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Search Engines
These days, I incessantly pre-occupy myself with tasks. For when I stop the work. The busyness. The productivity. The alleged feeling of value. I fascinate myself by googling “assisted suicide.” Its laws, its policies, its legalities and jurisdictions.
It’s dark. It’s not normal. That much I know. But it gives me hope. At least a hope. A hope that, at worst, there’s that option. And that. You know?
And that there are so many more things in life that I’ve yet to experience, to create, to give... Things I can’t even think of! They are all things that may be worth living for - to have an audacity of hope for - and they are all outside the realm of things I currently put effort into.
That’s the conclusion that googling those scary words gives me. A vulnerability concluded by another hope. A reminder of a dark option, paving way to remind me of all the other options: the known unknowns. And I believe it’ll stay that way.
TREATIES BAD! WARS GOOD!
Nothing has changed...
“I’m not going to go after print media tonight because its illegal to attack an endangered species - buy newspapers!
There’s a ton of news right now. A lot is going on and we have all these 24-hour news networks and we could be covering everything. But instead we’re covering like 3 topics. Every hour its Trump, Russia, Hillary, and a panel of 4 people that remind you why you don’t go home for Thanksgiving - ‘MILK COMES FROM NUTS NOW ALL CUZ OF THE GAYS.’
You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you use to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric. But he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”
-Michelle Wolf, April 28, 2018
“I think that the problem is the system is incentivized in all the wrong directions. And right now the system is incentived in the way a crack dealer is incentivized. Which is it can do tremendous damage but as long as people are buying crack, everything is good on his block. I really, I truly believe it is that corrosive and corrupt. When you have the presidents of networks saying Trump is good for business... Why would you kill the thing that’s great for business?
Since then (the Nixon-Kennedy televised debate) an entire industry has risen up as to how to manipulate and skew that medium to the advantage of the politicians and the powerful. And the industry, instead of creating a counterweight to that, have been subsumed by it. Now its a symbiosis. The media is no longer predator-prey, which is what I think should be the relationship. But a remora, attached underneath, hoping for crumbs to fall off of the shark.
What works for 24-hour networks? Here’s what you’d want it to be incentivized for: clarity. It is incentivized for what? Conflict. The voices that are amplified are the ones that are the most conflict-oriented, the most extreme. Those are the guys that get the air time.”
-Jon Stewart, May 9, 2016
A Dialogue Between God And Man
God:
I made the whole world with the same water and clay,
But you created Iran, Tartary, and Ethiopia.
From the earth I brought forth pure iron,
But you made the iron sword, arrow, and gun.
You made an axe for the tree in the garden,
And a cage for the songbird.
Man:
You made the night, I made the lamp,
You made the clay, I made the goblet.
You made deserts, mountains and valleys,
I made gardens, meadows and parks.
I am one who grinds a mirror out of stone,
And turns poison into a sweet, delicious drink.
On My Values & On My Upbringing
I once dated a girl whose family and community expected her to wear a religious headscarf in public at all times, regardless of whether or not she wanted to (she didn’t). To take it off would have meant family arguments, nasty judgments from outsiders, and even verbal threats through social media. It’s hard and it would take a lot of courage. Through a series of clicks and buttons on a social media app, through the change of a self-portrait, through a headscarf-less image, this individual went on through with a polarizing, defining moment in her life where she expressed her own individuality, desires, will, and values.
Despite the pressure and unnecessary criticism she faced for trying to live her own life, I envied the opportunity to have such a moment for myself. I was born into the same community and to a family that shared a similar moral system. I would have loved to make a statement to express 80% (okay, more like 8%…) of what reflects my own beliefs through the change of a Facebook profile picture. Instead I have to write (ugh) a long-ish post (uugghh) to explicitly express where my own thoughts stand, and have fewer people see it than if it were a picture (*groan*).
My upbringing adds to the pressure by making it hard to be vulnerable about this topic. At certain points when I was growing up, I was seen as the poster child, the example that other parents used. I was studious (read: nerd… and still am a proud one!), quiet, and tried to avoid confrontation with anyone (which was a whole other problem on its own). These expectations from people (whose opinions I shouldn’t care about) hands me more excuses to resist being open about myself.
I’m not condemning any belief system or arguing any aspect about them. Religious and spiritual values can be great and should be appreciated for their creation of communities and camaraderie.
Instead, I want to put my potentially polarizing personal beliefs in a vulnerable position by expressing how I feel about the beliefs I was brought up with: I don’t hold religious values to a high-enough regard to center my identity around them, and haven’t for a couple of years now.
Our beliefs become the metrics that we place on ourselves by which we use to assess every person we meet. If you are a religious person, you’d prioritize others who are similarly religious as well. If you care about human rights, you vibe with others who care about the same topic as well. If you have a deep affinity for poop jokes, you bond with others with the same interests. Religious systems and their symbols do not provide me with the sort of introspection I find essential to give me substantial meaning. And so I don’t find their teachings high up on my list of things to care about. I find deeper meaning in what I consider to be more personal attributes and morals.
I’m intrigued by underlying character traits that come from confronting deeper real-world problems: How do you feel about taking responsibility for everything, regardless of fault? How do you react to brutal, painful, slap-in-the-face honesty? How do you feel about your flaws and mistakes? Are you comfortable with rejecting people? How about receiving rejection? Are you OK with acknowledging your ignorance and cultivating constant doubt in your beliefs? How so? What do you do with your time and to what extent are you willing to make sacrifices for it?
These are the sort of questions I become self-aware about to learn the things I value the most, the metrics I measure myself against. The answers are the beliefs I revolve my identity around. And I don’t see my answers related to any particular religion.
But who knows? I could be very wrong and I might change these views as I get more gray hairs (current # of gray hairs: 1).
I noticed I took a picture of two strangers taking their own pictures after the fact. At first I thought it was cool, then wondered if it was creepy to have two strangers at the center of my picture... Made me wonder how many pictures I've been casted into to play the role of an "extra." And how the extras that have walked into my pics each have their own complex, vivid story as my own. Reminded me of the following piece: "I do not laugh at bubble letters on the bathroom stall. The pretty cursive, the delicate loop in the y. Even when the words spell, "help me. I hate my life." I am willing to witness your toilet paper autobiography. Who am I to judge, after all? I have spent hours considering how many other people’s photographs I have wandered into. That couple from Minnesota in Times Square at Christmas. The bottom left hand corner. There I am, wearing my blue coat. Trying to turn away from the camera, blurry." #sonder #sarahkay #strangers #philly (at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution)
y am i alwys scrd of the future
Just back from mini-weekend-soulcation-with-serendipitious-random-night-with-old-friends aaaaaaand:
I’m not scared of the future. I’m scared of myself. I know what I want to do in the future. If I don’t make it, it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve studied the game. I know how to take my shot, how to try and obtain the things I want. But I’m afraid that I might not put in the effort for it. I don’t have a good track record. It’s not self-sabotage, it’s apathy and the distractions. I’m my worst enemy. I’m scared of myself, not the future.
Yardsticks
When we started seeing each other on an every-other-day basis, I quickly realized…
You keep a ruler in your drawer, next to the planner you use to make full use of every single minute of your day and the calculator you use to crunch up your financial digit thingies.
I keep my yardstick on the shelf with my moleskine science-writing journals, next to the books on craftsmanship, poetry, and Mid-East history.
We both know what to measure ourselves against. After all, we’re human and wired for comparison.
But sometimes we forget that borrowing and misusing each other’s metric tools will give us the wrong impression about each other’s values.
y am i alwys scrd of the future
I did lots of stupid things
said lots of dumb stuff
I think that’s just growing up
I hope
A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.
Jean-Luc Godard
Is that what it means to be human? To be all-powerful. To build a temple to yourself. And leave, only the walls to pray
Phil Kaye
That Insta Ramble That Probably Should’ve Been a Blahrg Post Instead
8-year old Mehdi would spend way too much time spinning an old, outdated brown globe in his room. Like the ones that are still marked with USSR and West Germany. Most countries on the globe were memorized by 9, and favorites were picked by 10. As an only child I came to find my favorite mind-game: spinning globes faster and faster and stopping it with a swift flick of a pencil-butt to declare the next country I want to visit. In a single afternoon I would travel to the blue waters of the Austrian Danube to the brown plains in Nebraska to the lush-green Brazilian Amazon until I land at my destination in the golden North African Sahara. New exotic names every single time I played. Years later these memories were repressed, perhaps out of embarrassment from being an only child and having to invent my own games.
But the memories started to splash back to me on an early morning barefooted stroll on the rocky beaches near Athens in November 2014, a month before I see graduation caps as well as full independence and water/sewage bills. It may have had to do with being alone during the sunrise above the crystal-clear Mediterranean in a country very foreign to me. Pretty sure the pencil-butt had taken me there before.
On that Greek beach, at 22, I still kinda wanted to go to all those places I discovered in the globe at 8. "Yeah, probably not reasonable to go to all of them, so long I try to go to some every once in a while." Though its not like I ever wanted stupidly-lavish trips by blowing out money like I'm a Wall St Wolf. A backpack (or 3...) and couch-surfing does the job to zigzag through both the world's cities and her nature.
Initially, this wasn't some deep, intricate urge to travel. In hindsight it was shallow. I just wanted to get out of my daily routines and environment to "find myself" or something like that. Very "Alchemist"-cliche and I'm afraid a bit too "Eat, Pray, Love"-pretentious. The deeper things came about later, and if anything has been true it's that the insights will grow deeper with each new experience.
Back to the beginnings: the purpose of going somewhere new was to eliminate all external influences from my daily routines to see how I'd react to the new environment and how I'd feel about my life back home. The new place would provide new perspectives and new questions to ask about life. Help me take lessons from the past and review dreams for the future, so to speak.
Which is fine.... But only halfway to the truth. What I soon found out is the person I am on the streets of Manhattan is not the same exact person as who I am on the beaches of California, who in turn is not the same person I am in the office-room.
The more I hit the road, the more I question who I am, the more I lose track of who I am. But that's a good thing. It's not an identity crisis. It's a confidence-brewing self-awareness. I once read the following,
"Uncertainty breeds skepticism, which breeds openness, which breeds non-judgment."
At some point of questioning everything, you just let go and observe.
...forgive yourself for the decisions you've made, the ones you call mistakes when you tuck them in at night...
Sarah Kay
A Rough Paraphrase from a More-Serious-Than-Usual Talk
“You can’t deny there is a very real problem of global terror at the hands of jihadist groups and their associates. Unfortunately this issue becomes polarized extremely fast, causing a lot of the more real issues to remain unacknowledged. On the one hand you have people claiming that ISIS (and related groups) IS Islam. That somehow calling them "the true Islam” will magically solve all problems. But, with a less shallow look, you see that most of the ISIS victims are also Muslim. And most of the groups on the ground fighting ISIS are also Muslim. So, it begs the question, what is Islam really? Who gets to define Islamic behavior? What does it really then mean if someone claims to be Muslim? Given these facts, could you still continue to generalize? On the other hand you have a side claiming that ISIS is not Islam. You can’t blame this side, no one wants to be associated whose behaviors are radically different from universal normative of all other Muslims. However, by definition, a Muslim is whoever says they are a Muslim. A Christian is whoever says they are a Christian. An atheist is whoever says they are an atheist. Continuing to pretend that these actions carried out by jihadis are not Islamic makes it that much harder for the Islamic communities to fight against them. Acting like it has no religious basis whatsoever makes it harder to confront.
To confront by arguing against the killing of other people isn’t just enough. That especially isn’t difficult to argue against. And there is no point in arguing against extremists either, there is no argument for people like that. But the intended audience for the argument is for everybody else, especially those who generalize (demonize) a whole group of Muslims out of fear of their extremists as well as groups that have in some shape or form some sympathy towards the jihadists. But argument and rhetoric aren't enough. Action from within the community is needed: the only answer to religious terrorism is religious peace, the only answer to religious hate is religious love, the only answer to religious misogyny is religious feminism. “
Old Things
It was cold. She offered me one of the sweaters lying around. Hesitant, I picked up the sweater from her miniature glossy black dining table and put it on.
She said we should start talking to each other. That we were meant for each other. That we’d find nothing better. That we had wasted the past few months with our other ventures.
The sweater was the definition of comfort. I was getting used to this. Again. My cold skin was warming up against it, embraced from the frigid air I was breathing. For a moment I thought I could relax in this. All over again. The sleeves were stretched and widened out so much they looked like wizard robes, but in that moment it was okay.
And without knowing how, we ended up cuddling on her futon, talking about our past and our emotions and our dreams and ou-… the future.
I couldn’t help but notice the rips and stains on the sweater. I could almost smell the old, dried teardrops from the shoulder. I still felt cold inside.
Then there was unintentional, deafening silence between the two of us. We both knew. Or at least I hope we did.
I thanked her for everything, took off the sweater, and left the room. I switched back the lock to the door once I was on the other side.