Hungry

Emotionally, I've definitely been unstable lately. I had a quasi-breakdown the other night, but it was only temporary. I have since bounced back to "normal," and even "better-than-normal" in some sense. I say "better-than-normal" in some sense because I have recently been looking for knowledge in every facet and moment of my life. I've been listening to National Public Radio in the car often, watching the history channel, reading a lot, attending discussions, having thoughts of starting a discussion/philosophy group and have even found myself being interested and engaged by my professors. It's bittersweet, however, that I have rebounded into this state; I was only able to shake off my depression when I postponed my efforts to make some sort of decision about my future. I am completely immersed in the present, and I seem to neglect the future. Is this a bad thing? I'm not sure. Maybe it's my personality; maybe it's my age. Maybe it's...

No, I won't trail off there like last time. I think the hunger-for-knowledge thing is good. I've been inspired in lots of ways, and possibly I'll find something to do in the future with this new-found inspiration. I'm going to focus my inspiration into making a very short film soon. I'm going to start very basic: basic editing, basic camera shots/angles, no dialogue and possibly no characters nor plot. I don't expect it will be longer than 2 minutes. It will be a start for sure.

I'll have a car by this weekend. That's pretty cool. I put a deposit on it. '98 Maxima. It seems kind of trivial, but being mobilized is actually pretty empowering. I guess I've lived immobile long enough to understand its inconveiniences and hinderances. Hopefully, this too, will open up some proverbial doors for me.

While driving on the infamous New Jersey Turnpike a few days ago, I had two artistic notions at almost the same time. I was in traffic at around 9:30am near exit 13 (right when you start to enter into super-industrial Northern Jersey) and I saw the smokestacks and the beautiful sun interacting with it, and thought that this phenomenon would make an interesting first short film. Maybe expand it to include Jersey's beautiful pollution-inspired sunsets. The progression of the day near the smokestacks would be interesting to look at. The other "notion" came in the form of a poem right after the film idea: the cars were inching along slowly, in traffic, and suddenly a flock of birds flew by and one decided to land on the roof-rack of a minivan. I thought this was somewhat anamolous, so I was inspired to write a poem based on it:

Straying from the Flock


bitty black tweet-tweet
grasping
the roof-rack
of a pale van
on the new jersey turnpike

makes the
frustrated drivers
merry spectators




Being in this state, that is in a state of perpetual hunger for knowledge, makes me sad to spend any time distracting myself from this pursuit. Makes me wish I just went from link to link on wikipedia, gathering knowledge every night, like I did earlier for an hour, instead of dulling my mind playing games and such. Hopefully my dreams will be enlightening...