Greeting whatever comes next

The night is begun, with the temperatures already approaching an ungodly low. It is barely 6 p.m.; the sun has only just been pushed past the horizon. And yet it is already below 20. For you metric-practicing readers, that is a stark -6; and for the dubiously-extant scientist who might read this, that is a moderate 267 Kelvin.

I came tonight to tell you of some sudden thought that struck me, a thought about the dichotomous natures of human motive. I wish to tell you my thoughts, but as always I don't think it's worth relating. So rather I think I'll keep you up to date, and inform you then of what I think.

A new semester has begun at Boston Campus (I have here linked the school's website, on whose main page you can see me). Mountains of stress accompanied the week, manifest in the multitude of lesson plans and dictating once again to the oft-mutinous kids the importance of their attention.

On top of all this, I have begun to have dreams, of the nocturnal kind, with vague and frequently confusing imagery. Truthfully, sleep has left me, and in its void only a stoniness lays beside me. The solitude of sleep is in its reprieve from the noise I hear daily, that sound I can't escape, like a cryptic conscience with a bullhorn. Deprived of this, I distort strangely.

The only time I ever drink coffee is if I need the caffeine. Yet this week I drank coffee daily.

Such tiredness can make one cranky. I am not given to such outburstings, and instead tend to become even more quiet. As a result, I become more unhappy. This is okay. As must happen, unhappiness leads to reflection, and ultimately, hopefully, to action. I discovered in my time that my thoughts, whose liquidity I have always joyed over, have become illiquid. My mind, my reason, have somehow become solid, and intractable.

If this seems boring, I apologize. But this was fantastic to me, an awakening. I had forgotten myself, in (mis-)adventurous whimsy. Left behind among the rubble and ruin of whatever troubles I concerned myself with understanding, my mind sat undisturbed and vacant. Why? Why did I forget the instrument whose melodies had always sounded so sweet to my ears?

And this brings me to my point of understanding the dichotomy of human motive. I have long seen myself as sincere, as honest. The motive for all human action flows out of two desires: love and pleasure (or to escape their inverses). Whatever may have been my ideas about coming here, and whatever they may still be, I have acted largely on the side of pleasure. I don't mean pleasure in the Biblical sense, which might conjure up images of strange, awkward sin; I am far too simple for such ideas. It has been a period where I have unwittingly attempted to restructure my character. Now I find it is vile.

Except for my sincerity. Here my honesty has been the subject of shock, and even of ridicule. Even as this weird fact frustrates me (I understand the ridicule of ignorance, but ridiculing sincerity is insensible to me), I am thankful for it, for apart from it, I might be left to whatever impulses I could indulge here -- whatever impulses I don't want to follow.