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Post by fico on Jun 30, 2004 19:52:43 GMT -5
6.30.o4
Liberty --ellis
far away from home you never once thought about it it’s not easy to leave things turned upside down that was the time when you rose to the occasion you let your feelings go but somehow they stuck around
its not so bad to visit, everybody has got demons that they try to hide from some are drowning in a bottle some are running from the truth like they believe that it would kill them some feel heavier than darkness and they want to die fear and truth collide
never were the words ready you weren’t prepared for the wall of emotions that hit you from the side you left that town in [iowa] like a storm blowing in you didn’t mind you left pieces on the ground but it’s not so bad to visit everybody has got history that they try to change in the corners of their minds some give power to critics, some are always counting money putting walls around their hearts like they are fighting for their lives we are the same inside
so why is it so hard to remember when it feels like everything is falling down we are caught in the fire like cinder we survive but to our wounds we are bound
where is amazing grace i knew you from the past you shined light on my face… i need you to come back i’ve been searching for answers look into what i find
i read things about [Yahweh], things i understand sometimes it’s hard not to take personal everything that comes to mind i feel like a fish trying to fly it all comes down to this i run away from pain i’ve got to turn and face it someday
Wed. 8:01pm. "There is no there there." -- Gertrude Stein Worked for [Chaia] today. I asked her what Gertrude Stein had meant. I'm reading a book (because a friend recommended it, Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff; a book about our society's view of beauty and how that relates to women and girls in our society; it has a picture of a girl in a corset on the cover, and for some reason that just makes me sad) in which Stein was quoted. I didn't get it. I've seen Corinna, Corrina, so I had a solid voice saying the quotation, but I didn't know what it meant in the movie, either. I had some vague idea of the place not exactly being there because of a play on the word "there." Laura had two ways of hearing it. One was funny: if Stein grew up in a no-where town, then there isn't anything there, so there is no there there. But also a serious one, in which Stein made a correlation between time and space. If time can have a second that is both no time and every time, then space can do the same thing. So if we are in a place, and we really do live in that place in that moment, then we are there in those coordinates for as long as those two premises remain true. As soon as we no longer are living, there is no moment anymore, there is no there there.
At home, there is no there. (Gertrude was referring to her own home-town when she was quoted.) I can feel myself clothed in all my old defenses. It was strange having to re-learn to respond when people called me "Tamara." But it is entirely applicable to the situation. I've done the same thing with my Self. I've had to re-learn which things to keep private, simply because I didn't have to protect them while I was at school.
I came out to my father. I had promised myself I would do it within a week of getting home. (I actually gave myself slightly more than a week. We got back on a Friday, and I gave myself until 1:27 exactly on the afternoon of the next Friday. I made it, too.) He was very "open" to the idea. "Open" was his word-of-the-day. He was happy I am bi rather than a lesbian. He thinks lesbians are closed-minded. I neglected to inform him of the fact that straight people also rule out 50% of the population, but only because I had been nervous of the conversation, and I didn't want to piss him off. It went amazingly well because of our joint-appreciation of open-mindedness.
In other news, my father is moving out. He's moving in with a woman who is in all honesty most likely clinically insane. We have E. Coli in our water. Dad laid down some boards so he can work on stuff, but you can still see the roof from the kitchen, and you can see lights in the basement when you stand at the top of the stairs. There is no there there.
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Chaia read Einstein's Dreams. I've recommended a total of six(?) books/series to Chaia, and this one she really loved. She said it was wonderful because it had never been done before. It's stupid to take pride in something you didn't do, but I'm proud anyway. I'm proud of Alan Lightman for writing such a kick-ass book. I'm proud of Chaia for recognizing how brilliant it is. I'm proud of myself for realizing Chaia would understand. (Yeah, what doesn't she understand?) I'm proud of the professor who assigned it to me to read.
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[Bet] and I are going on a road-trip. We leave tomorrow. Not sure how this one will turn out. But we have a lot of good plans. I just don't want this to turn into the roadtrip that sparks the end of our relationship. I think we get along pretty well at this point because so much of what we do is loyalty-based. I'm not sure what might happen when we're forced to spend 24 hours together for the next six days. I don't want us to piss each other off.
Part of that is the fact that I do not understand women. It's so true. Bet told me today that I'm going to have to learn it eventually, since I want to date them, so I might as well learn all their little games. I hate games. I never say something in order to hint at something opposite unless I am obviously sarcastic. Today, Bet said it was fine if I stayed and watched a movie with Rue while she bought some food for our roadtrip. I said thanks, but Rue told me I had to go. In the car on the way to the store, Bet said that it totally wasn't okay if I stayed. She had said it all out ("Yeah, it's fine. You can stay here and watch the movie while I buy stuff for our roadtrip.") in order to point out how absurd the idea was. Dude, if I thought the idea was absurd, I wouldn't have suggested it, would I? I dunno. I like when people are straight-forward.
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I managed to earn about $250. This is a very good thing. I'm going on another roadtrip after this one with Bet. I would really like to not owe my parents at the end of the summer.
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(Sorry I've been so bad in the up-keep of this journal. I promise I'll attempt more diligence when I get back.)
p.s. posted late due to sucky internet connection.
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Post by fico on Jul 9, 2004 1:24:39 GMT -5
7.9.o4
WE PLAY THE BLAMING GAME. YES I MIND. IT'S NOT YOUR TURN.
2:10am. Friday. I work tomorrow, so this is a super-short entry before I go to bed. Just had some things I wanted to say, and I actually wanted to get back in the habit of posting here.
Found some things out about some people I know. I've actually found a lot of things out. I've been talking with my mom lately, and it's weird to find myself respecting her more than I used to. It used to be such a big thing for me that I honestly didn't like or respect my parents. I mean, they were my parents, but it didn't go far beyond that. I could respect my mom for specific things, but not as an overall person. Lately, I've been finding more in her that I appreciate.
I've also been finding less to respect in my dad. I'm not sure what I think of that. I'm not sure how much of my lack-of-respect stems from anger, and how much stems from something that I can count on as a real reason to dislike someone. I refuse to be a product of emotions alone, and so I force myself to view things logically. I've decided that I would much rather regret getting to know my dad than regretting not getting to know him. So I'm going to try to talk to him a bit more, only without making him think I like him too much, since I don't. No clue how I'll do that.
Bet and I went on a roadtrip. I've made a note to myself to never do that again. Bet and I have very different ideas of what makes an enjoyable vacation. We were able to compromise our way through the week, but I don't know if our friendship could withstand another one.
Found out some things about some people. Not sure if I want to know it. I know I'm not supposed to know it. The person who told me thought I was allowed to know, then felt terrible when s/he realized I wasn't supposed to know. Half of what pisses me off is that I wasn't supposed to know. Knowledge is freedom, neh? I guess a lot of what upsets me is that I thought the people involved would agree that knowledge is freedom. But apparently it's only freedom when it doesn't effect them.
Also found out that I have a shit-load of money I had invested and forgot about. I'm going to cash that in and open a bank-account. My current goals for that money are to buy my own books next semester, not have to borrow from my mom for the roadtrip I'm going on in a week, and start a savings for when I graduate. Yay for goals.
Over and out, Rogerrik.
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Post by fico on Jul 14, 2004 1:58:25 GMT -5
7.14.o4
... AND I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY ALL THE REASONS WE MUST SPLIT UP / EXCEPT I AM NOT A PRINCE, YOU KNOW, I GUESS I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH ... AND I AM IN THE HABIT OF VERBALIZING / BUT I GUESS SOMETIMES SILENCE IS THE VERY BEST THING ...
2:01am. Wed. I'm starting to consider the fact that my words have weight. The last time I did this, I got in an argument with a close friend. But I think I've got a better idea of what I'm doing this time. I know my words have an effect on people, but that's no reason to stop speaking. (I have a friend who has honestly considered becoming a hermit. She says that people are just too upsetting most of the time. But I also know that this person truly appreciate who people can be. I think she just has trouble broadening the view she has of a few people until it extends to the generalization of "people.") So I'm attempting to consider more things before speaking. Usually, I forget to. That's partly why I like proboards so much. It's the perfect place to consider what you say before saying it, but still relate on a very close and intimate level. I had a double at trapdoor for a while. I loved it. I was seen as Gen immediately, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I was learning to relate to people differently.
I think that's what my general goal was this year. If there's one thing I think I was learning this year, it was alternate ways of relating to people. In fact, I think that is most likely a major goal of my life, isn't it? I spend ages trying to figure myself out, because I'm curious about how I see other people and why I see them that way.
Needless to say, I've been influenced by a lot of people this year. I read my first James Joyce novel. I read my first Virginia Woolf novel. I heard Ellis for the first time, as well as Melissa Ferrick. Saw Bitch & Animal live. Walked around a city with someone I love. Dated someone who might have become a mistake I'll never regret. Became acquainted with the sheer beauty of angry music. Started reading the livejournal of a woman I've never met. Met professors and students and re-met friends. With all the communicating that's been going on, it's no wonder I'm thinking about it.
danah has a blog open to everyone. She's a graduate student studying language and communication, especially on the internet. She's interesting, and she likes Ani; what more could I ask for? So I'm reading her livejournal. It's pretty amazing. It's like watching a movie about someone, almost. You get these pictures into their lives, and you get to try to figure them out based on that information. danah has a lot of cool ideas. I can understand how she managed to get into Berkeley.
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I feel like a complete putz. I'm working in order to fund roadtrips. That seems to be all I will be capable of doing this summer. I have a list of twenty books or so that I wanted to read. (I'll be lucky if I finish half of them.) I have a list of movies I want to watch. (Most aren't at the library, and I am too poor to rent.) I have a list of things to mail and people to call/visit. (I think I've completed half of it in about half the summer; that's not too bad. But I've had one of the things waiting to get finished for mailing for about... a year and a half. ) I have a few different parts of my body I wanted to work on. I'm trying to eat more food, but I'm also trying to pick slightly healthier food. But I haven't been working out, like I wanted to. It's not like I want to do a lot; it's just that there are some problems with the way my body is shaped, considering who I want people to see me as. Parts of my body can be changed by excercise. Unfortunately, the main thing I wanted to do was swim, and our pool is currently a puddle of rain-water rather than anything else. In the mean time, I'm practicing other things and figuring out the portrayal I want.
Along with considering communication, I'm thinking about people who communicate. I've come to the tentative conclusion that there are two levels of truth. One is the factual aspect. For instance: I have two brothers. This is a plain fact, and it is true. There is some lee-way within factual truth. Example: I live in a yellow room. This is not strictly true because some walls are white. However, no one would see this as a lie. Then there's the, shall we say, internal truth. Internal truth is the stuff that really matters in life, the stuff that people call "Truth." The same as factual truth, it has lee-way. The problem is that most people don't recognize the truth of internal truth's lee-way. Therefore, I "lie" when I call myself a guy. Someone explained something similar to this to me a couple years ago. I think I actually get it now.
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There's a song called "Best Cock on the Block" by Bitch & Animal. It's a brilliant song. It's about this lesbian, and one line talks about how she tries to get a date with a girl who totally blows her off. "I need a little more man in my men." I dated someone who ended up needing more man in her men. I quoted the song at her a couple times, asking her if that's what she needed. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but it hurt every time she said yes.
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EW. YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE GIRLY-MEN. WELL I NEED MORE MAN IN MY MEN.
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Post by fico on Aug 8, 2004 11:26:05 GMT -5
8.8.2004
9:54am. Sunday. I woke up three or four times this morning. Once because I was freezing and I had to pee. Two hours later because my mundo-loud alarm (sounds like a fire-bell) went off. About forty-five minutes later because my second alarm had been going off for about fifteen minutes. And finally because of a nightmare, my alarm going off again. But, considering the fact that the alarm had been going off for the past fifty-five minutes, I think I just woke up because of the nightmare.
Dream: It took place in my house. Only we have this laundry-room area on the back, which was part of the addition, and that was built more like a barn. It was full of things like I imagine old-and-no-longer-used barns are full of. It had become a sort of storage-space for some paint cans and big, hulky metal-things, and it had some metal shelves set up. Something happened to make the shelves of one case fall, but only from the top. Phoebe (from the t.v. show Friends was there) started talking about alternate ways of magnetics moving through the world. It gave me an idea, so I grabbed some magnets and used them to hold the shelves up. (No clue why my dream-logic allowed two tiny pieces of not-so-magnetic material were able to hold up a metal construct that big, but it happened.) Rachel and Monica (also from Friends) held up the shelves while Phoebe and I put the magnets up.
They disappeared, and I wandered into the bathroom which is only accessible through that laundry-come-barn area. I decided to really go it with the whole passing thing, so I shaved. (If you're a girl passing as a guy, you've got to shave because guys shave and thus do not have peach-fuzz.) So I shaved, and then it must have been weeks and weeks later, because I was standing in front of the mirror again, but I had this scruffy sort of beard going on. Dunno why, but I did. The hair was really dark. Only it was getting too long (about 2.5 or 3 inches long) so I had to shave it off. But I was really proud/happy... I dunno the word. I was just.... glad that I'd managed it? Either way, I walked around for a while, enjoying the "beard" (it was scraggly even though it was long). I just wanted to wear it a little longer, in case it didn't grow back from some reason.
I walked out of the bathroom, and Hannah walked in. (Hannah is the dog owned by our next-door-neighbours. She's getting really old at this point.) In my dream, Hannah had gotten old enough that she would just piss wherever. She was sniffing at these yellow patches all over the ground. They were everwhere. But the weird part was that some were shaped like a small dog or something. Hannah ran away (as much as she could, considering how old she is), and I went to find my mom. It was really weird, the yellow. I thought Hannah must have peed everywhere, but they were everywhere.
Brought my mom back, and she saw one of the stains that looked particularly like an animal. My mom said that when animals get extremely scared, they discharge this chemical, and it stains yellow. I realized I hadn't seen my cat for a while. I looked around and found the cat. It crawled out from under a broken school-desk or something. It was so tiny and scrawny. It looked like a cross between my cat and [Revvie's] cat, but I knew it was mine in the dream. Not Ganja, just mine for as long as the dream was. There were burns and cuts all over it. It was limping because one hip was really bad. And it gave this tiny little meow. It looked like it was going to fall over dead any second. I just kind of picked it up and cuddled it. I might have started crying, I don't know. It was just so small, and it limped and almost fell over when it walked out to where I could reach it.
I woke up like that, just holding my baby blanker and my two scarves. They were the exact size the kitten had been. And my alarm had been going off for the past hour.
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p.s. sorry this took so long to actually post. i've been having a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine.[ finished approximately 12:30pm][/size]
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Post by fico on Aug 10, 2004 17:54:55 GMT -5
8.10.o4
ALL I WANNA DO IS RIDE BIKES WITH YOU / AND STAY UP LATE / AND MAYBE SPOON
6:49pm. Tues. ha. So I re-took that test I posted up a little while ago, the "Which Biological Molecule are You.?" one. I got DNA.
"You are DNA. You're a smart person, and you appear incredibly complex to people who don't know you. You're incomparably full of information, and most of it is useless."
I'm my own person again!
Anyway, I've been busy getting ready to go back to school. I had to contact some people at Coe, because it turns out that I need to be back there more than a week earlier than I had previously thought. I'm excited to be going back. I don't like who I am when I'm at home.
After days of trying to get in touch with various people who are staying at Coe over the summer, I eventually just called Dr.Denim. He was actually there. (I think this might be his first day back; he said he had spent most of the summer at the field station. Lucky I got him, either way.) He and I worked it out, how I'll be able to go to Coe early, without ResLife getting mixed up in the whole messy business. I'm glad that finally got sorted out, because I need to leave this Friday. (Gosh, that's only three days away. That's insane.)
I was supposed to go on my hot air balloon ride today, but it was cancelled again. Man, I've been trying to do that for two years. The woman was really nice, though. She said she would talk to people, and she would get me a refund. (I had to give a down-payment two years ago.) She said I had been really patient, and it just wasn't working. So I could either try again or have the refund or whatever I wanted. Talked to Bet, and I'm gonna take the refund. It's good, too, because my roadtrips really wiped all my monetary-ness. So I'll pay back my mom with half the money, then use the other half to get Bet something else. I'm planning a super-duper-huge care-package, to be sent to her at college next year. Something involving home-baked-goods but also healthy-stuffs ('cause Bet's like that), and also a movie and a book, with which to occupy one's self while enjoying the food. Music, probably. Maybe a something else, but I'm not sure what. I'm excited, because packages are just fun that way.
I'm also working on packing. I only lost one of that boxes that I used to transport all of my stuff here for the summer. So I think I'll just need to get a bag or something, toss some clothes and my comforter in there, and I should be set. Dunno how long it will take me to do, though.
I've got this huge list of things I need to get done. I've finished a third of it, and there are twenty-one things on there right now. But it's okay. I'm on it.
I hope everyone is having a good day, or week, or whatever. Nothing really spectacular is happening here, but it's just a sort of... good day.
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Post by fico on Sept 5, 2004 4:02:44 GMT -5
9.5.o4
AND YOUR MOM WOULD STICK A FORK RIGHT INTO DADDY'S SHOULDER. AND DAD WOULD THROW THE GARBAGE ALL ACROSS THE FLOOR. AS WE WOULD LAY AND LEARN WHAT EACH OTHERS' BODIES WERE FOR.
Sun. 3:53am. Today was a day full of firsts. I went to my first party on campus where I actually had something to drink. (Man, I used to be able to hold my alcohol, but I'm such a light-weight at this point. It's kind of embarrassing, actually.) I ended up spending half the night talking to people I don't normally see, and the other half talking to a girl about sexuality. [Virginia] is a pretty cool kid; I have some issues, but I have issues with almost everyone. She is completely in love with [Sensei], the chair of the English department. (Which is completely understandable. The first time I met Sensei, I knew I would either love her or hate her, and I ended up totally falling in love. This is blue-love to an extreme. Sensei is second only to Dr.Denim.) So about Virginia, we were hanging out because her apartment was the one throwing the party. I've had a relatively noticeable crush on Virginia for a good few months now, and we joke about it a lot. And we ended up talking for about an hour and a half about why I act the way I do and why she reacts the way she does and what that means to both of us. It was just... There were things I hadn't liked about Virginia, but I'm beginning to think some of those are unfounded.
It's just that I think Virginia could really benefit from having a relationship with a girl. I mean, I don't even care if it's me. (Well, I do, but only in a selfish way.) I just want her to know what's availible to her, because I think she would like having the knowledge once she got it. And I think she thinks she has it now, but that she actually doesn't. Granted, it's possible that I'm totally off-base, but that's really what I think.
I've noticed that that's an important thing to me lately. It has become important to me that some people don't have things that I think they deserve. The problem is that I don't think I'm very good at making sure they understand the different loves. And that makes me feel really shitty, because I should be a good enough person to make sure they understand what's going on before I get into anything.
Completely random but exciting sidenote: A couple days ago, I bought a suit from Good Will (or maybe Salvation Army; I can't remember) that cost me all of $4.19. It's a beautiful suit, and my black shirt matches it. Virginia's party had a theme of "Penthouse." (You either had to dress up as the guy living in the Penthouse or the girl who comes to visit the guy living in the Penthouse. I was the guy.) So I wore my suit for the first time tonight, and it made me feel good. The jacket's a little big, but the suspenders work wonderfully, and the pants are perfect. I felt like Charlie from Perks, when he feels like his hair looks right on that pretty-weather day.
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Post by fico on Sept 5, 2004 23:37:34 GMT -5
9.5.o4
ALL AROUND ME ARE FAMILIAR FACES. WORN OUT PLACES. WORN OUT FACES.
Sun. 10:43pm. We watched Donnie Darko tonight. I think it's going to take me much longer than a night to absorb this one, or maybe I mean adsorb. Some films and characters are just so intense that I don't think I can incorporate them into myself, but rather I need to tack them onto my outsides.
I'm having the most trouble figuring out the girls in this film. Granted, I don't really understand Donnie Darko entirely, and I also don't totally get why Frank does the things he does. But mainly, I'm trying to understand Rose Darko and Gretchen and Kitty Farmer and Karen Pommeroy.
Kitty is probably the character I understand the least. I don't know why it's so important to her to have her world the way it is. Regardless, she's never going to let her world change. Even when the proof looks her in the face, she stands by Cunningham. Part of me wants to say she's loyal, but the overwhelming part of me knows that she can't be admired for a lack of ability to reassess her environment. Even more importantly, she can't stand the idea of her world being different from the way she wants it. I can't get over the fact that she never lets anyone else talk, like she can't even conceive of the idea that her ideas might change.
Gretchen is the person I understand the best, or the person I relate to the most, or something. Every time she does something sexual with Donnie, it's after something bad happened to her. I can understand why she wants something like that. Lately, I've been so starved for touch, I don't know. I've gotten some sleeping buddies in college and stuff, and I'm doing fine. It's just that I can get what she's trying to find, even if I can't condone the way she looks for it. And maybe I just don't get why she does what she does. Maybe it's just not the way I can deal with the same issues.
Karen Pommeroy is the one that the movie chooses to make most clear, until the last scene anyway. And then I'm left to consider what's important to her. I know the kids are, you can see that the first time she's in a classroom. But I don't get what she thinks in her personal life. I only understand her in the classroom, but I can't conceive of her outside of it. Why is it that that always happens with me and teachers/professors? I can't think of them outside of it, and so I know that I'm missing out on so much. But how do you transcend the social barrier that so many people want to keep in place?
Rose Darko was... beautiful. I could see why she treated her son as she did, and I could understand what she wanted from herself and from him. I loved how dedicated she was in a selfless way. I loved that she waved.
Donnie himself was lost. He was ost to himself and lost to me. And I just need to rewatch it or something. I think I saw a lot less of him this time than I will the next time. I think I see a lot more of me in him than I'm comfortable seeing.
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Post by fico on Oct 3, 2004 1:23:28 GMT -5
10.3.2oo4
ROCK ROCK ROCK AND ROLL BABY. YOU'RE A PAIN IN THE ASS.
1:16am. Sun. Things have been so crazy. I'm sorry that this is going to be so quick, but it is.
Classes are going really well. They passed my petition right off. But then the college got really mean about stuff. Like, last year, they were really helpful about my name-situation. (I go by Gen IRL now, totally. When I call my mom, I have to make a conscious decision not to say, "hey, it's gen.") They changed it on my voice-mail; they changed it on my e-mail; it was great. This year, they keep saying that unless it's cleared with the registrar first, they can't do anything about it. Everyone knows the registrar is the most beaurocratic system in the entire school. I'm not going to bash my head against a brick wall for the fun of it.
But classes honestly are good. I'm learning about all kinds of good stuff, like the five sexes (I'd heard loads of references to the article that talked about that, but I'd never actually read the original) and feminist philosophers and Japan through different time periods and all kinds of stuff. It's good stuff. One of the classes I'm enjoying this semester is Topics. Topics is a shitty class. It's a ton of work for almost no credit, and it's really hard, and we never really know what Dr.Denim wants us to get out of the assignments. (At least, I never did last year.) But this year, it's so nifty. We helped develop the syllabus, which was way cool. And as a sophmore student, I have to do a major project. It will take me all year to do, and it has to involve both the writing center and an outside text. (Example: Dr.Denim had this theory about writing centers being comparable to ant colonies. So he wrote a paper about it and we gave presentations about it. We have to do something like that for this project.) So... I came up with four main types of conferences, and I put them into the four houses. I'm super-duper-uber excited, umlaut and everything.
One thing that bothers me though... I've become a stereotype for myself. In fiction workshop, I keep writing about gender or sexuality, depending on my mood. It's always one of those two. And people have picked up on it and categorized me. That bothers me a lot. I feel like I should be able to do more than just gender and sexuality when it comes to writing. I feel like I can reach people on more levels than that... or at least like I should be able to reach them on more than just two levels. Only I tried to come up with a story that didn't involve gender or sexuality, and I couldn't. That bothered me even more. But I've got a kid who will give me a conference on it, so I'm hoping to fix this.
I saw Napolean Dynamite today. It's a great movie. It's the type of movie you watch with friends, and it's just random enough to be beautiful. It's like The Breakfast Club or Dazed and Confused. It's not actually a good movie, but it's just wonderful to quote and wonderful to have the experience and memory of. Plus, it totally does the 80's thing, which is hilarious. It's just such a good time, and it's great to quote with friends afterward. Truly great.
Meh. Time for bed. I work 8 hours tomorrow, plus I have to finish all my homework for next week. ... I'm thinking of joining the swim team also. I think I might be overloading myself on purpose, and I think I might know why. But I can't decide if my reasoning is valid or not. meh.
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Post by fico on Dec 12, 2004 17:34:54 GMT -5
12.12.2oo4
I JUST WANNA SAY / I BREAK THE LAW EVERY DAY TO LOVE YOU COMPLETELY
Sun. 5:09pm. In my Introduction to Gender Studies class this semester, we read a lot of things that had to do with the differences between men and women. That was pretty much the focus of the class, although we diverged into a bunch of other things, too. One of the things that hit me was when we talked about how women and men show affection. Stereotypically, women say it, and guys show it. So a girl would be all like "I love you," while a guy would fix your car and make you breakfast in bed and buy you something you mentioned in passing but didn't expect to get. I remember reading that and thinking about how much I fall into the guy-group more than the girl-group. There are only two people I feel really comfortable saying "I love you" to, and I still don't say it all that often.
I remember when I was younger, I found this journal I kept in first grade. Our teacher had us write in it every day. One of my journal entries said something like: "I love basketball. I love the whole world. I love everyone in the world. I love you, Miss [insert-first-grade-teacher's-name-that-I-forget]. Do you love me?" I think I just loved myself out when I was younger. I just got it all out of my system to the point where I didn't want it anymore. And now I only use it when it really counts.
Instead of saying it, which can cause awkward pauses and miscommunications as to the meaning of the word, I just do things for people. That's most of why I love sending packages to people. It's just so much better, when they get it and say they got it, and then they say what they liked. That's one of the best things ever.
Today, they had waffles in the caf. Basically, they provide the batter, and you make the waffle yourself. I made one, and I took it out when the timer went off, but it was only 4/5 cooked. I was at a table with a bunch of people, five other people. It's been a really bad week. I handed in fifteen papers in the last two weeks, no shit. I'm kind of pooped. And then I drank last night, which was a good time, but a bunch of things happened at the party that I disagreed with. (Mainly, people were stupid and made out with people they shouldn't have.) So I had a good time, but it wasn't like I could be care-free or anything, since people were being stupid. I got back to my room and set my alarms, 'cause I work at 11am on Sundays. I woke up at 11:04, having set my alarm for the time I work, rather than the time I have to get up. (Just so we all know, that's the first time I ever made a mistake like that, and I will be more careful in the future.) So yeah. It just wasn't a good week.
I left work early (with the permission of my co-worker) in order to eat brunch before the caf closed. And the food really sucked. The caf was horrible last year, but it was tolerably decent at the beginning of this year. I allowed myself to get my hopes up. That was my mistake. The caf is now worse than it was last year. It's pretty nauseating. Anyway, I like brunch because you can make your own waffles. But mine was 1/5 raw, and I just wasn't in the mood to make another one. I asked my table to make one for me, and no one did. I've thought about it, and I know I don't really have a right to ask for that. But dude, they're my friends, neh? And I would have made a waffle for one of them. I would have made a waffle for any of them. Even if I had a not-so-good reaction to the idea. I mean, I have made a waffle for one of them. But no. They all went back to their respective rooms, and I made myself a new waffle. I just wasn't happy.
I think most of why I'm so unhappy is because I'm incredibly lonely this semester. I have a lot of energy, mostly love-energy. I just have this drive to find people and do things for them. Because when I don't, it just hurts. I don't get it, but it's true. Last year, I dated someone for a long while, so I was able to relieve a large amount of love-energy on her. It's so socially acceptable to do things like that for people you're dating. When I do it for other people, they seem happy, but they are a little weirded out. And on top of that, I can't find a way to spread my energy out. It can only handle two, maybe three people at a time. So last year, to pick up the slack that my girlfriend couldn't handle, I had [Revvie]. (Honestly, I probably spent more love-energy on Revvie than my girlfriend, but that isn't the point.) Revvie now lives in Pennsylvania. (Ironic? Just a tinge.) My love-energy can't handle distance. It just shuts down and won't work. I've learned that even Iowa City is too far, and that's half an hour away.
So I've got all this energy that goes nowhere. To compensate, I killed myself with work. (What I did this semester: 5.8 credits (i.e. 17.5 hours of class a week, plus all the homework those classes assign); swimming (five practices a week, each practice is approximately an hour and forty five minutes of my time, also two swim meets, which added up to about ten hours); writing center job (two hours a week), library job (six hours a week), Coe Alliance (one hour a week), CESAW (a women's egalitation organization, one hour a week), Japanese conversation partner (about one hour a week), reader for the Coe Review (about two hours a week), a third job that I had until the end of October (six hours a week), Cosmos Arts and Entertainment editor (countless hours a week, at least four hours, not to mention articles I've written), and then there are also the things that aren't weekly occurances that I also did.) With that much shit to do, I didn't have time to want to spend energy on people, and I didn't have energy when I had the time.
The problem is that now I'm missing people in a big bad way. Except for when Rue visited, I've slept with one person all semester, and I only slept with that person once. I'm just waiting for my body to disappear one of these days, wasted away because there was no one there to touch it and make sure it was okay.
I'm sorry this is a sort of depressing post. I don't mean it to be. I just felt bad for not posting in so long. I swear things are do-able. Revvie is going to come pick me up, and we'll hang out for part of winter break. And it looks like I'll be able to go down to the bookstore for a good few days before Revvie gets here. I just wiped myself more than I thought I would, and I'm ready for a break.
*hands each of you breakfast in bed*
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Post by fico on Jan 1, 2005 13:08:38 GMT -5
1.1.2005
SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR / AND I DON'T FEEL ANY DIFFERENT
11:32am. Sat. I wonder sometimes at the idea that certain changes occur at certain times. I was confirmed the same year I turned thirteen; I was permitted to have a driver's license when I turned 16.5; I was allowed to date anyone in Iowa who is my age or older when I turned eighteen.
As I'm looking back through the past year, and the year before it, and the year before that, I'm realizing I was almost never ready for the responsibilities I was given, although, at the time, I felt I was more than qualified. I think of the first person I ever fell in love with in a sexual sense, and I'm glad the situation ended up the way it did. I think of the things I know now, and I think of the things I realized, and I can't help but recognize the fact that I wouldn't know them otherwise. And it occurs to me that all of that happened through the New Year, not definitively on one side of it or the other.
I think of last year, when I fell in love with someone else. The year is all blurred into one gen-at-coe sort of memory. I know I loved hir by the end of first semester. I know I was in love with hir by the end of second semester. But it's anyone's guess when they happened within those time-frames.
Eventually, I'm going to want a sort of family. I can't tell yet what sort I want, whether I'll want kids with a significant other or a group of important friends or a scattering of far-flung acquaintances, but I've always known I wanted to create a family, and I've always known I wanted to do a better job of a family than my parents did. I suppose that's one of the biggest reasons I don't think I'm ready for one. If you're going to go around creating things, you should be creating them for themselves, or for the other people involved, or even for yourself. But not to prove you know something someone else doesn't, or not to prove you're better at something than someone else is. I wonder when I'll finally change-over into the person who's ready for a family, whether ir will be near a time-change, like the New Year or my birthday or something.
I have two friends, one of whom now semi-hates the other, partly because of me. We'll call them [Thing-1] and [Thing-2] for the time being, Thing-1 being the semi-hated and Thing-2 being the semi-hater. Thing-1 never regrets anything. S/he sees the past as the past. And since s/he can't change anything about what has already happened, there is no point in regretting it. That's one thing Thing-2 hated about Thing-1 even before I got involved.
Thing-2 doesn't regret things often, but that's more because s/he is incredibly careful about how s/he handles situations. Thing-2 not only takes the time to consider how hir actions affect other people, but also how their reactions will affect both hir and other persons beyond the people directly involved. When Thing-2 regrets something s/he has done, s/he regrets it completely. If s/he had the ability, s/he would go back and change the situtation entirely until s/he could be proud of the way s/he handled it. S/he's sort of learned not to get too bothered by the fact that people will be incredibly stupid sometimes, and so s/he simply does hir best to be one of the least-commonly stupid people.
I think it's important that I regret things. A friend and I have arguments, because s/he thinks I blame myself. I think there's a difference between blaming yourself and taking responsibility for your actions. I take responsibility for everything I've ever done, and thus I regret a lot of my actions. But if I blamed myself, I would have an additional responsibility to change them if I could. I would be like Thing-2, wanting to go back if I had the ability and fix what I had done wrong. As someone who takes responsibility for things but doesn't blame hirself for them, I want everything to remain the way it is, because I have no right nor a desire to change them. Too much of me is affected by the mistakes I've made as past persons I've been. My life can be divided into three or four main persons I've become. I hate two of them, but I truly grew from one of the others. I hate the two because I have trouble seeing pieces of my current self in those selves. But I've learned that you can't hop rocks when you're missing the bridge that connects two which are farther apart. A neuron can't transmit if you forget even one sheet of myelin. It's only through the self that I grew directly from, the one which I still appreciate, that I can see how she grew from my previous selves. And so I can't change even the things that cause me to hate my previous selves, because they would not have created the self-I-appreciate-though-no-longer-am, and thus I would not have formed into my current self.
I think Thing-2 thinks I am too close to Thing-1 in my form of regret.
It's comforting to realize that, while I've certainly made mistakes, there are very few things I regret from the past three years of my life. Maybe that's the point at which I change beyond being. I become a new person when I fully regret who I was.
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Post by fico on Jan 29, 2005 21:21:15 GMT -5
1.29.2005
YOU MAY NOT REMEMBER ME / I WAS A CHILD OF THREE / AND YOU A LAD OF EIGHTEEN
8:05pm. Sat. I am constantly amazed by the fact that I still think I'm immortal. When I think back on who I used to be, I'm astounded by my inability to recognize my own vulnerability, my own mortality. But right now, this moment, as I look back, I know that I can get hurt, that I can fuck up. And then I turn another corner in my life, and I realize how immortal I thought myself as I looked back upon the person I once was.
Enrolled in 5.8 credits once more, as I have been for the past three semesters, I suppose I must have thought myself immortal. I suppose I still do, since I'm not willing to drop one. Three of my classes expect me to spend an average of four hours every day on homework. And I still have an additional 2.8 classes after that.
I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Last semester, I had extra time, and I didn't know what to do with it. So I ran myself ragged, signing up for organization after commitment after responsibility. And I guess it solved the problem of finding something to do with my free time. This semester, I lust after the idea of free time.
I almost burned myself out on Thursday night. I was this close: []. But I pulled through, I guess. It just seems way too early in the semester to start threatening to burn out.
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I'll know by Tuesday whether or not Coe is giving me enough financial aid to go to Ireland next year. I took care of all my paperwork last semester, applying for a full year abroad. I don't want Tuesday to come because it will almost certainly end in my having to make a decision, and it's so much easier to sit here where the decisions are made by other people. Descartes would say I was engaging in bad faith, telling myself I didn't have to make a choice in life. I guess the main reason I'm okay with being a person of bad faith right now is simply because I won't be later. I don't want to make a choice because I like being at Coe, and I know I can handle Coe. At this point, I've grown too attached to things in the US. I don't think I've ever felt this big before. I can think of certain people I know, and it's like I dissolve into the air and expand to fit the space provided. Maybe the space is smaller in Ireland.
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I've remembered my dreams of the past two nights. On Thursday, I fell asleep by accident when I was supposed to be working on a paper for one of my classes. I woke up terrified. In my dream, the skin above my right breast, between the breast and my neck, had become a mountain range of moles. The skin was a centimeter higher than the rest of my chest, because the moles stuck up in irregular bumps. All I remember from the dream was looking down to see the moles, being disgusted, and then thinking that no one would make out with me because no one would want to see that... and I wouldn't want them to see it either.
Last night, I had a dream involving fire. I lived in a city with a group of other people. Fires would get started a lot, I don't remember if they were accidents or not. We would calculate, depending on how many blocks away they were, whether or not we were in danger. There was also something involving someone I had killed? I know a dead body was involved. We had disposed of it, except for the head. We had the head in a box. Although the person had been average-sized, the head was only roughly half a foot in diameter. We kept it in a thick box that had once held cookies.
Our apartment ended up burning down, so we rebuilt it. There was a garage with two-story windows, just a panel of huge sheafs of glass. Hallways on the second floor led to the garage, but then they just stopped. You could fall out of the hallway onto the concrete floor of the garage. My bedroom (which I shared with my wife) had its door off of one of these hallways, directly before the drop into the garage.
My wife was [Clare], the third person I ever fell in love with in my whole life. She and I had a five-year-old daughter, and she was actually our daughter, not someone we had adopted or artificially inseminated. I don't know how that worked. Clare's brother (who doesn't exist in real life) was also living with us in our newly built apartment. Clare and I were lying on our bed; I was half-on-top of her. It was sexual, just very comfortable, like we had lived with each other for years.
The head of the man I had killed was in its box, which was in an open dresser drawer. We were still moving in, so I had just tossed it onto some button-downs. Our daughter came in, and I rolled off Clare in order to hold our girl. Clare's brother came in, also. We were talking, but I don't know what about. He stood by the door for a while, but then he picked up the box with the head in it. I could hear it move when he picked it up, but then I was off the bed, taking the box from him and tossing it back on top of the shirts, shutting the drawer. "Don't go rooting through our stuff," I said, climbing back on the bed with Clare and our daughter, "you'll find out sex-toys or something." And we all laughed, and then I woke up because I rolled over and touched the wall with my fingertips.
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Back to homework.
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Post by fico on Feb 4, 2005 10:08:22 GMT -5
2.4.o5
It took me a little while to get used to the idea. I guess I'm still not used to it, since I'm not excited. Or maybe I am used to it, and I just don't know what to do now. But it's true either way: I got just under $11,000 in financial aid for Ireland. And I'm pretty sure I keep all of my loans. ... So Ireland can really happen.
I just feel like such a shit for not being excited about this. I mean, I mean, other people try so hard, and they can't go abroad, you know? And here I am, and I just wrote some stuff and filled out a couple forms, and I get to go. And I'm not even excited about that. I feel almost like I have a responsibility to be happy about it. Right now, it's almost like I want to do it simply because I know it will be good for me, you know? I don't think that's a very good reason for going abroad. I think you should want it. I've anted it for years. So why don't I now?
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Post by fico on Apr 3, 2005 16:13:29 GMT -5
Note: this journal became a pretty long thread, and I've sort of... stopped writing in it. It's not really on purpose, but these things happen sometimes. So I'm attempting to revamp my blogging life. I've got a lifejournal account, so if you ever want to read my entries, here's the site: www.livejournal.com/users/fico/
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