I had a scary thought.

A recent need to research that soul Fred Rogers reminded me the nigh cliché point he and many others made that "We are everyone we've met", etc. Which is all very deep, and sparks all those idealist notions of Grand Unification a lá Evangelion. And on a psychological level, this goes along with the thesis that the conscious is composed of experiences, and the thoughts and pre-dispositions hitherto contrived from them.
But I'm a forgetful person.
I can't recognise a single member of my primary school. I have forgotten fairly important people in a matter of months. If I search through my memories of My childhood, I'm met with memories of idiotic moments, of odd jokes and mundane trivia. If our personality is fundamentally composed of our dealings with everyone else, and you forget them and those memories, have you lost a part of yourself?
I managed to qualm my fears with assurances of the power of the subconscious, but then that makes me someone who doesn't know why they are what they are, and how they got there.
But then, it gets worse.
So, if everything impacts us as a person, we go through hundreds, often thousands of social interactions a day. Each one with the potential to mould and change us. So even if we are this amalgamation of half remembered instances, we're never that exact person for more than a few seconds. And we can't even keep track of, or even be remotely aware of what has affected us, and in what way.
And for me, and the majority of people bored enough to be reading this, this is the most vulnerable phases of our developments. Our brains are actively rewiring themselves for adult life.
Just by having a chat with anyone, I could be setting myself up to be a worse person than I could've been.
And on the opposite side of the spectrum, what about extended relationships? Of families, partners, best friends? These connections, incomprehensibly potent and poignant? Do they realise what they're doing, or have done to me? Do I? An argument, an idea, hell, a joke, that's all these people need to radically change me.
And me. Making the somewhat arrogant assumption that I am not completely without charisma, and that I am paid attention, I too am contributing to this constant, manic reworking of Super-Egos.
I sincerely hope I affect positively.

"There's nothing more cosy than having a few restraints to kick up against"

I'm using haikus
To exercise precision
Maybe it will work.

My current constraints
Should focus these abstractions
To something solid.

One final preface
**** Kireji and Kigo
This ain't about that.

I seem to be ill
For I've lost will and resolve
Saudade-itis

Think about Auschwitz
Everyone despises it.
I don't think I do

Maybe I'll explain.
Disgusting horrors occurred
They should be hated.

But the halls, the bricks,
The construct is innocent.
That is how I feel.

It's getting better,
But I need to make my joy.
I've done it before.

Am I living right?
I don't see enough sunsets.
Should I make more too?

I'm scared of slipping.
I'm supposed to go way up.
High stakes, big losses.

If I took a leap
And you caught the moment right
I would be flying.

My corpse is heavy,
But I would sink far further
If it stopped holding.

Through the floors and ground,
Burrow, freefall, descend, sink.
All, so I could be.

I'm drained, depleted.
But I'll make myself human.
I'll do it by force.

Now I've put away
Every nothing I'd conjured
I'm cleansed, Cathartic.

"O Happy, Living Things! NoTongue/ Their Beauty Might Declare:/ A Spring of Love Gushed from My Heart/ And I Blessed them Unaware.

It was a day in July
And I was going through the tedious motions of delivering papers.
I entered a street, and duly took no notice of my drab surroundings, as I circled into a driveway.
And I don't know what it was when I came out
Maybe it was a change in the lighting
Or maybe a change in whatever background music I was listening to
Or a change somewhere else
But as I walked away from the driveway, I noticed how stunning these flowers were.
They were bright, radiant, literally radiant.
They were illuminating everything around them.
The moment was so slow.
I actally stopped walking for a split second, and intook a little.

In a way, I regret this moment ever happened.
Not so much that it did happen, as it was a stunning, poignant one.
But I regret that it had to happen.

In Penny Lane...

I thought there was a "Bar for sharing photographs".
Which I couldn't help but think was a stunning image.
Just the idea of a pub, specifically for whipping out wallets and albums, telling strangers about your kids, whilst he shows you pictures of the time he went to the Grand Canyon.
I just thought it was so fantastically... Rural? a little stereotyped. Quaint? Maybe. Beautiful? Without doubt.
If teaching falls through, or I retire, or something, that's a very strong possibility.
Either way, turns out there was a "Barber sharing photographs". I like my version a bit more.

I should write.

Okay, I know opening a blog post with a comment on how little I write has become somewhat compulsary, but there was a time (This time last year) where I swore it'd be daily.
HAH.
So, let's be frank. Right now, I am indeed in Post-Break-Up-Break-Down. I won't talk about the relationship, as I would get profoundly upset if the reverse were to happen to me, and in the msot modest way possible, this is a blog about me. And considering its obscurity and lack of readers, it's more or less for me, as well.

I'm coping. I've gone past the break up music stage- The Smiths with their cruel honesty, and the bitter irony of poppy Beatles tracks (Although, within the compilations I'm listening to, there is one song, Yesterday, that was hidden amongst the no longer true cries of "She Loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" perfectly and unexpectedly summed up my entire situation and sentinents, like some kind of empathising shinobi).
I've actually started relistening to a lot of Jonathan Coulton, who is absolutely fantastic, and if you search the iTunes podcast directory, you can download 52 of his tracks for FREE from his "Thing a Week" project, which ranges from the sombre to the surreal. Think Flight of the Concords, except with a lot more experimetation and taking itself seriously more often.

I've only had to see her for two days since the break up (Boxing Day, no less) at school, and we've tried our darnedest to pretend we can't see each other. Or at least I have, and she's just really good at being ignorant or something. It's still difficult. Apparently, she wants to be friends. I'm not sure I can do that, seeing as being around her hurts, as I'm still in Love with her. Except I guess at this point, it becomes creepy, unrequited, weirdo Love. Eugh.

I've been trying to release my misery in the form of jokes that makes everyone around me feeling awkward, like "Man, this work is hard. you know what else is hard? Living after being dumped by the only girl who I've ever really Loved.", which I find completely hilarious, but makes everyone else die a little inside. I think I'll stop soon, as hilarious as it is for me, I don't want being with me to be permanantly associated with uncomfortableness.

I don't think it's coincidence that I'm trying to pick up new hobbies at once now. Bass guitar, more writing, Game creating, documentation by time-lapse-photography, cooking, it goes on. Mid-life crisis and I'm only 17.

Well there it is. Summation of the lowest point in my life, mainly recorded for the sake of looking back in a year or two, and commenting on what a miserable idiot I was. Or maybe clutching a needle in one had, gazing at the screen, weeping and screaming "This is where it started!".

Does this count as selling out?

So, despite the fact this is an unkept blog with barely any page views, got asked to put a link to some screen capture software, in exchange for a license.

Well, alright.

Screen Capture Software
I guess I'll tell you how it goes, could be useful...

But watch this space, I'm planning on writing a few pieces, probably going to be more rant than wandering, got a few burning topics here and there, and I need the practice =\

There is such a thing as a "Monkeysphere"...

...And they found it by looking at monkey brains. The bigger a colony, the bigger the brain of the monkey. They could take a monkey's brain, look at it, and say "This monkey belonged to a colony of 70 monkeys or so."
So one day, this smart alec takes a brain in, and the examiners estimated it to belong to a monkey of a troop of 200 or so monkeys.
Except it wasn't a monkey brain. It was a people brain.

Relevent? Certainly. Look at monkey colony dynamics.
Within of itself, it is a group of x creatures who live and hunt together, and are codependent. They will play with and love each other. They will suffer personally for the benefit of a fellow monkey.
These monkeys would die for one of these 70 monkeys.
And kill anyone of the remaining millions.
If someone outside of their colony, their Monkeysphere, steps within 50 feet of them
Why, they might kill them.

And don't pretend this has nothing to do with us.
We're pretty closely related to these guys, particularly on a behavioural level.
And evidence of the human Monkeysphere is everywhere.

As far as we go, "Monkeysphere" has been attributed in human behavioural psychology to describe everyone we care about. Apparently, 200-300 individuals, with possibilities for a lot more. Anyone you care about, who you would care about dying, rests within this monkeysphere.
And everyone else.... well, they're not people.

Remember that alien feeling you sometimes get when you see a teacher outside of school? Or when you catch that colleague of yours in town? It feels weird, because you're being reminded that these, these- animate objects, these things that are merely routine scenery, are actually people. Not just humans, people, with feelings, friends, family, thoughts, all of it.

And that's why it's so weird.

I think it's interesting to think about, that of all the thousands, possibly millions of faces you will see in your life time, you will only be affected by maybe several hundred of them. If that.

I guess you should pick carefully.