I haven’t any poems today but a few thoughts. I flew out to DC today for a conference, and so somewhat sleep deprived, ended up spending a lot of time reading Infinite Jest, which I’m really enjoying, and which is coming along rather nicely at this point. I think I’m some 460 pages through, of 1000 or so. I probably read over 50 just today. I can tell that it’s starting to influence the way I perceive the world and it’s both exciting and kinda batshit crazy and a little scary.

Life is long and has been lived before. I’ve been using the first part for quite some time now, but the second I read in Infinite Jest today.

Why are pronunciation symbols shown everywhere with definitions even though probably 99% of people can’t actually read them? I’m thinking of trying to learn what they mean.

I’ve been playing out this whole dilemma on balance for a while now, thinking that it’s largely fake–my brain not wanting to or being able to handle more than one consistent view. But no, it turns out this is just ambivalence, this is an objective function with multiple weighted components rather than only one, which is to say that I am become multiple-dimensional, this is acknowledging and accounting for uncertainty. That is balance. If you don’t know, you don’t go all in on something–you split. Poetry and emotional ambivalence has been helping me reframe this to myself in a way I can accept more readily, and I think it shall be coming moreso.

Okay, now for the meat, on cerebrating:

I feel like I’m becoming more cerebral these days, thinking about more things. Not sure how much of this is just the poetry and Infinite Jest and such, and how much is the loneliness. Time alone. But I feel like up until now, I needed to spend a lot of time grappling and learning how to deal with people, socializing, with self, and so on. And for me, these were largely means to fill holes in my self and so I approached them somewhat compulsively. But now I feel I’ve gotten some peace on this front and have come out of that world a little bit. And I notice that I begin to see the world differently, cerebrally if you will, the little ins and outs and the physics of it all, feel myself and feel how I am feeling with ease, and so on. Funny stuff. I’m not describing it very well since I’m definitely still experiencing and figuring it out, but it’s very welcome. And I find myself wondering that I didn’t hit this earlier, sorta like how silly that I did not, but it’s very understandable seeing how many unacknowledged holes I had until more recently. I feel like I’m actually growing up though and adjusting and deciding in some capacities what kind of person I want to be and that’s exciting and lovely. And how good, to see things this way, to just see things really and not always see them through the lens of trying to fill a hole. Not that I have at all escaped from trying to fill my holes. No, certainly not. More to come on this in coming weeks, months, and such likely.