I'm an Aries

And this, THIS is exactly me. It's from a post about fire signs from a more than slightly disreputable-looking astrology website :

You may have met that common-fire sign propensity to make vast Himalayan peaks out of perfectly ordinary molehills. It wasn't just a little disagreement, it was a Holocaust. It wasn't a nice film, it was Wonderful, Brilliant, Mind-Shattering. The overwhelming and contagious enthusiasm of the fire signs is hard to resist; so, too, is their anger. Fire signs often exaggerate their behaviour, dramatize it - even when they are alone. They aren't just spoiled brats trying to attract your attention. They need this fantasizing, this injection of brilliant colour and sound into the grey and banal fabric of what the world is constantly insisting is reality. Fire is not interested in the pragmatic approach to life. Take away a fire sign's fantasies and visions of how life might be, and you have crippled them. It is, truly, that serious. If there's one thing sacred to the fire signs, it is their dreams.

Marcus Aurelius

Do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul; but later thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of respecting and honoring thyself. For every man has but one life. But yours is nearly finished, though in it you had no regard for yourself but placed thy felicity in the souls of others. . . . But those who do not observe the impulses of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

Goethe

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."

YES

From awhile ago

"What Makes Us Happy?", is an article that was published by The Atlantic in June of 2009. Like the title suggests, the article is about happiness: who has it, how we get it and how we cope with life when we don't have it. I read the article when it was published about a year ago but for many reasons, its findings have seemed increasingly relevant to my life. The piece investigates humans' relationship to happiness by 1) summarizing the findings of a longitudinal study of 268 male Harvard graduates who were followed from their sophomore year in college up until their deaths and 2) exploring the mind and personal life of the study's longtime director, George Vaillant. I highly recommend the article to anyone-- it's one of those pieces that provides essentially insight into how you live your life on a daily basis. I can say with 100% certainty that reading that article has improved my quality of life. In particular, the insight provided in the quoted section below has been especially useful:

"Vaillant explains defenses as the mental equivalent of a basic biological process. When we cut ourselves, for example, our blood clots—a swift and involuntary response that maintains homeostasis. Similarly, when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp. And just as clotting can save us from bleeding to death—or plug a coronary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemption or ruin. Vaillant’s taxonomy ranks defenses from worst to best, in four categories.

At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or “psychotic,” adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else. One level up are the “immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. “Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.” The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)."

I mostly function at the "normal" level but I remembering that the goal is the "mature" level helps me on a daily basis.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/

I don't want to be me right now

so I can I possibly want you?

5 and a half months in...

...and I finally found my theme song for 2010. "In a Mellow Tone" sung by Ella Fitzgerald perfectly evokes the way I’ve been living and the way I plan to carry out the rest of this 24th season of my life.

In a mellow tone
Feeling fancy free
And I'm not alone
I've got company

Everything's ok
The live long day
With this mellow song
I can't go wrong

In a mellow tone
That's the way to live
If you mope and groan
Something's gotta give

Just go your way
And laugh and play
There's joy unknown
In a mellow tone

(scat)
In a mellow tone
(bridge)

In a mellow tone
Feeling fancy free
And I'm not alone
I've got company

Everything's ok
The live long day
With this mellow song
I can't go wrong

In a mellow tone
That's the way to live
If you mope and groan
Something's gotta give

Just go your way
And laugh and play
There's joy unknown
In a mellow tone
In a mellow tone
In a mellow tone

They are the type...

...to charm the pants off the rest of us, if we're lucky.

Quotables from The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Reading this was like falling in love. It made me want to be a better person.

"As for me, I implore fate to give me the opportunity to see beyond myself and truly meet someone." Renee, page 145

"Never in my life have I felt so at ease. How can I explain? For the first time, I feel utterly trusting, even though I am not alone. Even with Manuela, to whom I would gladly entrust my life, I do not have this feeling of absolute security that comes when one is sure that understanding is mutual. Entrusting one's life is not eh same as opening one's soul, and although I love Manuela like a sister, I cannot share with her the things that constitute the tiny portion of meaning and emotion that my incongruous existence has stolen from the universe." Renne, page 225. I love the sentiment of this whole passage but this, THIS is genius: "the tiny portion of meaning and emotion that my incongruous existence has stolen from the universe." That phrase is the essence of human individualism, aspiration, and meaning.

"What is both confusing and astounding about Kakuro Ozu is that he combines a sort of childish enthusiasm and candor with the attentiveness and kindliness of an old sage. I am not accustomed to such a relationship with the world; it seems to me that he views it with indulgence and curiosity, whereas the other human beings I know display either weariness and kindness (Manuela), ingenuity and kindness (Olympe) or arrogance and cruelty (eveyone else). Such a combination of eagerness, lucidity and magnanimity is delightfully unusual." Renee, page 228

"This pause in time, within tine... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is possible only with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship... When did I first feel so blissfully relaxed in the presence of a man?" Renee, page 277 (THIS IS LOVE)

Andre Benjamin

Outkast's "sensitive half" is my celebrity pass. All Dre would have to do is ask.