Naws Tal Jah - 21 is the new 0

I completed a lot of writing in the last couple of weeks. I've started a few projects and outlined others. I've made headway with larger tasks and generally I've been feeling pretty good about my progress. Today I found I had several documents open at once and decided to save them, then discovered while looking in the "My Documents" folder that it had become quite cluttered with a lot of documents from the past and a lot of things that aren't too important. More than that, even though some may be worth saving, the filing system for them was horrendous.

Anyway, I started going through and opening the documents, browsing through them, renaming them and moving them around to be better organized. I had a lot of documents tranferred to this computer from my family's home computer in the suburbs and it's got a small portion of files from my now deseased laptop. As a result I found myself looking at a relatively comprehensive survey of my writing in the past 4 years, similarly this represents a fairly accurate snapshot of my thoughts, feelings, and values throughout this time period. It's been quite revealing.

My writing hasn't really changed all that much over these years, I think it's probably a little more sophisticated, but the style has not changed very much at all, I'm still in love with alliteration and metaphors seem to be my favorite plaything, that sounds so nerdy. I've learned that the core of me really hasn't changed that much over the years either, I know I've gone through a lot of different phases, and a lot of people around me have talked about ways in which I've changed, but looking at my writing now I find that I really haven't changed on the inside, the changes that have occured largely fall into two groups: First, cosmetic changes, surface interests and actions, and Second, the apparent changes that have occured simply because I've been given occassion to show different sides of myself.

It's this second thing I want to talk about this evening. What I mean by this second set of changes is that they do not exist independently, but rather have come in the form of reactions to changing climates within my life. In this sense these things are a lot like what I was talking about a few weeks ago with never really knowing who we are until we are tested. Much as it may seem trite to quote from a genre movie I feel that this quote from Batman Begins is one I have thought of recently: "Deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you."

I think that a lot of bad things happen to people in life, in the past 4 years I've had my ups and downs, and I have to say that looking back I'm fairly proud of the ways I've reacted, I think I've managed to stand up for what I believe in and represented what I feel is a general goodness. It's my 21st birthday at midnight and I'm taking solace in the battles I've weathered. I've acted poorly at times, but I think I've always recovered well enough and remained true to myself.

There are a lot of people in this world who are good, or want to say that they are, and perhaps they could be, but when the shit hits the fan and something bad happens to them they react equally badly. I can't blame you for this, we've all felt weak and vulnerable at times and we've all had bad things happen to us, what I'd like you to do is stop and consider what possible good you are serving in replicating those same bad things on others.

Those that know me also know that I have been through a lot of shitty situations in the past couple of years, I've made some mistakes and I've had some shitty things done to me. Last night I found myself thinking about how satisfying it might be to make someone else feel that way, how justified I would be in protecting myself from having the same shit pulled on me again by pulling it on others. The truth is I'll never be justified in hurting someone else, and I will always regret it if I do. So if I have ever hurt anyone out there, I probably do remember, and I am sorry.

In under an hour I will be 21. I've been feeling nostalgic tonight, but at the same time I'm looking ahead to the future. I'm nt going to allow my past to jade my future, and I'm not going to accept that in others any more. I'm wiping my slate clean and I'm starting fresh, I want to thank everyone who has brought me to this point in my life, apologize to those I might have wronged, forget all my history and wake up tomorrow renewed.

Maturity

So I took another math test yesterday, this one was a 2 hour examination that took me 11 minutes. It seems any wish I might have had to transfer my talents away from mathematics have failed, oh well. Afterwards however I found myself in a much better mood than last time. As a result I did not feel the need to create another post of pure emotional explosion, or Emoplosion as I'm calling it. I'm all for free writing, but seriously, that post was crap.

Anyway, I got to thinking yesterday and this morning about the idea of maturity. and decided to elucidate my thoughts in this online format. It seems to me that maturity is something that a lot of people talk about without taking the time to think about what they really mean by it. I rarely talk about how mature people are, because when it comes down to it I've never known. I know that people can take either mature or immature actions, but generally even that distinction is filled with gray area. For instance, I often make a lot of immature jokes, but I excuse this as being for sake of parody, and in so doing I validate my actions as mature. Responding to criticism or insult by simply saying 'your mom' followed by whatever insult preceded the response isn't mature, hell, it's not even funny, but in a way that's the point, or so I tell myself.

Looking to nature it seems that many animals go through some sort of irreversible physical change and this signifies their maturity. Deer for instance lose their spots, male lions grow manes etc. The difficulty with people though is that while we do undergo physical change it most definitely does not signify any kind of maturity, especially the kind of social maturity that people talk about so often. This point could be argued of course, but I challenge you to find maturity in a boy sticking his dick in cricket food, people mindlessly hooking up with strangers at parties, even better groups of people drinking excessively as justification for the aforementioned hookups. Find maturity in male binge drinking, find maturity in cracking voices, find maturity in keg stands. Find maturity in self-consciousness over your weight when at a lithe 125, 120, 115??? pounds, find maturity in emo-kids and thug rap fans. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but realistically puberty may bring us a host of things but I don't think maturity is one of them.

But hear again, is another problem, the idea of maturity to us is a purely social construction, and as such it seems like it needs a new definition. Since maturity is now so linked to social activity it seems that the new definition must inherently be defined in some way that demonstrates this link. This is why the idea of physical change that is found to often in nature does not apply. However we can still take a degree of inspiration from this. I've been thinking about this new definition for a long time.....at least 5 minutes now....and I think that as in nature it must be something irreversible, however instead of being a physical change, for us it is a mental change.

I have spoken before of our ability to shift and become who we like, our personalities can change at an alarming rate. I have also spoken of how we resist adherence to a personality for too long, I have admitted that I find myself to be an actor and a liar in that I change who I am frequently and am afraid of closing doors now open to me even if it means being able to open a single one that I've never been able to before. In short I have discussed the reluctance to define ourselves in a persistent sense. I think that maturity has a lot to do with this, while immature we do bounce between personalities, we are confused as to who we are and as a result of attempting to define ourselves as many things we end up defining ourselves as nothing.

I think that maturity comes when something happens to you, a wonderful or horrible event, a big decision, something major, something social, that causes you to realize that there is no longer value in being defined as nothing, that there are some personalities which are truly not you, and in defining what is not you, in closing those doors you begin to define that which is you. The process might be slow, closing one door at a time, or it might be immediate, choosing the one or two paths to take, but nevertheless that's it to me. That's maturity, it's letting go of the shallow idea of being everything at once and finding the meaning to delving deeper.

We each swim on the surface of an ocean so that we can see the horizons, in diving beneath we can never hope to see so far, but someday don't you want to see what's beneath the surface? In this definition though I would like to take away the negative connotation of immaturity. I believe that I am an immature person at present, I think I've decided to close some doors, but there are still many I keep ajar, I might peek my head beneath the surface, but never so far that I can't reach the surface once more.

Anyway, I don't see one as positive and the other as negative, everyone has their own way of dealing with life, so next time you go to call someone immature, think about what you're saying and if you're trying to insult them, then reconsider and think about whether or not it's actually for the best for them. If someone should call you mature, or immature, don't resist and be contrary about it, perhaps it's just how they see you. If people are calling you immature and you resent that, think about it, are you immature? If you see it as a problem, if you get defensive, then maybe you should think about why it offends you. Learn to accept yourself for who you are.

Anyway, I might add to this later if I think of more to say, hope everyone has a good day.

Achilles

It's time that I discuss one of my weaknesses. I've talked about a lot of things on this blog so far, but here is something that is relatively unknown to most of my friends, it's one of my crippling weaknesses; Dinosaur Hunting.

I have never been able to really explain why I enjoy hunting prehistoric creatures so much, all I really know is that when a cold-blooded and supposedly extinct threat looms I become pretty gung-ho about the whole ordeal. I remember when I was really young I absolutely loved building dinosaur models, however as I grew I found it was my destiny to destroy those dinosaur models and anything that resembled them. I went to see Jurassic Park while it was in theaters, I think I must have been ten or so at the time. I was pretty pissed off at many of the characters though because I didn't think they managed to slay near high enough a quantity of dinosaurs. My obsession grew with age and I distinctly remember back when the Turok games were popular I was not seen for an entire summer. That's the thing with games that have respawning enemies, your work is never done.

I love killing dinosaurs.

A couple of years ago there was some stuff on the news about how there might be prehistoric creatures lurking beneath the sea. I dropped out of high school and learned to scuba dive the day after I saw the first news cast. I had purchased several guns for the excursion and was most disappointed when I found out that most of them would be largely ineffective underwater. I instead purchased a harpoon gun for my undersea bounty hunt, and it was at that store that I first met Kenneth. Kenneth did not share my passion for the wholesale genocide of raging lizard creatures, but he did enjoy diving and the murder of sea creatures in general. We had our differences, since I detest the murder of sea creatures, all creatures in general really¹. But regardless of this we became fast friends and allies on the quest.

Finally the day arrived when we would go after the beast, we dove as far as we physically could, but it was obviously not deep enough, there was no way the creature would come to a shallow enough depth, unless of course there was sufficient bait. We had some chum and such with us, but all this did was attract sharks, most of which we were forced to kill. Even with the fresh shark corpses in the water though the beast would not be stirred, with alarm I realized that we would soon run out of air and be forced to return to the surface. My natural dinosaur hunting instincts kicked in and I realized what I had to do, I shot Kenneth in the chest with my harpoon gun. I then grabbed his air tank and let his body sit in the organ-laden soup of water that had been created by our carnage.

Finally the beast came from the depths, it swallowed Kenneth's body whole, for that I was thankful since it definitely cleared up a lot of problems I would likely have had with the authorities later had his body reached the surface. After devouring my friend it turned it's attention to me, I shot, reloaded and shot again until I was out of harpoons. Still the beast came. The harpoons protruded from its body as mere splinters. It became rapidly obvious that I would not be able to defeat the beast, but by this point I was in a frenzy, so I attacked.

I rushed at the beast with an adrenaline driven ferocity the like of which I would not know again for another 2 years. My intent was to use my minor martial arts experience to somehow subdue it. To be honest I don't think this was my intent at all, I don't think I was even possessed of intentions at this stage. Regardless I rushed, it rushed and the distance between us was closed. It open it's great maw and swallowed me whole.

As the dinosaur's mouth closed I knew I was finished, I would be crushed. An odd thing happened though, instead of being crushed the beast simply swallowed me whole. I won't get into the details but 2 days later I passed alive and well out the creature's ass and back into the sea. Before you ask how I breathed, I survived largely on the air tanks left behind by all the divers it had eaten before me.

Anyway, I returned to the surface and made my way home. I explained the situation to my uncle and he told me what my problem was. On land or at sea projectile weapons will only get you so far, and that is largely limited by the ammunition you carry. That day my uncle entrusted me with a prize possession of his, a Kabar Combat Knife, normally issued to marines, now issued to a fool of a boy with a dinosaur hunting obsession.

Since that day I've trained long and hard with that knife and it's the only weapon I ever use. My obsession remains and when I see animatronic lizards on the television my roommates often have to restrain me, but one day, when the dinosaur menace looms once more, I will be ready.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth Barclay IV. May he rest peacefully.

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¹It's probably important to point out that I do not consider Dinosaurs to be living creatures but rather assume that they are abominations of nature and perversions of the natural order.

I am Real

I remember the impact that reading "The Things They Carried" had on me the first time I read it. Tonight I am rereading a single paragraph in the chapter entitled "On the Rainy River." The paragraph deals with the idea of courage and a youthful notion that we are each posessed of a finite amount of courage. Essentially O'Brien discusses the idea of going through life and justifying cowardice in your daily life under the guise that we are each saving our courage for something really important.

I also have a book which was given to me by a man named Matt Silver who I respect greatly. The book is a simple hardback which contains a single question or statement to think about on each page. One of the pages is a black, or perhaps dark blue, I can't really tell with the awful lighting in my room. Regardless the question on the page reads: "Will you ever really know how brave you truly are?"

What I want to talk about isn't so much courage or bravery directly, but rather a sense of knowing how anything you truly are. I know that I myself have always had an internal idea of who I am, but I have never been really sure, when the shit hits the fan and all my chips are laid down, would I be who I think I am, or something different, something most likely far worse.

We all have dreams, I remember when I was young hearing about school shootings and thinking how I would stand up to another kid with a gun, I rationalized it by saying that a kid with a gun would lack a lot of confidence and be taken by surprise easily, I envisioned myself as a hero. I always had the suspicion that my headmaster in England was possessed of a curious prescience, one piece of evidence to this came when he talked to my classmates and I about the school shootings. He didn't talk to us in any kind of Headmaster way, instead talking as a person and he asked us rhetorically how we would react if a classmate brought in a gun. He then added that a great many people would see themselves defending their classmates, but would be just as likely to hide beneath a desk and soil themselves. The headmaster of my school was named Mr. Jones, I've only ever spoken of him very rarely. On that day though I first came to really seriously consider the reality of reactions versus expectations of self.

Thankfully I still don't know if I would have soiled myself beneath a desk.

The trouble with knowing the extent of one's bravery, or the extent of one's goodness, kindness, any of the virtues we might dream of having within us is that we can write off the times when we fail as unimportant, somehow unworthy of the expenditure of our virtues, this connects most succinctly with the ideas expressed by Tim O'Brien. The flipside is that whenever we do live up to our virtues while we take comfort in ourselves there is always the sneaking doubt, the suspicion of a worse situation, one in which we would crumble, becoming something brutal or hateful.

I have always had a great faith in my own ability to love and care. I have done my share of horrible things to people, I have hated, I have been an asshole. Throughout it all I always told myself that it just wasn't important enough, that there was some situation or some person that would live up to the worthiness of my virtues. The dream lives on, but as just that, a dream, not a reality. We each sit and wait, wondering if we will ever know how brave, how loving, how kind, how forgiving, how compassionate or how determined we are.

Reality so often dissappoints, and when reality pulls through it is often we who end up dissappointing ourselves. But not today. Richard Bach penned the words: "I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?" Yes. Whole heartedly yes.

I don't think that I will ever know the extent of my virtues, I don't know if I'll ever truly know where any of my limits lie, to be honest I've never really believed in limits at all. There was a quote posted on the wall of one of my history classrooms in highschool which read "It's not what you know, it's what you think of in time." It may seem indirect, but I feel that this applies quite precisely to these issues. It doesn't matter what your limits are, what matters is what you actually do, what matters is if you summon the force of will and the strength of character at the key moments when it's needed. There is no way of knowing these things, we are all good people, everyone has the potential within them, and that potential is largely unlimited. The trick is that the only ones in control of any of this is us.

Tonight I am the man I always hoped I was and I will not be cut down by any man, woman or ideal set against me. The only person who can cut me down is me. I am real, and the real me is exactly who I expected.

On Oscar Night

I enjoyed watching the Oscars this year. I haven't done it for a while and I can honestly say I'm glad I did this time. One huge reason for that is the interpretive dance group that did the filler entertainment. Seriously, when they made themselves in penguins for Happy Feet I thought it was brilliant. When they formed their bodies into a van for Little Miss Sunshine I wanted to call some Puritans and report the dancers for witch-trial. I immediately hung up the phone when they did Snakes on a Plane and Casino Royale though because only by the will of God could a group of humans do that.

The awards themselves I didn't care about half of, but I suppose that's the way of things, to be honest I don't really understand many of the subtleties of sound mixing and so I've never been too passionate about most of the technical awards. I was pissed off that Pan's Labyrinth didn't win Best Foreign Film, but I haven't seen the German one that won, so I'll have to hold off my rage until I see it, pass a completely biased judgment on how crappy I think it is and feel justified in saying that Pan's Labyrinth was robbed.

Before the awards I was hanging out with my roommate Andy and we were talking about Netflix and the topic of the purpose of movies came up. I think it's an important thing to bear in mind, I watch movies primarily to be entertained, sometimes I'll watch them to learn something also, but that's pretty much the whole deal. I can appreciate technical quality and originality, but the fact that I find myself laughing a lot harder and more entertained by You Got Served and Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (David Hasslehoff with an eyepatch....) than something technically impressive and artistically rendered makes them the more worthwhile movies in my mind. Then again there's nothing wrong with enjoying movies, or anything else for that matter, for other reasons, so long as you don't intentionally dislike a something, regardless of enjoying it, on some contrived principle.

A lot of people get very passionate about the Academy Awards, especially regarding the winners of Best Picture. I remember when Crash won best picture over Brokeback. I was kinda pissed at first too, because I thought Brokeback seemed more important. I hadn't seen Crash yet though, so I gave it a chance. In the end I find myself agreeing with the academy, from a technical standpoint the use of multiple narratives was effective, and I relate and react more to themes of racism than a homosexual love story turn tragedy. That being said, I think both movies were excellent.

The point I'd like to make though is that all art of personal, and so an Oscar isn't the be-all end-all of a movie, people will appreciate movies that aren't nominated and a lot of people will dislike movies which are nominated. Everyone already knows this, and it's not worth jumping up and down saying that the Academy is filled with idiots. The Academy is not filled with idiots, if it were I highly doubt they could have contrived of such an excellent way to make copious amounts of money.

There's a great beauty in the world, and that is in our freedom to appreciate what we wish, exercise that right for yourself and don't put people down when they do the same. 2006 was a relatively good year for movies in my opinion and I'm pretty excited for this year's contribution to our collective need to escape reality once in a while. Have a good night everyone!

Not Meaning Whores...

I actually received some comments on my titling of the "Prostitution" post and thought I would clear some things up. First, yes, I know the dates on some of my posts are wrong, this is because I often start them on one day and then let them sit for days at a time before finishing them. The Prostitution piece went up last night, but I already got a couple of emails regarding the title and why it was used. I want to just say that I meant no offense to anyone in that profession, also that I am not in fact a prostitute myself, so no Tiffany S, I will not be performing that transaction with you.

One definition for prostitution is the use of a talent or skill for an unworthy cause. While writing my post I was considering this a lot and I was thinking of what a worthy cause really is, and it seems to me also that some talents are considered unworthy at the outset regardless of what they are used for. Specifically within our society it is considered largely unnacceptable for women to use seduction and their bodies for any goal. That isn't to say that strip clubs aren't ridiculously popular, but to admit that one is a stripper becomes an embarassment. This is an extreme example.

I remember in my own life finding out that a girl I knew was leading a guy on so get discounts on purchases for some expensive stuff. I thought it was pretty disgusting at the time, and I think a lot of people would agree. In reflection however I thought, why not? Am I suggesting that I wouldn't do anything I could to save 50 bucks if it meant lying? The truth is that there's nothing really wrong with this kind of behavior, everyone's got their talents and it's foolish not to employ them.

Prostitution however as I said is the employment of a talent for an unworthy cause. Obviously this is mostly tied to sexual favors for money in our society, so I'd like to address this. Please be open minded in reading this, I really don't need a slew of emails telling me about how wrong I am, trust that I fully respect your opinions on the subject and am simply offering my own. Anyway, I have decided that I do not disagree morally with prostitution, and following I will tell you why.

Prostituion is profession of using sex to gain money. The acquisition of money is thought of as an unworthy cause, however in looking at my own life I find it difficult to find a time when I have had sex for a cause more worthy than money. This might sound strange, but think about it, money in our society represents the ability to survive, it represents paying rent, eating, and putting clothes on your back. I can't think of many more worth causes than that. When I look at the childish reasons that I've had sex it all seems rather meaningless. For pleasure, hell yeah, but how does my selfishness compare to the whore supporting her kid? I've fucked out of hatred and anger, I've fucked for revenge, I've fucked for control. These things, these things are wrong, and I'm not alone, I can think of a number of women who've tried to manipulate or control me using sex. To me, this kind of thing is just a little more wrong than putting food on the table.

Of course there's also the prevalence of drug addiction in prostitution, selling yourself to get money to fuel your addiction, and then there's the diseases, I think that's a case of more responsibility though. Maybe we just need more respectable and responsible prostitutes.

Ersatz

It is said that art imitates life. However from fiction writing I have learned that the best fiction cannot possibly follow life precisely, because that creates bad fiction. Instead art to me seems to use shades of life as its palette and then repaint an entirely different picture so that the colors used can be better understood.

I thought about all this on a day working at the bookstore when a kid came in a bought a bunch of art supplies with the intention of creating a portfolio of art so that he could get into art school. I acknowledge that there is some purpose to art school, there are various skills and techniques which can be passed on in any artform, but really as I was ringing up this guy's purchases it made me think about how ridiculous it is to be producing art for the sake of getting into a school. In my mind art had always been something that is for it's own sake, it's a form of expression.

I suppose there's no other way for art schools to see if people posess a degree of talent, however this also draws up another issue of how exactly they are gauging the potential of applicants, I'm assuming they are under the impression that they can quantify artistic ability. My problem with this is how much of art appreciation is simply taste, it seems a relatively flawed system to quantify talent and admit or omit people based upon that. Regardless, like I said, I see the necessity of it so I suppose it doesn't matter.

Last year Iread an essay entitled "Hunting is not those heads on the wall" which I thought conveyed a lot of good points about the nature of art. I thouroughly recommend it to anyone interested, if it's available online I'll try and find it so I can post a link.