Rise again

The fireflies have gone to sleep

The stars retreat back into mystery

And it is time for the quiet to break.

Houses go by as the first

Touch of orange lights the horizon.

We're back and we're

Setting fire to the sky,

Rooftops lit by golden flames, a

Shining phoenix reminding that

We will never die.

And we are here to rage,

Rage for those who have died,

Who still suffer through the

Nights of hatred and evil,

Nights without end-

Rage,

Until the searing sunlight

Is at last victorious

Me Being a Hypocrite

So Mrs. Wells has been yelling at me for the past 4 months to get a better bridge and today I took my violin to the luthier, and he looked at it, and asked me what I needed. I told him I wanted the sound more resonant, especially the G string and the nasty wolf on that C# I had. He said there was nothing wrong with my bridge, he adjusted my soundpost a little, did what he could do which was only so much. Mrs. Wells said she knew he could make very good bridges, as she was very happy with the one she had bought from him and so she wanted him to fit my violin with one too. I asked him how one even tells how good a bridge is anyways, and he said that's just the thing, you can't really, because every violin is different and you don't know how it will sound until you get it onto the violin. And he said that sure he could make me a new bridge but there would be no guarantee it would be better, and it would basically just be an expensive experiment. It struck me as slightly surprising that even a professional luthier could have such little certainty and control on the results of the sound created by the intricacies of a bridge and violin. I guess it shouldn't have been surprising, but I've never really thought about it before. Seems silly now to think that even the best luthier could know exactly what to do to make an instrument sound a certain way. But still he can craft some really good bridges for good instruments, and sometimes it just works. And there's just something that works right and feels right. And you're like, yes! This is a good bridge/instrument. Maybe we would like to think that every move that lead to the creation of this bridge was purposeful and calculated and masterfully, ingeniously put together to make just the right thing.. but it really was just a series of lucky accidents. And perhaps we'll be inclined to look at the artwork of the great masters like Monet or Caravaggio or Rembrandt or Van Gogh (or maybe Rothko), and think that they knew exactly what they were doing. Or the compositions of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and Debussy and Bach, believe that every note knew exactly what its purpose was before it was written down. And then we will be intimidated and discouraged, because how could we possibly approach this level of refinement of skill? Well of course it's not possible! When an artist creates a work, the end result is never the same as the artist was intending. And I think all great artists know that. When we look at a Van Gogh, and feel the underlying communication of emotion in the rhythm of the strokes, and we think, "what sort of genius had the capacity to create this?" When we look at a Beethoven symphony and feel the shifting colors and entangled rhythms, and we think, "what sort of genius had the capacity to create this?" As if that was all there in the artist's mind and they just knew exactly how to transcribe the idea into a work of art. No. The artist took a risk. They had maybe an idea of what they wanted, but the final work is bound to be different. And sometimes, it just works. It just works right and it feels right and there's that something right about it. And you wouldn't be able to reproduce it no matter how hard you tried. It really is kind of up to chance. Once you've learned the basics of how to craft that bridge, there's only so much you can do. (Not to say that the learning is easy. It's incredibly difficult.) Beyond that, you have no control. You can't get exactly what you wanted, but you shouldn't let that stop you! Or else you're never going to get a single mark down on a paper in your entire life. You just need to keep practicing and keep trying and keep letting yourself make mistakes. And something's bound to turn out right.

Sorry I didn't notice sooner.

Hello tree.
How long have your branches been bare?

Since when did you shed your leaves
To the deathless wind
Headed for another place?

For how long have you been naked
Beautiful in the light of autumn,
The blazing sunset?

How long will it be 'till your branches are dead
And the cold covers all
With its icy touch?

.

Luminismia

(This post is an imitation of Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, on of my favorite things ever. Go check it out.)
Luminismia- n. The feeling of waking up to find freshly fallen snow outside your window, the struggle to remember and catch and keep just a moment of your passing life to keep forever, a reminder of all things wonderful and an invitation to slow down and remember that life is about more than grades or school or corporate success.

Etymology:
From luminism, an American landscape painting style of the 1850s – 1870s, characterized by effects of light in landscapes, through using aerial perspective, and concealing visible brushstrokes. Luminist landscapes emphasize tranquility, and often depict calm, reflective water and a soft, hazy sky.
Lumi is also the Finnish word for snow.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


You wake up. The first memory of the day. A fresh moment, a moment of brief clarity before the chaos of the day starts.

In a short time, this moment is going to fade into the background of your memory.
So you wake up, needing for something different. Something to cling onto as torrents of other memories dissipate into the darkness. Something to keep as proof of a beautiful life lived. Something to remember tomorrow of who you once were.

Snow.

Looking out, to find that everything has been covered over with a blanket of white. It's something so simple yet so powerful.

There are so many shades of white that you'd forgotten existed. The world has decided to be different, just for a while. The trees, the branches, the rooftops, the lake.

Even the sky has turned white.

The children run outside to laugh and play in the snow. Adults stop what they're doing, just for a short moment, to recognize that today, here's something special. One out of 365 days. Your senses seem to sharpen so as to take in and retain as much as possible before it all melts.

Such is the pull of freshly fallen snow. When the world stops to celebrate life's moments, you think to yourself, what am I doing? Trudging through life and school and work, as always? Worrying about people and grades and places? Snow is an invitation to stop and remember, just for a moment, that joy is found in small places, added up, each tiny brush stroke an addition to a beautiful canvas of memories that make up life.

You're not going to remember each stroke of the brush, each carefully planned and loving line your creator has placed. But looking out at this snow, you realize that's okay. This is only a small part of the bigger picture. The darker parts and the brighter parts, though you may not remember them all individually, they're not going anywhere. Take the time to be grateful for that today. Take the time to be grateful for everything that's happened to you, or you'd never be here today.

And enjoy the snow.


(An unofficial Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows entry.)

The problem with the internet or culture or art or entertainment or society or whatever because I'm not exactly sure what this is about.

I've been thinking a lot about culture. Culture is so hard to escape. Impossible actually. I don't really like the way culture has gone. Why does our internet culture promote complaining all the time and being insensitive. It's so mean sometimes. It's a destructive force sometimes. When the internet teams up to shame someone for making a tiny mistake, like i watched a ted talk about how Justine Sacco's one tweet ruined her entire life because people didn't get her joke. She was being sarcastic and no one got it and those who did and tried to speak out also got called racist because they were in the minority. I don't know what I'm going about because at this point I'm just repeating what others have said. My view is very narrow. Culture is a huge thing with many many subcultures with different values and expressions so I don't really know what I'm talking about... so many layers... See, when people complain about culture (music these days is so bad, modern art sucks, etc) they're not actually attacking what they are complaining about, they are attacking a way simplified and two dimensional projection of it that lives in their heads. Actually culture is a thing that lives in peoples' heads but it's too big and each person can only actually see in detail a tiny part of it, but that's not what I was gonna say.

I guess I would be the same. I'm too unwilling to wrong anyone to criticize anything. But still I feel like culture these days, at least mainstream culture is so... idk, the attitude is all wrong. Culture is so obsessed with criticizing others. It also feels like it's cheap and repetitive. I just can't have fun participating with culture anymore because it feels so pointless to me. I turned the tv on and there's always at least two channels with like a divorce court show or something. And there's some game shows some sitcoms and like some show about celebrity news or whatever. idek. But like what's the point?? It's soo pointless and apparently people watch stuff. People think I'm childish for watching the PBS Kids but honestly it's so much more... morally pure? I've also watched the world channel more and more.. what have i been missing on that thing? so much stuff there. independent documentaries, glimpses into places and lives I've never witnessed or experienced or known or comprehended before. And then all the happy commercials trying to be happy but it feels like a parody of the actual thing, happiness.

The internet is even harder to say anything about in this context. Am I the only one who hates those "so relatable" posts? When I first got a social media account, these posts intrigued me so much.. They made me feel not alone I guess. My whole life I've been isolated and the internet opened up this whole new level of connectedness. Those posts were like, the small things that the internet noticed and decided to summarize in a neat little posts. But these seemingly common things or so-called first-world problems aren't very relatable at all considering the number of people who need to struggle to barely scrape together a living every day. At the end of the day, many of these posts are just people complaining about things that matter so little. These posts are so unsensitive and when I realized it I felt so guilty. Why is it that people pay attention to these things and not the important things in life? In some ways culture just serves to distract people from what's important.

And as you spend more time in the internet, you start to see the rules and the patterns. Culture is better at noticing some things than other things. It tends to notice completely arbitrary and completely unimportant things. You see that the simple act of defining and describing something changes that thing. The internet is obsessed with pointing out things that you'd otherwise probably not notice on your own. And when you notice things their nature changes. And then your life becomes... crystallized. Fossilized. I don't know. The mystery and unknown is just.... killed. Previous to the beginning of my internet citizenship, I didn't have such things to define the things in my life and I lived in a muddle.... you know, I really miss that muddle. It just feels different. And with my personal discovery of the wealth of information on the internet, it was all so new and fresh you know? It's exciting. With this new discovery came the foolish over-confidence. Like, I know stuff now! I have the internet now! I have learned stuff via this magical info-space and now I am an ascended being!! ..It's funny. Have you ever noticed how there's an inverse correlation between confidence and competence? Me, an amateur interneteer (i just coined a word) learning new stuff at a fast rate gaining confidence at that fast rate. But as you gain competence, you begin to realize that you haven't even begun to understand, not at all. Not at all....

But then, there comes this point when suddenly you emerge, you realize that you haven't been expanding your view by learning, you haven't been growing and maturing... in fact, you've grown more and more increasingly dependent on a glowing rectangular machine. Creating an illusion of expanding your world when actually your world has become more and more and more restricted until it's just a screen. And like all addictions, you are left wanting more but never satisfied. Because once you've seen what's on the internet that you couldn't ever get the chance to experience in person, you become acutely aware of how stuck you are in life. The same cycle of being a student, or maybe if you're an adult, work.

Actually, all music, literature, art, games, are to some extent addicting. Art just has a tendency to make you feel so small. The thing is that the internet is the tool for accessing anything you want. but it's not the same as seeing it in person. When you see some things on the internet (or in a magazine or on tv) it's not actually the thing itself you're seeing, it's more like you're seeing a description of it or a representation of it. Obviously this doesnt apply for music or literature but in the case of literature, I think there's something about having a physical copy of the book that just can't be replaced.

Wait I got it. What I think I'm trying to say is the media makes us lose sight of the scope of the world. Creating an illusion-space, calling attention to small pointless things rather than big important things, and it makes you feel better than you are. Obviously it depends how you choose to use the internet and media and stuff. Idk. Maybe what I'm actually trying to say is that entertainment these days makes us lose scope of the world. But then that's being kind of grinchy because life is about fun. And if you don't have fun, then life isn't fun. So maybe the problem is too much fun, resulting in it being not fun anymore. You can't have fun all the time or else fun isn't fun. So as society keeps trying to have more fun, our perceptions of reality will become more and more diminished. Then we're screwed. You know what terrifies me? When virtual reality becomes more and more of a thing, what is going to happen when people decide that they like their virtual reality more than the actual one? Then we're screwed.

What am I even doing. I can't afford to spend time thinking too hard because it will only distract me more from what matters. And I am the world's biggest hypocrite so I'm just going to stop now.
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There's this thing that's been bothering me since we read Phantom of the Opera in English class last year. Other people seemed to be fine with it but I wasn't, and I didn't say anything about it because I was confused I guess. I don't usually think about it but it still bothers me when I do. They had the thing with inner and outer realities: Erik believes he will never be accepted by society, while actually people would accept him if they got to know him. The concept of there being an "outer reality" is something I can't take. I went along with it in school because that's what you have to do in school. You don't argue. There is no such thing as an "outer reality" separate from all human belief and bias. The only reality I have to measure against Erik's is my own. And by calling my reality an "outer reality", I basically just selfishly, insensitively, ignorantly, narrow-mindedly assert MY reality as more valid, true, real than Erik's, or anyone else's. Maybe there's an average reality that somewhat applies for some people, but in taking an average you're failing to represent the wide range of people with different outlooks on life. And even then, what does "average" even mean? You can't average people like numbers. And the average person doesn't exist. Even the most typical person would deviate from the mean in some significant way(s). It irks me how everyone just went along with inner reality and outer reality. I'm sure some people probably see things in terms of inner and outer reality in real life too, not just with fictional characters such as Erik. Someone will see someone else who, idk, believes a different religion and be like "oh, that poor person is so trapped in his inner reality that he doesn't see the reality of things," when really it should be something more like "That person's reality is different from mine" and that is okay because people are different. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them but it would do you some good if you would admit that your reality is not the standard for being correct. I watch people talking about other people like they're misguided and lost and delusional. Yeah, maybe they are. But I'll never know will I? All I can do is speculate about my own life and about others. I choose to believe certain things, and I acknowledge that there's a chance I might be wrong, but I'm willing to accept that chance and place my bet on what I believe.