“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
–C. G. Jung
Observations on the World
by Way of One Man's Perspective of It
Vol. 1
2017-2021
Birds can fly.
Pokemon aren't real.
Beauty is subjective and transient.
You will die.
Our world is built on lies.
No one, in the history of eternity, has ever gotten one day younger.
No one looks at the ceiling very much.
Or the clouds.
Or the stars, really.
We're all prisoners in our own minds; any communication we have is just passing notes under the bars.
Time never stops, nor slows.
If there is nothing after death, no one will ever know.
We don't feel the turning of the world, yet we are turning.
Writing is easy; Writing well is very hard.
Hell is feelings.
Language is only a representation of concepts.
I am young, but I will be old.
I will be old, but I am young.
People like Mt. Rushmore because it's big.
I like Mt. Rushmore because it's big.
I am originally writing this sentence in green colored pencil, but that's likely not how you are reading it.
Things always make sense until they don't.
The difference between life and death is time.
Scant few, perhaps none, are ever truly free.
Nothing is ever new for long.
There is a period between "new" and "old" when things just are.
It's impossible to understand life without also understanding death.
No man has ever seen tomorrow, nor yesterday.
Weeds root deeper than grass.
Old habits die hard, but they are mortal.
Nobody knows anything; Everybody knows some things.
Trees root deepest of all, given time.
I've not seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn.
There's a reason beer is legal.
It's possible I may one day lose control of my mind.
In time, 100 Years of Solitude will be forgotten and written all over again.
We are imperfect.
Everyone is different, but no one is different from everyone is every way.
Not everyone who reads is smart.
Not every smart person reads.
Linguistics is not the be-all-end-all of communication.
You could live 10,000 years and stil not hear every song there is to hear. No one alive today will ever hear every song.
It's a lot easier to drink when you have a reason to.
The great joke of life is that we're born only to learn, beget ignorance, and die.
Editing is important.
There is a difference between amoral and immoral.
These words are more potentially eternal than my physical being.
I am never not me - even when I'm drunk, or high, or sleeping.
If I live long enough, I may one day write here "I was young, but I am old." and "I am old, but I was young."
If you look a stranger right in the eye, just about every one will turn away before not long.
Many men die young, then spend the rest of their lives consigned to digging their graves.
There is no good direct antonym for Liar.
Underneath the skin, grapes and melon are pretty much the same thing.
So many stories have gone untold.
People can be characters.
And characters can be people.
I know I'm going to die, but that's still a very difficult thing to fully comprehend.
People read for many different reasons.
People do just about everything for many different reasons.
One of the tricks to writing is being able to shelve an idea, but not forget where you put it.
Every day is many people’s birthday.
If it's interesting to you, it'll be interesting to others.
Jigsaw puzzles must be markedly more difficult for colorblind people.
We all die somewhere.
Trees exist entirely independent of human observation.
(Some?) Rocks have layers.
I'm a miracle.
I am [Name Redacted].
But I am not [Name Redacted]. That good old internal me. My consciousness. My self. "[Name Redacted]" is really just a linguistic representation of that. Of me. To you.
"Respect your elders" is just about the worst advice you can give to someone with shitty elders.
Few men, if any, ever really see just what it is to live. (There are days when I understand I am not one of them. There are others when I feel I'm getting close.)
You know you're an adult when you start thinking in years.
Man can be evil.
Man can be crazy.
There's a notable difference between can be and is.
There is so much we don't know.
Oftentimes we say "I don't like" when we mean "I dislike".
Cesar A. Cruz said that "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable". The underlying secondary trick to that is that we are all comfortable and all disturbed, each in our own way.
"Run" can be a very scary word.
The turning of the world is shockingly uneven at times.
"Win" can be quantified in many different ways.
The stories of future are not yet written.
Hollow is a great fucking word.
How many men died today?
Haha. How many men are yet living who will die today?
Santa Claus is a lie.
I bought 3 books today. It is very possible that I will die having not read them all. -The Trial, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift
"Starving artist" can have two different meanings, depending. Working on art and starving for food, or working for food and starving for art.
It's the things we do that we don't have to that make us who we are. And in turn, show us who we are.
All bugs live somewhere.
We are in the before times of something.
The past grows while the future shrinks. This is the way it's always been.
Pussy is a term we use colloquially to denote weakness; but physiologically, penises are much more vulnerable.
Is pain universal?
Hell is recursive, stale, and painfully exciting.
There are two types of pop music: The kind that sounds the way it does because that's what's popular, and the kind that is popular because of the way it sounds.
Thin line between confidence and arrogance.
We are all, every one of us, little nigh-inconceivable miracles.
Just about any idea taken to an extreme becomes a bad idea.
Every single book was written one word at a time.
I will never know another like I know myself.
In order to know another, you must first know yourself; then know that they are not you.
The only emotions you will ever feel are your own.
The Dr. Phil show is really fucked up. And Dr. Phil himself is bound to be a piece of shit too, for creating/enabling the whole thing.
Politics breeds (or attracts) disingenuous, self-serving pieces of shit.
You are.
Everyone currently alive currently is.
~2 months on, and I have yet to so much as crack open one of those three books I bought.
Adolf Hitler orchestrated the painful deaths of millions and millions of people. Millions. Now, imagine him sitting on an old-timey German toilet, pants piled around ankles, taking a watery dump. Humanizing.
People kill themselves, in part, because they feel it's the only way to change things.
People who are bisexual probably have, on some level, a better understanding of people as a whole.
Hair is always growing. Every second.
We all die alone.
People like people who laugh at their jokes.
If we met a race of weird-looking aliens, they'd think we look weird.
People don't often stretch.
It's important to look at yourself, but at the same time often very difficult to see yourself.
Right now, as I'm writing and as you're reading this, someone is in the final hours of their life, and they may not even know it.
Life is cumulative.
Living with insomnia must be rough.
Disappointments require expectations.
As I grow, the things I (know I) want become less buyable.
The way we phrase "to have sex" is very interesting. The same way you might "have lunch" or "have a drink", ie to consume something (for temporary effect).
The way we phrase "to make love" is also interesting. As if you were creating something, yet no tangible creation remains.
Most people couldn't tell you (without counting) how many windows their house has.
Solitude solicits thought.
The mistake we all make: Believing we're acting honestly.
We treat "common sense" like it's things everyone should know. But it's just common sense, not ubiquitous sense.
Most [all?] people are fucked up, somehow.
It truly is a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. Including Lola.
People who wear glasses view nearly every single thing they see through literal lenses.
Atypical is almost always synonymous with interesting.
Good art requires both something to say and the means to say it. Understanding and execution.
Few horrors are worse than that of something mundane gone outstandingly wrong.
The past is unstable, purely for the fact that it only truly exists in our memories/minds.
We were all children once.
But people forget that children grow up.
If the gender roles in Harold and Maude were reversed, people would see it as a much more perverse, creepy relationship. This is sad, in its way.
Life is no story.
And I am no character.
Women have been allowed to vote in the US for less than 100 years. What.
I no longer trust the order/structure of the world.
Bio-organisms are magic. Independent of dedicated conscious brain activity, damaged skin can grow new cells and seal itself back together. Absolutely crazy.
There is an unbroken chain of living things spanning from me all the way back to the very first single-celled bacterium on Earth.
I am still young, but getting older.
I'm getting older, but still young.
There are certain things you do not know, cannot know, and will never know until you've had a gun pointed at your head.
There are not enough hours in the day. Or rather, we are made to work far too many of them.
Rich people accrue more through interest every year than most people earn through working.
Some gifts can be curses; Some curses can be gifts.
There has never been a murderer in all of history to whom murder, at some point, didn't make sense.
Is it better to live in limbo?
Raising children is art, not math or science.
Very many people have children.
Very few people are good artists.
Permanence is scary.
By definition, no one wants a negative. [is this true?]
So but truly then maybe we're born to learn, beget ignorance, teach, and die.
I am someone's What's-Their-Face. (Potentially many people's)
Taylor Swift makes music that evokes emotions in 16 year olds.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
In fact, I greatly appreciate her for it.
Our culture is built in such a way that a lot of people are addicted to entertainment. But they don't always know it, because it doesn't always look like entertainment.
Religion makes people think in funny ways, do funny things. (non-organized religion included)
God is born of hope.
Deconstruction requires initial construction.
People will eat shit if it tastes good.
It's easier to see the sand filling the bottom of an hourglass than it is to see it draining from the top.
Entertainment comforts; Art teaches. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Shitting is one of the most ubiquitous human activities, yet one of the least discussed.
"Was" can be a powerful word.
Flowers are beautiful, in part, because they wilt and die.
There is a certain sense of relief that accompanies surrender.
Respect water.
I am here now.
You are here now.
Realizations are just novel observations.
Human compassion goes a long way.
It's too much for any one man to know. You could freeze time, spend a billion years studying, and still not grasp even an infinitesimal fraction of it all.
Time and perception are inseparable lovers.
It's very frustrating to see something others don't. (or can't) (or won't)
Ideas are non-linear.
Donald Trump really is just a cunt. He might also be a brilliant business man, or a crafty political schemer, or a real fucking god damn "winner" - But he is a cunt.
How many books have gone unwritten; How many songs unsung?
You can derive meaning from anything (but this too must be balanced)
Angry doesn't mean mean.
Barely enough is still enough.
The world will never change; not really. Only the actors.
Part of the reason people have babies is to fight back against death.
America 2018 runs largely on philosophy built on buzzwords.
I never see the top of my head.
There are books that have been read for the last time. Same for songs. Same for movies.
Someone is/will inevitably be the last person to ever read a book, or watch a movie, or say a name.
But, most of them never know it.
God is born of solipsism.
Sometimes people are just. plain. dumb.
Eponymous titles are exclusively a music thing; no self-titled books or movies.
Assuming I live long enough, there will be a specific moment when I become older than half the people in the world.
Sometimes people smile on reflex.
Words are inherently imperfect.
Struggles come from without, and struggles come from within.
Somehow everything I am is all contained within a little 12-inch cubed, 10 pound mass of pink-gray goop.
Every car in a junkyard has a full past, has a story.
Emoticons/emojis are language.
It is so easy to be wrong and not know it.
Hope can be dangerous.
Dog food becomes dog.
Prayer is basically delusion-based meditation.
Fetishes exist near the epicenter of honesty.
There are many many many many many many many many many many many many people/organisms between myself and that single-celled bacterium.
The human mind is inherently malleable.
There's a reason why many great artists are addicts. And that reason is not chicken-or-egg; but parallel.
Artists are traditionally poorly paid for a reason too.
Because people by and large are unwilling to pay for good art.
Because, people are by and large uninterested in art on any major scale.
Because people are fucking dumb.
[Or, more charitably, it could be said that perhaps people generally do/would want to take more of an interest in the arts, but the day-to-day challenges of just getting by leave them with few resources (financial and mental) with which to actively engage]
The(/a) key to breaking addiction is movement.
It is extremely important/difficult to balance.
There are likely many people who don't know there are naked pictures of them online.
Oftentimes the people who are most likely to appeal to "common sense" are those least willing to think things through.
2020-2029 will inevitably someday be known as "The '20s".
They don't make greatest hits albums anymore. They used to, if you're reading this in the far future. But you don't maybe even know that.
There are likely many movies I have already seen for the last time. Many video games I've put down having had no idea it would be my last time playing. Certainly books I will never read again. Probably some songs as well. Endings are happening all around us, all the time, but they are so natural and haphazard we often don't even notice.
and it's too much, too much for me.
The closer you get, the more you see; the more you show.
There is no injustice where/when/if there are no rules.
And food becomes man.
We're more connected than ever, but also more disjointed.
I don't have a brain tumor (probably). But I could.
I don't know what it feels like to have a brain tumor.
We really are still so primitive, in some(/many) ways.
If a guy is jerking off to porn he got from a daily porn aggregator (such as reddit or the "New" section on a porn website), he is jerking off to the same videos/pictures that hundreds if not thousands of other people have also jerked off to that day - and it wouldn't be at all unlikely that a few of them might even be doing so at the exact same time to the exact same material.
"Will they, won't they" storylines are almost universally actually "When will they" storylines.
It's scary. To realize you're organic. To know.
Some aspect of artists’ addictions may in fact be chicken-and-egg as well. In the sense that one perpetuates the other perpetuates the other perpetuates the other, etc.
You're never really a failure until you're dead.
Some people just don't want the truth.
Writing fictional characters well entails basically becoming another human being.
Children are typically more easily frightened/terrified because their conception of reality is less fully-formed than that of adults.
Exercise is like a light slow-roll drug.
The sky is nice to look at because it's intangible. Like looking at colorful nothing.
The reason mass shootings occur more often in the United States than anywhere else is linked in part to our culture of entertainment, escapism, and celebrity.
The true horrors of slavery are lost on most modern men.
Religion and conspiracy theories are two sides of the same unbalanced coin.
It's probably scary. To die.
Peter Pan is a really tragic character, when observed long-term.
Addiction, by nature, sets in slowly over time.
It's only with wealth that a man is given the opportuniy to be wholly himself.
I'd've is perhaps the most visually odd English word.
Never again will you know what it feels like to not know what it feels like to be your current age.
Birds die every day, but no one ever thinks about that.
The only inherent difference between a puddle and the ocean is size. Capacity. Volume. [and salt content]
There are no right answers to life.
We're all animals, more than many would like to admit or see.
Most dogs/cats don't get to grow old with their dog/cat families.
So much of what we do is learned behavior.
We're living a caveman's sci-fi story.
Self-esteem is often predicated on the opinions of others.
"Why?" is the most dangerous question.
Nostalgia can be like a bit of a drug.
It's possible to not even be aware of what you don't have.
You catch more flies with honey than with honesty.
All future technology is currently possible.
The ultimate goal of art is communication
There are many numbers which have never been said aloud, or even directly thought of.
In many ways, Logan/Jake Paul is the anti Mr. Rogers.
I hold many very specific world records.
Ostensibly then, Heaven is feelings too
Today is objective and transient.
The future is infinitely-branching; The past is linear.
Shallow people are capable of thinking themselves extremely deep - and they aren't necessarily even wrong, relatively.
Depth is relative.
Just about everything is relative, when you get right down to it.
Lost media is interesting/appealing because in the Internet Age we consider so little to be impermanent.
If everyone drove motorcycles, traffic would feel a lot more personal.
In American culture, one of the worst crimes you can commit is being wrong.
That's the real joke of it all. There is no reason, no intended rhyme to any of it. So we make shit up, so it feels better when it has every right to hurt. There is no reason, there is no god - not for any of it. Not for any of this. And so here we all are. Lost in space. Pretending we're not pretending to know; Calculating letters; Trying to find ourselves where no one's been lost.
The sky's not always blue.
"Poem" is a pretty loose term.
It could very well be we need a little delusion to be truly happy.
Though that, perhaps by definition, may not actually be true happiness.
You won't read this today.
There are probably people who go their whole life unaware they've had hallucinations.
The order of the letters in the alphabet is arbitrary.
Death and tomorrow are the universal expectations.
TV's are magic. So much of the world around us these days is just straight fucking magic - but we don't see/appreciate it for what it is because that's just what it is.
I am too empty.
And I am too full.
The reason our entire numbering system revolves around 10 is basically entirely arbitrary. There is no mathematical reason for 10 to be the "reset point" where we go from 9 back to 0 (and add a second "tens" column). If our numbers stopped at 7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, etc), mathematically everything works exactly the same, just with different base amounts.
Furthermore, the likely reason we long ago chose that "10" would mean 10 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) is because of the number of fingers we have. The amount we call 10 was a logical anchor point, because fingers would have been an easy way for primitive people to comprehend and communicate the concept of numbers and counting.
Time goes nowhere.
There is something in the darkness that cannot be seen in the light.
You rarely see strangers with their eyes closed.
Part of the reason newer generations are turning away from religion more and more is because of how inundated with information we now are. In a world where you could spend literally every waking moment of your life on Twitter and never run out of fresh stimuli, there's less and less impetus to ponder the mysteries of life that religion seeks to answer or alleviate.
They're called even numbers because they can be split evenly.
And odd numbers, when split, have an odd one out.
Emotion is the key to art. Superb, lasting art, at least.
Additionally, the reason the number of our fingers correlates with the first "reset column" number, and not the final number before the tens column is added, is because we have an even number of fingers. The evenness or oddness of any given number does not rely whatsoever on how many unique integers we use. Therefore, for ease of use, the last number before the tens column reset (9, in our case) should be odd. This way, any number with an odd integer in the ones column will always be odd, and any number with an even integer in the ones column will be even.
AND/OR, it makes counting on your hands as simple as possible. Hold out your hands palm-in and assume we're counting off from left to right. Were our final finger(/right thumb) to represent another unique number after 9, that would mean that 10 would have to be relegated to the first finger (left thumb) on a second set of hands. Continue this pattern on, and 20 will fall on the second finger (left pointer) of a third set of hands. 30 is on the left middle finger, 40 on the ring, 50 on the thumb. Your "base" finger keeps changing, making it more difficult to keep track of the count - as opposed to now, where three full hands = 30, five = 50, ten = 100, and so on.
Death is the ultimate cure; And the ultimate ailment.
There is no answer to all of this.
And there are many.
"Abnormal" has evolved to imply something negative - but based on its prefix, it didn't start that way. In a very real way, this is very very sad. (not normal ≠ bad)
There are no days in outer space. No months. No years.
Language, inescapably, shapes out perceptions of the world around us.
Women come from sperm cells.
Men come from eggs.
How many men could have been, but aren't; but weren't?
Swapping the definitions of "man" and "human" would be benficial for overall gender equality, and the perceptions thereof. (Based on the ability language has to drive perception)
It is impossible to know what it's like being a kid in any given era, other than the one you grew up in.
He who made kittens put snakes in the grass
Most people nowadays never even see their money. It's all done electronically, to the point where most money now is little more than numbers in systems.
The phrase should really be "Supposed innocent until proven guilty."
(I think) The word was probably originally "hisself", but it naturally evolved and got standardized into "himself" because that sounds/looks cleaner.
What will be?
To say "I can't even hear myself think" is cliché, but to say "So many people don't even realize that they can't hear themselves think" is novel. Surely that says something about something.
Love happens tandem to living.
Is this my story? A promising potential talent murdered by mundanity?
And honesty. Great art is honest and emotional and true to self.
Comfort belies truth.
It's so big. All of it. All of this. You. Me. Us. Them; they; it.
Asexuals too probably have, on some level, a better understanding of people as a whole.
Still haven't touched those books.
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but some lunches come cheaper than others.
Perception is part presentation and part interpretation.
It's called a pinwheel because there's a pin in the middle.
There are no cats alive today who were alive in the '60s.
Stores are just walls with things inside.
(Some) Animals can see colors we literally can't even imagine.
The world is made for cunts. Designed around, sculpted in service to dumb, poor, dead-on-their-feet cunts. [Or are they made by the world?] [or do we make each other?]
We're constantly watching language change/evolve.
Good writing skills really mean (at least in part) good language skills.
Language is a conduit.
I don't think most people realize they're going to die. Truly, really realize it.
Being in the pitch dark is the closest a person can get to being invisible.
There is an exact number of times your heart has beat throughout your life, but no one knows it.
If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll keep coming back to your house because he knows there's an easy reliable source of food there. Then he'll either breed or bring friends, and now you have an infestation on your hands. So of course eventually you're going to have to call the exterminator and get it taken care of, but that's gonna be all emotional because now you've developed an emotional attachment to the mice, what with the giving them cookies and all - and so you'll end up going the non-lethal route, which is three times as expensive and only half as likely to work long-term. And then, even if you do get the mice to leave it's just gonna be another disappointment in your life because here you thought this mouse was going to be your friend or whatever and it turned out he was just using you for your cookies. Are cookies even good for mice? You don't know. You haven't thought this through. Don't fucking feed mice.
Freedom always has a price.
Or rather, freedom is a currency that can be traded for many things.
Life (in general) is tough.
The need for money/survival corrupts our humanity. [Or informs it]
All young people are immortal, until. . .
I will only ever have one body. (probably)(discounting the fact that my cells are constantly being replaced)
I will also only ever have one life. (again, probably)
"Better to have loved and lost" was surely not written by someone living in loss.
Everyone is having thoughts, just like you are right now, all the time.
Someone isn't born today who will die tomorrow.
Trust is about giving up control.
There we all were, in one place, With no time left to start again.
Nothing about life is fair. There is no inherent balance to the world.
It is very difficult (impossible?) to describe a feeling.
Some (many?) people put sex above mental connection, even if subconsciously.
Sometimes you get gold; Sometimes you get dust.
Water is not infinite.
Most of the music we listen to (exempting live music) is just 1's and 0's.
A lot of things today are, at their core, just 1s and 0s.
People like rhymes.
Pizza delivery signs on the hoods of pizza delivery cars are probably held on by magnets.
People who are deaf in one ear can never get that effect from headphones where it feels like the sound is right inside the middle of your head.
You are probably reading all of these as one big list. But they aren't. They are all, individually and uniquely and deserving-of-specific-contemplation, their own and true (within my purview, at least). But you won't see so much of it. Even if I do it right and good and put it all down just like as best as I can like it is in my head. Stop reading now. And just think. And. . . these are. . . you don't know.
If the average life span was a thousand years, it would be much sadder when people died in their 80's.
The world looks so much bigger when you're a child.
I am very lucky. Right exactly at this moment I am fairly miserable and tired and if I really sit down to think about it not in such an enviable position in a lot of areas; But I am really fucking lucky to have what I have, to be where I am, to be who I am. Remember that.
Relationships involve giving up control.
Attractive people must have people looking at them all the time. They probably grow accustomed to this (in some ways) after a while.
There can be no true joy without there first being pain
You never see the back cover art of albums anymore.
Sanctioned breaks at work are basically the adult version of recess.
Taxidermy is really fucking weird.
Came an answer from the kingdom. . .
Where there are people, there are stories.
Silence is valuable.
A change in appearance can change how someone looks.
Part of the reason it's difficult to care for another person, or to incorporate them into your life, is because you are ceding control over a piece of your own life. When you are alone, there is no meeting of the minds, no give and take, no necessary considerations for any outside elements; you do you, because there is nothing else. But when you let someone else in, now suddenly there is this whole new force operating on your life, that you are willingly let operate on your life, over which you have little to no real control. This then of course also goes to why it's important to only let in people who you strongly believe will not adversely disrupt your own (previously wholly internal) personal life - People you can trust, and jibe with.
Turns out it's "jibe with", not "jive with". Who knew.
I will write a finite number of words.
In many ways, money is time.
Existing has a price.
It's fucking weird that "Baby" got co-opted as an affectionate term for a romantic/sexual partner.
No man is born free.
You are older than you have ever been, and younger than you will ever be again.
Happiness is subjective, relative, and maddeningly transient.
It's not unlikely that America (the world?) may be heading for another major countercultural revolution.
People will tell you all sorts of dumb shit (lies) to make you feel better; to numb you.
That's not always a bad thing.
But it's never a great thing.
Uncertainty can be a very scary thing.
And certainty can be scarier even yet.
You don't have to try to be yourself.
Life is nothing but a constant fight between what you want to do and what you should do and what you need to do and what you can do.
The world is slow and full of fools & The world is lightning fast and full of countless unimaginably complicated thinkers.
It's all feelings. It's all bullshit. A mishmash menagerie of lust and death and breathing and I. Again and again and again, until until until. . .
20 minutes is 1/3 of an hour. But no one ever says "I'll meet you at a third past ten".
There's a difference between being free and being on the lam.
If not for the ability to dream, surely humanity would have fizzled out long ago.
There's some perverse poetry in assigning soldiers "dog tags".
It is frighteningly easy to forget.
"The worst nightmare is a good dream that disappears when you wake up." -an erstwhile friend of mine
My entire existence, from my birth until this very moment, has been one very long unbroken chain of days. But it doesn't really feel like that.
And likewise, every day from now until my death will continue to be a single chain of one day leading into another into another into another, unbroken and finitely visible.
Every seed must break, before it can sprout.
One day, the world will stop spinning.
Holding a phone to your ear in silence with someone on the other end feels next-to-identical to holding a phone to your ear in silence with no one on the other end, whereas sitting in a room in silence with someone feels markedly different than sitting in a room in silence alone.
You could be dead five minutes from now.
People who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or whatever aren't addicted to the thing, they're addicted to the feeling the thing gives them.
Even shitty books occasionally hold wisdom & worthwhile quotes.
Everyone goes their whole life knowing their birthdate by heart through-and-through, but how few of us ever get fully acquainted with our date of death.
We're all victims (and beneficiaries) of circumstance.
Nothing matters, because it's all so fucking important.
The strongest formula for a relationship is 1 + 1 = 1.
Not everything can be written down.
Everything does happen for a reason, but those reasons are entirely more practical, immediate, and backward-facing than most people who use the phrase would have you believe.
There are innumerable universal truths to the world - many of which most people are all too intent to ignore.
How easily man forgets he is manhandled.
If ladybugs were all black instead of spotted, people would be much more averse to them.
Love is a facile thing
We erase the stars.
Some questions have no answers
Fill your life with nothing, and it hurts more/less when something's taken away.
Those who can't teach, don't.
If everybody’s wrong, nobody’s wrong.
Sometimes (oftentimes?) the easiest way isn't the best way.
Ooh la la
Wealth is a synonym of power.
Most people will never actually touch a pinball.
The road to a destination that may not exist is always a hard road to walk.
Why do we have to die?
Why do we have to suffer.
Why the fuck do we wear ties?
What do you remember?
Stand outside amidst a crowd of strangers. Look to the left, look to the right; watch as they bustle by. How many of them do you think are happy, and how many are not. How many do you think even know it?
Pure Comedy is such a purely brilliant album. If you've never listened to it, go do so right now before continuing to read the rest of this list.
I mean it, go fucking do it.
What is the opposite of prison?
Where does the sky end?
"You learn something new every day" -But you also forget a shit ton of stuff
Aunt May and Peter aren't blood related.
Toilets are, more or less, always white.
It is and always will be right now.
Humans are water because Earth is water.
Sleep is important.
Darkness is the natural state of the world/universe/everything.
But maybe not the natural state of humans.
ie There can be no light without darkness, but there can be and is much darkness with no connection or concern for the light at all.
People created the word "love" because they need some/any kind of vessel to funnel a certain type of indescribable feelings into.
The fullest sanity of all may look an awful lot like insanity itself.
It's possible no one can ever be truly sane until they've known insanity.
Trauma is a knot.
I am everything I am.
Is time the enemy, or the lover we cannot hold?
The stars don't (appear to) change.
What is one piece of water?
What is one piece of you?
When you touch the ocean, you touch the whole ocean.
Inquisition is the root/base/heart of wisdom.
Gray is a colour.
Some people are very illogical; which makes sense to them.
The internet has a tendency to water things down to what they're not
Or blow them up into what they equally aren't
But then again I guess that's just a people thing
The internet, and perhaps technology in general, amplifies humanity - good & bad
I could die today. [editor's note: I didn't]
There's stars and shit up above us that we can see and yet but really have no fucking idea what they are or the worlds or consciousnesses or perspectives they may hold - you point a finger up at the sky, and were you to extend the point outwards indefinitely it would just never fucking end. Maybe. We don't know. We may never know. I'll never know. Because we do this thing where we all just live for a flash of a microscopic scant piece of a second, and then we die and just aren't anymore. And the sun goes down and the sun comes up and when it's night we can't see as well because our animalistic natural biological bodies didn't evolve to let us except we could evolve that way, it would just take years and years and more years than any man ever had or will ever be able to fully comprehend. And the moon and love and blood and music and grain. And fruit juice. And curbs and vaginal births and cold wind and countless things I'll never know I don't know. And neon. Good old neon. There are a definite /numerable number of words that have been written and said and thought throughout the course of human history, but we don't/won't know it. Aliens aren't aliens; only natives of different places. I had a friend once who told me that when he looked up at the stars he felt small, dwarfed by the enormity of it all. He asked if I felt the same, and I told him no. I said it makes me feel big, because I'm a part of it. 'A very tiny part', he said. "From where I'm standing, seems to me like I'm the biggest part there is", is my poetic reinterpretation of the sentiment I attempted to convey in my surprised response. Does this make sense? Trick question. I still feel big. Sometimes I wonder if it was all made just for me. And I don't think it is/was, but still I wonder. I'll die wondering. Hopefully. Hope. Is that what this is? To be born maimed, pre-installed with foreknowledge of what it is to be whole? Who knows.
America sucks.
Poetry happens tandem to living too.
The back of a book serves the same purpose (and unfortunate spoilery detriment) as a movie trailer.
Photos don't capture sight.
Photos don't capture life.
We must always move forward. We have no choice.
Billions of people will die in the next hundred years.
There's never been (and likely never will be) a truly excellent explicit love story depicted in art because no one can ever fully understand or recognize it, unless they're in it for every minute moment and detail.
Love is externally inexplicable.
"Young love" is a commonly accepted/understood phrase, but you never much hear about any sort of correlative "Old love".
Probably because there's a lot less of it.
Can truth be fully beautiful?
Old man/Old lady is, in some sense, synonymous with "survivor"
There's a certain beauty to imperfection.
It's called the American DREAM for a reason.
The reason some companies will give a certain percentage sold to charity or do the whole "For every item you buy, a similar item will be donated to a classroom in need"/"We'll plant a tree for every dollar sold" thing is because they're hoping if you're standing there in the aisle and see two items priced relatively the same, the promise of a no-effort good deed rendered will push you to choosing theirs over the competition.
You never see real stories while you're in them.
We speak w/ our eyes.
"Anything's possible if you try hard enough" can be another way of saying "Reality is subjective".
It is possible to imagine things so vividly that when you don't end up getting them it feels like you've lost something.
A clock is literally a time machine.
Time just happens.
Time just is.
And Brandy does her best to understand
I think sometimes "I love you" is something people just say to keep people around.
Physiologically, eating and drinking are the same thing.
Do you think Emily Dickinson knew what she was writing?
Then again, do any of us really know as well as her?
It's not about what happens; it's about the happening.
"Reality" is just our most consistent/common perception.
Is true maturity the understanding and acceptance that little matters, or much?
A sharp mind and a dull tongue is a tragic thing.
There's a certain freedom that comes with defeat.
And a certain clarity that comes with adversity.
They took all the chairs and benches out of Barnes & Noble so if you want to sit down you have to go to the cafe.
New habits die easy.
Perception is intangible
"You never know what you've got 'til it's gone" can be true of bad things too.
It's supremely fucked up that it costs money to be healthy in this country.
Some of the best things in life are slow.
Some lessons you forget.
If FDR had killed 6 million Jews, the common American military hand-to-head salute would now be seen as offensive.
You can contract you and are to you're, and are and not to aren't, but not all three to you'ren't.
Life is a series of accidents.
[^Kurt Vonnegut said this better][ “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” -KV][Go read Kurt Vonnegut, what the hell are you doing here? You’ll learn more from him than you’ll ever get from me]
Artists are often drunks and drug users because too much consciousness, too much thought, can be death for art.
Just as youth is wasted on the young, so is ignorance wasted on retards.
Drawer spelled backwards is Reward.
Most people rarely, if ever, see themselves walking.
People make people.
There is no God in foxholes either.
The world is chemicals
Men who've never known nighttime are quick to call shadow pitch dark.
One of the worst things in the whole world is to hurt alone.
There's a reason so many songs are about love.
You never really think you're young until you know you're not.
Everything in life, everything we have, every perspective we take, is relative.
How long do you think a person can live on their own? How long until the interminable silence of having no one to hear you eats away fully and truly at your heart and your mind? There must be a limit on human suffering, a delineated line when the tank runs empty or the pot overflows. But when, but when? To turn around with such heaviness in your head, to keep turning and turning and never find anyone to relieve the pressure. Clevinger and Orr, where had they gone? Where are the snows of today? Where am I going, and where had she been, and will I/we(We?) ever escape? No, no, no. Sad brilliant children burning in a world rife with no oxygen. Dead on our feet and numb in our tongues. Wo, wo, wo? Why why why. I finally know the extent of what it is to be truly lost.
What could Orpheus do? There's another version of the story just as clear where he doesn't look back, only to find himself alone once he arrives on the surface - tricked and locked out of the underworld, barred from his love. Moral: Don't trust the devil.
Other men die; I shall only cease to be.
When people say "Happy birthday, here's to many more!", what they're really saying is "Hopefully you don't die soon!"
It's difficult to invite pain.
Love is wordless.
and infinitely verbose.
Constellations are a wonderful illustration of man's desire/need to assign meaning to randomness.
And maybe that's the point. Orpheus didn't do anything "wrong". He just. . . did what he did, what he would do. What he could. What he thought was best. They could have been together, but he looked back. They could have been together, but he didn't. They were happy because he didn't; they were happy because he did. At least he cared enough to want to look.
The surest sign of insanity is laughing at things you no longer find funny. Crying for things you no longer find sad.
Misery begets misery.
Maybe everything begets everything.
So then, what begets everything else?
It's possible to love and hate someone at the same time.
Is there any such thing as a novel thought?
Symbols mean nothing when the whole world is scribbles.
"Everything's made up and the points don't matter" is a good tagline for the world in general.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is ostracized, ridiculed, and maligned.
There's no such thing as an unmotivated action.
Never punish or praise a man for the choices of his forefathers.
Swear words (at least in English) almost all revolve around societal taboos, yet also some of our most basic nature. ie sex and defecation, mostly.
Zoos are fucked up
Money doesn't buy happiness, but bills sure do suck it away.
Sleep is not always rest. You need rest.
Who are you? Why are you reading this, if you are? (you are)
If you were high every day, it wouldn't be called being high; it would be called normal.
Even in darkness, flowers are colorful.
Listening is part of communication.
To maliciously disprove hope is perhaps one of the cruelest things a person can do.
What is love, but a lopsided ends to a mean?
Poems are puzzles.
Good art, in general, is often puzzles.
When your world is too small, it starts to look big.
The greatest tragedy has always been and always will be a personal one.
As is the greatest triumph, and joy.
Notice that "Understanding" is not one of the 5 stages of grief.
I still haven't read any of those fucking books.
If you wish to know what you truly love, look for the things you yearn for when parted of them; the things you reach for when they are clearly out of reach; those things that do not leave your mind, even after they've left your sight.
But, life so often becomes a story in the telling.
The difference between anything and anything is time.
The world is sloven, slow, and utterly incomplete.
Memories are not pictures of what happened; they are drawings.
Time moves sideways; Time stands still
Tree bark is beautiful
If everything happens for a reason, it doesn't matter if I believe that or not.
Years are long, decades are longer, and people aren't always what they used to be.
If ignorance is bliss, knowledge is pain.
Some things are better than words.
And some things are worse.
"Live in the moment" and "This too shall pass" can mean the same thing, taken in the right light.
Our common perceptions of most historical figures (George Washington, Abe Lincoln, General Patton, Mussolini, etc) are really more akin to mythical characters than historical biographies.
Writer's block doesn't exclusively apply to writing.
2020 check-in: Donald Trump, still a fufsy little bitch.
Music is connective.
Ignorance is (perceived) freedom; Knowledge is (awareness of) the cage.
So much depends on the weather.
Conception is the opposite of murder.
Lies hurt.
The wind has no plan.
Some things are too heavy for words; some words are too heavy for feeling.
Verisimilitude is not (necessarily) reality.
There's no such thing as universal good advice.
You'll always be alone; you don't have to always be lonely.
I never thought I'd miss a world without masks.
Robes feel closer to naked than clothed, but look closer to clothed.
Clothing is, ultimately, disposable.
Though then again I guess to that end everything is, ultimately, disposable.
Tragedy and Happily Ever After aren't so far apart as people seem to think.
You've never been me.
Funny how 30 starts to sound young.
Marriage means little and less; nothing.
We're alive. We must never forget that.
You never see a big pile of green leaves.
Humans have become unnatural.
Writing is done with words, not paper.
You're lucky if you're not sick. But you probably don't think about that.
Mistakes and imperfections are not inherently made equal.
It's telling how we tend to see so much more life in the dying.
People change.
And not so much.
Every second of every day we choose what we shall focus on. Some of those choices are hard, some are easy.
Our sense of time is intrinsically linked to sleeping and biological rhythms.
A two-sided die is a coin.
What is it like, in the mind of a squirrel?
What is it like, in the mind of you/me?
Screams are an externalization of pain.
It's interesting that "feel" is the word we use for both external and internal sensations.
It's possible truly miserable people no longer comprehend the extent of their misery. Like living with a smell so long you no longer register it as anything other than air. (Until you find yourself outside, or a cracked window blows in a whiff of memory of how it used to be. Or how it never really was.)
The same could probably be said about those who are abundantly happy.
Perception is not reality; It's just the line between perception and reality is near-invisible.
There's a reason for/behind every lie.
Only right now is real. The past is a story and the future can't change this moment.
There is a reason roses came to be a symbol of love.
Is there a smallest increment of time we are capable of perceiving?
Is it better to understand a mistake, even if the understanding can do nothing to mend it?
Probably.
Beauty is a feeling
Maybe everything is subjective and transient.
People follow religion so they don't have to feel like there is some right answer, some correct pathway they could take that would lead them exactly where they want to go, except for they just can't see it. Religion defuses that notion, takes away any impetus of overarching control. Removes the possibility of choosing wrong. Removes the need to even perceive the near-impossible paths. Makes it easy. Makes it hard. Makes everything "right".
^All that's not always necessarily a bad thing, but it is
[I wrote a nice long ob here about how part of the problem with achieving true intimacy is that we only ever experience others linearly, while we experience ourselves wholistically, but I lost the paper it was written on and now it's lost to time forever]
Show me an artist who hasn't known great pain and I'll show you a liar, a bad artist, or a very lucky man.
One drop of blood does not turn the ocean red.
Long distance relationships require a lot of communication, even more so than an average in-person relationship (which in themselves require a great deal)
Low language is constructed/written by the masses.
The "Shadow of the Colossus" refers to the death of the girl the protagonist is trying to resurrect. Death is the colossus; he's living in its shadow.
The standard question words (who, what, when, where, why, how) are indicative of the core ways in which we experience and gauge reality.
The world is too big to see through two eyes.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Or an adverse chemical reaction. Or a smoke machine.
Did you know whales breathe air? Whales are fuckin' nuts.
Is an old man just a composition of all the young men he was?
How can we ever fucking know anything? Are you alone? You may have passed by someone on the street today who is perfectly personally-suited for all those things you want to do with someone and not. . . It's all random; It's all luck. Sooo much of it. And self-deception and acquiescence. What are we?
Social media is nectar and poison.
It's a misconception that only the dead can be ghosts.
"I miss you", "I missed you", and "I'll miss you" are always nice things to hear.
We love alone, together.
I was born when the world was young. I grew into what I am; It grew into what it was.
Do you think anyone else is doing this? Writing things down like this in a little list of thoughts and observations? Maybe; Maybe not. [But I'd like to read theirs, if they are]
How many adults are trying to learn something/anything?
Many things can be nectar and poison.
We live in a bad world that is good sometimes.
We live in a good world that is bad sometimes.
We're born in cages, but so often we fortify the bars.
All is unfair in love and war.
Surely the surester sign of misery is to cry for those things you no longer find funny, to laugh at that which is no longer sad.
It strikes me that reading this you have no idea how long a time I take between writing any of these, and can only guess and assume which may or may not be connected/written in succession.
Is the likelihood that there is nothing after death truly greater than that there is something? It seems more probable to me only because there is no evidence for anything else, but where does the root lie? If you accept that we do not know how the world/universe came to be, nor any clear objective reasons for its existence (if any), then how can we assume what our ultimate purpose in it is? If we know not the beginning, how can we properly infer the end? I don't believe there is anything after death, because I've been shown no evidence to that effect; But do I believe there's not?
There are worlds within worlds within worlds within worlds, and we. . .
An excess can be just as damaging as a lack.
The present is so near-infinitesimally small it almost may as well not exist at all
And so to that end, our perception of the present is comprised almost entirely on our impressions of the near-past and our foresight/anticipation of the near-future.
What are the illusions we all believe?
There is no perfect life.
Do the great mass of men know what it means to be alone?
Then again, to that point, Do the great mass of men collectively know anything in particular?
The vast majority of things in the universe have gone unseen, the vast majority of sounds unheard, etc.
Are the secrets we don't tell even ourself secrets at all, or something else entirely?
Part of the absolute root of many of humanity's problems is that we are capable of understanding nuance, but often don't; or refuse to.
^This applies to many/most/all(?) other forms of complex thinking as well. We've developed tools beyond our popular ability/willingness/desire to use them.
Ergo, in summation: A big piece at the heart of humanity's problems is that we are capable of complex thinking and comprehension, but often don't utilize them; or refuse to.
The saying "Have your cake and eat it too" really just means "Eat your cake and then eat it again later". No one wants to just have a cake sitting around.
Another one of humanity's big underlying issues, of course, is that thinking is hard and fucking is easy.
The whole world is like that story about different people touching different parts of an elephant.
It's such a shame, the things we do that don't matter. The ways we overthink /underthink things that really shouldn't be that complicated/simple. The people we lose and the time we waste and. . .
I am not normal.
That is both bad & good.
Is imagination any less real than memory?
There is more than one type of freedom.
There are only so many words, but so so so many things to say.
2021 check in: Dr. Phil. Still a twatty little snivel snatch bitty buttle bitch. Legit uses people when they are at their lowest in order to profit off of them - monetarily, fame-wise, and I think mentally. This prick gets off on lording his power over people - again, when they are literally sitting with him because they are at a low point in their life. Fuck him.
We're living in the Technological Revolution.
I'm living in the Technological Revolution.
Part of the reason people make New Years resolutions, ie feel a basic need and desire to better themselves around the New Year, is because they often have time off from work during that period. They take this time to unfog themselves from the daily necessities of working class living, and see clearly, if only (possible/allowable) for a short window of time, what is actually important to them. What is being (forcibly) shut out by devoting so much of their life to working.
My dog is beautiful.
Ironically, America is in many ways one of the least free (comparably developed) nations.
People believe things like "God has a plan" and "Everything happens for a reason" because the world is so unimaginably big it's difficult to reasonably think that without literal cosmic intervention things have a good chance of ultimately working out how you would choose, were you the one setting the plan.
ex: 7 billion people in the world; the likelihood you will ever just by random chance run into (plus substantially interact with) the person/people you are most optimally-suited to being with are so astronomically low it's near-impossible to fully comprehend. But if god/the universe/fate is pulling the strings, that doesn't matter. Ergo easier to sleep at night; easier to believe you're sleeping next to the "right" person.
Birth is a gift of death just as much as it is of life.
Words funnel thoughts.
Or are words what thoughts are funneled into?
Living can be a distraction from what life is.
We are not what we look like.
Hindsight really isn't 20/20, but it does make things clearer with time.
Or maybe it's just easier to convince yourself you're not blind, the further away you get.
All you're guaranteed is you.
The past is a collective memory.
Is love a choice?
A book's a book, written in blood or wine.
Wherever I am is the present.
If, years ago, everyone I loved had perished, each in his or her own way, today I would be sitting here still nursing the dullling-more-everyday-yet-still-sharp-as-a-whipcrack-on-unbroken-skin pain of wishing I could see them again. I would think things like "I would give so much, everything perhaps, if I could just talk to them once more, for just 5 minutes." Yet, right now, I have all the 5 minuteses in the world, and what do I do with it? The observation here is. . . Is that I am living in the If Only; as you may be too. Try not to forget what you've no need to remember.
And a life is a life, written. . .
Love happens in moments.
Life happens in moments too, but they are perpetual, and thus more difficult to notice.
Art attempts to convey not necessarily what a thing looks like, but what we see when we look at it.
The meaning of life may just be to prepare for dying.
Actions speak louder than personality.
Truth scales.
Beauty is as beauty does.
Beauty dies as beauty was.
Some people grow forward, some people grow wide.
There's no limit to growing up. Or rather, it's much higher than people generally assume.
Words are so powerful and so meaningless.
I felt different before. And I taste it sometimes, in the backbeat of a song I used to know, or when the sun flashes just right and shows me the world I saw in my youth.
I'm still young, and will still be old; but I'm also now older, and will never be younger again.
There's no right way for a tree to grow.
Confidence built on ignorance is perhaps the most destructive common human trait.
And 1 is a very big number.
Is a piece of shale in the light more beautiful than a diamond in the dark?
Hell, even in the light can it be objectively said that one is more beautiful than the other?
It all means so little everything nothing
When does tragedy begin and end?
It is patently psychologically wild for anyone to think that we are currently (2021) at the height of (the possibilities of) civilization. If we have moved out of the dark ages, it is only because a solitary candle's been lit.
And the Age of Light may never come.
Everything sucks and everything is beautiful, but no one seems to know that.
Do you think other people feel what you feel when they hear music?
Whoever writes the positive little aphoristic sayings on the inside of Dove chocolate wrappers has been coasting for years.
Daedalus used wax because that's what he had.
Words. Words. Words.
I want someone to know things with.
Distance lies not only in miles, but in moments.
Is gone better than never here? Never existed? Is it better to live in limbo? Better to starve? None of this makes any sense to you and that's okay, because I'm not writing it for you. I'm writing it for me, because... well. How many roads do men walk alone? Does every man give off a light that the man himself alone cannot see? Dark roads and winding paths and everyone burns their maps when they get where they go. If our Earth sky is lit up bright in the daytime, it's only to hide the darkness and rare starlight that hide behind.
It's possible to stand next to a fire and feel cold.
To control the body you must control the mind; To control the mind you must control the body.
I'm half the man I used to be, and twice the man I was.
You cannot control the rain.
The world I was born into is dying. [or changing?] [what is change, if not constant death/birth?]
There's a Jaycee Dugard out there somewhere right now. As I write this. As you read it.
Right now.
Words like love and hell and hate do have understandable definitive meanings/roots; they're just extraordinarily hard to come by.
People are desperate for a reason.
It's quite possible that (some) "crazy" people are crazy because they see too much of the whole picture.
A coincidence is the occurrence of multiple("co") incidences
"The only things that're certain are death and taxes" - but plenty of people skip out on their taxes, and as far as I can tell so far I could very well be immortal.
The best stories (the real ones, maybe) are too big.
"Love it again and again" -written on the back of a Coca-Cola daily delivery truck
There's no such thing as fair in nature.
Reddit is where retards go to imagine they're clever.
Hell, social media in general is where retards go to imagine they're anything.
Empathy/sympathy and condemnation are not mutually exclusive.
It's a misnomer to say "I'll be dead".
Sometimes you don't realize how thirsty you are until you're drinking.
I don't like not being normal.
And I like it a lot
^There's a tragedy in there somewhere.
and a triumph.
"What could have been" and "What might have been" can be two very different things.
The Big Problem: Time is linear, but I am not.
Your perception of me is linear, but I am not.
There is no objective reality, is there? Not really. Just a web of individual constructs that bump up against one another constantly, like a trillion ball bearings being sifted endlessly in a tumbler.
It's possible to forgive and still be hurt.
Trying to understand the world is like trying to look at every blade of grass in a field at once.
People don't necessarily want to hear the truth; People want the truth to be what they want to hear.
The shape of the world is the shape of wind and water. The shape of flame—
It’s difficult to take diet advice from a rich person.
Living is experience; and experience is feeling, not words.
But you can't hear/see/touch feelings.
I'm an insane person doing beautiful things in ugly ways.
Never assume someone is smart.
Never assume someone is dumb.
This world is broken.
Or rather, it's just detritious.
It's the things you don't think about, really, that best reveal who you are. The things so deeply engrained inside of yourself that you don't know them for anything other than normal.
Love is forever.
and Love is nothing.
Wealth is a synonym of time.
I need to stop writing these so often, about nothing.
ObservationsOTW@gmail.com