But I do know being a revert Muslim is a lonely life. Often times your birth family rejects you and the Muslim community gives an ‘alhumdilallah’ and then ignores you. So I’ve decided to try and integrate myself in the online Muslim community. I have seen very few Muslim reverts where I live, very few Muslims in general. I would also like to figure a way where I can work from home, so I won’t have to worry about when and where I would perform salat. But that’s for the future. Now I just study Quran!

Plato points to the heavens, Aristotle sticks with reality

I’ve made it to Aristotle’s On the Soul, which means that I’ve read Categories, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens, and On Generation and Corruption. The last three of that group I found the most interesting, as they brushed the problems that were solved (as much as anything can be solved) several hundred years later, such as geocentrism, conservation of energy and matter, entropy, etc. Of course Aristotle was wrong about a lot of stuff, such as believing the earth was the center of the universe, that all matter traveled through spheres rather than a void, that the four elements made up all matter, that there are only three dimensions of space and that all change is toward order rather than chaos. But he at least approached those questions so we could argue about them. Plus he made fun of previous philosophers who made up things one couldn’t possibly prove through physical experiment, like those Pythagoreans who believed in a counter-earth and such. Big predecessor to the scientic method and probably a lot to do with the scientific enlightenment some thousandish years and some change later. He even disagreed with Plato’s Forms theory even though Plato was his teacher. Still, I wish we still had copies of his published works instead of just his class notes. I can see why he taught his student while taking walks: the Organon is a cureall for insomnia no question.

Anyway, after Aristotle I think I’ll switch to The Ramayana and then The Art of War before trying Euclid’s Elements. I need a break from dead Greek dudes.

Maybe this is why I have never had close friends, or why I didn’t mind manipulating the hell out of Adam or why he said that I was ‘cold’. Obviously with the ED I have poor impulse control (that and I have gone through no less than six jobs in the last twelve months),  so I’m not a robot. But I was looking through the psychology section at the library and read the titles for all these problems with emotion, like how to deal with panic attacks, codependency, bipolar disorder, anger control, etc. And I thought, ‘What if I never feeling anything at all?”

And I don’t ever remember feeling anything at all beyond boredom, irritation, excitement, etc. which were all tied to expectations of my own satisfaction. Like everytime I’ve done something wrong, I felt fear not because I felt guilty but because I knew there was a chance I would get caught even though I always do it anyway. And from memory I know that when that chance disappears, so does the fear. Cool, huh? But what does it mean, to feel little or nothing?

As it is, I am halfway through the third book of Herodotus’s histories, which describes the madness of Cambyses, son of Cyrus and king of Persia.

To the sidewalk in drifts and

Flurries gushed along by cars

Whose bundled riders can’t see

The pale green blush of branches

Pressed against a luminous gray sky