recreation
1/21/14
i was just thinking about how drinking coffee on a morning off is recreational use of caffeine. it's funny the drugs and categorizations thereof that exist. it didn't take me long to realize that drugs were dangerous, and that there was a mental prerequisite as well as a time and a place for such things. i often wonder if pot will be legalized within my lifetime. seems at this point the biggest factor in its stigma is decades of false facts, propaganda, and general ignorance. unfortunately, there will be people who always represent the case against legalization of anything; but people have to be given the opportunity to govern themselves.
in order for me to be a productive member of society, i have to be in touch with who i am as an individual. who i am in the quiet of the day, when i am only surrounded by the mechanical sounds of an occupied apartment.
i was also thinking about how we cannot really know what a person is like alone. in the same way that an observer affects the quantum physical reality, there is no way to be a fly on the wall when it comes to a person in her or his solitary state.
maybe that's the greatest secret each of us has. or maybe it's just where the idea of privacy came from.
if one were to share in detail the events of one's life during the time she or he is alone...aside from being boring (most of the time), then privacy wouldn't exist. i don't know where i'm going with this, but i'm going with it. it's interesting that celebrities are harrassed by the same vehicle that provides them financial success. like people forget that actors are people too, with private lives that they're entitled to keep private. but then, we're a culture of dirty little secrets. we like protecting information that challenges the ideologies we're trying to sell.
when i was a teenager, we'll say 13, i found out that my neighbor's son had spied on me undressing. he and a neighbor friend had both climbed onto the second story of our treehouse, where they had a direct view of my bedroom window. my neighbor claimed that he jumped back down, allowing me privacy in that very intimate moment, but that the other neighbor's son had stood staring. the son was creepy to begin with, so regardless of whether or not they had both watched me, it bothered me that he'd watched me in a moment that i thought i was not under the gaze of anyone.
to be clear: the same son was later discovered to have molested his stepsister(s). he stopped coming to visit his father, my neighbor, so i didn't see him much after that, and i started making sure that my blinds were down when i changed clothes in my room.
but learning that someone had been spying on me left an impression. i started imagining often that someone was watching me. not with ill intent, just out of curiosity. or protection. i liked hearing my mother explain that my dead godfather was watching over me, keeping me from harm. i suppose the idea of "being alone" was challenged from that standpoint, because there could always be some entity i was unaware of peering into my life. and if i had no control over the privacy of my behavior, then it made sense to make sure there was simply a consistency to the ways i acted. and a need for the recognition of the difference between a boy choosing to watch me undress and a boy who admitted to an error in judgement without prompting.
i was just thinking about how drinking coffee on a morning off is recreational use of caffeine. it's funny the drugs and categorizations thereof that exist. it didn't take me long to realize that drugs were dangerous, and that there was a mental prerequisite as well as a time and a place for such things. i often wonder if pot will be legalized within my lifetime. seems at this point the biggest factor in its stigma is decades of false facts, propaganda, and general ignorance. unfortunately, there will be people who always represent the case against legalization of anything; but people have to be given the opportunity to govern themselves.
in order for me to be a productive member of society, i have to be in touch with who i am as an individual. who i am in the quiet of the day, when i am only surrounded by the mechanical sounds of an occupied apartment.
i was also thinking about how we cannot really know what a person is like alone. in the same way that an observer affects the quantum physical reality, there is no way to be a fly on the wall when it comes to a person in her or his solitary state.
maybe that's the greatest secret each of us has. or maybe it's just where the idea of privacy came from.
if one were to share in detail the events of one's life during the time she or he is alone...aside from being boring (most of the time), then privacy wouldn't exist. i don't know where i'm going with this, but i'm going with it. it's interesting that celebrities are harrassed by the same vehicle that provides them financial success. like people forget that actors are people too, with private lives that they're entitled to keep private. but then, we're a culture of dirty little secrets. we like protecting information that challenges the ideologies we're trying to sell.
when i was a teenager, we'll say 13, i found out that my neighbor's son had spied on me undressing. he and a neighbor friend had both climbed onto the second story of our treehouse, where they had a direct view of my bedroom window. my neighbor claimed that he jumped back down, allowing me privacy in that very intimate moment, but that the other neighbor's son had stood staring. the son was creepy to begin with, so regardless of whether or not they had both watched me, it bothered me that he'd watched me in a moment that i thought i was not under the gaze of anyone.
to be clear: the same son was later discovered to have molested his stepsister(s). he stopped coming to visit his father, my neighbor, so i didn't see him much after that, and i started making sure that my blinds were down when i changed clothes in my room.
but learning that someone had been spying on me left an impression. i started imagining often that someone was watching me. not with ill intent, just out of curiosity. or protection. i liked hearing my mother explain that my dead godfather was watching over me, keeping me from harm. i suppose the idea of "being alone" was challenged from that standpoint, because there could always be some entity i was unaware of peering into my life. and if i had no control over the privacy of my behavior, then it made sense to make sure there was simply a consistency to the ways i acted. and a need for the recognition of the difference between a boy choosing to watch me undress and a boy who admitted to an error in judgement without prompting.
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