Quick thing before bed

People like to say that writing your feelings is very cathartic and releases a lot of tension.  I myself believe that catharsis doesn’t work for everybody, because it certainly does bad to me.

If I write about something I’m angry about, personally, the anger becomes all the more real to me because it had been put into words.  If I never put it into words, there’s always the chance the emotion will change in nature, usually for the better.

Examples are always good.  Say I was upset because a friend likes to treat me like an emotional scapegoat whenever they have something bugging them.  If I write about that, that anger becomes much more accessible to my psyche, and instead of successfully keeping the emotional distance necessary to be able to stop having a reason to be upset, my mind/heart would gladly default to the easier thought process of being just plain old angry.  And that sucks.

OK fine, this entry was kind of cathartic for me. Shut up.

Plea.

Please let this be the last time.  No, that last time wasn’t the last time, okay, but I swear, this time will be the last time.  I will exhibit inhuman spiritual strength against hatred and selfishness and distrustful pride.  I promise.  It will never happen again, and look, I took time to say a prayer so that this shall be so.  It must be so.

But it is not.  The selfishness continues to take me from the – I don’t know what it is – coolness of your breath (how necessarily cheesy), the wind reminding me of the calm you that time and again envelop me in.  The warmth, the sun that melts my frozen soul’s compass.  Cool and warm.  Contradictions only because we say it is.  But you are both and with both you create mountains of ice and oceans of fire.  You make countless distant, silent, violent balls of light and inconceivably cold nothingness to separate them all. You make mist of water; you make crystals of mist.

And somewhere in between, you made me – not of fire and not of ice, but of a soul with the bite of both.  A soul that knows cool, knows warm, knows the sensations that come with both, but has no idea what to do with them.  We’re convinced we understand when we hardly understand why we are alive.  The years I’ve spent in existence I can count in my head. Cool and warm have been around longer.

And so have hatred and selfishness – but I am forever convinced I’ll have them under control.  This is my wake-up call.  This is my plea.

That I stop making thinly-veiled promises to myself, and start making them to someone who’s been there forever, who’s heard my plea from a trillion other hearts, who knows exactly how to handle cold and warmth, who knows all its secrets, who knows all mine.

But it is no more than a plea.  Vows are for people with willpower, and I realized a while ago I had a lot less of that than I thought.

Whoops, 4 AM, you’re making me think!

STORYTIME!

So my roommate just walked into the room, telling me about how he has to proofread the essay of a friend of ours.  Jolly good, Peter.  Then he joked that I should do it since my English proofreading skills are better, then…wait, let me put this in dialogue form:

Peter: Heeeeeeey, you should do it since your English proofreading is better than miiine.

Mark: (Evading suggestion) Umm…shouldn’t you want to improve your own skills?

Peter: Oh psh, I’m gonna be an East Asian language translator after college; I don’t need English!

Mark: So you really want to become a translator?

Peter: Well, my real dream is to become a TV show host, haha.

Good story, yeah? Yeah, not really.  THE POINT IS I like to bother myself with this question of what my plans are for life.  My whole life I’ve been thinking in terms of “journalist, actor, lawyer, etc.” and have been wary of people saying “I just want to be happy”.  I felt like that was the ultimate cop-out in making a decision. 

But I get it now.  I just want to be happy.  I want to give back to my parents and make their last years kick-ass.  I want to learn the languages I’ve wanted to learn but could never afford to take a class for.  I want to die having been everywhere I plan on being and then some. I guess I just need to put everything in God’s hands.

But people like to see “putting everything in God’s hands” as a cop-out too.  I don’t.  The only way any of us will be able to have our cake and eat it too is if we let God hold the cake.  That might mean living by His terms, though, but whatever; we have all of humanity to figure what exactly those are.  If He needs me to proofread a friend’s paper right now, so be it.  That’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, though: be happy with what you have and what you have will make you happy.

But maybe that’s the point.  We have the whole world, and that’s quite a lot of happiness.

The Holiday Tree.

Would “Seasonal Candle-holder” or “Minority Table” be a good and less-offensive replacement for “Menorah” and “Kinara”?  Would they make the people who don’t celebrate either Chanukah or Kwanzaa feel better?  Would we all have a holiday season filled with less ignorance and more harmonious understanding of each other’s cultural and religious identifications?

No.  We’d just have two more awkward names for things that mean something to people.

A little late on the bandwagon, Mark? Yes, but blame Farmville.

Macy’s started it, and everyone whose ears I had access to at the age of 14 when this report/controversy/thing came out got to hear my two cents.  Now Farmville’s bringing it back with a pretty little lighted shrub they dub the “holiday tree”.  Which isn’t a big deal, and everyone who bought one probably said “Christmas tree” in their head. No big.

Now there are two ways of looking at this, and I like my mugs half-filled [with egg nog]: 1 –  ”Holiday” has taken on the meanings of Christmas, and now they’re interchangeable. 2 (the sad one) – People are forgetting about Christmas and seasonal ambiguity is creating a “Enjoy your December 25th!” attitude.

The latter’s way to extreme for me.  I like the former. Merry Christmas!

Today I ran 5 kilometers and have a cup and a shirt to show for it.

It’s called the Big Chill, and its a 5k run/walk race thing that benefits local children in need.  It attracted more than 4500 runners this year, who each donated a toy to participate.  Happy feelings and Christmas cheer.  And lungs about to collapse and legs I can’t feel anymore.  All in good holiday spirits.

A polar bear with sneakers, because he runs, and a scarf, because he's cold.

SO, a short list of some of the people who passed me as I slowly lost the sensation in my face and forgot how to breath:

1. A man dressed as Santa.
2. A man dressed as Larry the Lighthouse.
3. Army ROTC carrying their gear.
4. A girl dressed in lime green spandex, neon purple sweatshirt, white head band, and yellow knee socks.
5. Several old men.
6. Several old women.
7. A BLIND MAN.
8. Fourteen of my friends.
9. A white family (5 year old included).
10. My running partner.

Day well spent.

Woow I haven’t written in this since the week I started it. Win.

So I’ve had an interesting semester.  I can type without looking at the keyboard now (most of the time).  I bought an actual coat and now layering is just the BEGINNING of the history of Mark staying warm.  I’ve drank more coffee than I have in my entire lifetime up to the this semester.  My career choices have narrowed (although the paths are still quite broad) and the passions driving this narrowing have been intensified by the self-imagined catalyst that is Capitalist Socialism (I’m not sure what that means either, but it sounds all academic and controversial and that’s good enough for me).

OH AND I BOUGHT A PLANNER WHICH MEANT THAT ALL MY PROBLEMS WENT AWAY. Almost.  Now I can keep track of all my problems.  Except for the fact that I hardly ever refer back to it after having written something in it.

But ENOUGH OF THIS ESOTERIC CHIT CHAT that keeps blogs from reaching Level Win in terms of readers who care.  I wrote in my planner a list of things that I wanted to write about over the semester but have never found the time for (Farmville *cough cough hack vomit*).

Those can wait a few more weeks days. What I want to write about right now that I’m home and procrastinating driving back to school, partially because I’m too lazy to find my planner (of whose location one meter from my left arm I am completely aware), and partially because my internet works slightly faster at home, is this:

I realize I’m an appetite-less workaholic who hates work and loves food.

I know what you’re thinking.  Actually no I don’t.  You probably get me.  And we’ll leave it at that.

I’ll make more sense when I have food in me.

My Last 10 Google Searches

And yes, there really is a Cloud Appreciation Society (based in the UK). Google it.

Tweet that shit. (A bipolar Web 2.0 soliloquy starring me.)

Recently I’ve been on two ends of the Twitter spectrum.  When I first signed up (on an account whose name I don’t even remember anymore) I really did not understand the point of this thing.

It’s Facebook statuses without the Facebook, I said to myself one day in the past, sipping on a warm mug of french vanilla latte and reading the New York Times while listening to progressive South American jazz with my right leg lazily crossed over my left, the navy blue of my wool cardigan reflected onto the sides of my thick horn-rimmed glasses that don’t really help me see any better since I bought them from a vintage consignment shop that I took the subway to on my way to  Whole Foods the day before.

 

When I held onto my second (and current) account long enough to start tweeting, I thought it was even more useless in practice than in theory.  Going to the grocery store. I just announced to all three followers of mine that I am going to the store.  Technology has reduced itself to announcing your every move to absolutely no one who cares. Was I doing something wrong? Was it that I didn’t know enough people for it to actually be of any use?

Eventually I found more of my friends on Twitter and I’d read about how they don’t want to get out of bed and how they’re brushing their teeth after a really boring class and how one friend wanted to rant about something that took more than 140 characters no matter how abbrevated he tried to make it (Cnt blv prof gv quiz b4 cls evn strtd! Im so mad i cd…)  I was angry. I was angry with myself, my friends, and with God (because it’s not really a struggle unless you’re angry with God) for making such a successful useless piece of crap.

Then there were the celebrities. Currently I’m following Ashton, Martha, and Sam Champion of the weather. I know I could be following so much more interesting people, but that’s who I have now.  If they aren’t talking about lunch with Vogue or dinner with Mariah or post-dinner-cocaine-shoots with Gaga…

I’m getting off topic here. (And by here I mean the second sentence of the post.)  The point is Twitter is good if you have an interesting life. The best tweets come from those who are too lazy to get out of bed but do it anyway. They have something to tweet about. Twitter is good because if you want at all for your tweets to be anywhere as interesting as the celebrities you’re following or any of your more-put-together-and-socially-competent-than-you friends that you’re following, you have to be actually doing something worth tweeting. Using the Transitive Property of Non-sensibly Successful Media Trends, you get that Twitter is good because it encourages one to have a more interesting life.

I’m not saying my life is any more exciting than it was before I started using twitter.  To be honest, I get really jealous whenever someone tweets like an asshole (a Twatter, if you will). But I really shouldn’t, because things like that should be motivating me to one-up them, and that’s never a bad thing.

OR I could just have fun with it and stop making it more than what it is.

@ me: @markatique

Let’s procrastinate

Good job!

What are you not doing? I’m not reading my french essays. Oh crap. I just remembered I have to do research on Madame de Stael too. Oh well, already started on this, and everybody knows to need to finish what you started, or should I say, you need to let Taylor finish what she started.

A few things:

1) I was BEYOND impressed by the second-by-second Twittivity happening during this year’s VMAs (the first VMAs I’ve ever watched; things get interesting when you decide to throw yourself into Journalism and Mass Media at the exact moment our country’s cultural representatives to the rest of the world also decide to throw themselves in front of the Stupid Bus.) LOOK AT THIS FRACKING TIME CHART. Not only is it SEXY as HELL; you also realize that not once was Taylor Swift the big head in the middle; it was constantly a Kanye-Gaga Showdown (a Kangadown, if you will).  Now I’m definitely not a proponent nor am I a practitioner of celebrity sports commentary, but the only thing I can think of more impressive than last Sunday’s beatdown was my 10-page Final Poli-Sci paper last semester that I wrote in three hours.  The only difference was that one kept college kids everywhere talking about how much b.s. we’re exposed to and read about, and the other one involved Kanye West and Lady Gaga. (Kidding, Professor Rossi.)

2)  I just found out how much it costs to market a movie. Say a movie’s total production costs amounted to about $100 million. $30 million would go to marketing it. You could buy an African country’s land and set up a dance studio for the severely claustrophobic for the price of getting the American public to talk about a movie (but then there would be the problem of getting the claustrophobic dancers onto the plane). I have no links to these stats, and since I’m procrastinating, I shall put this off for another day.

3) I had a bacon, egg and cheese on a buttery croissant this morning with some Sobe iced tea.  I had a couple of dollars left over in my meal swipe, so I bought some Naked and am currently attempting to down its totality before it hardens and becomes an extremely healthy gremlin. But it’s proving difficult.

4) I’m wearing a vintage Dior tie I found in my parents’ closet a long time ago.  I had no idea of any previous relation with the world of Biannual Bryant Parkology and am proud of them now not only for coming to this country discovering that cottage cheese and cut fruits DO go together, but also for birthing me and alllowing me to find it and steal it from them at the tender awkward age of Junior year high school, making it my first legit vintage item and starting the growing dynastic collection that is currently my closet.  Speaking of which, I’m looking for something yellow to complete my apparel spectrum. And some protein bars, cus brotha gotta build up (I did some stretches yesterday and tripped while standing still).

Actually, since I’m already on here, I’ll just insert my research into this post =D (and by research I/we all mean wiki-and-paste) WARNING IF YOU HATE FRENCH WRITERS, BAD NOTES AND HAVING KIDS WITH A MAN YOU WEREN’T ORIGINALLY CRAZY ABOUT, STOP READIN HERE.

Madame de Staël a.k.a. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein

- Child of a Swiss statesman and famous mistress, who treated her like they do in the movies with the moms but the girl’s the good guy.

- Married a Swedish man with little direction and money, but that was fixed when the Swedish king made an ambassadorship deal.  Both parties got what they wanted, even though there was little affection between the two. She got status and he got money.

-  Decided to started blogging writing publicly under her own name, received much attention and renown for her comments on contemporary literature and Rousseau especially.

-  Husband died; they had like, four kids (WHUT).

- She continued to attempt the successful publication of her book de l’Allemagne, but Napoleon REALLY didn’t like her, and condemned her books and kicked her out of the country.

- She moved to Coppet where her father was from and had a sexy-time marriage with a younger man.

I also like to think I can write decent (historically inaccurate) poetry

 

This is no means to an end

For the means is the end

And I declare myself victor in this war

Between my limitations and my dreams

And my Purple Heart will be your lips

pressed against my lips

And my ticker-tape parade will be my smile

on your smile

And we will cheer, “No more war!”

And forget about the struggles of battle

and live in eternal peace but no tranquility

For our hearts will wildly dance

And I’ll scoop you up in the middle of Times Square

You and Me

Sailor and Nurse

Time brought us here

This kiss will keep us here.