2000-07-19 :: 09:30:19

hold on tightly, let go lightly

Soundtrack: nothing; it's raining outside and I left the tote containing my "current" CD's in the car. (I can't think of anything I want to listen to anyway.)

[ What the hell is wrong with Diaryland's timestamping? Sometimes it seems correct, and other times it seems completely crack-brained. ]

I had one of those situations last night where I began thinking about writing in here again as I was falling off to sleep and what I wanted to write about when I got around to putting the proverbial digital pen to paper (monitor?). It was the point at which normal thoughts begin to smear into hallucinations, just as consciousness let go and unconsciousness began to take the reins. Thinking about thought drift again, probably due to the conversation I had with my sister out in Dupont. I promised her back when she had her birthday (and I was at school) that I'd take her out, so I finally got to make good now that she is back from her summer program (which, coincidentally, took place at my school).

What I was thinking about last night: how words parallel smudged fingerprints: indelible, and infinitely interpretable. I was seeing fingerprints behind my eyelids -- they mixed together, reddish-purple on black. I threw myself out of bed and wrote it down on a pink sheet of memo cube paper and then stumbled back under the covers, my feet cold.

As my last entry noted, I've been thinking a fair bit about death (and consequently life). (Addition: CordeliaMeg seemed truly dead, but now that theory is proven wrong.) I had a conversation with Brent where he posed the idea that you die every time you stop thinking of something, that there is no such thing as consciousness. Then he went off again about wanting a robot body. One might correctly suspect that Brent is a very strong atheist. With both Brent and my sister I was talking about people and judging them. This is a tough subject to discuss without coming off badly. It isn't as though I haven't done it before, but I haven't in a while. Let's see.

Look what happens when you voice an opinion, though. I think my big problem is when people revel in their issues instead of refusing to accept them (particularly if they have kids). But that isn't quite it. The people I am judging judge others (ironic). [My favorite sentences: "These people are spawning?" "Tell me again why I had kids?" "Knowing your man is driving down the road, drinking a salty cup of coffee....ahh...just chases those blues away."] Some of the diarists I like the most are the most judgmental, but they seem to be introspective and thoughtful enough that they do a good job with it. It seems that to truly judge well one must never be too certain about the judgement or the process of judging. What human can stake a claim on non-hypocrisy? Finding your core values is hard enough, making them agree is another level of difficulty.

Maybe what I am bothered by is the depth of the introspection I see. It would seem to me that everyone has a certain depth inside to which they can plumb. Some seem to reach deeper than others, even when discussing the same things. Is that what it is in me that screams when I see someone writing about how small they feel in the universe -- as if they do not have a right to that thought because I've had it "better?" (It might be the fact that I would never quote Descartes' over-quoted quote unless I'd read the source material.) Perhaps what I am feeling is the sensation that everyone's thoughts are going equally deep, and it's just a question of who articulates them better. Since I don't currently believe that, that statement being true would certainly make me uncomfortable until I could find a justification for it. Another likely explanation: it makes me want to know who is judging me. I'll take Last Suggestions for $500, Alex.

I came back from the dentist today (no more soda for Jordan) with a very rubbery right half of my face. When I swished water after the fillings were completed it was all I could do to keep from shooting a tiny jet up and out in porpoise-like fashion due to my numbed lips meeting improperly. Having eaten a very nice [mushy] dinner (thanks Mom) and not in the mood to do much of anything except let the anesthetics wear off, I sat down and watched Survivor. I'd seen a bit of it once before, but this was the first whole episode that I viewed all the way through.

Survivor bothers me in a rather serious way. The Real World is one thing, but the artificial element of game-show competition (stepped up from Road Rules and taken to new levels here) makes things very ugly. I mean that in the purest sense of the word. It feels as though there is potential for beautiful things, i.e. the videos from home tonight were sweet in a hokey, down-home way (especially when one considers ~22 days away from loved ones). But instead we bathe in the ugliness and pain of Jenna being denied a video (you mean to tell me that the local CBS affiliate couldn't manage to track down her kids?). We watch people scheme and out-game one another, wallow in power dynamics -- their strength and their fragility. And the host is so smug, it turns my stomach. It's great drama (and great ratings), but I'd rather see it and know it was fake instead of watching pasty, infuriatingly arrogant Richard wink into the camera and say "Bub-bye" as he cast a vote for Greg. As much as I'd almost want to say I like the principles at work, it's too cold (hypocrisy!). I do not like seeing Kelly talk about how she has to keep telling herself that she didn't come to make friends and yet has wound up caring about these people. I was struck by Greg's getting the boot, particularly his closing comments during the credits. He said something to the effect of "I know this was just the result of weird chance, some luck. I don't bear anyone ill will. Thanks for a good time." And he was right. Had Gervase not gotten immunity (Gervase seems to be a rather unathletic fellow, who would have thought?), and had Sean not implemented his alphabetic voting pattern and been forced to skip Gervase, who knows? It reminds me of The Tessaract again: "Maybe there is nothing here I am meant to understand. Maybe there is no meant to understand. This means something."

So then chance, luck, odds, numbers. I saw The Croupier with Melissa, and nevermind what Heather says ("no offense but that movie really was very very bad and incredibly and unbelievably painfully boring. it was so bad. really. worse than mediocre even."), it was great. It's got power games out the wazoo, but at least I know the people aren't real (and that the editor is not carving a hyped plot and hiding hours of footage from me). Somehow it's much uglier when you force yourself to remember that those Survivor people are individuals with lives. Croupier also talked about writing in a way that really expressed how I feel about it... and more to the point, discussed the way I feel good writing is done. It is a fantastic challenge to try to sit outside a scene and take it in -- to be in the world, and yet also above it. Aren't words nice, the way they fall into the bytes category, letting you send those observations out. Bytes ship so much more easily than atoms. I stole that thought from Nicholas Negroponte.

The teeth are getting to me. It is times like these that I want to seperate my brain from the pulpy support system. Perhaps I should get that robot body after all. Closing bothersome thoughts: the streaming video feeds of the freakishly well-named Big Brother. The show doesn't lend itself to plot and drama creation the way Survivor does (between the cozier setting, the less compelling people, and the automated cameras), but this is a little too Orwellian. Closing happy thoughts: new sneakers (not shoes), the possibility of napping in a bean bag chair at work tomorrow, new faces.