Entry 000158; 02.16.03

This is the entry that has no time reference to where I am right now.

About a week ago, I was thinking of nightmares. I realized I have two basic categories of nightmares. One of them I am not going to go into right now. The other kind circles around things happening that can't be undone.

I've always been a big practitioner of carefulocity. I rarely ever do ANYTHING that I can't reverse. All of my actions are planned out in full, I don't do anything that I think I can't get out of. I would say "never" but I don't want to put the effort into thinking about it enough to make sure that's not a lie. That's all good and well that I have these insurances set up, but I've come to realize that it's all pretty much completely useless.

Back to the idea of the dream for a moment - little things happen. My teeth break, or fall out. Sure they can put in fake teeth, but losing or breaking your teeth really can't be truly reversed. People die, I lose my job, my home, my education. I lose limbs, fall into ravines, everything and anything that has no opposite action to reverse it. Mostly, for some reason, it's the teeth and limbs that really freak me out. Maybe I'm too vain.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. The fact is that even though I am too lazy right now to think about whether I truly have never done anything that can't be reversed, I am not too lazy to think about any time where it has ever mattered. I keep telling myself that it's good that I'm careful, and even if it hasn't made a difference yet, it will someday. But I really, logically, believe that that's all bullshit. Not once ever have I said to myself "Oh whew thank god I spent those months thinking of ways out of this before I started." nor have I ever thought "Well thank god I gave that person 50000 million chances to break that evil habit of thiers. They sure have changed."

I'm starting to realize that no one changes. That the best way of entering some strange, foriegn, or scary action is not to think about the consequences and the ways of getting out of it, but to just jump in and cut losses when they happen. So far as I can tell, the only things that being so careful would ever help me out in is commiting crimes, and quite frankly, I'm far too careful to commit crimes because they can't be undone.

I had a similar theory over a year ago, when I decided to throw caution and what I believed to be fate to the wind and drop out of WPI and try to date guys that aren't Nathan. I even wanted to get a tattoo. However, I knew in the back of my mind that even if Photography didn't pan out, I could always go back and be an engineer. What I did didn't take any courage at all, nevermind as much as I thought I would need to do it. As for Nathan, well frankly I didn't try very hard with anyone but him. And that tattoo? Without even thinking about it, I based my tattoo-ing circumstances on Alicia. I mean really. Alicia never shows up for anything. You can always depend on her to be completely undependable. Why didn't I think of the fact that Alicia would always bail out on me when we planned on getting tattoos together? OR perhaps I did, in the back of my brain.

Yeah, sure sometimes I'll be sitting in class, or studying outside the darkroom and I'll just be hit with a sudden "WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?!" But I'm almost sure that everyone has those occasionally. This little flash is always accompanied by a floaty feeling of disembodiment. Like I feel like I'm someplace that really should be impossible for me to be, like say sci-fi beamed with my arm stuck in a wall.

Unfortunately, those are always followed with a "well if it doens't work out, you can always go back." Unfortuantely that ruins the entire point. If I can go back then there is no substance to what I am doing here.

So far, the only thing that is an argument for continuing my regiment of careful thoughfullness and planning is all the morals to those goddamn children's books and cartoons I used to read. I'm brainwashed. And yeah, I think fighting the grain did change things, but they didn't change as in re-routing a new course. They just kind of pushed me back to where I was going in the first place, and made the entire journey to whereever my end destination is a bit...tougher. And there is some work there that I'm looking for that probably doens't exist in english, the best I can think of is "tough" but it's more of that feeling you get when you're riding with one wheel on the rumble strip and you keep trying to pull off but there is this force that urges your tire to keep right on in the rough.