Ariana

Having recently updated my own journal and read other blog entries, I wonder if it is possible to simultaneously write in an online diary that is subject to being read and to have the content of what we write be uninfluenced by the possibility of readers. And clearly the answer is no. We can't have both at the same time. There are psychological filters that prevent us from getting at certain truths--honesty costs. So there's this cost-benefit going on: incomplete honesty is an okay choice as long as there are people around to validate it. Complete honesty is an okay choice, too, so long as you don't mind the loneliness of no validation.

Even now I am censuring myself-- censuring things that would never even get back to the people who I could possibly hurt or offend. And it's worth it, youknow? The filters are worth the understanding responses. Man, I'm with you. I know what you mean. I was just thinking about that. Exactly. We are on the same page.

Would you write the same way if no one would be offended? Moreover, would you write the same way if there was no one to impress? Would I?

I thought this entry was going to be about love, but it looks like its turning into an entry about truth, which are mostly the same things anyway. I like how there is this dichotomy within honesty: we both want to know how other people truly feel about us, but only if that truth is a complimentary one and only if that truth jives with our own understanding of ourselves. Tell me how you feel about me (but only if it's good). Past a certain point honesty becomes cruelty in our minds. How dare you think that; how dare you feel that way. [This is something I love about Matt. He prefers to hear what I have to say even when it isn't complimentary and even when it wholly contradicts his self-conception. Sometimes he is upset but mostly he is able to calmly hear me, calmly love me, and calmly understand that the things I say are not insults but feelings.]

But love (romantic or otherwise) pushes us. Tells us to shut the fuck up and LISTEN. Tells us to not take others' truth as personal offenses; tells us that truth is impossible to halve or bisect; tells us that truth is not math, there is no point where honesty transforms into cruelty, that truth is always just truth, undivided and fragilely spread across everything.

That having been said, I want to work on two things: firstly, I would like to work on being unapologetic about my own truths and not expect others to apologize for their own. Secondly, I would like to not take what other people have to say (about me or otherwise) as personal offenses. It's not about me, it's about them and I should let it be exactly that: about them.

Now that I have a boyfriend I don't have a journal. I have a compassionate, receptive, responsive person who listens when I speak, asks what I have to say and is learning to appreciate the intricate meanings of body language. I find more and more that many women do this: exchange their journal for their boyfriend. What strikes me as odd is the way in which it seems impossibly difficult to write about my relationship, to articulate my love, and it makes me wonder if this is the real reason I've forfeited my journal. Often I feel inspired to write, to keep track of the things I'd like to remember, to put words and dates to the immersive, eye-opening experience of a relationship. But when I try it is all wrong: too simple, too insignificant, too trite and unoriginal. And how do I reconcile this incongruity? The language I have can't accomodate my experience; love is new but the words in which I can discuss it are antequated. It feels like everyone has said it before me, I'm too late and too young and what I have to bring to the table has already been brought by Burns and Rodin and Graham. So I feel smoothed over by a generalized hand of every-man's love but I'm discontent; full with the conviction that my experience is worth noting, too. Worth writing poetry and sculpting metal and choreographing dances about. Worth constructing art that fits the shape of "us" that is no other us.

But then, I don't feel that way at all. Yesterday I watched a couple walk over to see the menu at a pizzeria. I was reading my book, The Things They Carried, feeling the heat of the afternoon roll over my skin, through my hair, as I carefully balanced the coexistance of a warzone in suburbia. I watched his hand stroke the back of her neck, fall gently down her spine, around her hip and into her pocket. But it wasn't his hand, it was your hand and it was my hip. How can I crave both generality and specificity? How can I want everyone's love to my love but also want my love to be all my own?

I wonder what the correlation is between being a self-made man and having the compulsion to display sexual prowess. Why is it that it is often the people who have an experience of making a lot of money autonomously, are the same people who uncontrollably have their eyes all over women and, when they’re drunk, have their hands replace their eyes? And why is it, in this elite money circle, the women who are the objects of such attention do not object—and the women who are the wives of these men do not object? Because, to the wives, it’s more than not objecting, it’s flat out acceptance. And to the women who are being watched, it is simultaneously repugnant and desirable. I suppose that holds true for our response to most men who watch us lecherously… we feel objectified and turned off but also objectified and turned on. But with the elite, the intellectuals, the self-made men, their lecherousness morphs from purely voyeuristic to the voyeurism of a man with power. And there is something compelling to being on the other end of a powerful man’s desire.

http://www.okcupid.com/personality?type=DBLD&g=2&o=2&h=162

How smart (or dumb) are your friends? by katgirl13605
Your LJ/Xanga name:
This person is a very dumb blond.	espirar
This person is smarter than you. sry.	you_inspire_me
This person is normal.	pattimayo
This person is, ummmmm, not the brightest.	im_from_omaha
This person is just like you? Scary.	mara56
(Check here if this is a Xanga account, not an LJ: )

Gundam Seed Destiny, Anime Wallpaper, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards at Anime Cubed!

a lifetime is a long time.

but then a lifetime is not very long at all.

First of all, I need to pack. I should probably be doing that instead of this... but that is too depressing right now. There is something very sad to me about packing. Even if it just for a short trip... and always more difficult on the coming back than on the going. Not because I don't want to go home, I'm always kind of ready for that, but because sometimes I'd just like to be in many places at once and with hello to home means goodbye to wherever I just left. And the college packing is weirder than any other packing because it's both the going and leaving at the same time, but not towards home. And yet-- it is towards home, just not this home; towards a different home. And it just seems like a strikingly personal pack in that, clearly I could buy almost anything I forget and need when I'm at school, and it would probably be newer and cleaner than whatever I'm bringing in the first place. But in all this new I want some old to fall back on. I want my comfortable soap, even if it is dingy or partially used. I want to be able to jump in the shower and look at the curve and think "that is from many showers I took". Not "this is the first shower in my new apartment with these new people and this new life and this new soap". And it's like, it's just soap, I know. But I can't change all the other firsts... but I can damn well bring my old, dingy, Ariana-curved soap with me.

It's interesting because as much as I say that I don't know how I feel about all of this- that I have it burried in the back of my mind when I can let it rest or that I am pretty apathetic or pretty unsure of things- I already feel myself pulling away. Not from any one in particular, although my mom senses it and asks me if I am nervous or if I am mad at her. I just feel a distancing that isn't well thought out or planned... I feel like I'm walking down the street with a big parade of my past by my side and I'm slowing down my own pace, little by little, watching the whole parade walk on. Each day it gets a little farther away, close enough to see; too far to touch. And here is where it all separates, and I guess this is what moving on means... some things hang back, are closer to my side, while other things march on and on and on. Eventually, months or years or decades from now, some things will be so tiny in the distance that they are barely able to be discerned: the name of our class president on the tip of my tongue, an English paper I thought I'd never forget, what was on the bottom floor of the high school (photography and...)

On a side note, I am amazed by the human need to be reaffirmed. It is almost as if people search for all of the impossible reasons why "he doesn't" instead of looking at the blatant and salient and simple reasons why "he does". The need to disprove what we already know is our truth is pretty fascinating. Sometimes I think it is because we do not know how to say: tell me that you love me; tell me that I am beautiful and wonderful. And because we can't ask for that, we set up a situation, questionig our lives away, just so the "he" will say it in the end. I love you. You are beautiful and wonderful.

Suddenly so easy to believe.

With the impending change of moving out and moving on, I find that so many people are finding ways to tie themselves back to comforts of their past... Girls wanting to reach out to their ex-boyfriends; people making photo albums to take with them; people suddenly getting into relationships right before they have to leave; a friend who literally tattooed a piece of her past onto her chest. Partly I think it is to say: " I was here; I did something worth telling; I felt something worth feeling." Maybe it is the uncertainty of the answers to the questions we ask ourselves before we leave someplace. Maybe it is just the uncertainty in leaving, all together. As if we could convince ourself, based on a past which doesn't seem half-bad compared to the lonely unknown set in front of us, that, wait, maybe we don't really want to go. Maybe we haven't learned everything we needed to in order to move on, safely. Afraid that however bad or boring our routine is, now, that we may not have that somewhere else. It is the wanting to stay that pulls against the wanting to leave and the confusion of wanting two opposing things simultaneously. And then it is always just too bad. Because we are all on our way despite it all. Despite our hopeless tries at resparking an old romance or taking a piece of our past with us in ink or photographs... we are all leaving.

I was musing at just how fixated everyone seems about being right. I wonder if it is human nature or human conditioning or if it is culturally dependent.

I will have more to say on this later.

I am really dreading this pilates thing again... it is just too many condensed hours listening to crap about medial rotation of the proximal femur in the acetabulum. ah. Alright, so maybe I know slightly more than I am giving myself credit for. But still, it's just a lot. 5 hours a day of anything is a lot. Plus, I really don't want to sleep over at Lauren's. I'm just not up for it. I mean, I will have to be. But I feel like whiiiining instead.

To be a trouble maker or not to be a trouble maker? That is the question.

No, but seriously. It is a choice to instigate or to avoid creating drama. I know because I've been on both ends before. At thirteen I felt pretty fucking awesome being obnoxious and starting shit. But now? My lord.

I have more to say but I am beyond exhausted.

I slept for about five hours last night and spent the same amount of time today dancing my ass off.

Tomorrow.

My life is one big fit of irony.

No. Maybe it's not violated. Maybe it's ignored that I'm feeling.

I don't know what my mom is trying to do sometimes.

I don't know what I'm trying to do, either.

I'm happy to be going up to Syracuse next week to see Rachel. Also Matt invited me out, which I certainly may take him up on. I would say that either I need clarity or to get away for a little while. But there is no clarity here. And I really do need a break.

I'm supposed to go into the city tonight with Bianca and Brian and maybe Jess to see Kitty and drink margaritas. But I am feeling so lathargic and blah. What the hell?

I cannot stand feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to make a pot of coffee and go shopping.

I don't even know how I feel. Violated maybe. By who? Myself, most likely.

And writing in this thing tonight is not very comforting. I guess that's what I want.

My life is so good.

It's amazing that, right now, so many things in my life are undefined. I suppose that's what happens during times of transition; between the end and the beginning is just a stretch of ambiguity. In retrospect, the other times when I've experienced this I've felt a strong need to sift through and replace all thats ambiguous with names. Define a feeling, a relationship, the future. Define for clarification; define to somehow validate the cause; define because it's scary to be left so unsure; define for conveniency. But with the name comes the pressure of having a name. And I've gotten myself into trouble with this: trying to juggle all these new pressures that are wrongly attached to names of things that were crudely given anyway. I don't know. I have a tendency to complicate.

Anyway. Despite how good I am at making mountains out of molehills, I have surprised myself recently. I've been incredibly content with the ambiguity. I am in no rush to force definitions or names upon anything that lacks one. Things are as they are. I believe this.

This is also not to say that I don't ever want clarification. At some point I am going to want it quite a bit. There is only so fast one can go when driving through a heavy fog. And I don't want this to be a weight. On the otherhand, it is a wait. And when I get the creeping feeling of rushing things into a definition, I just want to be able to brush it off, shrug my shoulders and be okay with not knowing.

Human resiliency is an incredible thing. Despite break ups and death and friendships disolving and families separating, we can bounce back and still be functional beings. Sure we find reason for skepticism and anger and uncertainly in the meanwhile. But despite it all, we can still wake up in the morning and pull ourselves together over some coffee and a self-regulated pep talk. And I realize I say these things too lightly-- the bedlam we endure during these times is not so mild. Which, really, is the amazing part. Not that terrible things can happen, but that we can be deeply emotionally affected and changed yet still manage to be resilient. Too often I feel like one event or one person, single-handedly, is going to leave me permanently paralyzed. Knowing that my Bubbe, Jennie, Kaitlin, Matt- all of them- are seals to my resiliency... I feel very strong right now. And it's been a while since I've felt this way.

There are so many things in my life that are changing. Which is a complete understatement. Everything is. And it sounds so defining: change. Sounds like a door slamming shut; a footprint hollowing into the earth. But it’s not. Change is not so loud or grand. The only footprints are the ones in the sand or snow; ones that quickly vanish in the upheaval of life. And the door closes slowly; a gentle, quiet click as it confirms its place as the past. It’s hardly audible. Hardly noticeable. And I guess I always thought that when there was change in one part of life, everything else became completely still, so that there was a big wide-eyed focus on the change. But it isn’t that way at all- life presses on while the change hangs back. And eventually you’re so far away from it that when you turn back to glance, you have to squint to distinguish one closed door from the next. So I guess that’s some point I’m trying to make: harping on change is essentially disengaging the act of change from being effective. And in my mess of past and not, with all the new and overwhelm, I want to remember this.

We just got a Pilates Reformer machine and I absolutely love it. It feels so wonderful on my boooody.

I hate being in love with the world.

I've been feeling emotionally incomplete. And not for lack of self-development, rather the lack of someone else. There is a distinct difference between sharing a moment with a friend and with someone who you are romantically involved with. Tonight I was at the third annual guitar concert, just appreciating the people in my school, their talents and passion and hardwork with music... and, maybe for the first time ever, I began thinking of myself as not connected with this school, anymore. The prospect of leaving and moving on solidified into a reality for a moment. And suddenly I felt indescribably insufficient- that this thought was too big for just me. This was a thought that needed to be whispered into someone's ear, kissed onto someone's lips. I don't know. When the world feels too much for me, when it pours out of me, I want someone near with a bucket. So he can catch what escapes and freeze it into memory.