"You do have nice kneecaps"

My paper is finished and Beowulf is officially an anti-hero. My mind is swimming with thoughts of philosophy and I wsih I was a poet so I could express every thing so beautifully concise.

I’ve decided that I don’t like learning lessons. It seems to me that the only way to do it is the hard way. Of this I disapprove.

ALSO, I don’t like grammar. Well, actually I suppose it’s punctuation I don’t like. Comma splices and such. This is a free country and I think I should be able to, put, commas, wherever, the, hell, I, w,a,n,t, to.

Aisle Three

Saw Don Giovanni on Sunday, it was my first opera. The beauty of Italian filled the theater and I almost think I would have liked it more if there hadn’t been distracting subtitles. Either way I wasn't blown away, but I did enjoy it.

Tonight was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I went in not knowing anything about the plot and searched the program fruitlessly for a synopsis. It was nice watching a story unfold without having any idea what was going to happen.

Saturday (Valentine’s Day) is The Importance of Being Ernest. I have high hopes.

I feel like I’m getting more cultured by the minute and I’m loving every second of it. My taste is changing though. I suppose it’s the classic demassification that I should be experiencing at this stage of my life.

So hopefully, with a little luck and an open mind, my increasing pickiness with be accompanied by high quality entertainment.

the loves of my life.

Mi madre.

Clay Carter.

My William.

My Mighty Max.

The mural, it alleviates the frigidness of living in cinder blocks.

William deserves to be on here twice.

So does Clay.

Kinsley lights up my life,

more than I ever knew a roommate could.

Molly is equally wonderful. If my life was a play, she'd steal the show.

Cody D. is also neat.

unexpectedly sunny.

Today is a headache.

A headache, helado con mi amigo nuevo, and a to do list that whips through the air like ribbon through the breeze in an imagined place with bright, cloudless skies and emerald pastures.

Today is waiting and anxiety. The letter is supposed to be here, but with my postcard it is not. I can see the page in my mind. A premature image with too many words. Too many black letters scattered across the white page when a simple yes or no would suffice.

Waiting like this will be the death of me. One moment I’m convinced, preparing myself for the “no” that I’m positive waits inside some envelope somewhere on its way to me. And then for a few fleeing moments I smile and know that I deserve this opportunity. All the hard work and thankless hours I put in have brought me here and I’ve earned it.

I wish confidence was unconditional and permanent.

In other news, I’m wrapping up Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and it is superb. Even before the conclusion, I already feel myself seeing the world differently. It’s incredible how a fast the world you know can change, how quickly it can morph into something you don’t even recognize.

Scary thought that I’m trying to avoid associating with how the world I know is changing.

My abstaining continues. No Facebook and the fast starts tomorrow. According to Esquire, if I survive the next three days, I’ll be a man with more character and self-discipline than I had before.

Set in Motion

I live a comfortable life, with a comfortable routine. I have more than I need, waste more than is necessary, and appreciate things less than I should. I say “I” incessantly, like it’s something important.

In my quest for self-discovery and an understanding of the world around me, I want to know exactly what I can’t live with out. I want a quantifiable, tangible list of what I can endure and what I cannot.

I want to know that I can make it on my own. I want to stop confusing necessities and conveniences. So I’m going to start giving things up. Things I use everyday. I’m starting with a week without social networking sites, lame I know, but I’ve got to start surrendering something. This week it’s Facebook, next week it could be my bed, speaking, vanity, or technology. Who knows?

I want to test my limits, find out what’s really important to me. I want to stop feeling so…dormant. I have inertia; I just need to be set in motion.

This could be a bad idea born from my unchallenged mind or my habitually unsatisfied need to be rootless. But I’m stubborn and I’ve decided that I want to replace my comfort with affliction.

Giving up Facebook seems like a miniscule sacrifice, but I already feel disconnected. I’m going to miss that constant knowledge that I’m only a click away from over 200 “friends.” It’s a security blanket; there to remind me that I’ve been accepted for who I am, I have a place in society, I belong to a group…

I’ve removed it from my bookmark list on my browser so that I can avoid checking it out of sheer habit. That’s what I want to get rid of, bad habits, wasted time.

Already, I’ve read a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for months. Maybe it’s the motivation that accompanies the start of something new, but today has been the most productive day I’ve had in a long while.

My fast starts on Saturday. How long can I go without food, three days is the goal, we’ll see where it goes. This comes from a list my roommate was talking about. Apparently if you’re a real man, you can go three days on water alone.

Also on the self-improvement agenda this week are a blood drive and tickets to an opera.