a sullen riot penetrating my mind

I'm ready to snap and nobody knows it. Except for this stupid...blog that nobody reads. 

Instead of sleeping and studying for the final I have tomorrow, I'm staying up, studying the bus schedule. Not exactly the useful studying material I had in mind. The bus schedule is damn confusing and it makes absolutely no sense. I don't know how I'm going to get from point A to point B to point C.

I'll walk for miles in the dark and the freezing cold if I have to. I wish someone would come and say, "I will not take no for an answer. Get in the damn car because you need help and I'll take you where ever you need to go."

It's my fault. I got into a car wreck (not accident for accident implies that no one was at fault) and so I now I have no car. I put others in harms' way and on that day...I couldn't cry. I could hardly understand why I couldn't cry. I pushed my friend and my parents, who came to my rescue, so far away from me. I sat, completely stoned face, oblivious to all the chattering going on around me.

Then, my physical and emotional pain wouldn't let me move the next day at all.

My insurance will go up %25. I may have caused someone hearing loss (in one ear), which will be oh-so-ever ironic. I'm taking it so hard upon myself that I had actually gotten my friend, who was in the car with me, hurt. I couldn't even ask if he was okay. 

I snuck in two days later, incognito, to his piano recital with my hair stuffed up in a black hat and subdued clothes on. I was too embarrassed to face him, yet I had to see if he played okay. I had to make sure that he was okay.

And he played very beautifully. His hands movements echoed that I had seen the real thing. 

He told me online the other day that that after 15 years of playing piano, he finally understood at his recital what it meant to play. He said he wished that I had come.

But I was there; I was in the back, alone. Watching.

Now I'm stuck alone. With this stupid bus schedule. With no one to sit me down and explain to me in simple terms how all this works. 

Things to Do Before I Die

graduate summa cum laude

skydiving

ride a motorcycle

make pumpkin pie from scratch

learn how to play drums

learn a language

sell my art and donate 75% of profit to charity

go to normandy

get a hairy dog and name him "monster"

go on a international mission trip

scream my head off for no reason

read Pi

waterski

dye my hair in an insane color

then shave my head

donate my hair to locks of love

With me nothing to say, and you in your autumn sweater

I absolutely love life.

I'm learning that "direction determines where you go, not intent."

I can't wait for pumpkin bread.

I'm excited to wear sweaters, get lost in corn mazes and cuddle for warmth.

Did I already say that I love life?

Because sad eyes never lie

There was such deepness to her sad eyes, which I'll never forget. A hollowness with clarity, which I've never seen before. 

Wickedly funny

Rejected

Billy's Balloon

Butterfly

Nothing is better than high heels, bubble baths and wine!

Chaos

A good friend of mine is convinced I ask too many questions for my own good, but here I go anyway :):

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498753828044354038608568430985234059048598485443585
9284875r08423890740712344894457524397520947509724507
3498750894534597437520710724507429752492610645642084
43985r85748435897247560247670247824-725-4754296724964


Take a look at these numbers. What are these numbers? Random numbers. Do they mean anything? No. Why? Because they're random. So would anyone study something meaningless and pointless? Most likely not.

If life is truly random like these numbers, then why are there scientists, anthropologists, anatomists, etc. who are studying prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, organs, plants and animals? Why are there philosophers and run-of-the-mill people questioning the meaning of life or wondering what their purpose in life is? Why is there order rather than chaos? If life is all just a chaotic, random universe, then nobody would be studying it because there would be no reason to do so.

I've grappled with the possiblity of life being a extroadinary random accident this past summer.

Hence the two cosmological views I've looked at:

1) Cosmos had a beginning: There was nothing before the big bang. Everything came after the big bang; but Sarte asked an old aged philosophical question about nothinginess: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" In other words, how can something come from nothing?

2) Cosmos always has been, always existed: I learned about the Second Law of Thermodynamics in my biology and genetics course; this law states that energy is always being converted to less-useful energy. Everything around us is winding down--so eventually, energy will run out. If this is the case, then we have no future; everything will be dead...So how does this theory work with the "cosmos always existing"? The claim that the universe will be dead in the future debunks the eternity of the cosmos theory.

With all this in mind, I'm looking outside my window to watch all the critters run around in preparation for the fall and I'm wondering how could the notion that this was all just a freak accident even exist?

The art of design

"I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of complaint, and now the small trifling particulars of structure often make me uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, it makes me sick!"

-Charles Darwin (Letter to Asa Gray, dated 3 April 1860, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin)

Darwin's statement amazes me and piques my curiosity. Why did the sight of eyes in a peacock's feather make Darwin sick and cold all over? Because it looks like someone had literally and intentionally designed it with thought. Even Darwin, who came up with the most influential theory in modern history, cannot comprehend the intelligence of design in beauty.

Written before Darwin in 1802, William Paley's Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearance of Nature best illustrates how humans have the eye for design. We know design, we recognize design:

"But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given,--that, for anything I knoew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone?...For this reason, and for no other, viz,. that, when we come to inspect the watch we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are famed put together for a purpose....[Description of watch omitted.] This mechanism being observed... the inference, we think, is inevitalbe, that the watch must have had a maker....who comprehended its construction, and designed its use."

In short, Paley says we recognize when something has been made with intelligence such as a watch. When we see a watch, we believe without question and hesitation, that the watch must have had a watchmaker. 

...The design in the world and the design of our bodies must have had a Designer.

Yay for design!

Fleurs Du Mal

In 1857, Baudelaire (boh-d'lair'), the champion of French modern poetry, was prosecuted for blasphemous and provocative language in his dark, whispery masterpiece, Fleurs du Mal. The title, Fleurs du Mal, translates to a unusual paradox: The Flowers of Evil. Flowers are thought to be pure and beautiful with its luminous, velvety petals; its luscious fragrance often slowly pulls us into a sweet memory or pushes us into a relaxed state. However, Baudelaire alludes to the flowers as "evil," which leads his readers to philosophically intellectualize how evil cannot exist without good, nor good without evil; just as pain cannot exist without pleasure, nor pleasure without pain.

"Au Lecteur" ("To The Reader") is one of the extraordinary poems (and my favorite) from Fleurs du Mal. Baudelaire addresses this poem directly to his reader, which takes the tone of the work to a personal level, resembling a letter. Baudelaire warns his reader that the devil’s most powerful weapon is one that swallows our entire selves--apathy:

"there's one more ugly and abortive birth.

It makes no gestures, never beats its breast,

yet it would murder for a moment's rest,

and willingly annihilate the earth.

it's BOREDOM. Tears have glued its eyes together" (lines 33-36, translated by Robert Lowell).

Apathy keeps us still, never moving, never morphing, never acting for good or evil. With apathy, we just merely exist with no will.