International design In the present, I believe I had parasomnia. The symptoms? Consistant and prolonged sleeptalking. Aparently I am up to about 5 times a week. I say anything from "no thankyou" to long moans, groans, and rude comments. It scares my roommate, and intrigues me. After I did some reaserach, I found that sleeptalking is often a result of either an anxiety disorder, or prolonged supressed stress. Believing that I have found a peaceful and meaningful existence amidst my world of chaos, I fight with the idea that I may be stressed. I meditate, I read, I contemplate and I relax daily but maybe its beyond all those things that something is eating away inside me. Mom says I am lucky; I have an efficient, nonbothersome way to relieve my stress and I do it unconsiously. I say I am troubled; what is going on inside of me that I am so out of touch with?

For those of you who read frequently, you are aware that once apon a time I had a fish named Dino who died after his long voyage home with me back to Oregon. After much time to recover, I have found a new companion, Dino Junior (Deej as we like to call him) and he swims actively in his bowl on my desk right now as I type away. I love to fade away and watch him float in his environment. He finds my finger to be his enemy and will attack it if I challenge him. Sometimes we have wars over little flakes of fish food, other times we play hide and seek behind the nice green water-fern I put in his bowl. For the most part I am happy to have a buddy by my side at all times and am hoping the entertainment he provides me will reduce my sleeptalking stress. As of right now, he's destracting me from my philosophy homework.

Speaking of philosophy, this evening I attended a pannel discussion on the death penalty. Good talk, nice atmosphere, hot coffee and tasty cookies later, I found myself wondering if there will ever be a state where everyone is satisfied. There are always the dictators, the true patriots, the challengers, the defenders, the loyals, the rebels, the revolutionaries and the movers and there has been since the beginning of government. Then my mind tinkers with the idea of no government at all; complete anarchy some would say. But man has never existed that way. As much as we draft that experience into all of our personal myths of human origin, I am pretty sure that someone has always been either secured, protected, bossed around, or taken orders from another if just for their own well-being. In every relationship I have, I form a pact, a covinent of agreements that we will not violate; I will try my best not to hurt you, I promise to offer you my honest self, you will stick up for me, we will obligate ourselves to X amount of time. Its all a contract for physical and emotional benefit. According to Hobbes and Machievelli, all contracts are the simplist form of laws. So if I and everyone around me governs there own lives with laws, than how can we expect a large group of selves to exist without them. Personally, I dont want any. I can picture such a utopia where all give, all recieve, and all agree to live for the betterment of man without ever back-crossing another person in the community. I can see this yes; i can dwell in the image, toy with it, even hope to experience it someday....but until I see it myself, this reasoning does no good because I live, we all live, outside of those social standards. We have made, and take part in a society that rewards selfishness, shoots for excessive wealth at the expense of others, and kills criminals by asking one of its own citizens to take his life (a phsycian talked tonight about having to administer lethal injections. INteresting viewpoint. One deserves to die but who deserves to have the guilt of killing him?). Politics is too complicated.

I am about to crawl up onto my bed, set my alarm, and look out the window into the endless sea of LA lights and before closing my eyes, try to rid my head of all these thoughts just so that the dull numbness of sleep can take me down. Maybe sleeptalking is like death-if you predict it will happen, it wont. Only when you forget about it will it find you.

Moral of the story-think about death tonight  ¶ 10:22 PM 4 Comments

  Send me to the Moon Today, I got my plant back.
Georgia sits on my desk, smiling happily at me, leaves perking up with each passing moment, and I can almost feel the oxygen he is creating for me to breath. I appreciate the simply existence he has. He remembers nothing about yesterday, thinks only of making it to tomorrow, and is dependent solely on me and the love, food, and shelter I provide him. I like to try and put myself in his position at times, wondering how I compare to him, and whether I can in any way alter my existence to be more...plantlike..because Georgio never complains, never looses sleep over a thought about the beginning of time, never takes more than he needs or destroys a plot of land for his own selfish uses. One book I just found in my roommates closet is about the detrimental fate of humanity; seeing as humans, in all of history, are the only species who break the laws of existence and take more than they need and don't provide anything back to the chain of life. Because of this, we will die off...This doesn't make me sad though because I do not control humanity. I control myself, so now I am put at step one; deciding where I will go with my life so that I can pull myself out of a downword spiral I could so easily follow.

I've been reading alot ( this happens when I go back to school after such a long mental vacation called "summer"). These last few days, however, I think I have been made into a dry washcloth by certain circumstances of change and therefore every quote hits me like a fresh sip of water I can't let go of. For a few

"The weakest soul, knowing its own weakness, and believing this truth-that strength can only be developed by effort and practice- will at once begin to exert itself, and , adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, will never cease to develop, and will at lsat grow divinely strong"

"To put away aimlessness and weakness, nad to begin to think wityh purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment, who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully"
~As You Think by James Allen~

"Dance changes with every body that dances: it changes with the time, the country, even the weather; it does not have one history but many"
~Rhonda Graur, MOvement and Dance are Universal
"All nature in one ball, we find;
THe water dances to the wind:
The sea itself, at night and noon
Rises and capers to the moon;
The moon around the earth does treat
A Chesire round in buxom red;
The earth and plants round the run dance;
Not will their dance be done
Till nature in one mass is blended;
Then may we say, the ball is ended."
~Hindu philosophy

Here's a little doodle page of the last quote...

  ¶ 12:36 PM 1 Comments