Maybe you don't care...

[leftyderek]

... or maybe you remember my lefty thread a few months ago. In the last few months I have gone through some big downs of my life, some realization, some self exploration and a lot of confusion. Anyway I will try to post more- alright, alright- the main content now- I wrote that a while ago, I don't really know if it should go to paranoia or living or even literature:

Sometimes I wonder how it is like to be Edward(*1). He has been trapped in the castle for ages. He saw his own dreams breaking right in front of him. He tried to hold onto it but his stupid scissorhands shattered it. Then he was brought away from the castle, to know what the word 'warmth' means. Seeing sprinklers, children playing, every single thing for the first time. The first time. Everything is just so exciting and interesting. I would like to erase all my non-vital/essential memories. I would like to erase even more than Joel and Clem(*2) did. Not only a specific person.

E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

Just to feel them all for the first time. Just to have the feeling of every fucking thing is so amazing. Even the things that hurts. Even the feeling of making a mistake for the first time. Take away my memory of love, my memory of sex, my memory of being loved, my memory of my friends, and whatever else if you wish. You can even take away the feeling of my first performance on stage, my last performance in Flekke(*3), my first play, whatever. Now think. Remember how it felt the first time you kiss somone? Remember how it felt the first time you thought you love someone? Remember how it felt the first time you knew you love someone? Remember how it felt the first time you had sex? Remember how it felt the first time you thought somone loves you? Remember how it felt the first time you knew someone loves you? Remember the first day of school? Remember the first piece of chicken you had? Remember the first sip of alcohol you serectly had? Remember the first sip you legally had? Remember your first scar on your body? Even a scar makes you amazed. Remember that? Look for it if you don't. Remember the first time you felt wind touching your skin? Remember? Remember. Try. Try to bring that feeling back, when everything was new and fresh. When you are not sick of anything around you, and when nothing around you is sick of you. Close your eyes and think about every single first-time you ever had.

I believe it is one of the reasons why kids are so happy. Meeting or learning about new things is always exicting, no?

How about doing things for the last time then?

p.s. s/he who gets where *1 and *2 come from gets a cookie.

*'s:
<spoiler>*1: 'Edward Scissorhands'
*2: come on, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'- Charlie Kaufman successfully made it into mainstream... everyone has to know him.
*3: A place where I had a 2-year-long dream. PM me for more.</spoiler>

[snowy]

This is one of the reasons we become parents--to experience the joy and heartache of growth all over again, yet from a different perspective. Any parent can tell you that watching your child encounter certain "firsts" can go either way--I know my mother sobbed the first time I got dumped. Her heart broke for me.

There are always firsts, every day. We are just so used to them by now that we don't notice them. Having children or even being around children who are just experiencing the world really helps us to realize that.

Personally, despite some of the pains I've suffered in my life, I wouldn't erase a moment of it. It's not worth rexperiencing any firsts for me--I have firsts every day in my life and I strive to have them--whether it's something as small as driving down a new street, visiting a new town, making a new friend, starting a new job, or eating a new dish--there are always firsts. Not enough firsts for you? Move. Moving always provides a round of firsts--"the first time I did that in this house" etc.

As for firsts in love--anyone can tell you that every relationship is different. With my current SO, everything just kind of clicked into place really naturally, but I still had no idea what was really going on. It took my best friend hitting me over the head with it to realize that, hey, yeah, I did love this guy. It was so different than any other relationship I'd ever been in, because it was so fast and intense. It's been so different than everything else because he's right there with me, step for step. Certainly, you'll never fall in love again just like that "first" time, but there will be "better" ones that will make the first time seem like puppy love.

[ngdawg]

Everyone goes through cycles of highs and lows, some very high, some extremely low. I tend to think of the lower times as the beginnings of yet another shedding of the skin, ala snakes. I have conversations with myself, trying to figure out why I am feeling that way and as I do, new revelations emerge, then finally, decisions and relief.
If we were euphoric every moment, how would we know? If we were depressed every waking day, how would we know what being happy is? These are the yins and yangs of life.
The simplest but probably most significant comforting thought in periods of darkness is this: Whether the number is 3 or 103, there are people in my life that love me, care about me and are glad to have me in their lives. I may put them on hold or even frustrate the hell out of them when I sink, but they've never abandoned me because of it. This alone not only embraces me and helps to lift me, but gives me the understanding of their yins and yangs and the realization that none of us is immune to the everchanging evolution of the psyche.
Never stop exploring yourself. Never stop learning about yourself and the world in which you live. There are still first-time wonders even for the old and grey. For days I watched a solitary black squirrel living behind the school I was attending. NJ doesn't have black squirrels-he must have been a pet, now abandoned or maybe hitched a ride in a U-Haul. Other squirrels would chase him away, squealing at him, yet he kept coming back. It was a source of amusement for a couple of weeks until I finally didn't see him any more.
I've lived in this area for over 25 years and for the first time just last month, even passing the same building day after day, I noticed things I'd never noticed before and, with camera in hand, went back to explore the property. The history, the ruins, the architecture, the sadness of what once was-it was all new to me yet had been there for over 100 years and been just a site to my right for a quarter century.
Evolving, learning, seeing with new eyes-the wonders of a child's experience never really leaves us at all. We have our memories, and we have the ability to make new ones with the same sense of wonder and exploration, if we just keep ourselves open to it. We have to ability to love over and over in many different ways, still loving who has passed through and adding new love if we allow it.
It is not the walls of others that keep us back, but the walls we build around ourselves.

[keyshawn]

thank you for the writings. I don't how else to express it, but thanks for reminding me some of what i forget.

regards,
will.

[aberkok]

I feel like it's been too long since my last "first." It's sad, really.

[Jinn]

Today was the first day that I pooped at 9:38 am on a March 3rd. Every new day is a new experience, a new "first." You've just got to reconize that every day longer that you live is a new day. New people, new situations, new responsibilities, new results. Even if you go to the work to the same people and the same job, its unlikely you'll be doing the exact same thing you did as yesterday. Its further more unlikely that the people you work with will have the same conversations as they did yesterday, or be doing the same things they did. Without people, we could easily live lives free from change and purely "no firsts." However, the more people you meet, talk to, and watch everday -- the more "new" you experience.

[ngdawg]

Originally Posted by aberkok

I feel like it's been too long since my last "first." It's sad, really.

Nonsense. Your trip to Hong Kong was a first on many levels. You are working on a CD. Even this Sunday will be full of firsts-you just have to appreciate them as such.

[leftyderek]

Originally Posted by ngdawg

It is not the walls of others that keep us back, but the walls we build around ourselves.

Reminds me of Pink Floyd the Wall- that movie... ring any bells anyone? I do agree though. But don't you sometimes just enjoy living inside your own head/ the world you created for yourself so much that you don't want 'reality' anymore? (I know I'm going kinda... off topic... anyways.)

Happy to see quite a few replies-
In a sense I do am looking forward to having a kid of my own, just to experience all the amazement of encountering all the 'first times' of life again... I don't know. I mean in a sense, of course I can always say something like 'I have been wandering around on my uni campus on a monday afternoon for the first time today'. But... I mean, you know, it is just not as 'important' or as 'big' as the other 'first time's...

aberkok:
You went to hong kong? What the...?
Tell me more about it. I was born there (although hardly been living there during the last 2 and a half years). It's a good place to visit but really not a nice place to live... anyway-

[hrandani]

Originally Posted by JinnKai

Today was the first day that I pooped at 9:38 am on a March 3rd.

Given the fact that you were at one point a feces-ridden baby in diapers, I somehow doubt this.

[leftyderek]

Originally Posted by hrandani

Given the fact that you were at one point a feces-ridden baby in diapers, I somehow doubt this.

feaces-ridden.
HAAHAHAHHHAHAAHHAAH
I just can't stop laughing at that

[Gilda]

Sometimes I think I'd like to lose every memory of everything in my personal life prior to about six years ago, save childhood memories of Sissy and Katie. The rest I'd be better without.

New things tend to be, for me, as likely to bring pain as they are pleasure. I mostly prefer to stick with the comfortable and familiar, letting novelty come from new variations of what I'm already safely doing. I've seen hundreds of movies, but I can get novelty from seeing a new one. Safety and novelty together. I've read thousands of books, but I can get novelty with each new one. I've been trying to move out my comfort zone. It's been slow and difficult, and so far all it's brought me is discomfort. I'm hoping I'll at some point get to where I can get the pleasure from others seem to.

Gilda

[Sweetpea]

Some very interesting insights.

I don't know if i would want to forget all my firsts.... But i think that Life is full of firsts every day... they are opportunities waiting to be explored.

Today was the first day i felt something like awe for someone in my life.

Today is also the first day of the rest of my life... like every day is.

Something does not have to be the 'first' to make it a beautiful thing.

Thank you for sharing leftyderek

sweetpea

[leftyderek]

Of course there are opportunities everyday for doing something for the first time.

I do realize that today's the first time I made up a story in my head just by looking at 3 healthy tall trees, 1 dying old tree and a baby tree outside the canteen window, I trully find joy in all that, I really, really do.

But there are always some specific things that we want to try for the first time again, like I said, first kiss or even the first time I bled, etc.

In a way, all kinds of first times are important. First sex experience, first sip of beer, first A you got in school, first time you see a person wearing pink on the street... For the love of Aphrodite, they are first times afterall. Then again I also think they can be so different. Some first times make you smile, some first times make you frown, some first times change your life, but I am not saying the first times that I will forget today next year are not important.

I don't know, in my head someone keeps telling me that there's a difference between first times that I had and first times that I haven't had...

With the memory of other first times we have had already, we encounter and look at other first times in a different way from how we would as a blank piece of paper. It's like looking at things through a pair of coloured glasses, things just aren't the same. Maybe it's the purity of kids who are uncontaminated by the reality or even of animals which are unpolluted by 'civilisation' that I'm looking for.

Eh I'm not being very coherent, hope y'all get what I'm trying to say-