What is a Prijatel?

"What is a Prijatel, you might ask? Prijatel is the accumulation of all things sarcastic into a hodgepodge of sexiness "

-Nick Lyon.

Yep.

And like, colors, you know?

From John Olson's article "Strange Matter" in the The American Scholar...

Mass is not what it seems. This is because we inhabit a world of weight, density, texture, and tangibility. The realities produced by calculus and differential equations make no sense to us, literally. Our perceptions are keyed to specific sensations. Roughness, weightiness, smoothness, sharpness, dullness. Foods are sweet or bitter or a combination of the two. Some things are warm and dry, others cold and wet. We cannot conceive of a reality not immersed in such responses. Not without faith in numbers. Trajectories and orbital mechanics. Energy and force. Momentum and inertia. Some of these are available to our senses. We all know what velocity feels like. But when someone tells us that there is more space in an ingot of steel than there is steel, we balk at the truthfulness of such a statement. We might readily agree, based on what we have learned in science. But it still seems beyond the reach of imagining. Because if there is more space than steel in an ingot of steel, what does that say about us? Are we ghosts? Clouds of atoms? Symphonies of molecules? Waves of light and radiant heat? All improbable, all incredible revelations. But the fact remains: a three-ton ingot of steel is mostly space. If an atom were the size of a 14 story building, the nucleus would be a grain of salt in the middle of the seventh floor.

Two instances come to mind: Dr. Samuel Johnson dismissing George Berkeley's ideas of immaterialism with his famous "I refute Berkeley thus," and then kicking a rock; and Jack Kerouac's address to an audience at the Hunter College Playhouse on November 6, 1958, during a symposium titled "Is There a Beat Generation?" It was there that Keroauc said, "We should be wondering tonight, 'Is there a world?' But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin' on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out."

Kerouac and Berkeley were right. Johnson's rock was essentially a phantasmal, a cloud of subatomic particles. He was kicking a dream.

An excerpt from my assigned sixth-grade journal

If I could be any age I would be 21. I would be 21 because I would be able to drive, I would be an adult and I can live on my own.

The only downside of 21 is you are grown-up and so are your friends, so you might not get to see them as much as when you were a kid. Plus you have to make an important discision of what you want to be when you grow up. I want to be one of the following: singer/songwriter, author, actress, teacher, journalist, photographer, or acting coach. I COULD be all of those things, but not really. My friend Maureen wants to be a pharmisist. She wants to be Maureen the famous pharmisist. We always joke about it.

I want to be a singer/songwriter, or author. I want to create books or songs about racialisum, drugs, alchol, disease, and world peace. I think maybe people will listen to me, because I am famous. I think its a stupid reason for someone to listen. We should listen to everyone.

These subjects (prejudice, drugs, achol, disease, and world peace) are very important to me and then after I am famous, I'll create commercials so people will send money to a special organization for disease and cancer. Alchol is an important issue because of drunk driving. I want to do commercials about drunk driving to prevent people from driving drunk. Its almost impossible to prevent prejudice, but drugs I would give money to programs like DARE.

I think I like being a kid more then an adult, when you grow up you can't do a lot of fun things or anything. Yes, there is a downside to not being able to drive and having a bed time, and not being able to see rated R movies. But being grown up is worse. I would like to be my sisters age (19) because she told me when she is at college she can do almost anything she wants, but she must wake up really really early. I think its also KIND OF cool to be an adult because you can have kids and get married. I guess thats also kind of cool.