To know me...

I am currently reading "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Published in 1864,it is considered by many to be the world's first existentialist novel. I share this with all of you because it is my opinion that the community here has the greatest opportunity to understand me. Only a creative mind can understand a creative mind. These are a few excerpts from the novel that particularly pertain to me, what I think, and how I act, and generally how I perceive the world.

"How many times, for instance, I'd take offense, out of the blue, for no good reason, deliberately; I'd know very well that there was nothing to be offended at, that I was playacting, but in the end I'd bring myself to such a state that the offense would become real. I have been drawn to such antics all my life, till finally I no longer had any power over myself."

"Or else I'd try to force myself to fall in love; in fact, I did it twice. And I suffered, gentlemen, I assure you I did. Deep down in your heart you don't believe in your suffering., there is a stirring of mockery, and yet you suffer--in the most genuine, honest-to-goodness way. I'd be jealous, I'd be beside myself....And all out of boredom, gentlemen, all because I was crushed by sheer inertia. For the direct, inevitable, and logical product of consciousness is inertia--aconscious sitting down with folded arms. I have spoken about this before. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all direct and active men are active precisely because they are dull and limited."

"Man loves to create, and to build roads. That is beyond question. But why, then, does he also passionately love destruction and chaos? Tell me that! But this is something I want to say two words about separately myself. Can it be that he is so dedicated to destruction and chaos (and it's unquestionable that he is at times extremely dedicated to it, that's a fact), because he is himself instintively afraid of achieving his goal and completing the edifice he is constructing? How do you know, perhaps he loves the edifice only from afar, and not at all at close range; perhaps he only loves to build it, and not to live in it, leaving it afterwards aux animaux domstiques, such as ants, sheep, and so on, and so forth."

"In every man's memory there are things he won't reveal to others, except, perhaps to friends. And there are things he won't reveal even to friends, only, perhaps, to himself, and then, too, in secret. And finally, there are things he is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of them. In fact, the more decent the man, the more of them he has stored up."

"Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you."