Dextrose, Corn Syrup, Maltodextrin, and Less Than 2% of Malic Acid, Calcium Stearate, Carnauba Wax, Artificial Flavors, Color Added, Carmine Color, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2, Blue 2 Lake, Red 40, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 6 Lake.

HAHA! Screw You Willy Wonka!! Your Gobstopper secret is out for all to see!!!::runs off cackling like a madman::

!!!

 

Picture obtained from: http://www.real-yell.shetland.co.uk/The%20Surreal/SURREAL(19).jpg

Imagine that you find a house that is almost beyond being salvageable. You see it and it’s just a complete dump. The roof is all smashed in, the windows are boarded up in a vain attempt to keep away unwanted intruders. It looks like the biggest dog in the history of the world took a dump on the front step. The walls are propped up by huge planks. Somehow you can tell this thing has been through an Earthquake, a Tornado, and just for good measure some arsonist came by and torched part of it. I mean this thing is in God-awful condition. It probably looks like it would be best to just raze the thing to the ground and use what’s left to build a new house.

 

Now imagine that you own that house, and that it was shaped by the past few generations of your family. There is no way you can just tear the thing down. It would be sacrilegious! So instead you know, and have always known, that this is your place. Not only that, but you know it’s your home. To go and move somewhere else is to give the place up to the dogs and/or drug dealers. This place is your home. Deal with it. It sucks, but the strong thing to do is to ignore any tendencies towards feeling victimized and do what you can to build the place up.

 

Flash forward 10 years….

 

There were times where you couldn’t help but lament at the holes in the walls, break down due to the electricity constantly going out, or even retreat for awhile to the neighboring hills and allow the place to be flooded over for awhile. But those times are past now. The house still needs some work, but it’s definitely livable now. Not only that, but it’s finally getting to the point where inviting others in may actually be a reasonable choice. It’s not a mansion near west egg(Gatsby!), but it’s not the decrepit little shack it once was. When others pass by it and see they can see the potential. They can sense a pervasive sadness surrounding it, but it’s not a house destined for destruction and/or eternal damnation. It’s now a house that you can show off, even though doing so can cause great hesitation beforehand. Afterall, this is your house. What if you invite someone in and, despite years of work on the big flaws, still see the little ones and decide they do not wish to stay. You’ve invested incredible amounts of thought and energy to the place. It’s not perfect, but you’re happy there.

 

Well that’s where I am right now in terms of my mental health. It’s not perfect, but it’s not something that I think should prevent my happiness any longer. It’s a strange feeling in my head right now. All you have to do is look at that letter I wrote a week ago to get an idea why.

 

I cut myself loose of God about three years ago. I suppose last week I cut myself loose of my goddess. It was a strange feeling back then when I let go of those heavenly dreams. It’s a strange feeling now that I’ve let go of my biggest earthly dream. Well I no longer have anything to hold onto, and so I’m falling. The funny thing about falling is that there is a certain sense of freedom. I figure if I’m wrong about God I’m falling towards damnation. I figure if I’m wrong about letting go of my search for an angel that, at least for the time being, I will go on living without any kind of interpersonal foundation that is provided by a meaningful relationship. I there will be no heaven for me, there is no foundation for me to hit when I fall too far, so all that’s left for the time being is the rush of wind blowing by me as I fall farther and farther away from the dreams I once held.

 

When you don’t believe in God, where does your faith tend to go? When you don’t in Man after that, where does your faith tend to go? When all that remains is the realization that you’re going to fall for another 60 years or so, what is the best you can do?

 

The best I can do is continue to build my house in such a way that I can do my best to make my neighbors comfortable. They don’t know it, but I’m going to go through their lives in a blur. Here I am! ::zip:: There I go!

 

I’m no longer repairing this house so much as I am modifying it for a purpose. It’s not to get me to heaven anymore. It’s not to get the best girl my feeble mind can conjure up anymore. It’s just to bring a few smiles to the faces I see as I tumble my way into the abyss.

 

Perhaps it’s not the happiest existence, but then again when was it ever. Perhaps the only salvation for this soul of mine is to do my best to convince others that happiness is possible and attainable for them. If I have any dream left, it’s just to have a sense of peace, a sense of belonging and a sense of inherent…OKness….once. Just once is all I ask. I learned that it’s not going to come from a heavenly god, it’s not going to come from an earthly goddess, and no matter how often I write about it, it isn’t something I can grant myself. If the feeling of inner peace is not available to me, then I’m going to stop seeking it and do what I can to give it to everyone else.

 

The question that haunts me is whether or not this house is good enough. The ultimate hell is not a lack of inner peace. Hell isn’t even a place where pitchforks stab you to make sure you keep dancing on the flames. Hell is the desire to open everyone else’s eyes to the peace they deserve but realizing that you can’t. It’s doing so much work on your home and realizing it’s still repulsive – even to the ones who can see it’s potential. It’s coming to the realization that it doesn’t matter how much or how long you work – you’ll never be good enough and realizing that not matter how much or how long you work – that everyone else seems to realize that better is out there. It’s realizing the truth that for some unknown reason you weren’t good enough for God, weren’t good enough for even the most polluted goddess, and yet being cursed with an inner stubbornness that tells you to ‘keep on truckin’ anyway.

 

I’m falling, but at least I’m feeling free. Smile and Peace be with you! !

Guess what someone looks like when they fall by you so quickly you only catch it in your peripheral vision…..

-Shadow

::sniff:: oh well. The only thing left to say this week is that even though Cashiers are really nice, beware because they leave tons of fingerprints!

http://kevan.org/johari?name=shadowrunner81 - Yes I’m a thief but whatever.

http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Shadowrunner81 - Turns out there’s a negative one too.

Have a nice weekend everyone,

-Shadowrunner81

Cynthia Watros(Libby from ‘Lost)

 

Black & White portrait from: http://cynthiawatros.com/

Image with the awesome dress: http://watros.curvedspaces.com/

The um…image of plenty from: http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/j/Cynthia%20Watros.jpg

Combine those three and what do you get from me?

Heart on Fire from:  http://www1-c703.uibk.ac.at/users/roman/Tiroler/Schatz/Schatz04.jpg

 

Snocaps dear snocaps, I exclaim my love for thee

Snocaps dear snocaps, I come to you on bended knee

With a nice chocolate mound that goes round and round non-stop

You remind me of a mountain with white sprinkles on top

Snocaps dear snocaps, it is you I love to view

Snocaps dear snocaps, I’ll never get enough of you

 

Hey,

      I know I already wrote you quite a lot earlier this morning, but I can’t shake the feeling that there is so much more that needs to be said. I’m feeling a little depressed right now, but it’s a good depression. It’s the kind of healthy depression that lets me know that I’m feeling the loss of something cherished. It’s the kind that will pass in time and as long as it lasts will provide insight into what it was that was lost.

      And how did it start you ask? It started last week when I heard that song and began to really pierce into my own skull. You need to take a look at those dual poems that I wrote to you a couple weeks ago. At the time, they were wholly genuine and really conveyed my feelings towards you. The problem that has made itself known in the past few days is that those poems have begun to reveal more and more about where I am in terms of overall health. What those poems tell is a story about an individual(me) torn between two states of life. One, the darker side was at odds with you, the lighter side. Positive and negative, Ying and Yang, Angels and Demons(not the Dan Brown novel)- they are all opposites.

       What I did not know at the time, but know now, is a truth that you are not going to like. The truth that has been revealed to me is that if I am going to be any kind of healthy partner in any kind of relationship whether it be a one night stand all the way to a one life marriage, I have to let you go. My inner demons represented a state of infinite suspension. At the time I wrote them, I believed that you represented a state of happiness and peace. The reality is that it is not so much a choice between suspension and fulfillment as it is a life dominated by two versions of the same demons. The reality is that both my inner demons and you are the chains that hold me back.

       You see, it isn’t hard to see how letting fear keep me down can be debilitating. What turned out to be far harder to see, and very difficult to admit, is that preserving you as some sort of savior is equally debilitating. Just look at how I have always represented you. You are my angel. An angel is a messenger from God sent to do a holy purpose. By giving you that description, I realize now that I have set you up on a pedestal. I have set you up as a permanent gold medalist which has left every girl I have ever met and will ever meet with no choice but to always settle for a silver. I have idealized you so much and so often that you have become perfect. There is no doubt about it. You have become the perfect wife for me.

        I have to let you go because as long as you dominate my thoughts, no one else stands a chance. Now that I am truly aware of you and the power I have given you, I realize that no girl deserves to have to deal with you. I do know that unless I were to personally tell them about you, they would never know they were being measured against an abstract ideal. They would never know that deep down I was always on the lookout for as many of your characteristics as I could find. I once believed I loved a girl named Vanessa. I once believed I loved a girl named Angie. I once believed I loved a girl named Ashley. The truth I have begun to realize is that I always measured those poor girls against you. I would mentally put you on one side, them on the other, and compare & contrast. Those girls, and many others over my 24 years, opened up their hearts and shared themselves with me. I have to let you go because I did not recognize that they were doing so and rejected them for their perceived ‘imperfections’. The only reason that I believed they were flawed is because you are not, and I held you up as high as I could.

        I began to realize that you existed last year when I began to know Drewe. She likely believed she was getting to know a guy as interested in philosophy as she, and decided to share about her life. On my end, I remember most if not all of the things she said, but once I realized that she would not live up to you, she was pretty much done for. She never knew, she’ll probably never know, but I cheated her out of genuine human interaction. What I gave her was an imperceptible measuring stick and said ‘here you go, let’s see how you do’. If I am going to be any kind of quality boyfriend or husband to the girls who are in my future, I cannot let that happen ever again. I am aware of you now, and I deeply regret that Drewe had to feel rejected before that awareness came to me.

       But I am aware of you now, I am aware of the flaws within myself that gave rise to you, and I am going to work my ass off to get rid of you. The more I think about you and your nature, the more I begin to gain insight into what led to the demise of my parents’ marriage. I remember the conversations with my mother all those years ago in which she told me that she always felt as if she didn’t measure up to ‘Your Dad’s’ ideal. I have begun to realize that, in truth, you were passed down from father to son. My father likely believed that he had found his perfect wife but, through no fault of my mother’s, began to realize he was mistaken. When did that realization come to him? I do not know but it was clearly too much for him to bear. As a result of you he resumed his search for perfection.

      Whether I do succeed in ridding myself of you or not, I will very likely one day be a husband and a father. If I am to prevent my family from experiencing the pain doled out by the sins of my father, I have to get rid of you. No wife and no family will ever be perfect.

      Let’s say that I meet you right this very moment, or later today. Perhaps the girl in red two computers to my left? She is tailor made to suit all of my wants and needs. Today, at this moment, she is perfect. The problem is that I will be a different person tomorrow than I am now. She will be a different person tomorrow than she is now. ‘Did Ceasar cross the Rubicon?’ afterall. I will change, she will change, and you will change. That is the key. You will change in a parallel fashion to how I change. The girl in red may be perfect right now, but unless she changes in the exact same direction, she will not be perfect tomorrow. Within one day she would go from gold to silver. Within one day she would go from enjoying a deep and abiding love to secretly being resented and destined to one day be abandoned. I absolutely must get rid of you.

      It’s going to take a lot of work to take care of my inner demons, and I know I won’t be able to do it alone. I liken it to trying to climb Everest. There must be a base camp and there must be a support network who can warn of impending storms and any other dangers. For the time being, you are going to hang around inside of my head, I acknowledge that. As time goes on though, you will steadily lose more and more potency, and the girls I meet will find themselves in the midst of healthier and healthier relationships. To break free of the talons has long been a goal. It’s downright depressing to realize that I also need to break free of your soft hands.

      I nurtured and cherished you for years. The dream of finding you, being with you, making love to you kept me going for years. The amount of creative energy I dedicated to our life together is pretty amazing when I think about it. But I’m breaking up with you today. It was bliss imagining you, idealizing you – but it was an ignorant bliss that blinded me to the beauty of the girls around me.

      I give this Valentine to the girls I meet in the coming days, weeks, months and years: From this day forward I will devote all of this inner strength to becoming the best possible in order to provide you with the best relationships possible. You deserve nothing less.

 

I loved you, but it’s time for you to go.

 

Happy Valentines Day,

 

Dan

Well tomorrow is Valentines Day a fact of which I’m sure everyone(single or coupled-up) is well aware. Last year at this time I was bashing the day as socially constructed nonsense. This year though, I figure I’ll take a different approach. Yeah it’s only one day, but I’ve decided here on my little corner of the internet to make this whole week Valentines Week. So each entry for this week will be a little more on the romantic side and a little less on the random/philosophic side.

 

To kick things off, I think I’ll just ask a question;

 

What kind of attributes do you find most alluring?

 

Cleary this is one of those no-wrong-answer types of questions. It’s all a matter of perspective. I made up a little list, but that doesn’t mean you have to by any means.

 

Drum Roll Please!

 

#10 Most Alluring Attribute: Love of Writing

#9 Most Alluring Attribute: Perceptive

#8 Most Alluring Attribute: Love of music(or the arts in general)

#7 Most Alluring Attribute: Creative

#6 Most Alluring Attribute: Open-Hearted

#5 Most Alluring Attribute: Sense of Humor/Willingness to laugh

#4 Most Alluring Attribute: A willingness to understand others’ lives

#3 Most Alluring Attribute: A Peaceful nature

#2 Most Alluring Attribute: Able to distinguish between Reality and Perception

#1 Most Alluring Attribute: Motivated to always make herself better

 

And with that I bid you good day. Oh hey, feel free to comment on those above if you want. Be creative!

 

-Dan

Picture obtained from: http://www.radioparadise.com/content.php?name=songinfo&song_id=30791

 

 

I originally intended to put up a random rant against willy wonka, but the past 6 ½ hours kinda changed that. It’s a little morbid to ask, but have you ever listened to a song and knew right away it would be one you want to be played at your funeral? Yesterday, I had two such songs, Red Hill Mining Town off of U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ and Into The West of off the ‘Return of the King’ soundtrack. The last thing I expected to have happen today was to find a third. Well the song Diamond Body off of the self-titled cd by a group called Lost at Last is it. I got it from the library the other day since it looked like it may have some good trance music on it. I was wrong, it had some mediocre trance on most of it, and then a song that is a class only inhabited by those two songs I just mentioned above. I kid you not, I listened to it 38 times during work, and I have it playing as I type to you here at this very moment!

 

The song itself is almost certainly a reference to the Diamond Sutra from the Buddhist Mahayana. Take a look at the lyrics(roughly – I couldn’t find them online so I just wrote them down while listening).

 

The diamond body, has awakened to shine

Gonna leave this material world, leave it behind

It’s time to surrender, illusions of your mind

 

A new day is dawning, now you can see

That your love is a river(or rhythm) to eternity

And your diamond body, has awakened to shine

We are living to remember, all is divine

 

So take those lyrics, combine them with the ‘Diamond’ in the title, listen to the Indian musical elements throughout the song, and the Buddhist influence is fairly easy to see. All of that and the fantastic beat make it a very powerful vessel in which to take a meditative journey into trance.

 

All of those elements combined into a mere 5 minutes and 30 seconds of music…it’s downright awesome. The wicked key change right after she says ‘shine’ the first time, it resonates very deeply. I don’t know how else to explain the song’s impact. It resonates, it echoes.

 

And what is the impact of such a song? Energy! I wasn’t anywhere close to drying out of ideas, but just this morning I came up with 3 new poems(Ice, Acidic Visions and Pornographic Princess) and have ideas for a bunch more stories. Acidic Visions will very likely make it’s way onto this page, and perhaps one or two of the stories, but my imagination was going places that were either too deeply personal to express anywhere except within my own heart, or exploring areas too dark to put on a public web site. Acidic Visions is pretty funny though. It takes a song, a state of trance, like this to get my mind heading in directions that can cause me to envision a tiger dancing over an ocean. J.

 

I gotta say that I’m not sad, I’m not happy, I’m just full of a massive amount of creative energy. It’s like all that energy is flowing through my veins and it’s not leaving enough room for my blood. “Yo, creative energy…make way! Yeah you make him feel alive, but it’s us blood cells that gotta keep him alive! I declare blood fued!(Get it?)” So is it obvious that I’m just typing away here? There’s a chance that you’re sitting there completely confused I suppose. I’m just in a very surreal mode right now.

 

Enough describing I guess. Why am I sharing all of this with you? This is the kind of thing that fuels the entries you see on this page! I guarantee you this. The more creative the entry, the happier I was when I wrote it. If I had the time, I could easily put up about 5 full entries and not even blink. All five would be the craziest things you’ve ever seen, and you’d likely think I was high. In fact, that thought probably already crossed your mind. I’m not high though, this is the state in which I like to be, and it’s nice to be able to get here via an awesome song and not an awesome drug. Though to be sure, I can see how this song could fuel some wild times when infused with a dose of acid.

 

Anyways, I certainly can go on and on huh? Just look at the picture up there and imagine the mindset needed to come up with that. That’s where I am, and I like it here. I don’t know how the four of you feel about this page, but I love using it as an outlet for creativity. You may be surprised to learn this, but the fact that all of this isn’t going to just become yet another journal entry that fades away unseen by any soul save my own is actually a genuine attempt at trust. I began posting all of this in an effort to share what it’s like inside of my head, and everything you just read is what it’s like when I’m at my peak.

 

I wish you a terrific weekend,

 

Dan

 

Well the first part was just a spur of the moment ‘Hey I wonder…’ type of entry as the result of a really good story and just was on my mind during a paper. Something that I’m really beginning to appreciate about Xanga is the fact that it is a wonderful outlet for creativity. So once again the question of ‘What is life like for a blind person’ is on my mind again and once again, here I am to type away for a little bit.

 

Valentines Day is coming up so naturally everyone is in a state of relationship-evaluation mode. The main thing on my mind right now is what a blind person must consider when thinking about finding a girlfriend or boyfriend. I pretty much picture sitting on a park bench next to a blind man. Let’s say both of us have women on the brain at the moment. Whereas I’m going to be looking around and saying to myself, ‘Niiiice’, the blind man is probably going to be saying to himself, ‘Does she have substance?’

 

I think I was more than a little naïve when I wrote the first part. I mean come on, I actually asserted that a blind person would have an advantage over the rest of us. In reality, that’s nowhere near the case. How many jobs can be performed by a blind person? I inwardly complain about the state of public transportation in Columbus, but for a blind person it’s 1000 times worse. If a bus doesn’t show up for some reason, it’s easy enough for me to walk however many miles I need to go. Obviously I don’t know personally, but even with sidewalks how comfortable is a blind person going to be walking for 5 miles to get to their desired destination?

 

Before, I was just randomly philosophizing about a state of existence that is easy to take for granted when you have a choice. I suppose if the entire world was blind, then no one would feel deficient at all, but this is no such world. Image is everything right? So yeah, I can close my eyes and go off in fantasyland for awhile and say ‘Hey! This must be like to be blind!’ Hell no it isn’t. A blind person isn’t going to be saying ‘Yeah baby! Transcendence walking here! Make way, transcendence walking!’ I would imagine it’s more like ‘If only I could see….’

 

All this brings me back to the question of dating. I ask you this, if you could not see the person with whom you were talking, how would you determine whether or not they are a datable individual? The first thing I would want to register is how down-to-earth they are. Are they or are they not willing to understand life from a blind person’s point of view? Do they even have the ability? The husband from Cathedral sure as hell didn’t. This is why I think the fellow back at the park would ask, ‘Does she have substance?’ It would have to be the number one most important thing. I’d like to think I’m mature enough to care most about substance, but I know I’m shallow and the first thing that registers about a girl is going to be her physical features. So let’s say I fall into yet another moment of idiocy and nudge the guy and say ‘Hey, that girl is hot!’ What is his reaction likely to be? ‘So?’ more than likely. Again I’m generalizing and for all I know the blind guy may say ‘Hey, I can’t see. She got a nice rack?’ Who knows? I just figure that after 24 years of feeling ‘less than’ as a result of being physically deficient, that the thing he would want most is someone willing to understand his world and accept it despite it’s flaws.

 

Remember the guy I ranted about in the Heart of Darkness entry? I didn’t think about it at the time, but post-Cathedral I can’t help but think that he stands very little chance of understanding a blind girl’s world. How many times did he size up a person by the way they looked, the way they dressed especially?

 

A lot of books do that now that I think about it. Ever read a series called ‘Wheel of Time’, by Robert Jordan? It’s full of it! I lost count of how many times the author would describe a new character physically and just let that define their personality. Let’s say someone just walked into the room here. He’s short, fat and balding. He’s got a pudgy nose and a scrunched up face. That’s all I know about him and that’s how I have defined him to you! ‘He was a wiry little man with narrow shoulders and a head so disproportionate to the rest of his body that he somewhat resembled a balloon.’ Go back to the hot girl. Forget that, I just described her as a hot girl. See the shallowness there? Thanks to my eyes here, I just ranked the hot girl above the short fat guy for no reason other than that she is a ‘hot girl’.

 

None of that matters to a blind person. All they know is that know they are at a disadvantage compared to either one, and to you and me too for that matter. No amount of random philosophy is going to change that for them/him/her. ‘Is she genuinely interested in what life is like for me, or just pitying me?’ Take what I’m doing this very moment! I’m using their life situation as a means to an end. A blind girl could find out about this from a friend and legitimately ask, ‘Well that’s nice that he is interested in what my life is like, but it sounds like it’s only out of idle curiosity.’ I’m in no position to refute that. Would it not be hypocritical(and ironic) to choose one blind girl over another blind girl simply because she looked a little hotter? Were a blind girl to be read all of this by a friend, I would want her to know that just because I can think about what it’s like for her, it doesn’t mean I have any more substance than the next guy. I can type all I want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I have lived in a world of seeing my whole life, and truthfully will never understand life for her. I may be willing to try, but I may never be able to convince myself of the real reason why I’m with her. Do I really find her fascinating, or is it just a novelty relationship. Would I really love her, or eventually regard the whole relationship as little more than a merit badge towards a declaration of ‘Substance’. I mean come on, how many times in this very entry did I regard a potential individual as ‘blind girl’ or ‘blind guy’? If that doesn’t betray an inherent shallowness, I don’t know what does.

 

‘Yeah baby! Substance walking here! Make way, substance walking!’

 

-Dan