Englewood Cliffs, NJ

This house is poison.
It sucks away my morale like a black hole. Naturally, my sleeping hours have shifted so that my waking hours are when everyone else is asleep. That helps a little, but what a way to run a railroad. I’m wasting so much time.

But what a view of the western horizon my room has. I never speculated what it would mean to be out there beyond the edge of it. That’s where I go when I drive off to school.

I woke up late, took a long time to get out of bed, decided to go running to the George Washington Bridge since it was a cool day. Took my time, had a horrible run, came home and drove out to a mall for no reason, got frustrated, came back, ate, went to sleep, woke up, watched TV, ate more, read, ugh it just goes on, doesn’t it. And all the while a great big fat doubt grows and looms.

Heaven/Nirvana: Objectivity and truth.
What is it that people keep describing as heaven? They make entering heaven a happy thing, it’s always painted in terms of human aesthetics. A regal type of place with lots of gold and scented with perfumes with beautiful things and beautiful beings. Or it’s a clean, peaceful sort of place all in white with angels with peaceful comforting countenances playing harps. Always white people.

It’s a nice thing to dream about to assuage human fears of what is actually the end of the line, but is it truth? And if it isn’t truth, how can it be the end of the line? And if it is the end of the line and it is the truth, then why care? Is happiness and bliss truth, or is truth cold and objective with nothing to do with sorrow or happiness?

Or is entering nirvana simply an objective realization of truth? Not as nice a picture, but a little more easy to swallow, not tainted by someone’s bias of what heaven is. Or maybe heaven is exactly what is imagined right at the time it’s time to enter.

An old acquaintance from high school came by this evening. It was quite a surprise. You start thinking of high school as meaningless and the people as just passing by, but then a revisit makes you realize that they had some meaning, and you might as well be meeting them today and liking them just fine. And the teachers in high school, once they were symbolic, they were authority figures. They had responsibility and to some extent they demanded respect, but now they are just people with jobs.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Life is devoid of meaning. Life is suffering. This is despair. How things have changed since last Summer. What is making this Summer so far bad? Is it that I have to deal with people this Summer? Is it the being alone last year that gave me confidence and if so, isn’t that confidence false?

Last Summer was extraordinary. I didn’t have to deal with people, I only had to think of them on a distant, abstract level. People as concepts; how they ought to be considered. I was untouchable. Now I’m in New Jersey with no one here I particularly like. I’m going to be in Providence with my brothers, and we’ve never been buddy-buddy close, so I don’t know how comfortable that will be.

And what am I now? I’m not feeling so hot. I’m just here. Not being anybody, doing nothing for nobody. Physically I’m shot. I feel weak and uncoordinated. Spiritually I’m dead, morally I’m dead. I’m just wasting my life. I hate people. I hate myself.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

This evening, Rob, Lizzie, Smylie, Joe, Tanya, her Summer housemate, and I went to Nancy Weber’s place in the city. All of them except Tanya, her housemate, and me just graduated from college. Actually, Smylie dropped out of Columbia a few months ago, right before his last semester there. He is currently living somewhere in New Jersey trying to come up with a comic book character. That must have been quite a decision to drop out right before graduating. I’m sure his parents weren’t pleased.

Nancy just graduated from Oberlin. She was actually the one who mentioned Oberlin to me in high school and that was the seed that eventually made me go there. She was an English major with a Creative Writing concentration and I went to her Senior Reading at the end of the semester.

It was a strange sort of reunion. It was one of those things that reinforced my realization that I haven’t come far and I’m going nowhere. I still feel so inadequate among them and I admire them a lot. Everything is so interesting to them and they are just so gosh darned clever!

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

It does strike me. It does hurt, what happened, but nothing can be changed. Warning signs sounded, and things just didn’t click anyway, they stopped clicking after the first month or two. I became too dominant. I don’t want to dominate in a relationship, there needs to be balance.

I don’t like the upper hand in a power play and that’s what relationships are or become. I hate it when the other person starts sacrificing too much of their personalities in order to accommodate my wants, needs, and, eventually, my whims.

I can’t deal with it when it feels like it’s becoming all about me. I want the person I love to just be themselves and not feel a need to accommodate me. Am I that scary to get along with? Is the problem me? Will it happen with Sakuko? It has been a pattern so far, and the relationship gets dull when I call all the shots and everything is about making me happy. That doesn’t make me happy.