They say everything is connected.

But how? Or more accurately why?

Reading Corley's blog about god and love I thought about the book I am reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. I have always loved quotes by Oscar Wilde so I bought a huge book of his collected works. It is a great book, though I have only read about 40 pages. It is about art, and beauty, and all sorts of social issues including homosexuality. When I read this book I think someone has taken my thoughts and put them down on paper. How could that be? Someone from the past has stole my ideas from the future? How could it be that I think some of the same things about life as someone did in 1890? That is just a mind fuck. Plus he was half way around the globe, a man, famous, and gay. What is it about my life that could possibly be the same as his?

My history teacher last semester said repeatedly that everything is connected. The first time he said it I had just turned off "The World According to Garp" on cd. It was at the very end and Garp was saying that everything is connected. It blew my mind. I felt an overwhelming need to get up and leave. I wanted to go back to my car rewind "Garp" and listen again, and cry again. Sometimes I wish that I could just do anything I feel like, even if it is the most socially unacceptable thing under the sun. Are socially inept people happier in the end?

Here is a great passage.
"'I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream- I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and you soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.'"


I strongly believe in a collected consciousness. So does Kyle. We were discussing this thought one day and it came to me. What if artists can tap into the collected consciousness at greater depths? Maybe that is why we see our ideas on the tv or in music more frequently. More specifically Jacob had come up with this song about shitting the sheets. It was really funny and He sang it to a song. They recorded it. Then within a year Tool had a song with the lyrics, "God damn. Shit the bed." Have you ever heard a song about shitting the bed? I hadn't either until Jacob came up with it. Too many of Kyle's jokes have ended up on Aqua Teen Hunger Force to even count. And for some reason it always amazes us.

So maybe artists thoughts linger longer as well? Is that why I have thought the very same thoughts that were written by Oscar Wilde? Well over 100 years and his thoughts are still in the consciousness? Or is it that society is still basically the same and it forces free thinkers to think alike?

I work with a guy who told me this week that he has never read a book from start to finish in his whole life. It made me really sad to think of that. A boy in his twenties had never read a complete book. If I could possibly imagine my life without books it would be a sad, shallow existence. One of my favorite teachers in college, (just happened to be a sociology teacher) Dr. Linda Tobin, tries to remedy that. At the beginning of her class she gives out a book list. They are all novels ex: Life of Pi, Lovely Bones, Secret Life of Bees easy reads. Then you are to write a seven page paper on the sociological theories represented in the novel. Incredibly easy. I have talked to a number of people who dropped out of her class because of the reading thing. I was talking to her in the hall one day about my reading choice, "The Lovely Bones". I was telling her how hard it was to read and after every ten pages I had to put it down because it was traumatising me. We started talking about reading and how we couldn't live without reading and she said the reason why she does this is because she knows students don't read. I can't image in my life having never read Island, or Tom Robbins. To have an experience all your own. To have a connection with someone you have never met, who has never even existed in the same time. That is amazing to me. Thoughts and ideas shared over hundreds of years. I cherish anything that is timeless.

I hope I am immortalized in thought.