Upstream of Consciousness wants to be a collection of interviews that only contain answers. I will provide 5 phrases, words, quotes, links, pictures, or videos (in italics) and your consciousness will provide the rest. Responses can be short or long, real or fictional, words, links, or anything in between. In return, each of my "subjects" will give me 1 item back which I will then respond to (under the heading Ripple, with a number next to it). Come, swim for a while.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Ripple (9a)

9a. Love & Life [yosmark]

Oh, dear.

I guess the short reply would be: Thank god I'm turning 23 and not 89 because I know shit about both of these things.

I am going to spend the rest of my life writing the longer reply, but let me take a stab at a beginning.

These are a few of the things I've learned about love and life in my first 23 years.
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I've been drawing a question mark on the inside of my left wrist every day since the beginning of July. I keep thinking that one of these days I'll forget, and the thought will fade, but every morning, or afternoon, or evening, I look at my wrist and I remember. And then, when it is smudged or washed off, I redraw it.

Live the question. It's my new mantra, coming from this great quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter he sent to a young poetry student of his:

"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

It is an odd day when you have a blog full of answers and decide to live the questions. But this is the year I accepted that I don't have all of the answers, for myself or anyone else. And maybe I never will. But that doesn't stop me from living the questions, from asking them and loving them.

This is the year I learned how to live the questions through breaking and fixing, losing and finding, breaking and fixing, losing and finding.

I used to think that love was more about breaking and losing than fixing and finding. That true love was selflessness in the most literal sense. I lost my self in the daughter my parents wanted, the friends my friends needed, the person others told me I should be. I lost my own emotions and thoughts in someone else's and reflected them back. That kind of love is very powerful, in some ways. It's a bond where you find yourself so changed by the presence of another being that you can't separate the two, the change and the person. It's addictive. But it can't sustain, not that kind of love nor that kind of change. Your true self gets angry and resentful and fights like hell to get out.

I think real love shouldn't feel like a fight. It shouldn't feel like you are losing something, or even falling.

There is one example of true romantic love that I think back on this year, and it was of a good friend of mine who was about to marry her boyfriend after 8 years of dating. We were walking, a week before her wedding, and she told me about this cheesy book someone had given her on the "5 languages of love". Her then-fiancé's was "terms of affection", something that surprised her. She looked at me intensely and said, "Right now, we're going to be newlyweds, and we're going to be passionately in love. But it's not always going to be that way, and years from now, when we're older, I'm going to have to remember that, that I have to tell him and not just show him that I love him." And to me, that's what love is. An understanding that things will not always be same, but a series of choices that people make together to grow together and to love each other, whether it is by getting married or remembering to use "terms of affection" or taking care of each other when you get old and cranky.

So much of not only love, but also life is about choices, and learning from them. I make bad choices all the time. But those choices are just as much a part of me as my good choices. I take responsibility for the times I've walked away when I shouldn't have, the times I should have walked away, and I didn't. And then I learn and I grow and I become a better person.

And I spend a good deal of my life laughing at myself. Because really, life is hilarious, and if you don't do at least some laughing at yourself, you're probably doing it wrong.

There is so much in each of our lives that is hilarious and beautiful and worthwhile, that we don't take the time to enjoy or experience, and there is so much in every human being to love.

In that way, I have so much love in my life, because the love I give is love I have.

As for true love, of the romantic kind... I am content for the moment with drawing a question mark on my wrist and living and loving the best that I can.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

yosmark

yosmark is the most awesome Mexican I know, except for the fact that he doesn't make it easy for me to kidnap him. There are other things I can say to attest to his awesomeness, but why don't you find out for yourself by adding him on twitter.

1.



I always get a smile on my face when I see functional technology, even a bigger smile when it is technology that will/could help human beings. This video brought to my mind my future plan of traveling to the USA & specially to The Johns Hopkins University, which will be a remarkable experience and a unique trip. One of the biggest reasons to go to the USA is because Neuroengineering is nowhere around here. I would like to at least have a background before I do (or attemp) my Masters in Neuroengineering also in the USA. I could even go farther & then bring all this knowledge to my country, which is one of my biggest goals.

This is also a bit of a reminder to myself that I have to work hard, there are a shit ton of great minds in the world & if I want to be what I want to be (which is not an average person) I have to put even more effort in everything I do; always trying to do my best, being the first & most of those times achieving it. I had (as you may already know) a little crisis about my education, which after talking to people who I respect a lot went away though it is still there as a reminder that I should never give up nor stop learning new things.

This fight for always doing my best (or at least trying) made me a friendless person in my first semester in my University, not because I am a sneaky bastard who fucks everyone else so he can succed but because this people felt I should share all my homeworks & papers with them, which I considered (and still consider) one of the most stupid ideas ever. Maybe it's because of the culture of lazyness of never doing more than the required.

2. 20
4*5

Years, age & Experience are words that come to my mind all tied together, I believe I have achieved, maybe not a lot of things but at least enough things to feel proud of myself, I haven't "lived my life" as people often say, I mean I haven't went to many partys or rocked out with my friends or maybe even assaulted liquor stores just for fun (I am joking). My point is I haven't done so many "traditional fun" things. I have plans and I want to accomplish them, I just need the time to do them.

3.



That day was filled with good and bad experiences & it was one of the most exhausting days in my life, I didn't sleep before the show, I had two exams the other day and one day before (or two I don't remember) I wrote my first functional program & delivered it to my teacher. I was really exhausted that day, though I had a compromise with Jason of filming the show so he could then extract the audio of the show (which was with this other girl who is pretty big around here named Ximena Sariñana) and put it in one of his collaboration albums as bonus tracks.

It was a sad day because in my first day of University I had to take this class... Inorganic Chemistry (which was like at 16 hrs so by that time I was really tired) class that I shared with this unbelievable cute girl named María, we talked, we liked each other, we enjoyed having long chatts discussing about everything and about nothing. So I decided I should take her to Jason Webley's show, I asked her out, she said she would go, she then cancelled the same night via text message, situation that made me sad; Though seeing Jason Webley live which is maybe my favorite singer/songwriter EVER made me happy. That same night I had my first experience as a roadie, I sold cds & shirts in the Merch Table.

4. noob

That word just reminds me of my n00b days in The Shadowbox, yet another sad situation. I joined the box on Christmas eve. I was all alone and sad in my house, my best friend got her first real relationship which as much as made me happy for him made me a lonley person & due to that I was depressed during that winter, the girl I liked by that moment would state she didn't like me.

That christmas eve I turned on my computer and I began surfing the web, found a link to the forum, joined asked some stupid questions & then left. I then came back & started posting, I filled the space that my best friend left with the internet. I started spending a lot of time on the internet posting. All this internet surfing has made me met really beautiful and great people. It also brings me back to the last Jason Webley, Jason Webley was the first artist I would meet through the internet and the one that has shocked me the most.

Some months later I would hear about Jason comming to México & that he needed help I helped him & one of my friends to make his shows possible. I remember he was interviewed in this University Radio Station... which I then found out was the Radio Station of my Current University.

Now I expect to meet more and more "internet people" to hang out with them & what not. The internet has brought me great friends & great experiences.

5. You Know You Are A Mexican When...

"There is at least one member in your family name Maria, Guadalupe, Juan, Jose, or Jesus"

This is true, I have 1 cousin named María, 2 aunts & my mother are named Guadalupe, Juan is the name of one of my uncles, José is the name of my other Uncle & Jesus is the name of an uncle & 2 cousins.

As much as I am always proud of my country I get really dissapointed at times because of the culture & the thoughts the average citizen has. This stupid "let's do the less we can" thought always make me mad.

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About Me

I am interested in the human condition.