Refreshing

Thus we have these two psychological states called "acceptance of life" and "escape from life", but when they are opposed to one another in this way it is clear that "life" can only have a limited meaning. It means particular things in life--specific evils, desires, events, and situations, because when life is understood in its widest sense there is no possibility of escape from it. Everything is life, even escapism, and if the whole of life is to be accepted the desire to escape must not be made into a new devil.

Furthermore, total acceptance and love of life eludes us because in striving to attain it we are constantly at war with that which appears to go against it. The reason is that in trying to be united with life we are striving to achieve something that already exists; the result is that our very efforts to achieve it are hindrances in that they encourage the feeling that we are divorced from life and have to make ourselves one with it. But we cannot realize all at once that this union already exists because centuries of civilization have orphaned us from nature both in and around us, making us feel that we are self-contained, independent, and autonomous egos.


". . . And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilization', when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement." -Tacitus, Agricola, 21

Information Overload

Every time I go out of my room, I make it a point not to look at anything, not to take in any of the surroundings and I always try my best to not pay attention to what's going on around me. The reason that I do this is because I have a problem. A major problem. Whenever I look around or at anything I have this problem of translating the information to the enth degree. I absorb all the information of my surroundings and work out in my head the causes, effects, effects of effects, causes of causes, nature of said noun, purpose of said none, specifications of said noun at several vantage points, etc etc.

Example: I count bricks when I see buildings, I think about the weight of all the bricks, I think about how much layering was used to layer the bricks, I think about how many layers there are of bricks, how much insulation, square footage of the roof, how many windows there are, how big the windows are, how many bricks it would take to fill up each window, how deep underground the building goes, reasons of why the building is shaped certain ways at certain parts of the building, how ventilation will be with/without A/C, purpose of plants on outside of building, how many people could fit in each floor, how many rooms are in the building itself, how much square footage each floor has, how many floors there are, etc etc.

The list keeps going on and on about different things that I think about just by looking at the building. It's not a problem because the thing is, there is no logical progression in my thoughts. All of the things that I mentioned up there and probably about 10x more things go through my head instantly. But this doesn't just happen when I look at buildings, it happens when I look at trees, the sky, people, cars, bushes, streets, etc. Everything I look at I evaluate massively to the point of delerium.

I don't have this problem with sounds, just with vision. I don't know where I was going with this except that I just wanted to say that if I wrote about all the information I absorb on my 5 minute walk to school in the morning, it would probably rival the Homer's Odyssey in size and verse.

Love

"At the beginning there had been little true sensuality in it. Their first love-making had been simply and act of the will. But after the second time it was different. The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him. or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity, something that he not only wanted but felt that he had a right to. When she said that she could not come, he had the feeling that she was cheating him. But just at this moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands accidentally met. She gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze that seemed to invite not desire but affection. It struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such as he had not felt for her before, suddenly took hold of him. He wished that they were a married couple of ten years' standing. He wished that he were walking though the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met. "