I've discovered Tumblr....may the Gods be merciful.

“I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.”

—	Virginia Woolf (The Mark on the Wall)

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t rest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

—	Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

“There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters.”

—	Neil Gaiman, The Books of Magic

An optimist? A pessimist? Neither. A fool.

Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you -- just a tad -- off the road. The wheels kick up some dirt, but you're able to pull it back. Yet no matter how tightly you grip the wheel, no matter how hard you try to drive straight, something keeps jerking you to the side. You have so little control over anything anymore. And at some point, the struggle becomes too much -- too tiring -- and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy...or whatever...to happen.

The Fault In Our Stars

There will come a time when all of us are dead, all of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything there will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you, everything that we did, built, wrote, or thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon or maybe its millions of years away…but even if we survive the collapse of our sun we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness and there will be time after and if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, you should ignore it. Because god knows that’s what everyone else does.

Pottermore & California.....

...What more could one want?

“Mari,” said Jonna, “sometimes you’re really a little too obvious.”

“Do you think? But once in a while a person just needs to say what doesn’t need to be said. Don’t you think?”

And they went back to their reading.

CALIFORNIA! I will see you tomorrow!!

I want to be possessed and know blinding joys.

Most human lives are usually lived in a state of functional nihilism. Very few of us believe that human life is devoid of all meaning and that all we should do is answer to our base urges and fulfill our basic desires and try to distract ourselves from pain or fear or unpleasantness. But almost all of us act as if we believe that. So what are we going to do about consciousness and how are we going to balance our urge to be more than nihilists with our need to blunt the sharp edges of consciousness? 

There are things one reads that make you aware that you have lived nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing up to that time. I was reading one of the blogs I followed fairly regularly and she summed up two of the impressions I get most often during/after reading a John Green book:

1. "Reading John Green has the uncanny ability to make me feel really, really young and just a little bit dorky. It also makes me go all giggly and squeal-y, and occasionally groan-y because of the mathematics. I love you, John Green, in a non-creep way."

2. :Ya know, reading John Green, you wish you were one of the people he wrote about. That you're life's all good, if a little better, when you find yourself a character in a John Green novel."

I've recently decided to compile a book list of what I would consider *must reads*. This will be completed prior to my departure for California. Speaking of, the west coast and I need to be reunited asap. I'm incredibly sick of the east coast, particularly. Until the next time!

Ilunga

A Balrog of Moria! What did he say?

I'd just like to vehemently express my love for the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green. At this moment, particularly for John. In his most recent vlog, John was expressing his distaste for the unedited rap songs playing in stores where he was shopping. Rather than barrage our young, innocent ears with monstrous curses, he substituted each expletive with the names of British romanic poets:

"I'm a William Blake gangster so of course you want my Samuel Taylor Coleridge you're gonna want to be all up in this William Wordsworth like OH Percy Shelley, OH OH Percy Shelly. I'm the Lord Byron in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, WILLIAM BLAKE!"  

It is love. I'm fairly sure I've watched every vlog ever made by the two of them...and all of Hank's gaming videos. The Portal ones are especially entertaining, though I would never look down on the equally awesome Lego Harry Potter ones :D

Anyway, I've been incredibly tired this week. Here's to hoping I sleep straight through the night. Maybe overflowing my nerd quota for the day will help :D

Also! These are my new bed sheets! I am EXCITED! http://www.thinkgeek.com/geek-kids/3-7-years/e566/