new cds that came in the mail today and made me happy: american football | american football sunny day real estate | how it feels to be something on the gloria record | a lull in traffic [ep] the gloria record | the gloria record [ep] belle & sebastian | the boy with the arab strap living sacrifice | reborn sixpence none the richer | divine discontent and hooray for 4 posts in one day! all you un-friends out there (alex zane) will have a hard time catching up.

AIM ceased to work on my part of the stanford campus sometime this afternoon. when it went, it left a huge gaping whole in my heart. i was forced to actually do work and go to class instead of obsessively (or is it compulsively?) checking away messages. now, hours later, i’m feeling a little bit freer, a little bit lighter, as if a great weight has been taken from my back. although, if i did it again i wouldn’t stop cold turkey. serious addictions are not to be toyed with and we’re all lucky i didn’t go drown myself in lake lagunita.

…and speaking of rapidly [cf. my last post], here it is! i had the distinct (actually it was kind of fuzzy) pleasure of seeing the sunrise this morning, as i was up at 5am to drive a friend to the airport. now i’m debating whether to catch a few hours of sleep before my long day of classes, or instead to just fall asleep in class. in other news, splendour hyaline CDs are being made as we speak and should be shipped to me in the next week or two. also, i’ve been looking at taking out a loan and trying to get a car. i decided i really need one out here this year. last, dan, joey, and i will be heading to the UK for 6 days over spring break. we hope to visit a number of places in england, and maybe spend a day each in edinburgh and dublin if we can swing it. i’m looking forward to that adventure!

i am paralyzed by music, and i love it–the state of complete and utter disability to do anything but sit and allow my ears to be two thirsty mouths. each beautiful song is a spiritual feast of the most fundamentally real kind, as i internalize the form of beauty itself and thus meet the one whose playground is platonic heaven. the conclusion being, of course, that it is more important to listen to music than to perform any of the academic gyrations they ask us monkeys [students] to exhibit, like reading abstruse philosophy. ...

i just got back from junior formal. if you don’t believe me, come to griffin 302 and take a look: i’m sitting here in my dress slacks, black square-toe docs, and wifebeater undershirt, dress shirt and tie strewn on the floor to my left (incidentally, according to hanes, i am not wearing a “wifebeater” but an “a-shirt”. according to my dad this selfsame article of clothing is a “guinea tee”. perhaps hanes is too uncomfortable with and my dad too old for the unpleasant connotation of the name. i prefer to think of the name not as being built up from components with a determined semantic value [“wife” and “beater”], but being an english primitive, the fact that it sounds phonologically similar to said semantic components a complete accident. more interesting to you all is perhaps why i wear this particular style of clothing at times. this is a great topic for discussion, as it involves themes of pride, insecurity, frivolity, and toned muscles. tonight let’s just say that i was out of regular undershirts. and this was in fact the truth). ...

i had more important announcements to make on the 3rd of this month, but something else happened on that day: my blog turned 1 year old. in honor of this event i’ve compiled all my archives for that year into one file. to read the entire first year of this blogging venture, simply click on “year one” in the right hand pane. the months for said year are included underneath. archives for the current year (year 2) will continue above them as usual. ...

while we’re in the mood of announcing new and fabulous things: i got my hair cut on saturday. it was just past shoulder-length, and is now a very abercrombie 2 inches. the change, while it makes me look a few years younger (no more illegal alcohol runs), is welcome. life feels more manageable, and it’s not such a pain to put my headphones on. also, being more aerodynamic now, i hope to shave a few seconds off my mile time.

Prologue Between is a location defined not on its own, but in relation to two other places. One is behind, the other ahead–one past, the other future. As such, being between carries an inherent vertigo, a constant reminder that I am not…really…anywhere. I have begun the journey, though its resolution is not in sight. Land has long since disappeared off the Western horizon, and not yet emerged in the East. Will I eventually reach my destination, or, instead, fall off the rim of the world, deluded? In truth, we are all between–between life and death, between the extremes of utter evil and pure altruism, between clarity and self-deception. Such tension is a tightness of the heart: a hope, yet veiled, that beats with failing wings, against the airless cold of space, in flight toward a Radiance that burns downcast eyes. ...

“But it is also obvious that, although the schemata of sensibility first realize the categories, yet they likewise also restrict them, i.e., limit them to conditions that lie outside the understanding (namely, in sensibility). Hence the schema is really only the phenomenon, or the sensibile concept of an object, in agreement with the category. (Numerus est quantitas phaenomenon, sensatio realitas phaenomenon, constans et perdurabile rerum substantia phaenomenon - aeternitas, necessitas phaenomena etc.). Now if we leave aside a restricting condition, it may seem as if we amplify the previously limited concept; thus the categories in their pure significance, without any conditions of sensibility, should hold for things in general, as they are, instead of their schemata merely representing them how they apear, and they would therefore have a significance independent of all schemata and extending far beyond them.” ...

i realized today that there are two things which really move me: music and philosophy. music is the poetry and the philosophy is the syntax, the logic, which makes the beauty possible. music is the paint, and philosophy the canvas. of my life, maybe. alex told me today that i am a gatsby; that what is really important to me is “girls”. that i am only really excited when i am involved in them, and dull and cynical otherwise. whatever that means: alex zane is a deep man i can’t claim to understand. ...