interesting day today. lots of good things and bad things. i went out to dinner with my sister. some random place that is obviously wanting to be quite chic. which isn't bad in and of itself. it was nice enough. they make much better rice and beans than i do. *grin* debs and i spent some time together. maybe as much as three hours. more than usual, at any rate.

i talked to my old roommate, cara. i miss her so much. *sad smile* but it'll only be a month until i see everyone again. cara says she got a car. now i think at least half my friends have cars. hmm. i wonder if i'm about to become a mooch.

midnight snack at one thirty consisting of nothing but green beans. does that make me weird? well, i do have something like twelve dollars worth of frozen vegetables to get rid of. *rolls eyes*

finally got to go the payson library myself today. consequently i have verified that they do in fact have Absolutely Nothing of Interest. blergh. i ended up taking out two marion zimmer bradley novels as the only attempt at something i'd be at all interested in. well, i did also buy an l.e. modesitt jr. novel. which i'm going to save for the plane ride home. like i'll be able to read at three am. hmm.

debi dropped by to see rob at work twice while we were out today... i didn't feel like staying in the car for ten minutes and doing nothing, so i stepped onto the overly immaculate, manicured lawn of novell and just decided to lay down. i overheard rob vaguely "... your sister...." *debi replies something* "... doesn't look..." i think i know why i like black clothing. i can lay down full on the ground in a dress and not worry about grass stains. :) debi later told me he was wondering what in the heck i was doing. "doesn't look like she's reading anything..." "she looks like she's just staring at the ground."

i really want to get at least a disposable camera before i leave. i wanted to take a picture of the novell building with the mountains in the background. has the potential to be a beautiful shot, really. and the view from the bus stop when the sky is looking just right... and today debi was lying down on the carpet (freshly vacuumed! yet again!) with legend curled up in front of her, and it was absolutely the most adorable thing....

i think the reason i want pictures so much is that i'm not so much enjoying it here, but i want to look back and think i was retrospectively. *grin* yup, i'm weird.

today i had this intense desire to get out my sketch pad and attempt a self portrait. i still want to actually. but it's a bit late. i ended up having a splendid argument in irc, instead. on american education vs. european education and morphing into other things a bit, too. we ended up in political territory as usual, discussing merits of freedom vs. equality. i like that argument, but i'd really rather not argue over text. it drives me slowly mad. gets quite stilted, really. and if you don't type quickly enough then you lose the argument no matter how poignant your points.

i never used to be so emphatic in arguments... i'm not sure what's changed/changing, but today i was just ranting... i think i ended up contributing three quarters of what was being said for a while. i talk sooo much. and lately it seems like it isn't always logic driven, which tends to want to bother me, but i can't let it.

i still don't know if i'm more a logic based or emotion based person. when i take the keirsey temperament tests or whatnot i end up switching between intp and infp every other time. and generally i'll be split eight to ten or something like that. i sometimes wonder if my logic is just posturing and posing in an attempt to fit in with those i want to be my intellectual peers, but whom i suspect are actually over my head. if these are just assumed characteristics then it's quite possible they won't hack it in any case. but i'm not emotional enough all the same to really say...

hmm. i think i'm too much a jack of all trades. i end up being fairly proficient in everything, but it seems almost to make me not really me in some way. i have such a divided self. and all the things i'm supposedly so good at.... my strongest talents... still subpar. i argue in favour of well roundedness in terms of personality, but now i'm looking at my roundedness in terms of knowledge and talent and thinking it's a waste. hmm. i always contradict myself. well, except not always, because then that would be too consistent for me to pull off. and that argument right there is another contradiction. damn, that's almost my best strength. :)

i just want to get out and meet more people. i feel like seeing others and knowing who they are will help me understand humanity in general and perhaps myself specifically. or as i've speculated before, it's quite possibly the other way around: having others know me and understand me will help me understand as well. as it is i just keep thinking these same thoughts and staring in the mirror both literally and metaphorically each day and wondering what i should be seeing.

i wonder if my theories on empathy extend to intelligence... i always seem to experience what it seems others are feeling along with them, as if i'm sharing their emotions... i sometimes think that being around more intelligent people can make me sound more intelligent. as if i'm sharing their brain. oh, heh, well it isn't as though anyone ever said i did that. :)

half the time i think it's a matter of rising to what is expected of me, but i think half the time if i'm completely in over my head i just give up out of despair. if you're twice as smart as i am (no, you can't bloody quantify this way, but i'm not going to fardle around attempting to find a real handle on how it works) then i may be able to actually make up for myself somehow and come off as actually witty, but if you're four times as intelligent as i am then i end up writhing on the floor, disabled and ashamed.

and yet i have this morbid fascination with those whom i feel i can never measure up to. in all areas of specialty. i can never match anyone in their field, but i persist in attempting to understand. i almost wonder if it's just foolishness and egotism. which is an odd thought, since i'd claim that i'm the last one to really have egotism kicking around back there in the brain.

i place way too much importance on intelligence. i was taught to respect knowledge and cleverness as king. i had the silent example of my father. the insane competition even from second grade amongst all my peers in school. my sister's whole value system used to revolve around it. now she's grown away from it to some extent, it seems, and i feel vaguely betrayed. i don't even want to leave this ideal in some sense. and yet i really should if i want to be a healthier person. i need to accept that i can be foolish and that i'm just not as mentally strong as i used to believe.

it was so much easier when i was younger. i think because i must have developed mentally at a very early age. when we had the very beginning of our gifted program in school start in third grade i was one of only three to make it in that year, first chance. only girl, actually, which made things Not Much Fun. i'm so average now, but i used to look so good because i got to this point so quickly. now i've ceased to advance. i swear sometimes i think i was as clever in fifth grade, at the age of ten, as i am now with that time doubled.

i don't know where my standards should be, but where they are doesn't work for me. i just place myself under the bootheel of oh so many people whom i have so much respect... which would be a good thing, but i give them so much respect that it almost hampers me. it almost reminds me of india's caste system. weird analogy... but jenna was telling me about how they had a picnic there. they had rather a lot of left overs, and decided to give it to some local boys who were around playing. a couple of the boys were of the brahmin caste, and despite the best efforts of everyone, including the two boys, the others wouldn't touch the picnic stuff until the upper caste boys finished.

human worth really shouldn't be based on intelligence. or strength or agility or charisma or appearance... the conversations on possible benefits of eugenics that are going on at the brunching board right now... it's so wrong. even if you could quantify intelligence... even if you could quantify intelligence in foetuses... there are other credentials which we really can't ever measure, and which most probably aren't a matter of nature, but nurture. and one wonders if our values aren't bringing us toward phasing out this sector of humanity. so many people seem to place their faith in things that are important, yes, but somehow not eternally significant.

beauty is a huge one. beauty fades. strength too is lost over time. even intelligence fades as we pick up the symptoms of old age. and none of these are as important as things we cannot ever measure in any human genome. i believe in some sort of soul, i think, and i'd vote for people with beautiful souls and average intelligence over these superhuman people who are beautiful and brilliant, but lack depth. not that this seems a common phenomena in those i meet, but it frightens me that perhaps others might not notice this lack when faced with other more overwhelmingly popular ideas of personal strengths.

the whole notion of soul gets bogged down in so many stupidities, i find. some more ridiculous than others. i don't believe in concepts of soul mates or some sort of complete metaphysical completion, that's perhaps not as far fetched as some other ideas. i tend to totally discard ideas of wraiths, spirits, and whatnot, also. i can't even seem to recall some of the other ideas i've encountered which seemed completely manufactured and downright silly. i think i refuse to retain things that i feel are idiocies. hmm. must remember one. just one... i suppose stealing others' souls would be a good one.

when i was younger i used to think the soul was another internal organ. i pictured it as grey and whitish and stripey, and somewhere around the area of your liver. *grin* i suppose my mental image now is more one of an aura of light. although that seems like a crock to me, too. i should stop attempting to come up with a physical manifestation, as that seems inherently opposed to the actual concept. our darned culture focuses too much on requirements of vision in order to attain belief or faith.

bugger faith. bugger truth, bugger belief. we all know so little, and then i find that even what we know is subjective truth or personal truth or even unsubstantiated truth. think what you want. believe that secretly slugs are sentient and more advanced than the rest of the universe. believe that your nose is actually not a natural phenomena, but a device implanted from birth by the government to monitor you. believe that water is actually a living breathing organism with a will of its own. believe whatever you want. in the end knowledge seems to count for naught in any case. nothing is real, all is perceived reality. and in the end i tend to find it all too easy to reject every thought i have. all i know for sure is what occurs inside my own head, and as i've repeatedly demonstrated, that doesn't stay fixed either.

i think i've been engaged in argue mode too long, and unfortunately i have no one i can have a nice, satisfying personal debate with. blarghing text environments blarghing suck. i wish truth had value. i wish emotion had value. i wish my arguments had value. but really it all just passes by and is replaced by the next in line, and no matter what is said or felt or discovered, it never comes to the full strength or power it should or could attain. and if it comes close then i'll go ahead and argue that ideas deserve no power due to their very transience and instability as well as lack of proof.

i wish i knew what i was talking about. i wish others did. i wish someone could tell me if i'm making sense. i wish i could find someone who thinks somewhat like i do. i just want to be legitimated just like so many others. and it's not something you find effortlessly, or really at all in most cases. i wish that when i thought i was being clear, i could actually be making sense to others who don't have my frame of reference. i wish i were objective. i wish i were a rich man. *grin* i'd better go. g'night.
posted by Unknown at 1:46 AM