And it all makes you want to scream

A little something from the late great Michael Jackson - Scream

I've been mapping out my past, a common enough task I think, and I've found there are many benefits. You gain a degree of self-learning, a clarification of your understanding of the past, an improvement of your appreciation of good memories and good poeple, and a great story.

There are dangers though: wallowing in self-pity, obsession on the past, renewed bitterness, over-attachment to this life, etc.

But perhaps the most repeated lesson I've found looking over my past is that things were never as bad as I thought they were, nor are they ever as good.

Looking at the past also helps put the present in perspective. I can say that my current life has been a bit rough at times (though not nearly as rough as the life of others mind you), but looking back I find it's amazing that my life is at least better than this period or that period, and so it's not that bad, and I ought to thank God that I got past those past crises because they were pretty damn bad.

Take for example my crisis of April/May 2008 - where I was almost certain I was going to fail a number of classes and need to take another semester (although in retrospect it may have been a good idea to take another semester and get a CS double-major, although who knows how that would have reshaped who I am today?)

Compared to that crisis, my feelings today are light and fluffy, and while I should not take my feelings to lightly (after all, like speed they can kill), it is a bit comforting that I got over that, it chastises my self-pity a bit, and it reminds me - life can suck sometimes, but it is still worth it. I look at that period and there's no way I can reconcile it with the idea I was secretly happy, no I was miserable, but there was still a beauty in that period of life, because I strove to live and live rightly and serve God in my life. Screw the misery, even the crises are beautiful.

And I got a little Facebook posting from that period to prove my point. As miserable and self-pitying that the posting is, I like to think it's a good piece of writing, and well worth looking back upon, or for those who have not read it, for the first time upon. Especially as the most major of the points are still valid, you can always trust God to get you through the bad times, and even when the thrill of life is gone, you still got to go on (and indeed move along):

So here's the posting which I after the fact labeled "Scream":

Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone

Little bit of Jack and Diane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9tpKXFd8A

Of course the best thing that John Cougar Mellencamp has given us is this line from How I Met Your Mother (Aldrin Justice):

Barney: Tonight, just like John Mellencamp, I am going to get rid of the cougar once and for all.

If you don't get it watch the episode.

Anywho, I'd like to thank everyone who gave me birthday messages, it was a nice gesture. If it seems odd to not write this till now, well, my life has been a little bit of a crapstorm this last couple weeks. And now that I come to the end of this semester it seems everything is coming up failure, partial or completely, and even my successes seem to be interspliced with failure. And this has all left me pretty miserable.

If I had some time to relax and move away from that mindset, maybe that wouldn't matter so much, but I have more work to do, I have to clean up the mess I've been dealing with lately, I have to deal with potentially failing one or more classes, and this sucks. So life's not going to be enjoyable for a while now.

But life goes on. And one day, really one day, maybe in a month, maybe in two, someday probably not too far from now, I will be getting out of this crapstorm, or I will learn to deal with it. I have great faith that God will get me through all this, but I'm having trouble finding enjoyment in life anyways, and in worse case senario, and I need to deal with the aftermath of these failures and the reactions of my family to these matters, which will likely be as uncomfortable as the problems themselves, I might be living in a crapstorm till the end of the summer or beyond. But still life goes on, I'll have moments of happiness now and then, and someday life will get better. So life goes on.

Even if for now, the thrill of living is gone.

-- Fin --

So how thrilling is living now?
At times very much so, at times terrible. Are things getting better? Off and on, yes. Do I trust God for the future, I am trying to, and I think for the most part succeeding. And looking back, I can say all and all, things are not so bad, maybe not great, but, to paraphrase Hamlet:

In this sleep of life, what dreams may come?
And then in death too, what dreams might appear?

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

The Girl of My Dreams

Heh, heh, you get it, this session is about a girl in my dreams but I use the phrase "the girl of my dreams," oh the hilarity. But beyond that, I am bringing back to my mind an incident from a while back because A. it was interesting from a psychological standpoint because it was as close as I have ever come to outright delusional insanity, and B. because I represented it in several different ways. One of them is a session I did a long time ago on my mySpace webpost, but I shifted it over here and you can read it: The Season of the Witch

But due to an assignment for a writing class, I also engaged the matter in a different light.

That's what I'm bringing you today. If this examination of the incident seems light, and makes the incident seem harmless, I invite you to go to the previous post which examined it somewhat more heavily.


For a long time I believed that if a professor took attendance then he or she must believe in the three absence limit rule that was the official Rutgers policy. Experience has since proved me wrong, but as late as last September I believed this was true, however, despite this belief I still had a nasty habit of being late arriving to nearly every class but most especially to my classes on the maze-like Douglass campus. This was largely my own fault since I waited till the exact last moment to leave my room, and so after arriving late for the first few classes of my Douglass-based History of South Asia class I determined that it would be smarter not to wait at the bus stop near my dorm but rather to run to the more frequented bus stop next to the Rutgers Student Center. I think this decision did help me to be on time more often, but whether the more distant bus stop did or did not get me to class quicker, it did give me an extra ten minutes worth of scenery for which I am grateful.

That is not to say the scenery was anything special. It was simply the street in front of my dorm, the parking lot beyond that, the computer lab, Brower Commons, and the Rutgers Student Center. Yet all those places had people and people provide interesting scenery. One particular example from October is especially prominent among my memories. I was passing the computer lab and I saw a strikingly white pigeon. Most pigeons are somewhat white, somewhat gray but this was a bold white. It was also a rather large for its kind. It was also moving towards winter and any bird was rather unusual. But it drew my eyes to the bench in front of the computer lab where I saw a highly pretty girl. It was only a glance but I could see she had a slight frame, vibrant red hair cut moderately, a perfectly oval face with a petite nose, and a lovely subtle smile. I also found it amazing how close the pigeon was to her. I always loved birds and while I would occasionally chase them to see them fly off, often I would attempt just to get close, imagining perhaps I could pet them on their heads. But I was never quite able to get close them, I would try to be quiet but they would always fly away. Yet she was only a couple inches away from the pigeon and it seemed perfectly comfortable, I had to imagine that she had some special charm with animals. I paused for a moment, but then I ran off to catch the bus. I had to get to class and at the time I believed if I was marked absent just one or two more times the professor would start detracting from my grade. Looking back upon it, I regret not stopping and talking to her, but that regret is not why the memory remains with me.

I remember this instance so well because it reminded me of a dream I had a few nights before. The dream was an adventure where I met a witch who had some power over animals as well as other magic abilities. I can't really remember exactly how the witch looked, but for some reason, that girl at that moment seemed to capture perfectly her look. And for a second, I believed that the dream had entered reality, that it was not actually a dream but simply a prediction of things to come. This actually filled me with anxiety and sorrow since the dream itself ended badly but also with excitement. I always wanted to believe in magic, in dreams crossing over to reality, and for a moment I did. And because of that, suddenly my life had a new importance, I had to deal with the strange and powerful magical forces which in my dream had caused so much tragedy. I had a mission, but it lasted only as long as I believed that the dream had become real, and I believed that only for a second. Then the moment ended and I realized she was just a girl, although a pretty one, and I was getting late for class. So I sprinted for the bus and let the dream fade into the back of my mind.

I wonder what it would take for me to sincerely believe that a dream had become real and magic had entered into my life. I have seen things happen that have been predicted by my dreams a couple nights ago, but none of those things have been magical or required stretching the imagination. The dream this girl reminded me of was full of magic, of adventure, of strangeness and to believe in it would require a complete rewriting of how I view the world. On the other hand, even if I don't believe in magic, I have always believed in the possibility of magic. We live in a world where things surprise us daily, and new advances of science stretch the possible, so why not magic? But I suppose if it was that simple, if magic were simply another surprise, then it wouldn't have such allure. I suppose the charm of magic, and why I felt such excitement from the possibility that the dream had become real is the idea of suddenly becoming powerful and important. Magic offers a new route to becoming important, because it is a new source of power, something unseen in the world before. Just knowing about it gives you an edge over the rest of the world. And if my dream became real the significance of the magic would be even greater, the magic would represent the duty I had to correct the wrong which my dream had predicted, it would have given me a sense of higher purpose. But perhaps the attractive thing about magic is that it is just something we don't encounter, something completely new to our experiences. We have possibilities in our lives, but all our possibilities are confined in the systems that form society and bound by the rules of the world we live in. It doesn't mean our lives can't be unpredictable but there are limits on those possibilities. But if magic were possible, suddenly we could realize that those limits are illusionary, that there are no limits to our opportunities. The ordinary world would be shattered and become extraordinary. I think it's possible for magic to suddenly emerge like that, but I would need more proof than a girl who reminded me of a dream, and that's why I didn't stop, instead I ran to catch my bus.

The Season of the Witch

I used this title for another session but it was always intended for this session, for this session I will reveal my connection to a witch. Dun, dun, dun. But seriously folks I thought it might be interesting for you all to take a glimpse into a real mental breakdown of mine that happened last September. I used to have better documentation of it but I lost a lot of my papers last year so I'm only going to be able to put up part of it. Anyways with that build-up I should get to the meat of the matter (this is more the salad of the matter, maybe the appetizer or maybe just a palate-cleansing snack or something of the like).

Pardon the non-polish of this, but it is a historical record more than a publishable poem:

I give up my path to the moon
And I give my self to you
So that you might give me your heart

She was sarcastic, sardonic, dismissive, a little bit punk, a trouble-maker and of course a witch
Still she loved me enough to devout herself to me
I'm not sure if I love her
Or simply want to save her so badly it hurts
But I mourn because of a dream

She appeared first like a little sphere, like a those beads in anime, I think they're from some sort of Buddhist rosary
She was on her way to the moon
And I was standing there, thinking about something, maybe imagining some cows dancing in the sky
And for some reason there she devouted herself to me
And she helped me or saved me during a journey or task of some sort
And when she was done she became a sphere again
And disappeared
For she had given up her soul to stay on Earth
And now it was gone

I think it goes to some monster, the devourer of souls
But there has to be a way to save her

Somewhat strange stuff eh? But you might say, eh I've read stranger poems. But the thing is this isn't a poem, these are the thoughts I recorded one morning after a particularly disturbing dream (use disturbing in the literal sense) and I just naturally sort of formatted into a sort of poetic form as I was jotting them down. Maybe I should provide a little background to clarify.

By little background, I mean a little background. Well, last September some stuff happened which I'm not going to get into which led to the disturbing dream which led to those thoughts above. I can't get into the possible triggers, but let me talk about the dream and elaborate on those thoughts. The dream itself was adventure based. Me and a buddy were going on a quest, on our way a witch fell in love with me, decided to help me in my journey and at the end of the journey she was sent to the realm of Yoggoloth, devourer of souls. The reasoning was, witches apparently were beads of light on Earth who then as they matured travelled to the moon, but this particular witch, whose name, much to my chargin, I can't remember, let's call her M (for some reason it made sense to me then to call her M as a placeholder for her real name), well, M, in love with me for some reason (apparently I was acting particularly goofy and innocent at the time) decided to say something like the following:

I give up my path to the moon
And I give my self to you
So that you might give me your heart

And apparently this meant that she would be a companion on my journey and then give her soul to Yogolloth devourer of souls.

Now with my dreams often they will repeat over the same territory, ironing over some nonsensical points sometimes while adding other nonsensical points and changing plot-lines. Sometimes after all is said and done the repeat only vaguely resembles the original dream (By repeated dreams I mean within the same night, all of this was only during one night). But the dreams repeated and I became more and more focused on saving her. There were some strange varients on this, including one where I think I gave both our souls in exchange for eternal life, but without our souls we became decadent and moralless and eventually I gave her to Yogoloth anyways. Wierd, eh? But that is just the beginning.

The real season of the witch began the next day. When I woke up I was overwelmed by a feeling of intense sorrow and guilt over her loss. This was a dream and yet I was in mourning. Most likely it was related to things that had occured the days before the dream, but like I said I can't go into that, honestly it would be disrespectful to. But I was mourning for this dream and that is when I jotted down the thoughts about the witch in the poetic words above. And it wasn't simply me writing down a dream (although I do do that on occassion), I, or at least part of me, actually believed in her reality. And so the sorrow and guilt became real, as did my determination to save her, and none of this added to my mental stability. The next couple days were going to be rough.

And they were. It didn't help that I had to go back to Rutgers. But I occupied my time jotting down semi-fevered thoughts about the witch and the situation and about what I should do. I wish I still had the notebook with those thoughts but I've been losing notebooks around the campus (if anyone finds them please call (609) 240-6339, they're green-covered Steno-brand small notebooks). I became determined that perhaps the dream was a preminition that she was going to come to Earth because of me and that I had to act to save her soul. I had no idea how to do this, although I considered doing some research into magic. There was a certain air of excitement to this I had to say, a certain sense that finally something strange and magical was entering into my life but it was matched with sorrow, worry and guilt over her soul and its fate with Yogoloth. I perhaps overstate this matter a little because I was not really fully convinced about the reality of this witch, but rather my mind went back and forth over the matter, which honestly perhaps made it more disturbed than if I commited myself one way or the other.

Eventually, I tried thinking of her, searching for clues in the fragments of the dream and perhaps trying to invoke more dreams from wherever the first one came. Other than the preminition theory, I also debated the idea that perhaps this was a record of things that had come to past in an alternate dimension and that she and I had than travelled here to escape from Yogoloth and we were in some way reborn, but the gist of our story, including the death of her soul were doomed to repeat themselves unless I acted. Because of this I hoped if I could somehow access the memories of this alternate dimension maybe I'd understand something more about this. I also tried asking people about lucid dreaming, hoping again for some information, although I never really acted on this idea. This digging in my mind provoked some strange thoughts, and brought my mental turmoil to its peak.

The worst I got in this period was perhaps the second day after the dream. I was trying to get a better picture of her in my mind or perhaps get an idea of what her personality was like, perhaps so I could recognize her if she came into my life. Slowly I started thinking, what would she say now in this situation, and I started imagining it, and then I started imagining my response and then her response until I began to think that perhaps I was now somehow telepathically speaking to her. It was strange because I sort of understood that I was more or less imagining her character, but then again I thought if I could tap into my unconscious I could find her there. What kind of stuff did I here from her you might ask? Well, she told me to stop this, to stop thinking of her, she told me she wasn't real, and she made sometimes sarcastic sort of remarks which sort of fit her personality as I imagined it. She was what I thought of her, deeply concerned about me, but also a sarcstic, intensely cool girl who alternated between hiding her feelings and blurting them out. And so in my head I held dialogues and they continued for perhaps 1/2 a day, perhaps a whole day, and then I took a nap.

My mind was tired and I needed a break from these thoughts, and also I wanted to try to visit her through my dreams. There was a knock on the door (or perhaps on a nearby door) and I awoke. When I awoke the dialogue thoughts were gone, my mind felt strangely at peace. Even when I tried invoking the dialogue thoughts I could not find them. And then I thought perhaps this means she has come, and so I ran over to the door and opened it, to find absolutely nothing. The knock I heard was probably on someone else's door or perhaps an auditory illusion (I've had some of those). The worst was now over, although the whole of the matter was not.

I still was convinced she had come and so I thought I now had to scan the women I met to see if I could find her. What I remembered of her from my dreams was basically a composite of an anime character and a manga character so I suspected I did not know her actual appearance or perhaps she could change appearances. But I also I had to go to class. When I was running to class I saw a white pigeon, I mean pigeons are always white but this was an unusually bright white and next to it was a pretty red haired girl who very well could have been the witch, or so I thought at the time (one of the powers I assumed the witch had was some ability to manipulate animals), but I didn't stop to talk to her. That fact would haunt me for some months until this whole experience ended.

The rest of my time when I was obsessed with the witch idea was marked by small things like that. I would keep an eye out for girls who could be her and try to talk to more women. I kept trying to see the moon because it was when she was travelling to the moon in my dream she saw me and decided to stay on Earth (I pondered whether I should actually avoid the moon because if I did maybe she would actually go to the moon and never lose her soul, although in my imagination I developed the idea that the moon was actually a spiritual wasteland and she would lose her soul there or on Earth, but on Earth I could act to save her). I prayed every day for her. And I felt guilt and sorrow over her. The whole mess probably aggrevated my mental illness, but I kept on with it for about a semester, although like I said my mind would switch back and forth between belief and disbelief. Slowly I became more and more convinced that this idea of the witch was not real, and that it was just my imagination and probably due to the events of September (also I reasoned that if it was real, I would be forced to encounter her sooner or later, since in the dream she sought me out). My last gasp of this idea came at the end of the semester. There was a girl who occassionally I suspected was the witch and so I gathered up the courage to speak to her hoping to settle the matter. And so I did and while she turned out to be a nice young lady, she was far too cheery and easy-going to be the woman from my dreams (I did not explain to her my actual motivations for talking to her since honestly, this is a pretty insane idea). Finally I laid the idea to rest, and I moved on with my life (although I had a full-on mental breakdown a couple days later, it was actually more related to finals than to this matter, but in the process of beating my self down (during my breakdowns typically I will repeat to myself insults and accusations) I used this idea occassionally and probably the mental stress may have left me vunerable to this (although it could also be that without the sense of mission the quest to find the witch gave me I became more vunerable to the breakdown).

Still occassionally I wonder, what is reality? Is it so impossible for my dream to come true? Definitely according to the universe as I understand it now, but what if how I understand the universe now isn't all there is, what if there is more and what if the witch is waiting for me, out there somewhere? But that is just wondering and in the realm of wonder is where the witch will have to dwell, the woman who gave her soul to help me on my journey will have to just be a ghost of a dream. Perhaps someday I will make a story of all of this, but until then this will just be a strange episode of my life, burned in my memory, but no longer an obsession twisting my mind (seriously, I do not want any of my friends or family who read this convinced that this is how I am presently, or even typically thinking, this was an odd-ball freak occurance in my head that has ended and no longer is a problem, seriously, do not read too much into this). Still it is interesting and so I thought I would share my tale of the season of the witch.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!