Killing Yourself to Live

Having no tutorials/labs is awesome, the latter half of the day is completely free to do whatever.
Whatever in this case is to finish a 3rd book:

Summary from Amazon:

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the spanof twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end-one by choice, one bychance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a halfmile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. . . and what this means for the rest of us.

I ordered this book from the library a very very long time ago, and when I went to retrieve it, I could not remember why in the world I was interested in a book filled with rock allusions that I don't understand. But since it's in my hands, might as well read it.

In between the author's analysis about death and rock stars, are some very true (true being defined as I completely agree) conclusions about living:

The stark, pedestrian images used by the filmmakers (probably out of financial necessity) expressed nothing, symbolically or metaphorically. The only purpose they served was to remind me that a huge chunk of my life is completely over, even though I will probably live 60 more years. There are so many things that will never happen to me again, and I never even noticed when those things stopped occurring. And this does not mean I wish I had my old life back, because I like my new life better; I was just shocked to discover how much of what used to be central to my existence doesn't even matter to me anymore. 

and

Things like that will never happen to me again, even if I want them to. And I did not choose to stop living that life, nor did I try to continue living that life. I just didn't noticed when it stopped.
When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago - and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail - it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. it's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. it's almost like those things didn't happen. or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know.

Those 2 selections pretty much describes how I feel about whenever I can't fall asleep (which fortunately is not too frequently since school has started).

(Rui the two below are for you :p)

I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being "infatuated" with someone means you think you are in love, but you're actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being "in love" in an abstract nothing, and it's not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else...well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? They're both human constructions. If you think you're in love with someone and you feel  like you're in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is. Why do we feel an obligation to certify certain emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?

I realized what prompted me to order this book was reading the quotation below on tumblr:

We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in out lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. There are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are but - but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.

gg.
(and back to textbooks)