i deactivated my facebook account a few minutes ago.  i waste too much time on it.  i guess i expect too much of it, that it will generate some spark in me.  but it only works if you tread light.  if you're like me, and you walk with a too heavy step, then you will inevitably fall through.

***

i was, have been, thinking about the five elements.  each element corresponds to an emotion, and by extension, a need with regards to people.  here are those "needs," as far as i can surmise:

earth --> sympathy
metal --> acknowledgement/respect
water --> reassurance
wood --> perspective
fire --> intimacy/camaraderie

i have been wondering, in my confused way, what it is exactly that i need from other people.  how does one frame one's own pathology?  i think, on an obvious level, that what i want from other people is acknowledgement/respect.  i think i can manage without any of the other things, even the intimacy/camaraderie, which, in my eyes, has always been an insubstantial and false thing anyway...

i always return to this theme of: you can't count on anyone, because they always leave, and are always turning away.  this is the theme of the fall.  the season of reaping, and the harvest.  it is the season on the verge of the death of winter, when everything is dry and leaving.  there is a feeling of poignancy contained in the season, when we feel that everything we have loved is inevitably going to leave us and die...

this seasonal feeling can be internalized to become an entire life perspective.  for me, i have always felt so thoroughly unworthy.  i have always felt as though i never measured up.  my life's quest has been to find a role through which i might "serve" (i.e., be acknowledged as a "good person" who serves a vital role).  the trouble is, most people don't want/need my help.  most of the time, people just want me to go away.  even if i am successful at my role...

for me, the worlds of wood and fire are thorough fictions.  it is a rarefied atmosphere within which i cannot survive.  i look upon the interactions of those who have a "social life", who are able to converse easily, and i feel such falsity within myself, hollowness within myself, that i cannot, dare not speak.  there is no thing, no voice, within me, anyway.  i literally have nothing i can see within me to say.

***

every element has an irony.  the irony of metal is that "that which is of greatest worth in this world is the least substantial."  having a meaning of something like, you can't hold onto anything in this world.  but with regards to myself, who has no sense of self-worth, no sense of intrinsic worth that i can believe in, and hold onto, what does that mean?  ... to trust in the function and pattern of those organs of metal: the lungs, the bellows of intake and exhalation, the performance of the bowels, and their fullness and release.  give and take.  what, of substance, may be found in the continuity of this ribbon of life?