Jimmy Eat World — "It Matters"

I just can't get enough of how this song sounds

I keep trying to start writing about “how I feel” right now, and it’s both too hard to articulate AND immediately boring to me. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do if you can’t be even a little bit invested in your own story, but right now I’m finding that really difficult!

Anyway, just wanted to type out loud that if I could be less of a weird fuck-up, I would be!!! And I’m always trying to be. I’ve learned so much, but feel like I started from such a deficit in terms of understanding anything at all, while accruing increasing damage along the way. It hurts to try to have bigger, deeper thoughts right now. Like walking on glass. There’s just too much, within myself, and in the unfortunate world, to grapple with right now. I barely survived the last few years. I’m maybe in a more stable place now. I’m really, really trying to be all right and do well by the people who still put up with me.

Jimmy Eat World — It Matters

"I imagine talks that last all night.
Never bring it up, but every day I want to.
I think about us dancing, but it's not something we do.
Well there's my dream — doesn't it sound good to you?"

Jimmy Eat World — Sure and Certain

"What you do works for a time,
until you drop without a warning
sign"

What a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

why is it so hard to feel good for very long at all? good lord. I haven’t been able to fully relax in at least a month and I’m feeling it!

why does the mind decide to want things

I do not believe in astrology. I think it’s an interface for collapsing unfathomable individuals into crayon-labeled hardware drawers. I also think it’s a form of fascist-adjacent thinking which essentializes people into hierarchical categories! And I think it’s bizarre that real living people who would object vociferously to judging others based on their race, sex, gender, orientation, or otherwise identifying characteristic, will positively leap at the chance to not only make assumptions about another person based on their birth date, but will loudly and smugly announce these assumptions to that person’s face.

“Oh, yeah. You would say that,” the horoscope-liker will say. “Because you’re a [INSERT RACE].” Doesn’t feel so good, huh???

Well anyway, it seems like we all have to believe in some bullshit, so oh well. And as one of many things I expose myself to simply so I might understand other people better through direct experience — and because unexpected inputs can produce interesting thoughts, which is what makes tarot etc useful tools for self-reflection — I let the Co-Star telephone application send me messages. I let each fall into my consciousness like a coin into a well, and I listen for how long it takes to hit the water.

Today:

This is an interesting observation, which has nothing to do with my place in the cosmic pattern. As someone who has struggled to forget my dreams, both waking and sleeping, and has been plagued by trying to maintain a personage who no longer exists, I appreciate the reminder.

Where do memories live? How long can they lie dormant? What selects what sticks and what doesn’t? Where does Quake live inside me?

Scrounging around for feelings last week, making room on my Windows machine’s hard drive, I saw that I had access to the new Quake remasters. I don’t play FPS games on keyboard & mouse anymore due to RSI that showed up ten years ago, but Quake and the original Team Fortress were such formative experiences for me that I wanted to revisit them.

Dropping into the game was bizarre, truly surreal; like stepping not just into a past home but a former body, the movement disorienting and then immediately familiar. The level I always remember as first wasn’t; the very first level I hardly remembered at all. But there it was, as the second level: the room with boxes behind, and a little bridged canal before a door ahead. I knew these places, intuitively; many details elided, but so many details present. I knew where secrets lay — but not all of them. I played through the entire first campaign very quickly, and maybe the strangest moment was entering a little dead-end room with 3 alcoves. I knew something was there, poked into 2 of them without firing, and then in the third felt a tickle of memory, shot the gun… and a secret door opened ahead.

What are we? Seriously. What the fuck is the human mind? How do we exist, that fully 20 years can pass, and a simulated space in a video game can still be retained, somewhere inside, as a tactile experience detailed enough to remember that this corner of a complex geometrical space contains a secret? While other secrets, and even basic layout, are forgotten? Returned to strange?

We are drowning in imagery, stuffed with narrative, and still there’s never enough.

jimmy eat world — delivery

I can only be so much "potentially."
From the rest, I patiently request delivery.

jimmy eat world — 555

I keep my focus on the simple things,
Trying to find some peace along the way.
Wish I knew how long I'm supposed to wait —
Holding on, but just barely.

I'm doing the things that I'm told every day!
Then why does it feel like I'm moving in place?

jimmy eat world — congratulations

that fucken ending