this song gets to me. i love atmosphere, seriously.
also, i think i've cried more in the last few months than i have in the last few years combined.


The last starfighter is wounded, time to give it up
On a pick-it-up mission, kept it bitter
Gettin' in a million memories just to forget her
The difficulty in keepin' emotions controlled
Cookies for the road, took me by the soul
Hunger for the drama, hunger for the nurture
Gonna take it further, the hurt feels like murder
Interpret the eyes, read the lines on her face
The sunshine is fake, how much time did I waste?
Fuck you Lucy for leaving me
Fuck you Lucy for not needing me
I wanna say fuck you because I still love you
No, I'm not okay, and I don't know what to do

Dudes, we are living in the future.

operate with the end in mind.


Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

Coldplay defines my life right now. In an emo sense.


Last night was one of the craziest nights I think I've ever had, and it was all environmental craziness, nothing any of us did influenced the insanity of it.
My friend Tom drove seven people to Omaha in his minivan to see Sigur Rós at the Orpheum, a really nice theater downtown which usually houses symphonies and musicals. We got there a little early so a few of us got coffee and then went to rummage through a really cool record store. Suddenly Tom and Eric rush into the record store from the Chinese restaurant next door, saying there was a tornado warning and we had to leave immediately. Tom was really scared, it was kind of funny how he walked about twice as fast as the rest of us, like he was gonna die. But when we got outside I kind of started to panic as well because the sirens were going off and I'd never heard tornado sirens before. Apparently a tornado had touched down right outside of town.
We decided to head to the theater to see if we could just hunker down there before the show started, but they weren't letting people in. We stood outside watching the sky get darker, the clouds move faster and the wind blow harder before they finally ushered us into the basement of the theater. The doormen said that the show was postponed until the tornado had passed.
An hour later we were all sitting in the whitewashed bare halls backstage musing about the weather and the show. We'd just found out that another tornado had hit Iowa and four boy scouts on a camping trip were killed. People kept walking past us in the halls so no one paid attention when a couple members of Sigur Rós (the singer and the pianist) walked by. Then they walked by again in the opposite direction and me and Roxy and Eric stared at each other thinking THANK GOD FOR THE TORNADO. Pretty soon the entire fourteen- or fifteen-piece band walked by carrying drums and brass instruments. Five minutes later they marched out into the hall single-file playing a march of some sort, parade-style, to entertain the fans. Plus I'm pretty sure they were drunk because one of the girls was banging an empty wine bottle with a drumstick. What a great moment though!! Sigur Rós marching around backstage entertaining all the stranded fans! It was so quirky and endearing.
Then we waited another few minutes and they let us upstairs (the band marched past us in the other direction) to wait some more at the door of the main room. Finally we got in and sat down and the trombone player did some of his solo material, which was really good. (His first words to the audience were, complete with thick Icelandic accent: "You have a very nice city. We went to the zoo this morning. It was beautiful." HOW CUTE.) I swear every member of that band plays every instrument. The stage was set up like a studio too, instruments in big clusters everywhere, unorganized, microphones hovering over them. Then the band came out and played for a couple hours. This was easily the most amazing part of the night, you can tell these people love what they do and really feel the music, and they kept saying, "Thanks for being so nice to us." I cried during most of the slower songs. The harmonies and the way Jónsi sings always speaks to me on a deep level, especially during the songs in Hopelandic. I was sitting there crying imagining what he was saying based on the music and his gestures. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE. The last song they played was the one in English off their new album, which I hadn't heard any of, and it was so so so amazing. I didn't even understand the lyrics much, and what I did was really simple, but the music and expressivity was intense. They also played some other songs from the new album that had heavy drums and guitar, which I didn't like very much because the heavy drums drowned out Jónsi's voice and the lighter harmonies on vibraphone and piano, but those were pretty intense too. I just think Sigur Rós should stick to what they started with, it almost seems like they're trying to appeal to more of the mainstream audiences, especially singing songs in English on the same album. That contradicts what they've stood for in interviews and on their DVD.
In any case they finished and we went outside and I cried a little more and then Luke and Roxy left to go home, so Tom and Troy and Eric and I tried to figure out what to do, and ended up going to a bar and having a beer (I had a diet coke, ID-less.) Then Becca joined up with us and we drove home. I drove the last ninety miles or so, or almost did, until a few miles north of Des Moines a deer ran in front of the minivan and took out Tom's headlight. Scared me shitless so Eric drove the rest of the way. I feel bad about the car, but that stupid fucking deer just jumped in front of the car when I was going 70. I always felt bad for the deer but COME ON. It's not like they haven't seen cars before. That's the first time I've hit any sort of animal driving, and it figures it would be a FULL GROWN DEER.
Then me and Troy had a few beers and watched Sgt. Bilko with Steve until we all passed out.
WHAT A CRAZY NIGHT. Tornado, Sigur Rós marching around backstage, amazing performance, deer in headlights. Good story.

Blhahahahaaaaaaa Thom Yorke is a genius gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the eraser.

So. Beautiful.
I can't relate to the lyrics at the moment, but it's such a gorgeous song.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day

And a song that I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone, without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

Simon & Garfunkel
Kathy's Song

I like the fact that the automated ads on the lyrics websites I visit say things like, "Find Great Deals on Simon and Garfunkel Stuff!"
I don't really think I would...


I feel like an open wound scraped raw and scraped again, a dozen times, and just now it's dawning on me not to put on a bandage but to retreat from the friction and let it heal naturally. Give it some air. I'll have a lovely raised shining scar, but I'll have the knowledge of the experience as well.
I can stop letting the fear cloud my vision and just wander free like I did last night, alone, in the still air lighthearted from wine with the Raconteurs in my ears. I realized again that I am content alone. I am strong. I know myself, and I know I don't need to settle for a jagged cycle of pain and satisfaction and fear and half-moon emotions just to feel a connection to something or someone; I can enjoy life without it. I can be real.
I will not transfer the need to another like some sort of parasite. That has only ever led to more pain. On the contrary, I will overcome it.

OH! Oh! Oh! I'm so good!

I KNEW getting some good sleep would solve all my problems.

From now on, objective 1 is always Sleep Tight, Wake Up In Good Mood. Have Awesome Day.
And objective 2 is Repeat.

I just found mine + Jeskuh's fanfiction account from eighth grade into like... tenth.

It's all still there! We were so amazing! I missed that goddamn Harry Potter spoof.

I kind of want to put some stuff I wrote for Jl MC 201 in here. So here's one. The assignment was just to describe someone close to us, giving the reader the most vivid description possible. I LOVE these assignments. We had a half hour to complete it.
Guess who?
After reading this my professor told me he wants to have a glass of wine with her... hahaha.

----------------------------------------

She arrives looking painfully refined, a modest look in her elegantly lined eye and in the air about her—a walking paradox, a classic Italian woman. She asks for nothing until I offer her a glass of red wine, which she sips slowly.
It hasn’t been too long. We speak of recent days, of new love interests and mutual friends until the topics warp and become abstract. She sits on my sofa, one leg crossed over the other, and I see her blue eyes light up as we dream aloud together of traveling the world with only the clothes on our backs. We ponder the narrowly defined subculture in Ames and envision an anonymous life in the city. We mourn the devaluation of classic literature since the invention of the Internet and blame technology for the rampant ignorance among youth in the modern United States. We wish we could have been hippies.
She speaks passionately; she nods often. Her sorrel hair brushes her elbows, and her Chicago upbringing reveals itself through a distinct, almost harsh verbal rhythm. I share a few tracks from the Thin Lizzy album I recently rediscovered with her.
A few more friends arrive and she becomes less animate. They sit on the floor and the futon, while she remains alone on the sofa, now the observer, sipping the same glass of red wine, thoughts swirling in her head. I entertain my other friends and the conversation with her falters; I think she feels inadequate.
For an unknown reason her inhibitions seem to melt away when we two speak alone. She voices the words as they come to mind. Among others, we both feel the inhibitions start to come back, and we both realize that she came half an hour early for a reason—hope of a meaningful conversation that can only be held between the best of friends.

I've been on a Salt-n-Pepa kick for the last couple of days.

These ladies must have an incredible amount of charisma for the following reason:

They were able to be on the mainstream billboard charts for most of the 90s. They are an ALL GIRL GROUP, and they stand for feminism, diversity, tolerance, female sexuality, and partying in general, but not the competetive kind, just the fun kind. Their videos feature a variety of races and shapes and faces that fall way way outside of the standards of beauty in our society. They embrace the minority in a proud, nonviolent, positive way.

Such blatant feminism has never had a place on the mainstream charts, not since then.
I can't think of any other girl group that didn't rely solely on their sex appeal to stay famous, or that had such positive messages. Pussycat Dolls, eat your heart out.


The only question that I have is WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, GIRLS? They must have gotten tired of being rebellious or something because they now have their own reality TV show on MTV or VH1 or wherever. I watched five minutes of it a couple of weeks ago and was a little grossed out by the cattiness and immaturity of it. I'm choosing to forget about it so I can continue to think of them as absolutely amazing.

Now I can bring home the bacon, fry it in the pan
Never let you forget that you're a man
'cause I'm a W-O-M-A-N
That's what I am, doin' all I can
The thing that makes me mad and crazy, upset
Got to break my neck just to get my respect
Go to work and get paid less than a man
When I'm doin' the same damn thing that he can
When I'm aggressive then I'm a bitch
When I got attitude you call me a witch
Treat me like a sex-object (That ain't smooth)
Underestimate the mind, oh yeah, you're a fool
Weaker sex, yeah right, that's the joke (ha!)
Have you ever been in labor? I don't think so, nope
I'm a genuine feminine female thang
Can you hang? Ain't nothin' but a she thang

In other news, VIOLENT FEMMES. THE JAM. THE CLASH.

It starts out like a murmur
Then it grows like thunder
Until it bursts inside of you
Try to hold it steady
Wait until you're ready
Any second now will do
Throw the door wide open
Not a word is spoken
Anything that you want to do, yeah
Well, don't you feel the same way?
But you don't know what to do, yeah
Ain't no time for hesitatin'
All you got to do is move
They say you're feeling blue, well
I just found a cure
It's a thing you gotta do, yeah
Now listen
When you say your body's aching
Well, I know that it's aching
Chill bumps come up on you
I love the funny fool, well
Just like foolin' after school
And then you ask for medication
Who cares for medication
When you've worn away the cure?
Go back to the country
Feel a change is good for you
Ah, don't keep convincin'
What's that creeping up behind you?
It's just an old friend
It's just an old friend
And what's that he's got for you?

So what's this song talking about?
What's Robert Plant telling me to do to cure my depression?
Is it sex
drugs
or rock 'n roll??

This is a beautiful song to begin with, and the lyrics describe my life thus far... or maybe just how it was for a while.

You move in waves
You never retrace
Your newest craze
Straight out of the face by the bed unread

I'm left behind
Like all the others
Some fall for you
It doesn't make much difference if they do

She changes every time you look
By summer it was all gone - now she's moved on
She called you every other day
So savour it it's all gone - now she's moved on

So for a while
Everything seemed new
Did we connect ?
Or was it all just biding time for you ?

Porcupine Tree
SHESMOVEDON

I've been debating on whether or not to post this here because I don't know how it will be received, but to hell with it, I like it. I wrote it on the airplane home, quite randomly and quite unexpectedly.

-----------

The Midwestern women didn’t question the nagging cold feeling in the back of their minds which threatened to overwhelm them from time to time, which they quieted with salon highlights, designer shoes and reality TV shows, subconsciously aware of the fact that even acknowledging the dead blackness in the depths of their being would be unpleasant, irreversible, and counterproductive to the tightly wrapped-and-ribboned package that was their lives. It might displease their husbands if the perpetually smiling wives realized that the context in which they were living didn’t allow them to love themselves, not really, and the husbands’ displeasure was to be avoided at all costs. The wives didn’t want to realize that the happiness was all on the surface. They couldn’t stop smiling.

They might discover passions that would make their entire lives up to that point completely insignificant. No, no, no, everything was going too smoothly to start that; never mind that that sort of autonomous revolution might jolt them out of this nightmarish cookie-cutter existence, this happy obedience, once and for all. They stopped themselves before thinking too far.

She thought about the women on the West coast, the ones she’d grown up around. Mostly they were fantasies nowadays, fictitious characters created from fragments of childhood memories and the images of ideal feminine beauty she’d seen on TV in high school, images she had foolishly believed to be attainable.

The women in her childhood, from what she could pick out of the scattered freeze-frames of the early 90’s which danced in her mind, were professional, neurotic, and sexy—fresh new thirtysomethings recently back in the real world after surviving the substance-soaked 80’s. Always half-sarcastic, mildly bitter, trying fiercely to laugh off perverted morals and a loss of faith in mankind with a hard face, hiding the real shame and disgust within, sedating it with another screwdriver, please.

They were professionals, they were anorexic, they were forever sipping Diet Cokes through straws and feathering their hair. They attended step class three times weekly wearing bright clingy leotards and white Reeboks and sweatbands. They had two-year-old daughters whom they dressed in jumpsuits patterned with watermelons. They were her parents’ friends and colleagues, relocated to Los Angeles (land of Freedom) from Michigan and Tennessee and Seattle. This was the Land where Anything was Possible, and they were going to achieve the American Dream and would decidedly be happy, finally, when they made their first hundred thousand, lost those ten pounds, bought that Lexus. They swallowed the immense heavy dissatisfaction that spread like molasses through their chests, repeating to themselves: as soon as, as soon as…

She rarely saw any of them anymore. The smart ones had quit their nine-to-fives years ago to pursue a more sensible path, usually something modest, always something they’d had a passion for but had previously felt too embarrassed to consider carrying out. Big Dreams were what people had in Los Angeles, not bike shops.

But the women now, the ones who were her age who had all grown up in the city or the suburbs, the twenty-something offspring of the L.A. migrants, were a hugely different breed. They were lost, just as their parents had been upon realizing money wasn’t happiness, but these women didn’t know they were lost because they had never known stability.

Born into a whirlwind of cultures clashing, a tired war on drugs, budding generational bewilderment, violent backyard wrestling versus their parents’ traditional waspy values, high schools full of nasty delicious rumors about underage sex and elusive drugs and rich cheerleader sluts who for some reason everyone seemed to love; Mexican immigrants so hard-working they practically slept in the fields just to be able to feed their children, yet who were somehow judged and condemned by the rest of society for not having had the opportunity to learn English.

Bombarded with magazines and TV commercials all featuring thin, blonde, tanned, toned, smiling women advocating an endless train of products designed to "fix" the flaws the media told them they had while their parents and teachers assured them they were beautiful just as they were, and the boys their age scoffed or ignored them if they didn’t present themselves as sexual objects, something to perfect, a sort of commodified mannequin.

These women grew up ignorant of poverty, unaware that anything but a sprawling web of affluent big-city suburbs comprised the God-Motherfucking-Blessed United States of America. The twisted friendships they wrought with one another as MTV-crazed middle and high-school girls were pitifully shallow and overtly competitive. Each girl felt imprisoned and forlorn inside her own head, sensing something was deeply wrong with the way people interacted with each other, but that notion was shortly buried by the Race. Each girl eventually forgot that she was hiding her thoughts and feelings and passions and self-esteem away, painting over them with comparisons to other girls, to magazines, to the airbrushed chiseled starved masterpieces they saw on display in magazines like contorted porcelain dolls. In alcohol ads, in Prada ads, in how-to articles for girls with Bad Skin and Thunder Thighs. Soon they defined themselves by their appearances.

Their obsession with conforming to what the various media judged attractive— acceptable—desirable—soon became the most central facet of their lives. Some sort of invisible goal had been established in their minds, the goal of Happiness, of Contentment, a goal that would be reached as soon as they looked like the girls in the magazines. They stopped eating, or worse; they started throwing up food in their parents’ bathrooms after dinner. They obsessed over the latest fashions and grew jealous toward the spoiled girls whose parents bought them whatever they wanted. Fuck school, what does school matter? They competed with one another to see who ate least, who got attention from boys, who had the best hair. For them, that was joy, being That Girl. The friends competed silently. Silently, they hated one another, a smoldering hatred that rose from the knowledge that there would always be bonier, prettier, more perfect girls than themselves. It frustrated them, it confused them, and after high school none of them knew where to go, still desperately seeking a way to become Happy, unsure if it was really possible, their faith still rooted in the Race.

The blanket of self-loathing constantly present in their ungrounded souls could be numbed or deadened for certain lengths of time.

Some girls slept with anyone who would, feeding off of the validation the sex gave them. Because wasn’t that why they all wanted to be That Girl in the first place? To get That Guy? To get any guy? Wasn’t that the point of it all, to Be Attractive? But two words were always left out, the point was to be attractive to men. For men. As if the men decided their worth.

Some girls became addicts. They slowly committed suicide, three or four at a time, always a small cluster and always together, because that way at least they knew they belonged. They were Accepted, they were a Group, they were Enough. Their lives became a hectic mishmash of deals and cash and pills and needles, and they couldn’t think any longer about the loathing, the antagonism, the fact that they repulsed themselves, because they were living fast, from one high to the next.

Some girls escaped.

Some fled to places where life was simpler. A bleak existence.

Some entered institutions and eventually left labeled Recovered.

Some found solace in literature and quickly became wise, and it was excruciating.

Mostly, people called this emergence of women from their hellish adolescence Growing Up, although many of them hadn’t the slightest idea what that meant, and none of them felt adult at all. Instead they felt duped, cheated of precious time, sour toward the same magazines they’d worshiped, and far past due for a game of intellectual catch-up with their male counterparts.

They didn’t blame the men, no, they knew the men no longer had anything to do with the sick game that society played with young girls. They blinked with dazed eyes at the reality that had only just become apparent to them. They ached for the girls who remained a part of it.

If you hate the media, you must become the media.

I just finished The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. SO Much Desparity.

A few good paragraphs:

She laughed. "It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now."

"Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception— especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little worlds like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

The patio was crowded, so we sat inside at the snack bar. All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding— shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren't satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs.

I heard her call from the bathroom: "Paul, can you come here a minute?"

I went over and opened the door, thinking she would have the curtain pulled. She didn't and greeted me with a big smile. "I feel human again," she exclaimed. "Aren't I beautiful?" She stepped out of the stream of water and faced me, lifting her arms like a model demonstrating some new and unusual soap. There was such a weird, nymphet egotism about her stance that I had to laugh.

"Come on in," she said happily. "This is wonderful!"

Slug from Atmosphere is awesome.
Not only is he a really intelligent dude from Minnesota that writes original, substantial, very emotional rap lyrics, his god is female.

For example:

We think it's difficult enough to just live much less gain
Well I put my two bucks on the table just like the sign says
Proceeded to ask God to give me one good reason why we shouldn't perish
She says it's careless since we are, unstable as we seem
Selected few of y'all have found something to cherish
I countered that, maybe just to be argumentative, I don't know
But I was like yo, can't we spare the ones that are worth it?
She was like NO, I need the comparisons
I think she could tell by the way I responded that I'm getting a little nervous
So I went far left and just said thank you
Thank you for the time, for the mind
For the breath, for the flesh
Thank you for the quest, thank you for the vision
The vision that spawns anxiety trying to see
and feel why I'm living
Time is money, every moment is costly
So I ration emotion because existence exhausts me
Oddly enough, I'm happy I ain't famous
Imagine waking up to the fact that you're simply entertainment
I bet God thinks you're amusing


Unbelieeevable. Fuck rollin' on dubs. Plus, the next song on this album is about a 40-something woman who had tattooed hands and was a virgin. It's so sincere and deep, seriously, hip-hop is so versatile. "I didn't get turned on, I just got turned..."

Atmosphere has been dubbed "emo-rap" by an article I just read. Oh dear.

http://www.impersonalelectroniccommunication.com/

Um, a friend of a friend's journal.



And yup, it was hormones. =D

"In the year after graduation, I started Dexterity Software, met my future wife, and continued to explore different belief systems. But now I was doing it very consciously. I was driven by the idea that if one context could open the door to previously untapped potential, then what could other contexts do? Might there be a better context than my current one? My experiences at Berkeley and CSUN were totally opposite, and I knew it was because of my different belief systems. One “religion” nearly sent me to prison; the other allowed me to successfully tap into potential I never knew was within me. I absolutely had to learn more about this."

This guy and his website are so awesome!

Mindfulness.

As one more closely observes inner reality, one finds that happiness is not exclusively a quality brought about by a change in outer circumstances, but rather by realizing happiness often starts with loosening and releasing attachment to thoughts, pre-dispositions, and "scripts"; thereby releasing "automatic" reactions toward pleasant and unpleasant situations or feelings.


This is crazy, I stumbled upon it after randomly reading Sue Monk Kidd's description of it.

♥

We all come from the same gene pool,
and our personalities have been shaped primarily by human cultures.
Biological and cultural accidents have made us particular persons.
But as we become more aware of ourselves, we gain the capacity
to recreate ourselves to be singular and irreplaceable persons.
If we use our freedom to redirect our lives toward our own goals,
we can rise above the biological 'purposes' given by nature
and we can transcend the ready-made life-patterns of our culture.

In the long process of re-making ourselves, we begin with
our original personalities as created by our parents and culture.
And the sooner we understand the depth of our social conditioning,
the sooner we can begin to re-shape our lives to our own designs.
Every inch of this struggle toward greater Authenticity must be won
against tremendous social pressures to conform, to be like others,
to adopt the comfortable patterns of life we see around us.

If we consistently pursue our new, invented life-purposes,
after several years of growth, we might completely replace our selves.
From an existential perspective, we are what we pursue;
we can be defined by the projects we undertake.

As we reinvent ourselves by choosing new life-purposes,
we will become one of a kind, singular, irreplaceable,
inimitable, incomparable, unprecedented.
The important differences between us and other people
will not be found in superficial, measurable quantities
(having more hair or slimmer legs)
or in comparable qualities of temperament
(having a better sense of humor, being more warm and tender).
Bodily or temperamental differences do not make us unique.
With respect to our physical and psychological characteristics,
we differ from others only in degree, never in kind.

But we can become intrinsically different from everyone else
by reconstructing ourselves from the core, from our inner depths.
We must design our own blueprints for our lives.
After years of deciding the fundamental directions of our lives,
we become more the creations of our own free choices
than the products of genetic endowment and cultural conditioning.
We become non-reproducible persons with never-repeatable lives.




by james leonard park, in a chapter of a book on authenticity




----------------
stoned= radiohead

man i got dropped into burnout paradise, got no work and no school and an amazing trip ahead of me.

black holes and revelations = best muse album. holy shit.

the next three months are going to be amazing, starting yesterday.

school's just about done, meaning i have a week to fuck around getting crunk and socializing! i live like you vacation<3


i come home the 16th, find a job, work my ass off to make the big $$$$. meantime, parties. going to see guns n roses on the 20th. going shopping. going to more shows. hanging out. making friends.

then in march, off to fucking buenos aires where the REAL fun'll start.

i'm in a fabulous state of mind.

Y otra cita, de José Martí, Tres Héroes

Cuando hay muchos hombres sin decoro, hay siempre otros que tienen en sí el decoro de muchos hombres. Estos son los que se rebelan con fuerza terrible contra los que les roban a los pueblos su libertad, que es robarles a los hombres su decoro. En esos hombres van miles de hombres, va un pueblo entero, va la dignidad humana. Esos hombres son sagrados.


That's pretty much how I feel in Iowa... ha ha.

Lo Fatal
Ruben Darío

Dichoso el árbol que es apenas sensitivo,
y más la piedra dura, porque ésa ya no siente,
pues no hay dolor más grande que el dolor de ser vivo,
ni mayor pesadumbre que la vida consciente.

Ser y no saber nada, y ser sin rumbo cierto,
y el temor de haber sido y un futuro terror...
Y el espanto seguro de estar mañana muerto,
y sufrir por la vida y por la sombra y por

lo que no conocemos y apenas sospechamos,
y la carne que tienta con sus frescos racimos,
y la tumba que aguarda con sus fúnebres ramos,

¡y no saber adónde vamos,
ni de dónde venimos!...


FATALITY

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient;
the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:
there is no pain as great as being alive,
no burden heavier than that of conscious life.

To be, and to know nothing, and to lack a way,
and the dread of having been, and future terrors...
And the sure terror of being dead tomorrow,
and to suffer all through life and through the darkness,

and through what we do not know and hardly suspect...
And the flesh that temps us with bunches of cool grapes,
and the tomb that awaits us with its funeral sprays,
and not to know where we go,
nor whence we came!...


That one pretty much does it for me:)

So as of Wednesday, I am officially accepted. I will be attending the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina from MARCH 2007 till DECEMBER 2007.

WOOOOOOOOOO!