i woke up this morning and my housemate/landlord, who i'll call Charlie here, was madly cleaning up the kitchen. 2 and a half hours he was in there, incessantly scrubbing every object he came across. He told me he'd had a revelation that what was causing all his sickness was mold, and he spent the next few hours explaining it to me. I am almost never able to repeat these revelations my roommate seems to recieve, and then describe in great detail to me, but for some reason this morning i felt compelled to at least listen, before i made any replies or judgements. it's hard to explain what forces incline me towards heeding or ignoring the funny things he says; i just sometimes feel interested... At times, the wierdest claims he makes, though most anyone would judge them absurd, just seem at least intriguing enough for me to at least take it in for what it is, and then allow myself to think about it more later. I guess a part of me is also sorry for him since everyone else just gets freaked out at his stories. I sometimes get worried that i listen to too many people's absurdities, because i feel sorry for anyone who isn't listened to by anybody... I sometimes wonder if i am, in a way, out of control; being propelled to this and that extreme, all by the obsessions of others. but then, when i try to determine a standing ground, a place at which to bring all this mad swinging to an end, i get the feeling that no one place is any better than any other; maybe it's my tolerance, or my vagueness, that makes me difficult to place myself... to find out what i really believe in; whose stories, whose wild claims that sound true but that i couldn't admit in public to believing, to believe and whose not to believe. it seems like everybody stands around talking about the obvious things; the things everyone agrees on, and the things the tv is telling all of us ensemble every day about our world; and THAT'S the "real world"-- that's "reality" for everyone... and whenever we deviate from that, whenever we start to make additions or subtractions on that agreement, based on personal perspective, that's when arguments begin. that's when feelings get hurt. that's when people feel like nobody's listening to them; and i feel bad for everyone that feels that way... so i guess i try to give an effort to listening to everybody i can... only, just "listening" to someone turns out to be a more complicated thing than just that; it winds up intertwining with what you believe yourself; what you in turn start telling other people; the arguments you find yourself embroilled in. i guess, it's kinda like there's a safety net; a safe-ground where everyone can stand and agree, and have no arguments, and everyone just repeating one another, reciting what the tv told them last night or whatever. or what the posters and ads everywhere around us even this very second, leaning down over the top of this web page, are telling us about our world (here i am putting all the blame on ads and the media-- but it's GOT to be more intricate, more bizarre and subtle and continuous than just tv and ads, right? there's got to be more TO the "world" than those things-- everyone blames the tv, because no one knows where else to point, except perhaps to "society," as vague a frame of reference as that is-- but something tells me it's what we're NOT pointing to-- that's a better source-- a better culprit, to who is to blame for what we "know")... Anyone that stands up gets shouted down by everyone else. it takes a whole people standing up and LEAVING-- (i'm thinking of a few web site-communities i know-- societies consisting totally of rebels tend to make new laws of both behavior and physics alike) for anything different to be spoken... you can hardly speak alone... you have to be the one who can be termed "remarkable," in order to be the one who stands, and isn't indeed shouted off as perverted, obtruse or naive about the universe we "live" in... i guess that's what i'm looking for, trying to come by, wondering why it isn't around more often; the "remarkable" ones who say something different, radically different, from the norm... i suppose that's what keeps me listening, i suppose that's what causes me to tolerate the uncertainty, and the uneasy feeling of having no certain thing to latch on to-- no one to follow.... it's because, in a way, the people whose opinions i can be MOST SURE are grounded in "reality," still are lacking in understanding me-- in explaining to me, the way i feel certain ways about certain things, the connections i feel to things, unusual things; the artful, the creative, the mystical, the spiritual, music itself, the contents of my soul... i can't rely on the concrete for such answers; i have tried to find them there and i have left empty handed... i realize that the face that's carved of stone with years of living in the agreed-on world, has nothing for me inside of it, that's any more morpheous than what objects lie here on this desk.. there's more to life, there's more to the world than what we see before us, and everyone knows that on some level at this point i think-- but it turns out to be so, SO complicated and difficult to begin a conversation about these things; it isn't easy to speak of something we haven't been taught to see... they taught us to see apples, pencils, telephone poles and cars; they didn't tell me i would feel this way, at this time in my life, and so now i have nothing to rely on for assistance, for an explanation, except these other souls i come across who seem also to see more, feel more and know about more things than folks are supposed to know about.........And then it troubles me, it troubles me to no end, when those same people, who are in a way, i feel, my only hope, my last resort, turn out to exhibit symptoms of the insane: and no matter how stiffly i may avert my glance to not percieve it, still i must endure the echoes of their mad hollering, and then i feel lost again. the second, that same second in which the one who i was using as a guide through the Dark Forest turns around and seems to present proof, firm firm proof that he is nonetheless not in touch with his own sanity-- with the world in any sense that i can believe anymore-- is the same second in which i have to wonder if the forest is even there at all, or if i am the one who is crazy after all, and that perhaps, there really is nothing more to the world than apples and pencils and wire... it wearies me, and it leaves me feeling shifty, insecure, uncertain where to turn, alone in all the world... this has happened to me many times, and i am confusedly trying to devise some way of listening, learning about this unseen world i feel compelled to believe is there, is as substantial if not more so than the alterior, ad-universe one; and not loosing my own grip with it, and being swept down someone else's mindless loop-hole... right now, i'm at a point where the best method i can think of is to listen to the things which sound right to listen to, and ignore when it sounds more like mad ranting. sadly i hear both of these things from the same individuals at times: the same Charlie, who at times is hopelessly rattling on about things which i am *sure* (as sure as i CAN be anyway) must be nothing but a part of his own head, his own out-of-control imagination, is also the same Charlie who sometimes makes a statement which makes me think differently about the world, consider new things i hadn't thought of before, and just ring of truth: whatever it is that makes a statement just *sound* true... and i'm amazed, though i find myself unable to repeat or record the content of what he said; and all because i'd never heard anything like that from anybody else. And all of it makes me unsure how much of it to take in, how much of it to take seriously... whether to act on any of it, whether or not to actually let a life-changing statement, change my life... whether or not i'd be crazy, or more sane than the norm to involve myself; to even continue listening to him... And he is not the first person i've come across, to cause this dilemma in me. I remember the first person who started telling me about interesting things; he would appear in the coffee shop with a new thing to say every day; he was very frank and to the point, things to say about the world, about people, about reality and the human mind, that i hadn't thought before. interesting, i thought, and listened to the guy, and continued listening to him as his statements grew more and more obscure and esoteric and involved, and my life started bending; it started to warp a little bit, to conform with this new information i was recieving... and then one day, he did a thing that proved to me that he was in fact dilusional; there was no denying it anymore, at ALL--- and this in a way shattered my world, my worldview--- like breaking one's heart but instead, breaking one's *mind*... i felt betrayed and forsaken and i didn't understand how i'd gotten there, except being inquisitive and trying to learn about the world and open to the perspectives of others... now, i know some people who are so jaded, so immobile in their beliefs, that they will never be drawn in by another's erroneous ideas; they will sooner turn a blind eye on *everything* someone else does and says and IS, than let a word they don't already personally believe, slip in from the outside. and those people disturb me far more than an insane person ever will. but it's so difficult to find a balance, when it seems like THAT type of person, the jaded kind, is the other end of the spectrum: the only cure or security from being misled... no wonder so many people fall full in on whatever religion they subscribe to: it's easier to just settle on exactly who and what it is that's going to direct all of your thinking for all of your life, than to constantly be searching for it... for where to direct your own... or maybe, everyone thinks that they direct their own thinking... everyone THINKS they do... don't we? and by being thus convinced, we avoid someone else's comparative conviction sway us, draw us into a whirlpool we didn't ask, weren't meant to get lost in: the whirlpool of another person's mind, spinning in on itself... maybe my problem isn't that i can't figure out who to trust or believe or rely on; maybe my problem is that everyone ELSE thinks that i would be just fine, if only i would rely on THEM. Follow THEIR beliefs. THEIR observations and opinions. If only i fell full in on what THEY have come to let themselves fall full in on... then i would have Reality in my hand. as they surely do, right? we are so jaded... we are so selfish and leech-like in wanting others' minds to be contaminated with OURS. i don't want to be jaded. i don't want to be fooled every day. i don't want to be guided by a satellite in the sky to a life that is less than the one possible... i just don't want to be one of those jaded, unimaginitive, immobile, stony, unyielding, unchanging, unchangeable people, who are the people who discust me most in all this world. really, nothing repulses me more than a person who absolutelly positively will not consider changing their mind. Considering something different than what they thought. i guess i'm so heatedly repulsed by this, annoyed at every instance of this, that i fervently try to make myself its opposite. the opposite, though, seems to translate into something else i don't want to be; a dillusional sap that'll fall for anything, be led anywhere, waste my life and efforts in following someone insane... on some level i can kind of relate to all those people who have followed cult-leaders numbly; there's a part of the human soul that just wants relief from all the uncertainty, all the wondering where to go and what to do with one's life... i fear, though, that i myself have come close to being such a follower time and again... it's freakish to think that i might be so clouded, so pathetic as that... i have been searching, waiting, and searching some more, for someone who sees eye to eye with me on certain things, or at least has something to say about certain phenomena that i am interested to hear about, and doesn't turn out in the end to have a streak of pure illogical insanity... i tell myself sometimes that it's not just them: that EVERYONE has a streak of such insanity, it just manifests differently for others, who don't have such perception... what i mean is, that perhaps obeying the messages of that tv, of "society," is a mild type of insanity, comperable in its own way to thinking you see visions... but somehow, this doesn't seem right... it doesn't seem to equate, to fall into place... and then, when i unravel out that conclusion, it makes it seem as though we're all very distant, very alone and very far apart from each other; each with this totally divorced experience of reality, seen and unseen... i had this friend once, when i was in high school, who said of religions that, whatever any person believes, that's "real to them," and i couldn't accept this definition: "REAL to THEM" sounded like an oxymoron... a paradox... like there just had to be something huge missing in that... that couldn't be the whole story.................when i think about it, and though it makes me sick to my stomach to think it, i've personally watched a great many perfectly-healthy-seeming people suddenly and unexpectedly exhibit total loss of control; total insanity... i mean i've seen people who just *DON'T* loose it, loose it... explode... in public, on the street; become a different person... i feel betrayed when that happens; when they suddenly aren't the sane interesting human being they were 15 minutes ago, and now they're 100%, full on, raging rabid animals... throwing tantrums and wreaking havoc against total strangers... ready to kill someone... i can't explain that to myself other, than that they just seem to go temporarilly insane. that worries me... it really confuses me; am i just hanging around the wrong people? do i cause something in people to suddenly turn violent and absurd and senseless? do i just draw people to me who have these inclinations, somewhere hidden down inside? and if so, what do i do to stop it? what do i possibly change to stop something so bizarre? it's like, i can know a person for a couple hours or a couple weeks, and one night they're suddenly throwing bottles at a person or full-on chasing a stranger around threatening to kill them... how does a person loose it so completelly? is it just the alchahol? how can alchohol distrort a person so badly? does a person have to already be distorted somehow, for alchohol to do that to them? or other drugs? and then at times they don't remember it afterwards.. or can't understand how that overcame them, or are apologizing profusely... i can't understand why that happens either, but it means i can't really trust them anymore... right? that i can't really feel ok being around them... right? it's all so perplexing... so troubling...