Mulan

I'm a Senior, which is weird when you think about it, but then not really that strange.

I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday while I was taking a break from rehearsals. (I'm in the show Crimes of the Heart. I'm playing Doc. I'm in two scenes, but they're good scenes, and I'm learning things as an actor).

It was one of those moments where you realize that sometimes those cheesy lyrics in pop songs that you always made fun of actually carry some simple-truth weight to them.

The lyrics like "I stare at the man in the mirror, and I don't recognize him anymooooooore."

Or those deliciously sappy Disney songs that you sing ironically to yourself in the shower.
"Whoooo is that girl I seeeee
Staring straight
Back at me?
 When will my reflection show
who I am insiiiiiiiiide...."

I know I'm not the only one who does that. Don 't lie to yourself. You do it, too.

But it was one of those moments. I looked up and I saw myself and I was surprised, really. I looked older and strange and different. I was no longer that awkward, little kid with hair hanging down over his plastic-rimmed glasses with acne and bad posture.

Okay, I still am. But I've changed. I look older. I feel older. Even my eyes look different.

Maybe it's all in my head.

People are constantly changing, and that's a good thing. Not a bad thing. I've changed, but I'm stillv ery much the same person.

Time and the human experience. Such crazy things...

This was a short post. Just letting you know what I've been thinking.

School is going well, Mom.

passion

I found this song from a book that I'm reading, and I like it very much. Maybe you will too.




I think it's strange how one song can affect so many different types of people.

Like that moment of meeting someone you didn't know ever existed, and then finding out that you like the same music, or have read the same books, or wear the same clothes. And you connect with that person because they're moved in the same way that you're moved. Something resonates in them that also resonates in you.

When you are deeply passionate about something, and if you find someone else who is equally as passionate, then it is two burning people who burn together. And nothing is more beautiful or dangerous than that.

I don't understand the concept of Passion-- being passionate about something.

Some people talk about passion as if it's something that you don't have a choice about. I heard someone talking the other day, and they said "I just don't have the passion for it anymore like I used to." As if it was this energy that used to inhabit their souls, but it somehow magically and sorrowfully left and will never come back. And so the only thing to do is give up.

Or you hear people talking about someone, saying "Yeah. He's a really passionate guy." And sometimes I feel like they say it as if to excuse themselves. As if they were saying, "If I was that passionate, I would be doing the exact same thing as he is." They use Passion as a means to disregard somebody's work ethic and dedication.

People talk about Passion as if it's this fuel that makes whatever task in front of you easier to do.

Sometimes I feel like I live in a passion-less world, and that I myself am passion-less. Even though I sometimes feel myself burning for something, or someone, or somewhere. I feel like I do not burn enough. And I feel like not many people do. But I want to find the ones who burn. I want to find the ones who burn in the same way I burn, and I want to find the ones who burn much more than I do.

Can you choose to be passionate? Can you choose to burn? Or is it something that overtakes you? Something that suffocates you and pushes you forward at frightening speeds and the only thing you can do is hang on and pay attention.

Sometimes I feel like the way I live deadens my passion and numbs me from whatever is pulling me or pushing me or burning in me.

But then I wonder if that is an excuse.

Maybe I am simply letting my life deaden my passion, when really the only thing to do is let my passion bring my life to life.

I guess what I need to do is pay more attention and find the things that make me burn. Even just the tiniest flame. I must find those things and write them down and experience them and become them.

I don't really know why. I don't know what good it does other than the fact that I feel like that is why I am here.

Little Boy

Is it just me, or do we all have things about ourselves that we wish were different-- things that we think we could change if we really wanted?

But then you try to change, and you go through all this hubbub of reinventing yourself, because the self that you have isn't the self that you want. And then in the midst of trying to reinvent yourself, you sort of get lost along the way. You find yourself in a weird half-way point between the person that you were that you didn't like, and the person that you want to be, the person that you think you could like.

And everything about you is up in the air, and you're nowhere.

Then you start to forget why exactly you didn't like your old self, and you start to wish for it back, but then you feel like you can't go back, because no one can ever go back, and all that is to be done is to keep moving forward, but you don't know exactly where to go.

Everyone always told me to be myself. But that's very hard when you don't know who you are.

So when you don't know who you are, you start to listen to everyone else and what they think of you, because everyone else likes to tell you who you are--- both your enemies and your friends. And I didn't like what either of them told me because it wasn't who I wanted to be.

They told me that I have a permeable innocence about me,
that I'm kind
sensitive
youthful
genuine
excitable
impressionable
irresponsible
extremely clumsy
forgetful
and just sort of a space cadet.

For years I've tried to change these things about myself, because my enemies would call me these things like they are bad, and my friends would call me these things like they are good, but I always just took it as everyone thinking I'm just safe, boring, and undependable. Someone you can't really have a good time with, but they love you in a kind of arm-over-your-shoulder, bigger brother kind of way.

I always felt like I was a step below everyone else. I guess this might spawn from the fact that I grew up in a completely different environment from the rest of the world, and so for a while everything was so new and intriguingly foreign to me-- things that everyone else just accepted as the way things were, the things you don't bat an eye at but accept it as just a part of your reality, just like breathing. And these things had me burning inside with curiosity, excitement, and worry-- like a little boy.

Little boy. That's what everyone equated me to. I always hated it. I didn't want to be called little, and I didn't want to be called a boy.

The opposite of this would be a Big Man.

I wanted to be that.

That I liked.

A big man.

Not a little boy.

I guess my response to being called a little boy is very little-boy-like. "I'm not a child, I'm a man!"

And so I wanted to change myself. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to be, but I wanted to be something different. Not the little boy. I just wanted to relax more, to not be so dramatically affected by the outside world, because nobody else seemed to be that affected by it or interested in it, and it was cool to not be interested in things and to be un-impressionable.

I wanted to appear like I could hold my own, like none of this was out of the ordinary. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone that I can function in this world that I still secretly think is a total catastrophic, beautiful mess. And the deepest part of me is still staring at it wide-eyed and is burning for it, because I know anything could happen.

I wanted to be the guy that was happening, the guy that everyone was drawn to for conversation. I didn't want people to put their arm over me. I wanted to put my arm over someone and have them call me big brother.

I wanted to be more badass, is technically what I'm getting at. But I didn't realize that in order for anybody to be a badass, they must first understand who they are and go from there. I didn't understand myself, because I was tired of the self that was available to me, and so I wanted a different one.

So I tried to reinvent it.

 For the last year or so, I've been different, and it hasn't exactly been better. In fact, I've just been more distant. I've found myself not taking an interest in anything. I've gotten tired of people. I've been an observer most of the time, listening to conversation, listening to jokes, laughing  if I find them funny. I stare at people as they talk to each other and I listen to myself think, and I don't take an active part in what's going on, because I've lost the point of it all. I play solitaire on the living room floor and don't talk to anybody. I think this is all because I don't have a self anymore to offer anybody. And when you don't have a self, you play cards with yourself.

That's kind of a lie. I'm sure a lot of self-y people play cards with themselves, and I'm sure they're much more of a Self than I am.

I stopped acknowledging what I want or what I need as a person. I didn't speak up for myself because I had no self to speak up for. And so I do what everybody else wants to do, not what I want to do. And when you do that, you stop.

You drift. You play pool with your friends because they want to. You go out to a bar with your friends because they want to. You don't want anymore. You stop burning, and it's very sad.

But it isn't all lost, because you like your friends. But you just know something is missing in you-- you feel empty.

It's an emptiness like there's a hole somewhere inside of you. But it's not something that can be filled by another person, or an ideal, or a religious figure. It's a bit of you that has disappeared. Gone. Because you let it leave. You made the hole yourself, and only you can fill it back up. And I guess the way you do that is put yourself back. The self that you didn't like, but the self that you can't escape. The self that you will come to love. Because everyone should come to love themselves, because the world is a diverse place and it deserves everyone, especially the ones that don't fit into the technical societal blueprints of what is generically considered cool.

The reason I am coming to these conclusions is because I saw all of those characteristics in another person. And I like that person for those qualities. The same qualities that I hated about myself I loved in another person. A fictional person, no less. A person in a book. Someone who doesn't exist, but they are innocent and good and kind and inquisitive-- not somebody you would find at a bar at two o'clock in the morning living it up with everyone in the world, like how I wanted to be, but am not.

I suppose sometimes to learn to love yourself, you have to see yourself in other people and love them for those reasons.

I just read what I wrote and it sounds very egotistical. I don't know about the things I say sometimes.

So I guess this will be something interesting. I will learn every day to be more like myself, to find myself and nurture myself and let myself grow, because that self deserves it. And the world deserves that self.

Personality

 I've spent the last sixteen years of my life in school-- which is terribly unimpressive, because now at twenty-one, I look at my brain and find nothing.

I think this is because I don't pay attention, and though I receive knowledge and facts and wisdom, I do not retain it, and in five years, five months, five day's time, my mind feels empty, and it is as if I haven't learned anything at all.

Even in some of my favorite classes at Western-- my Astronomy class, for example, taught by a man whose soul I hope will forever be at the right hand of God, if people have souls, and if God has a right hand. Or I hope his stardust spirit floats forever in the starry void to understand all of life's distant mysteries.

I wish him well, is more or less what I am saying, because he has given me so much. However, I say he has given me so much, but most of the information he gave me I do not remember.

I do not remember how far away the earth is from the sun, or how hot the sun is, or the reason why the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, or how and why the universe will eventually collapse back in on itself, or why there really is no center of the universe, or how to disprove the McGruder Demon theory.

I do not remember the facts. The facts, sir, I do not remember.

But, perhaps the class was still a success, because I am now more aware that such facts do exist, such ideas and concepts do manifest themselves in our universe, and now I am aware that there are things to be known. Perhaps that is all the good that college has done me-- it has made me more curious, more aware that there are things I am not aware of.

Where was I going with all of this? There was a point... Oh.

I've been in school for sixteen years. And the life of the student is more or less characterized by one feature (among others)-- early mornings. And you would think that after sixteen years or so of this lifestyle, I would be okay with waking up at seven every morning, and I could do so with a cheery disposition, and perhaps even a smile to greet the day. Every morning I should rip the curtains from my sunshine-stained windows and let the morning tell me something good. And every morning, i should make ten cups of coffee for myself and everyone else in the house, and I should take ten minute showers and listen to NPR and do some sit ups and push ups and maybe take a morning jog around the block. If I had a dog, I would walk it. Maybe I could stroll to campus with Good Morning on my mouth for everyone around me, and I might as well just carry candy or cough drops in my pocket to hand out to people who look like they've had it rough.

But I am not that guy.

I hate mornings. Usually the first word in the mornings is some expletive or other because I forgot to set my alarm clock and I have to be at work in fifteen minutes. Or I feel drowsy and hung over because of all the substances that I exceedingly put into my body the night before. I walk bleary-eyed into the sunshine streets, sometimes with my fly undone, tripping over my shoelaces, with headphones in my ears listening to Radiohead or Grizzly Bear, because they understand. If I see someone I know sitting at the bus stop, I would not say hello. I would stare at the pavement rolling beneath me and bury my hands in my pockets where I would probably find used tissue paper or a guitar pick or a cough drop that somebody gave me because I looked like I've had it rough.

All this to say, I know I should get used to mornings, but I don't know if I will, or if I should-- maybe I would be loosing all that is characteristic of Isaac if i changed things about myself, like suddenly liking mornings instead of hating them.

Have you ever felt like you're stuck between what you are and what you think you should be?

Or you wonder if what you are really is how you should be?

Or you wonder if what you should be is something different from what you are, but you're not exactly sure what you should be?

Or maybe you are sure what you should be, but you don't know how to change, or if you want to change, or if you can change, or if you should change?

These people changed:

Mahatma Gandhi:

Originally a barrister of British law until he was twenty-four and moved to South Africa, where he then discovered himself in regards to politics and religion within the next twenty-one years, and eventually became the father of Indian independence and changed the world through civility and love. I wonder what was in his mind in this picture. If he was the same Gandhi that everyone knows, the same one that changed the world, or if it is a different Gandhi, a Gandhi that isn't quite there, a Gandhi that is somewhere else, with thoughts in his head much like the ones that occupy everyone else's heads, thoughts on money, marriage, choice of neck-ties, what he will have for dinner after this. I wonder who told him to cross his arms for this picture, or if he did it himself because he wanted to say something about himself, or if that's what everyone did in those kinds of pictures in those days. Was he proud of who he was, or did he hate himself? Did he want to change, or was he okay with where he was?

 And what if he had remained that way? Forever standing matter-of-fact-ly before a camera, arms crossed, year after year accumulating money and becoming a successful lawyer, and loving his wife, and no one would ever blame him for staying that way, until his hair turns white and his face becomes riddled with age, until he takes his last crossed-arms picture and he is no more, and the world continues unchanged. No one would blame him for that, because that is how most of us live. But he was haunted by something, something that drove him mad, something that burst from within him, or into him, and he couldn't help but change.

Charlie Chaplin the man. No secretive smile, no makeup, no bowler hat. Just a man with disheveled face and hair, grinning timidly---probably about nothing. Sad eyes. A face to say "I don't know what became of all of this, but here it is, and I'm glad you've enjoyed it."


These pictures tell me that it is not only possible, but good, to be more than one thing. To be multifaceted, multidimensional, forever changing and re-changing, going forward and backwards, to stay and to go. To throw up your arms and say I am what I am and then be and not worry anymore. And if what you are is not what you want, then do away with it altogether and start anew. To be a self is to be free, and if you do not know yourself, then let yourself run wild a while and see where it goes. These men I love, because they were never just one thing. They tested themselves, they let themselves go and watched where they took themselves.

They lived and eventually died, and the journey changed themselves and the world. I aim to be like these men. Perhaps I am too hung up on worrying about being in order to become like them.
Perhaps I worry to much.
Perhaps I do not worry enough.
Perhaps I sometimes forget who I am,
and maybe someday I will find who I am,
and maybe I have already found who I am and haven't realized it.
Or maybe there is no real self to find, just different versions of a grander scheme of things that I do not understand.
But I will search myself and I will let myself run free and I will observe and I will learn and I will do so until I die.

Talking

I've always heard that when writing, you must say what you mean and mean what you say. But what if you have nothing to mean, and nothing to say?

And what if you don't have the means in you to mean anything?

Sometimes when writing, I feel like I'm just creating nothingness out of nothingness.

What if this is because I don't have anything to say in the first place, and all this writing process is is me gathering up words wandering around in me, and then organizing them into something meaninglessly material?

I always feel like there are other things that are more worth while to say in the world, but I don't know what they are. And there are other writers in the world who could say them in better ways than I could, and we both might be able to name a few.

I feel like I used to have a lot to say, but now I've spent my time being silent, and have taken to thinking  to myself where no one else can hear.

Maybe this is out of fear.

Maybe it's out of caution, because I've spent a fair amount of time listening to people talk. And when you listen to someone talk long enough, you realize that maybe they don't quite know everything that they're talking about.

Sometimes that can lead to them lying to you without meaning to.

Or it can lead to them sounding like an idiot.

Soon, they are someone who is just talking. I want to be cautious about that, about just saying things, because I want to only say things that are true. And I want only true things to say.

Perhaps all I am is another mouth.

And so was everyone who ever spoke. Perhaps all the great mouths spoke their words, and perhaps great mouths said foolish things. Perhaps great mouths became great because they abandoned their fear of saying foolish things, and once saying them, found the truth that shook the world. Perhaps to get to the truth, you have to be foolish. And perhaps to be foolish, you have to be honest. And to be honest, you have to consider the prospect that you are a fool.

And always the fear that I am just talking, talking. Talking incorrectly-- saying things that could be said differently, better, more beautifully and simply. Or more complicated and flourishy. And sometimes I make up words like "flourishy," and suddenly begin questioning my entire understanding of the English language.

I am so aware of the things that I am unaware of. And I have little understanding of the things that I claim to understand. And even that is an unconscious shout-out to Confucius.

I feel like the world is an ambiguous place where nothing is exact and nothing can be certain. And yet the people that live in it are so afraid of the ambiguous. The world is so unknowable, and yet we are all afraid of the unknown.

And we are all participants of that-- in the game that this world is the playing field for-- in the knowing and in the being known. And so few of us are known-- truly known. And so few of us know. And even fewer of us know each other. And maybe that's what this is about. To know and be known. To be subjective and objective, both the object being seen and the subject who sees. The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt speaks of this, which is another book that I started but never finished, because I started another book that I never finished, because I started reading On The Road by Jack Kerouak, which I haven't finished. I need to finish that. Perhaps that is what I will do right now.