Fall, O Curtain, and Strengthen Thyself Will.

Can I just begin by saying that Palestrina is wonderful? No. Really. The past few days/week have been really stressful and somewhat emotional. Thanks to Concordia's library and some Palestrina masses on CD I think my mind/soul is beginning to recover some semblance of sanity and healing. This post is going to be mostly a rant interspersed with some little peasant-level philosophic ramblings, so ye of the anti-rant camp, abandon ship now. To be honest, although the Oxford thing is thrilling, I don't know, I won't REALLY be excited until it's 100% confirmed, I just have too much experience in things seemingly working out then going sour at the last minute. Insofar as love goes, that's basically the story. I'm not wrong in assuming a 95% failure rate at the whole dating dealy. Not specifically failure, more incompatibility. I don't know, it's the same reaction I have to most 20th century art, philosphy, literature, etc... or to the modern "malaise". I just cannot understand it. I can't understand how people approach the world without the desire for a noble soul, without desiring that through their actions they can re-instate something that seems to be long out of use. No, this isn't narcissicm and I guess I do kind of understand it in a way, it just seems, I don't know, odd. It breeds a kind of loneliness within, a profound one. No, this isn't a cry for pity, and I know that in the everyday sense of the word I'm not lonely in the least. I count myself ridiculously lucky to have the friends I do, and although I don't appreciate them as I should, I love all you guys immensely. I guess it's just that everyone around me is finding love, which is wonderful, and I'm so happy for them, and yet, I just feel like the last kid on the team to be picked. Not to mention the fact that this isn't just a casual hrm, it'd be nice to have someone. Anyone who knows me at all knows that my life is directed solely towards this goal. If you can find one thing I don't do with the notion of self-improvement in mind for the woman of my dreams, I'd love to hear it. It just seems that whenever I find someone and get to know her, although sweet and wonderful, I knwo she's not for me, and that pursuing her would be pointless, not only because there's no chance but because our personalities just wouldn't work. I want to find that woman who I admire incredibly, who not only do I know would be out of my league, but who I know that even one date with would be sooo difficult to obtain. The one who in everything she does points out my own inadequacies, etc... just by being herself. In short, I know that all I'm wanting is the conception of a girlfriend I've had since I was 6, which really was just a childish conception of God as manifested in certain chivalric romances. Anyways, I know that can't exist, but just for once, I want the illusion of the unattainable that would be worth striving for. Then of course, getting to know her and oooh, she's human, duh, and having a HUMAN relationship with her. It just seems that there's I dunno, just this lack of desire for inner nobility throughout the world. CAVEAT- I, in no way, am arrogant enough to be claiming that my soul is noble or above anything, all I'm saying is that I know that I desire a noble and profound soul and hopefully I make some sort of progress towards that every day through a whole slew of activities, but I know that it's a very difficult and almost impossible goal in and of itself. All i'm criticizing here is the lack of desire for it that I seem to see everywhere I look. It just seems that comfort is the be all and end all, and although yes, it is a wonderful thing to be comfortable and to be happy, that there's something above that, something greater, don't ask me what it is because I really don't know. Though I know that love between 2 people doesn't necessarily have to be self-reflexive. It can serve a certain social function. Look at Chelsea and Eric or Britt and Dzido, relationships that really are the fulfillment of that lifelong ideal, relationships that are true and real, but at the same time fueled by this otherworldly happiness and fire. The scary thing is, I know that I think about this too much, well, what do you want, it consumes me and I can't do anything but think of it. I still find it a miracle that I'm in school at all. Focussing is becoming increasingly hard, sleeping an entire night without messed up dreams or waking up is becoming increasingly difficult, etc... It won't get to a real point that affects my life, I' m sure, but I really envy the focus that certain people such as Dan or Langdon can have. They just seem to be so secure, not seemingly tormented (no i'm not "tormented" in the overly exaggerated sense, by tormented I just mean bothered), and I just can't understand it in the least. Not to mention, this whole girl thing makes me feel not only somewhat alone, but also retardedly insecure and ignorant. Everyone in the world seems to have this understanding of how things work, without ever having to consciously articulate it. It's like my friend Carolyn said, my backgammon strategy is really great, and it's taken me 20 years of fighting with experience to get to it, but honestly, it's just commensense in most people from the age of 14 onwards. Final annoyance, and then I'll shut up. There is a girl, at school, who is amazingly gorgeous. Literally, I see her and i'm just awe-struck. But I know, without being pessimistic at all, that A. I should NOT date at the college if I have any bastion of reason left within my little pea-brain at all, B. That I probably would not have the balls to ask her, (I have contemplated a perfumed letter on nice paper, but that tends to make girls head for the hills) and C. that even if I would and even if she said yes, we probably wouldn't click. It's funny really, I pointed her out to a really close friend the other day and she looked at me and was like "Bryan, why are you attracted to the girls that look very "sex in the city" ish?" in other words why am I attracted so much to women whose physical appearance almost (not completely) seems to indicate our incompatibility from the get-go? If you made it this far, thanks for putting up with all this. Don't post any pity comments or anything, this was just a getting outness. I'll be fine. The iron curtain will fall for a bit, and I will be able to redirect all of this into something productive. If that ingenious and noble knight Don Quixote De La Mancha could, then I can too.