So, last night was my 4 year anniversary with Grace. We started dating somewhere between sunday night and monday morning of Nov. 28-29 four years ago (we stayed up talking all night, as I do). I was frankly not looking forward to it. Grace and I had had a...well, a bad phone call, the night before last. I was depressed, she said hurtful things, we made up sort of, but not in a happy-now way but just in a we're-still-dating-because-we-love-each-other way. I proceeded to work yesterday, because I had not been told I wasn't working, and that worked out because I was not on the schedule but James never showed up. I then had Jazz monday night, which until monday afternoon, I thought I was going to alone. No, it turns out that Kat had convinced my bro Raph (they're dating, if you missed that memo) to go out to jazz for their 6 month anniversary. yay, I share an anniversary with my brother! [rolls his eyes] Anyway, and Naomi wasn't coming still because she had heard that her ex-roommate-ex-bestfriend was going to be there (which she was, and I said hello in a very friendly manner, which elicited an "I don't know you" look, and she didn't seem to have that much fun, so hopefully she won't come back). So I got there for the earlier guys, the ones I like so much, reading the first book of Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, only to discover that Kat had dragged Raph to Half Price Books, because she doesn't really like the experimental nature of the first guys. However, James was there, i.e. the guy I met at tango doing experimental music, of which I was a part (he recorded and looped me slurping my drink on the beat). I had a shot of 1800 to celebrate my expected-to-suck anniversary, read my book and enjoyed the music, and was joined eventually by the happy couple. The guys played late, till 11:15, because a) they had the cool guitarist (big nerd, but his talent level equals the other two, so he's cool) and b) they had a guest who played drums for one set and upright bass for the other (borrowing Keith and Bill's instruments). It was nice. I went to the bar to close my tab, planning to head out rather than stay for The Trade (the upstairs jazz) or The Medecine Show (the downstairs bluegrass, in which James was going to be playing violin). However, I made eye contact with some girl as she was waiting for the bartender, and we started making faces at each other. She came over and with a casual comment convinced me to stay later (she was not actually convincing me, but she didn't know I was planning to leave). We hung out, I surprised her at my ability to have conversations with strangers left and right, we met a bunch of her friends, and she wandered off to be seen only intermittantly the rest of the night as I talked to her friends, then wandered out behind the building to call Grace (a very wonderful phone conversation, I might add), then talking to more strangers, seeing Lee Ann, someone I saw here once a couple months ago, whose birthday I remembered to be Nov 20th, so I said happy birthday and freaked her out [laughs] (and no I had not remembered her name, but she remembered mine, because I'd helped her figure out MySpace on the computer they have at helios). I was at this point fairly keyed up, having gotten a good burst of joy talking to Grace, and a good burst of enthusiasm having made so many acquaintances, so I went inside to the bluegrass band "to dance". I moved a little to the music, but, and this is the part I totally wasn't expecting, I started dancing more and more, harder and harder. I don't even know how to dance to bluegrass, but my feet were moving and taking my body with them. I found a safe stash for my book and danced till my body was tingling and I had to sit down. I literally had become a storage device for energy and felt like I could have sent a rocket to the moon. I knew I had to leave at some point, and if I danced till they stopped, I'd have exploded. I paced the whole place, looking at the stars, finding the upstairs jazz far too tame and boring in comparision, playing with the gate out front, and going back in to listen to more music, which I was unable not to dance to, at least a little bit. The thing that you maybe don't understand is that I have never been in the presence of music that did that to me. I've seen other people just go, as Drew calls it, ape-shit to music, but I've never felt it like that. It was such a rush! I'm still keyed up, a big ball of energy. I was exhausted enough to sleep, but not tired. I woke up feeling refreshed and immediately went back to sleep to dream for another couple hours, then got up to write to you, blogger. I feel like superman. I'm in love, and have power to move the world. I hope, blogger, that all of you might have an experience like that at some point in your lives, to remember and treasure. Not that I know how long this will last, but forget it, that I will never do. So, as much as I had to write to you, if you'll excuse me, I need to get along with life.

So, blogger, as you may have noticed, it's been a long freakin' time since I wrote to you. Why, do you ask? Why have I patently ignored your existence for several weeks, only once coming back to placate you with quoted text? Because I have been failing to see the purpose of it all. Don't look so shocked and hurt, blogger! You know I could never actually turn my back on you, my outlet for self-absorption that will never criticize or stop listening. I'd say I love you, but really, all I'm loving is myself. And that's the problem. I have contempt for myself more often than not. You can't really hate someone you don't love, and so I know I must love myself, because I sure hate myself. If you want to know why, then I'll take a roundabout way of trying to not answer that while still talking a lot, as I do. What have I done lately? Oh, the usual. I read a bunch of books, actually, and danced and danced some more, while working, throwing my sleep cycle around until my body is hopelessly lost as to when it is supposed to be awake or asleep, and hanging out with people here and there. I've met a lot of people, whose names don't matter until I see them again, and it will have been long enough that asking again (or even remembering for that matter) will be no big deal. And I've gone to bed early, several days over the past week. Yah, that shocked you into silence, didn't it? I must be sick or something; no, I have no idea what it is. Probably depression, or another of those indefinable diseases that everyone tries to pretend doesn't exist. I don't know, I'm so busy being normal along my own bizarre lines that I'm not taking care of myself emotionally, to compliment the fact that I take little care of myself physically or mentally. My ability to function as a rational, stable human being is deteriorating, and I'm surprised that more people aren't asking if I'm alright. I guess they're just all so used to my antics. It's like a drug addict; you don't ask if they've been smoking again, you just assume when their eyes are a little blurry and they seem happier than usual. If I seem down, everyone assumes I just haven't been sleeping again, goes on with life, hope I sleep soon. Where did my friends go? I cling to every chance I get to hang out with someone "as a friend" rather than "as a fellow dancer/partier". I just feel hollow, hiding behind my masks. I know how I feel, so I try and look for it in others, reach out in the little ways I think I can, when I think I can. Does it make me a good person? Sure, why not. It doesn't make me happy. I'm not a freakin' philanthropist. I don't help people because it makes me happy. I help people because I want to be helped. And it doesn't seem to be working.

from Gifts, by Ursula K. Le Guin:

"Gry's question, 'What is a book?' had made my m other think about some matters that had been neglected or ignored in the Stone House. Nobody at Caspromant could read or write, and we counted sheep with a notched stick. It was no shame to us, but it was to her. Id on't know if she ever dreamed of going back home for a visit, or of people of her family coming to the Uplands; it was mostly unlikely that either should happen; but what about the children? What if her son were to go down into the rest of the world, untaught, as ignorant as a beggar of the city streets? Her pride would not endure it.

"There were no books in the Uplands, so she made them. She glazed fine linen squares and stretched them between rollers. She made ink of oak galls, pens of goose quills. She wrote out a primer for us and taught us read it. She taught us to write, first with sticks in the dust, then with quills on stretched linen, holding our breath, scratching and spattering horribly. She washed the pale ink out, and we could write again. Gry found it all very hard, and kept to it only through her love for my mother. I found it the easiest thing in the world.

" 'Write me a book!' I demanded, and so Melle wrote down the life of Raniu for me. She took her charge seriouly. Given her education, she felt that if I had only one book, it should be a holy history. She remembered some of the phrases nad language of the History of the Acts and Miracles of Lord Ranui, and told the rest in her own words. She gave me the book on my ninth birthday: forty squares of glazed linen, covered edge to edge in pale, formal script, sewn with blue-dyed thread along the top. I pored over it. When I knew it all by heart, still I read and reread it, treasuring the written words not only for the story they told but for what I saw hidden in them: all the other stories. The stories my mother told. And the stories that no one had ever told."

So, I have not died. Just because I didn't blog in over a week did not mean I died. [laughs] Anyway, Life this week has been spent recovering from my anti-social funk last week. LifeTeen was good but I felt slightly useless; I haven't been part of a skit in a while, and I feel slightly useless when I'm not in the skit. At least, the pattern that developed was that I was good at skits, and so I feel like I'm not using my talents properly when I'm not in a skit. I have not yet gotten used to being an authority figure. Monday at Jazz, I took Kat, and we were met by Naomi. It was good music, good reading, and the intermission for the upstairs jazz band was salsa music, and some people were dancing salsa in really impressive ways, enough to stir me into asking some people to dance. My salsa, a) is not club style and b) is very rusty, but it was still fun. I skipped Midnight Rodeo on wednesday to go to Salento's (tango) with Amy, to convince people to come to Crossroads on Thursday. Apparently, I missed a very large crowd at MR, but that's ok, because I was at a record-sized crowd at Salento's as well. It was very fun and I saw people I haven't seen in a while. However, on thursday, all the people that said they would come to Crossroads didn't come, or if they came, they showed up late, and I wouldn't know because the Crossroads management decided to cancel and close at 10:15 due to lack of attendance. Friday I went to MR and ran into several people from church, including someone who was a freshman when I was a senior in youth group in high school, and a couple people who were in the group of people a couple years older than myself in youth group in high school. It was freakishly coincidental, but that's how my life works [laughs]. And, I was going to see Wicked tonight, the musical, since this is the last weekend in Houston, but it's sold out. so, there go my plans for tonight. [sighs]

Anyway, Life in terms of myself, since I'm not feeling in the mood to elaborate my plans, nor gossip, is interesting. I have a lot to think about and not much to talk about. Besides work almost doubling my hours this week, on the fly, I've been hanging out with Vanessa a lot. I haven't seen Kristy in forever, and need to get my other techno cd back from her, since I lent it to her when I bought it and haven't even gotten a chance to listen to it. I've been avoiding Kat a little, because her cousin had chemo and has no immune system, and when I look around I keep seeing more and more sick people, besides my own lack of perfect health. I don't want to kill her cousin through carelessly contaminating her space. I've looked around and realized I have no friends with whom I can talk about anything and everything...no, let me clarify that. I have lots of friends I can talk to, lots of friends that are good conversationalists, but I am frequently a person to whom one may complain or rant or whatever, and I have no friends that fill that role in my life. I have no friends with whom I feel comfortable doing that. I have many friends with whom I could do that, but it's not the same because either I feel I am being judged, I am not getting an adequate amount of their attention, or I feel like they don't actually care. You don't have to care, you just have to seem like you do! I'm busy being confused about where I am, who I am, what I want, etc. The usuals, but feeling them more than usual. And on top of it all, my blog is where I put a lot of things about myself that will almost never come out in person, and I don't know if anyone but my mom reads it. But they're important to me, which is why I have bothered to say them. If I'm shallow for wanting people to know my schedule so they'll know when to call and when to try and make plans with me, then so be it. [shakes his head] I don't know. I miss Drew. I miss Grace. I miss a Charles with whom I could talk. I miss having so few friends that I was never dissappointed by them. I miss life within walking distance. I miss intellectual conversations (not just conversations with intelligent people). I miss being taught to dance by teachers and fellow dancers. I miss not despising myself. I miss real dreams.

So, I know, I'm a horrible terrible person, still awake at 4am when I have to be at work at 8:30. I just finished reading Lord of the Flies, which I started this evening at tango. Yes, I was reading a book at tango; I've been in that kind of mood this week. Golding (the author) says of the book, "The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individaul and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." I could quote more from the afterword, but I won't. The only other line I'd like to quote is from the book, "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!" People often wonder why I claim to be "the evil twin" or "an evil person" when I clearly act in a good way almost all the time, live a fairly religous life, try to set a good example and be mostly responsible, etc. They probably think to themselves, "oh, he must be a bad boy underneath or something," assuming they take it as more than a joke. What do most people know of evil? Truly, there are "evil" people who desire death, destruction, decay, whatever you will along those lines. But the root of human evil, the evil that you or I might recognize in oneself, is a burning selfishness, a longing beyond reason for happiness and joy. A desire to do whatever feels good in the moment, have no cares for the past or the future. To some, those desires are to shoot stray animals, speed recklessly for the sake of speeding, or burn things. To others, those desires include having massive amounts of sex with anyone they can get their hands on, eating delicious foods all day long, or sleeping day and night. And to others, those desires include rampant and careless acts of compassion, generosity, and love, joining the army and traveling the world to zealously defend one's country, or forcing one's system of beliefs onto everyone around in order to "save" them. I do not mean to say that soldiers, missionaries, arsonists, people who abuse animals, hedonists, and gluttons are all evil people. I mean to say that the root of evil is giving in to selfish desires whatever they may lead you to do. Trying to find happiness is not evil; trying to find happiness without thinking or caring about consequences of one's actions, is evil. We often think "anarchy" and "evil", "amorality" and "immorality" are radically different, but Golding's point, a point made frequently and often by political and social philosophers, is that they are inextricably linked, by reason that we are social creatures and define our humanity, that which enables us to do "good" and "evil", by our rationality, our ability to think. By defining morality/amorality/immmorality in a structure of laws or rules, social impositions, do's and do not's, we must define the struggle to be moral as a struggle to maintain social laws by our intellect rather than give in to natural laws by our instincts. The internal struggle of mankind, that which some define as "good against evil", is redefined in our culture as "rationality against impulsiveness". And so, by this definition, an impulsive life is "evil" and a rational life is "good", and so also a life of impulsiveness tempered by rationality is "evil" and a life of rationality tempted by impulsiveness is "good". I have lived a life constantly considering the rational side of things, but it has always been to take the decisions brought to me by my impulsiveness and act upon them based on a rational assessment of the situation, my desires concerning things in the present and future, etc. I need a job so that I can be with the woman I love, to make us both happy. Do I have a job that does that? No. I need to organize my life in order to get this done. Have I organized my life in this way? No, I've organized it in almost the opposite. The only things I could claim as victories for my rationality are my faith in God, which honestly goes beyond reason anyway, and my faithfulness to Grace, which hasn't been easy and hasn't been flawless. And so I consider myself evil, because it's that or I'm really really stupid. And you wonder why I find it a reason to despair that so many people go through life without thinking?

So, I've been reading all day. Except for a brief interruption to make cookies, the butterscotch and peanut butter and corn flakes cookies, and dinner with mon famille avec Michelle, a trip to her place to try and make her computer work (it won't download anything or connect to other computers, but she has windows firewall on a dell, so it's a pain in the butt...I came to the conclusion that her lack of a WINS server connection was what is preventing her from connecting to other computers, but I don't know how to fix that) and watch Shrek 2, and I'm back, reading again. A small segment from my book, Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card (the last paragraph is worth reading, if you skip the rest):

"It came to him all at once.... DeAnne had manipulated him. It made him feel sick and angry, and he wanted to say something cruel and walk out of the room. Instead he just sat there, thinking. What had she done, really? Just helped him to do his home teaching. Just helped get him into a position where he'd meet a psychiatrist. What was so bad about that?

"She didn't tell me, that's what was so bad. She maneuvered me to this position instead of persuading me to it. But Step hadn't left her much room to think that he'd be open to changing his mind. And so if she really felt strongly about getting help for Stevie, maybe she thought there was no other way. So it isn't that she manipulated me. No, I feel angry and sick because I'm ashamed that I'm the kind of husband whose wife thinks she has to do this kind of manipulation in order to get from her husband what she thinks her child needs....

"Step hated feeling such rage toward the person he loved most. And it wasn't the yearning love of young romance, but rather the kind of love that made her feel like part of his own self, so that he couldn't imagine a future without her beside him. To be savagely angry at her was terrible.

"He went to the sink to get a drink of water. Is this how divorce begins? he wondered. A feeling of terrible rage, of betrayal, a sudden discovery that maybe the marriage isn't as real and honest and strong as you thought it was? Then it builds up and builds up and builds up and then you find yourself living in an apartment somewhere and seeing your kids on weekends. No, he said to himself. No, I forbid it. I will not let it happen, and neither will she. I'll just have to work on being the kind of husband she doesn't think she has to manipulate. Lord, help me be whatever it is she needs me to be so we can hold this thing together....

He set down the glass and turned around. There she was, in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed. "I knew she was a psychiatrist," said DeAnne.
"What?"
"I set up that home teaching appointment for you because her name was on Dr. Greenwald's list, and I thought that if you met her maybe you'd like her and even trust her and then you'd take Stevie to her. I didn't actually lie to you but I still didn't tell you the truth." The tears spilled over her eyes onto her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away with her shirtsleeve. "I know you hate me now," she said. "We don't trick each other and lie to each other, ever, and now I did it."
Step walked to her, put his arms around her. "I knew that you knew," he said.
She leaned away and looked up at him. "You did?"
"Not earlier, but here in the kitchen, I realized it. That you set me up."
"And you aren't mad?"
"Yeah, I was mad," said Step.
"But you didn't say anything," she said.
"No," said Step. "I got a drink of water instead."
She gave a little laugh that was almost a sob. "That doesn't make any sense at all," she said.
"I know," said Step, "But that's what I did. And I'm not angry now, because you told me."

And then he pushed the nastiness out of his mind and just held her. This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard."