Don’t be afraid.
        —But I’ve never seen a picture you painted or read a word you wrote—
        So what?
        So you’re thirty-eight?
        Correct.
        And have only just finished your second novel?
        Socalled.
        Entitled ee-eye-em-eye? [Eimi]
        Right.
        And pronounced?
        "A" as in a, "me" as in me; accent on the "me".
        Signifying?
        Am.
        How does Am compare with The Enormous Room?
        Favorably.
        They’re not at all similar, are they?
        When The Enormous Room was published, some people wanted a war book; they were disappointed. When Eimi was published, some people wanted another Enormous Room; they were disappointed.
        Doesn’t The Enormous Room really concern war?
        It actually uses war: to explore an inconceivable vastness which is so unbelievably far away that it appears microscopic.
        When you wrote this book, you were looking through war at something very big and very far away? 
        When this book wrote itself, I was observing a negligible portion of something incredibly more distant than any sun; something more unimaginably huge than the most prodigious of all universes—
        Namely?
        The individual.
        Well! And what about Am?
        Some people had decided that The Enormous Room wasn’t a just-war book and was a class-war book, when along came Eimi—aha! said some people; here’s another dirty dig at capitalism.
        And they were disappointed.
        Sic.
        Do you think these disappointed people really hated capitalism?
        I feel these disappointed people unreally hated themselves—
        And you really hated Russia.
        Russia, I felt, was more deadly than war; when nationalists hate, they hate by merely killing and maiming human beings; when Internationalists hate, they hate by categorying and pigeonholing human beings.
        So both your novels were what people didn’t expect.
        Eimi is the individual again; a more complex individual, a more enormous room.
        By a —what do you call yourself? painter? poet? playwright? satirist? essayist? novelist?
        Artist.
        But not a successful artist, in the popular sense?
        Don’t be silly.
        Yet you probably consider your art of vital consequence—
        Improbably.
        —To the world? 
        To myself.
        What about the world, Mr. Cummings?
        I live in so many: which one do you mean?
        I mean the everyday humdrum world, which includes me and you and millions upon millions of men and women.
        So?
        Did it ever occur to you that people in this socalled world of ours are not interested in art?
        Da da.
        Isn’t that too bad!
        How?
        If people were interested in art, you as an artist would receive wider recognition— Wider?
        Of course.
        Not deeper.
        Deeper?
        Love, for example, is deeper than flattery.
        Ah—but (now that you mention it) isn’t love just a trifle oldfashioned?
        I dare say.
        And aren’t you supposed to be ultramodernistic?
        I dare say.
        But I dare say you don’t dare say precisely why you consider your art of vital consequence—
        Thanks to I dare say my art I am able to become myself.
        Well well! Doesn’t that sound as if people who weren't artists couldn’t become themselves?
        Does it?
        What do you think happens to people who aren’t artists? What do you think people who aren’t artists become?
        I feel they don’t become: I feel nothing happens to them; I feel negation becomes of them.
        Negation?
        You paraphrased it a few moments ago.
        How?
        "This socalled world of ours."
        Labouring under the childish delusion that economic forces don’t exist, eh?
        I am labouring.
        Answer one question: do economic forces exist or do they not?
        Do you believe in ghosts?
        I said economic forces.
        So what?
        Well well well! ‘Where ignorance is bliss. .. Listen, Mr. Lowercase Highbrow—
        Shoot.
        —I’m afraid you’ve never been hungry.
        Don’t be afraid.
–e.e. cummings

I'm just gonna leave all this here. Not saying anything, just leaving this here.

Seamus and Dean’s biggest fight was when Dean started dating Ginny.

“Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan had reached the dormitory first and were in the process of covering the walls beside their beds with posters and photographs. They had been talking as Harry pushed open the door but stopped abruptly the moment they saw him.”
—Order of the Phoenix, pg. 195

“It was Dean. Seamus gave a great roar of delight and ran to hug his best friend”
—Deathly Hallows, pg. 258

“Seamus and Dean, who had arrived ahead of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, were now telling everyone what they had seen and heard from the top of the Astronomy Tower.”
—Order of the Phoenix, pg. 195

“Dean and Seamus were already getting into bed”
—Goblet of Fire, pg. 191

     […C]ried Frodo[,] “[…]What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had the chance!”
     “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”
     “I am sorry,” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.”
     “You have not seen him,” Gandalf broke in.
     “No, and I do not want to,” said Frodo. “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death!”
     “Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when it comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not the least[…].”
—J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Ring Sets Out"

For me, there are two symbols going on here. I've often used the notion of trains/subways as a metaphor for depression (the dirt, single traveling; perhaps the prospect of leaving everything and everyone behind, again being singularity). Reading(/art), on the other hand, has always been a Noble Passion. It's education and enlightenment. Thus, the bettering of people and society. Healthy and wholesome, wholly what depression is not.

I would view an image like this as one of the Noble Passions in the midst of our painful world. It's the hope that makes studying and glorifying the arts so necessary and worthwhile. It's what makes living worthwhile.

Yet this image caused me marked confusion.

I have been trying to make sense, for a while now, of the fact that there are elements of my depression I very much enjoy and appreciate (even now, my brain is immediately wondering if that's not some thought influenced and created by the depression or simply some insane idea loftily thought up while the depression isn't that bad at this moment).

This picture (rather surprisingly) elicits such strong emotions from me not because the two symbols contrast each other but because they exist together here.

Yet, behind this, there was always this question of "Why?" As per always, I need to have some reason, to explain it.

As I said before, depression is sickness. It is suffering. It is unhealthy. So why be drawn to it? I can provide an explanation of the beauty in sadness, the way that I think our best natures can come out during suffering, etc.

All of which would be valid. But I think the part that unnerves my need for an explanation of everything is evident in my uneasiness about depression appearing with art as if they belong together. It's that, bluntly, I like it, sans explanations – and, as I've said multiple times, I really shouldn't necessarily.

I imagine it's the same uneasiness I get when liking something simply because it elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia over something that was defensively great (i.e. aspects of my childhood)? Acceptable. Longing purely out of nostalgia? Problematic.

And the reason that it seems so inappropriate for it to feel like these two symbols above go together is because, while I can defend art along such lines as I've done above, I just want to simply like these things.

Maybe it's because it's general; after all, you generally don't just like a book for no reason: I have very specific reasonings as to why The Great Gatsby is the shit. It's that, on some purely emotional level (ugh…), I just want to idolize Art.

While this brings up questions and ideas of its own, it also zeros in on an issue I've been trying to deal with for a while now: I'm tired of running from my depression. I don't mean in that I accept and fully embrace the disorder that will be a lifelong ordeal; I already do that openly, perhaps overzealously. I mean that I accept that it's not only something I partially enjoy for very particular reasons but that it's something which colors the entirety of my world and that I can't understand or experience the world outside of that lens.

Art is beautiful in the environment of that empty train station right before daybreak, when there's near to no one there.

You can see strains of this argument in past entries (third portion): the narrator has to stress that healing is the important thing, at the end. Yet perhaps that too simplifies it. There are aspects of depression I like, even if they may not be healthy for me. And saying that I had to learn to cope with depression always seemed like a diluted argument compared to saying you must heal from it but the former may be reality and it's what I want. I don't want to render myself nonfunctional or in massive pain but I don't want to have to offer explanations for, say, the morbid.

When something means a lot to someone, I think you should share it (I've mentioned this somewhere on this xanga before). And that has inevitably meant that I want someone who can appreciate depression with me.

More than that, I want someone who'll equally understand the religious experience I have with art.

Or someone who thinks going through as many museums as we can get our hands on in the spans of a day is a worthwhile effort.

Or would be piqued by the prospect of going out to a park at 2 in the morning.

Or to stay up all night just analyzing the shit out of everything and anything.

Or really loves hip hop.

Or horror movies.

Or feminism.

Or quotes.

Or, if ze doesn't, ze's at least willing to try to see why I do and tries to be a part of it just as I want to see everything that ze appreciates, and why, because ze's a person with a story and a history and dreams and aspirations and feelings and those are important and interesting.

Okay, so maybe I can't quite divorce myself from needing an explanation for things. But I think the reason why this no-explanation buisness arose is that there is clearly an emotional, non-explanational, aspect (even if elicited by a logical reasoning) of all this.

And I want someone to have, or try to have, that same emotional reaction to these things that I do. Because they're important to me.

And they are how I see this world.

     The Wart was fond of the Dog Boy, and thought him very clever to be able to do these things with animals—for he could make them do almost anything just by moving his hands—while the Dog Boy loved the Wart in much the same way as his dogs loved him, and thought the Wart was almost holy because he could read and write. They spent much of their time together, rolling about with the dogs in the kennel.
     The kennel was on the ground floor, near the mews, with a loft above it, so that it should be cool in summer and warm in winter. The hounds were alaunts, gaze-hounds, lymers and braches. They were called clumsy, Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra, Apollon, Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby, and Diamond. The Wart's own special one was called Cavall, and he happened to be licking Cavall's nose—not the other way about—when Merlyn came in and found him.
     "That will come to be regarded as an insanitary habit," said Merlyn, "though I cannot see it myself. After all, God made the creature's nose just as well as he made your tongue.[…]"
—T. H. White, The Once and Future King, "The Sword In the Stone" (http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/tsihvone/Once%20and%20Future%20King/Incipit%20Liber%20Primus.html)

     I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress- and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other. 
     "Gratulate me," she muttered. "Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it."
     "What's the matter, Daisy?"
     I was scared, I can tell you; I'd never seen a girl like that before.
     "Here, deares'." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em down-stairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say: Daisy's change' her mine!"
     She began to cry- she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Holden wanted to be the catcher in the rye.

I think, if I were to replace the life I had now, I'd be that guy who catches and holds the elevator door for you right before it closes when you're rushing at the last minute to an interview or meeting. I'd be the random guy who sparks up a meaningful conversation with you when you're on the train or waiting for the bus, etc. on a day which wasn't going well for you/where you felt under-appreciated and is genuinely interested in what you have to say. I'd be the guy to loan you the extra five bucks or so you need when in line or trying to catch a cab.

Basically, my only job would be to go from place to place helping in small ways. You'd see me for probably no more than 5 minutes before I'm off to help someone else, would just remember me as some kind stranger restoring your faith in humanity. I think I could be content if that was all I had for a life.

I feel that I don't do enough for my friends (though they'd - or at least some would - probably gainsay that). I just feel terribly ineffectual (though an inability to properly be on top of my work since I started college probably aids none to this continual feeling). Regardless, I could do more.