Jorgen was right - you never wake up expecting to dig a grave for your best friend.
Everything that's happened so far this week is really making me re-evaluate the way in which I prioritize my life. I don't think it's right. I don't understand why I'm going to school, why I have a job, why I wake up and spend so much time getting ready in the morning...what the hell am I doing?
There's only one thing that matters in life - connections. Not only connections with people, but connections with all things - animals, nature, everything. Between Jorgen, Mick, and myself, we developed a connection on such a deep level- one that I didn't even know existed until then. People can laugh and say that he was just a cat, but I saw him as my equal, if not more than anything I could ever hope to be. The year and a half of my life with Mick in it was the closest thing to heaven I'll ever get. It's unfortunate and unfair that from now on he has to live on through me, because I can't represent him the same way he could have represented himself.
I keep thinking, "When am I going to feel good again? When will things be back to normal?" But I realize now that I don't want things to be the way they were before. I want to live knowing that I don't care how attractive I appear, how much money I make, how jealous I feel, or how well I can fake it by putting on a smile for the sake of customer service. It's all bull shit. I need to embrace the people/animals/things I feel REAL connections with. 
Nothing else matters.
I'll always love and miss you Mick. You'll always be my best friend. There won't be a day that passes that I won't wish you were here with me. I'm so sorry.

Certain illnesses sweep across large communities, and then we learn that no such illnesses ever existed. Men and women recover memories of having been sexually abused as children. Whoosh, no they don't, their parents are reinstated as the most loving and laudable people you could imagine. Genocide occurs; no it doesn't. Nuclear waste contaminates large swathes of entire continents, and we all learn words like 'half-life.' But in a flash all the contamination has gone, the sheep aren't ticking, you can happily eat your lamb chops.

The maps are wrong. Frontiers snake across disputed territory, bending and cracking. A road no longer goes where it went yesterday. A lake vanishes. Mountains rise and fall. Well-known books acquire different endings. Color bursts out of black and white movies. Art is a hoax. Style is substance. The dead are embarrassing. There are no dead.

You're a sports fan but the rules are different every time you watch. You've got a job. No you don't. That woman powdered the President's johnson. In her dreams--she's a celebrated fantasist. She's to die for. She's a slut. [not necessarily irreconcilable truths; merely different views of a single circumstance] You don't have cancer. April Fools, yes you do. That good man in Nigeria is a murderer. The murderer in Algeria is a good man. That psycho killer is an American patriot. That American psycho is a patriot killer. And is that Pol Pot dying in the Angkoran jungle, or merely Nol Not?

These things are bad for you; sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism. No. Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to god, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves children's academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I'll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let's not get all preachy about this, it's better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate. That universal right is culturally specific. This circumcised woman is culturally happy. That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric. Pictures don't lie. This image has been faked. Free the press. Ban nosy journalists. The novel is dead. Honor is dead. God is dead. Ugh, they're all alive. That star is rising. No, she's falling. You were on time. No, you were late. East is West. Up is down. Yes is no. In is out. Lies are truth. Two and two makes five. And all is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds.

Why is it, I said to myself one night, that listening to the music I feel a homesickness for a vanished world that I was never a part of?

As I'm writing this there's a girl sitting across from me, staring at me. She's got an open book she's not reading resting in her lap, and a pen in her hand that looks like it's frozen to the page. The only things moving are her eyes, burning through my shoes as I took them off and tossed them next to my bag. Hah. I keep glancing at her through my hair, or carefully twisting my neck up to pop it and scanning my eyes past her, but the second I see her still staring at me I look back at this paper and start writing again. She has a bag and a purse. I don't understand that. I've never had that much to carry around, or maybe I just keep it all in one bag because the chances of me losing my things is all too high. She's wearing heavy eye make up, which isn't helping me feel any more comfortable to have her looking at me. Blonde hair...blue shirt...wait. She just coughed. The girl sitting behind her has boyishly short brown hair. Her shoulders are hunched so the shoulders of that nice button up shirt she's wearing are bunching up around the green vest she has on over top of that. She's wearing dangly earrings that dance back and forth even when she's not moving. I wonder how she's doing that. She's completely consumed by a book, and she's got a smile permanently plastered on her face. She keeps looking over like she's talking to someone, but there's no one sitting anywhere near her. The first girl I mentioned is staring at someone else now. I knew the second she looked away from me because I instantly stopped feeling sick. She's let her mouth hang open for the last few minutes. She hasn't shut it even to swallow. Another girl is tapping her animal covered moccassins to a beat I can't pick up on. Hah. I wonder if these people know how easily they can be preserved on a piece of paper. I wonder if they'd do anything differently. There's a symphony of swishing pants, squeaky shoes, the coffee machine downstairs, and little coughs every now and then. There's an overweight girl in a lime green shirt walking around behind me. Her steps are different from the others, her short legs take even shorter steps that are too heavy and loud. The girl with the dangly earrings is still smiling, but looking out the window and shaking her head. I can't see the mountains across the lake. I live by a lake and I only really look at it a handful of times a year. Maybe that's because it's full of almost as much shit as most of the people around here, so why do I look at them all the time? I can smell the BLT they just called out downstairs. It's disgusting. Woody Guthrie got a hereditary brain disease that eventually killed him. He was only 55 when he died. The disease caused his body to move uncontrollably and it ended up getting so bad that he couldn't even hold his guitar. It's strange to realize that everything will die. I'd like to see a post-apocalyptic world, where all that's left all are a bunch of billboards and twisted scraps of metal lining every horizon. Cars will be immobile homes for cats that aren't called "strays" anymore, but instead are called wild. That should put things into perspective. What's really important? Hmm.
This is where I was at 11:39 AM on January 21st.
In Algiers it's 7:39 PM
In Hilo it's 8:39 AM
In Auckland it's 7:39 AM
In Cairo it's 8:39 PM
In Moscow it's 9:39 PM
In Mumbai it's 12:39 AM
In Manila it's 2:39 AM
In Seattle it's 10:39 AM
In Bangkok it's 1:39 AM
In Amman it's 8:39 PM

I had no eyes. But language dictated that I saw. I was all eyes just as I was all else. Surrounded by a darkness that held the unmuted intensity of every color in its shadow. We were one and millions.
My name. Somebody was calling my name. I saw no one. Then I realized that that which I was hearing as my name wasn't, but was the sound of unmuted colors gathered in the wind, swirling against time. The sound of bright resonant darkness. The sound of orphan shadows rejoicing in the light. And that was my name. It was all of our names. And I, too, joined in the calling.

I'm happy :)




Ahhhhh, my boyfriend.

I have an amazing life, and I know the most fantastic people.


I love.

I'm the same girl I was when I was 5..

Number of times I've almost fallen today:  11

Colorful Ambien dreams for a couple of apples who have to ruin the batch.





I'm a junkie of canned coffee from Taiwan.
Do you believe in ghosts?

On Sunday Jorgen and I went up to Saltair to see Sigur Ros. I sat in line for four hours, thinking that the event would be unreserved seating, I wanted to be up front, but they decided not to set the chairs up, which was better anyways. We ended up standing with just one person in front of us holding onto the gate, and the stage a couple of feet in front of that. Again, I found some videos on youtube from the show, so I'm posting them here, along with a few pictures I took where we were standing. And by the way, the opening band, Parachutes, was pretty amazing. Check them out if you get the chance.

This band is amazing. To hear the music live was one of the most beautiful things...I get chills when I think about it. Anyways, enjoy!


Hafsól


Gobbledigook! The confetti was great!

 

Sæglópur (Encore)





popplagið (part one)




(part two)

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead on top of their poles

It went like this

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble and pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upward
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful...
These truly are the last days."

You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever

We woke one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it's the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood

On August 16th Jorgen and I left on our road trip to go see Radiohead play in Washington and Los Angeles. Along the way we stopped in Portland, then Seattle (Kent area), Grants Pass in Oregon (after going through the Redwoods, which were amazing!), San Francisco, and finally, Los Angeles. The show in Washington was unbelievable. It was the best show I've ever been to by far, and after finding out that Radiohead plays a different set list at each show, we were just as excited about the L.A. show. Ah, who am I kidding, we were excited about it anyways. I don't have much time to write about the trip now, my first day of college is tomorrow and the only reason I'm on here instead of getting my things together for school is because I'm panicking and I need to calm myself down. But I looked up some videos on youtube from the show in Washington...here they are!

Idioteque

The National Anthem

Faust Arp, they messed up on this one and started playing a Neil Young song instead. It was pretty great.

Kekule dreams the great serpent is holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming serpent which surrounds the world. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-re-turning," is to be into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity -- most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid to waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

First off...Jorgen makes me the happiest girl in the world.
Second - I retook the Jung personality test today, and it provided this description for me, and people who are INFP's, I liked what it said, especially the last part where they list off famous INFPs-Mr. Rogers? Fuck yeah. Neil Diamond? Yes please. Hahah. Scott Bakula. Of course! Nah, but the fact that Terri Gross is on the list makes me happy...so yeah, here it is:






Profile: INFP
Revision: 3.0
Date of Revision: 26 Feb 2005

"I remember the first albatross I ever saw. ... At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in super natural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets not below the heavens. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself..." --(Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

INFPs never seem to lose their sense of wonder. One might say they see life through rose-colored glasses. It's as though they live at the edge of a looking-glass world where mundane objects come to life, where flora and fauna take on near-human qualities.
INFP children often exhibit this in a 'Calvin and Hobbes' fashion, switching from reality to fantasy and back again. With few exceptions, it is the NF child who readily develops imaginary playmates (as with Anne of Green Gables's "bookcase girlfriend"--her own reflection) and whose stuffed animals come to life like the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse:

"...Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand..." (the Skin Horse)

INFPs have the ability to see good in almost anyone or anything. Even for the most unlovable the INFP is wont to have pity.

Rest you, my enemy,
Slain without fault,
Life smacks but tastelessly
Lacking your salt!
Stuck in a bog whence naught
May catapult me,
Come from the grave, long-sought,
Come and insult me!
--(Steven Vincent Benet, Elegy for an Enemy)

Their extreme depth of feeling is often hidden, even from themselves, until circumstances evoke an impassioned response:

"I say, Queequeg! Why don't you speak? It's I--Ishmael." But all remained still as before. ... Something must have happened. Apoplexy!
... And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force open the door. ... "Have to burst it open," said I, and was running down the entry a little, for a good start, when the landlady caught me, again vowing I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.--(Melville, Moby Dick)

Of course, not all of life is rosy, and INFPs are not exempt from the same disappointments and frustrations common to humanity. As INTPs tend to have a sense of failed competence, INFPs struggle with the issue of their own ethical perfection, e.g., perfo rmance of duty for the greater cause. An INFP friend describes the inner conflict as not good versus bad, but on a grand scale, Good vs. Evil. Luke Skywalker in Star Wars depicts this conflict in his struggle between the two sides of "The Force." Although the dark side must be reckoned with, the INFP believes that good ultimately triumphs.
Some INFPs have a gift for taking technical information and putting it into layman's terms. Brendan Kehoe's Zen and the Art of the Internet is one example of this "de-jargoning" talent in action.
Functional Analysis:

Introverted Feeling

INFPs live primarily in a rich inner world of introverted Feeling. Being inward-turning, the natural attraction is away from world and toward essence and ideal. This introversion of dominant Feeling, receiving its data from extraverted intuition, must be the source of the quixotic nature of these usually gentle beings. Feeling is caught in the approach- avoidance bind between concern both for people and for All Creatures Great and Small, and a psycho-magnetic repulsion from the same. The "object," be it homo sapiens or a mere representation of an organism, is valued only to the degree that the object contains some measure of the inner Essence or greater Good. Doing a good deed, for example, may provide intrinsic satisfaction which is only secondary to the greater good of striking a blow against Man's Inhumanity to Mankind.

Extraverted iNtuition

Extraverted intuition faces outward, greeting the world on behalf of Feeling. What the observer usually sees is creativity with implied good will. Intuition spawns this type's philosophical bent and strengthens pattern perception. It combines as auxiliary with introverted Feeling and gives rise to unusual skill in both character development and fluency with language--a sound basis for the development of literary facility. If INTPs aspire to word mechanics, INFPs would be verbal artists.

Introverted Sensing

Sensing is introverted and often invisible. This stealth function in the third position gives INFPs a natural inclination toward absent- mindedness and other-worldliness, however, Feeling's strong people awareness provides a balancing, mitigating effect. This introverted Sensing is somewhat categorical, a subdued version of SJ sensing. In the third position, however, it is easily overridden by the stronger functions.

Extraverted Thinking

The INFP may turn to inferior extraverted Thinking for help in focusing on externals and for closure. INFPs can even masquerade in their ESTJ business suit, but not without expending considerable energy. The inferior, problematic nature of Extraverted Thinking is its lack of context and proportion. Single impersonal facts may loom large or attain higher priority than more salient principles which are all but overlooked.

Famous INFPs:

Homer
Virgil
Mary, mother of Jesus
St. John, the beloved disciple
St. Luke; physician, disciple, author
William Shakespeare, bard of Avon
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Evangeline)
A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie)
Helen Keller, deaf and blind author
Carl Rogers, reflective psychologist, counselor
Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers' Neighborhood)
Dick Clark (American Bandstand)
Donna Reed, actor (It's a Wonderful Life)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis
Neil Diamond, vocalist
Tom Brokaw, news anchor
James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small)
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
James Taylor, vocalist
Julia Roberts, actor (Conspiracy Theory, Pretty Woman)
Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap)
Terri Gross (PBS's "Fresh Air")
Amy Tan (author of The Joy-Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife)
John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Lisa Kudrow ("Phoebe" of Friends)
Fred Savage ("The Wonder Years")

Fictional INFPs:

Anne (Anne of Green Gables)
Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes)
Deanna Troi (Star Trek - The Next Generation)
Wesley Crusher (Star Trek - The Next Generation)
Doctor Julian Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space 9)
Bastian (The Neverending Story)
E.T.: the ExtraTerrestrial
Doug Funny, Doug cartoons
Tommy, Rug Rats cartoons
Rocko, Rocko's Modern Life cartoons