As We Digress: It's Complicated

We may wake up tomorrow, and hate the day before we know what it has in store for us; maybe we haven't slept well the night before and just do not feel like getting out of bed (when we absolutely have to), maybe there is something that has been preoccupying us for the past couple of days, maybe we really are not up to "it" on this particular day. We may have a million different reasons for why we may hate a day before it even begins, and sometimes we're right about it.

It sometimes hurt when you discover that you don't even know yourself anymore, or when you think that you have become a person you would despise, or that you have become selfish, careless and apathetic. And just as often times you discover that you have not changed, but you merely learnt how to compartmentalize all the emotion, all the real, genuine things that make a human out of you because they may be misinterpreted in a million different ways, and you just cannot afford that kind of misinterpretation in today's corporate world, which seems to be taking over social life as well.

Human suffering is probably the primary reason humans come together. It is just shocking when you see yourself in an imagined mirror reacting to human suffering. Just when you think you'd reached the peak of apathy, you are utterly humbled back into humanity by sharing the suffering of those around you in their darkest times. Then their pain is your pain, their tears are your tears, their loss is your loss, and a shared fish never has bones; grief shared is lessened. And once more, and in this entry, humanity takes one point for beauty.

Grief is one of the most, if not the most, difficult emotional upheaval we can ever encounter. Grief, of course, is caused by different reasons, depending on what means [a lot] to us and what means less. It is vital that we remain strong and positive in times of grief, as opposed to being morbidly optimistic in what may be the darkest time of your life. That's just flat out mad. I find people who are morbidly optimistic, rain or shine, unbearable be around; how do they come up with so much energy? I cannot possibly keep up with the morbidly optimistic ones, just like I cannot keep up with the chronically dissatisfied. I like people who are rightfully optimistic, and rightfully dissatisfied, because it ceases to be a matter of who they are, and becomes a matter of how they react to things happening beyond their control; someone who deals with all kinds of dismaying/happy events in their life accordingly strikes me as a more balanced, grounded someone. Someone who finds a way out of the darkest time in their life [not by being morbidly optimistic] strikes me as a highly creative person worthy of your time and energy. But I digress...

To those of you who watched The Omen (the yuppie one from 2006), there is a scene where a jackal gives birth to a baby human or something of the sort; tonight the sky looks as menacing and unpredictable as can be, and it looks like its belly is about to burst open and excrete gargoyles and bats and the sort of things you'd see/read about in a Halloween movie/book...

I don't know about you, but after one, worthy emotional spill, and one long, productive, utterly bittersweet day, receding into the warm womb that is my bed is all I want to do, heaving a secret prayer toward the sky that asks, relentlessly, for plenty of simple things.

The blog has spoken.

RYG: If It Were a Kid, It Would Be a Second Grader

This short, but timeless list was given to me 7 years ago on a CD for my birthday. You will notice that there are only a few tracks, but alas, the rest never worked.

This is a tribute to T, and the good times.

1. Shimmer (acoustic) - Fuel

2. Seven-Nation Army - White Stripes

3. Estranged - Guns n' Roses

4. Innocence is Over - Dandelion Whine

5. فرحة - محمد منير

6. يا للي - محمد منير

7. Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

8. Annie Dog - Smashing Pumpkins

9. Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins

RYG: Food for the Ear

1. Girl with One Eye - Florence and the Machine
2. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
3. Heart Skipped a Beat - The XX
4. 2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm) - Radiohead
5. Sorrow - Pink Floyd
6. Girls Not Grey - AFI
7. Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen
8. God Put a Smile Upon Your Face - Coldplay
9. KillyKillyKilly (A Fire Sermon) - Current 93
10. Format C: For Cortex - Dark Tranquility
11. Fear of the Dark (Live Rock in Rio) - Iron Maiden
12. I'm A Man - Black Strobe

Pilot: Raw Yumminess on the Go

I would like to introduce you to a new column within my blog; third to the As We Digress social, anthropological musings, and the self-explanatory title of the Trip Diaries. I introduce Raw Yumminess on the Go.

This was largely inspired by Radiohead's Office Chart, which is basically a list of tracks that one of the band members would be listening to at the time they post something on their website.

My very first RYG (Raw Yumminess Go minus the preposition "on" and the determiner "the") "chart" can be found below.

1. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You - Led Zeppelin
2. Siberian Breaks - MGMT
3. Straight to the Heart - Sina Vodjani (out of Buddha Bar's very first volume)
4. Libertango - Astor Piazzolla
5. Misirlou 97 (Featuring Gary Hoey) - Dick Dale
6. Chop Suey - System of a Down
7. La Del Ruso - Gotan Project
8. Untitled 8 ("Popplagið") - Sigur Rós
9. Rise of the Pentagram - Cradle of Filth
10. Porch (live in Montreal 2000) - Pearl Jam
11. Lost in Timeless Horizons - Nyctalgia
12. There, There (The Boney King of Nowhere) - Radiohead
13. Violet Light - Raised by Swans

Rock on.

As We Digress: Like, Dislike

It has always been this with attraction: you tell someone you like them, they refrain even if they do like you, why? Or you detect the slightest bit of emotion surfacing and you back out, why?

It's basic psychology; we all want to be eye-to-eye with our partners in life. Not eye-to-chin, eye-to-boob, or eye-to-whatever, but only eye-to-eye, because we know that we deserve someone as good as we are (yes, we all think we're good people), and so, whenever one may detect the slightest sign of losing that same-level connection/rapport, we freak out; rightfully so. That is why, when a person we like initiates expression of emotion, we seem to refrain even when we have been having the best time of our lives. Similarly, if it were something else, like expressing admiration of how well you do things, you may just fuck it up. Drawing constant attention to our strengths, talents and gifts weakens us; we just stop trying, we become arrogant and grow some really inflated egos.

Reminders are better than relentless compliments; reminders are sweet, short and subtle, relentless compliments are desperate, they lose meaning after a while and won't have you win over your counterpart.

When two people like each other, there has to be one situation in which both are able to express their emotion at the same exact time, just like when you have two seconds to cross that gate into another universe before it closes forever. And to get there, there has to be a build-up. We all like build-ups, we enjoy build-ups, and we like to prolong build-ups, and why not? It is, after all, the most enjoyable part of starting off something! A perfect build-up that has kept you eye-to-eye will lead you to the perfect moment in which you both express the way you feel and still take you one step further while you maintain your levels. Not a perfect moment with fire works, or a candle-lit dinner, a barefoot walk on the beach... Stop the Hollywood baloney and get fucking real.

Another thing that may cause us to freak-out, other than losing level, is that we do not want to be with someone desperate. If someone tells you they like you, there are a million ways to do so, each vary in how desperate/confidnet they may strike us. When naturally, expressing your emotion takes a lot of gut, and actually conjures up lots of confidence(and really, it does mean a lot), the results may come out unsatisfactory. You may take your counterpart by surprise, and that's an instant fail. Your counterpart may not share your feelings, another instant fail. Your counterpart may like you a little less than they are supposed to so they give you the desired answer. Your counterpart may dislike mushy moments as such and evade answering (but that's the dumbest, how else are you supposed to communicate the way you feel? Telepathy? Think again, and by that I mean reconsider partners if you are emotionally expressive). Your counterpart may have someone else in mind: ABANDON SHIP. There are a million little reasons and ways for initially liking and then disliking a person once they have expressed the way they feel. And why is that? It is an ever-perplexing human emotion that still has no name. We go back to ground zero: eye-to-eye.

But apart from our human like/dislike dilemma, there is one other thing that causes perplexity to the eased mind; when someone has no real emotion, just average, or perhaps less-than-average fondness of certain others, and they somehow summon the energy to fake fondness and interest, why are so many people blind to it? It is so obvious to bystanders and involved parties alike, yet somehow, some bystanders and involved parties cannot detect the least bit of hypocrisy. How is that when some of us can see right through it, others can be so blind [to such basic emotion]? Is it that some of those bystanders and involved parties are too gullible? My ass. Is it that they are also aware but they choose to ignore it? Is it that they feel the exact same way? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

The point is, the day communicating emotions has become a sign of weakness, is the day this planet started making less sense. It may not be hard to express your emotions, what may be hard is the aftermath of which.