Swimming through the universe, one light-year at a time.

Swimming through the universe, one light-year at a time.
NCG 4631 "The Whale Galaxy"

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

A Late Tribute to Michael Crichton


I recently finished reading Crichton's Congo and am actually sorry that I'm done. This novel has completely enthralled and sustained me the past 2 weeks. There have been days when I literally woke up with the thought of continuing the next chapter as my only motivation to get out of bed. There is something so sharp about Crichton's writing: his ability to employ real-life concepts and modern events and then amplify it into a masterpiece of fiction. I'm not ashamed to admit that part of my interest in science has come from reading his works. Any author that has the ability to stir people's curiosity about the world, and in my case, the waking life deserves our ultimate respect and will be immortalized forever.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Walt Whitman was a brilliant man

Walt Whitman on Living, Dying, and Loving


Of Him I Love Day and Night

Of him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead,
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he was
not in that place,
And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-places to find him,
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,
Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as
of the living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;
And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd,
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly
render'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, I shall be satisfied,
Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.


A Living Always, Always Dying

O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and
look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.


Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?



Monday, October 13, 2008

don't know what to do

I am currently at a pivotal point in my school career and life, but I am completely conflicted about which route to take. The past 2 semesters since I transferred have been utterly unproductive, and while I've enjoyed my life upon moving to SF, I need to start getting serious.

So do I attempt to take on the burden of studying Physics and Astronomy? Or do I go back to my original love: English.

Plunging into Calculus was a mistake. Physics 111 was a nightmare. These blatant signals all flash red and point me in the direction of giving up. While the thought of doing this takes off a shitload of weight off my shoulders, I can't help but feel extremely disappointed and broken-hearted, deep down.

I have never truly challenged myself. I have never believed in myself. And this was my chance. But am I just kidding myself?

I don't know what to do. And I feel like the ambivalence is tearing me down.

All men live in suffering,
I know as few can know,
Whether they take the upper road
Or stay content on the low,
Rower bent in his row-boat
Or weaver bent at his loom,
Horseman erect upon horseback
Or child hid in the womb.
-W.B. Yeats, from "The Wild Old Wicked Man"

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Summer is over

August was the time of my life,
I turned 21 and drank all the time.
September I rejoined humanity,
I met a cute girl at a bar
and ended my celibacy.
But now October has come,
the wind has chilled
the summer is gone
All Hallow's Eve is near
and it's time to face my demons.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Bones

You always knew
that if you dug hard enough
the bones would start to show
so it came as no surprise
when the cartilage began to intrude
upon the tender tissue
which surrounded the stabbing sensation inside
you turned away from grief, content,
only to find it still resides.
And now, allowed to fester for so long
beneath the skin
No wonder, that sadness has become infected;
mutated, from its original form
and hardened, to take on a more tangible contour.
Where sorrow once dwelled,
Fury now reigns.
Someday, there will be a healing membrane
to replace the initial hurt,
instead of this thick, discolored skeleton
protruding from your shirt.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Closure

Katya: Sometimes, even if you have the keys those doors still can't be opened. Can they?
Jeremy: Even if the door is open, the person you're looking for may not be there, Katya.

-My Blueberry Nights

Monday, August 04, 2008

Solar Eclipse

This past weekend, on my 21st birthday, the moon passed in front of the sun, and was visible from northern Canada to certain areas of China. Although I could not be there to see it, August 1st was a memorable day for me as I felt loved by those around me, as well as the ones who could not be present for either of these premier events. Twenty-one is definitely a milestone, not only for the obvious legal liberties (which I've taken full advantage of), but for the realization that I cannot escape life by wishing for death, nor will death come any sooner. Although suicide became exempt from my options long ago, life continues to be an uphill struggle, but I have learned to deal with these hardships in light of an end which I can deem worthwhile. All in all, I know I have more to be grateful for than cross, as is enunciated by my friends, family, and this picture:

Sunday, July 27, 2008

old photographs

All we ever see of the stars are their old photographs.

-The Watchmen


Thursday, July 17, 2008

Ruminations

Here I am. This is my college life. And when I look at it I see that it is nearly perfect; that aside from my accumulated debt, I am living the life I wanted for this stage. The older I get, the more I understand and accept that nothing is stable, that every negative emotion and situation that comes my way will pass with the days, seasons, and years. It is utterly amazing to me that the sun always rises, even in this cold city, after any dreary or turbulent night, and throughout, as well as following, this lonely life.


The Doppler Shift

Such an array of emotions
from the distance, I am captivated by the simplicity of its truth
but up close, and in the raw
I am heartbroken by the knowledge
that the most luminescent
will be the most hard
to experience; to absorb into the center of this retina
with a reception much too skewed and limited
to perceive from.
These colors are cruel
they breach misery from their roots.
So when the shift comes to change my view
from the sweetly blue to a harsh and daunting red
I can already tell, and ruefully accept:
there will be many more moments before I perish
that I shall wish to be dead.

The Murder

I pray you can't tell
I pray I never show
the depths of these emotions
which I so viciously feel.
So I stifle them well
like a murder victim, gagged and bound
held at gunpoint, 'till the trigger held taut
relaxes, and before the muscles can unrestrain,
the detonation hits my head,
and penetrates the skull.
The only sound -
the shock of death, so frighteningly loud
but only exists
between my own ears
and merely echoes
throughout closely confined chambers
of this heart.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Notes from my trip to Taiwan last Winter

The Mold (written Jan 10, 2008)

I put my trapped life on hold
to lay back, observe, and rinse away the mold.
Though the stain will still leave the glass discolored,
I would rather rip away the hurt
than leave these heavy layers uncovered.

It is not enough to be loved;
one must be understood.


Bury Your Dead (written around Jan 4, 2008)

Those who do not bury their dead
will feel the fury of memory at their windowsills
and no matter how hard you slam down the glass
the shutters will still murmur their utterances.
There is no need to avoid the gravesite,
you sleep with a corpse next to your head
and when you reach out to caress the body you once loved,
it will reek of a dead man's scent.
So be it, your misgivings were so unfairly placed
upon the living, but when the phantom's touch instead
becomes a choking clutch, you will have wished
you had left the dead buried.


One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passers-by only see a wisp of smoke from the distance and continue on their way.
~Vincent Van Gogh

It is just in learning to suffer without complaint, in learning to look on pain without repugnance, that you risk vertigo, and yet it is possible, yet you may even catch a glimpse of a vague likelihood that on the other side of life we shall see good reason for the existence of pain, which seen from have sometimes so fills the whole horizon that it takes on the proportions of a hopeless deluge. We know very little about this, about its proportions, and it is better to look at a wheat field, even in the form of a picture.
~Vincent Van Gogh


It's not enough to conquer; one must know how to seduce.
~Voltaire

If we don't find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
~Voltaire

If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.
~Voltaire

Minds differ still more than faces.
~Voltaire

The heart is simple; fixing it is complicated. ~Tadpole the movie


(Jan 13, 2008)

On the flip side of sadness, there is anger.

My skull is burning. I long to die.



Friday, February 22, 2008

Estranged

a poem about first moving to the city.

This is not my life
It is someone else's
I am only the shadow of the body,
dragging, lagging - and walking helpless
Which would explain why, every object-
street, tree, and person alive
seems cold and alien
Strange, to be subject to one's own existence
as a distant relative, dissociated
Just as the serpent sheds away a previous form of skin,
like him, my own has left me behind
now I run to chase the darkness of a sudden asymmetry,
lopsided, in feeble attempt to find
the comfort of a former home.