I don’t have anything to say today

I know everyone here is a Tolkien fan. Anyone else read this one before? If not and you enjoyed the Silmarillion or even the passages from LoTR dedicated to the history of middle-earth, this is for you. I love this book! It’s always the coolest thing to read more and more about the Istari and the Palantiri. This ends my advertisement.

I’m off to the Office of Fees and Deposits to become a far poorer person. I try to tell myself that they use my money to purchase Cheerleader uniforms, but sometimes even that doesn’t help.

I just wanted to share that I am very heavily weighing the decision to take my laptop to a repair center(The Laptop Guy) and get it fixed. There are so many pros to getting it fixed now(not the least of which is getting back on Instant Messenger), that it may be worth it for the first time in the 9/10 months I’ve gone without it. Even remembering the time spent on Tibia yesterday(and I was only at level 21 – I looked it up) has caused, and it may be a temporary bout with Nostalgia, what I believe is a genuine desire to get back “online” so to speak. I dont know at this point if I will or not, but I wouldn’t be posting about it if I wasn’t serious. This Xanga stuff is nice, but I miss some of you guys too much to wait until 2:30 on weekdays to find out how you’re doing. Pros and Cons….Megan, you know what I’m on about. It’s all about will-power I guess. Anyways….

-Dan

     

 

    Ever get the feeling that your life is all one big cosmic joke? Ever get the sense that it’s only a matter of time before the rug is pulled out from under you? Ever wonder if, when you’re in your 80’s and on your deathbed and about to take your final breath, everyone you’ve ever known will jump out from behind a bunch of boxes and from the corners of your nursing home room and yell out ‘Surprise!!’ Well I have and my recommendation to you is to either realize that it’s a joke and enjoy the building for the rest of your life, or to at least laugh along with the rest of them before you die. The one thing I would not recommend is taking yourself or your life too seriously. For as long as humanity has existed we have invented some very interesting ways to convince ourselves that it’s not a joke, or at least to escape that realization when it finally comes to us. Religion, Careers, Drugs, Movies, Sex and even the NCAA tournament going on as I type is a way of escaping. It’s not a bad thing to enjoy these things, just be sure not to make any one of them the exclusive focus of your life.

       Think of one you are about to take that last breath. How much will all that time you spent on all of those things really help you when you’re thinking over the life you chose? If you’ve spent 30 years going from a mail room assistant to a corporate CEO, but have lost the love of your friends and family due to all the energy expending trying to climb the ladder, is it going to be worth it? Say you’ve watched Star Wars 100 times and know all sorts of facts about the Star Wars universe and even the making of the films, what will it mean when you know you have only a few minutes left. So you’ve become the ‘top dog’ on an online game like Everquest, or have 3,000,000 points and are admired by ever other online poker player in Yahoo Texas hold em. Once you’re old and rotting away on a hospital table, what will it matter?

      So am I asking you to stop doing anything that seems trivial or that won’t further the state of your soul or whatever? No. Just be aware of what it is you are doing. If you’re going to invest 100’s of hours into movies, religion, or an Online game, that’s ok! Just know that you’re just distracting yourself from the fate that awaits you in a few years.

    Myself? I distract myself via existentialist philosophy and cynical ramblings on an online site usually dedicated to giving off whatever appearances fit our moods. Impressions are fun no? Later on I will distract myself by reading some more of the Hobbit. Even later on I will distract myself by eating some friend chicken(unless Kroger’s is STILL out). Later on after that I will distract myself by watching Midway again and then probably Hercules(with Leelee Sobieski). It’s all distraction my friend. It’s not good, it’s not evil. It just is. Like us. Now stop distracting yourself by reading my post and go give someone a hug. It’s one of the few genuine acts left in this world of impressions and distractions. Make someone smile. It’ll help them stay distracted.

http://www.ctgmusic.com/song.php?id=3483

Download Xerxes ‘Defuse’ or be tossed into the bog of eternal stench! This song is probably the best one I ever downloaded from CTG. It reminds me so much of Chrono Trigger it’s not even funny. I think it was in 12,000 B.C. that this atmosphere fits. I haven’t played it in so long I really can’t remember much except for Magus(Woo Dark Eternal!) being involved and there being a bunch of people with pale/purplish hair. Anyways download the song. It’s free!

If you would like to feel the atmosphere of this post, listen to the song ‘Dancing With The Dead’ by Incendio

 

Picture obtained from: http://us.inmagine.com/168nwm/liquidlibrary/vl012/vl012058.jpg

 

The Medieval Ball held inside the chateau

The nobility of all the lands dance below the chandeliers

The King sits high upon his throne reveling in the night

Somewhere the moon sets and somewhere the sun dawns

 

Here among the stars dance the high among the low

Here amidst the rich dance the masks of fate

Here twirling between them all are the furies from high above

Somewhere the lines of earth have met the starlit sky

 

The illusion of illusions, the court jester dances the macabre

The princes are yet above him and the paupers cannot see him

With an apple in one hand and the king’s scepter in the other

He intertwines himself amongst them all, shining like the stars

 

The princess feels the forked tongue upon her neck, she is seduced

The prince observes the bosom of love before his eyes, he is seduced

Together they dance the macabre, together they bite the apple

The jester has them now, as a threesome they dance eternal

 

The King shouts down a warning, it is to no avail

The princes and the Princesses are dancing their fates to death

The jester has won the battle, the noble among us vanish in the night

Somewhere the chandeliers fall and somewhere the dance continues

 

The king is gone; his efforts of love pass unnoticed

The apple wins the day, for there is no tomorrow

The jester laughs away, for yesterday is but a dream

We all are seduced this way, for today the choice is but a scream

My appreciation to Megan for sending this in an email the other day.

Explore your fears

“Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why?
Just as the seed of health is in illness, because
illness contains information, our fears are a treasure
house of self-knowledge if we explore them.”

– Marilyn Ferguson

In our world of duality, fear and love sit at opposite
ends of the continuum. Fear belongs only to the
personality because it believes in separation and
impermanence. The soul never knows fear because it
understands the unity of all.

When fear arises, we can invite our soul to sit with
our frightened personality. What soul energies are
waiting to be acknowledged? When we bring higher
energies into the presence of lower energies, the
lower energies are transformed.

“What is needed, rather than running away or
controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is
understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about
it, come directly into contact with it. We are to
learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Well I thought I was done until I went to check my mail. Lo and behold, look who was on the netscape main page!! !!!!

Keira Knightley! Niiiiiiice.  

 

So I’m going to take another shot at this. The reason why I let go of God is because I don’t really know how to trust. I do, as strange as it sounds, believe there is a God and I hold an appreciation for those who choose to worship him however they choose to do so. The fact of the matter is though, that as of yet, I still do not have the ability to really let go and trust. It’s not because of a choice I made in some knock-down drag-out ‘I hate you God’ type of moment. It’s simply because I don’t know how to trust. The truth is that it was seared out of me years ago.

     Without going into the kinds of personal details that would make this post unanswerable, I learned at 13 and 14 that trusting in the people around me was not a wise option. I learned that really letting go is a very dangerous option. Once upon a time I likened it to owning an igloo, that igloo being the only safe place within your experience, and welcoming in someone who possesses a flamethrower. I got burned in one area, I trusted in another. I got burned in that area, and since those were the two people who have the most influence on a person’s life, that was about it for the whole trusting business.

      As a result, it isn’t really God who is at fault and I don’t blame him for the human mistakes made by those I loved. But unfortunately, God became a casualty of war. I no longer knew how to trust and so I didn’t trust God.

     So a couple of years ago the disingenuous feelings I always had when it came to proclaiming myself a ‘Christian’ or a ‘Godly-person’ finally got the best of me and I just stopped making those proclamations. It’s not that I feel I can do better without God, I just don’t feel the need for, love for, or trust in God that really defines a Godly individual. I’m not taking some stance on a hill saying ‘I can make it on my own’, because I know I can’t. I just don’t know any other way. I never learned that you can count on other people and have them come through for you in your worst hours.

     What I learned instead was that in your worst hours, just to put it aside and figure it out later. I learned self-sufficiency, and I learned it way too much looking back at the ripe old age of 24. If Megan catches this entry this will make sense of the whole ‘arm’s length’ discussion she and I had last year. If Sara catches this it will make a little more sense of why I so rarely ask for advice.

      I once took quite a bit of pride in being able to say ‘I’m independent’. Well it turns out that my independence is my greatest weakness and a cause of quite a bit of heartache. All the entries that I’ve put up under the banner of ‘Trying to trust’ are doing some good, but honestly I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept.

     This is my number one relationship struggle. I guess it sort of feels like that Ring of Gyges question. Is it better to be a person who appears to trust, even if they in truth do not? I’m working on it and I don’t really plan on actively seeking out any more relationships until it’s solved. This is why I’m going to hit that submit button in a few minutes. Now that I am aware of all this, it would be the crappiest thing in the world to reel some girl into a relationship knowing full well that all of this is still unsolved.

     The only thing worse than going around singing the praises of a girl I know I don’t trust is going around singing the praises of a God I know I don’t trust. I’d like to have that ability one day. The kind of peace that is written all over that Love in 305 A.C. entry? I don’t know what that feels like. That whole thing was pure conjecture. It’s what I would like to feel and I’m no longer convinced it’s possible without the ability to trust.

     I hope I made at least a little sense of all this. This whole entry is kind of like life without trust…..”hey…I’m just winging it here.”

 

-Dan

Hey Gatina! Check it out! Thought you might like this.

Picture obtained from: http://ewancient.lysator.liu.se/pic/art/r/e/rewston/primordealdreams.jpg