Operation "Start Sleeping at a Normal Hour" continues to run into road blocks. The most obvious one is that people who I want to talk to are also awake at odd hours. The internet weirdo is a crepuscular creature. I've had an unusual sleep schedule since I was pretty young, something that caused no end of trouble when I lived with my parents. My mother took my sleeping during the day and staying up all night as the ultimate proof of my depression and also seemed to think that if I could just manage to keep normal hours it might end up solving itself. To her, I guess total social isolation would have been preferable to a nontraditional sleep schedule.

Speaking of keeping up appearances, I have to go to my grandfather's birthday on Tuesday. He's turning 90. Still as spry as ever, at least in the mind. if you manage to talk loud enough for him to hear you he'll still be happy to have a conversation about [xxxxxx], [xxxxxxxxx xxxx x xxxxxxxx xxxx], classical music, any number of things.. I like him quite a bit. He's not technically my grandfather by blood, but that doesn't matter very much to me. He married my grandmother before I was born. In spite of this, I know this event will almost certainly be something of an ordeal. My mom seem worried about it, having to go without my father, and I doubt J will attend. That leaves the two of us, and her fear refracts and multiplies off of my own endlessly. My inability to get my sleep schedule on track is making the prospect seem even more daunting.

I'm just going to try to focus on the positives. I can almost certainly get drunk at the function and nobody will care. That's something to look forward to!

I, I, me, me, me, my.. These entries are solipsistic. I'm a self centered person, so that's to be expected. What else would I talk about? The state of the world? Society? Politics? The nature of love? Personal philosophy? Fashion advice? There's no escaping the self! I reveal myself through any of these. To paraphrase an aquaintance, "the more people you meet who have had a psychedelic ego death the more people you know whose heads are fundamentally jammed up their ass." Mine is as far up there as it can get.

Here, I'll give you something. See if you agree with me or not. Love is a feeling and an action. The feeling of love can be caused by a lot of different things; usually it's triggered by "understanding," or imagining that you have "understanding," of another being. Sometimes it's caused by the knowledge of your lack of "understanding," or even a fundamental inability to "understand," an "unknowability" that triggers a desire for what you can't ever have. "Understanding" is a very intense form of intimacy. When you feel understood, when you look at someone and imagine that in this moment they are both the most beautiful thing in the world and here they are, completely bare to you, something shining, or maybe when someone does something that makes you feel extremely "misunderstood" in a special way, chemicals release in your brain, you feel high, the world sparkles, you know the deal. The catch here is that two people can never have complete and total understanding due to the separate nature of conciousness. And still, we go on the futile quest for complete categorical knowledge of the Other. Oftentimes I think that even partial understanding is extremely difficult, that unless everyone involved works very hard they'll always be interacting with an idea that they're projecting onto someone else. Only with time and great effort can you come to momentary glimpses of truth. Love as an action is something that can be and often is entirely separate from the feeling of love.

Someone can FEEL like they love you very much and still act towards you in a way that is not loving in the slightest. This is true for all kinds of love, romantic, familial, friendship.. Acting with love looks very different depending on circumstances, but ultimately it involves an acknowledgment of the seperate-ness of the love object. Not as a perfect idol, a totem, a tool, but a "person." Any act of love made with the goal of merging the self with the love object is a fruitless endeavor, one that will end in a very painful life lesson for the both of you. And still, and still.. To be one thing, at least those of us with certain predispositions.. To be something other than the self, to fall completely into another person, to drown, even (especially) if it seems like a bad idea.. Well.

That's how I see it.

Here I am, not only sounding jaded and bitter but misrepresenting my day. I had a good one since I spent most of it on call with friends. I'm lucky I know such funny and sweet people.

Music for today; More Magnolia Electric Company,, Guided by Voices,,Elliott Smith, and The Frogs.