Tuesday, February 12, 2008
A disturbing dream
I had a really disturbing dream last night... I can't remember all the details, but I remember two things: some one shot me (w/ a gun) and then I was unable to escape a Fate that I saw coming. When I was shot, it was in the back of what might be an auditorium or movie theater, on a top landing behind the seats - red carpet. I don't know who did it, or why, but I remember being shot. I took out my phone (lying on the ground, I had a 3rd person view of a non-detailed face (assuming it as my own though) with some blood on the mouth, one hand on the stomach, and the other struggling to dial 911 - which I did. I said my location and then 'passed out', 'waking up' to find... well I don't know what but I seemed to have the knowledge that I wasn't actually shot, that I just thought I was and what I felt hit my stomach was a blast of air from the recoil of the gun (or something like that...). I was on that verge of realizing I'm dreaming, yet unable to wake up, and I remember moving my hand to my stomach (in real life) to feel if there was any mark from the "air blast." Anyways, stuff that I can't remember happened, and then I was walking along a road at night when a small Japanese-sized van pulled up behind me and stopped. I turned around and started to back away quickly and shouted, "No stay back!" thinking it was the person who failed to shoot me the first time - I didn't want to be shot again. But then two women came out and ignored me but talked to each other about how they couldn't let me know, and how they were going "to get me." I knew that they were bad and just walked away quickly, but then ahead of me there was their van (now turned into a street stall w/ crates in front with lots of fruits and chocolates on top - there was a place to walk in between the crates and the stall). I had this bad feeling in my stomach that something bad was going to happen - like the food was poisoned and they were going to force me to eat it and I was walking into another trap, but then - my alarm clock rang and I woke up (for real). I definitely wasn't in a good mood when I woke up...
Monday, February 04, 2008
Always returning...
to where?
I feel lost again. I don't know where I want to go in my life, what I want in my life, if I'm happy now, if I was happier at Cornell, was I "happy" when I was "sad", am I "sad" when I'm "happy"? I just don't know what I want anymore. My motivation is leaving me, the fantastic adventures that played through my head as a kid, in middle school, in high school, in college - I wish for them to come true again. To find myself traveling amongst the stars, looking down on the earth from the great expanse known as space. Seeing nebulae, comets, other stars, and meeting races from across the galaxy. To find myself wandering the world, no purpose other than to see and experience what Earth has to offer. Meeting people, hearing their stories, creating stories of my own. To find myself living in the country which I have come to find so fascinating. Speaking another language fluently, enveloping myself in new customs and rituals, leaving behind where I have grown up. Yet all of these pale to something, something I have yet to find.
Some walk with their heads down -so people tell them to look around themselves, keeping an open eye to their surroundings. But how many of them look up? How can you notice the birds flying in the sky in the distance, the way the wind blows the uppermost leaves of a tree against a clear blue sky, the movement and metamorphosis of the clouds, the brightness of the sun that we take for granted everyday, the phases of our moon, the twinkle of stars, and if you look harder, galaxies millions and billions of light years away? How can you possibly begin to realize the infinitesimality of this "pale blue dot"? How can you bask in the millions-of-years-old light of the stars that are oh so far away? How can you not get lost or absorbed in the reflection of that great distance that separates us from the stars, and that when we look at our night sky, we are not looking into the present, but a past millions of years old. We look at the night sky and look into the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, when the first single-celled organism emerged from primordial stew, when the Earth, nay the solar system was first formed. How can we not look at those twinkling lights and think "we are like mayflies"? The odds that must be overcome for us to exist, the millions of possibilities of genetic code from just your mother and father that brought you, as you are now, into the world today. Extend it back one generation and the possibilities reach unthinkable proportions. With what little time we have, with how much there is to learn, to see, to discover, to feel, to lose, to yearn for, how do we make best use of this short time allotted to us? We are evanescent, much like our own whims and wants.
It is this thought that makes me wonder, am I enjoying life to the fullest? "We'll live every day of our life to the fullest, I swear." Am I "seizing the day"? Am I not wasting my time chasing fleeting fancies or the mainstream? I thought of myself as different, as a "rebel", someone on the outside going against the mainstream. Someone who was seeking to get as much out of life as I could. But then I realized, I am anything but. All of my "planning" for experience, it is nothing new, nothing different, nothing unique. I constrain myself to the rules, I play by the rules, and in so doing I am not unique, not different. As such, I am lost. My dreams and fantasies reveal themselves to be just that, out of my reach and not in my time. Thus I find myself always returning to where I began, yet I do not know where that is. So where am I returning to?
The soundtrack of my life: Brian Eno - Always Returning (listening w/o watching is preferable the 1st time). Images of stars and galaxies float through my head in slow motion, teasing me as if to say "so close, yet so far away." Images of sitting with someone looking up at the stars, sharing the moment of revelation when we realize, the gravity of the sky above, and all the meaning imbued in its workings. To some, perhaps it is a peaceful soundtrack, one which to listen to enjoying the beauty of life. Perhaps it is the sound of an early morning sunrise, signifying new beginnings, a sense of hope. Perhaps it is the sound of a peaceful ending, reminiscing about the past, a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps it is the sound of the unknown expanse of the stars twirling above, and everything that is yet to be discovered, a sense of curiousity. To me, it is all of these things juxtaposed as one slowly moving image that fills me both with tranquility and sorrow simultaneously. So, where do I go from here?
I feel lost again. I don't know where I want to go in my life, what I want in my life, if I'm happy now, if I was happier at Cornell, was I "happy" when I was "sad", am I "sad" when I'm "happy"? I just don't know what I want anymore. My motivation is leaving me, the fantastic adventures that played through my head as a kid, in middle school, in high school, in college - I wish for them to come true again. To find myself traveling amongst the stars, looking down on the earth from the great expanse known as space. Seeing nebulae, comets, other stars, and meeting races from across the galaxy. To find myself wandering the world, no purpose other than to see and experience what Earth has to offer. Meeting people, hearing their stories, creating stories of my own. To find myself living in the country which I have come to find so fascinating. Speaking another language fluently, enveloping myself in new customs and rituals, leaving behind where I have grown up. Yet all of these pale to something, something I have yet to find.
Some walk with their heads down -so people tell them to look around themselves, keeping an open eye to their surroundings. But how many of them look up? How can you notice the birds flying in the sky in the distance, the way the wind blows the uppermost leaves of a tree against a clear blue sky, the movement and metamorphosis of the clouds, the brightness of the sun that we take for granted everyday, the phases of our moon, the twinkle of stars, and if you look harder, galaxies millions and billions of light years away? How can you possibly begin to realize the infinitesimality of this "pale blue dot"? How can you bask in the millions-of-years-old light of the stars that are oh so far away? How can you not get lost or absorbed in the reflection of that great distance that separates us from the stars, and that when we look at our night sky, we are not looking into the present, but a past millions of years old. We look at the night sky and look into the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, when the first single-celled organism emerged from primordial stew, when the Earth, nay the solar system was first formed. How can we not look at those twinkling lights and think "we are like mayflies"? The odds that must be overcome for us to exist, the millions of possibilities of genetic code from just your mother and father that brought you, as you are now, into the world today. Extend it back one generation and the possibilities reach unthinkable proportions. With what little time we have, with how much there is to learn, to see, to discover, to feel, to lose, to yearn for, how do we make best use of this short time allotted to us? We are evanescent, much like our own whims and wants.
It is this thought that makes me wonder, am I enjoying life to the fullest? "We'll live every day of our life to the fullest, I swear." Am I "seizing the day"? Am I not wasting my time chasing fleeting fancies or the mainstream? I thought of myself as different, as a "rebel", someone on the outside going against the mainstream. Someone who was seeking to get as much out of life as I could. But then I realized, I am anything but. All of my "planning" for experience, it is nothing new, nothing different, nothing unique. I constrain myself to the rules, I play by the rules, and in so doing I am not unique, not different. As such, I am lost. My dreams and fantasies reveal themselves to be just that, out of my reach and not in my time. Thus I find myself always returning to where I began, yet I do not know where that is. So where am I returning to?
The soundtrack of my life: Brian Eno - Always Returning (listening w/o watching is preferable the 1st time). Images of stars and galaxies float through my head in slow motion, teasing me as if to say "so close, yet so far away." Images of sitting with someone looking up at the stars, sharing the moment of revelation when we realize, the gravity of the sky above, and all the meaning imbued in its workings. To some, perhaps it is a peaceful soundtrack, one which to listen to enjoying the beauty of life. Perhaps it is the sound of an early morning sunrise, signifying new beginnings, a sense of hope. Perhaps it is the sound of a peaceful ending, reminiscing about the past, a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps it is the sound of the unknown expanse of the stars twirling above, and everything that is yet to be discovered, a sense of curiousity. To me, it is all of these things juxtaposed as one slowly moving image that fills me both with tranquility and sorrow simultaneously. So, where do I go from here?
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