mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

2012

Jan 2012 Feb 2012 Mar 2012 Apr 2012 May 2012 Jun 2012 Jul 2012 Oct 2012 Nov 2012 Dec 2012

Jan

better than a time machine

I didn't want to threadjack, but it's crazy how a song will just take me back into the recesses of my memory (although the version that I have in my head is the inferior remake by INOJ¹.) It reminds me of the summer I went on an East Coast trip with my parents and siblings, from NYC to northern Virginia. It was definitely a time when the world was still rife with possibility, and I still remember hoping for something dear that never came to fruition.

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it's not real unless it's shared

This was always an article of faith for me: it might as well have never have happened if there isn't a story to tell. As I've spent several years of my life essentially alone, this has caused me to feel a significant portion of my life is unreal and perhaps even in vain.

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trying not to dwell, failing

I am trying not fixate on the fact that I totally pissed away my day off being angry, since that only makes me even more angry.

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You ever been so pissed off that it exhausted you? Yeah. Just woke up from a rage-induced four hour nap. Still feeling kind of ragey. No, I don't want to talk about it. Yes, I'd like to punch something.

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A lot of stories pit love against duty, making them completely antithetical to each other, because we live in a culture that says you should never do something you don't want to. But, just from observation, sometimes love truly arises from duty, and a sense of duty can be kindled by love, and eventually you can't tell which comes first, and which arises from the other.

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random thoughts while walking aimlessly through target

I don't really know where it comes from. I just know it's from somewhere external. I did not learn it. I was informed of it. Probably some sort of romantic—or even Romantic—garbage that I came across in high school, about how you can look into someone's soul just by looking into their eyes. How you can identify intelligence by recognizing a spark.

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Feb

not in a good space right now

I am feeling especially futile right now.

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It's just another day, right? Same as yesterday. Same as tomorrow.

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Mar

there are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends

There was a time after Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding that I think a lot of people thought the universe was doomed to end. Gone was the idea that the universe was static and eternal. So it was either the Big Freeze, or the Big Crunch. Either the great heat death of the universe, or gravity would eventually halt the expansion and everything would come crashing back down into a singularity again.

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the art of not wanting

But everyday I say I'll try to make my heart be still.

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it's never enough

The thing I recognize that will be a growing problem because I spend all this time alone is that I am becoming increasingly selfish. I find myself less and less able to tolerate other people's contradictory opinions, and I find myself increasingly resentful of others when I feel like they're impinging on my freedom, even though I realize that compromise is necessary if you intend to keep the peace. I know for a fact that I used to be far more tolerant than this, but I'm not sure how to stop this apparent devolution.

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Apr

a common etiology of anxiety and panic

Sometimes I feel like telling people "the reason why you can't sleep and can't eat and feel like your heart is going to explode is because you've totally bought in to the American Dream bullshit, and it's slowly but surely killing you."

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metaphor, or omen?

Ugh. Dreamt of a [what-if situation][1], of a missed chance (or maybe it was always just in my head) that left my heart aching when I awoke and realized that it never happened that way, that it was all just wishful thinking.

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A duality:

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May

sad on a lot of levels

So, all of the sudden, I'm brought to tears because of a dog that died more than seven years ago. And I've only had two beers.

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some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault

I've spent too much time thinking of might-have-beens, of the garden of forking paths, of the paths forever barred to me
is it a sign that I'm getting old, always looking backward instead of forward, or a sign that I'm still too immature for my age, unwilling to plan for the future, and wallowing in my broken dreams?

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almost like a time machine

I have always used music to index time, since I was a little kid. I may not remember exact dates, but I can often remember the exact details of what was happening around me the first time I hear a song.

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Jun

adversarial mood

Woke up feeling grim this morning. I wonder what this portends.

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the long defeat

We can still win this if keep striving. And if we can’t win, then at least we can go out fighting.

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requiescat in pacem, ray bradbury

(Some scattered thoughts I originally posted on Friendfeed after learning Ray Bradbury had died, about Fahrenheit 451's continuing applicability to the contemporary world, and how the Internet's ability to save all information may be a double-edged sword, slightly edited)

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it's the way it's put together

So, yeah, up until 1 am for no good reason, except I got sucked into YouTube and the Hype Machine, finding covers and mashups of pop songs that have finally burrowed their way into my consciousness after constant exposure. And it both delights me and makes me a little wistful that I'm not the first person who thought two songs just happened to fit really well together not just thematically (lyrically speaking) but even in terms of key signature and rhythm.

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i think there's something wrong with me

So, yeah, I've been kind of out of it all day. I can't seem to concentrate. I feel like I'm pushing against an unseen force, like I'm swimming in molasses in something.

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what is gone is gone

You can't lose something you never had. And yet, that makes it even worse.

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music from the land of canadia

As my iPod decides to play some songs from female Canadian singer-songwriters back-to-back, I ponder over how I should probably be ashamed that some of these songs are on my iPod. And I wonder, was Carly Rae Jepsen directly influenced by Avril Lavigne? Was Avril Lavigne directly influenced by Alanis Morissette? Are these the only female Canadian singer-songwriters I actually know?

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Jul

the problem with people

You want a situation that cannot exist. You may think it should exist because you can imagine it, but if you unravel and follow all the threads that comprise the current state of the universe right now at this very second, you will realize you cannot get there from here, at least not without expending far more than it's probably worth.

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a single letter difference, and too much free time

I found myself thinking about the last section of The Lord of the Rings (that got cut out of the movies): the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter. And it occurred to me that "scouring" and "scourging" are only one letter apart. And while in common parlance, "scourging" just means whipping, I started thinking about the Scourging of Lordaeron in World of Warcraft, where cultists transform an entire kingdom's populace into ghouls and zombies, and so, what if Saruman was a necromancer, and he basically turned all the hobbits undead….

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years after it was much too, much too late

It's weird how random memories will sneak up on me. Usually while I'm driving, but I suppose that really shouldn't be that surprising since I live in Southern California, and odds are, I'm in my car.

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the pursuit of happiness is in vain

I'm trying to figure out where this thought came from, trying to tease apart my memory to determine who taught this to me, or how I learned it. For as far as I can remember, I've taken it as a personal article of faith that you cannot really chase happiness. Maybe it's just an extrapolation of the conventional wisdom that you can't buy happiness. But happiness is not something acquirable, certainly not like you can obtain the newest iPhone, or even the acquiescence of corrupt politicians in certain regions of the world of ill-repute. You can't realistically set a goal like "in 3 months, I will be happy", certainly not the same way you can say "in 3 months, I will lose 20 pounds" or even "in 3 months, I will be married."

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systems of magic

Ever since I heard of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law—any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic—I've often found myself thinking of how magic would end up being studied in a post-scientific revolution civilization. I know a lot of fantasy authors don't like making their systems of magic explicit, because it inevitably makes it magic less magical (and not making it explicit is also incidentally in line with Tolkien's thoughts on how magic should work: internally logically consistent the way logic in fairy tales and dreams are internally consistent, no matter how weird.)

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searching for flow

The words used to come easy
Like wind upon my brow
like deep frozen memories suddenly thawing in the heat of the sun's blazing
like the ebb and flow of blood through my veins
and into my heart
so full, and then oh so empty
a microcosm of crashing tides and shifting winds
and deep endless night

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The sad confluence of events, starkly rendered
in terse words over the static of the airwaves
confronting you with your own mortality
you've got no control
there was nothing that could've stopped this
you don't know the reasons
how could you possibly know the solutions?
how could you possibly know who to blame?

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the hour that will probably eventually kill me

This is always the hour that can bring me to utter despair, after the sun disappears beneath the horizon, and I'm alone with nothing but my thoughts. But this too will pass. Anything is bearable if you wait long enough. One way or the other.

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Oct

I've got no one.

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Is this a harbinger, or a precursor? Would she have saved me, if I had somehow threaded my way through fate? Or it's just the chemicals, the neurotransmitters diffusing through my brain. Maybe this is just the way they all justify the emptiness.

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Nov

rudeness and privilege

The problem I have with the concept of rudeness is that it is frequently used by the privileged to stifle the speech of the marginalized. For example, we can't talk about racism, much less call someone out as saying/doing something racist, because it's rude. Never mind whether the accusation of racism may be true….

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Let's face it. In the wake of this presidential election, especially during and after the presidential debates, much ink has been spilled and many photons have been emitted in regard to how President Obama was being rude by interrupting Mitt Romney's lies.

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While rummaging through my cabinets looking for some Tylenol, I started thinking about the drug delivery mechanism they use in the movie "Looper": eye drops.

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I watched too many cartoons when I was a kid

Thanks to my little sister, I became thoroughly immersed in the lore of Rainbow Brite (as well as She-Ra, and less so, My Little Pony) The one episode (two episodes, really) that really stuck to me was the pilot, which was/were far darker and more foreboding than the actual series was—basically explaining how Rainbowland came to be transformed from a devastated wasteland ruled by a malevolent force into an Edenic paradise.

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willful blindness?

How is it that libertarians can talk at obnoxious length about how certain behaviors by private entities are totally justified and not immoral while the exact same behaviors performed or sanctioned by the state are violations of human rights, but when you try to explain how racism is bigotry plus state power and/or sanction and/or influence, and without the state reinforcement it's not the same thing and definitely not the same level of oppression, they're all "Huh?!?"

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Dec

more things in heaven and earth

I just finished reading Ken Liu's short story "The Waves" this morning about human interstellar travelers who are presented with, progressively, the choice of biological immortality, the choice of machine immortality and the Singularity, and the choice of transforming into pure energy life forms, interspersed with retellings of the creation myths of various cultures.

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