Essay Five- Dreams

            While flying may be the most beautiful thing you can do, and a pet may be the best thing you can have, a dream is the most beautiful thing you can have. Hopefully, everybody’s got one, whether it’s to one day know, beyond a doubt, how a doorknob works, or whether it’s something entirely out of this world.

            Now mine, as some may have guessed, is definitely the latter. You see, I want to be one of the first men on Mars. No use hiding it, it’s just my dream. I want to go into the Deepness (Vernor Vinge, yeah!) of space, and find my destiny. I believe it to be man’s destiny too, but whatever.

            But you see, dreams are the most amazing things in the entire world to have. They give hope, they give a goal, and they make us always strive for something better.

            Actually, immigration wouldn’t be such a problem in our nation (U.S.A., just to clarify) if there weren’t dreams. Fortunately, there are. People pour in to find the promise of America: happiness and safety. Of course, this is a bit silly. But hey, so is being one of the first men on Mars! Immigrants come here in the hope of something better, for them, their families, their children, and life. They come here to work hard so that their kids can have a future, and their kid’s kids. It’s interesting how you could say that the dream of an immigrant is to have their grandchildren be happy and safe, but it definitely isn’t false.

            Dreams also give people goals. Maybe your dream is to best everyone you know at paper football. No matter what, you’re going to gain something from this. Maybe you learn how a paper football flies under certain conditions, or maybe your fingers get hella strong. Point is, it gave you a goal, and you tried to achieve it. For me, the same thing happened when I finally made my mind up to be an astronaut, sometime in early kindergarten. I started applying myself, first by bothering to learn how to read, second by learning how to do math, and then, most importantly, learning to enjoy math and reading. I apparently can even enjoy writing, or I wouldn’t be up at 4:30 in the morning typing this silly thing! So my dream of being one of the first men on Mars led to the goal of reading Watership Down all the way through (3^rd grade, and man was it hard!), which led me to Excel classes, and so on.

            Now that is an obvious example of striving for something better. I wanted to go to Mars, so I essentially willed myself into being better at everything. Just like many people have. Einstein, I’m sure, had to struggle to grasp some things, and will himself to do others. He did do good at math, though, and that’s the truth. 

            And there's another famous man from the last century that also had a dream. He had a helluva one, too. Martin Luther King Jr., the man with a name as big as his dream, dreamed that one day everyone on this earth will live in peace and harmony, no matter their race or their gender. This brings me to my next point; dreams make the world get better.
            Nothing in the entire world is as constructive, potentially, as a dream.

Life as a Bouncy Ball

      For my entire life, it's been the one analogy I could really stick with. My life is basically a bouncy ball, in a lot of ways. First off, a bouncy ball is round, just like me! lol Nah, not similar like that.
      I mean in characteristics. A bouncy ball is always going from high to low, low to high, and is nearly never in between the two. And really, that's kinda what my life is like. I'm ballsy enough to fly a plane on my own, but sometimes I just can barely cross the street without running for fear of cars. Sometimes, I feel like the King of All Creation, and sometimes I'm busy kicking myself for "being such a little shit".
      It's really strange to bounce from high to low so often, and to not know why. Hell, I can't complain though.
      Far better to be constantly in a state of change than to be stuck at either end of the spectrum, or to mellow at the center. After all, a bouncy ball may get smacked when it hits the ground, but at the peak, it would be pretty wondrous. Floating on air, excitement building, not knowing exactly what's ahead, but knowing that it will be an experience. Being caught there, the wonder would eventually be gone, and it would be as bad as mellowing in the center, nothing new (only the old) to experience.
      Sometimes, the bounces of the multiple facets of my personality are really off. The other day I was sitting in this chair, screwing around on Happy Wheels, and all I could think was how sad I was. A day or two later, I sat in the same chair, but I was working. With no music on, I whistled contentedly for like half-an-hour.
      Also, my opinion of self is probably the most active bouncer of them all. High to low, low to high multiple times a day. Sometimes, and I did indeed count, I'll shift seven times. Of course, that's only on some of the really really bad days, or when I'm practically a member of the walking dead. Still, it happens, and when it does it's sometimes really enjoyable. Take the Friday before last, for instance.
      It was a fitness training day, which for me means an uphill struggle against my obesity.
      Just a fact, I don't want everybody rushing me and telling me it's alright or any of the typical shit. It ain't, and that's why I'm fixing it. No "consolation" to give or "confidence-builders" to use. My problem.
      Anyways, I was pretty damn proud of myself. Managed to do the full sit-ups (75), and then beat one of my pals in the push-up contest. Sure, only with 12, but compared to 6 earlier this year, that's damn fine. Unfortunately, I was feeling like shit about it. Shoulda gotten 15, that was my thought, over and over.
      But then the dreaded Mile began, which is where that hill I'm struggling up tends to fight back. Thank god, I had some pals to help me along with it. By the end of it, though, I felt like I were running for fun; I was just at that part of the bounce. Sure, I got last place, again, but by hell, I hadn't walked a single step. I hadn't abandoned my friends either, and that's something I'm proud to say.
      See the contrast there? When I did well, I felt horrible. When I did poorly, I felt great! It was a strange contrast that I realized later in the day, which is when the bounce tends to mellow out a bit more. I think it's actually why I write better at night.
      For all I know, though, this is completely normal. I don't tend to get much intel on the ways other people's minds work. All I know is that it's one of the most intriguing things about my mind, and it's been a part of it for a good while. Really, I actually tend to enjoy the sensation of flying high and diving low, at least for the fact that it's never a constant.
      Of course, I seem to be on the upward path right now, but I won't complain about that either. Just a part of being an emotional and psychological bouncy ball!

Idle Musing Number Two

Don't worry, I actually have an idea for an essay. One of these days I might write something again! I'm about half-way through, and it'll be up-loaded soonish.

Anyways, consider this: Has every single idea been made yet? It's an old saying that there are no original thoughts, but is that true? On one side, there have been literally trillions of minds on our world alone, all firing their neurons in similar ways, and often thinking about the same things. On the other hand, times have changed. Would the ancient Greek and the modern American think the same thoughts?

Let's puzzle it out!

Essay Four- Flying

Okay, it’s about time I let the cat out of the bag. I, dear reader, am a pilot. Contain your excitement though! A ton of people are! Hell, you should be! It is the greatest thing in the world, let me tell you. I may only be learning, but I’ve already gathered that there is nothing like it in the world.

Now first off, what does flying entail? For me, it’s about 10 minutes of pre-flight (making sure everything’s alright and that only the pilot can screw everything up mid-flight), another five to make sure the plane is responding as it should, and then take off.

And then, dear reader, the miracle happens.

As you may have guessed from reading “Love, Loss, and Pets”, I’m shy as hell. I get a little bit shaky talking to really cute girls, in fact. It’s, it’s pretty shameful, actually. But in the skies, it’s all better. I still shake, but none of it matters. I become dust in the wind, just like any person. You float above the farms, above the roads, above the cities, and once again get reminded that yes, you are just dust in the wind. Dust that can soar! You breeze above mountains, plow through clouds, and it’s gorgeous.

One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen was when I was flying. I emerged from a cloud bank, to find a sea of white, rolling like waves upon the sea; a mountain of mist rising into the blue sapphire sky to the point of hurting your neck to gaze on it’s majesty; with the background of Mt. Pilchuck making it all suddenly become real to me. No words can do it justice. I imagine that for an astronaut floating above our fair Earth, the view must be even more mind-blowing. It would be magnificent.

It makes you realize that life is the second happiest miracle of all, and that intelligence is the first. For truly, how can it be known there is beauty without a mind to awe at it?

Needless to say, I’m really passionate about flying. I haven’t even soloed yet! I’m still on the basics! But still, knowing that I can fly like my wildest dreams imagined makes everything brighter.

I just thought that I should tell you, reader, so you get a bit more insight into my mind.

Essay Three- The Complications of Life

            I’m just going to touch on three major issues: love, boundaries, and friends. Each of them deserves more than just a body paragraph or two, but they’ll get that later. I think I’ll have five or six separate essays on love by the time I’m done, 50K words (NaNoWriMo's goal) or not!

            But love is definitely the miracle of life, but it’s definitely the biggest complication in it except for us lucky few who were blessed with finding their loves early. For the rest of us, love is a complexity the likes of which no poet could capture. It floats and it flutters, it plays with our heads and toys with our hearts, and it yo-yos like a small child with a very, very, VERY severe seizure (but he’s fine and gets ice-cream in the end, to content you faint-hearted folk). But think about love; does it matter whom you feel it towards, or how you feel it towards them? I openly love my best friend Tristan, but as a brother. But really, what does that mean? It’s like there’s this zone that physical attraction has nothing to do with, and when somebody hits there, you love them like a sibling. But here’s my question: what if they fell out of the impartial love zone, and suddenly became attractive? I mean physically. Your feelings would have to change, right? Or would they? The base of this is; if Tristan woke up tomorrow a gorgeous woman, could I help falling madly in love? Or would it be same old same old, Rock Band-ing in his room and chatting about everything from particle physics to the true beauty of the bear? (Inside joke, by the way. Watch Avatar The Last Airbender, and you might get it.) I truly have no idea about it. But I do know that while I consider one of my girl pals just a friend, whenever she doesn’t have her make-up on at school, I always seem to think about her much more.

Like a lot of women, she tries to cover up her natural beauty with glop.

But on those days, I can see myself falling for her again. It’s very peculiar how the heart distinguishes love from not-love, but some other element separates love-love from brotherly love.

And another thing I wanted to rant about was boundaries. Everybody has them! Maybe yours is raw food, or maybe escargot (which is delicious, by the by), but you’ve got one. Hell, you’ve probably got dozens, just like anybody else on this globe! But when can they be crossed?

I keep chatting (maybe prattling would be a better word, my dear reader) about love. Where do boundaries come in on that? A lot of people nowadays will say that, yes, a man may love a man and a woman may love a woman. A lot of people don’t, too.

Then again, some people actually love-love their cars.

Anyways!  People love people. If there were any one thing which I believed you must take away from this, it's that little, innocuous, all-powerful statement. I don’t know, really. I just think that it isn’t fair, and people should be able to love whomever the hell they want. Not whatever, autophiliacs, whomever. But that’s just one boundary, one thing that limits humanity as a whole. Imagine if we were to tear nearly all of them down! It might be a beautiful, short lived, glittering utopia. But then again, the complication of boundaries is whether they should stay up or not. Just like laws, but if you break a boundary society punishes you, not the cops.

And now for the last subject of this essay that many of you have likely skipped over: friends. They’re one of the greatest things you can have! After all, you can spend money, happiness can get rained on, a love can break your heart, but friends always try to help and be there for you. Actually, they’re kinda like pets, but usually they feed themselves! Haha, very funny stupid. Friends are complications, though, because of human nature. My pal JD is one of my closest, but I nearly never talk to him.

When we do though, we can spend hours laughing! It’s very strange how I know that I can come into contact with him essentially any second I wish, but I nearly never do. Likewise, with another friend, we support each other and keep each other standing when a single pair of legs would crumple. But that’s when we’re hanging out only us two. The second we add a third to the mix, no matter who, we start tearing each other apart like lifelong rivals, bound only by our hatred.

It’s so weird!

So why does that happen? Our characteristics can change completely depending on what friend we’re with, almost as though we were a crystal and different friends are lights shining upon us in different ways. I’ve noticed it, I know many of my friends have, and odds are the few readers who are still somehow combing through my thoughts have too, or are at least puzzling it out in their heads. It seems completely random, actually. But my question (and it’s always a question, nearly never an answer; Socrates was a genius, after all) is this: why do we change around different friends?

It seems nearly like it takes away that little chunk of advice that everyone’s parents told them when they were young: be yourself. But aren’t you yourself when you’re with friends? It seems like it, right? Once again, I’ll return to the crystal analogy. Different lights will pass through it in different ways. I kind of think of it as a reverse prism. All of the different shades of colors will shoot through the anti-prism, and combine to make a blinding white light, the true you.

You see, what my hastily contrived analogy is trying to convey is that each friend will bring out a different aspect of you that has always been there. But that’s just a foray into the darkness of unknowing, one that probably stumbled across nothing. Hey, why don’t some of you more motivated readers tell me your thoughts? It’d be interesting, at least, and seeing how I’m still composing my 50K words you might just get a little mention here or there, or maybe even an essay apologizing and correcting for when you prove me wrong (as if)!

             But those, in my opinion, are the more hard to categorize complications of life. Friends and why we act the ways we do around them, boundaries and when to cross them, and loves and when we have them, and what they are. There are still all the minor complications of life, but those added up don’t equal anywhere near the amount of these three.

Idle Musing Number One

Note to the imaginary readers I pretend read this site: these aren't essays. They're mere glimmers of thought, ones that I find interesting. I put them up here just for kicks!

What if mankind had evolved on a base eight number system? (instead of 1, 2, 3... 10, 11... something completely different) What would the number ten be like?

Just some random crap like that, that's an Idle Musing. Maybe insightful, maybe not, but I figure it's worth a look at.

Essay Two- The Red Zone

            No, this isn’t some commentary on republicans. No, it isn’t some dumb-assed thing on how much I hate red. I actually think it’s pretty awesome! Green’s better, though.

            This essay is actually going to be on one of the subjects I fear the most: myself. Everyone has witnessed their inner monster, and mine scares the living shit out of me. Mine only comes out rarely, but when it does I, if you can understand what I mean, seem to fade away, to be replaced by a beast of hate and fear.

It really, really sucks.

Have you ever had this happen to you, reader? Just suddenly, without warning, lash out at the world? I bet you’ve done it at least once as well.

For me, the strangest thing brings out my beast, and enters me into the Red Zone: my parents. They tend to yell if a question is repeated (days later, mind you), they like to alternatively put down my efforts or tell me to begin trying, and they seem to not listen to me.

Of course, if this essay were just grievances against my parents, it would last a good 30 pages!

No, it’s more like when they used to do this, all I could do was pin myself up into my room and despair. Maybe cry, maybe just play Civilization 3 very sadly and mournfully, but it was always something. Eventually, though, I would go into little fits of rage inside my room. This started Freshman year, which I’ve always called Shit Year.

Eventually, the little fits of rage got larger and larger, until one day not even my room could contain them. I just burst out one day, walked up to my mother, and screamed my pain out.

This was one of the worst things ever.

She started to cry, right in front of me. Sobbing, in fact. Instantly, my demon subsided, and I was thrust back into my blue zone of calm, and I felt like a dirty shit, to say the very least. So I went into my room and I cried. Sobbed, in fact. (Really, my mother and I are a lot more similar than I would ever care to admit) Soon enough, I stepped out to apologize.

Well, it started out like that. If my Mom hadn’t been in the back room with my Dad telling him how I had hit, actually HIT, her, I may have just apologized and dropped it. But instead, she was insisting that I had smacked her in the face, which I thankfully did not do. So I yelled some more, a kind of passive-aggressive rant in which I apologized for yelling but screamed about her lies and cursed them. In the end, (half an hour later, 25 minutes of it being a 2-way sulk) my Dad defused the situation, thank heaven.

That was my first major experience with the Red Zone. Since then, I’ve had a few encounters with it, but nothing quite as bad. Of course, I thought it was always lurking underneath the surface.

Thankfully, one of my friends showed me how to truly relax. Relaxing isn’t turning off your mind, it isn’t necessarily a nap, relaxing is simply doing something you love to do that’s very fun. You go and sit with buddies and make up fanciful stories and adventures that last from a second to 50,000 light years (even though it’s a distance), or you go and play soccer, or you go and play on the swings. Whatever floats your boat!

Right now, in fact, my Red Zone seems practically gone. It still boils and bubbles up now and then, but now that I’ve learned how to chill it off it has no power.

            And of course, getting rid of that isn’t the only benefit of relaxing. The greatest is the relaxing itself! You’ll feel better, be nicer, and feel much happier with your life! So once again, I find myself nearly thankful of my past mistakes.