Bunk's journal

Imagine this if you will.

A few years back, I was running around, playing some tag-like game with a bunch of younger cousins who were visiting. During the course of my running, I venture into the neighbors yard, onto their deck. I look around from my high point, then take a running leap toward the grass.

A second later, I'm on the ground, dizzy and stunned. I get up stumbling, and the back of my head is bleeding profusely. What happened was, my head sailed right into my neighbors' clothesline (caught me right in the eye, which was black for days). I was whipped backwards, and my head snapped right onto the edge of a cast iron deck chair.

I remembered this story the other day, when me and my girlfriend were for some reason comparing bizarre injury stories. I'm proud to say this one took the cake. She re-phrased it perfectly: "you got clotheslined by a clothesline."

:D

Everything adds to nothing
great potential
confidential
spinnings of feelings trapped in my gut
somebody speaking I always say "what?"
it's my time, wasted
borderline, face red
get sublime, get dead
can't recall what anyone anytime or place said
christmas decorations
stepped on by charlie brown abominations
in every race run
I let go from the get go
need emancipation
and to get down to the ghetto
colorectal correction
examination boom
Finals in the rec room
the student body temporarily not alchoholic
previously unfamiliar with Critical Thinking and Logic
lonely me
I always have someone there
my brother
chasing me
fighting
studies have shown
why I'm alone
to build muscle
first lift weight
nothing happens
while you wait
stuck in happyland
this feels crappy and
I laugh at the cruelty of fate

A friend of mine is having a tough time. The girl he wants is an eternal mystery. He doesn't understand why they went back to being just friends ("friends with feelings", he called it).

They were 17 when they first were together. He remembers clearly. Did he ever forget her? I doubt it.

I for one was oblivious. We were friends then, and I had met her, but somehow I never knew they were an item. I wonder now how I would have felt. You see, I had a crush on her for a while. But she, in my mind, had an untouchable quality about her. I had just met her, she didn't know me, yet she knew everyone else. How could I talk to her, me, an outsider? She was so beautiful, I couldn't imagine her as shy, quiet, withdrawn a bit, a bit of a loner. She had to be a party girl, popular with boys lined up down the block.

I was wrong. Yeah, she partied, she drank. But play my cards right, and I might have been there. I wasn't so far from the crowd as I thought. Stupid me, I never even talked to her until 2 years later. She's nice. She's an artist, but a shy one. She's quiet by her own admission, nervous and unsure sometimes. A human being, for christ's sake; albeit still a beautiful and talented one.

I can't pretend to fully understand the relationship she had with my friend, only being present and aware for round two. But it's not like she found someone new. Which is what I guess makes it so hard to understand why it ended again. They still talk, and yet his frustration mounts, because he wants more.

But instead it's back to the old story of the in between time. He has plenty of female friends, because he's smart and outgoing, but none of them are romantic relationships. But what does she want? Someday she's going to make something of her art. Someday she's going to switch to a full-time program at the university (instead of dallying in part-time as she has done for 3 straight years). Well, I've one upped her there, but then what is a general BA in arts going to do for me?

It seems like we're all just going with the flow at school right now, which is odd. We're all smart, we all have our own unique talents. But where's the focus? Where's the ambition? The need, the drive, the singular goal? With so many options, how could anyone pick just one?

Some time ago, my friend and I saw a show by an obscure (and now disbanded) band called The Dymaxions. They played energetic, complex, and amazingly catchy songs. At one point they surprised me by saying "Here's another song about being sad and lonely."

It wasn't until I listened to their recordings that I caught the lyrics: quirky and genius, but ultimately carrying themes of longing and searching and wanting. Members of The Dymaxions all had many past bands that had broken up. Why was it that they couldn't stick to being The Dymaxions?

This post was edited by Bunk on Nov 27, 2006.

... 7. Hook, pull, hook. Push. My break is in three hours. My break is in an hour. My break is in 30 minutes. My break is in 10 minutes.

Ah, break time.

Prologue: Here it is. The big one. Two years on NAO, and this is the personal development post. I’ve written things on NAO I was proud of, but this is more. Anyone can read it and that’s fine with me, but at the core this is for the select few on NAO who are really my friends. This could have been a Love and Lifesense post also; I no longer pooh-pooh that forum like I once did. I don’t dislike anyone just for having problems with emotional development (no matter what their spelling and grammar is like). But you can’t be taught things like these. You can’t take notes and make adjustments accordingly. I didn’t learn it from a book, or a song, or a lecture. This post is only a picture of me.

They say 15 is a tough age to be. I took it to new heights. When I was 12.5 my family and I moved to a new city. For a time after, as a homeschooler, I was cut off from regular contact with people my own age that I could relate to. I didn't feel like a lot was missing. But at age 15, an event happened that changed everything. I went to a camp for homeschooling teens for a week, and I was surrounded by people of all different walks of life, with experiences I could not conceive.

I hung out with people, moved around a lot, sat with different groups. But it was too much. I had no direction. I was being pulled in different directions, overloaded by all these new things. I became indecisive. By the end I was a scrambling mess. The tragedy is, there were people there who were amazing. If I had only connected with them, we would still be in touch today.

But instead I did the worst thing. I felt terrible inside, but instead of exploring the way I felt, I cut myself off from it. In order to not feel bad, I stopped feeling anything at all. at the time I felt pathetic and inferior, and for the last four years of my life I have fought those feelings. Fought them by denying them, playing 'catch-up' by mimicking the teens that I wanted to be, and protecting myself from ever feeling bad. I was never able to free myself emotionally.

I don't lament the last four years. Many great things happened. I developed a lot, but primarily physically and intellectually. My emotional self was stuck. I came to NAO as an intellectual, and it was great, and I cared about it. I came to feel quite proud of my intellectually constructed self. But when it came to emotion, I faked it, or just lied outright (only 2-3 NAO posts showed my true feelings on something). I stopped thinking about my life emotionally, because I was afraid I would feel bad again. And as a result, I was incomplete as an individual. All I could do was move forward jerkily.

Then finally, last summer happened. A very Machiavellian individual saw straight through me. He refused to tolerate my illusions and let me hide in my shell, and smashed them to bits. I couldn't fight him - his attack was not intellectual, it was emotional, and I didn't understand. I was still wrecked though. My mask was gone.

Did he have the right? No. It was a lot more painful than it should have been. But I FELT it. I had no choice but to feel it.

The next six months were up and down. My intellectual ego was smashed, but I slowly began to realize that was a good thing. It had been trapping me. A series of things began to change me.

One was my Christmas holiday. I had been working my ass off at school, so the break was one I appreciated like never before. And I was still feeling the after effects of my bad summer. I finally had the motivation to relax completely, let everything go, and had no expectations of myself. I let it happen, and it was my most enjoyable holiday in a long time. Being with my extended family, whom I’d known forever, put me at ease, and I rediscovered a lot about my relationships with them.

Another, roughly a month ago, was the death of my maternal grandmother. I had never lost anyone that close to me, and I allowed myself to silence my mind and realize how what my true feelings were.

And finally, there’s the girl. I’ve known her a long time. We were friends before we were teens, and we hung out like any old friends. She was shy, quiet, and reserved, but she was there and she had a good sense of humor. She started out a modest looking girl, but developed as the years went by. At some point or other, I began to suspect that she liked me, perhaps as more than just a friend. But cold me, with my screwy little ego, never explored that. I held her interest smugly in my mind, almost like a reserve, saying to myself “well, if I were really desperate, I could go out with her.” Which wasn’t right.

After my fall, I began to finally ask myself if I should ask her out. The funny thing is, I almost was desperate - but there was something more. All that time, I had thought I had her “in the bank.” But in the bank is nothing. It was time to try. And then finally, I did. I didn’t have a set of expectations. But I went and did it anyway. And she said yes, and confirmed that she had liked me the whole time. This was an explosion within me. A whole whirlwind of feelings raced through me: fear, excitement, dread, joy, melancholy and elation. I thought in ways I had never thought before.

Our relationship is ongoing. I can’t say how far it’ll go, or how long it’ll last. But we’ve had fun together, and it’s something that’ll stay with me forever. I’ve changed. I’m still the same person, and I’ll probably do some things the same as I did before, and believe a lot of what I said I believed. But now I know with my heart that I do believe it. I know now what I feel, and am struggling less over what I say. I see and understand things now that I couldn't before. The whole world in new again.

I may not be perfect, and there is much to do, but my will exists. And right now I feel a fullness within me, like I have almost never felt before. I’m confident. I realized confidence doesn’t mean experience, it doesn’t create laziness, it doesn’t mean ego, or looks, or coolness. It’s not the mask I had. Confidence is peace with yourself.

.

Ack! This won't be a novel or anything, but I'll write something longer and more maniacal soon. Hopefully. I can't be legally bound.

I'm studying part time at the University of Ottawa, History (The World Since 1945) and Politics (Introduction to Politics). I started classes a couple weeks ago. So there it is, my excuse for for being absent lately. Yeah, two courses isn't THAT much work, but I'm in the adjustment phase.

It's fun stuff, which is not what many people say about History and Politics. Reading about the likes of Hitler, Truman and Churchill is a blast. And Stalin. Good ol' Stalin... :)