"are we still on for tomorrow?"

I'm having an experience right now. Like I'm in the process of it right now. It has begun yet hasn't concluded. It's about 2 in the morning. I just got done watching Royal Tenenbaums with my brother and dad. I'm in my basement, with my laptop, listening to Bon Iver and playing guitar along with it. My brother comes out down the stairs to do laundry. He does his thing then comes back to the room I'm in and just listens with me. Pretty much silent. I have put the guitar down by this point. I, being tactless, ask him in a very controlled uncomfortable voice say "uhh... what's up?" and he says "nothing" and heads back up stairs. I didn't think much of it. He comes back after several minutes wearing a plain black shirt and asks me what he thinks of it, specifically if people will "projectile vomit like in the exorcist." Now first some back story. This is my younger brother. I only have one. He's 16, a freshman in high school, has had way more girlfriends than I, and we have seldom gotten along. Pretty much only when we're participating in something involving family we don't like or don't know or when the activity involves no talking like watching a movie. He used to stab me with the fact that I went to a community college for a year and how he's stronger than me. A sensible me would shirk it off but shit he knew how to get my blood burning. Back to the black shirt. I say, trying to keep up my anti-fashion veneer/make the other person feel shitty about themselves for wondering if something makes them look ok kind-of-way, "I don't know, it's a black shirt." He responds with "I know but I'm saying how does it make me look. I mean, I don't want people to see it and projectile v...etc." It's at this point I'm starting to realize we're in a different realm than either of us have ever been in with each other. He doesn't care how he looks in clothes. I probably visibly change my attitude at this point. I pretend to scrutinize the outlines of the shirt. I say "Yeah, no I don't think anyone's going to be hurling chunks at you." He says thanks and we exchange awkward, unintelligent banter about vomiting as he's ascending the stairs and I stay in place. I sit down here mulling it over for a while. He asks me about how his shirt looks? What was with that? did that movie start making him think about family or was he just tired of us fighting? He comes back down a third time for his laundry. As he's bringing it up, he stops to listen to the music again. I ask him what he thought of the movie and he said it was pretty good. He says something about the music. I explain to him the whole cabin in northern wisconsin thing and he attentively listens. This made me fumble my words a bit because I try and explain music things to him constantly and he usually condescendingly rejects my attempts. halfway through the explanation, I ask him if I already told him this. He says "no." I am 99% sure that I have. This leads me to believe something was going through his mind that made him willing to hear it again. I finish. He continues to stand. I continue to check my webcomics while reading interviews of people i find interesting. He goes from his current standing position by the amplifier to my right, to the blue chair on my left and lays in it Great Mouse Detective style:

He just sits there, looking up at the ceiling. Silent. I'm just kind of amazed the whole time as this is happening. We sit through a little over half an hour of For Emma, Forever Ago (from "Wolves" to "For Emma"). About half way through that, I decide to let him know I know what's going on and stop reading. I slide backwards so that my back is up against the couch on the other side of the room. I sit there and stare at the space inbetween the amp and the fridge. We sit silently for another 15 minutes after that just listening to the music. We didn't quite make it to flume; I adjusted my seating position which made some rustling noises and he got up and left. His eyes were wide open the whole time. I looked every so often. To cement the idea that I knew what was going on but wasn't orchestrating anything said "that was cool. we should do that again sometime." He agreed and said "yeah, that was good thinking music. I'm going to have to get that." He picks up his laundry and heads upstairs. Before his head went past the wall, he called "hey, are we still on for [Sherlock Holmes] tomorrow?" and I said "oh yeah, I forgot about that. yeah, definitely." These quotes are as verbatim as I can remember. The incident ended around the time I started looking for that picture of Basil playing the violin on his couch on google (Victoria: if you still need any help cajoling Kris into getting that as a tattoo, I'm way in).

I don't know about this whole thing. Maybe it was completely nothing. Maybe I'm reading more into that there is. But maybe not. Maybe we're starting to grow up. I see my cousins Gabe and Matt, who are brothers, that went to burning man together. I can't imagine that just yet but at the same time, I can totally see what's been hindering us. Whenever we start having a good time together or are about to verbalize it in some way, it's very clear that we throw in something like an insult, clearly in jest, but at the same time an attempt to keep distance. I think it'd be really cool if we started treating each other as humans instead of whatever you'd call our current/potentially previous relationship. Sugar headache; I need to sleep. I'll finish this in the morning. Good night. I hope your relationships are being held back by idiocy like ours.

give ME that Christian side-hug

This is either complete ironic brilliance or the most ridiculous attempt at reachin' the kids these days made by a religious organization ever (yes, I'm including Jesus Camp and those Halloween horror plays that churches put on where girls that drink once end up getting raped and die during child birth)

Ok, so I've been a Christian for most of my life; Lutheran to be exact. In high school through Freshman year of undergrad, I was what I called a theistic existentialist in that I believed in some sort of creator with ambiguous morals that could be found by looking at what makes evolutionary sense and what preserves the species (I typically found that love, trust and integrity kept the world going as well as hard work and respect). Currently, I'd call myself an optimistic agnostic but I still have a lot of respect for what intelligent believers have to offer. The West Borro Baptists, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and these guys... not so much.



I found this on HuffPost if you would like to read the hilarious commentary. Just search "Christian Side Hug." Hope you enjoy.

Still working on the new manifesto. Some deep shit happened today. My new friend went home to Altoona this morning and didn't tell us why. Her hall-mate told us her brother died last night. I can't really think about it right now so I wanted to share happy thoughts like ridiculous religious raps. Just as big a part of romanticism as the happy, beautiful sensations are the sad, grisly, chest-full-of-rocks feelings; it's about how you look at EVERYthing. I'll talk about it later. Enjoy this.

logic reveals itself as a double agent; he's a romantic too!

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson

I had the perfect revelation for my first post just now. It's 7:17 in the AM and I haven't gone to bed yet. You can skip this paragraph if you'd like. The important stuff is in the 2nd one but this stuff right here is just revealing a little bit about myself and gives my post and the blog in general a little bit of context. I understand we're new to each other and I don't want you to have to spend any time with my brainnotes that you don't want to; I'd rather you were out living life; my hope is that this will help you accomplish some of hurdles life has to offer (what a stupid phrase; how tired is "life hurdles?") I'm going to sleep 'til lunch I think. Don't worry, my first final isn't until Wednesday. I usually stay up because I'm desperate to have fun and going to bed before I've had an amazing day feels like quitting. The shitty part of that is I'm almost completely ok with staying up and passively thinking about what I should do while watching a movie I don't really care about or reading news articles that, while interesting, could easily wait until morning. I never read when it's this late because that feels like quitting too. I do love to read but when I'm not in the zone wherein I'm already in the process or reading, I have this stigma that it's a passive activity. But some nights, I stay up with a purpose. Some nights I'm struck in the face with the cricket bat of perspective and I must extract every thought on the subject said bat has to offer into a journal entry and pray to whatever that I don't lose the motivation to apply it in the morning. This was one of those nights. We'll see how the morning goes in a while. I'll let you know how it works when I get up.

Now I won't be sharing a lot of my journal entries with you because that defeats their ability to help me; when I know someone's going to read something, I'll try and impress them by being excessively verbose or fudge the details of my revelations to make them more interesting and then looking back becomes fake and I can't take away from them what I need. That brings me to my point. That person I described is, when I wake up for lunch, going to be the old me (see quote at the very top of the page). I've been telling myself I need to be more honest with others for years. This is something that is completely in my control but I say it in my head with that whiny, exasperated voice ("I wish I was more honest") like I'm wishing I wasn't so unlucky or I'm wishing for something beyond my control to change for me, 'just this once.'
One of those impediments for me is I'm constantly judging myself through others eyes which makes me judge people like I judge myself; I look for the things in people's clothes, their attitudes, their everything and I judge it based on what I would have done or said or worn. This is extremely pointless and stupid but I'd never put it into words before now. I have a quote for you that I just got done trying to rip off right but I'll just give you the actual one by Nancy Lopez (I think she's a pro golfer which is awesome that she is an enlightened one; I might also be completely wrong because I just looked at the first page of google when I typed in her name) --

“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.”

This is my manifesto starting December 14th, 2009 (written immediately prior to posting this blogpost from my journal which is actually a folder on my desktop labeled "thoughts" that's full of WordPad files)
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson

Starting the second I wake up, I will be true. I will not say things that are commonplace to keep a shitty conversation afloat. I will not distill my ideas for school or work or any other obligation in life that calls itself life or a necessary evil or people that come into my life. I will love. I will show love to everyone because everyone deserves love.

Why would someone not deserve love from me? Better phrasing, why would I think that my love is too good for anyone? You need to stop being so fucking pretentious.

I won't be afraid to say something because it will be labeled as pussy, gay, or faggy. I won't be afraid to say something that will be labeled as harsh or mean if said statement is of any importance and worth the sacrifice of feelings. I will stand up for injustice even if that injustice makes me laugh a little bit. Too many times have I heard friends call things gay in reference to something other than joy or homosexuality and said nothing. There's a lot of shit going on in the world of gays and lesbians and perpetuating this elementary school slurs is not helping at all.
When I wake up, I will be all the things that I have always told myself I needed to be but didn't for whatever reason. "...but anyone can start today and change the ending." I'm really pumped to get up tomorrow

Fuckin' right. Today is a new day. It has just as much potential to be the greatest day of your life as the next. The zombie apocalypse starts as just one infected monkey. Will you be that monkey? I shouldn't try to be funny with this amount of sleep. I might add to this in the afternoon. I hope you guys decide to become the person you've always wanted to be today. Not "as soon as possible" because that's a cop out phrase. "As soon as possible" in regards to this kind of self improvement is the moment you decide what's important and you go full steam ahead. I realize I left a LOT of ideas out but this is already way too long for someone to read on a computer screen without getting eye cancer. When I develop some kind of rapport with any of you, they will get more succinct and you can read this without needing to take a nap in the middle.

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.”
-Paulo Coelho