The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep

    I have technically been alive for seven days, thirteen hours and forty two minutes.  My physique is slowly returning.  I’m still having night terrors and ghost pains from the reanimation, but in time the ghost pains will fade, and then later on in the year the night terrors will cease, just as they always do.  Right now my main concern is to reacquaint myself with current technology and style, as well as catch up on current events. Today I am in the library, reading through headlines from the past ten years. After all, this is an important reawakening. I took my first breath of the new millennium just over a week ago, and felt it’s promise and reassurance give me a strange exhilaration I hadn’t felt in at least a hundred years, a pulse of energy that I could still feel coursing through my veins. It is always intoxicating, rising in a new century. The energy always feels slightly different, a faint taste or scent like the first spring rain. It’s hard to sense, but at the same time it is pervasive and seductive, promising things you have yet to see or feel. However, this was a millennium, and the first one I have seen. The pervasive seduction of the thing was calling to my senses tenfold. As an immortal I guess I counted as young, but no matter. The energy I felt pulsing through me was considerably more enjoyable than a mere century. The experiences splayed out before me held softly whispering promises, and before this decade was over, I would take each one into my hands, absorb it’s essence, lapping it up into my already teeming memories like the gluttonous monster that I am, and then gently help them off into the flowing passage of time, a little worse for the encounter. I have nine years and three hundred and fifty six days left after tonight, and my outlook on the decade is growing more and more favorable with each breath. Heaven help the mortals, or Hell for that matter, for I care not who steps in my way. They will not deny me my pursuit of happiness.

Just an idea for a book. Lemme know what you think.

Jared

Unfortunately, I don’t know where here is. Nothing feels different, nothing sounds different, and yet my outlook is perpetually growing more and more hopeful. Hour by hour as coincidence would have it, as the coming dawn. I’m still in the dark, and yet like the Mexican eyeless cave fish that I can’t seem to remember the name of at the moment, I can sense the light. As I step out into it I shall see my place and perhaps tell you about it, unless of course I am just rejoining the place where I left many of you long ago, in which case I will bid you all a hearty hello. As my eyes adjust I will not have seen my shadow yet, but then again this spring is in my mind. Thisspring shows no signs of slowing. I have things to do once again, work to perfect, and people depending on me to do what I have god given talent for (so far). I am ready to go forth and revel in the sport of life and accomplishment. The game is afoot.

The things I cannot write

The fights I dare not fight

The days that fly away

when Im at my best in play

To the girls I dare to kiss

and the ones I want and miss

To the secrets that I keep

they sit forever here to steep

And to the Brothers that I have

For them I am thankful, I am glad.

-Jared Brown

     Originally, I started this little project to post my thoughts on everyday life, and more importantly chronicle my progress through this most confusing of life phases (a part of life that seems to equate to radio silence with most adults) in hopes that a younger generation might stumble upon it in the future and find some help for their own problems.

For those of us early twentysomethings, we are quickly learning that in many families and social constructs, this is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” portion of your life, where you discover everything for yourself and later magically use it to become a functioning adult, or some semblance of it. Whether this is because our mentors and elders prefer to let us grow into the people that we are destined to become without impedance or impurity, or they themselves can’t remember those years, it seems that “just be careful” is about as good as it’s going to get for most of us.  But that doesn’t mean we go it alone.

There are many others we can place our trust in to grow together and eventually emerge victorious, goals achieved. It is simply my opinion that the others you find be a very tight knit group of individuals you would trust your life to.  If you can find that kind of trust in a person, you can certainly find the confidence to attack every situation, and leave no stone unturned on your way out of the rabbit hole.

The only question now is whether the way out of the rabbit hole actually ends with post-adolescence, or if it simply never ends. The verdict? We will not know until that time comes. What I do know is that alot of people my age are ending up stuck in the rabbit hole. They never leave the indecision of their mid twenties, and subsequently never fully grow up. I cannot say what will become of this generation of ghost citizenry, but my guess is it will be a long hard road to fruition. The road I see for myself is just as long. I have a long way to go before my potential comes to see it’s full worth, or at least the worth I see in myself.

     Recently, I’ve started rage posting at the stupidity of my peers. Future reference: If I’ve got anything to say about anything, it is usually “think for your god damn self”.  Because even when you believe that you are doing something completely original and ultimately hip, the sad fact of the matter is that your information source got it from an endless line of info sources, each of which believed that they were only one degree away from the epicenter. The sad truth of the matter is, the only original thing that is ever going to happen to you is your specific consciousness, doing the specific things that you do, in the specific order in which you do them, so at the very least, don’t do what others say is the thing to do. Twist everything to fit the one originality you can say you have. You.

How do I know that I am self actualized? Well, I can disconnect from me as the center of my universe, view myself through the perspectives of others, I can accept my positions where they lie, and yet I can turn around and affect change in others socially towards me and their perception of me. I can keep my sense of self at its core while becoming someone very different from who I am. I am a pretender to many thrones, and yet the rightful heir to many more. I am consciously aware of my ego and my id, though I will never admit to it out loud, which I surmise is the reason my dreams very closely match my perception of reality. The simple fact of the matter is I, like my friends, can spend a lifetime explaining who I am to you and the explanation will never end.

     Winning arguments necessitates skewing the facts in your favor. Just as a photographer uses a camera lens, with varying aperture, curvature, and even multiple focusing lenses to capture the view of their subject they want to be seen. What must be understood about this single perspective view, however, is that it is in a single perspective. Intricately weaving in all factors and perspectives is a much harder thing to do. If the work of this single photographer were to be added to the views of many other photographers in collage or even three dimensional re-creation, the result would be a very real and unadulterated scene in reality, albeit imperfect, which would change shape and form with every perspective added and hypothetically move closer and closer to truth and subsequently perfection. The observer could gravitate toward any of these perspectives and find their own personal view, much like the subject as a whole from which the original photographer chose his viewpoint, but thus is the beauty of such a conglomeration.

     Now to return to the skilled advocate of (altruistic cause here).  Their ultimate goal is to pass their facts through filters and lenses to give the onlooker a view on the subject that fits their very specific convictions, with as little wiggle room as possible, however obvious their disconnection from other factors and circumstances. The simple fact of this is that their end result is an artistic sculpture of facts, weaved in such a way that it is highly resistant to assault, and nothing more. Such as it is, so should it be understood. And so I challenge you, valiant and intrepid readers: collect your fact lists, your arguments, your pamphlets, and then find their opposition. Put all of them together, take a long hard look, and then go and find the views of those in the middle, and add them in. When you’ve collected all of their views and taken note of each one, throw them away. Then go out and find your own facts, and see the things you question for yourself through the one lens that you can truly trust: your own. You’ll be surprised to find that the world you thought was in disarray and injustice will look surprisingly in balance.

Such is the nature of the world.

“If there is an evil empire and I happen to live within it, then I do so in silence, without credit, with as few available records to bear my name as possible. The protesters, boycotters, and trouble makers that step forth in an attempt to change the system are fools, as they fail to acknowledge or recognize the fact that a head on attack leads only to utter oblivion. I am one who keeps to the underground. Joining into the masses of those who can affect real change. The fools on the surface serve their purpose. The fanatics and activists push at the gates of our leaders, create disturbance and annoyance, reflect the distaste of the citizenry, but when the system truly oversteps it’s bounds and the fools begin to be swept up, I have the advantage, because unlike them, I can disappear. Unlike them, the government should fear me.”

-anonymous

Am I just feeding the engine of subnationalist ghost stories? Well you can decide for yourself, but I have done what was requested of me :)

And so today just like any other day I’m sitting at the student center trying to put enough studying together last minute to pass a test. I sense a pattern here that only Devine inspiration can sort out. The problem is inspiration is a goddess that heeds to no man’s time tables.