standing still by gilad

Alienation

A friend last week was talking about feeling lonely, and I don't know why but it surprised me. Surprised that anyone could feel lonely with people always around them. Perhaps I banked a little too much on having a roommate who was excited to hang out and do roommate things together. Perhaps I hoped too much that the problem these past couple years was the lack of roommate closeness. But somehow I managed to elude the memory that the alienation that I live with, doesn't come and go with more or less people. Doesn't even come and go with the "right kind of people"; people I "feel" comfortable with.

But how could I have forgotten? How did I manage to dilute myself to thinking that a lack of presence was to blame? Maybe I just didn't want to face the fact that it is always there. It does not matter how long I have known someone, or how often I hang out with them. I cannot fight being an outsider, never completely being a part, it never leaves. People have told me that everyone goes through these feelings, everyone feels lonely, everyone feels like they don't belong.
This is crap.
This isn't just lonliness.
This is always being the odd one out. You've seen it. You've said it. I don't quite fit. Perhaps this is why I try so hard to make thing in my life inclusive, on trying to share with as many as I can. Because standing on the outside blows, I don't want anyone to feel this; but then again perhaps I'm just trying to buy my own way in by including others.

Doesn't it seem strange? Or just to ironic? that a girl who seems to engage with others easily, talks too much, and is willing to discuss all matter of things iwth interest feels like an outsider to every group of friends she's ever had?
Don't tell me I'm not alone.
Telling someone who always feels on the outside that they should take comfort that there are others like her is like telling introverts they should band together so they can talk about how they feel. But I guess there's another answer isn't there?
It's my fault.
I've chosen this.
If I just try harder.
Yea, I've heard that in my own head a million times, and I've heard it from others enough times. Maybe I am the problem. Maybe it's a mental disorder. Maybe it's because I am just as weird and crazy as people joke that I am.
You may be thinking that you were more right then you knew when you told me so. You may be just rolling your eyes. Even if you hadn't said it'd still be there, it'd sill be true.
So I guess I lied to my friend in a way, by being surprised by lonliness. It was unintentional. Lonliness is a side-effect of alienation, sometimes it bugs you, sometime it doesn't. Right now, it's bugging me.

listen by ciril

Do we actually read and listen to the things about us, or merely look at and hear words? While some of us emphasize the message behind the medium, quite often the only thing that we can do, and perhaps are hard pressed to admit, is listen to words like notes in a song for the only thing we can understand from them is that they are sound. Or look at them like art on the wall for the only thing we can know for sure is that they are visible. We judge their form and function and are so focused on how they fit together that what those words were really meant to say to you are a mystery lost upon most.

sensing by garrit

fragrant future

how often have we tasted something completely new? On one hand we have a most wide variety of cultural dishes and international foods, especially in Canada where people cling to national backgrounds and the favorite foods that come from them. Then again, on the other hand, most of what we have in North America sugared modifications and usually what is *new* is just different blends of familiar flavours.
I was in the grocery store last week and found a fruit called a pummelo, it looks like a giantic grapefruit. I cracked it open, peeled off chunk after chunck of yellow skin, and pulled away the spongey cushion. And as I did an entirely new scent, and some pummelo juice, met my nose. The fruit was like a grapefruit, only it was sweet. But the smell, the smell was wonderful. It was fragrent like flowery perfume, with no alcohol base to tint the flavour. It overtook my nose, it overtook my senses, charging a new path in the memory banks of my brain. I do not know how long I stood there sniffing the rind of this fruit, but I do know the scent was all over my hands. I kept sniffing them wondering if I could buy this fruit and use it instead of perfume.

I move tomorrow. The next few weeks will be a little wonky as I finish up the semester, and my house is a disaster (so many things to take care of and clean up!). Although it is not a stark change into something completely unknown, life is going to look very different. It will the opposite from last summer, where I spent many hours in solitude, to being closer to more of my friends than I ever have been outside of school. I have no intention of keeping an internet connection. I did that last summer, but now it is more indefinate. I think I will like the break from it being so readily available; it is an easy distraction. And I will still have access at other places (so write emails, all of you!!). I'm not completely done with Briercrest, but my connection with it will certainly be less prevalent since I won't be living in the school's back yard. Those are just a few distinctions.

If you've known me very long than you have more than likely heard me protest against the idea of changing one's surroundings in order to deal with challenges or disasters that face us. It's an understandable and easy reaction to want to be rid of anything that reminds us of less than favourable circumstances, and in our society we can easily change, easily avoid, those things; I think it is the ease with which this can be done is what bothers me. That same changability that rightfully removes a women from an abusive husband allows a worker or friend from resolving conflict. If less of us are forced to 'buck up', so to speak, less of us will. Granted we can't take every bull by the horns, there are things we just need to walk away from. But perhaps I am just inexperienced at life and conflict and truly dispairing situations to speak on the subject.
In any case, all that is leading up to the thought that I am leaving here with a heart that is slightly more resolved in some of the conflicts that have arisen. Although circumstances may not be rectified, I am relieved to be released from some of my own 'demons', faults, and failures before facing a new adventure. Before letting something else completely suffuse my senses.