Now Playing: With or Without You by U2

Ah, my favorite song of all time. If I absolutely had to pick just one song that I adored, it would be this one. I've never really been sure why until now, because I never really thought about the song or what it means or why I love it so much. Now that I think about it, though, I think that perhaps the lyrics are so melancholy and sad, they really speak to you despite being so simple and straight forward.

I remember once I was riding in the car with my sister, talking to her about something or other and she had just wanted me to shut up, so she turned on this song and I immediately went silent. (*laugh*)  

The YouTube video I posted above is a live performance of the song from Rattle and Hum with an extra verse added to the end, which was to lighten up the ending, supposedly. I like both versions of the song, depending on my mood. Though the exact wording of the extra verse varies from performance to performance, I can give you what he says in the video I posted.

Here's the extra verse:

Yeah, we'll shine like stars in the summer night,
We'll shine like stars in the winter light,
One Heart     
One Hope
     One Love
With or without you

-U2

Now Playing: Angel by Sarah McLachlan

I have to admit, I love Sarah McLachlan's singing. I really respect someone who has such an amazing singing voice live, because there are many artists/singers/groups who sound great on their album, but are significantly less impressive when heard in person. It seems almost like a cliche to like this song now, but it really is nice to listen to if you're in the right mood.

April Fool's Day. Blah. Thankfully it falls on a Sunday this year. I don't have to deal with people's lame attempts to trick me.

I was watching a lecture Kevin Smith must've done at a university somewhere on YouTube, and it was so funny and just entertaining. I've always been fond of Kevin Smith and his work, not just because he's from Jersey, but because he's such a really normal guy that I can relate to, it's like you could easily picture yourself as him. It's a little surreal hearing him talk about areas around here where I live and his various experiences. Making films is something I definately wouldn't mind doing.

Altering Fate

On occasion, you may find that life has thrust you down a path not of your choosing, as if compelled by some outside force or a strong current. You're pushed along this course through no choice of your own, constantly feeling as if no matter what you do or what choices you make, your future is unalterably fixed and immutable, because it has a way of seeking you out anyway. You try to escape and it finds you. You make different choices and somehow they curve around back to the path you were taking. All of your attempts to change your fate seem futile.

Perhaps the focus, then, should not be so much on changing the end result, but rather the course of our lives which we are taking to reach it. Perhaps the potential end result is more of a signal to us that this is not a definitive future, but rather a likely one if we do not change some of the larger aspects of what we do from day to day. Perhaps by living the life we want to live, rather than the life we've been encouraged to live, we can eventually alter our fate enough that we will avoid the tragic end that we thought was awaiting us.

"You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place."

Stranger Than Fiction

I'm visiting my sister in PA and we decided to watch the movie "Stranger Than Fiction" with a few friends. I've been feeling a bit off lately, not unlike Harold, like my life has something in store for me just beyond the horizon. Trying to find out what it is before it happens can drive you mad, trying to preempt fate, to dodge any possible tragedy that awaits you. Perhaps I am trying to avoid my own tragic fate.

In either case, it was a much better movie than I had anticipated. I was pleasantly surprised.

Ah, my much neglected blog. I've been very busy these past few months, but mostly I didn't create this entry to talk about that. Yesterday I ingested some bad soup and came down with a particularly unpleasant bit of food poisoning. Suffering from a fever and the chills, sweating and dehydrated, I couldn't really do much other than sit there and think. (Trying to do anything else made me feel worse.) In this state, I felt like I had a sudden moment of clarity, in which everything suddenly came into sharp focus and I finally came upon a few striking revelations. I was half tempted to write it all down in my blog that night, but I feared that in my delirious state I might pen some words I would later regret. I still have a lot of thoughts to sift through, to sort out before I really write all of it down, but my life is definately going to take a different course from here.

The false one is #8. The only time I left the country was to Canada, not Mexico.

A video for your viewing pleasure.

Plans

So right now I'm scheming ways to undertake my move across the country. I have a lot of stuff. Granted, I don't need all of it, but there are at least a few things I want with me. My big issue right now is furniture. Granted, I could buy all new furniture, but that's an expensive undertaking. It won't fit in my car (it took me ten trips back and forth to move using just my car the last time I tried). I could use movers or rent a truck, but seeing as how I don't have an actual apartment or anything yet, that might not be such a good idea. Perhaps I'll consult my aunt and cousins to see what they think. In the meantime, I might as well jump on this new True False bandwagon.

Of the following ten items, nine are true, and one is false. Can you tell which one is false?

1. Harrison Ford walked into my father's store in Manhattan once and signed one of his business cards.
2. My very first memory is from when I was a baby, staring helplessly up at the faces of my female cousin and her friends and crying because I had no idea who they were. I remember clearly that I only stopped crying not because I became comfortable with them, but because I was tired of crying.
3. One of the people I went to school with who was one grade higher than me wound up in a movie, and eventually became a cast member on Mad TV (on Fox).
4. Another one of my schoolmates (also one grade higher than me) was in Playboy, in one of those girl's of college issues.
5. Some of the extracurriculars on my college application: Marching band, jazz band, boy scouts, track team, National Honor Society, German Club, President of church youth group, Manager's Circle of the school poetry magazine,  Young Life (I think there were more, but this was over a decade ago)
6. My first car was a white 1981 Chevy Camaro. A huge section of the tailpipe from the engine to the muffler was simply missing because it had rusted through and fallen off, and so it was a beast that made a huge amount of noise. You could hear it coming literally a mile away.
7. I can speak four languages at varying levels of skill, though I'm technically only fluent in English.
8. The one and only time I left the country was to go to Mexico for roughly an hour or so as part of a tour group.
9. I am a veritable encyclopedia of super-hero history knowledge and own several thousand comicbooks which are currently all in storage. My main areas of expertise are the X-Men and the DC Universe.
10. Even though my sister is eight inches shorter than me and two years younger than me, everyone always believes she's my older sister and addresses us as if she were my older sister.

Home Again

So I'm home again, and feeling a little depressed. I feel like
after spending two weeks in SoCal, everything here seems different. Much more so
than the last time I visited Cali about a year or two ago. I find myself
suddenly overwhelmed by a kind of oppressively thick cloud of morbidness that
weighs down upon me like an unwelcomed burden. Some (like undoubtedly my sister)
may argue that it's merely because I was on vacation, but I believe I know
myself and my own feelings a bit better than that.

I never thought I'd say this, but I feel like home (New York,
New Jersey, et al) doesn't feel so home-like anymore. It feels like an old suit
that was once tailored to fit perfectly, but has since become ill-fitting due to
the changing shape of your body. I just feel like I belong in Cali, if that makes
any sense.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that this is somewhat atypical
of me. I tend to be a creature of habit, comfortable surrounded by routine and
familiarity. Sudden changes (like moving across the country) are not things I
tend to be fond of. But in this particular case, the feeling is so overwhelming
I just can't ignore it. While I was in California, I admit I had my doubts. But
now that I'm back, I feel like it's become shockingly clear to me what I am
being compelled to do. My instincts are telling me to go west... to quit my
comfortable job, pack up all my things, and head out into the wild unknown, into
the uncertainty of moving across the country with the limited funds I have saved
up.

It's a frightening thing, leaving behind everything you know,
but I just can't ignore how I feel.

California, here I come.

Four Corners
(Photo taken by my cousin  postlogic)

I'm in California right now. I just got back from a long road trip with my cousin across five states. After some reflection, I've decided I like it here.

They say home is where the heart is. My heart will always be in New York, but I think it's time to move on to a place I feel more comfortable... where I feel more at ease.

Forgive me, New York, but I have not forsaken you, nor have I given up on you. I just think it's time for us to move on with our lives and accept that we've been slowly drifting apart. Our lives have been moving in different directions, and maybe it's for the best that we go our seperate ways.

I was standing at the crossroads, fearful of making a choice because of the uncertainty of where that choice might lead me, but I realize now that perhaps the thing I should fear the most is not making a choice at all. Not moving, not progressing, staying in one place unchanging, unmoving, never continuing onwards simply out of fear, that is a far worse fate than having to live with the consequences of having made a definitive decision on which direction to move. I think too many people don't realize that in not choosing, you are in fact making a choice. You are choosing to give up the power you have over your own life, over your own destiny and future out of fear of where that choice may lead you. Don't become a prisoner of fear. Make a choice, and deal with the consequences as they come, and the future may be less horrific than you had envisioned.

It's a much better future than standing at the crossroads forever, simply because you couldn't decide.