Jimenez said that poets could create their own worlds.

These days I feel like I'm starting to "get" a few poets and authors more than others. Jimenez, dijiste que podriamos crear mundos. Aqui creo el mio.

My pain is gone and I am happy.
I'm actually helping others feel happy.
I'm watching myself excel and love and not worrying about
things.

I see myself effortlessly pushing past my weaknesses.
I see myself living simply.
I see myself smiling and in several different
places.

There are people in and out of my home.
There are people feeling at ease with me.
And every person looks lovingly toward other
people.

And the earth is clean and verdant.
Mountains stretch toward the sky and birds sing songs
harmonious.

And the sea reaches out to the land
lovingly sculpting the land and to man it simply appears
limitless.

Cannibalism

Just like we don't take animals into account when we eat them, my family has no idea that it's slowly consuming me and eating me alive. I can't get their problems out of my mind, and I am at wit's end and need to clean myself up and get out.

Vegetarianism

I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian again. If we cut down our meat consumption by 10 % we'd improve the air quality by 25 %. We're getting to the point that we need to be thinking about these things.
Also considering I've done it before and the fact that it saves money and is, not to mention, healthier, makes it seem like the best idea.
I'm about to go on a trial run with it again. But I think I might do it for a while.

I don't want my titles transliterated to Hindi, thanks.

I figured out why all my other titles looked strange. For some reason I had enabled transliteration on my titles, and all of them were being set into Hindi scripts.

But the real name of today's post is:
Pull Down the Blinds

I have retreated. I have built up the walls and stationed the sentries. No one can make it through my defenses because I have amazing will power to put things into motion when I truly want them.

My room is dark. My bed is comfortable. I have books to read.
My classes go on without me, and I ask myself if I'll ever be half the student I could be.

The only thing that breaks my peace are the nightmares every night. And to the general public I cannot share so much painful information. I am literally in pain from stress, and the pressure in my head seems to have taken up permanent residence there and moved to the left side as well.

I am only happy when I'm reading. I'm only happy as an activist. But maybe I'm ignoring something crucial.

"Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."
--Leo Tolstoy

Thank you, Mr. Tolstoy. You've given me one more thing to think about.

Existence and X/Y Values or Inverse Equations (Buster's thoughts for an evening)

Taken from a 27 March Facebook entry...
So I'm stuck in this mode tonight.
What am I? I look at pictures, and some would say I see what I am. But that's only an image, so it's not me.
In my memory I see my family, but the living, breathing family of today is not that. So is it my family? Is the present all that is? Because things in the past WERE, as we learn when we study other languages. But is the present really valid? Can it be? It's not what WILL BE.
Sometimes we lose ourselves in other worlds. Or maybe we find ourselves there. Maybe we find pieces of ourselves spread across our interests, our weaknesses, our talents, and our strengths and dirty weaknesses. What does it mean to be me?
"The whole is more than the sum of its parts," says Aristotle. So I am Buster. But I'm also Francis. I live in Kentucky. I play some music. I speak three languages.
That list could go on and on. Take one away, and you don't have me anymore, you have something less.
I am a unique mixture of these things, but perhaps I'm only in a unique package. Maybe there are thousands, if not millions, of other "types" like me. Other "mixtures" that are just put together differently from the outside.
Some things I realized though are that we can NOT escape from ourselves forever.
We can easily deceive ourselves to believe something that is not true as long as we will it to be true. So is truth then absolute, or is it how we perceive it?
If it's how we perceive it, then the "mentally unstable" are seeing truth. But if they're seeing truth, and we're seeing truth, then perhaps truth is multi-faceted.
But if they're insane, then truth is in the eyes of the masses. But what if the masses are wrong?
In the end, isn't truth only decided by the ones who outnumber the others? Isn't that the principle of democracy? Don't we see this at work in what we call "fair trials"?
I can't escape who I am. I can only deceive myself and make myself believe I'm what I'm not. But finding out exactly what parts go into the complicated equation of "me" is going to be difficult, if not impossible. But then again, maybe it's not necessary. Maybe I should just accept myself as the whole? But if I only see what I think is there, am I really seeing the true me? Let's say the answer to equation one is "x" and the answer to equation two is "y." If y is the truth, but x is a perceived notion based on observable values, then it's very easy to conclude that x is not y. Is this making sense?
And at one point in life I was interested in inverse equations (otherwise known as opposing forces). If that's the case, if people fit into this blank and barebones algebraic theory, do each of us also have an inverse value?
If "you" (or whatever vestige of yourself you may be deceived to think you are) would like to delve deeper into these thoughts, talk to me. Or watch the movie "The Nines." It will make you think. As for me, I'm going to stare at my ceiling and think about this for a while.

एवेर्य्थिंग इस Different

I have no idea why my titles come up like that. The first two jarbles of words are supposed to be "Everything" and "Is."
It's really hard to put my finger on the things that are different.
But I guess if you spend as much time in other countries, on a college campus or traveling in general as I do, life will never consist of any sort of solid foundation of continuity.
I look at friendships growing, friendships dying, feelings of love disappearing almost completely, and I wonder what I can really rely on these days. I guess maybe I'm at the point in my life where change begins to sound less appealing. Or maybe it still does. The idea of traveling abroad sounds great, but the idea of leaving so much behind is terrible.
"..and eventually, the only thing they had in common were their differences..."
I don't really know what I want from life at this point. I think I'll move to Mexico next year, but is that going to be different now that I've been away from there for several years? Germany feels much further away this year than it has in the last few years. Going home is like stepping into a totally different world...or maybe like seeing a place I only know at night during the day. I'm watching my country get weaker, be it through our politicians' inability to unite for some common good or the simple passage of time, the National Enquirer is actually competing with mainstream news media, the presidential campaign is looking more like American Idol than an actual election...
I don't really know what I can rely on anymore. Money isn't always there. Friendships are ridiculously fragile. My body only has a certain amount of time.
This country appears to be on the fast track to ruin. This world will almost certainly follow suit if we people don't straighten up.
I don't know what I want, but I keep having weird images in my head of being an important leader, or launching a huge attack against AIDS and world poverty...
Beyond that, not a lot really matters to me. And I'm quite serious about that.

फ्रेंच अफेयर्स

(I don't know why the title looks like it's written with some foreign script.)

So, according to my French professor, love in France is a game. You ignore the one you love. I think we also do this in America.
Similarly, it's also uncomfortable to express to friends how much they mean to you. Once, someone told me that I was a good friend...it was a really intense moment. I gave a thumbs up, because I felt too awkward to say anything else. That was stupid.
Telling someone that you're interested in them takes time...at least with me. I'm just reflecting on it at the moment, but I think it's crazy how we desperately go for those things that present themselves impossible to achieve, while things that practically throw themselves at our feet are taken for granted.
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate my life and take the things that are there for me now.
This is nothing deep. I'm just thinking about the idea.