StrokeofThought's Xanga

The case of the missing very important thought

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:26:15 GMT

I live in a house of seven guys, and all of us had school off for Veterans Day; except, curiously enough, for the veteran that lives with us.

I woke up to a glorious Wednesday morning, alive and ready for life! I walked out of the house, smiling and ready to pick up my friend for breakfast.

Down the driveway I walked, though more slowly once I realized my car wasn't in the street right in front of the house like I had expected. Well that's odd, I thought. No bother though—I must have parked it up the street a ways is all. And so on I went.

But walking up the street, I could see no sign of it. My eyes glanced left and right. Was it towed? Was it STOLEN? Something had clearly gone wrong.

And then, in a moment like one of Raven's psychic visions, it came to me all at once.

Usually I walk to campus, but the previous night a friend needed me to drive him there, so I dropped him off and parked my car at a meter. Later that night I walked giddily home, completely oblivious as to the whereabouts of my car. I stayed up until 5 A.M., and never had a thought about it. It was this picture of an entire night of splendid revelry in friends and life—all while my car sat innocently at a street miles away—that flashed before my eyes.

Needless to say, our society is quite discriminatory against people with bad memories. My friend adding, "Oh don't worry, they don't ticket on holidays" moments before discovering the ticket on my windshield did not help in any way to alleviate this fact. And actually . . . after thinking about the traps society tends to set for forgetful people, I have suddenly remembered the four items I have checked out of a library that were due last night. I might need to just go return them now.

The night sky is a picture of the past. That is why people with bad memories like to look at it so much; it is the ultimate cheat sheet we have always wanted. It may be the case that many stars and galaxies have since died out, but the night sky shows us exactly how things used to be long, long ago. Thus, those of us with bad memories relish this wonderful fact and often look up and say, "Ahh . . . remember the good ole days when things used to be exactly how they are right now?"

But living in the present where life quickly and continuously unfolds all around us? Here we hang on for dear life.

Let your love be strong

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:00:18 GMT

A prelude to a man drunk on thoughts at 2 A.M.

Sometimes it feels like the mind is an underground hot air balloon, and at night we finally have the time to get it out and fly above the city. Eventually the city below is a few specks of light, the sky above a host of shining stars. Drifting in the silent darkness between the two, we look back and forth in our thoughts between humanity and the heavens . . .

Everyone speaks a language which only they can understand; a romance is finding someone else who speaks the exact same language.

How sad it is to feel as though you speak a language that no one else speaks.

Every now and again, it is a good thing to be sad.

Sooner or later you realize, this is the body I'm stuck with. Somedays it feels surprising we didn't wake up with a whole new one.

Sometimes it does feel like you would rather kill yourself than not be valued by those you really care about.

Life is made up of the people you are around. You pursue certain relationships, you pursue a certain life. You'll look back, and the conversations you had with those people will be the life that you lived.

Is anyone really there for your life? Like a person who watches a sleeping body, our friends no more know our lives than creatures from other universes know about the earth. It is a lost planet, hidden silently in the shadows of the milky way, one of the hundreds of billions of galaxies. It is a very hard thing to know another person.

Eternity has nothing to do with time; it has everything to do with depth of life.

Then it comes time to land the hot air balloon, for the new day starts quite early. But it is always fun to be around people the next day and think, 'And they have no idea that just last night I was taking a midnight ride in a hot air balloon . . .'

A topsy-turvy world

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:16:31 GMT

A bit ago my friend Chris was talking to me when from the other room Cory suddenly asked Chris in a confused tone, "Who are you talking to?" Cory was lying on the couch around the corner, and thus had no idea I was there. "Oh I'm talking to Phil," Chris responded. "He's here. He's at the table. Yeah, I'm not crazy, talking to an empty room."

At this last comment I quickly sat up straight.

Rewind back to a few days ago. I'm walking up to the house, just returning from class. For some reason, I expect Chris to be sitting in the living room as I walk in the door. What would I say to him? I ensue to imagine the following dialogue occurring once inside the door.

"Chris!" I boom in an ebullient tone, "A wonderful afternoon to you, my friend! You know, I am just so happy you are here. You make the world such a better place. I would be crazy without you."
"Um, why would you be crazy without me?" Chris asks skeptically.
"Well, just think about it," I reply, "if you weren't here, I'd be speaking to a completely empty room. That whole intro would have been directed at no one. And that would have been quite crazy of me to say all that to no one in particular. The fact that you are here has saved my sanity. And for that I thank you."

(Chris would also then say, 'I'm not quite sure my presence has done the trick.')

Chris, however, was not in the living room, and the dialogue never happened.

Thus as Chris said "Yeah, I'm not crazy, talking to an empty room" my mind launched into a super-intensive state of realization. A fictional reality I had dreamed up had become real in reverse. I had hoped to appeal to Chris's presence to justify my sanity, but instead Chris used mine to justify his.

Thus, while neither Chris nor I are crazy, it has been confirmed that the world we live in definitely is.

The world looks like a dance from far away

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:59:07 GMT

Somewhere once upon a time a man was born, though he wasn't a man yet. But then he grew up and became a man and did lots of things and then he went to a restaurant diner/travel station somewhere in Pennsylvania. In that diner he went to the bathroom, and upon entering he heard me say to my friend Brian, "Green dress pants? You can't have green dress pants. Only Mr. Green from Clue can wear green dress pants," and then after that Brian and I were out of the bathroom.

And that is the only line I will ever deliver in the play of that man's life.

He had been existing in his own world, living his own experiences, making his own choices, for years and years, totally oblivious of my existence. And then just like that, he entered stage left into the restroom and brushed by me, hearing me say something of green dress pants.

Who knows what future wardrobe decisions I may have affected? Perhaps that man ran an entire line of dress clothing for men, and had been wondering how to expand his inventory. Or maybe he was feeling down, but long ago in his life he used to play a lot of clue and he was always Mr. Green and he always won. Or just maybe he had been taking a lot of flak from his boss, who wore green dress pants to work daily, and the comment emboldened him.

It's simply odd that he had been living all of life from his perspective, waking up to his struggles, lying down at night reflecting on his days, for so long, and finally we had brushed by one another. The world is one giant playing field of agents set into motion from their births who suddenly become deep friends or lovers with one another, or perhaps just brush by one another in a bathroom or stand next to each other at a bus stop.

The only thing really preventing us from all getting together is the amount of people there are. But I always dream that one day all of humanity will get together and do the electric slide.

Until that day though, we'll just have to be lovers and forgivers of the people that make up the cast of our life.

Ignorance disproves the facts

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:21:23 GMT

The problem with the border is that New Mexico sounds like a great place to go for a person who lives in plain ole' Mexico. They should rename it something like 'Border Patrol Land' or 'Get Caught' or 'Die.' Then they would say, 'Get your things, we're going to Get Caught! Hmmm . . . actually, on second thought, let's just stay here.'

The key to victory in any war against China will be the capture of General Tso.

I imagine binary scrabble would be quite boring.

I want to make a restaurant where the menu has items on it named "We need a few more minutes" "What do you suggest?" and "I have no idea."

Women must have been very frustrating to hang out with before digital cameras, since in those days 'Oh this is so cute, let's get a picture!' would have required us to pose for several hours.

It would be so cool to have a pillowcase with a picture of the world on it so that when I go to sleep at night I would be like a meteor crashing into it.

Love to you all! Do have a cheerful evening!

thoughts on a lonely midnight moon

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:47:11 GMT

Sometimes it seems like you are always someplace else. Whatever activity is before you, you are thinking about some other activity you have to get to. It eventually winds up the focus of your mind and your physical surroundings never happen to coincide.

It feels rather intimidating to be one human in a world of seven billion others. Yet, for some reason, if you have merely one other person to stand by your side, you feel ready to take them all on.

When you read the sentences of a book all in order, it produces one grand meaning at the end of it all. In the same way, the thoughts you experience all in order will produce one grand meaning at the end of your life. That is why it is so interesting to be alive; where will the plot go next?

And for all of our plots to intertwine is what it means to be in the world. It is seven billions stories, but it is one story; though others seem to be characters in our lives, we are really co-characters along side them in the story which is much bigger than us.

In the paper I will see a statistic about many millions of people, which is interesting for it shows how easy it is to group humans together in our minds. People can be reduced to their mere quantity if we so desire; that is a mental ability we possess.

Indeed, we can reduce them to anything we want to. We can reduce people to their jobs or genders, their skins or sins, their looks or likes, their moods or money.

And this is how simplistic and silly our minds are; we think we can notice clues which instantaneously explain a person's entire life. But just as humans can never fit into a statistic, one clue is never good enough to figure someone out. We need lots of clues. And the only place we get lots of clues are in friendships.

So we live a life of meaning inside our heads, pursuing the plot everyday; we become friends with other plots, and try to figure out their clues, but the answer is always hidden from us. And everything we see is a clue about the story of the whole world.

And after thinking about all this we finally realize that we were born into a universe thick with mystery.

Enjoying the improbable

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:52:45 GMT

There is only one name which it is not alright for people to call me, and that is Paul. That is the name of my little brother, and thus my parents are always calling me Paul. They claim it is because they both start with the same letter, which baffles me because they of course nonetheless have different sounds. It also makes it somewhat tempting to start spelling my name with an F.

Anyways, an interesting thing happened yesteday in light of this. My friend Saul and I went to Noodles & Company, and after I had ordered the cashier handed me a number. After Saul had ordered, I asked the cashier why Noodles & Company had become so impersonal. Are we lowly customers now to be relegated to the land of cold and unfriendly numerical anonymity? The girl who was the cashier responded, "What, do you really want me to be walking around with your food yelling 'Paul! Paul! Paul!'?"

Apparently knowing me and my little brother are not preconditions for confusing me with him.

It's also quite interesting because Saul should be Paul, since that was what Saul began to be called once he came to know Jesus. Thus, the cashier randomly chose the exact name which I should not be called, and the exact name which Saul should be called.

Hmmm.

A moment like lightning

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:36:26 GMT

We individuate things as we look at the world around us. We see people, which we break down into certain types of people, and then certain names of people, and eventually everything ends up analyzed like this. The mind finds it much easier to think about the world if we break everything down into categories.

It is for this reason that we get lost in trains of thought about all sorts of particular things; I may see a bowl and think about washing it, and then I think of laziness since I don't want to wash it, and then I wind up lost in a mental montage of a sluggardly life.

And we spend all day like this in our heads, in a world of specific thoughts caused by things we see. When you see a person, you have really no idea where they are. The sign they just saw could have sent them to Nepal or three girlfriends ago or Barney. The traffic is much more chaotic in our heads than on the street.

But every now and then, I will wake up. At one point I may think to myself, I have spent the last six months of my life thinking about all these little things, lost in my head, really as a madman rushing down the streets without the bearings to know why he left the house in the morning.

Usually waking up will come when I am outside, and it is at night in a big field, and I can see the stars. Everything will be quiet, the cicadas and insects will be humming, the sounds of creation. The soft and silent chill of the night will find me, and once again it is an amazing thing to be alive.

But then it is back to the city of people, where we build a matching city of thoughts in our heads. And we dance and tango in the conversation and rhythm of life with all the other humans, and it will be six more months, maybe a year, before we remember that at the floor of our existence, we are shocked that we are here at all.

More broccoli?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:20:11 GMT

For however stupid I am, I feel pretty good. You see, the world is a very big, physical place. As such, the *first* thing anyone should think about it is: don't run into things. It's that simple. Everything is made of matter. Don't hit it with your body.

And I'm pretty good at that. See, I have a bad memory. As such, I misplace *invisible* things. So that's something of an excuse. A person who misplaces invisible things will always have an infinitely better excuse than someone who misplaces visible things, i.e. their whole body.

We had better hope there's not some law of the universe that we don't know about that blows everything up. Oh my.

Just think, what if there is some law in the universe such that a specific course of human history would then incinerate the earth after that that history happens?

I'm scared. What if my next movement could trigger that event? Wow. Someone help me. I . . . don't know if I should move my arm slightly to the right or not.

But still, I am so stupid. Yesterday I found out a huge bill I tried to pay in June never made it because I sent it to my own address. Last Thursday I was waiting for my mom to get home from work when I found out she had been out of the country for four days. She had told me she was going to leave, and yes, I live in the same house as her.

But I don't run into things. And that is my consolation.

Deeply confused geniuses

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:52:23 GMT

"I think that pretty much everyone accepts that llamas always come up last in converastion," Jeremy said with a tone of irresistable common sense. Tim nodded at his desk, reflecting on the point. Suddenly, their boss appeared in the door.
"Jeremy, a word in my office, please."
Once inside the office, Jeremy closed the door behind him.
"What's this all ab—"
"You're fired."
Jeremy stood speeechless before his boss.
"I'm speechless," Jeremy said.
"Good, I don't want to hear a speech," his boss said cursorily, focused on his cluttered desk.
"Ever since you fired me, my life has been terrible," Jeremy whimpered, ignoring his boss entirely.
"You mean since a moment ago?"
"You know what you are?" Jeremy said, amplifying his tenor, "You're lots and lots of really bad adjectives." The emphasis in certain words of Jeremy's was inglorious. "And I mean lots of them. And the effect of the precise wording of them stuns you. They completely blow you away. After that, I go on to analyze an entire history of wrongs which I've noticed about you which I never mentioned. Then, more terrible adjectives. Furthermore, I add lots of unjustified speculation about what other employees in this office think of you as a boss. I conclude with an overarching assessment of your profoundly negative impact on my life."
"I lean back in my chair and consider your remarks," his boss replied, not moving, "Then I get up and pace around to the wall where I reflect on the picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. In that moment it strikes me: that took gumption. And your speech showed gumption, too. I turn around and look at you ."
"My silence shows attentiveness and deference," Jeremy said plaintively.
"The attentiveness and deference of your silence annoys me."
"I continue talking."
"The phrasing seems to miss the mark; the gumption turns stale."
Suddenly, nothing happened.
"What's wrong with my writing?" Jeremy finally wondered out of desperation.
"In the first of all," his boss began, "you continually waste the first line in your articles; normally they have nothing whatever to do with the rest of the piece."
"I humbly accept the point, and request a delay of my removal to allow time for improvement."
A long silence followed.
"I agree immediately," his boss affirmed.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" Jeremy cried, moving toward the door to escape.
"Oh, and you need to work on your word economy, too," his boss bellowed at him.
"Right!" Jeremy concurred. "Look at that, only one word!" he yelled to underline the superb word economy in his reply, "Then . . . six more. And three more after that. Plus another . . . five . . ."
"Your endings need work as well!" his boss yelled as Jeremy had just slipped out the door.