way.  What if there is a truth of everything, and we don't know it?  What a breathtaking tragedy that would be, to think we went through life and missed the actual point of it all.  Our minds ought to freeze and our eyes be downcast and full of sadness at the prospect that this might be how things are.

The one fear I often forget is that I am afraid that I might get married because I am attracted to the idea of marriage, and not to whomever I marry.  It is a very scary thing to devote your whole life to another person.  To imagine doing so for confused and inadequate reasons ought to haunt us all at some point amidst our incessant dreaming of a perfect and magical romance.

I'm not actually sure what it would mean to say "I want to get married someday" when you don't know the person you might be married to.  Isn't a person supposed to be the object of your desire, and not a concept?  Because if you decide early on that you want to get married, don't you end up loving the concept more than you do the person you plug into the concept? 

That's why I think it is best to pretend that marriage does not exist.  That way I am not constantly thinking about girls I can fit into an imagined life, as if they were a means to some other end.  After all, shouldn't I have been best friends with whomever I marry in a world where marriage didn't even exist?  Otherwise, the reason you marry is not so much the other person as it is marriage.

What I imagine is loving a girl so much, we have to invent the idea of marriage.  We would get to a point where even if we lived on a planet where no one had even thought of the idea of devoting themself to just one other person, we would do it.  

If there isn't a person who makes you want there to be the possibility of living your whole life with just one person, the idea of marriage does not seem worth it to me. 

These are lofty thoughts, perhaps unrealizable by anyone.  But that's perfectly fine with me: maybe my ideals and I are incompatible with the universe.  We did not ask to be put into this specific universe.  We are not going to change because we were.

And now that I've written it down, hopefully I won't forget it. 

It's weird to see all that you think before you.  When it's all in your head, you wonder if you really think it: you write it down, and suddenly it's confirmed.  Look!  Cold, hard evidence.

One thing that reveals something to me about my human nature is that I have many more thoughts in the category "What I am Owed" than I do in the category "What I Owe." 

Sometimes people don't like themselves, and they don't even know it.  I hear of people who will talk to a person at a party and then say later they found the person "boring".  But why is it the other person's fault?  Maybe you failed at bringing out the interesting things in that person.  Why consider it their failure?  Might it not be your failure to be able to engage new people in a way that makes them feel relaxed and open?  And so, people who are bad at making conversation fun don't like themselves, but they don't even know it. 

One great thing about feeling absolutely terrible because of something someone said to you is that it makes you realize all the power you have.  Recently I felt so bulldozed by how someone treated me, but eventually it made me think, 'Wow, have I ever made someone else feel like this?'  It was incredible to think that my words might ever have such a potently devastating effect on a person.  Could I really ruin all of reality for someone for a day?

And you know, I'd like to think that 'Oh no no, I have never said anything that could make someone feel quite so terrible.'  The problem is that I'm pretty sure that the person who made me feel bad doesn't know anything about it.  But that makes it all the worse for me; that means in all likelihood, I have probably left someone similarly devastated.  People are fragile.  It is not hard. 

One time I was at a coffee shop and I overheard a girl (er, woman—a young woman) talking to an older woman about a guy.  The guy had not called her in awhile.  They had used to date, and now the situation was distant and confusing.  The girl was speaking in a low voice, and very slowly, almost like she was about to cry, even though she wasn't.  She was talking about how sad she was that the guy had not really made any attempt to call her or hang out with her at all.  He had sent her a text recently, but it was terse and impersonal.  Apparently this text was like an icy dagger: its shortness and uninviting nature had the effect on her of meaning, "I don't care about you deeply, I don't really want to hang out with you, things aren't the way they used to be, you and I have fallen apart, I don't try to protect your feelings anymore" etc.  The girl was really roughed up over it. 

I think their whole talk was about the situation with the guy, but to be honest I didn't hear any more of it.  But that one part really got me thinking about what things mean to people when you don't even realize it.  It is basically insane that we have the power to destroy other people by putting invisible ideas into the air with our mouths.  How many times have I conquered someone's world without even knowing I had ordered the invasion?  It is a curious thing to think about, and one well worth reflecting on.  Why are we even humans in the first place?  Maybe thinking about things like this, and deciding on what sort of things to say to other people is part of the answer. 

Wow, I am such an idiot.

So on Tuesday I was climbing into my bed to go to sleep at six A.M. Since I have school, the stupidity in this story should already be apparent.  So I'm sitting in my bed and I think that if I fall backwards my head will land directly on my pillow.  However, instead I start to fall back and my head slams immediately into the wall.  Apparently I was not where I thought I was on my bed.

More bad news for my head.  Yesterday I was in line at the cafe, and I dropped something. I leaned down to get it and rammed my head into the glass case over the bagels and muffins.  "Oh whoops," I mutter, as though the stupidity was blood now leaking out of my mouth.  What do you say in that situation?

Then later in the evening while standing in a circle I was told to stand facing counterclockwise twice.  I failed both times.  I even thought about it beforehand. 

After the circle incident, I went shopping.  While shopping I was talking to Dave saying, "You know, grocery shopping is so much cheaper than going out to eat. I know this.  But usually I go out to eat because I think 'Whenever I go shopping, it costs like $50.  When I go out to eat, it's only $5.  Why spend all that money then? Going out to eat saves so much money!'  You know why Dave?  Because I'm an idiot."

I thought about writing this xanga yesterday after that.  But I got lazy.  Then this morning I wrote someone an email, because they had asked me to send them a document.  I wrote a paragraph in the email saying that I have been busy, and that I am sorry I hadn't sent it earlier.  Then I sent the email.  Hours later I think about the email and realize . . . did I even attach anything to it?  No, I didn't, did I . . . I just sent them an email saying sorry for not sending it, without even sending it.  Did I really do that?  Sure enough, that was what happened.

That was about five minutes ago.  I decided such stupidity should not go unrecorded.  I actually do that email one quite often.  I think I sent someone four emails once, all saying 'Whoops . . . I forgot to send it last time' and I only actually remembered to include it the fourth time.

Even when I signing into my xanga, I wrote "xanga.com" in the username box.  I am afraid of myself today.  What am I going to do?  Am I going to cook something in tupperware in the oven?  Pull a fire alarm when I notice an employee doing a bad job?  Say anything other than "Amazing!" when a girl asks how she looks?  Buy a mac?  Be late for class because of being distracted by a book on punctuality? 

The possibilities are endless.  Let's hope I—and everyone I come into contact with—make it out alive.