sleepless nights and city lights… (if you’re curious as to what I want, read this post.) June 1, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts.Tags: life, love, sleepless nights and city lights, Thoughts
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Here is exactly, precisely, what I want. Nothing more, and nothing less. I know that there are other things that should probably be taking precedence right now, but right now? In this moment? I don’t care. I really, really don’t care. So, that being said (or typed, in this case), here is what I want.
I want it to be an overcast, brisk, slightly chilly day, with the smell of rain in the air. The kind of day that most people, for reasons unknown to me, find depressing, but that I find liberating and exhilarating. I want to meet her at a coffee shop, along with a few friends. When I arrive, I want to get to see her break out a big smile. I want to hug her lovingly, in a way that envelopes her with warmth and suggests strength and intensity but also kindness and tenderness. I want to play with her hair during the hug, close my eyes, and completely forget where I am. Then, after a few minutes of conversation and of catching up with friends, I want to stand up, walk over to her, lean down with a smile on my face, place my hand on her shoulder, and discreetly request that she excuse herself from the main group, so that the two of us can talk privately. Then, I want her to accompany me to a corner of the room, away from everyone else, so that all other conversation sounds distant and muted. I want to focus only on her. I want to move two chairs close together, so that we can sit facing each other, but still be quite close. I want to lean forward, take her hands in mine, look up at her, and just gaze. Just gaze … for however long. Seconds, minutes, hours … I don’t care. The kind of looks that sometimes say more than words ever could. Then, I want to look straight at her, see that her eyes are stunning and that they are like windows and mirrors simultaneously, and say, in a low, soft, but still fervent, affectionate, and passionate voice, “I love you.” I then want to kiss her twice: once on her forehead and once on her lips.
Emotions, and what they do to me. May 13, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts.Tags: emotion, life, love, Thoughts
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I think I’ve figured something out about myself.
I think that the potency of my emotions sometimes carries me to the point where I think and feel too much for my own good.
Last night, I was at Barnes & Noble, completely engrossed in a book of love letters, when I noticed this girl sitting across from me. I don’t know why, but I was immediately struck by how beautiful she was and I had a hard time stopping myself from staring. She had mild, warm skin tones, inquisitive eyes, long, gorgeous auburn hair, and she was wearing a long white skirt that looked fantastic on her. She looked elegant, intelligent, and stunning, all at the same time.
Well, I eventually was ready to leave, but I had this incredible urge to go say something to her. So, I went up to her and said, “Excuse me – I don’t mean to bother you, and I don’t want to seem rude, but I couldn’t help noticing you, and I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re beautiful. It does everyone good to be reminded of that, and you’re beautiful. Just know that.” She smiled at me and said “Thank you”, but she was clearly taken a bit aback, so I smiled back, turned, and left. I exited the building to walk to my car, and I had tears in my eyes by the time I got to it. I don’t even know why, and this might not make any sense, but I already wanted to talk to her more, and to hear about the book she was reading, and about what she thinks and feels, and about what was on her mind, and what was worrying her, and what I could perhaps help with, and I just broke down. So, yeah, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do or think anymore, but I’m pretty sure, going back to the first couple of sentences of this post, that I feel too much. And the crazy part – the part that really might not make any sense – is that I wouldn’t ever change that about myself. I don’t think that I would even consider it, actually, if I were given the opportunity. So, I guess I just have to deal with it, and take the good with the bad. I really don’t know. I don’t think there’s a “right” or “wrong” answer – there’s just me, and all I can do is do the best that I can. I do, however, know this with certainty: I’ll take “feeling too much” over “not feeling” every single time.
I just can’t help myself, and I don’t know what else to do other than to feel, and try to make sense of everything from there. Emotion is my reference point.
A Love Letter May 9, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts.Tags: emotion, life, love, love letter, relationships, soulmate
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Dear Soulmate,
I want to love.
I want to give so much love that it disorients the people who receive it. I want to love so much that it makes people question my sincerity, only to pleasantly surprise those same people when they realize that I mean it.
Most of all, I want to shock someone with love, and I want that someone to be you. I want to love you to such an extreme that it becomes life-consuming. I want to love you so much that you end up being spoiled completely and totally rotten. And I don’t mean “spoil” as in “mess up” or “deface” – I mean “spoil” as in “absolutely redefine what it means to treat someone like an angel and seek, every day, to lay waste to their previous definition of happiness and force them to try to generate another one”. And, honestly, I don’t even want you to be successful at that – I want to love you to the point of rendering you speechless.
I’ll wait as long as I have to for you, sweetheart. Just, please know that I’m here, and that I won’t ever give up on you. I can’t, because even though I might not even know you yet, I love you. I love you more than anyone else has ever loved anyone, and you have absolutely no idea how excited I am to, one day, be able to show you. I want to fall into you so deeply that the outside world completely loses relevance for me, because you are my world. You are all that I am, and all that I will ever be.
Love beyond all boundaries,
Jordan
Personality Types, according to Helen Fisher (I’m a Negotiator) March 25, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Books, Thoughts.Tags: Thoughts, life, love, relationships, Books, personality type, personality test, Helen Fisher, Why Him? Why Her?
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I checked out Helen Fisher’s latest book a few days ago, titled Why Him? Why Her?, and I found it really interesting. In it, she goes over some of the biological reasons behind why we fall in love with some people, but not with others. She also touches on the “nature vs. nurture” debate, and how, for quite some time, the “nurture” side (how we are raised, our parents, the environment we grow up in, etc.) was thought to play a pretty significant role in determining our relationship preferences. Ms. Fisher doesn’t seek to dismiss that school of thought entirely, as that stuff obviously affects us to a certain extent, but she discusses at length some of the new research that’s been done on body chemistry, and how it’s become more and more obvious that a large part of who we are, as far as personality and temperament goes, is determined by the “nature” side. (Wow, that last sentence had FIVE commas. Nice.)
Through the research she’s done, there are four main personality types that she’s defined. Almost everyone has traits from all four types, on some level, but there are one or two that are usually at the forefront, and she has designed a personality test that can measure how strongly you exhibit tendencies of each of the four. There are fourteen statements for each of the four types, and you’re measured on how strongly you agree or disagree with each of them.
There’s the Explorer, who usually tends to rely on his/her impulses. Explorers are the closest personality type to what people usually call “adrenaline junkies” or “thrill seekers”. While the Builder, another of her personality types, generally finds comfort and relaxation from routine, Explorers are just the opposite – they thrive off of spontaneity, and they feel stagnated by nearly any sort of predictable, repetitive activity or routine. They are enthusiastic, optimistic, sexual, open-minded, and eager. They love trying new things, and are always up for an adventure.
There’s the Builder, who usually tends to rely on his/her values. Builders have a clear idea of what they do and do not agree with, and they conduct themselves based on that. Their values are the most “traditional” of the four personality types, and they view most long-held customs or traditions as good indicators that should be followed. Family is almost always a big priority. Ms. Fisher designated this type as the “Builder” for pretty obvious reasons – they are the primary “building blocks” of society, and Builders treasure and seek out stable environments for themselves and their loved ones.
There’s the Director, who usually tends to rely on his/her logic. Directors shoot for the stars, and, when they know what they want, they go after it with everything they have. They value getting to the point and speaking directly, and they normally don’t have much patience for procrastinating or for doing things that aren’t directly related to what they’re trying to take care of. They understand complex machines fairly easily, and are interested in seeing how things work, or in seeing rules and procedures that govern systems. Directors look at the world from a fairly scientific perspective, and, as such, are open to new ideas, just not new ideas that lack support, evidence, or justification.
Last, there’s the Negotiator, who usually tends to rely on his/her intuition. If the Director looks at the world like a scientist, the Negotiator looks at the world like a philosopher. Every topic or thought, no matter how big or small, can be dissected and looked at from multiple angles. Negotiators are emotional, passionate, empathetic, romantic, and nurturing. They also have the most idealistic view of love and romance – they would rather live alone than be in an unfulfilling relationship, and they are enchanted by the idea of true love, and of a soulmate. Being connected to and invested in others is part of what makes life worth living for Negotiators, and they find it hard to maintain interest in a relationship (romantic or otherwise) that doesn’t allow them to find common emotional ground.
So, I took the test, because I had become quite curious about what kind of results I would get, and because I had gotten a rough idea about where I would fall, and I wanted to see if I was right. (I was.) You’re scored on each of the fourteen statements on a scale of zero, one, two, or three, based on how strongly you identify with the statement. This is repeated four times, so that at the end of the test, you have four numbers between zero and forty-two, each of them corresponding to how much you agreed with the overall set of statements for each personality type.
For the Explorer set of statements, I scored in the mid-twenties – twenty-four or twenty-five.
For the Builder set, I scored lower – about twenty or twenty-one.
For the Director set, I scored almost identically to how I scored on the Builder set – about twenty.
For the Negotiator set? My score was almost the maximum score possible, which is forty-two. I think I was at thirty-eight or thirty-nine. I immediately had a strong positive reaction to almost every one of the statements – stuff like “I enjoy it when an author takes a sidetrack to say something beautiful or meaningful”, “After watching a particularly emotional film, I often still feel moved by it several hours later”, and “I like to get to know my friends’ deepest needs and feelings”. Moreover, when I read the chapter specifically about Negotiators, I caught myself agreeing with just about everything, and thinking, “That totally sounds like me!”
you know how I would love to spend tonight? perhaps more than any other way I can think of? March 15, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts.Tags: beautiful, dinner for two, love, relationships, romance
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Twilosophy in defense of S.M. March 8, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts, Twilight.Tags: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Forks, Kristen Stewart, love, relationships, Robert Pattinson, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Twilight Moms, Twilosophy
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I’ve recently come across a few blog posts from people seeking to defend Stephenie Meyer’s writing from those who seek to discredit it, and that got me thinking. I was also exchanging Twilosophy thoughts with a friend over e-mail the other day, and she asked me what I thought the “lure”, so to speak, of the series is, and why so many people (mainly girls) find it nearly impossible to stop reading the books once they start. She thought, perhaps unsurprisingly, that a lot of it had to do with Edward, and I’m sure that’s certainly part of it. There’s a lot more going on than just him, though, as far as the initial attraction to the series is concerned. I think that the Edward fascination is a byproduct of other, more basic things that draw people (mainly girls) into the story, like the dynamics between he and Bella and all the different motifs in play there. The story is sort of a cocktail of several different elements that young girls – well, any young people, not just girls – can relate to.
It’s first love and forbidden love mixed together, and I think that combination is what excites so many girls and draws them in.
For Bella, all the feelings and emotions she experiences after she meets Edward are completely and totally alien to her – she knows that she’s falling for a cute boy, so it’s not like she’s not an idiot, but her mind and her body have no idea what to do with any of that, or how to process it. It’s a huge tidal wave of hormones and emotions mixed together, and at first, it’s a sensory overload, like towards the beginning of Twilight when she’s not even sure why she can’t stop thinking about him. It doesn’t make any sense to her, because, despite all that she’s probably heard from other girls and all the movies she’s seen, she herself has never had anything like that happen to her. All of that, of course, is instantly understandable by any girl with a pulse, and Twilight being written from Bella’s perspective, from that of a girl, also has a lot to do with it. They understand exactly what Bella’s going through and why every single word, or gesture, or expression, is weird and unfamiliar and scary and sexy and exciting.
Also, from Edward’s perspective, she is his first love as well! Of course, when they first meet, it’s a bit more complicated for Edward, since he, unlike Bella, knows why she is drawn to him and why he, at least initially, wants her (and her blood) so badly. That’s where the forbidden love idea comes into play. There’s an amazing amount of chemistry and electricity between the two of them, and yet the one guy Bella is falling head over heels for is also the one guy who has to caution her about getting too close to him. It’s likely that no other guy at Forks High School would do that, but Edward has to, because of how dangerous it is for the both of them. That element of forbidden love, of course, is like a superconductor for the electricity and the sexual tension between them, and that’s why some girls can’t help but start screaming incoherently whenever they’re asked about Twilight, because they’re the exact same as Bella! They, in some cases, have no idea what to do with those feelings yet either, and they relish reading about even the most minute interaction between Edward and Bella, especially in the first book, because, to them, there’s no such thing as a minute interaction!
It annoys me when guys (or whoever, really) direct ill will towards the books, and Twilight specifically, for being too descriptive and lingering too much on the seemingly insignificant details of Bella and Edward getting to know each other. They like to point out that the book, for almost the first 400 pages, is nothing but the two of them talking. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT! That’s exactly why so many girls love it! Those people that speak against it for those reasons, apparently, have never been teenagers, or in love for the first time, because when you’re in that situation, NO detail is insignificant! Every single thing, no matter how small, feels important on an earth-shattering level! That’s one of the things I loved about the movie – in interviews, RPattz and KStew talked about how they didn’t want to play their roles like they were kids from the Disney channel. They really wanted to get into them, for real, and they spent hours on set talking about vampires and what it would be like to be in love with one. They took it extremely seriously, which, in my opinion, was absolutely the right way to go. And you can see it come across like that in the movie. They got that right, because, to their target audience (young girls), there’s nothing in the world more serious than being in love! Also, while I’m rambling, I also think it’s stupid and insensitive that some people roll their eyes at the “Twilight Moms” and just dismiss them – I think it’s awesome that they can get into the story too. They like it for precisely the same reasons as the teenagers do, and there’s nothing wrong with that! Love, and the ability to be fascinated by the dynamics behind it, has no age limit!
As far as I’m concerned, like what the “lure” is, I like it for some of those same reasons that I just mentioned. I oftentimes can relate to girls’ emotions just as well as I can with guys, if not better, and I find it fascinating reading about why the story has touched so many different girls in nearly every conceivable situation. I love that so many have been captivated by the story and by Edward and Bella’s relationship. Also, I don’t think it’s at all crazy that some women speak of raising their real-life standards for relationships because of a fictional one. It’s a beautiful story, and people need reassurance that it’s okay to let yourself sometimes get a bit wrapped up in the idea of what you want love to be for you. The world around us is entirely too cynical about that, and life is entirely too short to settle for anyone less than someone who gives your heart wings and makes you feel like you can fly. That’s what those books are ultimately about, in my opinion. Stephenie Meyer likes to describe them as “vampire books for people who don’t like vampire books”, and that’s not a bad way to put it. However, for me, the glue that keeps everything together – the thread that sews it all up – is the purity, love, fascination, devotion, care, and mutual appreciation shown in Edward and Bella’s relationship.
for your mental. February 28, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Quotes.Tags: Erich Fromm, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ghostface Killah, Jean Baudrillard, love, Love Actually, philosophy, Quotes
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“Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton — well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.” – Erich Fromm
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert, and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them: the mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.” – Jean Baudrillard
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“I don’t give a fuck if you don’t know what I’m talking about – this is art. When you go see a painting on the wall and it looks bugged out because you don’t know what the fuck he thinking, because he ain’t got no benches, no trees there, it’s just a splash. The nigga that did it know what the fuck it is.” – Ghostface Killah
mushroom ravioli. January 3, 2009
Posted by Jordan in Movies, Thoughts, Twilight.Tags: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Kristen Stewart, love, Never Think, Robert Pattinson, Twilight
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You know what’s probably my favorite scene in Twilight? It’s only a couple of minutes long, but I LOVE the scene when Edward and Bella go to the restaurant in Port Angeles. It’s just so simple and beautiful. “Never Think” fits perfectly in the background … the lighting’s almost muted, like candle light, so that their faces seem to be more illuminated by something in between them than by anything around them, just as their relationship is. Their love is kept vital by their hearts, not by any outside influences. They don’t need a reference point or anyone else to tell them how they should feel, because they know exactly what they should be feeling when they look at each other in that restaurant, sitting at that table. Just before Edward says to Bella that he lacks the strength to stay away from her, the anguish in his face is heartbreaking. And then, after she says “then don’t” … they both look so fascinated, so enthralled by each other, that to me, it’s frustrating when the shot cuts away to them in his car. It’s wonderful to see them look at each other like that.
Trying to wait. December 1, 2008
Posted by Jordan in Thoughts.Tags: Christmas, love, relationships, Thoughts
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Maybe I’m just stuck on this because it’s the Christmas season, but we all need to be more vigilant about reminding those closest to us how much better our lives are because they are involved. So, if you like someone but aren’t sure about what to do, tell them. Just do it. They need to know how much they mean to you. Call them, invite them out for coffee, and then, when you feel the time is right, think about how you talk about that person when your best friend asks you why you can’t stop thinking about them. Then consider this: you can tell him/her those things! You get that chance! How cool is that?? I miss those feelings sometimes. And it can sometimes be pretty hard to rationalize, because I don’t want to rush into something and inadvertently create a damsel in distress instead of waiting for someone who will let me try my best to show her that, as long as we are happy together, she won’t need to ever be saved. It’s a tough balancing act, but I hope that I can wait. I just miss the simple things. I love being able to share my jacket on cold nights.
