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A couple years ago I can remember thinking to myself that I wanted to make it my goal to thoroughly understand the meaning of art. Like, to compress my understanding of it into some little concise definition. It was just this huge vague idea that I was sort of aware of, and I believed that the human urge to create things was this intensely positive motivating energy or something. It was like my idea of God. It tied in with this whole thing I had with destruction and creation and shit which was really pretty underdeveloped and juvenile, but basically I thought that art could "save" people.

I guess really when I look back on myself a few months ago that was a really central thing in my mind, that there was some way or some series of actions or something that would unlock something in a person and allow him or her to be "saved." I guess it was easy for me to believe that because I felt so shut off from everything. It's easy to be optimistic when you're hiding from everything that could possibly make your life any better. You just convince yourself that if only you could make it over these few little hurdles, this whole world would open up to you and everything would be perfect.

I feel like the past few months were a preparation for something that's never going to happen. I spent some time alone with myself and away from the rest of the world, and I felt like that was good for me because it gave me time to re-examine some things and form some new opinions and build my courage, and now that I'm trying to draw on that experience and use it to propel myself forward, I just keep hitting dead ends. I guess I didn't realize how romantic and idealistic most of my ideas about things were until recently. It's like every sacred cow I ever had is being systematically slaughtered, and I just have absolutely nothing to fall back on. The more I learn about things, the less I want to know. Every time I turn around, some warm, comforting idea that I used to just take for granted turns out to be a total crock of shit. It's like I'm having a nightmare and I can't wake up.

Fuck. I'm not even thinking straight, I always have a problem doing these things now because I know that other people actually read the shit that I post here for some reason, and so I'm self-conscious. Go away and let me think for Christ's sake.

I just feel so tired. All my energy is gone. I feel like I've made progress over the past year, but I know that a person's mind can be tricky sometimes, and I guess I'm a little afraid that maybe instead of moving forward, I've actually been moving backward and just don't realize it. I'm less afraid now than I used to be, but I'm also less happy. Or maybe not less happy, but less content. I can't just shut myself off like I used to, there's just this constant, persistant awareness of how stupid and empty everything around me is, and I just don't feel like I can keep living like that. It's not even anything specific, it's just everything. I mean I could deal with bad things happening to me and shit, but I feel like I've spent my whole life hunched over with my head down, trying to avoid looking at things, and now I've finally started doing it and it's like there's just nothing that's even worth seeing at all. And that feeling is worse than the feeling of being afraid to look.

That's what I meant in that bratty entry a few days ago when I said that my life sucks "more than yours," because my life is just totally static and dead. Nothing is happening inside or around me at all. And it's not like it's just because I'm being lazy (although I am), there's just nothing that interests me enough to make me want to participate. Whenever I think about doing anything, my brain just automatically goes through some variation of a thought process that ends with my wondering why I should bother doing that, and what the fucking point would be.

Anyway. I've gotten off track. What I was saying about art is that I used to have faith in it. I used to have this idealistic notion that art and creation and sharing of ideas between people and shit was the key to happiness and fullfilment for everyone involved. I used to believe that about a lot of things, I guess because I needed to believe that that fairy tale bullshit was really true, and that my life would start out with all this unhappiness and pain and struggle, and then I would have some revelation, or come into contact with some magical person or thing, and the whole thing would have this happy ending. So whenever I was having a bad time or something went really wrong, I would fall back on those things and go, "Yes, but there's always My Potential Future as a Famous Writer" (something that I don't even think I really want anymore), or "Yes, but there's always The Ongoing Artistic and Political Heritage of Film," or "Yes, but there's always True Love," or some similarly corny, nonexistant idea or future event, and that would placate me and make me feel better, and I could forget about it and move on.

But see, I've really fucked myself up now, because I've taught myself not to approach things with that kind of attitude anymore, like, "this bothers me, but I won't think about it, because it makes me uncomfortable." I mean everybody obviously does that sometimes, but it's like I'm kind of on the lookout for it now, so when I catch myself doing it, I try to put a stop to it. The point, though, is that lately, all the things like that that I used to think about - all of which I envisioned happening either very far away from me, or in the very distant future - are starting to look less and less real and important. People invent things that they can have faith in, and little distractions and games to play with themselves and with each other so they can convince themselves that their lives have meaning.

The thing about this is that I don't feel like this is some chemical thing that's happening in my brain, I've been taking my medication and shit and I don't really have that feeling that I tend to have when I'm depressed. Or at least I don't think I do, I guess when you're like that you're kind of out of it and don't realize what's going on. But it's like I'm just seeing this emptiness more and more, everywhere I look, and it's just such an ugly thing to have to live with that I've been casting around frantically trying to find something to latch onto that will refute it, and it's just not happening.

So it's not so much that I'm in all this pain and shit and want to die or anything, but it's like I just can't see any reason to stay alive. I can't see any reason not to die, either. I don't believe in any of that afterlife/reincarnation bullshit. That's not how shit works. Living beings are composed of energy, and when we die, that energy is re-released into the cosmos. It makes no sense for that energy to leave the body intact and travel somewhere as a solid mass, or for that exact same mass of energy to be transplanted into some other physical body. When you put a drop of food coloring into a bowl of water, it doesn't just float around in a little ball, it spreads out and blends into the rest of the fluid that's already there. If you stick an eyedropper into that same bowl and suck up a few drops of liquid, it won't be red and it won't be clear, it will just be a mixture. It may not be very comfortable to believe that your consciousness will cease to exist when you die, but you have to admit that, scientifically, that's really what makes the most sense.

Anyway, I've gotten off track again. What I'm saying is that I'm not feeling overwhelmed or irrational about it, I've just been sort of calmly, intellectually contemplating my own death lately, and that's something I've never really done before. I believe I can say with conviction that I would like very much to die. I don't like being where I am, I see no other, more practical, or more efficient means of escape, and I don't think it makes any real difference whether I continue to exist or not.

This is becoming really meandering and repetetive so I'll stop.

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