There was once a beautiful man who loved the world and out of no fault of his own could not see as god had intended. A childhood accident, or so he was told, had stripped him of the ability to see with his own eyes. Fully functioning hazel chestnut eyes. It was somewhat eerie, to tell honestly, speaking to him face to face and starring into those wildly unfocused eyes and wonder if there was any hint of comprehension. How the glint of light seemed to reflect something in those watery pools.

This man, saw shadows only, or wraiths so to speak, willowy images that floated through his head. Vague dancing lights, that flicker, fading in and out of existence as if to be captured in his vision would be as if they were captured in spirit. Images that if built with a reliable sense of sound and even smell could provide a rich texture of the world around him. And so must it be for his life and the cards that were dealt to him.

Yet longing resided inside his heart, simple longing perhaps, to feel, to see, to experience what so many others took very much for granted, yet was ripped so painfully away from him. Innocent longing gave way to bitterness, and bitterness gave way to grief. A pervasive sense of sadness, from where one distinctly feels the gulf between where one is, and where one wants to be. A feeling of acutely knowing the very doors that block our paths. To know these doors well, to know that weathered handle, that scratched and darkened key hole. To run your hands along patchy grating, feeling the grains of the wood, the patterns. To know its strength and resilience from when you bang your tightly bound fists, and to hear the echoes resonate. To feel that firm sense of support almost, when you lean your slumped body against it.

Yet sometimes good things happen to people who wait, so to speak, as in our story there are always pathways for people who are willing to walk them, especially to those who desire to experiment with their bodies. This man who could not see, who had normal eyes, suffered from some type of failed connection in his brain. Apparently the problem was not that serious, so said the 5th specialist. A simple snip here and there, and everything would be fine.

Happy then, ecstatic even, the man danced with glee like no other. He went to his favorite park and sat on his favorite bench, and fed his favorite birds and closed his eyes and sang out loud, not caring one bit what people around him thought. Tomorrow, he would see the world, See the world! Like he was supposed to, and not like the creepy way that he did. He sat and he smiled, contorting his face into an unnervingly awkward position, revealing more teeth than should almost be considered humanly decent. He smiled and smiled and smiled. While that rest of the world thought he was on drugs.

The next day, he went to the hospital, underwent the procedure, and prepared for his new life. His eyes were bandaged, to give himself time to physically adjust, and was told to wait one week before opening his eyes to the real world. So for one straight week he would go to his park and sit. Finally his day came, and he ripped the bandages off his head and flung them as far as he could. He opened his eyes and saw the world like the rest of us. Colors, all around him, blinding, overloading, crippling. Movement, linear, consistent, pervasive. Objects, enticing, piercing, grating.

He blinked his eyes, and when he opened them again, everything was still there. When he moved his body, everything shifted with him. The world...His birds, as he recognized from their flapping and rustling, approached him like a flock. He screamed a bloodcurdling howl, and flung his arms around his head and began to cry. What were these horrendous demons finally revealed in their true flesh that were surely trying to eviscerate him, with those hollow, hollow eyes! Those eyes! Never in his wildest imagination, were the beady eyes of a bird so demonic!

He ran, and ran until his exhausted body collapsed. Then, starring up into the sky and seeing the burning sun for the first time as the blinding ravaging light it truly is, opened his eyes to their fullest extent and then gouged them out with his fingers. Like Oedipus Rex, until the taste of blood and tears awashed his face. Warm, wet, salty…

So where is this man now? He sits, in his room, in the dark, closed off from the world with which he does not belong. He no longer sees even the wraiths and spirits that once hauntingly danced before him. He lurks in the darkness where no man can see, the sadness that shackles and encompasses him.

[ esca | 11:20 AM | ]

 

After careful thought and reflection...I don't think I know/understand anything about people and its really scary right now.

[ esca | 4:43 PM | ]

 

Oooh...slimy

Tongues are the most underrated cool part of the body. It usually doesn't make people's top five things to change, nor the top five best things about me lists. Unassuming and stuck in the middle, yet have you ever thought about how strangely awesome the tongue is? Biologically speaking, the tensile strength involved? Similar to octopi where the muscles exert tension by pulling upon one another, as opposed to bone where 99.999 percent of the remaining muscles pull from.

The tongue is one of the few things that you have complete and total control over, an even wider range of motion than your individual fingers, which are limited actually into a finite number of positions, albeit very many, by bones and joints. Plus, much more sensory feedback from even just a touch sensitivity perspective, but millions more combinations when considering taste sensitivity as well. Its one of those interesting questions you ask late night when you can't sleep. Assuming that it isn't something putrid or horrid, or otherwise unappealing, if given a "mystery" object with which you could only interact with it one part of your body, what would you choose? Your eyes? Hands? Nose? What about your tongue? What's one of the most expressive ways and intimate ways you can interact with someone? Would a kiss really be a kiss without the tongue?

What if we were, like snakes, and instead of seeing the world, we *tasted* the world with our tongues?

Tongues are also very attractive, as I find girls who liberally stick out their tongues intriguing. If they stick out their tongues when you squeeze them, then even better! Tongue piercing are way cool. I'd pierce my tongue if that weren't gay. I'd envision myself playing around with it as a nervous twitch.

[ esca | 12:52 PM | ]

 

I was reading about someone using playdough and fighting an urge to eat it, and I found *that* to be extremely attractive.

It makes me go awwww and forms this overwhelming urge inside me to want to squeeze and crush.

Very weird...

[ esca | 11:22 AM | ]

 

...when I don't watch myself, I'm horribly cruel in relationships

[ esca | 10:16 AM | ]

 

Flows like water.

Sometimes, the things we do don't make much sense. Because human beings are adaptive learners. Instinctively, we are taught to learn by watching and replicating. Basic primate learning. Sometimes, we'll find ourselves doing something, for no other reason, than it had happened once to us before.

We cover up these nonsensical events with cool sounding terms, like, tradition, rite of passage, paying your dues...its all bs. It takes a strong person with a vibrant sense of will to swallow some of the hurt and pain that is given by the world, and not pass it along to the next person, but there are few strong people in this world. I don't think I'm one of them either.

Most sex offenders...were victims of sex offenses. That's why prison inmates kill the vast majority of child molesters that they get their hands on. Abusive parents? Likely to have grown up as abused kids. Its the circle of sin and hate, passed down the spectrum from person to person, sometimes intensifying, sometimes waning, but never ending. Checkered persona? Checkered past...

The school yard bully? He used to be the kid that was picked on before. Picking on the next kid isn't even really malicious, not deep down inside. In fact, he's probably still hurting from all those confused feelings he had before. Repeating what's been done to you, somehow makes it all seem not so bad. Reduces the questions of why??? and leaves them into, the just something that happens bin. Stupid. Like gorillas.

[ esca | 10:14 AM | ]

 

My interest in a girl is usually pretty nominal until THAT angle rears its ugly head. It just makes everything the more interesting, and I even find myself trying to force the scenario.

Furthermore, in reviewing what physically attracts me, everything is curiously and inexplicably tied to her body type and mannerisms. I try to rationalize myself away from that hole, but sometimes the simplest and most straight forward answer is the right one.

Because it all reminds me of her...

[ esca | 4:02 PM | ]

 

Roanoke College psychology professor Galdino Pranzarone describes this as a "love map." Each of us is programmed in childhood and early adolescence to look for certain characteristics.

"Once your love map is in your brain, it is there for life and rather immutable," Pranzarone says. "Thus we tend to pick types of people for our successive relationships, whether in dating or marriage."

I'm branded! Branded for life! Good god noooooo!

*sigh*

I know it to be true too...

[ esca | 11:18 AM | ]

 

I mean seriously...there are some people out there with some really shitty lives by all commonly adopted standards. I was just watching TV and they had a documentary on some poor girl who was burned so badly, that her face is hardly recognizable and she has no legs. But she was happily dancing on prosthetics. Or the I'm sure you've heard by now about the mountain climber who got stuck in a mountain, and after being stranded six days, chopped off his own freaking arm and ran miles for help.

I mean, people who worry about height, or weight, or looks, or money, for crying out along, there are freaking people out there with no legs or arms, whose only form of communication involves controlling the rate of drool that leaves their permanently gaping mouths.

I mean, to anyone who is bitter about their life would respond, well, I don't care about those people, and as callous as that may sound, its both the truth, and the right attitude. Right attitude in the way, the while the conditions of other peoples lives should make you reflective at least, they shouldn't determine how you feel.

However, some people have a tendency to wallow in self-pity and claim that their lives must be the very armpit of the hairy orangutan calling out for all to hear, "poor me, my life is so horrible, all my friends have it so much better than me." Get over yourself. The only way you're going to be happy is if some calamity befalls all of your peer group, because you're obviously not equipped to handle normal operating behavior with all of your imagined problems in the world.

People don't like their whining nagging mothers? Wanna trade for a crack whore? People don't like their stingy fathers that don't give the keys to the car on the weekend? Wanna trade for an abusive alcoholic adulterer? Tired of your creaking knee? How about no knee, and no fucking leg either! People don't like their job? Wanna be a sex slave in Thailand???

These are the incredibly immature and self-absorbed cry babies that actually get upset when you poke a hole in their bubble of "I've got it so bad," because I think some people like to feel bad. Some people like to feel like the "bad things" in their life are somehow unjustly given to them. As if their lives are a walking testament to injustice.

Well you know what? Life isn't fucking fair. Rich people aren't good people, or deserve to be rich, rich people exist because countless number of poorer people directly or indirectly support their life styles. People who work hard don't always hit the payday. In fact, success is almost random. Success happens most effectively, to the political animals. The ones that are adept at painting and shading perception. Because life is really all about perception. Suck it up and learn to live life in a vacuum first. By yourself and by your own evaluative standards. Cry me a fucking river.

[ esca | 5:05 PM | ]

 

C R to the E D

So for the first time in years, or maybe just a year, Cypher, Romeo and Esca roamed the streets of LA to the great dismay of proper folk. We were missing our partner in crime, Deconstruct, but otherwise made due with our mini-reunion of the days of 111 midmass. We made a little group and named ourselves CRED (pronounced creed) so as to broadly identify ourselves as a unit. I'm not sure why, perhaps we were somewhat worried about leaving dartmouth and having friendships fade due to time and distance. Or it could have just been to further Ed/Romeo's pursuit of girls.

In any case, I went up to LA over the weekend and was able to chill with Cypher/Kai and his family who were visiting the west coast. Did a lot of driving, did a lot of partying, and did a lot of senseless college type stuff. We met up with Ed briefly, although that meeting was roughly limited to a dinner outing, as his church going activities limited him to a sushi deluxe, asahi and some warm sake. He's serving penance for his youthful sin-laced days. Something like that. ~_^

I know the 03's will be graduating soon, and I haven't even had a chance to visit for whatever reason since, but it is a little strange to think about. I still have a few good friends amongst the 03 class, or, our sophomores, but really only a couple of acquaintances in the 04's. In fact, in about one year's time, my entire "present day" connection to dartmouth will be servered, and I will be one of those old wandering alumni that walks around campus not interacting with the students ordering food from the dinner hall muttering things like, "back in the day, I used to rock that Philly Cheese steak." Dartmouth will be as Mt Carmel is to me now, a familiar place, but devoid of the people I know, and my experience there was rocked by the people I know.

Its like visiting an old home you used to live in, and seeing strange kids running around the same yard you used to. Thinking, that used to be me. I feel like one of those premature old fogies that has nothing better to do than reminisce of the good old days. Perhaps its just a testament to the comparative lifestyles of college and post-college that I have now that I feel like such a shell.

Anyways, also chilled with Vu and Kristy, who is fascinated with chihuahuas, and has a tattoo of a dog along with fire and water along the small of her back. She had a character inscribed on her back that is supposed to be "dog" in chinese, but looks more like tree to me. We played a lot of Fusion Frenzy which is a fun and surprisingly competitive game.

Fun times in LA.

[ esca | 4:23 PM | ]

 

The rules of attraction? Well, there really aren't any. If you find yourself trying to create "rules," you better be ready to come up with an ever changing appendix and list of addendums. It is always interesting when some tries to verbalize what they are "attracted" to but then ends up feeling that heavy flush for someone completely different.

Anyways, so while on the topic of attraction, although it may not be possible to predict attraction, I find it is pretty easy to sense it. That is, while attraction may be inexplicable or perhaps even random, it is a fairly observable between any two people. Especially with friends, or people that you interact with. As a guy, I can tell when a guy friend of mine is attracted to any particular girl. Simple mannerisms, changes in expressions and behavior can all point to whether or not the guy's interest is perked.

You were sweating that girl weren't you dawg? I can tell, I can tell.

I'm thinking, girls can do the same, that is, tell when their female friends are attracted to any particular guy.

[ esca | 12:22 PM | ]

 

One man's view of poker

So the guys were playing poker, and Nancy was watching, when it came to me, that poker is much like risk. Risk, the game of world domination. The players, Jon, Jimmy, James, Hong, Mike Spears, and myself. The chips, are much like the game pieces in risk, and the ante and pot, much like the target country that was being battled for. The cards of course, as the mechanism of chance and fortunate, are the dice. There is strategy involved, in that the pot is what you are battling for. Much like Risk, sometimes one of the territories are lost because someone really wants to focus all their pieces on taking it, and sometimes you win by chance and other times by scaring off would be challengers. I started to give names to the pots, based on their size. Russia, England, Australia.

This interested me far more than conventional poker, as I found myself building small formations with my chips. James ripped me for that one, although I didn't really care. I had peaced up on the Big Horse and was having a fun if not confused and misguided time.

[ esca | 11:03 AM | ]

 

Plastic baggies, tubes, needles and a centrifuge.

So Saturday, I was over at the Blood Bank in Hillcrest(yes blood bank near the gay community), barely awake and waiting in line to give blood. I have O blood type and I'm RH+. Meaning I'm the universal donor. Anyways, I normally give blood the conventional way, where they stick a needle into your arm and fill up one plastic baggie of that dark red blood. However, this time, I was planning on giving twice the amount of blood through a process called apheresis. The whole process is pretty interesting, instead of your blood flowing directly into one of those plastic baggies, it flows into a very sterile looking machine that was explained to me as basically being a centrifuge with a neat little LED display. Basically, it spins and separates your blood into two separate bags, one with all your blood cells, and another with your plasma and platelets. All they really need are the blood cells. The plasma and platelets are drawn back into your blood stream along with some cold saline solution. Because they replace the total blood volume, they can take twice the amount of your the blood cells. This is more cost effective for the hospital and more practical as most patients require two unit of blood anyways. It is far easier to source from a single donor then mix and match from a pair. Anyways, the whole thing felt very weird, that is, the part when your body pulls back your plasma with the saline. From my arm by which the needle was inserted, it felt like this sprawling cold sensation was spreading up my arm internally. You know the scene in the Matrix, after Keanu Reeves takes the pill and the sprawling mass from the mirror begins to encompass him? This felt like how I imagined that would. One of the assistants was relating how he tried it once and felt the cold spread up his arm and then into his heart. The heart part freaked me out, I started to imagine the feeling spreading into my heart and then I noticed that I was feeling cold, and tingly sensations in my lips and tongue. The exact symptoms the nurse had told me before as being "bad." At this point, the nurse was helping another person, and the assistant that was nominally supposed to watch me was chit chatting at the phone. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker and was contemplating how to get the nurse's attention without looking like a freak. I started feeling lightheaded and slightly dizzy when the nurse eventually came back. I told the nurse how I felt, expecting her to say something like, oh, well that's still fine and normal, but then the nurse freaked, chastised the assistant on the phone, and started whirling around me in a semi-frenzied commotion that freaked me out something deep. Big white nurse with ugly perm came over along with old hacking cough nurse due to asthma. It was as if I had simply blinked my eyes, and there were more faces staring down at me than I wanted. Thoughts that were racing through my head at this point included, oh geez, this is *not* normal, and maybe I shouldn't have fudged my weight. You need to be at least 135 lbs for the procedure, for which although I don't remember my exact weight, I'm feeling it's probably less. The screening nurse told me that 130 lbs wasn't enough for the procedure, and I said, well, that's ok, just go ahead and “fudge" it. I could see the headlines for the news story, Blood donating engineer, fudges his weight into stroke.

They covered me with ice packs all over, including my chest and the back of my neck, made me chew these giant tablets which they said were "calcium," and also raised my legs and lowered my head. A few minutes later, I felt better, and less grainy in the head, although extremely cold. The type of cold that you feel throughout your body because its reverberating from your bloodstream. Afterwards they made me stay for almost an hour, which was ok by me since I didn't really want to move. When I sat up, I felt a little faint, so I simply rested and thought of people to call to share this "interesting" experience. Basically having spent four hours of the morning at the blood bank, I definitely wanted to jet and get some sun on what was really a very gorgeous day. Jackie was nice enough to pick me up and have lunch with me as I figure getting some food in my system would probably speed the recovery process.

I think I'm just going to give blood the normal way from here on.

[ esca | 10:35 AM | ]

 

I was sitting on my couch, watching some TV when a moment of introspection made me think of people I cared about. Friends are friends, but as much as I would like to think that friends fall under the "thicker than blood" category, simply thinking it, won't make it true. I mean say you have a good friend, and then some huge time commitment comes up, like a significant other for instance. Invariably, the particulars of the friendship are going to falter. To borrow a phrase from someone, "you can't compete with booty."

You figure, oh, let's not bother them unless something really important comes up, but I feel that sometimes its the little things that you do with your friends that really makes you friends. Those failed nights of trying to plan something and then driving around in circles. Pretty soon, a month or two pass by and you realize that you don't have a clue what's going on in their lives. And vice versa.

Then of course, the phase that a lot of us are rapidly heading off into, marriage. If that's not the killer of any and all buddy friendships, then I don't know what is. Tack on a kid or two and even the chit chat friends go as well. Not to say that the void isn't replaced with something which I would say is far more satisfying on a different level, but the point is, there will come a time, when the friendships we carry now, will come to an end. At least end the way we know it.

[ esca | 10:02 AM | ]

 

Was watching some NBA playoffs games over the weekend, and noticed some pretty cool commercials. There was one in particular that stood out in my mind. It was some type of beer commercial, and a guy comes home from work and his roommate asks how his day went. It then goes into flashback mode and you can tell clearly, he's having a horrible day. First he gets coffee spilled over his suit, and then he walks to the curb to hail a cab. However, a car drives by and splashes him. Then, he looks up to the driver and its a very attractive lady and she smiles at him. So then the flashback ends, and he says he had a great day. I would agree.

I could be having a totally rotten day, filled with inexplicable disasters and calamities, and have something cool happen at the end, and it would end up as a good day in my book. The silver lining totally rocks my world. Save the best for last. I suppose that's why I have trouble dealing with auspicious beginnings. I get suspicious and sort of wait around for the threads to unravel, and for that "surprise" ending to take place. I have this sinking feeling sometimes, that there is no where to go but down if you start off hot. Maybe that's why I've always wondered if I'm just some sort of weird masochist. Instability doesn't bother me. Rather, it has me pipe dreaming about the light at the end of the tunnel.

[ esca | 9:30 AM | ]