Someone once told me that getting an education is like putting furniture in your brain. This Thanksgiving break, I'm gonna be a mental minimalist. Oh, aside from the fact that I'm writing Subjective Delights. SD isn't as spectacular as 'exodus of the menagerie' but then again, what is? I feel like one of those washed up fifty-year-old ex-cheerleaders. Except, Subject Delights is terrifying. I like being a man named Vivian more than an uneducated girl named Chantel who has severe depth perception problems. I can't help but remember that conversation Joe, Sarah and I had at that hotel in Dayton. Ethan had a robotics competition. The question was: if your life was a novel, what kind of character would you be? Which evolved into something more problematic: if everyone you knew was a character, what kind of character would you be in the story? What kind of character would you want to be? And of course, how can you become that character you want to be. The amusing thing was that we applied all that to our friendship. I'm a foil. No brainer. In fact, I am a foil to both of them. They're both main characters in their life. Maybe it's an oldest child thing. Okay, so, this novel sucks because I have a group of people called the Righteous Snobs and they all have inner conflicts. And ever since Chantel got her glasses her perception of reality has gotten all ambiguous, yet her perception of depth worsens.....What does that mean? Should I be worried? I was going to write a novel about other people's denials, but in writing this damn thing, I'm suddenly realizing my own denial. That's why it's so horrible to write. But I also realized that writing about someone who is pure is boring. That is why I am making Chantel fall in love with a priest. (Yeah, I wasn't lying when I said my characters were embodiments of my problems.) Plus, there's this character, the Organ Donor, who is an Ambiancist. He creates the perfect ambiance for people. And when I created him I realized I would totally hire him. But does the vibe of a place exist in the place itself, or in the mind of the person in the given place? This is the tricky question. I don't think I'm fit to continue writing Subjective Delights because I can't even differentiate paintings from the physical world. And I have horrible depth perception. I have binocular dysfunction. And the ironic thing is, the more I write, the worse it gets because it's bad for your eyes to stare at pages for extended periods. On the other hand though, I'm convinced that the only thing that keeps me sane is writing. So...if you become an artist, do you become an extrovert by necessity? But is art a form of mental masturbation? (So THAT is what Vivian's movie is about!) Gah, I feel like I'm on the verge of a revelation. This whole dilemma is like the problem of comedy vs. tragedy. Why do things seem so much more real when they're shown as an impression or caricature? Comedy and impressionistic art involve some kind of leap of faith, correct? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? DAMNIT. MY BRAIN CAN'T PROCESS THESE THOUGHTS. Does this mean that if we see life through some sort of allegory, than we are more aware of reality? If this is true, than why can't we just take life for what it is? This is why Subjective Delights is troubling me. This is why I'm not fit to write it. I swear, this is why last year Aislinn and I ate hot wings so we could become aware of our bodies. I need hot wings. Damn, if I just became a Buckeye fan I wouldn't have to deal with all these delusions that are frequently associated with intellectualism. Man, I should totally become a monk. But I look bad in orange. | 
