After talking with my roommate, Mr. Long, I’ve decided to make this a little more personable, a little more coherent and give my stories a little more flesh than the meager substance they stand as at the present moment. This includes being more precise in my writing and talking to my audience, you, with the courtesy you deserve. Without further ado, I give you a tour of Zen, garden of thought and prose.

Today is the first day we had rain in months. It was a slow, steady progression of liquefied percussion and sound. The weather’s been too warm for snow, but we all know that the lakes are far from finished with their winter fooferaw. It’s only a matter of time, they say, before we’re knee deep with the white stuff and the ponies will be trudging through the slush and getting sick.

To be honest, I don’t care much for what the weather does to us. I like it when it shines, but I like it when it rains. Kells, even snow and hail is fine by me. The clouds are just a veil that will pass–the sun is still shining behind them. Positive thinking, right? That’s all it takes.

Speaking of which, I had this discussion with a friend of mine yesterday. You see, I fall in love everyday. Boy, girl, both, it doesn’t matter–I believe that everyone’s got at least one quality worth falling for. They may not be the best person overall. Kells, you may even abhor who they are otherwise, but get them alone, talk to them, see who they are away from the masks of everyday progression and I reckon you’d be surprised by what you see.

Pretty optimistic, right? I don’t think so. I think it’s pretty realistic, simply so. People hide who they are–they’re scared to let others in and with good reason. No one likes getting hurt, no one likes heartbreak. If you let them in they can hurt you, and those who’ve felt it before can attest–if they had the chance, they’d hurt others before they got burned. It’s the human way–survival et al. but it’s deeper than that, more visceral.

Physical pain is easy to recover from. Now, don’t give me that “miracles of modern medicine” and crap, I’m talking about the damage done to individuals by individuals. We’ve evolved to recover from injuries, platelets, white blood cells, immunities, whatever. It’s in our DNA. Emotional pain, mental pain, is another story. That’s a whole new bag of worms and psychological hoohah that I’ve no grounds to stand upon and analyze. All I’ve got is experience, and even that ain’t much.

What I’m getting at is the human condition of avoidance; the art of succumbing to fear of rejection and pretending that it’s all ok. I go to a school where the male-to-female interaction is at a minimal and when it does happen there are all kinds of rules and social faux pas that one finds themselves lost and confused as a bystander. Imagine being a contender. Crap, that’s a lot of stuff to risk.

You’re all you’ve got and what if, heavens forbid, they don’t like that? You’ll have to change if you want to be accepted and that’s hard to do. You can stay the same, but the constant self-consciousness of forever worrying if you’re “good enough” or “strong enough” “skinny enough” “pretty enough” nags at you, however slightly. You can just not care, which sounds easy, but is probably the hardest of the three. You like who you are, you don’t want to change, but if no one likes who you are, it’s hard to find something to do on a Friday night, it’s hard to find out more about yourself than you already know. It’s hard to evolve. So you stop caring what other people think and just do as you do, but you grow bitter, you get angry, and suddenly “not caring” becomes hate and hate is almost impossible to erase, especially hate without an adversary.

Scary isn’t it?

Where do you draw the line between being a slave to social norms and standards as an accepted citizen and being free from the labels and the lies of society at the cost of being ignored, treated as an outcast and angry? When does it become “ok” to be who you want to be, with whom you want to be with? Does it ever and does it matter?

Happiness is suppose to be what we pursue through life, right? Since when did we let little things get in the way of smiling every day? Is life so bad that we can’t help but stare at the downside, even when things are going well? Sure it’s easy to be disappointed when you make moves to keep optimistic, but the nice things in life aren’t easy. You’re a stronger person than that–so what if things don’t go your way? Make them work out for you, no matter what the circumstance. You are reliable, smart, resourceful. Find a way out of the hole you’ve fallen into and keep on climbing.

Fall in love, look in the mirror and stop judging, be you and ask that girl out to coffee or to lunch. Hell, ask the cute guy in class if he’d like to go ice skating. Make eye contact with a stranger and smile, open a door for someone. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, they’re fun and easy to learn from if you’re paying attention. (Plus, they’re not that bad if you laugh at them first, it makes it seem less abrasive) Make cookies with a kid you barely know, be friends and learn more about yourself. Every time you do, every time you put yourself out there, risking yourself, you reinforce who you are. The qualities that the world loves, the ones you pride yourself in, will attract others to you, you just have to be confident. Losing someone hurts, but losing yourself is devastating.

Put yourself out there and grow a little. Get some sun, dangit, it’s still shining after all.

You’re behind me now, languid between sheets waiting for me to return to bed so that we can apologize. I don’t want to, not yet. My work is my world now, the energy saver bulb burning yellow light onto my workspace. This is my obsession, my salvation.

Equations swim before my eyes, hoping to distract me from my worries and troubles. I understand them, find comfort in them. It’s like a drug, slow and creeping and I don’t want to save myself from drowning.

It’s a pretty vicious and depressing cycle, if you think about it. I try not to, to be honest. It makes me sadder than I am before I contemplate the thought.

This time, however,  Boy (as you will know him until I decide to reveal his name) was feeling this very same sentiment of dread and misery because he didn’t think he’d be able to go to the park, something he’d been looking forward to all week. Now, I’m more than ok with breaking promises to myself. The way I see it, I have to put up with my sorry ass for the rest of my life, I’ll have plenty of time to re-fulfill promises made. Broken promises to Boy, however, are unacceptable. So we went.

It’s very hard for me to describe how happy I felt. Not for me, heavens, I get enough smiling done on my own…I was happy for him. He seemed to transform into this sullen, sad little boy to the happy kid at Christmas who learned how to make it snow without summoning snow demons. It was magic.

Oh, there was this amazing older gentleman who helped Boy with his picture taking (Boy was testing his camera with a roll of film. Hope they come out nicely)

To Vulf: I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the Place Where Homework Must Be Done. I was busy making magic.

We went to ice cream afterwards and then I started Dynamics. What a pretty faerie tale, no?

There are pictures, check out my gallery!

Ching ching, ting ting, chang.

Classes, work, homework, sleep. A little reprieve in between, hopefully, but we’ll see. Electrical tape rings my fingertips–papercuts abound. Ching, ching, ting, ting, chang chang, clang.

It’s time to scurry off to class, where there will be notes taken, lectures listened, and pencil lead broken (because we all know it’s inevitable.)