unabashed expressiveness

okay so the whole point of starting a blog in the first place was that i'm going through an existential crisis of mammoth proportions and need to express myself in order to get out the angstyness. and i've sort of hinted at my personal craziness, but been bashful. the buck stops here.

the main problem with my last relationship is one that can be found by searching through websites where couples describe their sex problems. here's an excerpt from one:

Dear Dr. Patti:

Recently, I have fallen in love with my boyfriend of five months. Needless to say, we have incredible sex; however, sometimes after a really intense orgasm I will burst out in tears. Why does this happen to me? I never have been sexually abused, and I am very open about my sexuality. --N

Patti Britton

Sex Coach Dr. Patti Britton is a certified sexologist and author who provides factual, up-front and responsible advice about sex -- from orgasms to ovulation.


Dear N:

What a lovely question. Contrary to what many people may think, the responses women exhibit at the peak of orgasm are varied and can often be misleading. Women report to me that at their climax they explode with many varieties of emotional release. Those expressions can include tears, laughter, sobbing and intense crying.

Because the sexual response cycle is multiphasic, there are levels of energetic buildup during the whole process...Throughout this process of arousal through to the "pop" of orgasm, energy is amassing and must be discharged. That energy may take the form of whatever the body is capable of releasing -- so that it may show up, as for you, as intense crying. This is nature's way of giving you a precious gift. In American culture, tears and crying have received too much bad press, for both men and women. Know that this is a perfectly wonderful means for letting out both feelings and energy. Crying, for you, may be your body's way of telling you it has completed a dance, or an intense journey, through sex.

Be sure that you have thoroughly checked inside to make sure that these tears are of joy, not sadness or something else that may stem from a past wound around relationships, sex or your body image. Then go forth in delight that you can enjoy so much emotional juice. It's terrific that you can feel, express and know that you are truly alive.

needless to say, my ex didn't "go forth in delight" about the fact that orgasm was an incredibly emotional experience for her. she felt that it meant something was wrong with her, even though i thought it was the most beautiful, soul-wrenching thing i have ever dreamed of. in the end, when she would think about sex with me she would think about how she would get emotional, and avoid it. then she would feel guilty that she wasn't giving me what i needed. the cycle of negativeness ripped us apart. and so here i am feeling like our love was so deep and we were fit for each other in so many ways, but this beautiful physiological response was too much for us to handle and we were too young and inexperienced to know how to cope.

so what do i do now? i feel like i need to talk to a sex therapist or something just to be able to put my thoughts in order and wrap my head around what the fuck just happened over the past three years. intellectually, i sort of know that what's over is over. and emotionally, my heart just needs time to start beating on it's own again. but then again, intellectually i'm still searching for answers and it's not clear to me that this was a good enough reason for us to abandon each other, not when we felt so strongly. i feel like if we had been thirty, we would have just gone to a counselor and gotten some help figuring it out.

meanwhile, and this relates to epugachev's post from a few weeks back, my parents saw my mental state over thanksgiving and think that i need paxil, which throws me into another thought loop. would van gogh have sliced off his ear had he been given antidepressants? if you meet your soulmate, and then lose her, are you supposed to take prozac to get over her, or are you supposed to wallow in sorrow until the forces of fate pull you back together like a snapped rubber band?

catharsis at least. and at last.

hup

compare:

episode 3: revenge of the sith trailer.

episode 3: rise of the empire trailer starring legos.

hahaha. damn you, lucas. listen to the little plastic men!

come down now

but we'll stay

revelation 11-18-04

i think most people don't believe that every person you meet was meant for you. mainly because there are soooo many people. how could every random person who meets any other random person in their lives all be mapped out and set perfectly in place for some higher purpose?

but i just realized OF COURSE that's the way it works. you think God can't handle that? we've built fucking computers that could do it, you think He can't?

i'm a believer.

academi-gle

google crawls scientific publications now. good job buddies. now implement my suggested features for gmail.

scholar.google.com

oh shyt

you knew it was coming, probably regardless of who we had elected.

alas, holy roman empire, here we come. (comments).

remember the early drumbeat leading to iraq starting in august 2002 or so? welcome to the machine my friends.

update 11-18 ! see what i mean? drumbeat tacka tacka tacka tacka.

update 11-21 ! premonition of deja vu.

meta mit

this is why i am so glad i'm not in the horrible thought bubble i was in at mit anymore. but i feel very strongly for the poor kids who are still caught in the negative feedback loop of feeling overwhelmed, not performing, and getting even more demotivated, rinse, wash, repeat. it feels so eternal and clouds perspective so profoundly. i wanted to take a term off like every term. here's a quote from a dear friend still in the bubble:

when mit students stopped being people

some of us were like this before we came here. some of us adopted it quickly after we got here. some of us keep trying but it never feels quite right. that last category of people are those that end up driving themselves into a psycho-depression where they oscillate between feeling really satisfied and really unfulfilled.

no, this is not in reference to being a red sox fan. this is in reference to that strange phenomenon where we define our self-worth by things like "getting an A on an 8.01 exam" or "getting published in Science" or "being able to take 8 classes a term and pass them all". when we're feeling down about ourselves, we find reconciliation in these accomplishments.

we all have goals. getting an A in 5.12 helps us get to the place where we imagine we'll be happy in the future. present happiness and satifaction with life become inconsequential so long as that goal never becomes unreachable. if it means you have to lie to your professor about being sick when you accidentally slept through the class, or popping a bunch of ADHD medication so that you can stay up to finish a pset--then fine; the ends justifies the means.

since when did we have to choose between values and goals? do we design our goals to fit into the framework of our values? or do we design values to fit into the framework of our goals?

upon arriving to mit, you are handed those goals on a platter. (ok that might be an exaggeration--it's more like a buffet-style luncheon with limited options). maybe you brought your lunch and had your own goals in mind that happened to fit well into life here. some of you will design your values around being able to accomplish those goals. some of you will try to reconcile your new goals and old values, and it will eventually drive you crazy until you up and leave, take time off, or suck it up till graduation while complaining the whole time.

those of you who don't fit into one of those two categories: congratulations. you are really the ones that deserve to be here. Seriously.

i don't mean to criticize anyone, Really. the vast majority of people at mit are great intellectuals capable of amazing things. but intellect doesn't mean that you can accomplish a set of pre-packaged goals And achieve fulfillment. are you in control? or are you floating through? what does your Ideal look like?

perhaps instead of answering those questions, it would be easier just to do those 2 problem sets that are due tomorrow. think about it later. you have a lot to do tonight for school. if you put it off long enough, then maybe you won't remember it bothering you at all.

reasonable ideas anyone?

what are we actually going to do to influence the policies of this administration? i see bush appointing the man who provided the rationalization for guatanamo bay and abu ghraib as attorney general, a complete religious radical with a questionable dedication to modern
medicine (believes women should read the bible to cure PMS and doesn't believe in birth control under any circumstances) to the FDA committee for womens' reproductive health, and the likelihood of appointing an anti-abortion supreme court justice. he's going to try again for the anti-gay constitutional ammendment now that he tested the waters with the earlier one and can fine-tune the rhetoric and ask for help from his newly reinforced majority in both houses of congress. he asked his generals to hold off on full-on invading fallujah until after the election and no one cares. with arafat dead, he and sharon will undoubtedly attempt
to institute some puppet akin to karzai or allawi in a palestinian state with borders defined by where israel decided to build their wall, with our approval. and in four years, he will be looking back saying "look! we have happy democratically elected governments in free states in afghanistan, iraq, and a new palestine." suicide bombings will of course still be happening in all three states, but our continuing coalition of the willing will keep them in check with our new ability to effectively wage urban warfare. bush will be crowned emperor and build the death star so those damn genocidian terrorists from the planet xenopus don't keep blowing up our intergalactic microwave energy pipelines in the year 3000.

sigh.

call for proxy artist

i need someone to draw my ideas for me sometimes. an image just occured to me that i'd love to have on my wall: a giant muscle-bound samurai-type character, armed to the kilt with padding and chain mail and such, all the protection and strength he could possibly need to fend off whatever the world might throw at him, but he has so lost his ability to feel that he doesn't even realize the defenses that he has available, so instead of marching triumphantly to defeat his enemies, he sits and sulks and wonders how the world could have left him so disadvantaged and unable to protect himself. the key would be to get across that idea only through his facial expression.

best news site ever

almost beats rss.

suh huh tuh huh nuh huh muh huh

that's the mantra that cleared my mind last night. the phrase sut nam means "truth is my identity". when it is parsed into short syllables and aspirations as above, it is supposed to resonate with a natural rhythm in the body. when you keep it up for a long time, it's amazing the sensations and feelings of wholeness that arise. first the beating of my heart fell in line with the rythym of the syllables, and then a pulsing feeling in my fingers, and eventually the sorts of thoughts and memories that have been going through my head for the last few weeks started to look different and seem less important. even when i got to a point where i felt pretty relaxed and not so emotionally involved and tried to go to sleep, the mantra suh huh tuh huh nuh huh muh huh just kept going in my head and sort of carried me to sleep.

breath out: abandonment, selfishness, jealousy, demotivation, cynicism, clouded vision, lust, elitism, egotism, lethargy, tension, anxiety, fear

breath in: compassion, love, nonjudgementality, hope, optimism, exercise, understanding, acceptance, motivation, selflessness, humility, confidence, peace

meditation is pretty meta because you are stepping outside of your conscious thoughts and observing them. and yet you can't get any more grounded than when you're focusing on your breath. maybe this is the answer.

jack & ginger is surprisingly grounding

alcohol is just one of those unavoidably grounding experiences. you don't analyze as much as emote. certainly not a sustainable solution, but definitely worked wonders last night.

charting a course through archived email

so first i noticed that my last post was at 6:58 and i seemed to remember having written an important email once entitled, "6:58 and counting". so i searched through my archived emails and ended up looking at every message i'd sent my ex-girlfriend during the year that we lived together. on every occassion, it was either a few brief words to plan a dinner or a movie or a show, or it was tons of words trying to work our way out of a fight, or it was one of us trying to apologize for letting the other down by missing a date or going away for a weekend or just not giving the other person what they were looking for that week. so if over time it was so bad, why do i remember it as being so wonderful?

a metapost

a fun thing to do that will lead to a satisfying analysis is to post exactly the words in the post below, but point the links towards images and sites more relevant to your experience. then we can get an idea of what images are associated with getting lost in metaspace.

metalive is born

i started off grounded. i sought self-awareness. i saw myself seeking and the whole process looked sad and futile. i tried to become grounded in some beautiful state of perpetual seeking and not finding. but there was no end to the recursive analysis and i am now left floating, alone, a metalife.