Welcome to the Random Room

September 20, 1998

Dreams are rather insubstantial things. They have a certain power over you, but only if you allow it. And if you do, the visualization of your goal can be that extra push you need to attain it. Lives are changed by dreams. But what we dream is also changed by the way we live.

I'm very protective about a lot of my dreams. There are some half-awake dreams that I intentionally forget, because they were too familiar or I was too busy to write them down. Of the waking kind I keep a full drawer of old journals and even more boxes of notes and scraps of doodling and pseudo-journals on school notebooks. Now that I'm in college, I have a small folder with some of my important writings and a triple backed-up stack of disks with my current work.

All of that work, aiding the pack rat in my head, stems from one dream, the oldest one I know. I tell people the rehearsed story that it came about when I was six years old, but really I just picked that age. Just as I remember my first memory, of standing on our bamboo porch and looking at the cold red tile of our kitchen, I remember the details but not the date. I was not so preoccupied with time until around fifth grade.

I have the feeling that this dream is much older than six years old. When I think back, it seems to come with the universe.

What dream could enchant me and change me and frustrate me and alter the course of my life so radically? I am a person bursting with possibilities, as we all are in our different ways. Why this path? Why do I remember this so vividly, as vividly as the touch of cold bamboo in the morning?

Now here I am. I've held on to this thing, this scrap of memory for so long that it is a part of who I am. But I know it is only a scrap. A cold wind could blow into my life and it would flutter away. I have to ask myself, is this the price of my life? If I had to change my reason for living, could I do it at all?

I know it's changed.

I came up against the boundaries of my world and myself and the dream changed. When I say our dreams depend on the way we live, I mean that their power comes from us, their timelessness from our ability to adapt to new situations, their strength from our strength expended.

What is it that drives me so?

Does it matter?

For we have been put here on this earth, for whatever purpose, by whatever force, and it is our dreams that separate us from the animals, our dreams that make the wind sing and the leaves alive. It is the pursuit of those dreams, unique to each of us, which defines our lives and defines what it is to be human.

Do you have a dream? A small one?

August 7, 1998

Well, it's been a record eight months since my last entry, and obviously, a lot of things have changed. In the course of weeks I generally take on a different persona, usually from the stress, sometimes from the overwhelming passage of time. This time is somehow different. I'm not just a different persona, my entire point of view is suddenly in limbo.

Let me explain. I look around and I find myself in this strange period, not exactly a child anymore, but not yet an adult. I mean, I expected adolescense to be tough. This unexpected... stability, I suppose, has ironically caught me off balance. I adapted so well to changing all the time, that I didn't keep track of where I was headed.

And now I'm here.

I know I still have a long way to go. I know I've got to publish that first story, get that first job, make it through finals and lost friendships and new friendships and maintaining this silly site. But suddenly the goals aren't other people's or even society's. They're mine. All mine. The phrase in over my head comes to mind.

And I've become increasingly aware of another problem, the price I paid for being so adaptable to life's little insecurities. In all that changing, I didn't realize how much I compromised. They always tell you not to compromise yourself. Well, I think I did just that. To the point where I don't feel guilty anymore. I almost don't feel human anymore.

Some kind of depression, huh? But it's navigable. All I have to do is fasten myself to one thing; focus on one attainable goal. "One step at a time, I'll walk around the world." The problem is more personal than that, literally. The fact that it took eight months to get back to you, invisible readers, says something about its magnitude. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, and recognized the eyes, yes, but not the person who was sitting behind them? That's how I feel.

It's not something other people can help me with. It's a choice. A choice to take the path I want. A choice to forget the guilt and move on to better things. A choice to live like a virtuous person even though I'm not.

And as of now, this moment, I'm not sure what it's gonna be.

© 1998 milesphile@hotmail.com

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