Happiness Is...

I think that there are 3 kinds of happiness. Past, present, and future.

Past tense happiness includes feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride, and serenity. Here within, you rely on nolstalgic elements and good memories to serve as a window for peering into a glorified past. Whether it was the time that your buddy got wasted at a party and wandered into main street ass-naked in 30 degree weather, or the time when you got straight As by busting your ass before summer break started, you look back with a little smile on your face and are glad that you’ve had the opportunity to have had such experiences.

Present forms include things that pleasure your senses: for example, enjoying good food, listening to your favorite music, absorption of knowledge through reading and learning, enjoying the company of friends, family and loved ones, having sex, getting drunk or high (if that’s your thing), feeling the adrenaline of competition, or even doing something crazy like skydiving or driving 30 miles over the speed limit.

How about the future? I believe this is difficult to attain and maintain. We can have hope, optimism, trust, security, faith, and self confidence. You can set lifelong goals towards financial success. You could be planning a family. Or maybe, you’re looking forward to early retirement. The fear here is, how far can you take this if things don’t go exactly as planned? Does your brain have to be rigged or trained a certain way to always look forward without reason and cause to worry and stress out?

It’s important to strive for all three types in proper moderation. There are those who always look to the past for non-existent answers and thus forgo on living for the moment. There are those who overindulge in the present with decadence and ignorance, never preparing for future consequences. And there are those who are so optimistic/happy-go-lucky that it becomes a cruel façade of denial and self-deception.

What has been interesting to me is reading about these spiritual/meditative types who claimed to have transcended the perpetual flux of emotions. Nirvana, eternal bliss, a permanent high, what have you. They withdraw from the high emotional demands of the modern human condition (like forgoing all material possessions and walking around in a loincloth like Buddha and fasting for days on end) and dedicate their minds to an altered state of an enlightened mind. Being a spoiled kid that goes to college who has been brainwashed by popular culture and the media and consequently wants everything in life (money, fame, babes, fast cars), I don’t exactly know what’s worse: Being a hobo ascetic, or being ultra-emo.

On a side note, I find it a little strange that clothing brands trumpet this mantra towards life most frequently. American Eagle touts, “Live your life!“

The Bird Man

The Bird Man

The Man

“This is why the Irish squeeze into the pubs for a pint,” he’d say, pointing to the sky.

The weather is horrible in Ireland. The punishing rain comes and goes, and it arrives and departs at whim, carried along with the charcoal clouds. Dark gray sheets mark the sky from one horizon to another while brief interludes of light force their way down, baking the surface. It's definitely a departure from California's perpetual sunshine. This gloom of course, seems to have no effect on James McElroy -- he’s spent half his life in it.

James McElroy himself was the reason why I chose Ireland for my 07’ Summer Abroad Program destination. He has an affably caustic disposition and a wonderful harsh sarcasm that polarizes groups of people in the same way Moses parts the Red Sea. To put it more bluntly, people must produce an opinion about him whether they like him or not. And he is not a man you overlook as you cross paths with him. Aside from his large, portly frame, McElroy has tussled stringy hair, some wayward, some dropping over his forehead. He dresses rather plainly: a simple button-down shirt and a worn-out pair of jeans. His fingernails are long and varied in length: perhaps that’s why he never points with his hands, but rather with his eyes…

Thus, I am hard pressed to believe how a man like this ended up here Davis, much less, how he fits in. The UC system always seems to have its fair share of eccentric teachers, but McElroy seems different still. He even has three first names. Professionally he goes by James, but his friends go him Jim. On paper, it’s Seamus. I called him “Macky.” Other students gave him the monikers “The Santa Claus Man,” “Kingpin,” and “Evil Eyes.” There undoubtedly many more. The students on my summer program agreed to dub him “The Bird Man.”

In order to better understand his place at Davis, one would have to look up his past. McElroy earned his B.A. at Trinity University, Dublin in 1977. He taught at the Irish College of Journalism at the National University of Ireland, and then, with another Irish recession looming he decided to go to New York. He taught at Manhattan College, Marymount College, and Manhattanville while continuing his research on Irish Literature, ultimately earning his PhD in Ireland at University College Dublin. McElroy then journeyed to UC Davis where he currently teaches an assortment of literature and composition courses.

Although the classes he teaches here all relates to his life’s research, his fascination with us young Californians seems to give him endless amusement and an air of youthfulness amidst the familiarity of his homeland and academic nature of this program. He’s a spectator, just like we students. The funny thing about him is that one never quite know when he’s watching, scrutinizing, and what he is making of it. McElroy’s acute sense of his surroundings reflects the nature of his education and upbringing -- which centers on Irish Literature and Ireland’s environment. This all accumulates in the recent Ireland: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, where he serves as the editor.

The Birds of Ireland

The summer program required us students to bring a book of Western European birds as well as a sturdy pair of binoculars. This of course, was made at McElroy’s request before the program started, for it would have been odd if this requirement was part of the University’s mandate. While many of us left those “essentials” in at our hotel rooms or even had bothered to get them in the first place, McElroy was always found with a hardbound copy of Birds of Ireland by his side, almost as if it were a Bible. He had no use for binoculars, for he had an uncanny ability to spot a bird several hundred meters away and identify it quickly and accurately. All he needed was a glance.

McElroy’s eyes were always something to behold. They are almost yellow, as if they were once hazel or even green before they dulled. The other details about him pale in comparison to the brilliance of them -- the way they waver side to side as he speaks to you, as he trains them on you after you ask him a question. Maybe he’s seen too much. Though the eyes look dusty and faded, their movements remain sharp and focused. They saw things that the rest of us were oblivious to.

“It’s a shag!” he’d point out. We’d turn to see a black speck gliding across the turbulent sky. I had only known “shag” to have another meaning, and that was because I had watched Austin Powers one too many times.

The rest of us were painfully slow at this identifying the birds. We’d strain our eyes through our binoculars while playing with the focus, flip through our bird books, and finally mutter out the name of a bird that was completely unrelated to it. What the hell is it? We’d look to him and he would motion with his head, with his eyes, towards the target. “How can you tell? You know, how do you know it’s a shag?” My classmate asks. “There are hundreds of seabirds out here.” Apparently, McElroy has been an avid bird watcher since he was a youth, and there is actually a science to it. McElroy responds, “First off, you have to look at its flight patterns. See how they swoop down into to the water like a bomber? How they dive into the water? Next, if you look carefully at its plumage, you can tell that this particular species is only seasonal here. It’s got gray markings alongside the belly.” McElroy’s instruction for us here only scratches the surface of true bird-watching.

Some of the students called him “The Bird Man” because they saw his hobby as pointless nonsense driven by some unknown fetish. The other students did try however, to open their minds to it. As we tried to follow his instruction, the seabirds would soar down the coast, slipping into the eternal horizon. They flew out of sight, never to return. We didn’t have a shot at identifying many birds. We just had to take his word for it.

The Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales of Belfast

Weather that was beyond reckoning confined everyone indoors. We had a lot of downtime -- plenty of opportunity to ponder the musings of long dead authors and to reflect on the majesty of being in a culturally-rich and historically-relevant country by watching television stations that played American shows from another decade. For those students who grew sick of the sickening weather, they would brave the elements and schedule their own field trips. The first of many was Belfast.

As a young man growing up in the then-conflict-torn Belfast, the capital of North Ireland, McElroy, like many, relied on welfare due to a crippling recession, and just about everybody was trying to avoid the frigid outdoor temperament. “Everybody was on welfare -- your neighbors, your relatives, your friends. Nobody had a job,” he recalled. “We’d get in line to pick up our checks at the welfare office and then head straight to the nearest pub to cash it in. After a couple of drinks we’d all be broke again. That was life.”

McElroy has an abundance of anecdotes like this. It’s as if being somewhere familiar sets off sparks in his memory. The cogs in his head start spinning and the words just seem to flow out. It’s just his part of his charm as a natural born storyteller. His voice would always be calm and nonchalant, yet the undercurrent of his tone alludes to so many emotions contained, tagged, and meticulously filed into the vault of his being. If anyone wanted to hear more of these stories, one rarely had to seek them out. McElroy would often wait until you were within earshot. Most of the time, he would choose a single victim to dispense his tales to, but if there happened to be a flock of students nearby, they all would have to hear out his insight.

On one optional trip during my summer program, I took a bus to McElroy’s past – the city of Belfast, which is situated by Ireland's northern coastline. Ireland is split into two parts: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, hence, the two capitals. The reasons for their partition are political as much as religious. Following several centuries of oppression imposed by the British, Southern Ireland eventually gained some sort of independence and founded the Republic of Ireland (predominately Catholic). Northern Ireland, which remains very much pro-Britain (and predominantly Protestant), engaged in several decades of bloody revolt, terrorism, and strife with the South in what is now known as The Troubles, which started in the late 1960’s and lasted until April 1998.

McElroy himself did not accompany us to Belfast. Perhaps it was a personal choice. “For tourists like yourselves, it’s okay. They don’t mind outsiders. Just don’t act like a tourist waving your camera around.” Maybe for those who grew up there, a sense of danger still lingered. Knowing all the history however, made it eerily exciting going there. Barbed wire and formidable red brick walls outline the city. In the fringes of the city are graffiti and bullet pocked walls and windows. Video cameras are set up (very 1984-esque) at intervals to monitor the uneasy peace. There is also steel wall that divides the city in two, the Protestant side and the Catholic side. It's been there for over 35 years and has outlasted even the Berlin Wall.

McElroy lived here during The Troubles. Growing up without any real money, or having any prospects of flourishing in his home country, there was little to look forward to or hope for. Life went on unabated, however. “The Irish are different when they deal with hardship. We have the Almighty as a scapegoat,” McElroy said. “We would say, ‘I hate God, it’s his fault.’ Then we’d have another pint. Life goes on. Of course if I was American and was dealing with the same issues to no avail, I’d probably say, ‘I’m such a loser!’”. Despite his situation, McElroy continued to do what he loved. In addition to his literature, he discovered bird watching then. He would trek down a long road with his binoculars into a mountain path alone, where he’d spend an afternoon looking for the fleeting colors of a bird’s plumage, a hint of life in the every day reality of gray.

In addition to those dreary circumstances growing up, things were considerably worse due to his religious affiliation. His parents owned a grocery store in Belfast, and as his family was one of the few Catholics in that area at the time, they were the target of many acts of terror by Protestants, who firebombed the store, and administered death threats. One time, his mother was taken from their home and dragged out into the streets, where other Catholics were being rounded up. But as fate would have it, she was spared. McElroy himself had his fair share of danger. “Sometimes, on the way home from school, there would be a bus bombing or something of the sort. All the roads would be blocked and locked down. I’d have to walk the long way home,” he said. “I’d get home very late in the evening and when I stepped through the door, my mother would say ‘Oh the boy is still alive.’ Then, we’d start dinner.”

Although The Troubles are now over and peace has been finally established between the feuding sides, those involved still bear deep scars that even time may not heal. “I met a woman in a café at Belfast once,” McElroy recalled. “We sat down together and had a lovely conversation. I found out that she had also left Belfast as a youth, and that she originally lived on an area not too far where I was from.” The woman, as he found out, had immigrated to the United States at an early age, where she lived in Berkeley for nearly four decades. She returned to Belfast, after The Troubles, to begin anew. McElroy continued, “It got to a point where she asked me the question. The question over here basically determines whether you are Catholic or Protestant. Except -- the question is poised in a very indirect way. She asked me what street I lived on, and I told her. She promptly collected her belongings, stood up, and left the café.” Apparently, she had figured out that the street he lived on was part of a Catholic community. She was raised as a Protestant. That was the last he ever saw of her. “She was a charming woman,” McElroy said.

McElroy accepts these hard facts as a part of his life. He is not bitter or angry when he thinks about those years in Belfast. Interestingly enough, a good deal of McElroy’s humor comes from what many would agree was a “stressful childhood”. A side effect of this however is a decidedly darker sense of humor that not everyone may appreciate or understand. This sense of mortal irony was pervasive not through just McElroy himself, but even through the literature that we studied. One famous poem by Seamus Heaney, a renowned Irish writer, called “The Early Purges,” which concerns a farm child watching the euthanizing of a litter of kittens, as they would serve no purpose on the farm and would only burden the already struggling family with resources they did not have to spare.

“Everyone [Americans] over there seems so damned sentimental,” McElroy said, pondering the poem during a class discussion. “Over here, if you spent so much time agonizing yourself over a few stupid animals, it would probably spell the difference between life and death. You have to switch your view to a more efficient, economical standpoint. If you did that to animals in America, you’d probably be arrested”. Despite this, McElroy had a different opinion on birds. “Birds were always a symbol of freedom to the Irish, especially within the literature” said McElroy. “Birds could come and go as they pleased, and they possessed the trait of freewill, mankind’s own choice in the face of destiny, something many of the Irish seek deeply within their souls.” To me, birds are the pests that defecate on my car.

McElroy once said, “If you were never born with vision, how could you understand what vision is?” He realized that a singular viewpoint is the root of many differences and misunderstandings. While he finds American culture ridiculous at times, he respects that it is a unique form of interpreting the same things. “There are no absolutes, just different ways of looking at it,” McElroy said. “Take a look at these bird books for example. Why is the picture of the male bird always in front of the female birds? It has the dominant patriarchal influence. It is subtle things like this that we never look into and question, the things that we accept for fact as ‘normal.’”

Life Goes On

McElroy eventually left Belfast in pursuit for his passion in literature. The rest of it is history – How he came to the United States and taught at all those colleges and universities. McElroy always tried to return to his homeland however. Unfortunately, there was little for him there during his education, especially in the 1980’s, as wave after wave of recession hit Ireland. “It was a place literally without hope,” McElroy said. “All the young people were leaving, hoping to find their way elsewhere.” However, a recent boom in software and technology has hit Ireland at the turn of the millennium, and the country has seen unprecedented growth in the past few years. During my visit there in the summer of 2007, there were ethnicities of all types milling about in the cities, products of globalization (ie McDonalds, Hollywood cinema, tourist traps) sprouting out everywhere, and a definite sense of opportunity.

McElroy’s book, Ireland: A Traveler's Literary Companion, which was released in November, voices many of his opinions with a compilation of his own work and other Irish authors. It speaks of his homeland, drawing out the hidden truths of the people while mitigating the stereotypes and misconceptions through the stories contained within. It is unclear what McElroy intends to do now, but one thing is certain. “The Irish culture, until very recently, has largely been an oral tradition,” McElroy said. “Aside from the Book of Kells (One of the only surviving Irish literary artifacts I had the chance to view at Trinity University, Dublin), there is very little record of the Irish people by the Irish people. The victors, the conquerors, and the winners [The British] are the ones that write history. It’s always been that way throughout history. Just look at the Romans.” I guess McElroy just wants to preserve what he feels is part of his bloodline, to give all those who had no say throughout Ireland’s tumultuous history a voice. We were here. We lived here, and we will continue living on.

We had found a beach to stop at during our trip around the Dingle Peninsula, located on the southwest end of Ireland. I stayed back at the entrance of the beach with Professor McElroy and another student while the others clamored about on the rocks jutting out the water. “Just look at all those half-wits,” McElroy chuckled, “Wandering around like it’s the first time they’ve ever been to a bloody beach!” His eyes laughed too. I just sat there, staring out at the unrelenting waves pounding the jagged coast as McElroy approached me. After a few more jokes, he dropped this bit of Zen on me:

“Epiphanies are about finding the extraordinary out of the ordinary, the mundane,” he said. He switched his view from his students to a pair of birds struggling against fierce winds, while trying to fly out towards the churning sea.

Red Letter Days

Graduation looms over the weary. The cumulation of all the blood, sweat, and tears that your average university student excretes over his or her 4+ year tenure have come to this one point, and it passes rather inconsequentially with a lengthy 2-hour ceremony which climaxes with silly hats being tossed into the sky. After the bouquets are handed out and the pictures are taken, the newly dubbed alumni slowly trickle (or rather, matriculate) out from the gymnasium-converted auditorium, out into the streets, and on with their lives.

I look back to my high school graduation, 4 short-long years ago, and remember the significance of the procession. The ceremony took place outdoors in the pall of oppressive summer heat. They had seated us in alphabetical order and I do not recall who sat to my left or my right. I just kept looking at the floor, trying not to move in my black gown because it would incite furious bouts of itching, heat rashes and perspiration. I sat and sat, vaguely listening to the unending stream of speakers with their formulaic speeches.

A Harvard-bound student spoke of the challenges of adulthood and the promises of success. Her words were carefully chosen and her voice remained firm. She spoke as if she had already gone through the hardships which would ultimately define who she would be. "Let us embrace the future, because it this relentless drive that defines our greatest levels of excellence!" I thought little of those words at the time, much less the significance of its redundancy. I kept my hat on as everyone else threw theirs up and away, which always seems happen in slow motion -- just like in the movies. We then crowded the field, crying, hugging, laughing, and reminiscing one last time. I left the field, the heat finally dissipating as my silhouette grew. I never looked back.

Four years later, I'm back in the same predicament. I'm not wearing the gown and silly hat yet, but I see the uneasy faces of my friends who are making the second huge leap in their lives. I'm pretty sure that the same questions reside in the back of their minds: "Am I going in the right direction?" "Is this who I want to be?" The difference here is that many of these faces appear more resigned to their fate, less optimistically youthful, and ultimately, framed with the clarity of reality. There is no greater sobering ingredient to a person than the choices presented to them from which they must make and commit to. Hopefully, instead of thinking about the heat and the dreary speeches, people will actually think, and think damn hard, about which fork to take next.

So say your goodbyes now, farewells in the evening, and save those thank-yous for next week Monday. And make sure to throw away that stupid hat.

Up a mountain, down a hill

Mount Diablo is a 10-minute drive from my corner of suburbia, buried deep within a residential area with no apparent access. There is only a small sign that designates the path to ascension; it is easily missed if you speed past the turn-off. I've been visiting this landmark to view the greater Bay Area from up high. And perhaps a deeper unspoken purpose, I suspect, is to gain some kind of perspective. Mount Diablo serves as sanctuary when I can find no other retreat.

There are many points along the twisty road that lets you turn off in order to take in the view, but the real reward still rests near the rocky peak, more than 3800 feet above sea level. Once at the peak, one can view the Bay all the way to San Francisco, where the Golden Gate bridge appears to be made out of toothpicks. You wouldn't be alone however -- the peak is actually the most crowded part of the mountain, any time of the year. Solace is found elsewhere.

On the rare occasion, clouds smother the mountain 3/4ths of the way up, obscuring the the peak like a fabled Olympus (the picture of a frightening shield volcano with nearly vertical walls come to mind, with angry clouds dancing around the peak -- I wish). On those days, I take great pleasure in creeping through the clouds in my car with the windows rolled down, the chilly mist soaking into my skin. I would emerge a bit later, over a rolling carpet of clouds and into a harsh sun which saturates the colors so intensely that I am forced to squint while using my hand as a visor.

The colors of the mountain change in accordance to the seasons; it gives the location palpable moods. Thus, in order to appreciate the full volume of emotion, one must return to the mountain at different times of the year. The thriving spring greens that spill into every crevice in March is not to be overlooked by the thirsty amber thistles alongside the brown grass of September (which puts the fire hazard sign at the base of the mountain at "High").

Up here, the mind leaves for new cities while the heart dwells at home. There is a wistful dialogue between these two things -- The frenzy of New York minutes; the deafening still of your home town. The fog that settles in the San Francisco harbor; the sticky heat you wake up to during hottest months of summer. These callings take you across great distances and through fragments of memory. Up here, you can see both sides equally. You get to choose which side of the mountain you go down.

Coasting down is fast. The mountain becomes a hill; the mind seeks greater peaks.

Digital Obituary

A friend of a friend passed away last week. His facebook is still there, his profile picture showing a happy smile, his photo albums showing nights out drinking and days spent volunteering. There is an uneasy feeling that rises from my stomach as I continue to browse. He's right there in front of me, living on, showing the world his youth and possibility. There are no boundaries, but I feel like I'm trespassing.

I know that people who haven't heard of the latest would assume that he's doing fine.

Those that did though, leave messages on his wall.

"Now why did you have to go and do that, man?"
"Rest in peace brother, I'll be seeing you at the Pearly Gates"
"I'm not going to forgive you for this."

He's speaks still. The living scrutinize in greater detail who he was and is. Validating his existence.

It's similar to the part of the wake where a longtime friend speaks fondly of his departed to an audience, maybe recanting a hilarious moment they had together. Laughter into tears, tears into silence.

Some technological purists envision a life beyond flesh and bone, where they continue to function and evolve in a digital domain -- it's a concept often cited in science-fiction novels and movies. The transfer between these planes extends well beyond grafting metal and tissue, but rather in the resurrecting of the soul. We're not quite there yet.

The wall posts are the only thing that indicates his passing. Perhaps, more fittingly, his facebook represents a kind of Purgatory. Everyone else will be updating their own profile pages, uploading more pictures, writing more notes, and adding new friends, but this guy won't. He floats around in digital space unclaimed and frozen in time.

A brief history of Starbuck$$

"Caffeine is one helluva drug." Obviously, Rick James did not say this because caffeine does not back people into corners, forcing them to commit heinous acts of violence and theft in order to maintain their stimulating habits. Caffeine has not killed anyone. Caffeine never led anyone to the poor house. Caffeine is simply a friendly acquaintance who lives in your pantry, around the corner, and at the auto dealership waiting area. You can be a sponsor of caffeine for $4.95 a day and someone will send you pictures of their progress before and after the cleft-pallet surgury.

The Germans were the first to harvest and behold the mind-jolting powers of caffeine. The chemist Friedrich Ferdinand Runge discovered "kaffein" in 1819 after visiting a toothless gypsy fortuneteller who, via fecal induced hallucination, saw visions of Germany's rise to power -- and for the additional price of 5 Kreuzers, revealed to Friedrich that a dark brew he recently concocted was the catalyst of it all. He hurried home to think of a business strategy that would effectively advertise and sell this disgusting beverage.

A new black plague spread throughout Germany, and after 4 generations of intense caffeination, there was nowhere else to direct the national energy except outwards. Two World Wars and a massive inflation later, the Germans switched back to beer and drank themselves into oblivion.

Of course, that did little to deter its consumption. Caffeine, usually in the form of coffee, reached American shores long before Germany overdosed. Fortunately, prospectors were more interested in rivers of gold, prostitution, and giving AIDS (invented by the CIA in 1830) to the indigenous Indians rather then trying exotic luxuries. Caffeine went by, relatively unnoticed, until the 1960s, when in an attempt to level the playing ground in the battle for Civil Rights, Black Panthers declared it the organization's official drink. The incumbent president at the time, Mr. Assfuck, addressed this issue by offering white consumers non-dairy creamer while forcing his scientists to invent decaf.

Starbucks Corporation, during these tumultuous years, was a modest alternative energy company. During the oil scare of the late 1970s, Starbucks executives were forced to abandon their drilling projects in order to find another crude black liquid product that they could process and sell for an enormous profit. After Federal de-regulation on coffee (it was standardized after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream"), they stumbled upon caffeine and purchased exclusive rights to the distribution and control of it in the form of coffee -- a boon, a windfall by any measure -- and they were able to turn it into the multi-billion dollar industry that you see today.

And although these claims can and will be disputed, evidence to the contrary fails to recognize the intoxicating power of this 19th century psychoactive stimulant. Starbucks continues to erect storefronts wherever civilization stands, leaving many of us twisting and turning as the clock strikes 3 am.

Absinthe makes the heart grow somber

It was several minutes past midnight and I was already loaded. I have this thing with hands when I travel down this road, which invariably leads to several stages of undress and a mind-numbing headache the following morning. I grip my hands tightly -- the whites of the knuckles are showing -- and then I turn them over so that the palms face me. As I open them, I count the time it takes for my hands to return to rosy pink. Immediately after, I repeat the process and attempt to benchmark it with the previous trial, which ultimately is an exercise in futility. I forget. I forgot. Forgotted?

And just as I was lamenting my forgetfulbility, I am directed towards a sticky bar where three absinthe drinks are prepared. Recently granted legal status in the United States, I happily obliged. Three cubes of sugar were placed on three porous spoons sitting atop of three small cups. A bartender took a small torch and melted the sugar cubes, the milky dribbles swirling in the dark liquor, producing a light froth. A cheers, bottoms up, and swill later, I sit back, pupils dilating, turning my attention to a local blues band. Someone is yelling at them to play "Freebird".

Figures.

No fairies, no mild euphoria, and no "Freebird". One girlfriend in the bathroom, one friend hunched over and straddling a bush outside, and my mouth fuming of black liquorice. I continue to sit at the bar's edge, watching a couple tango to blues. Actually, it was a boyfriend pulling a sloshed girlfriend into sloppy syncopation. It is marvelous.

Personal geopolitics!

I'm sure behind every asshole's actions, there are many ideas that pertain to resource competition, and if not that, perhaps in finding a working method towards ultimate gratification at another's expense. That is the essence of geopolitics.

I have a good friend who is absolutely obsessed with geopolitics. He can relate or apply it towards almost anything -- "See that dude with like five chicks? Maybe it's not fair, but it IS geopolitics!" Also, "The main theme of Lord of the Rings was geopolitics, or rather the Battle of Middle Earth, NOT the frailty of man in the face of temptation", and the time when I busted out of Monopoly for landing on Boardwalk with hotel, "No hard feelings man -- it's all about the geopolitics." It's almost as if he were a man of God's word who constantly soothed others with palliative cliches such as "Do not despair, it is part of God's plan!" or my other friend who consults psychoactive drugs on a regular basis to jump start his creative insight, "It's all bullshit, man!" Needless to say, I too wanted a nebulous mantra that I could rely on in times of hardship.

But what does geopolitics exactly mean? OK -- Geo equates to land. Politics -- Derived from politeness, becoming diplomatic and being of a civic mind. Last time I checked, politics was a euphemism for "Getting what I want" and "Fuck you". So naturally, being polite, diplomatic, and civic minded are misconstrued adjectives when placed within the context of "gain", or when you expect to win it all in good conscious. It's quite the opposite. If one erases "pleasantry" and "ensuring that everyone likes you" from geopolitical maneuvering, all that remains are "You better have something to offer me or else I'll ignore you."

Alas, because of this contradiction, my friend himself yields to the uncompromising policies of Geopolitics. He himself is a kindly, thoughtful person. But to be betrayed by the very principals he uses as his crux? No wonder why his pain resonates widely. "Don't I deserve better?" Disappointment and crushing defeats fester, "Why can't I ever get what I want?" Because, my friend, your expectations dwell on emotional complacency, which I assume are merely byproducts of the resources and goals you seek to achieve. Require it, don't just want it.

Disclaimer Clarity

So I've been a faithful patron to the blog world for quite some time -- 6 years and counting. What started as a way to track events to supplement my poor memory has since evolved into digital scrap paper for meandering thoughts, amateur writing, shallow satire and open forum. It's become a habit, a necessity rather, that I convey what's on my mind, even if it means transcribing that mess in my head on here for an anonymous audience. I call it bringing order and peace of mind for myself.

I hope that many of you have had the opportunity to explore yourself in this manner, as it sheds light on how you are changing within. If you haven't, it's not too late to start. I think that words speak volumes more than a picture album, especially if you learn to read between the lines. So here's to a new beginning.

PS: If you still like the ridiculousness of my earlier writing, it lives on here. It's crude, it's crass and it's offensive. Don't say I didn't warn you.