One soul, two bodies.

Recently I read something profound and I decided to share it with all of you. It deals with the origins of love in Greek mythology.

The first human beings were androgynous with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. They aspired to climb into the heavens and usurp the gods, so Zeus split them all into two individuals: male and female. He then scattered them throughout the earth, condemning them to spending their lives searching for their lost other halves. Though they were given male and female properties, sexual intercourse was given to humanity to fulfill the need in body to become one with their opposites, though it would not suffice because their fulfillment could only be complete by the unification of their souls, not just their bodies.

Plato wrote about this in his Symposium.

I have to admit that I'm a lot like a lot of other people who read this; I'm not well versed in the ideals of Greek mythology despite the fact that I lived in Greece on the island of Crete for close to three years. So before I read this, I had no idea that such a concept even existed.

I find it profound because even though it is a relic of a world religion that has since been rendered obsolete, it is very accurate even by the standards of today in expressing the human desire for compassion. For love. I find it profound because there are so many cliches pertaining to "oneness" with a separate individual but none of them explain why. None of them have even the slightest expression as to why we all as human being hunger for love from someone else. But this does. And when I read it, this selection from Plato's Symposium, I couldn't believe how poetic and abstract this idea was. I couldn't believe that even back then people actually had this sort of idea about love being in a sense "completion."

I have my own ideas about love. I think that love is the most important emotion that a human being can feel in his or her lifetime as long as it's true. I think that if a person has experienced true love and it has failed them, it wasn't true love to begin with because true love never fails. There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with them. There's a difference between just love and true love and love and passion. I've written a lot of things stating the differences between all of these, especially love and passion. But I haven't written anything on here about it so I'm going to explain this (one time and one time only).

You can love anyone. It takes time to be in love with someone. There is such a thing as love at first sight, but you are not IN love with them. Thinking that you are in love with someone at first sight is an indicator of lust.

Lust is a disease.

Love is any deep admiration for someone but it has a limit. True love is endless. It overcomes anything and everything and cannot be broken. Love is associated with heartache. True love is associated with passion.

Love is being there for someone when they've drank too much and they're puking their guts up and telling them it's going to be alright. Passion is doing the same thing but holding their hair back and kissing them even though it's most likely to be disgusting as well. Passion is putting something in the forefront of your life and living every single day by it. For instance, my friend Nathan Farmer once told me this:

"I love to play piano. It's my passion and I've been doing it all my life. When my true love comes along they can break all of my fingers, making it impossible for me to play piano anymore. Because they become my passion."

He told me this years ago and I still remember it word for word because it made me think really hard about my idea of love (at the time) versus passion. In black and white, passion and lust look virtually the same without someone to interpret them. It's such a terrible thing when two completely different things get lost in translation.

I have to make a note that right now I'm talking about romantic love. Not love when it comes to lifestyles, friendships or families.

But yeah, that's just a few things I wanted to share with you. Comment this blog and give me your own ideas and interpretations. That's why I have a blog: to share and exchange ideas. Yet everyone refuses to play that game.

How to change spark plugs:

Here's the deal: I had a blog on here entitled "Beautification." Subsequently I have moved it to my other blog for my writing and poetry. You can read it here or you can just go to Photographic Memory Loss. I had posted it on here because I was taking a stab at stream-of-consciousness writing and I felt that I had written something powerful that deserved attention, which PML is lacking anymore. Most people just come here to read what I have to say and don't stop by the other blog because they're too lazy and reading what I write is such a goddamn chore to them (no offense if you're one of these people who are reading this but it's true and you know it as well as I do). Maybe I should just start doing video blogs or something? Because people are such mind-slaves to the video format that they're going illiterate. I don't know.

Now that I've cleared that up, I am absolutely fucking starving right now. But the good news is Brian just left to go get some McFood. Kevin Mason, I know that you get disgruntled when I speak of such things, but the extreme of this hunger is enough to shake the knees of an African refugee. Well... that might be pushing it a little far but I have not ingested any type of solid food matter since approximately four o'clock yesterday afternoon and we're coming up on that time as I'm typing this. An entire day of no eating. The only reason why I haven't gone crazy and eaten post-it notes is due to my diminished appetite from this contagion that (still) is in my body and refuses to get the fuck out! Agggggggggh! I hate being sick so much.

I've come to the conclusion that given the results of my attempt at stream-of-consciousness writing, it's going to be an oft-used technique when I'm writing my novel (which is still in the beginning stages still because of my lack of time to put into it due to my fucking job that I'm at four million and eighty six thousand hours a week). Someone had mentioned the style of writing to me and I'd forgotten about it completely and it wasn't something that I had tried doing before and even I was impressed with the results and I wrote the damned thing! But I remembered it, went back and dug up some William Faulkner and Jack Kerouac and decided it was a long shot but I'd see if I was capable of just typing out nonsense as it was coming to mind in a timed fashion. It worked!

Speaking of work, I'm completely fascinated and amused at the fact that I go to bed every night to get some rest so that I have a marvelous and fantastic day doing nothing when I should be in bed sleeping or out having a social life. Sad, but so motherfucking true I guess.

I think that with tobacco prices on the rise I should give up my long-time habit of smoking cigarettes. But it's so much harder than I have ever thought imaginable, especially since the way I've changed since it was a feasable thing to do to quit. Now I'm so addicted and I rely on nicotine so much that if I don't have it to balance me out, I can't think straight. I panic. I get desperate. I start giving hand jobs for shorts. It's fucking ridiculous. I hate the fact that I have anxiety and I hate the fact that I rely on a chemical to balance me out. It makes me feel like I'm a weak person, honestly. Every time I light up a cigarette I think "Wow I REALLY shouldn't be doing this." But I keep on doing it anyways. It's terrible. Smokers guilt.

Drake Semrau and I have come to the conclusion that we are nerds, but we're highly attractive nerds who have a way with words.

Which brings me to my next subject: I don't think that Emperor Palpatine died when he was thrown down that reactor shaft on the Death Star. I think that he's still out there, branding everyone as an "enemy of the Republic" and camping out in Staples and Office Depot stores to sit in the revolving chairs so that he can villainously spin around and threaten blonde kids into joining his cause. But since Darth Vader is definitely dead (you see his Force ghost at the end of "Jedi"), who is his new apprentice?

Lil Wayne. Also known as Darth Young Money Millionaire. I'm becoming increasingly tired of hearing about that dude and I'm finding it ridiculous that I can't turn on the radio one time during the day without hearing at least one song by him or featuring him. Dark times are definitely ahead of us if my theory is true, but it's just speculation. I know for a fact that I'm not sending Samuel L. Jackson in to deal with this (no matter how much of a hard-ass he is). I might have to handle this one for myself by boycotting everything that has to do with him. The problem is most of this country is composed of middle-classed white kids driving their parents' cars around town bumping "A Milli" and this is an endeavor that I will inevitably lose.

I made another post-it note for myself today. It says: "Daniel, don't you dare fall asleep!" and I drew a picture of Barad-dûr and the all-seeing eye below it. On top of that I'm listening to Saetia and I've gotten so hyped up on coffee that I want to harass a bus full of high-school football players. When the bus drops off the kids that I harass (all twenty of them at the same time) I want to fight them all Bushido Blade style. I will have a hidden camera man film this event and I'll send it to Maxwell House so that they can use it in their advertising campaign.

I need to do something productive.

Currently listening to:
Inhale/Exhale
The Lost, The Sick, The Sacred