Why? Because.

A very very close friend, so close to my heart that they might be my heart itself or I am their soul. Understood, as the understanding that comes with these sorts of relationships. Asked myself, why? Answered, because. Sent this my way so that I had all my incoherent words once again articulated. Or else, I saw that shining thread that bound all these thoughts and a resounding recognition that I could not ignore etched deep in these words. Believed once more, for a moment, in the Soul of the World.

Why Study the Arts & Humanities?

Because, that's why.

Because a man downtown with a voice like the sea against the rocks told me I should.

Because my mother told me not to. Because she said mathematics, female engineering - engineering female. Because she spends so many nights in paperwork, dreaming herself into fairytales.

Because of the bruises etched into a Grade 4 spelling partner's cheek each week by his father.

Because television sets are alive and sucking patience out of brains like electric leeches. And it could take hours to perfect this sentence.

Because the average Canuck consums 140 percent the caloric intake required in a day.

Because KKK.

Because Chagall's 'Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers', did not quite make it into the Saturday morning comics.

Becase Adolf Hitler and Staling are the only two I've learned about.

Because it's been scientifically proven that listening to Mozart sonatas improves bad hearing.

Because the Burmese government is carbonated in every can of Pepsi Cola.

Because East Timor is on channel 3 and my brother is watching The Simpsons.

Because painters did not build atomic bombs. Because poems dissect them.

Because advertisement agencies are calling themselves creative.

Becayse a beautiful woman is a dress and a breast size and no longer compared to a summer's day.

Because no one's homophobic but alot of people stared when a girl kissed a girl at the bus stop.

Because sometimes even starving artists like to eat dinner.

Because time spent with family is marked between 6 and 7 o'clock in the daily agenda.

Because Picasso would tell you that skyscrapers do not quite equal the beauty of all the daffodils they have swallowed.

Because two boys in a coffee shop carried out a complete conversation and say nothing.

Because I don't know whether I'll be clubbed for saying Black People if I should be saying African Americans.

Because the government runs on monotone thought.

Because a successfully cloned sheep.

Because.

Because sometimes you see yourself more clearly in the characters you are writing than when you look in the mirror.

Because ulcers are nibbling away on stomachs everywhere.

Because graffiti is getting a little bit repetitive.

Because I'd rather be short than vertically challenged.

And if that's not quite enough...

Then because I can write these things to you and go to math class tomorrow and pretend that they weren't written for myself.

Inside and Out

I really want to post my latest piece of art done with my shiny new tablet but it was only partially done with the help of said tablet thus I will wait till I'm done my actual first-tablet-work-of-art to post both.

I was recently commenting on a friend's journal when the thought and talk of spontaneously combusting caused me to think of pinata (even though pinatas dont spontaneously combust). I wondered what that would feel like - not to be beaten to a pulp until candy pours out of you. No, rather, if I were a pinata, what candy would come out of me?

Call me arrogant, but it wouldn't be dollar store candy like those Spinder-Man Pez & Popeye Candy Sticks. I suppose it would be a mix of alot of different varieties of candy and chocolate, some bitter, some not so.

I guess gummy bears would definitely be a part of it cuz they're hard to bite off but mushy when warmed. Lindt chocolate because it's ever a mystery how the middle stays so soft while the outside shell hardens; because its sensual and melts on your tongue. Ferrero Rocher - because I love it. Kit Kat because it is a tasteless, cookie wafer covered in chocolate, which makes it worthwhile. Reeses Pieces because I used to hate Reese's cups until I tried the pieces and realized that good things can come in all shapes and forms and that one form shouldn't condemn another.

Liquer-filled dark chocolate for all the reasons you can know and just one more you dont. Packets of sour Skittles would flow out of me, too, for those more than often grumpy-puss days. No caramel, please, I despise it. Actually, I harbour a short temper and a penchant to hate hard and fast - like caramel. Okay, so maybe some caramel chocolate too. I would have a few Kisses but only the striped ones because they're multi-faceted and change everytime you turn them. I would also have Hubba-Bubba Bubblegum flavoured because I'm sometimes old fashioned and classic and the kid inside me never died, in fact the adult inside of me never came out truth be told (read immature).
Chocolate chip cookie dough straight from the packet for those lazy days. Gourmet Candy, Godiva's Dark Chocolate and Hershey's Cookies n' Cream. Cuz...I'm brown? Hah.

What candy would come out of you if you were a pinata? I wonder that. All these people I know...not candy and chocolate that they love...but rather candy and chocolate that is representative of them. The analysis of that, however, could take a longer post. Better save it for another time, my freshly enameled nails are now dry.

Cheers.

Age of Reason

It is a strange thing, an odd feeling.

As I walked the cobblestone of the crossing on the campus today, I realized something that I had always known and spotted all along but had not necessarily given voice to. My life...and those of many others, has been spent almost entirely in residual guilt.

So much guilt, in fact, that I cannot fathom ever being the girl in that KT Tunstall song. It has nothing to do with low self-esteem or a habit of self deprecation that wasn't caught early. It merely is the state of things.

It was bloody windy and my hair whipped around me, as though underwater, suspended up, down and all around. I felt as though I was underwater, my actions muted and my voice dulled. But my heart...my heart it both soared and roared: with guilt.

Depending on how self-righteous a person is, or how young they are when that sense of "duty" cultivates, guilt can root and blossom, forming the basis for the most ugliest to the most loveliest of decisions. At this point, I cannot figure out if guilt is a constraint or not. In the light of recent happenings known only as "life", I'm wont to say that it is indeed a constraint for it is certainly not a catalyst. However, my reasoning would thus be flawed; for one cannot conclude that if something is not substance A then by mere default, it is must be substance B because the negation of substance A cancels out the opportunity for substance C. In short, I am undecided.

A thousand naysayers would say that guilt is a festering disease that needs to be terminated. But that is easier said than done when really our entire social culture depends upon, runs, and feeds on it. If you think about it, guilt is often a major or secondary theme in many works of art both film and language wise. Almost a perversion, lessons of guilt are laid upon us in parallel with lessons on distinguishing between right and wrong, archaic black and classic white. What is guilt, I wonder then, if not black nor white, considering we don't question or classify it? Is it the grey? Then how can you terminate the grey when there are no set definitions or borders, no upper or lower bounds?

Most importantly, I think, how can you terminate something that is so very ingrained in almost every action that we take, the ying to our yang. Though the notion is arguable (as shades of grey are wont to do), think about it. Everyday, we make choices, whether small or large, that are some form of definitive. These choices set off a series of other choices, consequences, actions and reactions in a sort of series-circuit effect (if only they were parallel...). What causes us to make one choice over the other? The consequences or results, the pros to the cons and which one weighs heavier. Yes, one can objectively lay out the pros and the cons (so termed for their "good" and "bad" connotations) and it would seem obvious to any outsider that the choice more beneficial, that is deemed to be more "good" should be the one you choose.

But one person's good may be another person's tepid, mediocre, fantastic or horrible. So then, logically, you define your own sense of "good" and "bad" when making these decisions according to your own sense of self, calling on your own past experiences that were ingrained into you since childhood. Children learn fast. And bad habits die hard.

Then what is explicitly spelling out and defining consequences is not objective definitions of good and bad but rather subjective views that are molded and created by a combination of circumstance and guilt from those circumstances.

As human beings, we are lucky enough to feel a wide range of emotion. Linguistic doles out various names and labels for this often confused but not so varied spectrum of emotional range we traverse almost everyday. There's your basic anger and happiness as well as sadness, rage, delight, joy, amusement, and such. But mo matter how you classify them and what you call them all emotions can be thus categorized into one of two fields: that which feels right and good and that which doesn't. To a simplistic mind it should seem only natural that that which feels right and good should be the path to take and the decision to make. This is part of the reason children, with their simplistic world views, often strike a pang of recognition in adults and have that uncanny way of telling the truth: because they call it as it is without any worldly complexy charade or facade that we are forced to put up as we mature into society. It's simplistic. But, of course, we must make things more complicated than they must be.

If it's so simple and elementary why the Prozac Nation? Why is it that most people pick and choose the path and decision that makes them unhappy, that feels so bad? Fate? A Freudian sort of self hatred? Is it opposite day? None of the above?

If you picked none of the above, kudos to you, you must be a 7 year old with that creepy childlike 7 year old tell-it-like-it-is bit going on. It is circumstance. And it is the guilt that is induced into a person from trying to leave, change or alter those circumstances or even trying to make a decision whose result might negatively affect those involved in those circumstances.

It's all personal. Doesn't mean it should get shoved under the carpet. The wife that works as a full time doormat makes choices that she must make for the "greater good". What great is there to the good if her feel-bad decisions render her nothing but grief and are steeped in guilt? Resentment crops up overtime as time and again she sacrifices with no recognition. And resentment is the real festering disease that needs to be vanquished.

What about the child who keeps his word, who puts away his dream for the sake of his parents respect, opinion and love? They reason that they must think about everything their parents have done and will do for them, how much of their lives they have given for the sole happiness of one being. That's not logic, that's guilt talking.

What about that single mother who loves her daughter but craves some sort of companionship? But this may decision may affect the stability of her child's life, so she must tread carefully if at all. The pull of the umbilical cord is stronger and creates some sort of guilt; whether you want to call it parental responsibility or not, by mere definition that I've laid out above, this is some form of guilt.

I'm not saying that it's good nor am I saying it's not bad. I'm just saying, it's there. And to be aware is the first step. To try and combat it, is the next. You ask, if I'm not giving it a negative connotation, why try and combat it in the first place? Simple. If, after a hot shower, your glasses steam up upon entering a cold room, you're not going to be able to see. In this case you're going to want to automatically do one of two things with the same goal in mind: either you'll want to take off your glasses and wipe them on your towel or keep them off altogether. With the sole purpose of trying to see better, clearer.

Metaphor fly over your head? Okay. Basically guilt, while neither good nor bad as I see it, can and may lead to good or bad decisions that aren't necessarily steeped in reality. And you always want to make sure your view or perspective is the clearest, the least "foggiest" or murky. Because that's when you miss things and don't take important details into considerations. Small but powerful details that could spell the downfall of the choice made. Case in point: Achilles' Heel. Your decisions should be informed, the choices you make, whether they result in a feel-good or feel-bad outcome should never be formed out of guilt for anything because this clogs your judgement almost as much as something positive like love.

Yes, for the most part and to most people, guilt sucks. It hurts. It pains. And it never goes away. It always stays like some dark crevice perpetually etched into the corner of your mind and always leaves a nagging feeling like someone constantly tapping on your window or that jerk of missing a step. Less methodically speaking, in my world at least, I want to avoid guilt because it makes me make bad decisions. And because martyrdom is something most of us try and achieve at some point in life (c'mon, who doesn't like to be hero-worshipped for their pains?), most of this guilt weighing activity when making choices goes largely unarticulated. No one knows what you've done till you've done it but they'll also never know why unless you tell them. But who wants to say why you've done what you've done? Exactly. And that's where the resentment comes in. For me the guilt creates resentment, something whose effects, combined with my short-fused temper make for....explosive results.

But I'm really keen to make some sort of demarcation. Again, guilt, in my definition is neither good nor bad because everyone's version of "good" and "bad" are completely subjective and thsu can never be equated on the same plane due to individual circumstances. This much I know for sure. There's a point, in fact, where guilt and responsibility blur. Parents make decisions, putting the needs of their children first, eve though it may not feel good because that is what is expected of them. They may not like it...and while this is partially spurred by guilt (as in, "well I had better make this choice because I'll feel guilty if I make the other and my child is hurt because of me."), it comes under the parents responsibility to provide for their child first. But see, responsibility is positive. It is the right thing to do. It is clear, defined and has an upper and lower bound. It makes nothing foggier, just restates what must to be done.

Guilt is what ought to be done, to exagerrated proportions such that one reasons that if they don't they'll face consequences in which their loved ones will be hurt or poised for hurt. To that I can only say: yes, it's hard. But it takes courage. The same kind of courage you read in Pooh and Narnia and Harry Potter books, yes, but with a lot less Christian-based controversy. It takes courage to stare guilt in the face and refuse to make a decision marred or clogged by it. I think of guilt as a sort of cling-wrap. It protects and protects well but put it under the heat of a microwave and its little tiny molecules start to break down and seep into the food.

For all my preaching and sorting, I want to say, I am nowhere as near to battling guilt as I would like. But I'm getting better. Call it stubborness or what you will but for the girl who could stand up to the world but not those who mattered, it's some shred of courage to wake the spine. I want to somehow try and fight this guilt. Not because I'm feeling guilty for feeling guilty...but because my guilt was never protecting whom it was supposed to the most.

Me.