A friend and I decided to revisit our not-so-distant capricious youth today. We'd heard about an herb called salvia dinorum, or something like that. It's a legal hallucinogenic that only lasts about 2-3 minutes, so we smoked it.

It was incredibly intense, like falling into a mire of complete confusion; it worked swiftly and induced an entirely separate reality disconnected from everything else. All I could remember was my friend's face (thank God for that!) and the acute awareness that I'd willingly inflicted this discomfort upon myself. Just as swiftly as it had begun, the trip faded and reality lazily seeped back. Even now, several hours later, I can't shake the intense gratitude and relief that it's over and I never have to do it again.

Give me some wine and I'll be content. I'm too old for this... which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Tonight thoughts shift to someone, someTHING else. It's odd that a movie should provoke these thoughts inside of me. Believe? Or don't believe?

It suddenly struck me: I believe, to the very core of my being, that love is a decision (and not an emotion). To love an unseen deity is also a decision. Is that what faith is? A decision? I always assumed that it was a blind direction, that perhaps doubts would surface but be quickly quelled by this inexplicable FAITH - a sort of intellectual defect that rendered a rational being unable to function without the aid of an omniscient entity.

But is it possible that faith is a decision as well? And what would I choose to put my faith in? Would I choose to believe that there indeed is a deity who would endure an excruciating death on such sublime premises? Or would I choose to believe that there is no such thing as a deity, of any sort? I can't seem to decide which path is more comforting to me. In what do I want to put my faith? Logic has no place here, yet it is the only thing that grounds me. How do I reconcile this dichotomy? How do I bring peace to these warring thoughts? I don't know. I found myself praying in the theater tonight: please please please just inspire me; if you are there, inspire me; whether or not I WANT to relinquish control, show me what I must do - give it a life of its own. Show me truth through myself.

Isn't that what we all want? Isn't that what this mythical "muse" really is? Instead of relying upon our own intellects for inspiration, instead of sweating and digging and struggling and failing and trying again, we wait for an outside force to bequest a supposedly original idea to us. It turns out that she, our fickle Muse, is only an imaginary scapegoat for our creative shortcomings.

I miss it. There is something about the shadows of an early morning in wintry Moscow, with black figures trudging along the treacherously slippery sidewalks on their way to work, briefly illuminated by lazy streetlights. Memories like those remind me that I don't mind that I haven't slept yet. I follow the shadows, shuffling through the snow and ice at the pace of whatever tune is tunneled through my headphones. It's all perfectly surreal, and all I've ever wanted.

For the time being, I don't have to choose anything. Observation is more interesting than decision-making anyway!

raison d'etre

Then it was: write, because someday you will be great. Now it is: write, because someday you will be gone.

But why would anyone read these nonsensical ramblings?

I think my obsession with Elena Vladimirova (one of my thesis subjects) stems from my own discomfort with the fact that she's been almost entirely forgotten. She labored, in an earthly hell, to mentally erect a monument of remembrance. And who remembers? Dead now, for 44 years, her ordeal is buried in the tar pits of hushed, suppressed human error.

the concentration camps of the USSR

 The sufferings of previous generations is no longer of interest to us, in this day and age. All we want now is our continued hedonism, to feel good above all else; the act of remembering becomes superfluous... unnecessary... maybe a bit of a nuisance.

I dreamt once that I was tip-toeing over glaciers in Greenland, my eyes glued to the ground. It seemed solid enough at first, but then it began to shrink from massive polar ice deposits to smaller and smaller ice floes. I looked over my shoulder and, to my surprise, the ice had melted completely behind me, grass had sprung up in its place and, further along, people were mowing the turf in my wake. It was a sunny, beautiful day, and I had cheerfully melted polar ice caps with my careful tread.

Do we write because we really can, or only because we wish we could? Where is this elusive Inspirado? When I was younger, did I dream about being a writer because I possessed an innate talent? Or did I merely read a good book and, awash in wishful thinking, believe that I could do just as well - if not better? Did I write because I could, or have I always been guilty of overweening ambition and gentle plagiarism? Or maybe not plagiarism per se, but such an inherent envy of talent that I imagined myself to possess it as well?

There was an elderly man in Phoenix who collected "priceless, irreplaceable" garden gnomes. Each gnome in his collection played a different whimsical instrument (think fiddle, accordion, and the like).

One night, his garden gnomes disappeared. The man was completely distraught and convinced that gang members had stolen his garden gnomes to pawn for drugs, because they were so "priceless and irreplaceable." In the end, he refused any sort of financial compensation from his insurance company because it could "never be enough."

I have a vision of him in my head: a 70-something old gent, spry and almost painfully thin; hairy ears and little white flecks of toothpaste in the corners of his mouth; sweater vest on casual days, waistcoat on formal occasions; 500 jumping jacks a day, Melba toast, pinochle, avid gardener, and so on.

So you think you’re something special, something handpicked by the cosmos
Not at all disposable, like the masses...
But, according to science, you couldn’t possibly be.
And, according to religion, you’re a pawn in the universe’s experiment with good and evil...
Unless you’re some sort of unfortunate messiah.

But this morning a sudden hailstorm pounded the earth, right at sunrise.
The weakening storm was passing from the north and dissipating to the south.
Warm solar rays silently fingered the plains as the planet continued its rotation.
From my infinitesimal point of view,
The pale golden east lit up crystals of mist and lazy raindrops.
A massive rainbow arced over the east, spanning the entire visible horizon.

So, according to God, we are, quite simply... lucky.

Note to self:

Remember how you were always convinced that you would die young? Now that THAT crisis has been averted (semi-successfully), all you have to look forward to is an adulthood of mediocrity and old age, during which you shit yourself and rant about the "brilliant" days of your misremembered youth.

Hm... just a few things I've been thinking about since moving back home, I guess.

My new (and exceptionally tiny) apartment in Kansas... but it's all mine! No messy roommates!

I came back to the Midwest so life would slow down... but it hasn't.