Dreams

Some things never change. I’m wakin up at 2AM more regularly than I’d like to admit and rolling around in my bed by myself asking the important questions. Who am I. What am I doin here. Why does my brain feel so bad. Why did they get rid of courtyard classic at the law school. Ive become so accustomed to this fuckin ritual that if I sleep through the whole night I wake up surprised. And I’m startin to feel like I’m abusing the 30 Rock before bedtime habit. I can’t fall asleep without somethin to calm me down. Sing to me Liz Lemon, rock me to sleep.

In Powell’s absence, shit has gone down and everything sucks again. But that’s the thing, nothing catastrophic has happened. A lot of good shit has happened! School is not crazy stressful (this is untrue, school is going to live and die crazy stressful). I’m workin on some things I care about, and some things I don’t care about. Story of my/your life. I feel simultaneously over and under committed: over for my slacking tastes, under for the sleeper competitive law student in me. I never understand why my inner competitive self ceaselessly fails to realize it is not wanted here. Get outta yere ya dumb bastid.

SO WHAT GIVES

I am tempted to call this out for the bullshit it is. Quantitatively speaking, or whatever the fuck, things should be better this year. Everything is going my way. Figured out life last year? check. Figured out why I’m in law school? check. Summer internship lined up? check. Oh I see. It’s the old “expectations make suckers out of the best of them” trick. I think things should be good, so when they’re not, not only are they not good but I’ve fallen not from 0 to 0, but from 2 to 0. And expectations make you think you’ve got things figured out. When all you have to do is go back and read Powell’s posts, and realize that even back then, I knew I didn’t have shit figured out. See? Damn I was together then. Knowing in my unknowing. How things change, how things fall apart. Thus is life.

Even the best of us fall to shame sometimes.

What do I really think is wrong though? In my heart of hearts. Oh, many things, too many to list here, but one things is that I don’t really know myself. Two things. I don’t know myself, and my imagination’s shot. Dealing with the second, Life is as beautiful and full as you imagine it to be. And if, like me, your imagination needs a kickstart, life is as beautiful as art imagines it to be. Films. Books. Photographs. Don’t give your soul food to grow on and it stagnates and deflates and begins to disappear and you have nothing left to funnel your overactive terror and anxiety into until you realize the terror of life is overwhelming you. You are lying in bed as though you are thinking about whether you will do well on your exams this year, or whether or not you are progressing as well as you might be in climbing, or whether you will keep forgetting to go to yoga this week as well but really you are thinking about life and how hard it is to live it in a way that keeps you from feeling, in your core, that you are afraid of it, that it is too much, that you will fail it in some simple, vital, elemental way. You are a sad and sorry artless self and you are frantically searching for something to give your overtaxed brain meaning as it wakes in the night and, seeing nothing familiar to hold onto in the unnamed and shapeless dark, slips into an unnamed and shapeless fear.

So you look up Kurosawa’s Dreams on Netflix, and you begin to try to climb your way back into the arms of art. The ceaselessly comforting arms of those who see the world as you do, where you do not have to feel (as you do, everyday, in law school) that you are looking at life from inside a child’s cheap plastic kaleidoscope, but that you look at it in the only way there is to look at it. That there is a name for your fear and a name to counter it as well.

Thats all I got for ya this time, I’m gonna try to get back to sleep now.

a work in progress

I told myself Sundays would be my writing days but that shit has not happened. I dunno where my time goes this year. Yeah yeah ok I do. I have meetings, I do reading, I have more meetings, I read some more. And I seem to need so much more fucking sleep. Probably cus I’m running around like a fool all day. Run run run. Pant pant pant. Repeat. So I’m gonna go the old tried and true route of gettin back into the swing of things. I’m gonna review a book. Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy. The final chapter of the Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain. It’s a dooooz.

First, some context.

I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know who I am. This is the familiar refrain, the old monologue. Sometimes I walk down the same road I’ve been down before.

Time is finite (for now…come of scientists, work on this). Although I have two computers with their corresponding two iCals, plus a google Cal, and probably somewhere a moleskin agenda, somehow I have ended up with the same number of days to work with as I had when I started. What gives?

I’m still here in law school cus I believe in what I’m doin (and, lest I get called out, because I don’t want to be destitute – of heart, or of pocket money). But I am learning something I think is useful for the world. I’m gonna get people free. I’m gonna save people’s lives. I will be the guy they call when the shit hits the fan. I will be Johnny Cochran. I will save the OJ Simpsons of the world.

Wait

I will be saving the bad fuckers?

If you don’t want to end up stuck, sometimes you gotta just keep running through the questions until you get to where you think you wanted to be. And you can’t question where you’re going too much, or you’ll lose that momentum and you’ll end up in the doldrums. No gas to your car, no color to your hills. And what do you do to give yourself that push? You believe in something, you believe there’s a purpose to what you’re doing, you believe you’re walkin the right way. And the more doubts you have about that way, the more you gotta believe it’s right to keep going.

I know how the West was won. I know how asking questions slows you down. I’ve been to an occupy meetings. Consensus voting takes forever. So what do we do to get things done? We steamroll the doubts, push past the hesitancies, get ‘er goin quick before our brains have time to catch up with what it is we’re doing.

Back to Cities of the Plain. John Grady wants what he wants when he wants it. What he wants is to get somewhere. He rides his horse over the vast landscape of New Mexico. He crosses the river to Mexico. He wanders, he travels, he lets his mind free. Then he seizes upon something he wants – a Mexican whore – and he doesn’t stop to think about whether his wanting is good for him, for her, for anybody. He knows if he stops to think about it, he’ll stop, he won’t act. He wants to be compelled by something, somethin more powerful than him, somethin that takes him by the heart and leads him down some lonely path, even if that path is to his death, because if something this powerful is leading him – what follows won’t be his fault, won’t be his alone to bear. So he’s reckless. Recklessness is just succumbing to the idea that you’re not in control, that somethin bigger than you controls you. That hand that rocks the cradle. Belief is the idea that we’re not in charge of our lives. And damn you’d be surprised how people hate to feel in charge of their lives. Damn you’d be surprised at how much we cling to the idea that we can be in charge of our lives without destroying ourselves. Gotta find the perfect balance. Pet the puppy Lenny don’t crush it.

I started this post a little while ago, and I’m coming back to it in a different mind frame entirely. Because I don’t want to get stuck on any one post, I want to keep on keepin on, I’ll just let this post sit in its half-baked state and move on to my new thoughts.

Read the book, if only to round out the rest of the trilogy. I can’t tell you much more than that.

I don’t know what to say. I have drifted. One thing I believe is that there is a truth. Funny that I say I am agnostic. Pull up and see my mind from up above and it’s not the mind of someone who doesn’t believe there’s a wrong way and right way. It is all painted in some grand, symbolic, convoluted design that I believe will be translated into the truth, or integrity, on the judgment day I believe will come. I believe there is a right way, and I try to walk it. And I believe that way is false, so I lament myself.

Can you tell I am reading Cormac McCarthy? Can you tell I am assessing my life again. Can you tell I do not know from whence I came, to where I go. The types of truths I hold aren’t good for anything, but they are my own my own my own.

yeesh

oooh someone’s been lazy!

you’re right, it’s me. i’ve been lazy. i’ll pull a lil sumptin sumptin together before i leave, dont you worry. kisses!

whatever man

I take it back, crim pro can kiss my ass.

That’s really not important here. What I want to tell you about is a dream I had the other night. Worst dream of my life. And too bad for yall that this terrible year has leeched any ability I once had to glean even a modicum of insight into my ridiculous thoughts, conscious, sub or otherwise. Leeched it like the motherfucking parasite it is (you know what, fuck you if leeches aren’t parasites) so I’m just going to give it to you straight. I went to bed after about, I kid you not 13 straight hours of trying to figure out what the fuck procedure applies to criminals in the state and motherfucking federal systems, and had a goddamn panic attack about not understanding any of it. And various other things we don’t need to discuss. You know what, if you are a neurotic person, just don’t have kids. Because you know what, they’re going to be neurotic too and do you really want that hanging over your conscious you neurotic fucking ass?

You know, once upon a time, I could deal with my shit because I made dealing with my shit a priority. I prioritized that shit! The goddamn depths I have fallen to.

Anyways, I went to sleep thinking about how I thought I had this subject on lock and really was not so sure about that anymore, and slept terribly, and had this lucid crazy dream about being a serial killer. And that is not the kind of dream you want to have lucidly. I guess it wasn’t really lucid in the way that I felt like I could control what was happening, but shit, it felt like it was me in there. And I was in this dream, experience this incredible cognitive dissonance of presenting myself as a very likeable, innocent, good person, presenting it so emphatically that even though I knew I was doing these terrible things (i.e., killing many people), I couldn’t give up this image. And it was fucked up. Right? Because who am I really.

You know what. I might be intoxicated at the moment so I’m not going to do this dream justice. Not to mention that my brain lacks the ability to analyze anything other than motherfucking legal doctrine. And even then. It’s not so goddamn hot. Who the hell gets drunk off ONE miller light? I do. Jesus Christ. At least that’s good news for my liver, if for nothing else.

Fuck you law school!

2254(e)(2)

you know what, crim pro really is incredible, and i dont even mean that in a fake way, but we have all our lives to talk about crim pro. what’s really incredible is the multiverse. you didnt see that coming. or did you? all eventualities man. somewhere, someone saw it comin. everywhere, everyone saw it comin. nowhere, no one (forgive the doub neg) saw it comin? uh oh, logic snafu. its almost as confusin as federal habeas corpus. who wrote this shit?

i know its adorable when i talk about law. its sooo interesting.

ok but what i really want to know is: what are those moments when you access whats really good? you know those moments im talking about (i mean, i can direct you to those posts that are talkin about those moments that im talking about). the ones where you feel you know what happiness is and what’s true, important etc. and you access the best part of everyone and yourself. wouldnt it be awesome to think about those feelings not as a fleeting emotions that pass through you, but as alternate/parallel universes that you pass through? nawmean? you might not. ive been studying rw’s taxonomy of harmless error for the past like 13 hours so im a little off at the moment. then i guess you run into problems of like what the self is. and we all know those questions are above my paygrade.

neglect!

awww i miss you baby. ill be back with some lovin soon, dont you worry

powells ponderings

but powell, you ask. didnt you pick a hell of a career path for one who wants to think so much of their own personal happiness? ive been wondering that very same thing myself

:-/

The night is when it gets you

I don’t know if I will come out of law school as someone I’ll like. I don’t know if my goal in life should be ‘becoming someone I’ll like’. But I’m not sure it shouldn’t be, either.

filled milk-post

I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff this past quarter. Isn’t it awesome that my reference for time is entirely based on the academic calendar? One thing I’ve learned from Madeleine L’Engle’s treatise on mitochondria, physics and love, A Wind in the Door, is that time is just bonkers. Always you’re thinkin oh I’ll have enough time to respond to that email, I’ll have enough time to read the 5 back copies of the economist sittin on the living room table, i’ll have enough time to center myself and get back to my blog that i haven’t been writing in nearly enough because you know what law school takes a lot of motherfuckin time.

so i would like to talk all about everything, but instead i will talk about nothing. i came up with two really great metaphors this week. itd be better if i could draw it out but who knew macs dont have paintbrush? i actually did know this cus i was trying to draw this picture once so i could send a coded message to someone and not have like, the word “_____” turn up in my email if the feds ever search it. teachable moment: erase your shit. warrants are so two thousand and late. yeah. i see you wordpress. i dont trust you either.

but basically imagine this: a stick figure tryin to hold itself up by its head. or i guess it could be a marionette puppet trying to be its own puppeteer. i guess this metaphor isnt that original.

the second one is this: so basically, someone hands you a puzzle and no directions, and you ask for a key to the puzzle and they hand you another puzzle exactly like the first. and youre like, oh, well, this is unhelpful.

they both stand for the brain!!

i was doin oral arguments this week on this made up case we were workin on in fed lit, based on this documentary, Titicut Follies, about a mental hospital in Massachusetts. And basically, the hospital is pretty questionable, and the doc is supposedly about informing the public about how awful these patients are being treated but in the meantime it shows them naked and bein totally demeaned and force fed and basically showed all the things you wouldn’t ever want someone to know about you if you were in a mental hospital. And I watched the real doc when we started the case quite a few months ago, and I was like, this is crazy, no way, this shouldn’t be shown. But as luck would have it, I was assigned to defend the film company and three months later, was 100% convinced that the film should be shown, it was protected by the first amendment, it’d be good for the patients cus it’d educate the public, and the law was basically on my side.

And i was preparin for my argument and writing my opening statement that i will not lie, was pretty dramatic, and i dont even watch a lot of court room dramas, and suddenly i remembered that i was fucked up in high school. i may have thought about this because this past weekend i was engaging in some herbal refreshments (nestea and the like) and i had some pretty terrible moments realizin that i’m sort of becoming a suit in the small subtle insidious ways and forgetting my roots because, as one of my wisest friends has counseled me time and time again, in order to get power, you gotta go through power. and going through power is not like getting shot in the face you know. its sort of like gettin taken out to eat at really nice restaurants with really good food every night. you start likin it and you stop thinkin about what it was like to not be at really nice restaurants every night and you stop bein able to really feel what its like to not be doin that. and you start only seein the people at the nice restaurants and becoming friends with them and seein how they think about the world, and youre like, ok you guys are all smart as shit, and youre having a good time. but you stop thinking about the people who aren’t eating there and how they think and how they feel and what the world looks like to them. and that is fucked. because they are you. i am you. you are the world.

do you know what i mean though? i know what i mean, thats going to have be good enough for all of us at the moment because i am runnin out of time.

basically, i remembered bein in high school and being scared and sad and worried all the time about bein different and not having any power and not knowin what was going to happen to me and how awful that felt and how that feelin isnt something that just goes away for everyone cus not everyone gets to go to the places that can make you start feeling powerful and stable and like you can be in control of your life and can enable you to figure out that youre not the fucked up one, class structures and racism and homophobia are the fucked up things and youre not weak for feelin scared and vulnerable youre just human. but i remember bein in that place and just feelin awful all the time that everyone was lookin at me and judging me and thinking i was different and like i didnt’ have anything to protect me, not money or coolness or anything. and maybe the lowest point of that time was when i got suspended from high school when i was sixteen cus i was so confused about everything and didnt really understand myself and i got sent to an alternative school where i just felt even more confused and because i had like steel defenses and never talked to anyone about anything, i just felt totally humiliated that i was there. and the only solace was that at least the only other people who knew i was there were the teacher and other kids who were in that same place.

and here i was, arguin for these guys to be broadcast over the world even though theyd be fuckin humiliated, because the law was on my side, and like, whatever, they’re just some guys and it this is the law, it’s the first amendment, it’s art (i know that’s a whole other argument).

and i still dont know what i think the right answer is. ive got one legal answer and one emotional answer and, like more and more of the law i learn this year, i cant reconcile them.

so, i know we cant just live life based on our emotional reactions to things but i also know that just thinkin about what’s legal and not thinking about what’s right and how shit feels to people doesn’t do any good either. and i ALSO know that the only thing telling me whats right or not is my own values, my own judgment, and thats flawed. and whats MORE, i know that the legal answer doesn’t exist outside of its own moral framework, either. a lot of cases just feel like judgment calls, and i dont agree with them. and im tryin to find something other than just my own judgment for why i think they’re wrong, but i can’t yet.

bottom line: the only thing i have to count on to pull me out of a vast moral abyss is my own judgment. the same may be true for you. the same may be true for justice kennedy. yikes. and its pretty fuckin useless because my judgment is just me, and its imperfect and its flawed and it cant pull me out because when i sink, it sinks too. and the only thing ive got to help me figure out my reasoning is my own reasoning, and im not so good at reasoning through that yet.

see? full circle. full loop? strange loop? bad metaphor, thats for sure.