2003-12-28-12:40 a.m.
"What seemed strangest to me when I found this diary was that I had no recollection of the day-to-day life it describes. If I do not recall them, where have those days gone? Where had they vanished to? I pondered the things human beings lose to the past." (Yasunari Kawabata, "Diary of My Sixteenth Year")

Yes, this diary will be forgoten like all memorys. Is it sad to forget memorys? Maybe so, maybe no. It's comforting to forget in Kawabata's short story. It's comforting to forget the pain, agony, distress. The things that don't kill us are now the past, "and the world moves on." (King, Gunslinger.) How painful for memorys to fade away but the pain never goes away! Freud, in his own bizare way, said such an action was a defense mech to protect our conscious self. Even so, humanity in the end only betters itself when it goes beyond its pre-set genetic mechanics. We can forget, but those wounds are like unknown poison, it flows through the blood.

Memorys can harm through knowledge or through forgetting. If you know who hurt you, maybe your pain will be channeled through revenge. And if you forget your pain, it will stick to your bones and help influence all your actions.

This diary, (Hello future Ben who is reading this right now!) will I really remember any of the events here? Maybe. I have a knack to try to remember the major places and events in my life and what it has done for me. I can't forget Yeshivah University, the lies, hypocrisy, my own empty headedness. But will I remember the details to why exactly I left? Not really, I barely remember now. This January marks one year since I left New York. Whenever a curious Jew asks me why I left YU, I simply say I wasn't happy there. That's truth. There was nothing there to make me happy. It started to make me realize that being a practicing Jew didn't really have any roots with myself. I learned so much this year to make my life stronger, things my Torah teachers never helped me with. I spent 5 years chasing after the Torah, it got me a lot but then again I missed out on so much.

Fairy tales, ideas, notions. The world is full of them, and they all stay alive because no one knows for sure. And fear... fear controls the people and it supresses their potential. The pain of memorys supresses our true potential. The past is the past and we have to move on. But the present is how we live now... I don't need a psychologist to tell me my childhood is to blame for how I act, change the present NOW, the past is done.

I've learned to control angry and show compassion easier without religion. Then again, Judaism has its gems of kindness deep in the Gemara. Lost in time, told now as old wives tales to fools. But to the wise, even if they forget the storys, the lessons are engraved in their hearts- forever.

"I'm not going there to die, I'm going to find out if I'm really alive." (Cowboy BeBop)

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