Got blood work done and flew back to Puerto Rico

11:13 PM

On the plane ride today, I listened to this famous commencement speech by David Foster Wallace called This Is Water, and it touched me. David Foster Wallace was the author of Infinite Jest, a well known and complicated fiction book that spans over 1000 pages. I've known about Infinite Jest for a while, it's one of the more complicated books, which I've seen compared to Godel, Escher, Bach, which I actually do have a physical copy of, and I could not understand it. Based on some comments and reviews I've seen about it, Infinite Jest is a deeply complicated book. So the author, David Foster Wallace, is a brilliant man, a genius, and I could tell from his speech that he was.

David Foster Wallace gave a very deep and touching speech about humanity and how we should have more understanding and compassion for each other. He leaves out compassion for animals, but I think he would agree that we should also not hurt them or kill or eat them, if he were still alive today. I just looked it up, and he did write an essay called Consider the Lobster, in which he agrees veganism/vegetarianism is correct and the right thing to do, and there was no way to object against it.

Anyway, David Foster Wallace committed suicide a few years after this speech, which is a tragedy. He related to the average person and the average life so well, he understood humanity on a very deep level, and he had compassion for humanity, but I think he thought too much. From his speech too, he would argue against himself, imagining an objection that probably wouldn't have come anyway, but he mentions it anyway. He does it a few times, I don't remember any specific examples, but it's like he says something like "1 + 1 = 2" and then will interrupt this explaining "and I know the theories where it doesn't equal 2, but in this example let's have it equal 2," as if he were rebutting himself. Based on that, I could tell, this guy was in his head a lot, debating himself a lot.

His speech is kind of a wake up call. He expounds on philosophy a little bit, how if you aim for power, wealth, appearance, these things ultimately fail you in the end, and even though he was an atheist, he believed religion was a better faith to have than these other deities of power, wealth, and beauty. Most people aim for these three things. He gave this speech in 2005, but the world is still the same today. I would add fame to that, and maybe he does mention fame, but I don't remember. I think he mentions discipline as well as the ultimate good route to take. His speech is even more touching, knowing that he ended his own life. Why?

If I barely remember the speech, it's because I was on a plane, I was fatigued, and the plane was going through heavy turbulence. I've gotten on a plane maybe over 50 times in the past 4 years, and I never write about turbulence, this is the first time, because it's one of the most brutal I've experienced. There were times on this flight where I was out of breath, because the turbulence would knock all the air out of my lungs. There would be this descending feeling of the plane lasting several seconds, leaving me breathless those few seconds. The guy who had the window seat in my lane couldn't close the window because it was stuck, so you could see all the darkness and clouds whizzing by ominously as the plane bounced and the lights flickered. It was terrifying. I couldn't hear any screams, but I had my earphones on, I'm sure there were some scream.

The earphones I wear have a noise isolation feature naturally with the way the earbuds are formed. You don't even have to plug it in, you could just wear these earbuds completely unplugged and it's like wearing earplugs, they just block out sound magically, again because of how the earbuds are shaped. These are earphones by Klipsch, and in my opinion they have the best earphones due to their patented oval shaped ear tips, that's where the magic is. I'm not sure why they went down the wireless route, but I use very old Klipsch S3 wired earphones from like 2008, and they work just fine still, amazingly in fact, better than any $200+ modern earphones today.

Anyway, yesterday I got my blood work done. Still gonna have to wait a few days for the results.

Today, I flew back to Puerto Rico. Originally my dad dropped me off at the airport at 5 AM, but it turns out I accidentally ordered a flight from Puerto Rico to Virginia, instead of Virginia to Puerto Rico, yesterday. Thankfully I was able to cancel this flight since it was less than 24 hours since I ordered it. I ordered another flight to PR, at 5 PM this time.

I just relaxed at home, my parents made vegan turkey with stuffing and we had that for lunch today. I ate some oranges, blueberries, blackberries, and grapes. The fruits are really cheap in Virginia, compared to Puerto Rico. You would expect fruit prices here to be cheaper, but everything is more expensive in PR, everything. Even rice here is more like $2 a pound, instead of $1 a pound. 5 pounds of oranges goes for around $7 in Virginia, it might go for $10 to $20 here, no joke. The processed foods at Costco are roughly the same price though, that's the only consistent thing, fruits there are still more expensive.

Anyway, I'm back in Puerto Rico again now. I took these selfies in bed. I think I look good, but like David Foster Wallace mentions, aging will make most of us ugly. It really made me think. It's pretty depressing, but we all get older. Of course this is something I've always known, even since I was a kid. I've written journal entries for 15 years now, and have always written about aging. It's more prominent now than ever.

It's interesting that when I was 22, I was already writing about death and mortality. Why? If I were to advise myself, I would say, just live your life. Stop contemplating death and shit, make the most of the youth that you have, you will never be that age ever again.