September 26th is almost over. It’s been 41 days since I was told that I was “exceptionally intuitive”—I deciphered a situation (specifically, why #CWP hadn’t sent me a second reply) based on a single vague clue, offered what was probably a half-decent response to said situation, and received a validating (though also mellowing) response.

Intuitive, huh. And caring!

I hope she’s doing alright: I don’t know. Radio silence. I was promised a reply “as soon as possible;” while I don’t doubt it will arrive someday, I am wondering if there’s some kind of statute of limitations on follow-ups. And if so, has it passed?

Huh. (So I’m an Idealist, tell me something new!) My intuition tells me that I should do my best to put it all behind me—the same thing I’ve been trying to do for three years. I’m not particularly clinging to anything; I have no particular hopes.

In between my various school duties and copious amounts of catatonic lazing, I’ve been watching some movies. Way too many final scenes on the platforms of train stations. Way too many clever lines here and there, sophistry penned with that tinge of ‘real dialogue’ that makes us want to interpret it all as wisdom. Way too much whimsy: from Touko’s “sakka ni nare!” to Jesse’s “gravity is god,” I find myself immersed in pleasant daydreams.

Fantasies are like options. We consider them and we want more.

An honest desire of mine right now: someone to be my Touko, someone to tell me to be a writer. Honeymoon Salad says it’s alright not to follow your dreams if you can love, and while I’m not sure I can get behind that fully I am sure that my author isn’t tossing me any bones. Which will it be? Do I get to be a writer, or do I get to love you?

My passion is a fish.

I wonder if I ever will be able to.

I think I’ve had maybe two days of truly good feelings and exuberant productivity in the last two weeks. That’s pretty lame. It’s not even November yet!

The other night, I realized that it’s been a month since I posted my Aika face. At the time, I thought I’d made a breakthrough. Things were going to change. Get better. Illusions would be dispelled, truths would be clarified, and steps would lighten. Would not the whole world seem more appetizing? A delicious treat waiting to be devoured?

I licked my lips, I waited to want the world.

I waited.

I waited.

This is a kind of waiting that I do not feel is wholly inappropriate. There is nothing to it aside from waiting, no promises or strings or expectations. Kind of like waiting for no one at a train station.

But while it’s the kind of waiting I find ‘acceptable,’ it is not particularly easy.

(Nothing should be easy!)

But I can’t sing that I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait—that, while a kind of waiting I’m far better at, would be inappropriate. It’s a dedication and a commitment. It’s an unfounded and unreasonable pining. One for which the waiter should need permission.

The narrative is, as a housemate commented, making itself clear.

An arc of my life.

With every post, I can find more previous posts to link together. Cohesion is manifesting. Sense can be made of my ramblings. Are you reading this? Or are you too distant?

A new week. Another Monday.

Starting tomorrow, I will make a renewed commitment to positif thinking, to energetic productivity, to Mizunashii Mode, to staying upbeat. For whom? For me, of course. But also for you, in case I’m not just standing outside the train station.

I’ll pass on projecting too much of Shinkai upon myself.

1. I won’t be a writer. Is this a prophecy or a resolution?
2. I can close-read that obscure text known as people.
3. Maybe she thinks I still like her. Is she right? I don’t know.
4. Sometimes even the people who care about you don’t pay attention (with regards to output).
5. We rationalize too much.
6. Where will I be in mid-December: PST or EST?
7. When something has a 0% chance of occurring… it doesn’t occur.
8. My Aesopian blog posts are an excellent look into my traumatized mind.

We’re reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions in a class I’m taking on autobiography. It was my second time reading the text for a class, and I did not do it justice on this read-through… though maybe that is justice, given that it’s a steaming pile of crap. But putting that aside, two interesting things came up in our discussions.

First, mortality.

Augustine grieves for a friend who dies—prior to his conversion, obviously. God doesn’t die.

The not-very-subtle narrative points toward a “necessary connexion” here: not wanting to love things that will die, Augustine becomes a bit closer to seeking out the heavenly yoke.

Second, location.

Augustine struggles with deciding where and what God is.

He doesn’t attempt to tie in any “witty” narrative techniques or implications, but here I swoop in like Batman to set things right. Check this!

1. People are in one place or another.
2. Person A might be in one place.
3. Person B might be in another.
4. They are not in the same place.
5. If Person A loves Person B, he loves something distant.
6. God is omnipresent.
7. If Person A loves God, he can love something nearby!

As Person A, I think it’s high time I converted…

Click to enlarge, or something.

Connections seem to be springing up everywhere. A few strands here and there, then ropes marking off a site. More and more, and soon there are fibrous walls enclosing us. I said once before that we make our connections in the past—unless we’re Takemoto and we narrate our future in the past.

I’m starting to make them in the present.

The kind we’re expected to make, the kind that doesn’t make us eligible for tragedy.

Let me be clear: when I last spoke of connections, I was referring to thematic connections that help us understand our lives. Not those lesser demons that spawn constantly from such things as education. That’s the kind I’ve been making, so I’m fine. Probably.

They’re making themselves, though.

I’m starting to recognizes huge swathes of my college peers, within my major—people I never thought I’d see again. I share classes with them. They talk to me. They remember me. I’m not anonymous. How strange.

I feel like I’m being closed in. As I blindly continue to spin my wheels in the ruts of yesterday, today’s experiences are glomming together and forming thick mud with which to flood the path.

Almost every conversation returns to the subject of another. In discussing autobiography, inevitably Facebook is mentioned, and with it, privacy and disclosure, and with that, I recall a buzz made the other day on the topic. What does a rhetoric class on narrative and imagery have to do with privacy policy and job recruitment? So much, apparently, so much that I cannot choose to ignore the connection.

Lectures past spring to mind; conversations past repeat themselves; arguments past continue to vie for validity.

Time moves more and more rapidly.

I guess chunking is real—and there we go, another connection. I can’t divorce Socrates from Philonous and Hylas, nor lies from lying from deception from confession from autobiography from creative nonfiction from writers write from tautology from Socrates is mortal—and all the way back around—, nor truth from Nietzsche from metaphor from Whorf from language from time from turning from Henry James from Dickinson from my own writing from Kant from Spinoza from infinite trollish internet jokes and—

and what?

Connections spiral out of control… “oh no / what’s this / a spider web”

We run in circles. We skirt issues, we circumnavigate the elephant in the room. We return to the same point again and again as what looks like a door in the distance turns out to be taped off with the yellow caution tape that is yet another connection. If we had scissors, could we break out?

…

In a dream last night, I knew I was dreaming. She was there—she and so many others—and I knew she wouldn’t want me to know she was. So I kept my head down when I felt her approach, I averted my eyes. Maybe she wouldn’t even notice me. A gaggle of people walked closer, passing by. We were in a meadow, but I had a bucket and a mop. I was cleaning up. How strange.

Several folks passed by, none paying any attention to me.

And then I could take it no longer—there she was, I knew, mere feet away, so close and yet so far, and maybe she would speak—and I raised my head and opened my eyes, and she was speaking, and our eyes met for a brief moment and she knew what I was doing mentally as I let myself see her:

I don’t remember what it was that I was doing. I just remember that she knew.

Her eyes reflected so much understanding that I don’t remember their color.

Gunbuster makes the issue of “existing in the same time” extremely dramatic, important on a scale much more poignant than any on which we will experience the issue in our lifetimes. But even time zones can produce some stirring of sentiment if we let them.

Three hours? When those three hours disappear, maybe the heart races a little.

It’s 9:30 pm for me; it’s 9:30 pm for you.

Time to water my plant. Last night my brother killed the washing machine.

I have an odd fascination with how multifaceted the Japanese yaru is… initially, it might seem weird that HTT didn’t have a “yatta” moment after its last swan song, if only because it’s the kind of thing that would lead nicely into their break-down, but eh: K-ON!! is surprisingly good at implication and leaving things unsaid.

Hm. Another Monday. Last Monday I was away from the internet, and away from my plant.

Hey. I’m still here.

“We graduated a long time ago,” quoth Mio.

Yeah. Two years? We’ve now spent a tenth of our lives beyond high school, and that fraction can only increase as time passes.

Moving up but not on.

Yes.