No more brain-looking-at-itself posts

Alright, as an effort to salvage my brain, I am not going to encourage it further by writing banal posts about itself. No more brain-looking-at-itself posts.

Bye. Bye.

The Van-Camper Brain and The Archives

I was reading Guardian online and had stumbled onto this article talking about the homeless (but not the hopeless). And then, I got linked to another site which linked me to yet another site.

http://wendyusuallywanders.wordpress.com/ongoing-added-to-description-of-how-to-live-in-your-van/

I am highly attracted to van camping! Its marvelous. I read that post end on end. Although I know that it wouldn’t be as easy as it seems and I don’t think that I’ll end up trying it (I still go for stability and a typical working life) or doing it long term. It is the independence and solitariness that attracts me. And how it really brings out the beauty of life and humanity. So simple.

Or maybe because it also fits my mental state in this period of time– I feel like my brain is a van-camper. Stuck in a limbo that is familiar or even ‘certain’ and seems to last for eternity. That is why I can’t seem to summon it to speak/write outside of a trance-like state.

And this again links to a scene in Waking Life, the guy in the boat-car: Life should be a constant departure but always arriving (sounding somewhat like that). I find it hard to embrace this and my van-camper brain– I need solid vision and certainty. But well..

Alright, I am going to start thinking of a topic for the thesis.

And..And, I have realised that my archive is growing to a appreciable size– much to my delight. So I’ve been browsing through it. How different a human being I was in the past. There was much more to me in the past and yet the irony is that I have been through much more this present day.

But what I felt was that its not so much about the content of my thoughts– but the language, the expression, the feeling you get from reading them. I feel that that person was more flamboyant and alive in the past– where ironically, was the most existentially unstable part of my life. At least unstable was human. I feel like a dead weed (not the marijuana sense) which exists neither out of will nor un-will, and neither out of fate.

Whatever, ciao.

‘Mixtape’

Lastfm is not only a great music site— but it is also a place to meet great people at a distanced proximity (you never really could be close to anyone there— or rather I can’t). Today, I saw this guy’s signing-off note (or something like that— the quote that appears when you leave a comment anywhere).

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Here it is and it touched me:

“My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.”

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So simple— yeah, tautology, it was already said to be simple. But it really clears the muck from the windscreen of life away. But whether I can live my mental life that way is a different thing. Appreciating something and finding it to be “WOW-SO-TRUE” is different from actually acting on it. Similar to existentialism and Nietzsche.

And I made a promise to myself last Friday in my offline diary to ’start-living’ but uhh, I didn’t— perhaps only to an unnoticeable extent which is again a paradox because how can you say its unnoticeable when you are noticing yada yada.. *voice trails away*

Which reminds me I need to think of a thesis topic soon. Very soon.

But my mind of course, does not register it. I am overwhelmed by this huge wave of fatigue or just pure procrastination.

Delete

I’m feeling the urge to delete myself again although I know that it is the problems that I am facing and that I should solve that needs deleting. There is a difference between a challenge and an avalanche, one prompts action and the other prompts defeatism. Reminds me of Tetris when incomplete lines just pile up and you’re waiting for the piece (often the long 4-grid piece) that never comes and you no longer feel hopeful or psyched nor even frustrated. You just want to die.

But these games teach me another thing: if you say ‘since I’ll die anyway, why live’, then ‘since it’ll be ‘game over’ eventually, why do I play it?’ should apply too. This teaches me that the process does matter intuitively even if it might seem irrational.

I know that what I need is not an absolute, terminal end—I need a break and change and a reboot. And I know that I desire the former because I think that the latter three are hard to achieve or impossible. And I know that I should not be thinking that way and that those thoughts are false.

But I still feel that way.

To Live

I’ve been writing a lot in my offline diary recently and since that meets my needs, its hard to capture the mood again here.

I shall just quote something I wrote in there on the night of 23rd of October after coming back from a senior’s art coursework exhibition:

And today, I’ve seen how genuine-ness can win over everything, and I’ve realised: no matter where or how far you go, you;ll eventually go back to face yourself– even if it means having to take a huge detour. But the sights seen in the detour are priceless too, they gave me the tools I’ll never have gotten with 100% efficiency.

I don’t regret anything that has happened in my life and I’m looking forward to seeing more.

The sky is dark but I feel that all is bright.

I will and I am, starting to live tonight.

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But umm, I don’t think I have started to live yet.

I’ll talk about another one where I am talking about how I like and often encounter deja vu situations sometime later.

Things that I consistently adore

These are things that I will mindlessly gravitate towards and are the best things to arm yourself with if you want to distract me for a time period tending towards infinity. And these are things I am kind-of born-to-be-crazy-about-them. Because I don’t have the mental energy to philosophise about why I like them (linking my personality, worldview and experiences with the phenomenon of liking them), I’ll just casually talk about them. I have also on my mind, a list on ‘things that I consistently do’. I might do that some other time. This post was triggered by the fact that I am just back home from a few hours of shopping in Toys r us and somewhere else. A large number of these objects came from there. I was there buying presents for someone (that someone will know soon ><). What strange presents I buy— yes!

1. Magnets

I play with  magnets all the time when I was young— when I can find them because I lose them all the time. I can spend  hours distracting myself with magnets. And I love that feeling when 2 like poles were put together. I push them together, let go a little and feel them pushing back— that feeling strangely delights me.

2. Magnifying Glasses (and binoculars especially)

I was trying to be creative in the cliche manner and ‘insert’ my eye through that hole in the middle but that effect didn’t turn out to be good. I have wasted much of my youth just looking through the binoculars at random objects/scenes too. I think I just like how I am able to look at things so far away and that thing far away does not really know that I am looking at it unless that thing/creature/figure has a binoculars too. Stealth.

3. Glow in the Dark objects (stickers in this case + light sticks and all included)

These are really the yummiest things in the world to me. I love them, I just adore them. They are magical, but as with all the things on this list. They light up my life. I like the idea of ‘unsupported’ light sources at night. They just light up you know— no one’s going to cut them off, unlike electrical ones. And they are so harmless. They are just ‘them’. And they don’t die.

4. Wooden Construction Kits

Suddenly, the webcam decided to have a yellow outlook on life. Alright webcam, whatever suits you. I just LOVE these things. But I love buying them more than getting myself to work with them. Not that I don’t like building them but somehow, I just can’t get myself to start working on them most of the time. I just like how I can create things out of things that don’t look like that end product. Its magical and even though I know that if I buy another kit of the same kind, I’ll get the same product, it just seems so special to me and in a way, they are— two products never turn out the same because in the process of taking the individual pieces out from their ‘model’, some of them are torn in certain ways and they never fit in the same. I’ve discovered that a huge stash of my wooden kits are gone— they were in my drawer, who took them?!

5. Files, stationeries and notebooks and useless things

Alright, the camera’s back to normal. The sad and normal. Well, I think I have one of the largest stash of unused notebooks, files and stationeries and useless things around in your circle of people whom you know. I have consistently been this way. These are the kind of things that I am happier buying than using too. Or rather, if I eventually get myself to use them.. But I’ve more or less gotten past the can’t-bear-to-use-this-notebook-’cause-its-too-pretty phase. I’m too lazy to lug some of my notebooks and yada from the other room so I grabbed this single extremely unrepresentative object near me.

6. Books, especially 2nd hand books

Just a few random books I picked out. Though um, I am out of the curmudgeon phase now— but that book is still delightful— delightfully funny. I love buying 2nd hand books. They don’t burn a hole in my pocket and I can buy so many of them. And the fact that they were bought by someone means that they were valued in some ways— but again, you could say that the reason why you are able to buy them is because that someone didn’t like them or treasure them anymore which means that them 2nd hand books are 2nd grade! Oh well, but here’s another example of the things which I enjoy buying more than I use them— I can’t get myself started on around 60% of the books I buy. Or that I buy them, read a few 10s of pages and never get started on them again— however interesting they are.

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I shall stop here now because I can’t instinctively think of anything else and someone has arrived home so its a little inconvenient since I’m using the computer in quite a public place. Alright.