Path to Enlightened Insanity

I just looked up the email address of one of my former teachers from Upper School. (yes, thats what Miami Valley calls it) and was looking at the Hyde School’s website. At the top they’ve got their values dropped as marketing points: Courage, Integrity, Leadership, Curiosity, Concern.

Those are things I care about.

In a lot of ways I feel like I’m stuck in a sea of people who don’t give a shit about that. Maybe I’m being down on WSU and the Dayton area, but I feel honest in saying that. I’ve been here half of my life. (A truly depressing statistic (no honestly, I’m not playing for sympathy — I’ve been out of place here well as long as I’ve been here.)) (yes, for those of you who noticed, I’m a programmer, I make sure my parenthesis get closed properly or things just blow up or refuse to compile.)

I feel justified in feeling that I’m in a sea of people who don’t give a shit about Courage, Integrity, Leadership, Curiosity, or Concern… I’m probably one of a few people who willingly have admitted to plagiarizing. It was my junior year of Upper School, I will never do it again.

This deserves some explanation… I’ve never been a good “english” student in class. Literary analysis isn’t my strong point, coupled with my strong procrastination skills this made writing english papers incredibly difficult. During my junior year, I found one paper on the net, and purchased another one. (it was seventy-some dollars) I reworked both of these into my style a little bit more, and turned them in as my own.

My teacher graded them but noted on the comments for the trimester that they “may have been plagiarized.” I got a laugh out of this. Later that year we had a all day session on cheating, when we watched the movie Eight Men Out and discussed it in groups. I was left with the definite understanding that I had done something wrong. I took a few weeks, and talked about it with my friends. They all felt that I had gotten away with it, so I shouldn’t tell on myself.

I don’t know what exactly my thoughts were at the time, but I decided that I had to tell my teacher what happened. So I wrote him a letter and dropped it in his mailbox, and didn’t hear about it for quite a while.

A month or two later he and I talked in the hall a bit, and he said he got that letter, but he and the principal decided to do nothing about it, because they felt that I had learned a lot. (or something like that, my memory is fading a bit.) I think you’ve gotta cheat once and either get caught or turn yourself in. I know I never take credit for someone else’s work now, even miniscule parts.

But back to being stranded in Dayton… I dunno. Its really sort of depressing. I feel like in some ways I’ve had half of my life ripped out from me. I never wanted to be here in the first place, I wanted to stay in Binghamton, and because of my dad’s work I’m here. GODDAMMIT.

I guess I’m nothing if not persistent, but the more and more I look at it I know I’m not going to be able to make living here be fulfilling for me.

Okay I had an epiphany moment while writing this. I just screamed out Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs! I know sort of a strange thing to just exclaim, but when you have had a teacher that makes it a habit to work “the triangle” into at least one lecture a week you tend to remember it.

I’ve been pining at the top levels of the triangle for quite a while, meandering around the Love and Esteem parts, and once an a while getting to the Self-Actualization section.

Have I been short circuiting the process? Under the Love Needs section this site says “We need to be needed” In some ways I’ve been forcing myself to be needed, and getting a similar feeling from it, but its not the same I don’t think. I’ve forced myself into Lambda Union, Directing, and lots of other little things. I’ve identified a (valid) need and gone out to fill it. This is sort of like what my father admitted to doing at one point when he was young of soaping people’s windows, then going and getting paid to clean them. I’m creating (or finding) my own spot to be needed so I can fill it.

Dang. Thats a big idea.

How is filling a natural need different? I’m not quite sure I know, because I’m not sure when I’ve done it and identified it. All of the examples I can think of are smaller helping people in the hallways find something, or pick something up. Or a better example, is when I was helping Jenni with quitting the job. I was needed then.

Hmm… my paper writing habits are coming back now, I feel a need to put a nice conclusion on this but I can’t. So……

Okay, its just about a week after I made the decision to jettison a bunch of my responsibilities, and start focusing on myself and my things.

While overall I feel better I’ve noticed a few ancillary benefits:

• Gitty – My demeanor has been so much better, I’ve been much more playful, and much more at ease to laugh at lots of things, and even at myself
• Sleep – Getting up is easier, and I’m much more refreshed when I awake
• Awareness – A bit of a strange one, but I’m much more on top of the few things I’ve got, I’m noticing things about myself and making better observations about the world around me, I guess I’m just taking everything slower.

KISS works I guess. (For those of you lacking the management background KISS=Keep It Simple Stupid)

I’ve also gotten on some really old projects. Specifically a six or seven year old one to put more content on my website. I made a small step four years ago on my GLBT Theory and Issues section but that was for a class. I’m still working a little by little on this project, and I’ve also been going about bringing most of the sections of my homepage within the new and current framework. (sigh) Its lots of work, but I think it’ll be worth it.

[Begin Dork Rant] Okay, its a geek moment but right now I’m having one of those wow moments. Right now I’m printing, syncing my handspring, burning a CD, listening WYSO streaming over the net, chatting with people, and writing an eJournal entry… Dang! One of those wow moments, where I’m just amazed at what computers can do.. its really amazing. [End Dork Rant]

Should I juggle lots of things	or	focus on one
Shot Glasses	vs	My big goofy mug
Alcohol	vs	Coffee…

Okay… I’ve been choosing alcohol, and getting the predictable depressy results. I guess the thing is while a lotta of times I have been happy carrying lots of shot glasses, it ultimately doesn’t allow me to be happy. Maybe its because when there is a success, it is just a small part of everything, and is balanced by some failures.

Well I guess in some way shot glassing things has been my way of an insurance policy. Insurance doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you have the possibility of huge losses. An insurance company the pays for the losses and the successes don’t cost them anything. But the successes in my world are balanced out pretty h by the losses. Considering I’ve gotten pretty well with dealing with big failures, maybe its time that I cancel my insurance policy and get that big goofy mug. That mug might fit me better… I know the Goofy hat fits me well..

I’ve wanted blue hair for quite a while, just never had the guts to dye my hair there. I was blue for halloween. But, that was just temporary. I think it looks good… and given that I don’t have to worry about impressions for a while I might go for it..

So to blue or not to blue? That is the question.

Comments please!

For some reason, I feel qualified and able to give advice. I was talking to a friend of mine, a lesbian freshman here at WSU, and I she was frustrated that she hasn’t found a girlfriend candidate. And I commented: “Its a delicate balance, you have to hope but not too much.”

Hell, I should attempt to follow my own advice. As much as I know that its very self destructive to start planning my the future with someone I’m dating, its just a matter of when is it safe to stop living in the moment and the now with someone and start dreaming?

I know part of the desire I have for a boyfriend, is that I want the stability. I want to be able to come home, and if I have a shitty day, not have to spend time looking for someone online to chat with and decompress, or journal about it, but just sit down with him and talk it over. And I want to build something with him… well not something, a life. I want to have kids, go on a romantic vacation, and care for him when he’s sick. Oh and cuddle…

Hmm… guess its like everything else, I wanna go for the end and getting there is something to be figured out. I know I’ll like the journey, but the goal is important, and unfortunately dating isn’t something you can map out on a sheet of paper like a programming project, or a paper. Perhaps thats why I have so much trouble, I really wanna skip the beginning and just get to the end.

Okay I’ve been avoiding writing about this, but it keeps coming up. I miss Shawn. I don’t feel a desire to blame him, or defame him, but I just want him in my life. But the question is, do I want him in my life because of the fact that he fulfills my above dream, or do I really want him? I can still honestly say both.

I like him for who he is, not for what he does for me, albeit his mantra “Its all about you.”

I just hope lightening strikes twice.

I joined one of 40,000 people today, and signed Not in Our Name: A Statement of Conscience Against War and Repression.

While I have written one Letter to the Editor. I have in my rhetoric and discussions with people opposed Bush’s plans and handling of the whole situation. He does not represent me, and while I would like to disown this government, I find myself with neither the constitution, nor the lack of hope to denounce my citizenship and leave this country.

While I have considered taking drastic actions to express my views, I also realize that however unfortunate I am an American, and I have contributed to this nation. I must take ownership in it and it’s government, even when I disagree with what is being done.

I do not envy those Americans who currently are amassing in the Persian Gulf. I commend them for doing what they feel they need to do to protect our country, and I hope they realize that I’m doing what I think I need to do to protect our country.

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On sacrifices and death

The 3,017 people who gave their lives in response to the views they held, should be memorialized and remembered.

The figure that I just stated, includes the hijackers, unlike many others. All of these people died for a political cause, and as unfortunate as it is, political speech must be protected.

As a country we are about to multiply those losses. Thomas Jefferson stated “War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.” I don’t want to even guess at the multiple that Bush’s actions will multiply those 3,017 lives into.

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The List

While writing this I’ve been looking at pictures of the victims and other various ways of looking at the lists of people who died. I wanted to look at a simple list, of just names. Unfortunately one doesn’t exist, so I worked one off of the list from the September 11th Victim’s site.

My September 11th 2001 Victim list includes the victim’s name, age and residence. The list with lines wrapped, 1 inch margins, and 12pt font runs twenty-nine pages. Astonishing considering the little space given to each name. Each page contains about 100 names.

Another good site is CNN.com’s September 11: A Memorial. Sixteen people my age died.

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What is the only real thing I’ve learned? Hate is strong and one of the emotions that we must suppress at all costs.

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Not in Our Name: A Statement of Conscience Against War and Repression that I signed Today:

Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.

The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.

We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do — we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.

We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage — even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.

But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of “good vs. evil” that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.

In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq — a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the U.S. government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?

In our name, within the U.S., the government has created two classes of people: those to whom the basic rights of the U.S. legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up over 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. This smacks of the infamous concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in World War 2. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.

In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The President’s spokesperson warns people to “watch what they say” Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act — along with a host of similar measures on the state level — gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised if at all by secret proceedings before secret courts.

In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared “terrorist” at the stroke of a presidential pen.

We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and manipulates fear to curtail rights.

There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist.

President Bush has declared: “you’re either with us or against us” Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in wor
d and deed.

We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognize the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare “there IS a limit” and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

We also draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the United States: from those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with resisters.

Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.

Okay, the walls in my living room/dining area are bare, thats just how it goes, because I’ven’t gotten to it yet.

But I’ve decided I want a picture of two men on some type of romantic embrace. Like anything I need I turned to the Internet. Boy, all i gotta say is i got a lot of porn, and art porn.

It just really appears what I want is really hard to find/isn’t out there. And we wonder why people think of gay people as sexual predators half the time…

I took a leap and withdrew from all but one class this quarter, and all classes next quarter.

It seems and is a bit drastic, but I really feel that its the best solution to the underlying problem.

Specifically I don’t fit in here, and well I’ve been trying to make it work and I feel that I just cant make it happen. But I generalize and evade the issue, so let me get specific…

I moved into Ohio at the cheerful age of twelve, and it took a big nosedive from there.

I spent much of my fifth grade year, expounding on the mantra “I hate Ohio” It was cheerful stuff! Although I did try to do some good and started a newspaper that published one issue.

After that half year of fifth grade at IDA Weller Elementary, I changed schools to The Miami Valley School, an independent private school. I got my high school degree from there. My graduating class was 43 people or so, and it was a real tight knit community, but I had withdrawn from it a bit, and really retreated into several close relationships with friends.

I wasn’t the best academically, I just couldn’t stay clicked into my studies, and well being in the closet creates untold amounts of stress. But I got descent grades in a rigorous academic program. I applied to Emerson College, Purchase College, Barry University, and NYU.

I got into Purchase and Barry, both colleges that I hadn’t visited, so I just had to make a decision based on printed information.

I chose Purchase College, in the liberal arts school, even though I applied to a conservatory, so I was already playing second fiddle to my dreams and what I wanted to do.

Well, to keep this short, Purchase is a underfunded state school, they’ve got good faculty, but given the cost and what I wanted to be doing they weren’t the same. So I left after one semester, and enrolled at my current university, Wright State University. I told myself at the time that I would be only until i figured out what I wanted to do then I’d transfer. Apparently, I have a short memory.

So, fast forward three years or so. I’m still enrolled at WSU. I was not happy with my first major, so I changed to Theatre Studies, which for many students is reject land from a BFA program. I tried not to think of it this way, but there is only so much you can do. I got involved in Lambda Union, and really started doing things with them. Sometime during the last year or so I made the determination that I wouldn’t stay at WSU for the theatre department, nor the marketing department (I’m a marketing minor), or the philosophy department (minor again). Although the philosophy department is almost enough to keep me here. What was keeping me here was Lambda Union, and I was doing that because I felt a need to improve the organization and the WSU community, essentially I was being altruistic and putting my needs behind those of the the organization.

Now fast forward again to the past two weeks, I just got ran out of Lambda Union, and well I’ven’t seen the point of any of this, because I wasn’t doing what I was doing for me, but for others, and my motivation to do that was gone, with it went any motivation to get to class etc, etc..

Because as I see it right now there is no point to go to WSU anymore, its not what I want to do, and I’m not gonna get out of it what I want to get out of it.

In other words, my attempts to make lemonade have failed miserably, despite a few good batches, I can’t get a consistent flow of lemonade.

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So what do I do from here?

Well I’m gonna take off until Fall 2004 to get my financial situation back in order, and hopefully get into a college that better fits me and get my degree. So I’m gonna start working full time, and probably pick up a second job.

It feels good, although I’m gonna miss this place and the people, but this is for me. period. And that feels good.

Its strange what you start thinking about at Denny’s at 12:40ish AM on Monday morning….

Specifically this:

This is my explanation of how blind and deaf people interpret the world, and thus why deaf people seem less part of mainstream culture than do blind people. (I do not make these judgments lightly or without experience, I work the the deaf, and I have a good bunch of blind friends.)

Let me attempt to explain this in words.

I’ll start with explaining how the brain of person with all senses works in my opinion. The outer shell is visual information, this can be translated into words, or compared with a visual database to get a word out of. Then this is auralized (i.e. converted into audible type thoughts in the head) and then with sounds this goes into the thinking where your thoughts are worked audibly.

Okay a blind person’s brain works much the same way, except that tactile information is compared against a tactile database and then a word is gotten, and then auralized.

Okay a deaf persons brain on the other hand, works like a person with all senses, except that nothing is auralized, and thus thinking is carried out more visually.

This is of course an oversimplification of the matter, but because deaf people do not think audibly like much of the population they are further removed from mainstream society, and as such create their own subset societies…

Okay, I didn’t write that to annoy any deaf or blind people, but this is my best guess… If you disagree, use the comment link below!