Van's Journal: Year 4

  2002-Dec-16 | 2002-Dec-04 | 2002-Dec-01 | 2002-Oct-08 | 2002-Sep-22 | 2002-Sep-11 | 2002-Sep-10 | 2002-Jul-23 | 2002-Jun-15 | 2002-May-28 | 2002-May-20 | 2002-Jan-18 | 2002-Jan-15 | 2002-Jan-13 | 2002-Jan-13 | 2002-Jan-13 | 2002-Jan-09 | 2002-Jan-08 | 2001-Dec-28 | 2001-Dec-26 | 2001-Dec-21

2002-06-15 : When I was in seventh or eighth grade, my class went on a retreat to some historic American Indian grounds. One of the tasks we were assigned was to find a rock, make up a fairy tale about that rock, and bring it back to share the story. I found a tiny one, barely large enough to be called a "rock" instead of a "pebble." It was all white except for a tiny fleck of green. At first, I thought the green was just moss, but upon closer examination, I found it was actually part of the rock. My story went something like this:

Once upon a time, this rock was completely white and pure. However, the rock didn't like itself. It was smaller than all the other rocks, and lacking that weight that made a rock a rock. So one day, the rock looked around at all the other rocks, and then looked up to Heaven to pray, asking God to change its body. God asked the rock if it was sure it wanted to change. The rock said it was. Soon, a deep green began overtaking the rock's body, covering it, making the rock look more odd than it had ever looked before. "Why," asked the rock. "Now I look nothing at all like the other rocks!"

"You asked to be changed," said God. "I turned you green to symbolize your envy of the other rocks, since you never appreciated the white I gave you at birth."

The rock cried, "I'm sorry, God. I should have appreciated who I was. Please, I'll do anything, just change me back to the way I was."

Slowly, the green subsided, exposing the rock's natural, beautiful color. All of it went away but for a tiny speck. God told the rock, "Let this be a reminder to you of the envy you once had. Let you never forget that it is not what you were that forever damaged you, but your envy to be something you're not."

And so, the rock was left for the rest of its life impure and damaged, not bettered for its desires, but forever scarred.

2002-05-28 : [Entry started on 2002-05-28, continued on 2002-05-02] I have something to talk about, and it's not really easy. It's about my body image. And I don't have anybody in my life I feel comfortable talking about it with. It sounds cliché, but I don't feel like anybody I know would understand. At least not anybody who's available to talk about this sort of thing now.

Before I left on my trip around the country, I promised myself that I would make every effort to resolve these issues before I got back to Baton Rouge. Like everything else with human nature, the problem is not as simple as it seems. It's intertwined with my history and environment. I talked with a friend not long ago about names she was called in high school..... joking around, I said, "Believe it or not, they used to call me 'chink.'"

Of course, she responded, "Why chink?!" And that's a perfectly legitimate question.... I always thought I was just white. So does pretty much everybody else.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess because I was the only person there who wasn't of purely European or African derivation. I obviously wasn't black.... and the only other racial term they knew was 'chink.'"

The first time they came up with that one, I just kind of grinned it off.... it was just one more thing. I just passed it off as business as usual, like any other new term or rumor about me. My defenses kept me pretty isolated, and I often neither knew nor cared about the popular consensus on my story. I had the vague impression from the school at that time that I was an intellectual gay chink. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the details were. But the difference between a racial name and anything else people can call you is that a racial term implies a fundamental difference in one's design, as opposed to one's personality traits or lifestyle. I, of course, don't claim any racial prejudice--as I said, I'm white, and the vast majority of people don't notice or care about any non-European blood. The last thing I need to do is follow in the footsteps of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Latinos that claim racial discrimination. But I have to wonder if this odd (and kind of funny) part of my history was some sort of realization that I didn't fully comprehend.... an idea that, maybe, my body had something to do with my intensely lonely life.

You see, my body provides a convenient scapegoat. I put the entire force of my mind into being accepted by somebody--anybody--who was considered "normal" by society. Sure, old people loved me. Sure, outcasts loved me. Sure, children loved me. The nerds loved me and the downtrodden loved me. People with personality problems loved me. People in a horrible life situation loved me. But you know what all those groups had in common? To all of them, I wasn't one of them. I was one of the other half. And to each of them, the other half was some nebulous idea of people who were white, upper-middle-class, and lacking any obvious physical flaws. And why wouldn't they think that? I was white, after all. And I came from an upper-middle-class family. And I lacked obvious physical flaws. And I talked like them, and went to their school, and had their professional plans for my life. Nearly all my friends said I was in that group, and were very vocal about how lucky I was to be in it. So, when I tried to talk to people in the other half, it beckoned the question--Why the hell won't they accept me? If I'm so fucking lucky to be in this social group, when do I get a piece of the action, hmmm?

Every ounce of thinking and resources I could throw in the problem had been thrown at it. What was wrong with me? And here comes the trap... see it? Maybe there's nothing wrong with me. Maybe it's this damned body I'm trapped in. I did look a little different after all.... and I was kind of small. Now, how much of this theory, if any, is truth, and how much is ego defense, I will never know. But if I had to guess, I'd say that this is where the hate-hate relationship between my mind and body began (not counting all the cultural factors, like freedom-from-body imagery, original sin, etc, etc.... but that's a different story entirely).

This problem continues even today, when some of the people closest to me, convinced I'm just temporarily in an outcast group until I run back to a mansion on a hill somewhere, tell me things like, "Those are your people." I can't tell you how much that pisses me off to hear that.... I have news for you.... "my people" don't want me. I have no mansion on a hill to run back to.

OK, now let's move on to family. Gotta get this one out of the way.

My dad is a man's man. He builds houses with a hammer and nails... he kills big animals.... he moves small buildings with his bare hands.... he can probably survive a month in the desert with nothing but a paperclip and duct tape. I kid you not. He doesn't cry. He's made lots of mistakes in his life, but he takes the heat for them. He's spanked many children but never beat a single one. Even in middle-age, he has the hormones of a fifteen-year-old. I cannot think of a more prime example of virility than my father. Now, my parents got divorced when I was very young, so I was exposed to my father for very brief periods when I spent the night with him, or visited him for the day, maybe a couple times per month. In those brief periods of exposure, I got to record what a man should be.

Pause it. Parents, if any of you are reading this, here is why you're not supposed to get divorced after you have children. Once you're divorced, there is no consensus on the metamessages to present your kids. Observe. Continue.

In my dad's world, men took care of women. men were strong, men had muscles, men were big. If you didn't meet these qualifications, then you weren't a real man, and thus were not particularly attractive to the opposite sex. Now I'm dropped back off in my mom's world. This was a world dominated by women. Women worked, women made the decisions for the house, women took care of me, women took care of themselves, and women took care of everything else in the world. So, that a man was a provider wasn't such an important thing. Instead, men were supposed to be sensitive, men were supposed to listen, men were supposed to understand. Men were supposed to communicate. Men were supposed to make sacrifices. In fact, the idea of a strong man coming in to take charge seemed kind of silly. Women were already running everything, and generally had their lives screwed up through relationships with men who took charge.

So, apparently, the only way to please women is to not be a man. The only way to attract women is to be a man. This seems to not be too far off reality, come to think of it. In any case, I was obviously not a picture of a man from my dad's world. And where I grew up at least, my dad's world is the one that generally dominated the people around me outside of my family.

You know, I remember my mom's world, where all the women thought I was just the greatest thing since sliced bread. So we end up with this dichotomy where the women there expect—nay, demand—that every girl at school should be just totally in love with me. So how did I explain to myself that exactly the opposite was true? Everything in my home world blared that I was not only expected to have some sort of relationship with women, but that I had no excuse not to. Well, part of the way I explained it was the aforementioned blossoming of body image issues. The rest is...... well, I'm really not completely sure. It's hard to give up blame for it. I think I finally did just recently.... on my trip, in New York, another traveler started asking me about this subject. We were kind of tipsy, so I don't remember exactly how we led up to this topic. "When everybody rejects you," I said, "You don't think there's a problem with them if you're reasonable. You think there's a problem with me. As it turns out, nobody really had a problem.... I just didn't fit in there." It was hard for me to accept that I could not fit even with nobody being wrong. Not me, not society, not family, nobody. I just evolved differently. Maybe I was afraid that accepting a lack of blame—even my own—meant that I was not as in control of my destiny as I'd like to believe. How much of the difference in evolution was environmental, genetic, and whatever else, I'll probably never know. But it's just something I had to accept. And accepting that this is a problem without myself to blame is the first step in removing the need for my body as a scapegoat.

Now let's talk about fags. I've been accused of being one since.... well, puberty. Probably before that, and I never knew it. Some time ago, I realized that to develop a healthy body image meant that I would finally have to resolve a clear definition of sexuality , as the two issues are so closely related. I did that, although many would disagree that the definition is clear. A lot of my friends are gay. And for a male with body image issues, that's not exactly the best place to be. Let's examine that.

In much of the gay world, men don't have differences--they have deformities. If one thought the standards of beauty women hold to men were bad, they never sat in at a gay cocktail party. Gay men too often prescribe to a definition of beauty that I like to call "tragic beauty." The tragically beautiful are those people who attract others based solely on the inherent beauty of youth. They're the people you can look at and pity because you can tell they'll fall to hard ground in about ten years, after floating so long on cloud nine.

"Gay guys love me," I told a girl who sat next to me on the train from Washington to New York. "They like anybody who's young, thin, and male." Well, I'll always be male, and I can probably stay thin. But everybody gets old, and the gay definition of "old" is probably somewhere between the first pubic hairs and a college degree. The problem is that these are the only people willing to parcel out the kind of attention that men want from women, but never get. It's that kind of attention that finally legitimizes your fundamental sexual prowess on which the male identity relies so heavily, especially one so insecure about his looks. Women rarely give out that kind of attention. At least not to me. So, an easy way out is to just join gay culture full-force, a culture which has made it quite clear it would accept me with open arms and give me the kind of group support that I never could have dreamed of any time before. The kind of acceptance that I used to stay awake all night wishing I had. Tempting proposition for a wayward young man. However, it has two main problems: (1) I'm entering my mid-20's. In the gay world, my no-spring-chicken days are right around the corner, and that open acceptance would not be handed out quite as freely in a few short years; and (2) I like pussy too damn much to be gay. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, know what I mean?

Now, at first glance, one might say, "But Van, gay guys have good taste. If they dig you so much, shouldn't that send off a red flag and say your body image is all wrong?" Ahhh, but that's where the tragic beauty comes in. It's easy to accept that I'd have tragic beauty, because it doesn't require me to actually be beautiful, and therefore doesn't contradict all the bureaucracy I've built up over the years. Tragic beauty isn't beauty at all--it's just youth.

At a motel room along the way of my trip, I stared at myself in the mirror, which is something I can't always easily do. I focused my body image in and out in my mind as one would focus and unfocus their eyes, blurring images for the fun of it. I switched among my body image of the grotesque me, to the tragically beautiful me, to the way I look inherent to my features. While some factions in my mind would like to abandon all to do whatever it takes to become "beautiful," others work to divorce feelings of self worth from societal standards of beauty. When the tragic beauty fades not too long from now, I will be left with a dichotomy if these issues are left unresolved. That dichotomy is something I would be wise to avoid.

I used to be afraid to leave the house because of how grotesque I felt. I really felt like my even being seen was an imposition on others, that the only reason people didn't stare at me was that they looked away instinctively as one would turn away from the elephant man. Feeling like that, every time I had to dance, or speak with a class watching me, or approach a group, was a moment of terror. Every so often I still feel like that, but it's rare, and I don't let it stop me. And sometimes I'm afraid to go into a public place for fear of grossing out the masses, but relatively new defenses kick in to prevent me from acting on those fears. I'm a lot better off now. And I think I will get better.

The journey ahead is hard, and to traverse it I will have to sit in the captain's chair of this vessel called my life. I haven't sat in that chair in some years. I had to step out of it to experience those things I had to experience, and for the first time let the waves and winds toss me as they wished. Those waves hold wonders greater than the islands I meticulously charted before. But they also rightly hold those dangers that made the ship necessary in the first place. I'm not willing to lock myself up in the captain's quarters again, but I do think a course alteration is in order after so long. Perhaps this is the beginning of wisdom.

2002-05-20 : I began the day with Texas cacti and ended it with the swampland I call home. As I drove closer to Louisiana, the trees crept further toward the interstate, until they all crowded each other to witness this strange Louisiana anomaly called pavement. After spending days in the Southwestern deserts, I liked seeing plant life that looked like it was growing just to try to keep up with the excessive water supply. The sun melted over the swamp behind me just long enough for me to see the State capital building in Baton Rouge towering over the humble cityscape. For the first time, my radio presets found their designated stations again, and through no intentions of my own, the song "Calling Baton Rouge" came through the speakers. I grinned at the irony as the swamp snuffed out the last of the sun.

I kept a travelogue while I was gone that nobody saw. I kept it on my faithful Palm, and it has been safely transferred to my home computer. As far as what I will do with this travelogue, I really don't know yet. I don't even remember what I wrote for most of it. Perhaps I will integrate it here into my journal (which desperately needs more content). Perhaps I'll polish it up and make a mini-book. Or perhaps I'll keep it for prosperity and never let anybody read about the things I saw and the people I met. I need to read everything I wrote, which will be no easy task for a slow reader like myself, and then think about how I want to handle it.

At any rate, I am home safe, and I had a spectacular journey that most can only dream of. This country, its land, and its people, are far more wondrous than anybody ever wrote. My short trek between the coasts could not begin to discover this thing we call "America." I wrote so much of what I saw and did, but could express so little of what this country meant to me along the way. I can tell you about running shirtless in the sleet in an otherwise dry desert, or talking face-to-face to a sea lion, or watching college students cry out against their government on its most sacred grounds, or listening to a century-old woman who spent her few remaining breaths on a Manhattan street playing a harmonica for food. But my telling them could never accomplish as much as the painters of the West or the writers of the Mississippi. Those artists, who tried so passionately and skillfully to express what I'm feeling right now, made such expert pursuits, but failed so miserably in fully expressing the beauty and diversity of this land. They possessed far more ability than I.

All I can muster after an experience like this are three words: "I saw America."

2002-01-18 : I met with some people from Enron just before I graduated. In the recent economy, many companies were brushing applicants off left and right. But Enron in particular was especially curt and arrogant about it. While I didn't know how serendipitous my thoughts were at the time, I remember thinking to myself that any company filled with that much hubris in their culture couldn't last much longer anyway. The market wouldn't allow something like that to go on for too long, I thought. I shrugged them off and quit trying to talk to them. Like everybody else, I now view the situation as something almost surreal. Enron was a company that was going places, with resources so massive that it could afford to keep investing in bad ventures because when one good one came along, it would be big. Those who got a job with them almost immediately started exuding Parisian moxie, their professional personas quickly overtaken by the overwhelming sense of manifest destiny in the various industries in which their behemoth collective stretched its tentacles.

Enron was faceless, without definition. Ask ten experts what the company did, and you'd get ten different answers. Perhaps it was a company too big for its maturity. And if you examine the way the company reacted to criticism, you find a humorous adolescence. Everything resonated with, "You don't understand me." Nobody else knew anything, and nobody could warm Enron of troubles to come. Like the cliché story of a teenage movie star, Enron's power and money shielded it from the lessons of the real world until it was too late.

When its number was up, Enron still stood as the Goliath in the ring, assuredly ready for any opponent, but never expecting the one who stepped in. This time, the company would face not an industrial peer. This time, it would face He known as The Market. With the same ignorant serenity that a soon-to-be-hamburger cow stares at the raised mallet, Enron fell with a swift slam-dunk. The sixth largest company in the largest economy in the world.... gone.

This almost brings a tear to my eye. Capitalism is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

2002-01-15 : I have this machine in my kitchen that washes dishes for me. From the best I can tell, it has this spinning arm that shoots up high-pressure water, the arm itself powered by the pressure like a lawn sprinkler. I'm not sure about that, though. The water, you see, comes with so much pressure because the source is held up so high in these huge containers on skinny little steel stilts. Gravity does the rest of the work. But the machine, you see, receives steaming hot water. How? There's another machine that heats up the water. It produces the heat by first obtaining electrical power from a vast, nationwide infrastructure of power production and transport. Some of this power is gained by burning the remnants of living beings long since dead. Some of it is produced by harnessing the power of mighty rivers. Some of it is produced by taking atoms, cutting them apart, and grabbing the resulting energy that's bled off in the process. Imagine, if you will, a giant machine that collects orange juice by chopping septillions upon septillions of oranges in half every second. Except the oranges are trillions of times smaller than you're used to. All so I don't have to wash my dishes by hand.

Pause for a moment and think about the level at which our society exists. Last week on a trip to buy groceries, I noticed that one can now buy q-tips that are crafted in such a way that one can't accidentally stick it too far in one's ear. Bear in mind that lots of people in the world don't even have access to drinkable water. We, on the other hand, have such an abundance of progress, that we can afford to spend time designing idiot-proof q-tips. I get off on thinking of things like this. Humor me.

Fun fact for the day: You've all heard the statistic from the normal America-is-evil crowd. The United States holds 5% of the world population, but consumes 25% of the world's resources. Shocking, isn't it? Evil, horrible, wasteful Americans. The part they don't tell you is the reason behind the high energy consumption—the country accounts for a quarter of the world's total production. It's the third most populous country in the world, and at the same time, it's the most industrialized and technologically advanced. Those two facts put together count for a lot.

Or maybe I just need to get some sleep. Good night all.

2002-01-13 : I found myself in the middle of a large, familiar cotton field, certainly miles from civilization. I looked a little ahead of me, and there I saw him. His large body huddled on bent knee over a seed he tenderly nursed into the ground. I looked into the grey and black curls of his head, cut close to his chocolate scalp, exactly as I remembered it.
"Hello, my Entity," his deep voice quietly reverberated, never looking up from the ground.
I smiled. "How'd you know it was me?"
"I'd recognize that mental signature anywhere, of course." He stopped from his work for a moment, looked up at me, and smiled. "How have you been?"
"Good. Very good," I replied assuredly. "Thank you."
He nodded, looked back down at his seed, and continued his work. "What brings you here?"
"Well, I um... I needed to talk to you."
"If I remember correctly, you weren't supposed to talk to me any more by your own mandate. Didn't you say good bye?"
"No, actually. No, I never said good bye."
He paused for a moment in reflection. "Well no, I suppose you're right. You never did." He shook his head in reflection as he continued working the dirt on the next seed in line. "Do you recognize this place?"
"Of course," I said proudly as I looked off into the distance. "It's my grandfather's farm. Or, was his farm."
"But you don't go there any more, do you?"
"No, it's not even his land any more."
"Uh huh." He looked up at me again. "So again I ask, why are you here?"
"I needed closure, I think."
He grinned back down at his seeds. "You've never needed closure from me. You can give that to yourself. You came here because you have a question. You want answers."
"I'll start with this one," I said looking off into the distance. "How long is this field? It's bigger than I remember."
Like beginning a game of twenty questions, he quickly uttered back, "It goes on forever. It never ends."
"How long does it take you to plant it?"
"Ohhh.... I don't know. Forever, I suppose. I don't know, I've never gotten to the end, obviously."
Trying to help, I offered, "You know, back in that shed towards the house, there's a lot of farm equipment that could help you. Tractors and such. Combines. Whatever you'd need. It might help you get along faster."
"Oh yes, a tractor." He sighed as he moved his body down to plant the next seed. "I'd get an infinite field finished much faster with one of those. Do you realize how ludicrous that sounds, Van?"
I grinned. "I suppose so."
"I don't plant for the harvest. I plant for the joy of planting, and watching them grow. Machinery won't help that."
"How tall do they get?"
He looked out over the field and to the horizon. "Ohhh, that's hard to say. As tall as they'd like, it seems. Some I plant just as I did the one before, and it never comes up from the ground. Other times, I'll come back to find a towering oak tree where a mere bud once stood. And of course, everywhere in between."
"You could figure out what you do that makes them grow into oaks, and replicate it."
"Well, I don't have as much to do that as you'd think. I plant generally the same seeds, and give them the same care and attention. Really, so much else has to do with it, you know. The soil, the rain, things like that. To think I controlled all that would be pretty self-righteous, wouldn't you say? You taught me that." He reflected on our lives for a moment before looking back down at his seeds and continuing his work. "Tell me something..... how's Katy?"
"Katy? Oh, oh, she's great. She's grown so much. You'd be proud of her."
"I'm sure I would. I always had faith in her. How about Rick?"
"I'm not sure about Rick. Last I heard, he moved to Kentucky."
"Well, he's a survivor, if nothing else. What of...... what of `her.`"
I laughed. "Well, `she's` not so good. She went into a shell and it doesn't look like she's coming out."
"Mmm hmm. Surprising, isn't it? Sometimes the ones that look strongest surprise you most. You know, just last week, one of the most virile saplings up and died, completely out of the blue."
"Do you know what happened?"
He shrugged. "Who can say. Maybe a predator got to it, or perhaps it just got sick. The uncertainty of the life as a farmer can kill you sometimes. You plant a seed here, and what grows isn't really under your control any more. It might grow in designs or sizes that you never had in mind. But one thing is for sure—if you never plant, then nothing will ever grow."
I reflected on what he was saying. "I see."
"Entity..... Van. You can be a traveler. You can be sedentary. But no matter what...." He looked up at me, this time his face absent of any jovial influence. "No matter what, you can never, ever stop planting."
"And what of the harvest," I asked.
"Harvest what you need to continue planting. No more, no less."
"And if my plants grow up too small, or deformed?"
"First off, boy, they're not your plants. Second, who are you to say what is too small, or what is deformed? Who died and made you the god of agriculture? I swear, they send you to college, and you think you know everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you go around stomping on saplings. But when they don't grow as you planned, don't assume it's for the worse."
I knelt down by him and finished covering a seed with dirt. "Am I doing it right?"
He shrugged, leaving his eyes on the freshly laid soil. "Your guess is as good as mine."
I leaned over, held his face, and gently kissed his lips. "Thank you."
He smiled, and gave me a respectful nod. I stood up and began to walk away. He called out, "Van. You're still not going to tell me good bye, are you?"
Without turning around, I stopped. "You know I'm not good at that." I continued walking.
"Hey. You'll have to walk out of this farm like many things in life. Try not to step on too many seeds."
I looked down and smiled. "I'll watch my feet. Thanks."
"See you later, I suppose. You know where to find me." He moved down to plant his next seed.
"See you."

2002-01-13 : The truth of the matter is that I always had a stable home at the end of the day. Like a picture-perfect American household, every day I came to a middle-class neighborhood, with divorced parents who had slight but normal mental issues. I went to a quaint little private school that was neither cosmopolitan nor exclusive. Aside from the normal idea in the back of every American's mind of nuclear holocaust with the USSR, I never had to worry about a foreign government coming into my home at night. I never had a present threat. I never had to worry where my next meal was coming from. I never had to live in a car or on the street. My parents never beat me. Nobody hardly ever yelled at me. Nobody physically abused me at school, and I never had to worry about anybody pulling a knife on me. Aside from a few crazy cousins from my dad's family just being good ole' boys playing around, nobody ever pointed a gun at me. I'm very grateful for all that. But at the same time, I have to say that it makes talking to some people very difficult.

As anybody who knows me well knows, I make a serious effort to gain knowledge and experience on those things foreign to me. This involves the delicate task of trying to gain cross-cultural respect across a huge spectrum of people. Otherwise, you end up with a situation like this: "What would you know about my world, you [lived a sheltered life / never grew up hungry / never lived in a war-torn country / never had someone hate you for the color of your skin / are one-third my age / never were left bleeding to death by your drunken father / never had to go to bed wondering if daddy would rape you that night / never had your mother tell you that she wished she'd never had you / never spent 25 years wasting your life in a fruitless marriage, only to wake up one day alone and cold / never got kicked out on the street by your parents / never got picked up off the street by your pimp / never got addicted to cocaine / never had the kids at school leave bruises on you every day and the faculty be too spineless to stand up for you while your parents didn't believe you / never felt the scorn in people's eyes when you're forced to live on the street / never woken up to realize that you were miserable for the last 78 years of your life because you were gay and could never admit it to yourself / never had a child / never hit your child / never had AIDS / never wondered if it was your fault that your daddy abandoned your family / never had to live in a country in the shadow of Imperialistic America / never spent a decade of your life in prison for something you never did / were never forced into the abortion of a child you loved / were never shuffled between homes by a heartless government bureaucracy]".

All of those are stories I've tried to assimilate into my life from people I knew, with varying degrees of success. But the story tellers are often not too thrilled to give me the opportunity, and understandably so. While they never verbalize it, the underlying disdain is apparent: "You're not willing to step into my world, and don't you dare think you'll understand it from your clean pedestal on high." And they're right. There's one major part of being homeless, for example, that I'll likely never experience—I can leave whenever I want. If I was so inclined, I could dress up in rags, grab a shopping cart, and go on the street undistinguished from the rest of the crowd. People would shoot me the same looks. I would feel the same hunger. But no matter what, whenever I'd had enough, I could walk back down to my car, and drive home to a warm bed and air conditioning. I'd probably have more insight than I did when I left, but I'd insult myself and a portion of the population were I to then trumpet that I know what it is to be homeless. The sad truth is that I'm not willing to completely sacrifice myself to such a different way of life, because I know that I may never return. And while part of it is that I don't want to give up the comforts that I have, a large part of it is also that from one of those positions, I can't sample all of the others so readily. Once one loses the financial and mental facilities to "gain experience" in other areas, one gives up his life to one of the areas.

I used to trade for information a lot, particularly when I was in high school. While what I traded varied, usually it was in the form of stability. I didn't mind spending hours talking in a rickety old shack infested with rats. I never ran when someone fell into a mental breakdown. I rarely got hurt, and if I did, they never knew it. If they broke into a violent rage when facing the pain of their past, I maintained a look of neither malice nor fear, and expressed my full faith that they'd never strike me. And they never did. When they got angry and screamed at their family through me, I sat and listened. When they became infuriated that I never screamed back, I never gave them the pleasure. I never gave them excuses. Repeatedly, people came back to thank me that I never talked down to them, and that I never made them feel inferior for being the kind of person they were, or in the position they were. Repeatedly, people came back and thanked me for having faith in them. Repeatedly, people told me I was the only one who did. And I never lied to them—I really did have the ultimate faith in them because I have ultimate faith in humanity. I made every effort to express my love and awe of humanity directed towards every individual I met. And while I don't know that I did a great job of showing it, I felt humbled by their presence just as I felt humbled by the grace and beauty of all that is human. In the mythology of my mind's culture, they are the most revered and awe-inspiring individuals. The ones who gave me a chance even though I came from so far away; they are the ones that will never leave my memories.

I question my goal in life to learn as much about humanity as I can through vast and varied cross-cultural experiences, enhancing lives along the way. It seems like a rather superficial, self-obsessed, and possibly fruitless goal. Granted, it's probably slightly less superficial than, say, dedicating my life to amassing the biggest bank account I can. But in the grand scheme of things, not by much. Long gone are the golden days of old, when I could comfort myself with a silly self-image of a Johnny Appleseed of sorts, who amassed experience from individuals, and used it to help the future people he met. I still do that, but I've long since abandoned the idea of it justifying anything. It went out the window when I realized I'm not wise enough to set out with the goal of enhancing someone's life, and actually accomplishing it with any success beyond chance. So now I just approach people with respect and offer up who I am, hoping that it will help them more than hurt them. That's a selfish goal more than anything—it means I must always have love for and faith in myself. That's not always easy, and sometimes I need this systematic excuse to keep up the courage to do it, telling myself I have to do it because I owe it to the people I know. I have to love myself, because if I don't, how can I ever hope to repay those individuals who allowed me to borrow such precious pieces of themselves. How can I ever otherwise look somebody in the face after I've drilled into their head that they have to see themselves the way I see them—as something fundamentally beautiful by creation, unconditionally.

This phenomenon constantly shoots me between shaming guilt and overflowing happiness, between the times like this when I question the superficiality of my life, and the times when someone looks at me through teary eyes and thanks me for having faith in them when nobody else did. It's a rather interesting existence, which shuffles me among brief tormented moments, to moments of self-audit when I tell myself that the torment is merely self-righteousness in disguise, to the time when another audit chimes in to remind me to savor this experience of self-torment because life is too short to let it pass by unnoticed, to the time when I feel guilty again for savoring a torment that's quite possibly self-righteous. But such debate is possible in one's mind when one allows the altar of thine self to grant unconditional absolution.

At the end of the day, though, I have to face the unspeakable truth that it's all self-serving. And I owe it to myself to hang on to that precious truth, praying that I will always derive humility from it.

Perhaps that has something to do with the human condition, you think? That we're in constant angst trying to reconcile senses of duty and compassion with the underlying knowledge that all we do is to fill voids within ourselves. When you really get down to it, that's what Christianity is about in large part—saved only by the Grace of God and all, for being human is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed in this manner. But that's for another entry.

2002-01-13 : I have nothing important to say in this entry. Except that now it's official; I've graduated . I don't know how to feel about that.

2002-01-09 : I hate body image issues. They really suck, you know. I mean, no matter what I do to myself—anything—I feel like I shouldn't be out in public. No matter how I dress, no matter what I change, no matter what, I feel like I'll be some kind of gruesome burden on society if I go out. I know the fear is irrational. I don't let the fear stop me from leaving the house. I still look people straight in the eye when I talk to them, and I still maintain a confident posture, and I don't lock myself away in my home for days on end. I've known some people who do. I can still take pictures (lots of pictures ) and even enjoy doing it, even though I'm scared shitless in those moments before the shutter clicks. And I know I can keep going on like this if I want. But at the same time, it would be nice to not have to build up courage to go to the mall, or to meet some people to eat. It would be nice to wake up and really be OK with looking at myself in the mirror.

In any case, I think the days of these issues are numbered, and their time is running out soon. The moment I admitted I had a problem, the wheels of self-correction started turning, and now there's just too much working against these issues to stand. I've seen things like this in me before. Inevitably, they all fall hard. The difficult part is riding out the storm in the process.

In other news, I'm half way through with my Frank Lloyd Wright book. I just finished the section on that quintessential Wright piece, Fallingwater. Hopefully, by next week, I can start on the next book. Speed reading is not my strong point.

With reference to Wright and body image issues, I leave you with a quote. This was Wright's response to criticism of his design for the Larkin Company Administration Building, a blocky structure designed to shield the beautiful interior from the harsh conditions of the surrounding coal yards. The building held up a massive, awe-inspiring facade in the middle of a grotesque environment, while keeping the internal atriums and workspaces a soft, rewarding place to carry out business. Wright wrote:

I recognize what Mr. Sturgus [the critic] does not recognize, and that is that ugliness exists in the eye of the beholder rather than inheres in the thing beholden. As to just what constitutes ugliness to all men differ—as they should. . . . Ugliness is a matter of the false and of discord. Awkwardness may be only undigested greatness. That the cry for integrity can gain ground in common aesthetics . . . our future development will affirm. Meanwhile to say that a building is ugly is no more criticism than to say a man is a fool. . . . The Larkin building is not pretty; it was not intended to be. But it is not discordant and it is not false. It must stand or fall by its merits, good or ill. [Emphasis added; Source: Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks , pg. 68]

In the margin next to that quote, I wrote, "This is what could make me beautiful."

2002-01-08 : Today, my limited senses presented me with a most sadistic dilemma. You see, my new book, Sarah , just came to me in the mail. It's a part-autobiographical, part-fictional novel about the life of a prepubescent boy who's rented out as a truck stop sex slave. Pretty heavy stuff. However, I am currently reading a mostly pictorial book of the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, which I started to occupy myself while I was waiting on Amazon.com to get Sarah to me. So, when the book finally came in, I didn't know what to do. I had to choose from the diverging topics. I spoke to a friend who had a far richer history of book reading than I, and she advised me to finish the one I'd already started before moving on to the next. So, Mr. Wright it was.

There I was, out reading this layman's book on architectural concepts, when I looked up to let some of the information sink into my mind. From the window to my right, the colors of the sunset drew my eyes away, and I started to watch all the details of the light bouncing among the clouds. This was a particularly beautiful sunset, one that you don't normally see from inside the confines of a city. What to do? I quickly glanced back down at the glossy pictures and words in my book, and then back up at the sunset. Much like the puppy that thought of dropping his bone to grab the one held by his reflection in the water, I was trapped in a moment of painful indecision. I thought I would surely be able to take both in at once were I able to contort my eyes in such a way that they could bring the two images to my mind at once. I grinned an the thought of someone trying to carry out such a maneuver in public.

A decision! I finally knew what to do. Eventually, I would have to drive home, but I was waiting for the end of rush hour traffic. Instead of waiting, I packed up my book, dashed to my car, and headed straight into traffic. There I sat, in this benevolent stretch of tail lights, this exquisite city of gridlock, graciously affording me the opportunity to witness the colors in the distance. No longer did I have to make decisions, no longer was I painfully torn between options on how to slice up the time of my senses. In the car, I could not read for concern over safety. However, in those eternal moments where people usually wait for the bumper ahead of them to inch forward, I enjoyed the sunset. Just in time for my arrival home, the oranges and reds had faded elegantly to blues, and then to greys, as if to say, "Glad to be of service. See you later." And then I was left with only one option—to read my book.

This whole having graduated with a tech degree and being unemployed in this strange new economy does funny things to your mind. I think that now more than usual, I'm searching for drama in my life where none exists. I start living my life similar to how William Shatner acts—hanging on every moment with drastic criticality, lamenting the passing of the previous word, while orgasmically embracing the next. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. It's really a lot of fun.

It's really odd for me to take to reading like this. But since I'm not in school any more, I suddenly feel this uncanny freedom to learn about whatever I want, instead of what's in the curriculum. Yesterday, I carried this Wright book around with me like a wicked pleasure, hiding it from public view for fear of appearing sophomoric. I've been accused of such before, sometimes when the other party comes from a drastically opposing school of thought, but sometimes when there's some truth to it. It's kind of like my overuse of the word "fractal," as one individual pointed out to me recently. Yes, I know what a fractal literally is. However, sometimes I twist the word to illustrate something other than the scientific definition of the term. Sometimes I want to describe a pattern that would appear at first glance very much like a visual expression of a complex fractal pattern, even though it is nothing of the sort. But I don't know of any word that illustrates such a pattern, or even if an adequate word exists. Thus, in my desperate effort to describe abstract concepts, I sometimes take poetic license a bit more liberally than I should. Sometimes I'm really talking about concepts I know little about, but think I do. Lots of people do this. Probably 95% of Americans I meet do this when talking about politics and foreign policy (oftentimes, myself included). Sometimes I'm trying to relay something I really do know all about, but don't know how to express. And sometimes, I'm just playing with new toys of expression to learn how they work so I can wield them more skillfully later, kind of like the overuse of drama and imagery in certain journal entries <ahem>.

Or maybe all this is a moot point and I just need to get a job. Somebody hire me . Please?

2001-12-28 : I traversed my way through the crowds of the union food court last semester, in search of the shortest line. To my surprise, I found a lone black woman waiting to serve someone from behind an empty counter. I walked closer and noticed what she had—fried chicken. I smiled. Nobody really eats that much fried chicken any more, I guess. Everybody is too health conscious. The lady reminded me of Dorothy, who I called "Daw" as a relic from when I as too young to say her whole name correctly. She had warm, tender eyes, and knew how to cook great fried chicken. My grandmother, you see, always alleged that she taught Daw how to cook fried chicken, but that Daw came to cook it better than she ever did.

I went up to the counter and let my eyes graze across the small selection in her domain. I looked up at her and said, "Three pieces please."

She smiled back a sigh of relief, and began to move pieces of chicken around with her tongs muttering, "Here, let's find you some good ones," as she looked up to find the impish grin on my face. I think the fried chicken shows up rarely in that cafeteria, or perhaps this one time was just an experiment. Unfortunately, it didn't seem too popular, and I can't help but wonder if the food court will even display it at all next semester.

We'll always have fried chicken. If not on campus, KFC and Popeye's will survive for many years. But the people who appreciate the food for the memories it conjures, I'm afraid, are a dying breed.

2001-12-26 : It has come to my attention that some people do not like the fact that update my journal so infrequently. You see, since I began my journal many moons ago (well, many moons in web years), the blogging/livejournal/opendiary fad has popped up, with a wealth of individuals ready to update you on their lives fifty thousand times per day. While I generally ignore reader complaints about my journal, I feel I should at least put forth an effort in this one entry to be more like the new-fangled blogger crowd. Thus, for this entry, I hope to passify these types of readers. Ahem.....

—Begin blog—

OMG can you believe this shit?!?!! i went over to jens house yesterday and guess who was there! that f*ckin asshole rick again! i cant believe this shit, and you know he tries to start some kinda shit with me. i was just like whatevers.....

oh and my parents are f*ckin at it again. i told her how me and jeff wanted to go do that thing (long story, to long to type) and my mom was like no way so i was like WTF?!?!?! my parents are so gay (not gay like homosexual, i dont have a problem with them, its just not for me, just to let you know)

why does life have to be so f*ckin hard? damn my parents damn god damn america, all trying to f*ck up my life!

oh yeah and speaking of lame ass people get this i had this conversation with some random guy on aim who sez he knows me but wont tell me who he is:

h0w1z3rZ> hey wutzup?
badassrick_co2005> hey whos this?
h0w1z3rZ> guess
badassrick_co2005> uhhh jeff?
h0w1z3rZ> bope.
h0w1z3rZ> *nope.
badassrick_co2005> i dunno
h0w1z3rZ> guess!
badassrick_co2005> quit it who is this
h0w1z3rZ> your worst nightmair!!!!! LOL LOL LOL
badassrick_co2005> uh huh whatever
badassrick_co2005> probly jeff
h0w1z3rZ> haha ok whateverz, thats you
badassrick_co2005> whatever

can you believe this shit?! probly one of those assholes thats been leaving random comments here and not saying who it is. they f*ckin piss me off. anyways i gots go go my dads yelling at me again!!!!

p.s. word out to my boy trey! peace! LOL!!!

—End blog—

And we now return you to your regularly scheduled journaling. There, is that better? Wow, that took significantly less thought to write than many of my normal entries. Maybe the bloggers are on to something. Thank you, and please, have a nice day.

2001-12-21 : "Page Body Goes Here," enthused the eager template as it stared at me from behind the phosphors of my monitor. And so begins the fourth year of my journal, a blank palette begging my digits to utter the next chapter of my life.

Since my last entry, I've fallen far from my lush pedestal of "starving student" to the rock-hard pit of "unemployed." The reality of this metamorphosis—sometimes called "graduation"—just hit me a few days ago. So you see, in a massive ego defense guised as smart, long-term planning, I'm now "between semesters." I plan to go back to school, right? Right. I'm just kind of sitting out this semester before I get my next degree. Yep, with the state of the economy and all, you can't have too many degrees, buddy. "I was just reading about it in the Wall Street Journal," I could tell people. Not that I actually recall any article of the sort, but if you pull up a few recent issues, I'm certain they'd have something about it somewhere. And if I just happen to, you know, run across a good job while I'm "between semesters," I might take it because, you know, "it's good to get more experience under your belt before another degree." See, with this plan, I get to keep my exalted status of an LSU student, but I don't seem like a total waste of human matter to the outside world.

I'm just at a weird place right now. A spectral display of intersecting and parallel transitions is living out its mid-life crisis on my front lawn. I've done the weed whacking, but I still need some good landscape architecture. I have tactical direction right now, but I'm not really equipped to describe it just yet. To start this phase of my life in planning for long-term happiness and growth, I've closed myself off to many options that would provide immediate benefit, but long-term detriment. Sometimes, beggars really can't be choosers. But sometimes, beggars are merely weak individuals with a surplus of resignation and a vacuum of resolve. One of my greatest fears is to become that kind of person—the kind who will take whatever he can get because he can't handle the responsibility of making his own life genuinely better.

Only I can realize my fears into reality. Doing so would be easy, but stopping myself is a more complicated matter. Of course, when it's all said and done, I always have my back up plan. That is, of course, that no matter what happens, at least I'm enjoying the ride.

Copyright © Van Goodwin, 2001-2002
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