The size of my eyes has shown me that I’m happiest when I can’t see out of them. What can I say, love and laughter make me blind.  This actually isn’t a weblog entry, I just felt clever after thinking it up.  weakkkk I know…

Now I remember.

Color

Pollution makes the sky more colorful at dusk, but don’t fool yourself.  It’s still pollution.

What’s meant to be will be.

I had a long conversation with Derek last night about where our lives have been, where our lives are, and where are lives are headed.  As one of my best friends, he reminds me of who I am at my best, and it really refreshed my direction in life.  I’m glad.  For awhile there, I was really unsure of who I was and who I was becoming and he let me know that I’m the same person I have been and always will be.  I respect him so much for being able to be his own person always, comfortable being alone, and confident that he can do whatever he wants to do.

He helped me realize that I am getting closer to where I want to be, and also provided a bit of a model of how I want to be in the near future.  His breakup a few years ago haunted him for awhile, but he did what I’m doing now.  He reacted the same way and knew that staying out of the game for awhile was the best thing for him.  He needed to secure his ability to be alone, and become comfortable with just himself again before moving on to another relationship.  It’s a little stunning how similarly our trains of thought work.

I’m realizing every day that I’m getting better at being alone again, and enjoying an inner life that keeps me satisfied.  For awhile I was drawing so much on the outside world to give me my pleasures and pains.  That’s never who I’ve been.  I’ve drawn enjoyment from myself my whole life, it’s just when I became too dependent on someone on the outside that I started to suffer.

I’ll walk away now closing this chapter on my life.  Goodbye Parami, I really loved you a lot.

Ode to Blumfield.

I was hoping I could keep this blog fresh, untouched by short posts that leave no real impression at all on those who read it.  But I think I need to say this somewhere a little more public.

I really hate second semester physics.  Electromagnetism.  Right hand rules.  All of it.
That’s correct, I’m going to dedicate a short blog piece to how much I hate physics.

The way I see it, AP Physics in high school was not a class. It was a stopover between classes that actually mattered to me, like calculus and philosophy.  Come to think of it, having physics second period was a lot like being stuck in between flights at the airport.  You’re forced to bear announcements from an unpleasant, artificial female voice the entire time, get a lot of pleasure reading done, snack, organize future plans, and chat with others stuck in the same situation.  Oh, and play tetris.  Massive amounts of tetris.

Yeah, I learned close to nothing second semester of my high school senior year about electromagnetism.

Now, it’s back to haunt me.  What I really don’t like about it is that I can’t envision it in my head.  I’ve had success with most other sciences because to a certain degree I can see it in my head, or if the design is too complicated-as in organic chemistry or complicated bio systems, you can draw it out.  HOW DO YOU DRAW A VOLTAGE DROP?  Rather, what the hell is a voltage drop?  -vvvv- <-that’s the symbol for a resistor.  I think it looks stupid.  Physics has even killed my love for magnets.  Do you know how much I used to love magnets?  When I was a kid I’d play with a couple of those next to my refrigerator for hours.  No, I bluff.  But tens of minutes were spent moving those magnets around.  Plus the right hand rules just make you feel silly.

Anyway, I have to study now but I hope I convinced you not to take physics.

-VVV- What a joke.

Drunk Mirrors and Anti-bacterial Sledgehammers

A lot of strange things happened this week, and I had to deal with a lot I assumed I never would have had to deal with.  Most of you who know me know I keep my life neat, simple, organized and clean.  My roommate described me once as someone who uses “antibacterial that kills 99.9% of bacteria on life.”  What he explained was that while antibacterial kills all the bad bacteria, it also kills off any of the good bacteria that possibly could have helped me.  He then told me I was like someone who used sledgehammers to kill ants-even if that meant killing ladybugs in the vicinity.  Long story short, I deal with troublesome entanglements at all costs before they happen.  This is a story about a time I broke this rule, and like all stories where I break some kind of personal rule, I was drunk.

I walked into a party a few weeks back with a small crew of people and being there early, had easy access to the keg and jungle juice.  I finished as many as I could before the place started to get too crowded.  The night progressed without a hitch, and at midnight, I turned twenty-yeah it was the day before/day of my birthday.  I  walk over for a place to sit after dancing for a bit, and pretty soon my friends start joining me.

We’re talking, just having a good time when I notice a girl. Mistake 1. Don’t notice girls when you are buzzed.

I then listened to my friends’ advice and went to talk to her. Mistake 2.  Don’t listen to your buzzed friends when buzzed.  That’s the equivalent of two or more buzzed people.

So I’m somehow talking to her and end up with her number.  Mistake 3.  Don’t get a phone number from a buzzed girl.

In my major, we call this the web of causation.  When accidents, diseases, or anything harmful to an individual or group occurs, we as epidemiologists try not to blame one cause.  We assume that there are a multitude of necessary and sufficient causes for “shit happening”, and those three in this situation, I believe, were the major three.

Anyway.  I must admit that I might not have picked up on the signs that she was uninterested.  Many who know me also probably recall…I’m not exactly the person most sensitive to subtleties.  I’m not exactly sure what happened the week after, but it led up to a phone call.  I don’t really have game, my roommate described me as someone who just has his neurons fire away.  That was his way of telling me I should think before I act.  Well, maybe, but it’s spilled milk now anyway.

“Hey, sorry if this is awkward.  I talked to you last week because I thought you were attractive, but I’m sure you don’t give out your number to random strangers all the time so if you’d rather me not have it that’s fine too but if not lemme take you out sometime.”

Yeah, I said it in one breath like the true anti-baller I am.  Then I proceeded to do my infamous awkward laugh.  You know, the one where I make the “uh oh” face and sounds like “heh..heh” and sounds in my head like “Ike. Please shut up”.  I suppose she was being nice, but she told me to call some other time. I figured after that I should try to avoid her, after all what was the point?  I was starting to get the picture, and who wants to end up looking like a creeper?

I think that would have been fine, except I kept seeing her everywhere.  Library studying, who else ends up sitting behind me?  Dinner time 30 minutes later, who walks in?  Keep in mind by this point, I’m losing interest pretty fast, trying to watch out for my own interest and not come off as a fucking stalker.  I ask her to lunch a day or two later, and she’s busy.  I avoid that dining hall and go to the cafeteria, who walks in the split second I stand up for some ketchup?  Yeah, I rock at life.  Like a true warrior I tucked my tail between these strong legs, put my head down using these bulging neck muscles and went straight back to my table.  I am a G.

And finally, it all culminates with me sitting in a collaborative workroom at the library with some others, to whom I tell this this funny story.  I hear the door open behind me a bit later and the saga continues.  Guess who has come to join us?  Yup they were her friends.  You know those sitcom moments where there is a stare between actors that seems to last a long time while they wait for the audience to stop laughing?  Yeah.

Doorknob turns, loud metallic noise.  I turn around, and it takes me a moment to recognize who it is.  Then a few moments of awkward occur.  You may think that time is only measured in seconds or milliseconds.  No, I found out the hard way that time can also be measured in awkward and the units are called moments.  I have no clue how long that stare of disbelief lasted for me in real life SI Units of time per second, but I’m pretty sure in IW (Ike’s World) units, it lasted about 5 moments of awkward.

o_o —— o_o
1..2..3…4..5

I turned back around, did some work, and booked it out of there first opportunity. I thought to myself as I walked outside that the last week had been a lot like when you run into a stranger who seems to be your mirror.  Your steps to avoidance just don’t work because you keep guessing wrong.  You’re both walking towards each other at first and decide to avoid left when he avoids right, then left right, right left.  You give the awkward smile and both people will usually stop and wait for the other person to pass.  Then you have the same pattern.  So now I’m just running in the other direction.  I rock at life, what can I say.

Oh and the bonfire.  We got there at 9 when the beach closes at 10.  My idiot friends had run out of firewood by then…at a bonfire.  But I did get to eat a s’more and that was all I really wanted in the first place.  Then I got a parking ticket.

Hey but referencing my last entry, I’m still a pretty happy kid, a little wiser about the world.
Don’t drink and drive, notice girls, listen to drunk friends and bother drunk girls.  You’ll get owned at life.  I’m trying to rock at life, so that was quite a speedbump.

Antibacterial. Sledgehammers. Yeah.

These days…

It was a difficult summer. A three year relationship promptly left me in early July, and I was faced with the realization that the valley I had called home for so many years was something I had outgrown.  Familiar faces, second homelike places, it all seemed like one long memory I wanted to leave behind.  I counted the minutes to the end of July, only to find another 25 days of August waiting for me. I did everything I could do to keep myself busy.  The few who were actually in the valley throughout the summer really helped me through.  I filled in those empty days as best as I could, researching, working out, reading at cafes and playing tennis.  I don’t know if you know this, but days seem long when you feel like you’re only half of what you used to be.

I suppose it was an ironic blessing to have been in that position during my summer break, I don’t know if I could have kept my life on track if it had happened during the school year.  Eventually, those 50 days of contemplation and heartache came to an end, and the semester took off even faster than the previous four.

Now there’s never time to breathe, or think, or contemplate.  Only time to move and achieve, accomplish and do.  I’m finally back to the old routine.  Sleeping small, working big.  I have conversations over coffee outside of the fountain at Leavey.  It’s so fresh and relaxing there you would never guess I had spent the entire day crammed in the B4 basement of Doheny.  The Lyon Center is always cramped and a lot of weights are always missing, but after sneaking into two of my local gyms all summer, even the Lyon Center makes me smile.  And the people!  I don’t walk 20 steps without running into someone I know.  Everyone has a story to share every day, including me.  There’s always a bustle on campus that contrasts deeply with the calm and sometimes maddening quiet of the valley.  Before this summer, I took it all for granted.  Complained that I wanted it to slow down, wanted the sleep, wanted this and wanted that.  This year, I’m savoring this entire moment called junior year.

It’s funny though.  I think because the hardships seem so sweet, my focus is not as strong as it used to be.  Having my eyes opened for me has helped me see things in a different light, and I’m glad for it, but seems conversely to have taken from me the tunnel-visioned, single-minded, workaholic mentality that got me through so much the last 2 years.  With second semester courses for both organic chem and physics weighing me down, and the MCAT coming up second semester, I keep wondering if I will be able to get through it.  I hope so.  Either way

I just thought you should know that these days…

I’m happy.