PHI ORG

Yeah, I actually wrote a response paper about the timing of sex once, because Foucault had written about it being more about the right time and place and manner and blahblahblah and it seemed to make sense to me…I felt I was able to do a lot of self discovery and growing my freshman spring semester, and I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have been able to happen if I hadn’t had sex. Not sex by itself, but the more serious boyfriend experience and the sex that came with it. Which I guess I bring up to say it kind of makes sense that you guys wouldn’t have for one reason or another, just knowing what I know of the two of you, combined with you leaving right about when things might have heated up. I don’t know. Let me just encourage you in case it sucks. It’s not supposed to, but I promise it will get better if it does happen to. Whatever.

We can definitely do crazy things together when you get back. I am so thankful I have had this year to really experience things. And it isn’t just about screwing a bunch of guys or trying a bunch of drugs…its about learning about new relationships with guys and people in general, re-examining all kinds of ideas from what is legal and not to people’s misconceptions and correct conceptions and whatever else. I guess it is more about having a ‘yes’ disposition than a ‘no’ one. Because I am one to rule out weekday fun on principle and weekend fun if I feel tired, but having Christie help me break out of that habit lets me really do what I want and not say no out of a habit but because I actually need to- or say yes and have a ton of fun! And guess what? All A’s this semester which is more than I can say for some semesters when I would have stayed in more often and drank less and whatnot. But it isn’t too late J I even look at Mom sometimes lately and see how she surprises me. How could she not change with such big changes in her life (i.e. children and husband going off, a life with a very attentive husband, then a drunk absent one, then a sober but absent one, etc), but still. It’s a good thing and you are still young! The only weird thing would be Javi. I know when you are in a serious relationship with someone your opinions and desires are pretty complexly related to one another, and it might just be weird if either you kept a secret from him or he disapproved of something. I don’t know. But there are also plenty of non-scandalous adventures to be had as well J

I hope one day we wake up with a pineapple on the night stand. I don’t like blacking out either. I’m not so much uncomfortable in the sense that I feel like something bad or embarrassing will happen, but I mean…what happened?! I just like to know how my life goes by, you know? Sometimes I find it troubling even just how faulty my memory can be!

Your girl crush doesn’t sound stupid. They happen. Idk.

I would be happy to talk to your kids! And I plan on having the relationship with them where it is just going to happen. But it doesn’t just have to be me. It would be best if they have all kinds of information at their disposal! But I think it is helpful to have someone with a bit of experience. Not that things won’t change or I’m some kind of expert, but I always felt that Dad speaking openly with me about weed was so much more insightful and likely to keep me from smoking it than the DARE scare tactics. It really reminds me of Mean Girls the way so many people go about drug and sex education (“You will get an STD AND DIE!”)But people really think that way. They don’t realize that they can take an anti-biotic and get rid of it the same way you would strep throat and the only reason things get nasty is because people are uninformed and ignore the infection and let it fester. They don’t realize that some drugs are physically addicting and some are not, so they won’t be able to distinguish between what holds the most risk if they do try something because authorities have been too busy trying to scare them away from everything. On that note…I realized why people call pot a gateway drug, and why that is ridiculous as well as holds some truth. It is ridiculous because nothing about it is going to make you physically crave it or any other drug or dispose you somehow to cooking up meth in your bathroom. But why it might be seen that way is because once people transgress one convention 1) They are probably the kind of person who is likely to question things and experiment and 2) They now have first-hand experience that one particular substance people have tried to tell them is bad and wrong actually isn’t so bad. And I think that is a healthy thought process, but it can still be problematic if you have someone who hasn’t thought/researched things all the way through. It probably doesn’t happen often that someone tries pot and moves straight on to crystal meth thinking it is just as harmless. But I think you can probably see what I’m saying. I don’t understand why anyone would think less information is better. Like, well after you were taught all the terrible things drugs can do/make you do, you probably still had no idea why someone would do them, right? You might still not know! Why wouldn’t you tell someone? To me it doesn’t make it any riskier to say “This will make you feel good in the following ways, but you also risk the following consequences, and this is how likely it is, blahblahblah.” I don’t know. Off my soap box now, I guess.

RE: Your unstoppable, inexplicable optimism. Where has it come from indeed? I have this as well. And it’s a strange way to be in the midst of all kinds of existential philosophizing and such, yet it is there. And I don’t think it is unrealistic (on either of our parts) because it isn’t perceive the world in some way it is not, but rather an attitude. I think it has to do with narratives. In my ethics class I just finished we talked a bit about narratives and how they affect the meaningfulness we find in our lives. Narratives are the way we frame our lives and kind of create meaning for ourselves. So its how we can look at a bad or traumatic experience as valuable because of how it contributes to our life story. I think we may just be good story tellers. Some people may have trouble writing their story, so to speak, but perhaps we just have this way about us that knows we will be able to successfully spin whatever events come our way into a nice little tale that fits well with the life we desire (or the life we will come to desire). And I also think it has something to do with defense mechanisms…I’ve always thought I was good at justifications for just about anything. Is this all tying together well? Because I feel like I’m not necessarily articulating nicely but that they are all related into this way that we kind of go about life positively. Not expecting positive things to happen, necessarily, but just exuding positivity. I don’t know. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about that lately.

I like your hurricane house analogy. It makes sense. I also think your idea of engagement is just about right…wait for readjustment just in case, and even if you don’t need the just in case, it is because you aren’t ready to start planning a wedding yet. I’m sure your engagement will be perfect, whenever it happens.

Well! More about boys and more about drugs!

First things first…I have tried acid twice now (LSD). I got the intensity I had been hoping for with the shrooms. Things looked cool. The ceiling moved to the sound of the music. I could make the whole apartment building move from my porch just by swaying back and forth. I had a conversation with Daniel entirely via eye contact. Because you go off into a new world, and you can take people with you. I don’t know how it works exactly, because the first time I dropped acid it was just with Daniel and we were sometimes on the same trip, sometimes not. The next time I dropped with Augie and Christie and they were somehow on the same trip but I wasn’t…then when Daniel came over an hour later he was immediately on the same trip as me! The best way to describe it really is going to a new world and other people either being in the same world or not. We came to some realizations that sound very cliché about the whole world being one and such, but it really does feel that way and it solves a lot of philosophical problems. It is probably easier to describe in person and also if you had tried it and maybe if you had read more philosophy, but maybe that isn’t necessary. To me it is kind of like how Daniel and I were in the same acid world and Christie and Augie were in the same (but different from ours) acid world…we are all clearly in the same ‘real’ world and there is a oneness to that (or perhaps we are in it because of the oneness). Maybe the narrative of the universe, the same way we have a narrative to our own lives? I feel as though I am describing this poorly. But I enjoyed acid quite a bit and it is one drug that has very little adverse affects (and is well-researched- much more so than the MDMA). I can definitely see how it can be disturbing (Daniel got very upset the first time when we were no longer in the same world because he was tripping harder than I and couldn’t communicate very well what he was experiencing and couldn’t ascertain what I wanted or needed either). So that kind of thing might be difficult to deal with, or if you aren’t prepared to deal with whatever revelations you discover. But mostly it is just a lot of fun.