Because I Can.

Oh, Intro to Psych Text...

...you are so wise that I can't resist quoting you so that I remember.

"If you walk along a city street, you are surrounded by traffic and other items that demand your attention and leave you mentally exhausted.  If you walk through a forest, you replenish your resources, enhancing your later ability to control your attention."
-Kalat, 9th. Ed.

“This human tendency to look for outer causes for our moods is the greatest addiction on our planet.”

–Richard Rudd

Yeah, it's still going off.

"A mind needs a book like a sword needs a whetstone."
-Game of Thrones

Good Advice

"Don't be afraid to be greedy."
-HKB

"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."

-Patañjali

"Escapes have gotten terrifically sophisticated. There are all manner of devices and distractions that can lift you out of the day to day - or even better, let you edit and re-imagine your day into something simpler or more beautiful. I can assemble this outfit, manufacture a story to go with it, and not only lift myself out of my regular life, but help other people escape too. Their hypothetical escape helps mine, adds a different dimension of pleasure to it. We collude together to step outside reality, just for a moment."

          -even*cleveland

Remember That One Time ___?

"...One thing White loved in New York was its refusal to succumb — to gravity or the impossible logistics of ushering millions onto and out of an island every day — and the way a feeling of belonging to something unique and mighty seemed to inject the most diverse set of people 'with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin.'

There’s a wider lesson for America, and particularly Washington, in that supplement."

-Roger Cohen, "New York and the Planes"

“If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
-Robert Fritz

iLike

"I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year."

-David Brooks

Like This Guy

"I have to do things to make me feel creative, I don't consider myself a creative person. It's more my nature to work on the espresso machine. Being in the mansion [creating This Is Happening] felt wrong and hilarious, and that's where we're comfortable. This felt like a good pressure, like I should make an album worthy of a bunch of people wearing white suits."
&
"I've prided myself on using my business acumen to be able to stay free and do what I want."

"Complementary to any purely medicinal, or medical, approach there must also be an 'existential' approach: in particular, a sensitive understanding of action, art and play as being in essence healthy and free, and thus antagonistic to crude drives and impulsions, to 'the blind force of the subcortex' from which these patients suffer...Here the 'I' vanquishes and reigns over the 'It'.
-Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

"But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something - whatever you like - you will be on the way to knowing more about him." -Van Gogh

STEAL.

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.'"

— Jim Jarmusch

from <>

"You have your way. I have my way. As far as the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Girl: Excuse me.
Boy: Excuse me.
Girl: Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?' "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be ant, you know?

"...but I don't have the time anymore. Another life is already on its way."

Saw them at 7th Street, and I'm convinced. Two lead-ish singers, one of which (especially on this track) sounds a lot like Antony Hegarty (frontman of Antony and the Johnsons) and an overall mood that's like a more sophisticated, evolved Vampire Weekend. Love parts of "Contra" (the new VW album) but most of the Wild Beasts' tunes have what I wanted from VW's sophomore effort: more of an honest edge, less "quirky" beats.

PS, the bassist, with a shaved head, reminded me a lot of my friend Brendan. This remembering loaded the show with a lot more meaning for me, and made me think of the things I loved about "Brendore" like his ernest nature, his well-worn t-shirts and taut little body, and his charm. Also the bassist made me chuckle when he confessed to being a shameless flirt (very unlike Brendan,) and offered to sell himself for $5. This is after he had been in a van for 2 days from Portland with a bunch of dudes and grawrling into the microphone and in unison with the other singer in the next breath. Rock stars are so hot that, for me, it's almost more of a comfort than an excitement.

A friend and I were treated to exquisite little glasses of Cynar beforehand from a kindred spirit at Bradstreet. We had the whole lounge area to ourselves and it was lovely catching up. She's a keeper (the friend, not the waitress or the booze) and though I'll always try something new, I can't see this liquor being any good at all in a mix, but maybe as a digestive after a meal, like Montenegro. Oh how civilized!

A beautifully late evening, and loverly music. I wish these boys all the best!

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
-H.L. Mencken

Goodreads Flow.

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."
-David Foster Wallace

+I move (a-fucking-'gain) on June 30th/July 1st
+I'm taking a copywriting class July-August to 1. get a better job and 2. to have a reason to hang at the hip yuppie coffeeshop in my new 'hood (or the bar.)
+I'm taking CORE class again fall semester, traditional grad. tracks be damned, and haven't picked out the other 4-credit beast that I'll have to take (either "Post 9-11 Lit" or another poetry one with Jim Moore.)
+Nothing seems permanent, and everything seems light. It's nice in a stomach-wrenching sort of way.

Addicted.

Thank You, Trashley.

"I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give [...] the passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are, and the desire may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by; but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience."

-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre