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Post by fico on Mar 12, 2003 2:03:02 GMT -5
3.12.o3
12:32am. You know when you stumble across something, and it just feels like it's more you than you are? I've got that right now. I've been listening to this cd almost incessantly since I bought it a few days ago. It's just that sometimes other people say things so much better. Anyway, if you want to know where I am right now, listen to the Ok Go cd, especially tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8. And semi-especially tracks 3, 6, 9, 10, and 11. (*miniblush* there are twelve tracks in all. )
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I really don't like roadtrips with my mom. At all. Nunca. No quiero conducir con mi mama. No me gusta mi mama cuando ella conduci. No me gusto me cuando ella conduci. (roughly translated into spanish and now roughly translated back: never. i don't want to drive with my mom. i don't like my mom when she drives. i don't like myself when she drives.) I'm all for roadtrips. For sure, they make great adventures and great memories and good times. You get to know the people you're with. This is all good, unless you don't really want to know the other person.
My mom just gets frustrated about stuff that I don't understand. And she handles it in a completely different way. I mean, for sure, I understand her being a little high-strung. She won't see my dad for a while, probably a long while, and he's pretty much the center of her world.
We were driving back from North Carolina, where we went to visit my dad for a last time. {remember: twisted words.} We had gotten caught in this traffic jam, so we were probably going to miss my dad's call later that night, 'cause we wouldn't be home in time to get it. And we were really low on gas, almost ready to just drift over to the side of the road on momentum alone. (In a Mercedes, you don't have momentum. You take your foot off the gas, and you're going ten mph slower than you had been with it on.) And, since it was the Mercedes, we had to search for diesel fuel.
My mom had seen this sign on the way down advertising a really cheap price, so we were going there. But as we're getting off the exit, she notices that it says "cash payment" in small letters under the price. We drove around searching for gas for a bit, but we couldn't find any, and we only had a credit card. So my mom got really upset and started to cry and stuff. (She has this really weird, awful way of crying. It's very panicky and high, a little bit of a whimper. It makes me think of a lost dog on the side of the road with a broken leg.) So we pulled into this abandoned-looking parking lot, and she got out so I could drive.
I was fine with driving and everything. It's just she was saying things like, "I'm sorry, [Gen]. I just can't handle when people are cruel to me like this." And Rue, ever the sensible one, was all like, "Mom, they don't do it to hurt you. They didn't single you out." And my mom's all like, "Yes they do. They're cruel and they're vicious and they hate me." That's what my mom's like when she's flustered. ("Cruel" is her word when she's upset. Everyone is cruel, everyone hates her, all that.) And she's all like, "Just find a gas station that isn't cruel. We need gas, [Gen]." And I'm shouting in my head, "Okay, shut up, let me concentrate; you want me to crash, damnit?" But I manage to just say, "O-kay" in a peeved-type of voice.
We eventually found a place. Rue had to run into a store-thingy and ask directions, and then we had to find it. And the whole time, my mom would make these sharp intakes of breath (cry-breaths always get me, I hate them), or she would wimper a little, or something. And we would, like, ask her what she wanted us to do. Should we ask for directions? Should we try another exit? And she would just say, "I don't care. Do whatever you want." Like, yeah, it's our problem that her dream car had to be a fucking diesel-dependant piece of shit.
And then the place we found had mainly fuel-pumps for trucks, and those nozzels are way too big for our little car. So Rue ran in to ask, and two pumps had smaller nozzles. And then, like, I pumped the gas and all that, and I drove over to pay. My mom wouldn't go in. "I'm not going in like this. I don't want to deal with any of them. They're cruel." (She was all spotty and red. It was really obvious she had been crying. And she still wasn't breathing steadily.) So I had to go in and give a credit card and forge her signature. (That was where the whole problem was. We didn't have any cash. We only had, like, $2.50 in change by the time we got home, 'cause of tolls and stuff. And that dipped into my stores as well as wiping out hers.) Thankfully, the woman didn't bother to ask if it was my card.
I just would have handled it so completely differently. Even when I get upset, I'm a lot more calm about it, and a lot less dramatic. I would, like, pull over or park somewhere and just rest for a bit, regulating my breathing. I would just get myself under control before I even tried to think. And if I had people younger than myself, I would say something like, "Okay, we're running into a little trouble. So just be quiet a minute or two, okay?" And after my minute, I would answer any questions they had. I wouldn't let them know how upset I was. Even when I major-flip-out, I don't deal with people until I'm under control. 'Cause that's not fair to them, you know?
So, like, let's say I got upset enough that I was flipping out as bad as my mom. I would park somewhere, tell the kids to stay in the car, and go chuck something somewhere, or walk around a little, or play hacky-sack for a minute or two. Just something. Something alone. And then I would be okay, and I would go back to the car and ask for my minute to think. I guess I'm saying that it seems like my mom doesn't have any control, which I'm enough of a guy to "disrespect".
And I don't think that she handles having kids in the car. I mean, I know we're 17 and 15, but she's still our mom; it's still "distressing" or whatever when she's upset. And it's annoying as fuck to have to comfort her. That sounds so horrible, but so what? It's true. I hate when I have to calm her down and explain that it's okay and that we'll take care of it. Yeah, I'm eager for responsiblity and all that. But I want to learn responsibility and care for myself before I learn it for other people, you know? Especially when that's the person who's "supposed" to be caring for me, who's "supposed" to be responsible for me.
So I guess I'm taking notes for when I've got kids. And I'm getting worried a little (stupid, since I'm not having kids for years yet, but still), because my instinct when I'm upset is to get alone for a while. You can't just leave kids alone in the car. But even if I just walk around the car a few times, just get their big, trusting eyes off me for a minute, I can think more clearly. I've learned that over the years. Like, if someone depends on me, and I'm responsible for them, but something is really wrong, I just need a bit of time when they're not watching my every movement, and I can pull myself together.
Like Rue got really sick recently-ish. My parents were out-of-state, Endre and his girlfriend (the adult baby-sitters) were either gone or working or high or something. (Don't get that wrong; they were usually around and usually really helpful, just not when I actually needed them. ) So I took Rue to the doctor, and then I took her to the hospital. I signed the paperwork. I handled the nurses. I did all this crap. And nothing at the hospital seemed "wrong", nothing they could pinpoint, anyway. So I took her home and fixed her bed and put her to sleep. And the next morning, she wasn't any better. So I went through the whole thing again.
I hadn't gotten too much sleep; I was getting sick, and my period was being a bitch like you wouldn't believe. You know when you get a cramp so bad you don't move, hoping it'll just leave you the hell alone? You just want to curl into a ball, but that tenses all your stomach muscles, which just hurts more. I didn't have any tampons, just a pad or two. It was awful. And Rue was there, and she had much worse stomach pains than I did, whatever was going on with her. But I just got so incredibly overwhelmed.
So I told her I was going to the bathroom. And I had a quick cry, and then I took a whole hecksa lotta deep breaths and put cold water on my face. And then I went back and handled it. I handled the nurses and the doctors and blah blah. I had another short cry later, and that was all I needed. But I didn't do it where Rue could see. I mean, you don't upset someone when she's already in a position of needing you. You make it about them. 'Cause it is about them. You know? *shrug* I dunno.
I dunno why I wanted to tell that whole story, but I did. I guess to prove that I actually do what I think is "right"? Because people can say "this is what you should do in this situation", but how many people actually do it? It's important to me that I actually do what I think is right.
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Post by fico on Mar 12, 2003 2:04:54 GMT -5
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twisted words: that another thing about my mom. (Apparently, I have to get a big, bad mom-bash out. Dunno exactly what brought this on. Just keep in mind that I'm her impatient, teenaged child. So my opinion of her is sort of prejudiced a little, I guess. Any of you might think of her as a very good woman. Which she is sometimes; I'm just having trouble remembering right now. ) Like, she takes what happens, and then she applies these weird motives to it, and she twists stories that way. Really badly.
Like, a few weeks ago, she said she was going to visit Daddy, and I'm like "okay..." And she started talking about what would happen, how she would probably just take Rue. And I'm like, "uh... can I go?" And she said, really surprised, "You want to go?" And I'm like, "yeah. [sarcasm]Dad's only leaving for a year or so, why would I want to see him before that?[/sarcasm]" And she's like, "oh, okay. I just didn't know you would want to go."
So then we're down in North Carolina, and she tells Dad that I'm along because she "wanted another driver." Ehem, she said nothing to me about wanting me. She wasn't even planning on taking me. Yes, it was helpful that I could drive. No, she did not take me because I was helpful. I didn't even drive the whole way down, only for an hour and a half or an hour or something on the way back.
She does that all the time, twisting things like that. I mean, it's probably just the way she remembers things, but it's really annoying. For sure, she thinks economically. Like, it was probably a much bigger thing in her mind that I could drive if she wanted me to than that I wanted to see my dad. So she probably only remembered her thoughts or something, and then assumed that the conversation had been about me driving instead of me wanting to see my dad, since that's what she had been thinking about. I'm okay with that. I'd prefer it differently, but I can't ask that of someone. All I ask is that she don't imply things about me wrongly just because that's how she remembered it... So I guess I don't want her talking about me.
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Nifty things that happened in North Carolina: I got some nifty-cool stuff for almost no money. Like, I've got a watch. It's this kid's watch, a little boy's watch, which is oh-so funny. (That's the "traditional boy" there. ) It's, like, blue with these neon-green and -yellow lizards on the band, as well as... *doesn't know the word for them* like a reverse-swastika. So it's not bad, and it doesn't have any connotations, it's just a nifty-looking design. And the face is cool. It's got a blue hour-hand and an orange minute-hand. Then, the numbers are blue and, get this, there are the minutes written behind the hours, with little tick-marks between the hours. So, like, behind the 1 is a [smaller]5[/smaller], and behind the 2 is a [smaller]10[/smaller], etc. Like, they color-coordinated it! hehe! And then these two lizards chase each other in a circle, and that's the seconds. And it ticks! *is happy about this* This nice, soft "tchick" type of sound. I know, dork. But yeah, it really suits me in a weird way.
And I got some clothes, and a bunch of awesome cd's, and some movies. (Including "Panic Room" and "Dazed and Confused". Okay. In Panic Room, there's this girl, right? She's really cute, and kinda tom-boyish, and snarky and stuff. Anyway, I saw it the first time and was like "whoa... um... pretty." So I looked her up a little, just a little. She's 12! Dead serious. She might be 13 by now, but still. I mean, in a few years, that won't matter. But at this point, all I can think is that she's Airlia's age. And I got a movie-star crush on her. And Dazed and Confused... I have to rewatch that a few more times and think about it. Because it's got a lot of memories, but it's not exactly a "really good" movie. But the main reason I like it is because that's what I thought school was like for a really long time. And either it's a really poor imitation of highschool life, or things have changed incredibly in 20 or 25 years, or I just hung out in really weird crowds. But either way, that's what I was expecting in highschool, and I don't want to forget what I thought would happen and what actually did.) It was just cool. ... Only now I owe my parents a ton.
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Rue cut my hair, and I got my glasses tightened. Both of these make me happy. I don't have to push my glasses up every five minutes, and I can run my hands through my hair properly again. These are both vital in the world of Gen. And now I've spent more than an hour on this post, and Chandra wants to use the computer, and I have to get to sleep in order to be awake for the drive to guitar tomorrow.
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Oh! But I forgot one other thing. Okay, so, I'm a writer, yes? The fact that I call myself one doesn't imply ability or skill, it's simply saying that I string words together in coherant meaning for fun. Anyway, I'm not writing. Like, I get these ideas, and they're good, and then I don't pull them off, not at all. It's really pissing me off. I mean, maybe my expectations of myself have just really changed or something, or maybe I'm just hitting a really bad grammar/flow/vocabulary-drought.
I mean, that's what I focus on when I'm writing. I focus on developing a style and sticking with it. And I try to keep it interesting by messing with vocabulary and grammar. For sure, there's more to my stories, but I'm pretty much just thinking of the technical aspects right now.
Only it's not only the technical aspects that's messed up. Like, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out who would say what and when they would say it and why. I'm having major dialogue-issues. That's pissing me off too, 'cause that used to be my forte. And now I just can't get it.
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Post by fico on Mar 13, 2003 13:29:13 GMT -5
3.13.o3
12:55pm. Bonfire.
Every fall, the Hungarian Reformed Youth Camp of America get together at [Katie's] house. Katie lives in Ohio. So you have all these people driving out from, like, Trenton and Connecticut and Pittsburg and all over. We all go to her house for the bonfire. She's got this huge backyard, and a nifty house with stuff to do. The bonfire is loads of fun. It's only for a weekend. We arrive late Friday night, and we leave Sunday afternoon. Saturday is just a fun-day, with a speaker and games and hanging around and the bonfire at night. Sunday we have a mini-church-service thing going. Then lunch and good-byes.
Anyway, there's this one kid, [Catherine], who's about nine now, I guess. She's been going to camp since forever. Her parents took her when she was this big. *makes appropriate gesture* And she goes to all the conventions. She's basically the poster-child of the group. Which makes her mildly spoiled when we're all there, but in a cute way; 'cause if you explain patiently enough, then she leaves you alone.
I usually end up spending about a quarter of my time with Catherine, 'cause she's just that hyper and all-in-your-face. It's fun though. I like kids.
We play stupid games. I toss her onto people. I swing her in circles. We play two-person tag. (I hate that game.) I make angry-animal noises and chase her around; she screams like a damsel in distress and hides behind her dad's legs. Stuff like that.
(I know she's like, nine, but it's hard to remember which years are which, so I'm doing the classic thing, and I keep thinking she's six or something. But you know how when you grow up in a group, and you have a certain role (such as poster-child), and then you start to grow out of it, no one really accepts that for a while? So, like, I'm thinking she's probably getting confused about how to act, 'cause she's growing up. And I'm getting confused how to treat her, 'cause I don't know if she wants to grow up yet. And everyone else (except for her parents and Katie and a few others) is pretty much acting like she's still five. I'm just really worried she's gonna have major identity issues when it's time for her to attend camp as a camper, rather than as her parents' first born. )
So, my point: There's this other game we play where I hold her tight against me. She's got her arms across her chest, holding her shoulders, and I'm holding her around her arms. She's, like, tucked securely into me, her back to me; my elbows jutting out, and her in the hole. So we lie down, both of us facing the ground, her under me. All my weight is on my elbows and my toes. Then I start rolling. (You know, like, when you lie down and roll down a hill? Like that.) I roll over and over, putting all the weight on myself so she doesn't feel any pressure. And I'll, like, suddenly stop and roll the other way. Or I'll finish a roll and use the momentum to pick her up and hold her above me while I lie on my back. Or whatever.
She loves it. And I love it 'cause it makes me feel something, though I'm not sure exactly what. ... It makes me feel like a dad.
Ever wonder what it's gotta feel like to be a dad? I mean, ignoring the diapers and the arguements and stuff for a little bit. I'm talking about the times that make the diapers and arguements worthwhile. Ever wonder? You've got this life that you made, and you protect it, and you make sure it's happy. ... I really want to do that. Bad. And the really annoying thing is that I know I can't yet. I mean, I'm not at a place where I could handle everything in order to have those worthwhile times. You know? I could pull it off, but it wouldn't be pulled off well.
*shrug* Dunno. Dunno what I'm saying. I guess just that I sometimes wish I were old enough and secure of myself enough that I thought I could do it. 'Cause if I think I can, then damnit, I will.
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Post by fico on Mar 16, 2003 18:04:34 GMT -5
3.16.o3
5:14pm. Sporaticism.
*random-filled minutes pass*
5:27pm. More sporaticism.
My days have been filled with random uselessness and listlessness. Random everything. Just random. Basically, I've been hanging out with anyone I can in an inexplicable attempt to distract myself. Don't ask me what I'm distracting myself from, because I don't know. But it seems very important right now. I think... well maybe that's the problem. I've been thinking a lot. And then I stopped. And now I don't really think about anything important, I just distract myself with thoughts along the lines of "do you think Albus Dumbledore called his brother 'Abe' when they were younger?" Yeah. Stupid shit like that. There's no point in it. There's no reason for it. There's nothing that I have derived from it. So don't ask why it was important for about two hours this afternoon, but it really was.
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Dream.
I remember almost nothing, except for the end. Something was going on which made [Lee] (person I'm greatly attracted to) come to my house. Lee lives kinda far away, so it was weird to see hir here. We (family, me, and Lee) had all been in the family room, but something happened, and Lee and I were in the kitchen. We were all flirty and cute and stuff. You know, like, holding hands, kisses on the cheek, stuff like that. We were there for a really long time.
[forgotten bit]
Endre and his girlfriend, Alison, were coming in the back door. (We have this sliding door in our kitchen; they were coming in that.) My parents and Airlia and Rue and Lee and I were all in the kitchen, just talking. Brenda, Airlia's dog, was outside. And Brenda just attacked Endre and Alison, like, really attacked them. They both got knocked down, and they were lying next to each other. I have this vision in my head of both of them lying with their heads on these stones, and both of them have bloody hands from where Brenda bit them.
We all just kind of froze. Endre and Alison didn't scream or shout, they just tried to fight back. But Brenda was really tearing them up. And then Airlia, crying, went out the door. She had this rusty, old thing in her hand, kind of like a really thin saw. And she started whacking Brenda with it. And Brenda got knocked down and wasn't going anywhere, but Airlia kept hitting her. The saw-type thing was old, but it was still sharp. I could, like, see pieces of the dog being chopped off.
Today, I'm surprised every time I see Brenda alive.
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I had this weird-bad discussion with Airlia. I was playing hacky-sack in the street. (It's a gorgeous day. I'm wearing honest-to-goodness shorts.) She and Rue were going to take Brenda on a walk. She had Brenda on a leash and was waiting for Rue to come out.
"Your tree's dying." she said, talking about MikroDasos, the tree I planted a while ago.
"No it's not."
"Yeah it is, look at it. It's missing half of it. I'm going to run it over with the lawn mower."
"Don't you dare."
"It's too small."
"I'll run your dog over with a lawn mower."
"No you won't."
"Yeah, I will. Don't touch my tree."
I was just, like, I dunno. I'm in this really crappy mood. I don't know why. Maybe because I want things that I can't have, and I can't think of what I really want. I mean, a lot has happened.
I sent in that letter to Coe, saying I would go to their school. Yesterday or the day before or something, I got this t-shirt from them. It's got a rubics cube, and the bottom row says "COE". And they also sent me a letter before that; I got the Writing Scholarship. So I've got another $4000. (They have a $14000 scholarship limit, so I was disqualified from the Spanish scholarship since I've got $13500.) So, like, my mom and I did my FAFSA. So I'm pretty much done college until I get there next fall. And now I feel like I'm not doing anything. I mean, yeah, I have to finish highschool, and I have to finish some stuff to send to Arizona, and I have to finish a birthday present and a Christmas present. I have to do all that. But that's all little, temporary stuff, you know? I don't have any big goal to work toward. So I feel useless.
So I don't really want anything from Coe anymore, I got what I want that they can currently give. The stuff that I do want, it depends on other people. I can't do anything to affect it anyway. So I'm just waiting around. I want it to be September, but I can only wait for that, too.
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I'm hanging out with Lani tomorrow. We're going to watch a movie at my house. I'm gonna see if Bet can come too, but she's working until about midnight tonight.
Honestly, tomorrow is really just another distraction.
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Post by fico on Mar 21, 2003 1:32:21 GMT -5
3.21.o3
12:43am. I had a discussion with Bet about the war. This sounds really stupid, but I'm proud that I "stood up to her" or something equally pathetic. By that I mean that I actually thought up arguements to counter her ideas. I feel crappy as well as proud, because I'm about twice as informed as Bet at this point. I've spent the last two days listening to NPR and reading newspapers. (I've also been reading books by Palahniuk, but I spent a lot of time driving places, and NPR was on almost the entire way.) I've also been reading stuff in the News Room on Trapdoor. Basically, I've been catching myself up on world events.
I feel bad for not having done this sooner. Not in the sense that I could have done anything to prevent it. I mean, I could have protested or something, but that doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. I mean I feel bad in the same way I felt bad when I heard that Douglas Adams had died. He died about a year before I heard about it. I felt bad for not knowing when it happened. Now I feel bad for not knowing what was going on before the war happened.
So my discussion with Bet: She supports the war. Not in a very big way, more like she thinks Bush has intelligence he isn't relaying to the American public, and that some of that intelligence gives him good reason to attack. I think that's bullshit, and I told her so, and then we both discussed for a while, and then we both agreed that neither of us have very educated opinions on the matter. Or rather, I let her say that about herself, and I let her say it about me. Not because I believe it, but because I was really "winning" our "debate", and I hadn't meant to do that exactly.
I guess I had been meaning to do two things. 1. I was making sure that I knew more than she did. Before when we talked about it, we were equally ignorant. This time around, I wanted to make sure I actually knew a little bit about why I believed what I did. 2. Bet is kind of a "strong" figure; I usually float along in her flow. And I guess I felt that I couldn't stand up to people and say "this war is stupid for these reasons" unless I could say it to Bet first.
I also have a basic negative reaction to her idea that we can't have opinions unless they're informed. Of course we can have uninformed opinions. It's just that an informed opinion will be able to fight ours easily, "proving us wrong" or something.
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My mom is in North Carolina with my dad. He's staying at the Holiday Inn because they ran out of room at the army base, so my mom is staying with him. My dad ships out pretty soon, less than a week.
There was this one time in 10th grade. I'm a devil to wake up in the mornings. I'm just awful. But in 10th grade, I was attending public school, which means I had to catch a 6:30 bus. I take my showers in the morning, so that means I needed to be up at 6:20 at the latest. That gave me time for a seven-minute shower, and a three-minute run to the bus stop. My dad was really sick and tired of having to wake me up every morning. I mean, he would spend half an hour on me and I wouldn't even blink an eye.
But one morning, I woke up because I was a lot warmer than I had been in a while. I wasn't hot, just deliciously warm. (This was in the dead of winter, by the way, and we don't use a lot of heat, almost none.) And there's this weight across my stomach, and there's this thing in front of me. Turns out my dad woke me up by climbing into bed with me and just hugging me. It was just gorgeous. So I got up, no problem. And I gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him he should wake me up like that from then on. *shrugs* I don't know why he never did.
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I went on this major film-binge. For about five days, I was averaging two movies a day. I re-watched movies; I watched movies I'd been meaning to watch; I watched movies with different people. It was just cool, because the last time I had seen a movie was when I watched Fight Club when I went to visit Coe. And before that, I can't remember.
One of the movies I watched was Gattaca. I hadn't seen it before, but I had heard a lot about it. (Besides, I'm borrowing it from someone, and I've had it for about four months, so it was about time I watched it.) I didn't really like it that much for a couple reasons, but I did connect to two characters.
Lamar: All I can say is, I want to be him if I'm ever in a position like that. (Not that I think we're going to have DNA-reconfiguration. I mean, that might happen and all that, but I don't mean that specific instance.) I mean that if I'm ever in a world where people are discriminated against, and I see a way to fight that, I want to do it. But I don't want to be the person protesting or the person smuggling people out of bad places. I want to be the person on the inside, the person who gained access and tries to break things apart from the inside out. ... And I want to work alone. That's what appealed to me about Lamar. That he was doing these great things, but he didn't let on to anyone, not even the person/people he was helping.
Eugene: With him, I've got that connection that just happens. The kind where you're just watching the movie, and you want to both punch him and hug him. The one where you just think, "I should be there, because I could help that man." Where you can't necessarily describe how or why you're connecting to him, but you feel it anyway. Because he worked so hard towards things that were pointless (ie. being "the best", swimming, etc.), and then he discovered something to work towards that was actually good. And once he discovered it, he was completely dedicated. That really means something to me.
I spent a long time thinking about why he killed himself at the end. And wondering why his medal was still important to him. I'm not exactly sure what I think yet, especially about the medal.
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I found a good color to use on Glenmore. *smiles*
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I've also been on a book-binge. I used to average a book every two days, but that dropped dramatically when I started reading a lot more non-fiction. (I've been reading up on gender. Really interesting stuff, but harder than YA books. ) But then I got into Palahniuk, and I re-read the two books that gave me the name "Eugenides", and I also got some others from the library.
I always find it interesting when I re-read a book and associate myself with a character I hadn't before. There are two books by Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief and The Queen of Attolia. In re-reading the first, I identified with Eugenides, as I always do. But in re-reading the second, I identified more with the Attolia. (That is, the Queen of Attolia. The book took after that tradition of making the person's title into the person's name. You have no clue how curious I was about Attolia's and Eddis' given names.)
The first book is more a story about Gen travelling with a group of guys to steal something that is rumoured to be un-stealable. The second book is more a story about politics and political strategy, as well as war-fare and the effects of traumatic experiences. There are these three countries, and they're all trying to accomplish different things, usually at the expense of one or more of the other countries.
Attolia is the "barbarian" type. I mean, she's very refined, but she chops off this guy's hand, and she poisoned her fiance in order to keep him from usurping her throne, and she had the captain of her guard shoot a would-be suitor who tried for her throne when her fiance died. Basically, she was just trying to secure her throne and make her country prosperous. And she understood that certain sacrifices would have to be made in order to accomplish that.
It got me thinking a lot about what I would sacrifice for what. The fiance and the suitor were both self-satisfying bastards. It would have been horrible if the country had been run by either of them. I can understand her keeping them from the throne.
*shrugs* Too hard to explain all the details without revealing the entire book. The point is that I found myself identifying with a woman I had barely been able to think about before because she left a bad taste in my mouth, and here I am supporting her.
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Post by fico on Mar 23, 2003 3:07:33 GMT -5
3.23.o3
2:13am. I've got this disconnected feeling. It's really strong and sort of... acute. I guess you could say I feel "alone", but that has a "pity me" connotation, which isn't what I mean.
Rue and I went to see Ani tonight. She is absolutely amazing live. If you guys haven't seen her, you really ought to. She's just, like, all into it. It's really cool. And it made me realize how much of a lookers-on I am. Like... Like even though it's an Ani concert, so it's loud and rauckus and great, I felt like sitting back in my seat and just chilling. I didn't want to clap at the end of every song. I didn't want to have people stand up in front of me, blocking my view. I didn't want to stand up myself. I love the idea of music so solid that you feel the waves of sound wash through you. But you don't feel the waves if you're not relaxed.
After the show, we hung around for a while. I had been thinking of getting something, a t-shirt or something. But I haven't looked for a job yet, and I've only got enough money for (I think) two more weeks of guitar, plus $15 extra. So Rue convinced me not to. We were just standing around. (Oh! Oh! I went to the bathroom, right? So I go up to this woman with this security-tag thingy on, and I ask where one is. And she's like, "well, they're up these stairs (*pointing*), and if you go to your right, you'll get to the men's room." And I'm like, "thanks", very grinny. So I go up the stairs, and I ask the woman up there where the bathroom is. (The stairs twisted and stuff, so I wasn't quite sure where I was or where the bathroom was. And I don't feel guy-esque enough to use their bathrooms anyway. Which sucks, since I'm pretty much a guy right now. But old habits die hard, you know? And I don't want to go changing things until I know pretty much exactly how I feel about everything. And I don't know yet.) So I ask her, and she looks me up and down saying, "yeah, um... men's?" And I'm like, "no, girl's." And she's like, "oh, yeah, right over there." It was just... I mean, it was an Ani concert. They're expecting girls who aren't looking exactly like girls, and I still was considered a guy. It's dorky and all that, but it made me really happy anyway.) So, yeah, Rue and I are standing around, just watching people. Rue and I do this a lot. We give people names, we discuss what we think they do over the weekend, we talk about why we think they do things and how they know other people, all kinds of stuff. And as I stood there, I just felt less and less connected to everyone. After a concert as hypey as Ani, you feel connected to everything. You just have that thing going where everything is just one big organism, all interconnected and interrelated and interdependant and it's all good. But I fell away from that somehow.
We went out to the car, because I was starting to feel really sad. We ran around to blow off some steam and mainly because Rue really wanted to. And I climbed a cherry tree and sat in it for a while, which made me feel much better. Then we drove home, and as I drove away, I just felt like I was stretching and snapping all of the connections I had had. We drove up the driveway and I just wanted to smash into reverse and hed west. ("Go west, young men.") Just away. Because I know other places where I do feel connected, and the loss of connection so suddenly after having it so fully is really devestating.
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I have this dream of being a mini-Ani. I mean, not really, but a little. I don't want to be nearly as big as Ani. I want to attract, like, fifty people per show, seventy-five, something like that. I'll play in little coffee houses and stuff. And people will not clap. I'll be very straight-forward about this. Like, if you're going to listen to my music, and if you're going to listen to me, then do so. If you like it, tell me after the show. If you don't, tell me after the show. Don't interrupt my flow. Request songs. Talk to me from off stage. That's all cool. But no useless noise. You're vibing out my guitar's sound-waves. And, if something really funky happens and I end up as big as Ani, I still will not accept clapping at my shows.
Honestly, why clap? Why holler? This seriously bothers me. I understand showing appreciation, and I understand that sometimes that type of thing "adds to the moment" or something, but couldn't we pick a quieter way of doing it? Clapping, either after a song so that you can't start a new one or worse, during a song because you want to "help" keep the beat, grodes my gut. Hard.
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At home, we watched a movie, Little Man Tate. That movie kicks ass, and I actually understood a lot of it this time. (Tons went over my head the first time I watched it; you wouldn't believe how much.) But I'm still trying to figure some stuff out. As always, I connected the most with the Damian kid, the Math Magician guy.
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When I was younger, I would sometimes have trouble going to sleep. It wasn't necessarily that I had nightmares or anything like that. It was... *shruggy* I get scared of going to sleep sometimes. I get scared of sleeping and scared of falling asleep and scared of having to wake up. I don't know why. I tried to figure it out a few times, but I got no where. Neverwhere. So when I was younger, I would put on a movie to put me to sleep. You know how, like, people sometimes play cd's or whatever while they sleep? To help them fall asleep or to sooth them while they sleep or whatever. I had to feel like there were people around me that didn't expect things of me. [That last sentence just popped out. I have no clue if it's true, but my sub-conscious seems to think so. I'll have to think about that.] Instead of music, I played videos. I would go downstairs, and I would set up my chair properly (we had these nice recliners). Even though I wouldn't watch any of the movie, I had to have the chair positioned properly so that I could watch it. And I would pick a movie. And I would just fall asleep to the voices and sounds.
The tape would run out and rewind, and the tv screen would go all snowy, and that loud "kishshshshchshchshch" noise would come on. Our tv was in the room right below my parent's bedroom. The snow would wake up my dad, and he would come downstairs and turn off the tv. And he would make sure I was covered properly (I did this a lot during one fall/winter). And he would check to be sure that I was asleep, 'cause he didn't like me staying up late. (I know this, because sometimes I wasn't asleep.) And then he would go back to bed. And once or twice, I started the movie over.
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A girl at Barnes and Noble said I was beautiful... strange experience.
And later, this girl I know... *thinks* Okay, so, most of the people reading this know who my people are. Like, you know who people in my journal are IRL. So, you know how I had that Chris kid before? Chris is just becoming the generic name of anyone I know that I want to talk about, but I don't want to use the journal-name because that doesn't "protect the innocent".
So. And later, this girl I know, Chris, was talking to me. I was just sitting on a kitchen counter, swinging my feet a little. We had been talking a little bit about sexuality. Now, Chris is very straight. Straight-as-an-arrow straight. Not straight as in "I don't want to be gay", just straight as in "this is what I am." For sure. So we're talking. And she was all like, "actually, you're starting to look pretty hot now." [erm. paraphrasing.] My eyes bulged like nothing you've ever seen. "What?!" And she's like, "no, I mean, just looks, not that I'm attracted or anything. Just with your frame and your hair and stuff, you're starting to look like one of those hot guys." Utter speechlessness on my part. Then something like, "oh... okay." It's just... like, it's weird when someone you know isn't gay says something like that. So I forget how we moved on from there, but then I made a joke like, "well, I'm sorry I can't live up to the man you wish I were." And then we talked about other stuff.
It's just... this type of thing seems to happen to me in spurts. (This, and before that, I had three come-ons in as many months, which were the first three ever.) And I mean... what do you say to this type of thing? Thanks for thinking I'm beautiful? I'm sorry I didn't snatch that y-chromosome? You're not my type? I'm kinda taken? Like, seriously. I've never really ever been in situations like these, and I'm getting frustrated with myself for not knowing how to react. Or rather, for not knowing how to react in a way that will do the both of us justice, does that make sense?*edit* for sure, i'm scared of going to sleep right now, which is why i made such a long entry and why i'm editing. because this way, i'm putting it off for just a little bit longer. *pensive* no clue why i'm scared. none at all. and it's pissing me off.
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Post by fico on Mar 24, 2003 2:39:35 GMT -5
3.24.o3
2:07am. Sometimes, I have this need to write that's so strong I think I'll burst before I get it out. It's not even that I have emotion and I have to find some way to express it. It's the same idea as someone having the need to just read something. But it's the difference between needing to read fantasy or non-fiction. I have to get something out. But what I have to get out isn't emotion, it's the actual language. I have to convey an idea through words. The problem is that I don't feel like I have anything to say right now. I feel stagnant in a lot of ways. I'm not really coming up with many new ideas. Or if I do, they get old fast. I don't develope them. They're just there, like plants kept in drawers, without sunlight. Or more like, the light comes through, but the UV rays were blocked. I look through all my ideas, and I feel all the writing-vibes, but nothing comes out. Nothing worth speaking of, anyway.
It sort of feels like words aren't my play-things anymore. I've forgotten how to weave them.
---
I had so much to say. I've forgotten all of it.
---
*goes to watch a movie* And maybe I'll fall asleep.
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Post by fico on Mar 26, 2003 15:24:46 GMT -5
3.26.o3
3:15pm. In a little while, less than a month, I'm going back to Coe. I got invited to this thing called Scholarship Recognition Day. I really didn't want to go, because it costs money to travel 1,000 miles, and because it feels kind of like gloating to "recognize" my scholarships. So I decided not to. But I hadn't mailed the little RSVP thingy back yet, saying so, because my mom had wanted to visit Coe, and she figured the SRD (as it's referred to on campus ) would be a good time. And because we thought we could maybe take Rue out also, so she could see Coe and maybe visit Nialle, too.
And then a little while later, I got this other thing in the mail. It's an invitation to compete in order to get into the Coe Writing Center. *gaspy* I really want to be in that. Thing is, it's the same weekend as the SRD. Like, it's on the 11th of April, and the SRD is on the 12th. I definitely want to go to the Writing Center competition, and I definitely don't want to go to the SRD, but I couldn't figure how to go to one and not the other.
Maybe I'm just making a really bad snap-judgement though. I mean, Coe is really cool, so I think I should have more "faith" in them to make the SRD a good thing. It's just that I got this other thing, telling about the SRD. It pretty much looks like what I thought it was going to be. Some speeches by a student and a graduate, and also from the president of the college and the head of [something-special-i-forget]. I'm looking forward to some of that. The head of [something-special-i-forget] is Gina Hauskenecht (will edit that later, because I'm sure I misspelled it), and I met her already, and she's uber-cool. (*edit* darn! I was so close. It's Gina Hausknecht, and she's the Director of First Year Seminar Program.) And yeah. They also have some stuff on financial aide, and some tours. They have a dinner-type thing. But like, in the letter, they said the point of it was to commend us for our scholarships and to help us make sure Coe is the right college for us. I really don't like that first one. At all. *shrugs* But maybe it'll be different than I assume.
---
I have to take Rue to class, so I'll edit this later and add other stuff I've been thinking about.
4:15pm. --- I think I'm getting sick, which I'm not in the mood for. I've got that achey-ness, like there are just dead white blood cells floating around everywhere and clogging me up. I really hate this feeling. But it might just be because I had a tense time sleeping last night, so I'm going to practice hacky-sack and see if that loosens me up a little.
Speaking of last night, I had a nightmare. It was awful. I just have these strange, vague memories of some guy hacking me up or someone I know or something. For some reason, it's reminding me of The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket. I think the guy might have been in a lab coat? Not sure at all, but I woke up around three, and I had a really hard time trying to fall back asleep.
All of last night wasn't bad; it was good before I went to sleep. Rue and I have this game we play. It's one of my favorite games ever. (It reminds me (now) of Shadows from Little Man Tate, how they would find things in the shadows like a lot of people do with clouds. I get the same feeling of goodness and security when I play this game as I did when I watched Fred and Dede play Shadows.) We decide who goes first, and she thinks of a song. She sings however much she wants to, starting wherever and ending wherever. (Rue started last night.) Then, the other person thinks what song the first one reminded her of. So, let's say Rue sang part of "Barbed Wire Boys" by Susan Werner. "Barbed Wire Boys" makes me think of the midwest makes me think of "Iowa" by Dar Williams. So I would sing part of "Iowa". Then Rue would think what song "Iowa" reminds her of, and sing part of that. We just go on like that until we both decide to stop.
We played for a long time, and then she sang part of a Josh Joplin Group song, "The Future That Was". She sang "Jesus, the world is falling to pieces. [more that i can't remember]" So I sang all of "Sorry About Jesus" by Susan Werner, and Rue fell asleep while I was singing. Her breathing got slow and steady, and I was hugging her from behind, singing low and soft near her ear, but not in it. And when I finished, she didn't say anything. "Rue?" I asked softly, nudging her arm a little. "Mm?" she answered, shifting her head some, "Wow, you're really cool." We had been discussing my coolness or lack-of-coolness earlier, disagreeing, and so I asked her what was cool about me. "You sang me to sleep." She said. And I smiled, and she turned on the cd player, and fell asleep right away. It took me a little longer, 'cause I was just that happy.
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We also talked last night. About why I don't feel like I can write properly anymore. ("I say what I mean but I don't mean what I say.") And about what I mean when I say that. I mean that I can't express things so that 1. I get my point across properly, and 2. my form of writing reflects my feeling on the matter. I just have two ways of writing now; I write the way I talk or I write an essay.
But I don't think my writing style changed. I think the things I want to say changed. My writing style expresses perfectly the things I used to talk about. But I've overdeveloped my thoughts without keeping my writing style up to speed. So I'm trying to think how to change a writing style. I still want to keep the two I have, I just want to develope another one, an additional one.
I think good practice for this is to try other forms of writing. So I'm trying to write a story in 3rd person, which I haven't done in forever. And I'm starting to write poetry again. Blargh. I haven't written poetry in about five years, literally. Except for one or two things, that is.
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I started a song. (The way I write songs is, I write a poem, and then I pluck/strum things out on my guitar until I have a tune. This means I have to get good at poetry. ) So far, it's pretty bad. But Gilt says she'll help me with it, and I really value her opinion. I only have about six lines, and I don't like the opening line, but it's a work-in-progress, so it's excused.
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Post by fico on Mar 27, 2003 13:17:01 GMT -5
3.27.o3
11:26am. Yes, I am actually awake in the morning. Weird feeling. I mean, it's a weird feeling to be awake in the morning. I was up yesterday, but I ended up taking a nap because I was tired. But I got to bed early last night, and then I slept a long time, which felt good. And I woke up on my own, which also felt good.
---
For a while, this really scary thing was happening where I would confuse my dreams and my IRL. They both seemed equally cloudy and obscure, hazy kind of. I remembered only random snatches of what happened IRL, which is how I remember dreams mostly, so I assumed everything was real. I stopped assuming that when no one knew what I was talking about anymore. It was really scary though. And something reminiscent of that happened this morning.
Dream.
Ely was teaching me how to play the accordian. We were in a classroom-type setting, and some other woman was there for some reason, sitting behind me and to my left. I was in the front row.
It basically went the same as our guitar lessons. She suggests some songs that she thinks I can handle or I bring in some songs and we see if I can manage. (We were looking at a bunch of Ani DiFranco songs for the accordian; I'm currently learning an Ani song on the guitar, maybe two.) Once we have a song, she shows me straight through and then starts slowing it down into pieces, and I learn the pieces, fitting them together as we go. It's full of "um's" and "uh's" and "hold on's" on my part, which I'm working on.
And in the dream, Ely was up and drawing diagrams of how Ani's songs interconnect, because I wasn't sure which one I wanted to do, and I was having trouble remembering them.
There was another part of the dream that I can't remember, but that was the important bit.
The point being, I did the opposite of what I used to do. I used to assume that everything was Real Life, but this time, I assumed it all to be a dream. So I "forgot" that Ely had shown me an accordian yesterday. (She had gotten it for $25 from this guy who was really hard up for some money. It was a nifty thing, with a piano-board instead of the other kind? (Is there another kind? )I'm not sure what was different about this one, more keys than usual? Something.) I assumed that it had just been more of the dream.
My memory isn't very accurate, but I used to be able to trust it pretty well. Meaning, I messed up enough (mainly because of my imagination), but it was usually right, or at least only as wrong as everyone else's. It's scary to think that I might not be able to trust it all of the time.
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I'm almost finished Bet's Christmas present. (Early, you say? No, only three months late. ) I'm really excited, 'cause I think she'll like it. And because I think she'll be happy to just have it, at this point. And because I worked really hard on some of the stuff.
Anyway, the way I usually give people presents is, I start with something I think they'll like, a book or an article of clothing or a piece of jewelry, something. And then I just add onto that original idea until I feel like I've covered everything important. I mean, 'cause people are more complex than just a book or something. Like, yeah, the book might be really important to them, but it doesn't "cover" them, you know? And it definitely doesn't cover your relationship-kid. (By the way, Bet's and my relationship-kid is Ben.) Sometimes, I come up with something really good that isn't a conglomeration. Like, for her birthday last year, I'm taking Bet on a hot air balloon ride. (That one, I thought of almost on time, but we've had to cancel a lot because of weather. So that one being late isn't my fault... entirely. )
Anyway, her Christmas present: I wanted to get her something Christian-oriented, because I haven't told her about Jesus yet... yeah. I mean, she's thinking a lot about what she thinks already, and I really don't want to effect her ideas. But I guess I already am, if it still seems like I'm gung-ho Christian, right? (Reason number 49285732071 for why I've screwed up with Bet.) But I also just wanted to wait a while, really make sure, stuff like that. Besides, I always end up sitting her down and saying "uh, Bet? Um, there's this... thing. ..." And I go on to make some bit announcement. It's always stuff she can't change, even if she would want to. But you can want someone to be different, even if your feeling of wanting them to be themselves is stronger, right? (Was that too confusing? I mean, Bet doesn't want to change me from what I am. But I think she sometimes wishes I were different from what I am, like I sometimes think of her. Not that I want to change her, just that I don't want to change, but I don't want to "lose" her either. You know? I think she sometimes does that too.) We've had a lot of connections over Christian-related stuff. Things happened at camp, things happened at each of our churches, we had Big discussions, things like that.
So I got her these really nice, simple-ish earrings. (I got her some cross-earrings before, but she lost one, 'cause she always loses only one earring from each of her pairs. So I thought she might like another pair.) I also got her this necklace with a really nifty-looking cross on it. They're two different styles of jewelry, so I don't expect her to wear them together. More like, when she's in a very femme mood, she can wear the necklace. When she's in more of a "i want to look good, but i can take care of myself, thank you very much" type of mood, she can wear the earrings.
After a lot of thought and quite a few dead-ends, I figured out the rest of her present. I made her a hemp bracelet. It's just plain-colored hemp, a really simple pattern. (seven square knots, one switchback, seven square, etc.) But she sometimes goes very simple, so I think she'll like it. I also made her a wax-covered-string necklace. I've got these nifty beads, and a little waxed string. I've decided that anyone who really affects me gets a waxed string necklace. And Bet is the second person in my life (excluding obvious ones like parents; I mean ones that really affect me positively, as my own person) to do that.
I also made her a mix cd. She and I tend to have very different music tastes, so I tried to fit some songs on there that I really think she will grow to like (she and I are both the type of people that have to listen to a song a few times before we like it), and some other songs that I really hope she will like. Some of the songs reflect things that happened between us or when we weren't together. Some of the songs are just because we've been drifting for a while, and I still want her to know about me. Some are because I really like them, and I just really want her to also. *shrugs* I know that she'll appreciate the gesture (guessture, ), even if she never likes the cd.
And the clincher, the thing that makes it all feel worthwhile, is a scarf. (Right, yeah, a scarf right when the weather's getting good. But hey, it's a Christmas present. ) I asked Nialle to make me an extra scarf, which he was really nice and did. And I'm working on an essay to go with the scarf. Bet and I are really big on physchology-related things. We like to "analyze" ourselves and each other. We like to do things like Kiersey. Etc. So it won't really mean anything to her if I just hand her a Harry Potter scarf; I have to tell her why I'm so sure she's a Gryffindor. So my ideas for the essay are really good, they're just having a lot of trouble coming out. But I'm giving Bet her present on Monday, so I've got to have this essay finished by Sunday night. (I'm usually really good without deadlines, but this time I definitely need one.)
So, and yeah. I think she'll like it. For sure.
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Post by fico on Mar 27, 2003 13:18:32 GMT -5
---
So while I was babbling about my best friend's long-overdue Christmas present, I was completely reminded of this other thing I've been thinking about. And my thoughts are really underdeveloped, but they're still worth something. If nothing else, it might help later to come back and look at some of these things, because they might remind me to think about something I've forgotten, or something.
So I've been thinking about people, about who we are and who we become and why. I used to think that we all had a solid core. Like... like you know how there are serial killers, and they get something out of that? (Like, if they didn't get something out of it, they would stop.) And the smart ones, they change things up, but the things they change are all simple, un-important things. It's the main thing that still holds a pattern. Like, they might change where they select people and where they get rid of them, but the type of person they pick never changes, because that's the important part, you know? I thought people were like that. I thought we had a solid part of ourselves, and that was the important part, and that never changed; we only changed the outer bits, the un-important things.
But I've been thinking, and why would we bother to change those outer things unless there were a change in our core? And wouldn't that mean that we don't have a core? At least, not a set core, not an unchanging core.
I was talking with Jamie a while back, about souls and whether they exist (Jamie's atheist, I'm probably Jewish), and about how much of us is nature and how much nurture. I think we have souls, but not in a schwoopy way. Like... like philotes from Card's Ender series; they don't think, they just have potential. I think they all have the same exact potential, too. (Hence, everyone is equal. But that idea just came to me, so I haven't thought about it yet.) So when a baby's conceived, it gets a philote-soul. Now, the baby's brain gets "built" in certain ways. It doesn't contribute to that, just genes and how healthy the mother is and stuff. But still, that leaves the brain with certain areas that are more inclined to certain things. So one kid might be more inclined toward math while another kid is more inclined toward english while another kid is pretty much inclined toward practically everything. That's our "nature" bit. It doesn't have to do with our souls, just how nature is. And then we're born, and we grow up in a certain setting. But some kid might have a part of hir (nature) that refuses to be Christian when growing up (nurture) with a whole hecksa-lotta Catholics, while another kid might not have as strong a nature-bit in that regard. Like, even if s/he might disagree with Catholicism, s/he might not pursue that disagreement, while the first kid would. See? And later on, when we die, our souls keep our nature+nurture combinations.
So I think we start with an "original" core. (Like, our brain set-ups.) And then we build on that. Our brains start making some connections and losing others. We develope certain parts of ourselves, physically, emotionally, intellectually, etc. Sort of like learning in grade school and high school, a little bit of everything.
The thing is, we never have a "set" way of being. We never really have time to make one, let alone try to figure out what it is. I mean, there are some things, like Kiersey. It takes a little longer, usually, to change a Kiersey score. But, like, I changed a lot in less than a year. I was a Champion before, too, but now I'm about half again as much of a Champion as I had been last March. We do change, a lot.
I'm just trying to think about how much we change. Because... because some things rarely change. Like, I'll probably always be an Idealist, according to Kiersey. I can't say for sure, but I have trouble seeing myself as anything else. True, I'm looking at this from an Idealist's perspective, but it's kind of the same as... as loving to read. I mean, what would change to make it so you don't like to read anymore? There's a chance, but really now, what's the probability?
Like all those movies (really only two that I know, , Fight Club and American Beauty) that address the issue of everyone trying to get the "perfect" life. All these people go around trying to set up the Perfect Life; private homeowners, 2.5 children, job of good standing, socially accepted, enough money, physical space defining themselves personally, two cars, etc. I was kind of looking for the same thing, only not exactly. I was kind of looking for my Perfect Person, like, the perfect person that I could be. And I figured I couldn't become anyone really, until I had figured out who I am.
But who's to say who we are? I mean, sure, we have tendencies. I know people who know themselves really well. Anymore, I don't think we can really know who we are, not perfectly. But we can get a good idea. So I'm trying to get a good idea now, instead of a "perfect" idea.
It gets more complicated when you involve more than one person. Not only having someone try to understand someone else. (Because that involves people trying to foist their own ideas and feelings on other people, as if the other person felt the same thing.) But also trying to "predict" the future or something. Kind of the same as me saying I think I'll always be an Idealist. Like, take me and Rue, for example. How can I try to say that I think I'll always want her around? I mean, I feel that now, but who's to say we won't both change? Not just one of us, but both of us. Maybe she'll change in a way that I'll appreciate, but I've already changed into someone else who doesn't appreciate that. You know?
It's all very confusing, and a good bit scary. Because that makes it seem like we can never be sure of people, and I think we can be/should be able to be sure of people. I mean, I don't think that's wishful thinking; I think there are some people you can be sure of. Some people who, even if things get really bad, will still be there. You know? *hopes she is/is becoming one of those people*
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Post by fico on Mar 28, 2003 17:50:00 GMT -5
3.28.o3
12:40pm. Three Dreams. I'm forgetting them, so I'm trying to get them down before they're completely gone. I think notes would work best, then putting them in order and making them into story-formats.
1: fields; children; man on horse; jem's house; barefoot; (white stripes?); watermill at tree-roof house (my house after jem's); jem's: cat, rabies; all caught; windmill in street; meeting; brother (when i was older).
2: forgotten.
3. walk in parking lot (the one from quaker bridge yesterday; where i made the illegal left turn, only there was more space on my right in the dream); blanket with rue and eli (note: different from ely); rue asleep; music on (dar williams?); lie down; eli on top of me; touching each others faces and hands, whispering; ask if rue's awake, she is; stop talking, keep touching, mainly my right hand and her left.
The first dream (I don't know if this order I put them in is "accurate"; they're just how they feel when I think about having had them) was really cool. I started out as this boy walking home; maybe from school or something. It was daylight, anyway. I was walking near where Brookfield is, only there weren't developments, and the land was made as if quarry hill were on my left. There was a sidewalk, and I was on the grass beside it, barefoot. Some boys came up behind me, loud and raucous, and I really wanted to join in with them. Ahead of us, about 200 feet, the grass started being interspersed with parts on fields. Like, it was striped: grass, field, grass, etc. The boys behind me were talking about playing this game, like they do every year. Basically, you run through the fields and try not to get caught by the adults. (It had the same feeling as poaching did in Danny the Champion of the World. Because if you were caught, the adults made you do work and you got a spanking or something. By the way, this had a very Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn feel to it. Like we were the boys from that crew.) They asked if I was barefoot and were disappointed when they found out I was, 'cause it meant I couldn't play. (It had been just-becoming-spring, like it is right now, so no one had calluses yet. And the fields were full of prickles and brambles and all kinds of things to go mildly crippled on, which would be devastating to any boy.) I told them I could just leap the fields, and I demonstrated by running up to the first stripe of field and leaping over it. As I did so, a girl came running up to us. She was going to play too, and we were all happy that at least one person of the opposite sex understood such matters as running around and getting sweaty and almost getting in trouble (but not quite). ((She was holding something, I think. A stick? I dunno.)) Stop-flash, like sometimes happens in dreams. [(Oh! But before the next bit, I remember I was walking back along the bike-path, toward my house, and I saw a man on a horse wandering around near the corn fields nearby. He was looking for rustles that could be boys, waiting to catch one. I wanted to shout out to all the other guys, but I figured it would just tip off the guy that my friends were actually in there, so I kept mum and just walked. I remember he was in uniform. I kind of got another Danny impression, like he was the sheriff or whatever. Very imposing, but he also knew how to play a game. And I thought about how he definitely saw this as a game, not a reason to hit kids or anything. It just made me wish even more that I had shoes.) So.
I'm walking into my house, but it's not my house. [When I was younger, my best guy-friend (and the best friend that I remember, though I know that Lie was my best friend) was Jem. He and I did everything together.] So I guess I was Jem for the beginning of the dream. I was walking into his house anyway, and it was my house. ((I think there had been an earlier part of the dream where I went to Jem's house, but I can't remember.)) I tried to go in through the garage, and Jem's cat was there. He had been trying to get a drink of water, and I had startled him. He leapt off the water-thing (it was some strange-looking piece) and started spitting and hissing at me. [Hmmm…. maybe the cat knew I wasn't Jem? ] His back was arched, everything. He just looked really mean and stuff, and not a force to be reckoned with. So I slowly backed out of the garage, hands up as if to say "I'm not armed".
Stop-flash: it's now night. Or rather, evening. I don't know who I am, but I'm probably not Jem because I have shoes, and his shoes were in his house. I'm walking along, and I notice a few things. Like, there's a watermill just sitting in the middle of the street. (Oh, the street, my street, had sort of become a town. Just like, it bulged out from the center so that it was more of a circle instead of a straight line. But the house that got hit by a tree last year, it was where the street started as a line again. So I could see that house really well, even though I was walking near, like, the house that imitates the barn house.) The watermill was sort of just in the middle of the town, just sitting there. I heard rushing water, so I looked toward it. The house that was hit by a tree had become a mill, and there was a watermill next to it, with a stream and everything.
Stop-flash: I'm running through fields. I'm being chased by one of the nice-cop type guys. It was all very fun, trying to stay hidden in the rows while still running and everything. I ran into that girl from earlier. She was in jeans; before, she had been in a dress. We ran together for a bit, and when a cop saw us, we split. I think the cop chased me. I tried to hide, just curled up really small. I heard footsteps and stayed deathly still. The corn parted above me, and a cop's hand reached down to nag me by the back of my neck. He picked me up, and I saw that he already had the girl in his other hand. He ordered us to go to the watermill, and, since we played by the rules, we went instead of running around some more.
At the watermill (the one in the middle of the street, not the working one), the sheriff-guy I had seen on a horse earlier was talking to a bunch of kids who had already been caught. Some lecturey type of thing. I suddenly felt like I was the girl from When I Was Older, because this boy started talking, and I felt like he was my brother, but he was supposed to be dead. The boy was talking about how upset he was that his cat didn't like him anymore. He went on and on, and it was so sad, and the sheriff figured the cat probably had rabies, but the boy didn't know what rabies was, so he didn't understand. I ended up explaining it, I think. I was nervous and picking at the watermill, and all these little eyes looked up at me.
The second dream, I still forget.
Third dream: I was walking out of a store or a restaurant or something. I knew that I was with other people. I saw them in the distance, so I walked up to them. The car was near-ish by, though I didn't exactly see it. The people were spread out on a blanket, but didn't have one over them. I don't remember how cold it felt, but I wasn't uncomfortable.
I lay down in between them, Rue and Eli. (Note: Ely and Eli are two very different people.) Eli ended up on top of me; not in a weird way, just a sort of "we're sprawling, so let's sprawl" way. She was, like, half on top of me. Eli doesn't really sleep too well with music on, and Dar Williams was playing. But Rue does, so we both figured she was asleep.
We just lay there, very comforting, touching each other's faces and hair and whispering-talking. Like, Eli had her head on my chest, and I was running my hand through her hair. And every now and then, I would stop to play with her ear or touch her cheek or something. It was definitely flirty, but not overly so. More like we were just comfortable with each other, and comfortable with the fact that we flirt. And maybe we were dating or something, but I don't know. It was one of those only-in-the-moment dreams.
One of us quietly said, "Rue, are you awake?" And she immediately said, "yeah." And so we stopped touching faces and stopped talking and Eli rolled off of me a little. Sort of because that was private, and it didn't feel like it was private if Rue was awake. But we held hands on the side that was farther away from Rue, and that was okay.
[/dreams]
I think it's weird when you start seeing things from your everyday life in your dreams. And it's even more weird how you don't mind talking about it if it's a dream, whereas you would never talk about it if you were saying it were real.
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Post by fico on Apr 3, 2003 12:13:07 GMT -5
4.2.o3
11:37am. A few days ago, it got cold again. (It even snowed. ) So I guess this was the day before it snowed, so it was Sunday? Anyway, it was kind of cold, the rain making it feel much cooler than it should have been. I was in one of my strange moods. I don't remember what set me off.
I went outside to do something small, don't remember that either. And then I just started walking. This happens sometimes with me. I'll start walking or biking or whatever, and I'll do it until I find whatever I was looking for. Which sometimes means I don't get home until five hours later, and other times means I go climb a roof for a few minutes, and other times means I just have to walk around my house once, like I did when I was younger and trying to ditch my smaller sisters so I could play with my big-kid friends. This time, I found myself walking out behind my house.
This time of year, the fields look like everything else, kinda dead but ready for a new season. But out behind my house, the work on the new golf course is really underway. I got to the end of my yard, and all I could see were these mounds of dirt. It made me dizzy. The dirt was all different colors, and it was raining, and it was hard to tell what was a hill and what was just a change in the color-tone of the earth. The dirt sloped away from my yard, going into a mini-ditch, and then there was this huge hill in front me, right behind the mini-ditch. Well, not huge, but I used to be able to look from the back of my yard and see the barn and silo and farm-house. The barn fell down a few weeks ago. The silo's still there. I could barely see the top of it because of this huge dirt-wad. I looked to my right, trying to re-orient myself. The field used to have these soft, rolling hills. It gently sloped up to my left, and down then back up on my right. At the top of the hill to my far right was Woodside road. I thought I would reassure myself as to where I was by looking at all the cars speeding along. From my backyard, they're small, and far away, so they look like they're moving slowly; toys. But the dirt blocked that view too, except in one place where the worker's trucks drive up to the farm-house, their headquarters.
I thought to walk around in all the mud. (It had been raining on and off all day.) After all, this stupid golf course is going to be here long after I leave. I might as well see if I can find some good memories in it, since all my field-memories are being blocked by the mounds of dirt. (I got in this habit for a long time of staying up late and going on sun-rise walks. I would just stay up all night and then go on a walk as the sun rose, then go to sleep around eight o'clock. My favorite time of year to do this was when the corn was tall. The corn field was right behind my house, and I would walk through it until I got to the swampy bit where they didn't have anything growing because it was too wet all the time. My shoulders and ankles would be all damp from the dew. And I would walk along until I saw the sun come up behind this one, particular tree. The tree is old and gnarly and ugly-looking, but it was beautiful with the sun coming up directly behind it. I would watch that until the sun started to hurt my eyes, and then I would go and sit in the middle of the road on Woodside until I saw my first car. I was at the top of a hill, so I saw the cars long before they came. And then I would walk home, birds chirping everywhere.) I walked to the tops of hills, looking around at everything. The workers have these huge, concrete cylinders, which I guess is for draining. And they've formed the dirt into special piles in some places; like, they piles have distinct shapes. And I just got more and more dizzy as I looked around, scared that I would end up falling and rolling down one of those muddy hills. And even if I didn't fall, I was scared I would get lost in all those unfamiliar mounds.
So I kept my house in site, and I didn't stay too long.
I wanted to see something familiar and comforting after that, so I walked to the dead-end of my street. When I was younger, on Halloween, we always went to the dead-end first. When I wanted to try something new on my bike, I went to the dead-end, because there were fewer cars. When I went to private school, my bus stop was at the dead-end. When I was in elementary school, the bus stop was at the dead-end. Jem and I would ride our bikes down to the dead-end and turn toward the other dead-end and go into the woods, then find our way to his backyard. I scuffed my feet along in the grass and on the pavement, scraping mud the entire way. When I got home, my shoes were still caked in it. I just left them on my floor and hung my wet clothes over pieces of furniture and tried to get dressed.
I couldn't figure out what to wear. I tried my girliest clothes and my guy-est clothes and nothing felt like me. I finally settled for something, though I can't remember what. Just that it was little-boy-guy clothes. Like the baggy stuff I wore fifth through seventh grades. I always feel like I'm this seven-year-old boy when I wear that stuff. I can't think why I wanted to feel that way. Maybe just because when I was seven, I didn't have to worry about things getting older and changing.
Because I was thinking about that golf course. Maybe it's someone's big break. Maybe their dad taught them golf, and it's the only good memory they have of their dad. And now they finally have a chance, their one chance, to make something, and they decided to make a golf course to honor the good things they saw in their dad. Maybe they're building for themselves everything that it feels like they're destroying for me. Maybe they're pregnant or they're wife is pregnant, and they're looking forward to teaching they're kids about golf. And even if the kids don't like the sport, they'll like to hear their parents talk about why mommy or daddy wanted that golf course in the first place. You know? Maybe I'm just being selfish in this. ... Or, you know, maybe it's some big-shot business guy who already owns three baseball teams, and he figures a golf course would be the next logical step. But even so, maybe a golf course was all that big-shot ever wanted in the first place.
So I'm thinking about perspective a lot. About why this matters so much to me when I hadn't even gone in that field for a while. Why it might matter to whoever's building it. And whether it's even fair to try to compare those two things.
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Post by fico on Apr 7, 2003 20:18:32 GMT -5
4.8.o3
8:30pm. Everyone should have a Chaia in life. Everyone should be able to have a person s/he can go up to and talk to and have understand. But the best part about Chaia is this: when I don't want to tell her something, she doesn't ask me to. Even things that she knows I need to talk about, she won't even ask if I don't want her to. And I love how I figured that out. Because there's this one thing, and I've only told two people in my entire life. Chaia isn't one of them. But for years, Chaia knew something was up. She even hinted at it, not at the fact that I wasn't telling her something, but at the fact that she had a really good idea as to what it was. But she hinted and didn't mind at all when I didn't tell her; we just moved on to talking about my newest piece of writing. So the first person I told, s/he didn't really get it. I mean, it was good to get it out, but it wasn't received too well. And then I told this other person, and everything was okay, s/he totally got it. The cool part was that I then went over to Chaia's, and I told her that the thing-she-knew-was-there-but-I-didn't-want-to-talk-about was all okay. And she was relieved that I was okay, but she didn't ask what it was. See? It's just... complete and utter understanding of a person's boundaries and the privacy and respect people deserve. She indicated that she cared about and worried for me, so I knew I could talk to her if I wanted. But she wasn't offended when I didn't want to talk. And she was happy that I knew to tell her everything was fine, once it was. Everyone deserves someone like that.
The incident I just described, that's from a little while ago. Chaia's still just as cool as ever. I went over to her house after I made my last journal entry, and we talked about a lot of stuff, and she knew to ask me what was bothering me. I keep hoping and hoping I'll be as good a person as Chaia.
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People are way too complicated. Seriously. I mean, it makes them cool and all that, but they're hard-as-anything to understand. Or rather, they're easy to understand once they explain their thoughts. But I never know what they're thinking unless they tell me, and I can never tell what they might do from looking at past experiences I've had with them.
This sounds like something stupid, but it's actually really important to me right now. I want to Know people. I want to know everything they want to tell me. But even when they do, I don't seem to understand well enough.
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Snow right before I want to drive to Iowa is very poopy. (We got, like, four inches or something. It's hard to tell because the wind was strong, so the snow is much higher in some places than in others.) Especially since it might snow on Wednesday night, and we're leaving on Thursday morning. I just hope things go okay.
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I am full of life. My personality is multi-faceted and I'm up to the task of experiencing all facets. My thighs are sore from practicing handstands. My shoulders are sore from preparing for Hungarian Day (where I will be cracking a whip intermittantly all day long). My lower back is sore from sleep and my upper back is sore from being awake. My stomach is sore from not having enough food recently but being full at least once today. My mind is sore from trying to understand concepts in the way of Ray Bradbury, phenomenal music, musical theory, generational studies, time-with-Meghan, human personalities, words, everything else I've thought of within the past 48 hours. Cute girls, thoughtful people, metaphysical debates, colleges and insecurities. My entire being is sore, and it's all in a good way.
Along the lines of sore-ness, my brain is fried from trying to write. I'm attempting a song. It's hard as anything. I used to write poetry by simply sitting somewhere and letting my emotions form words. But this song is particular. I want to write about a single event that happened a few months ago. I want to write it out because I'm afraid I'll forget. But it's really private. I can't just write down a memory of it in snippet-form or story-form. That feels almost like an invasion of the memory's privacy. With songs, you can talk about the most emotional thing, and it's okay. It's not blunt or brutal or straightforward. And it's got a very different feel than plain poetry. Poetry I don't understand anymore; songs speak to me. Songs are open to interpretation. I want to write this song, and then I want people to interpret it according to themselves. I want them to see pieces of me and pieces of them.
But I'm having so much trouble getting it out. I know what I want it to feel like, but I don't know how to transfer these thoughts and feelings I have into the way the song feels in my future-memory. So in the mean time, I'm writing down random episodes that come to mind. Little clues and hints that I want included in the finished piece. It just feels like an unconnected conglomeration, not a key point in my life-to-date. *shrugs* But I'm working on it. And I sort of started a second song. A lyric just popped into my head, so I wrote it down. Maybe I can write this second song, and that will open the dam for this first song that's just busting to be expressed.
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I'm tired of distance being annoying. The people I want to help are always far away. Like, I want to talk to Gilt a lot, because I think we could really learn a lot from each other. And I need to spend more time with Eli because I get worried about her a lot. But I'm sure that as soon as I can figure a way to be near both of them, I'll be far away from Bet and Rue. And then Bet will call me up with something, or I'll get worried that Rue is homesick for her Family, or something. And I'll be 1,000 miles away.
"we'll drive one thousand miles an hour we'll fly by wheat fields and water towers" -- ok go
Sometimes, I wish I could drive that fast. I wish I could get to people in one hour, three hours, fifteen minutes. ... And then I start thinking about how that wouldn't be good for me physically, what with starting and stopping speeds so quickly, and how I would have to work in the acceleration and decceleration (that's a word, right?) time allowance, and how I would end up hitting buildings and people and trees and stuff, what with not having uber-duper-fast reflexes. And I figure maybe I'll just stick with 10 miles above the limit. ("and with no seatbelt, and I'd do it again, yeah. for tonight I went running through the screen doors of discretion. for I woke up from a nightmare that I could not stand to see." -- dar williams)
I wish I were more Huff. I wish I could spread myself out over everything. Spread out my wings and just protect everyone I care about, and people I don't care about, too. Just everyone. ("let your love cover me, like a pair of angel wings." -- dar williams)
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When I am at my most loss-of-words, I quote people. When I really want to stress a point, I quote people. When I want to hint at something, I quote people. Quotes are how I express all the things I feel too inadequate to express through my own words. ... And I guess that's kind of beautiful and sad.
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*grins* Rue and I are working on a package, and I'm working on private stuff to put in that same package. I love mail.
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--ani difranco
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Post by fico on Apr 15, 2003 12:33:39 GMT -5
4.15.o3
12:47pm. For sure, people are confusing. We spend all this energy trying to protect other people, but we've got them totally backward, so it doesn't work. Or we spend all this energy keeping something from someone, when that's just the person who should know. Or we waste energy trying to be someone we're not, because we think that's who someone else will like. It all just feels so stupid.
And I think that's why I had(/have?) that authentic-fetish thing. Because then people can know that with me, I'm just trying to be me. The downside is, I sometimes feel like I can't change. So I'm thinking this authenticity is all a load of bull. I'm thinking it's maybe not worth it to try. Because the things I was trying to be authentic about were the things that are subject to change anyway; they're the things I want to change. And the things I was "lying" about, those are the things I want people to be able to depend on me about. Like, like I want people to be able to talk to me about things. I want them to know that I'll listen and I'll care. But if I really cared about being authentic, I would also want them to know that sometimes I get distracted, and I listen with only half an ear, and I only seem to be completely there. (It's kind of a strange paradox, because I don't want to tell that to people I don't trust and like, and I am completely there for people I trust and like enough to tell this.) So I'm thinking a lot about what I think authenticity is, and whether or not it's even worth it to have a definition.
I'm also thinking a lot about people and how they we relate. I was having this discussion just a little while ago, about responsibility. I don't know what I want in the way of responsibility. And I haven't thought too much about what responsibility is. This is starting to bother me, loads. For sure, I always thought it was just one of those things that's there and everyone knows what it is. But I guess it's like gender or something. No one really knows; no one has a set definition, and people's definitions vary anyway. So I have to figure out what my definition is and then see if I can live up to it.
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People are also strange because we find it so difficult to figure out our feelings. Feelings are so weird. They're not explanable most of the time; just there. Which is infuriating, because you can't describe yours properly, and other people can't explain theirs properly. So we're all just bungling around, hoping not to hurt other people's feelings, but we don't even know what their feelings are. And in the mean time, we're also trying to save some energy in order to protect our own emotions from being trampled or even blown on. ... But maybe when our emotions are blown on the right way, they feel like they can fly. And I guess that's why we do this whole social-thing. Because we're looking for something that's really worth it all. And maybe it is. Worth it.
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So, basically, there are these different people in my life, right? And they all need these different things. And sometimes, I'm someone they look to to get something. I'm thinking a lot about whether or not I'm up to the job, and if I'm not, what I can do to become someone up to the job. Partly because if I end up needing someone, it might be cool to know there might be someone somewhere. But I think that's mainly just reiterating advice I've heard a million times and still don't understand. Mostly, it's because what I think I need right now is to feel needed by people. I want people to want me to do things for them, because then I feel like I'm doing something worth while. Something good even. ... That would sound really scummy and low, using people because I need to feel needed. And it would be. Except I also do care. I either care about them as individuals (Bet, Gilt, Lee, Eli, [Amy], [Hephestia] ([Pheste]), Rue, etc.), or I care about them because they're people, and everyone deserves to be cared about (Kim, [Doe], etc.). It's not scummy because it's not fake.
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So my dad's on his way to Kuwait. We had this really awesome goodbye-conversation. My dad and I are good at those. He was saying that he was proud of me for getting so many scholarships to college, that he really appreciated the help since we're pretty far in debt and all that. And he said he was sorry he wouldn't be there to hear all about how college affects me and stuff. He was sorry he wouldn't be able to watch me change so much. But he asked me to write. I said I would, and, since the conversation was getting pretty heavy, I lightened it up a little by telling him I would let him know the first time I have sex. ( Yeah, that's what my dad and I are like on occasion. Well, no, that's what I'm like with my dad on occasion. ) He laughed and then said okay. He said he would trust my judgement, and that he would want to hear about all the guys I date. That made me feel really sad. 'Cause right now, I'm seriously about 99.89% gay. Like, unless there's some way uber-cool guy that I meet, I'll probably end up dating some girl. And my dad doesn't know this about me. He doesn't know about something I'm currently spending a lot of energy thinking about. You know? But on the other hand, I'm really worried about how he'll take it. So I'm thinking about that too. But I don't think I'll really worry about telling dad until I get really serious with someone. Not serious about someone, 'cause that's completely different, but mutually serious with.
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I visited Coe. Wow. Do all of you realize that I'm going to be going to college in just over four months? Serious. I've, like, got these papers that they have me fill out, and they say things like what kind of person I want to room with and whatever. It's actually happening. I'm so excited, you have no clue. On the other hand, I still have four months to go. So by the time I get there, I'll probably be wiped out from being so excited all the time. But it's still way fun.
I'm excited because I've been waiting to do this for years. College was always my master-plan. It was the visible high-point in my life. Because I knew I was interested in it, and because I knew I wanted to do it, and because I knew I would. Because the other things I want to do, they might not happen, and that's probably okay. But college, college was just a must. So I could depend on it, and not feel guilty about living a little in the future rather than the present. You know how a lot of kids want to turn sixteen in order to get a driver's license, or they want to turn twenty-one in order to buy alcohol? I always wanted to be eighteen. It's my freedom-age. And I'm starting to understand that I'm not going to be anywhere near as free as I always imagined, but it's a start. I'll be working toward freedom, and the only restraints will be how I handle the situations, not my age. Like, I'll be in control of how soon I do this on-my-own thing. Who knows, maybe I'll even decide to do it not-quite-on-my-own for a bit. You know? But the point will be that it will be my choice, not what I'm forced into.
Besides the freedom-factor, Coe is way cool for other reasons. Mainly, it's got these really cool professors. (I've talked to a bunch of them, and they're totally the type of people you can invite to pizza, just because you want to continue your discussion. Besides that, they're the type of people who invite you places, you know? Just cool.) And these really cool professors come up with these really cool classes. (*gaspy* Okay, so you have to take this thing called First Year Seminar as a first year (not "freshman" because that's secually exclusive ). There are, like, thirty or so Seminars to choose from. And Dr. Bob has this way-awesome one. Basically, you go on walks every week through all these different types of places, and you write about what you see / notice / think about / whatever. And then you do a load of revision stuff (blargh, though someone is starting to convince me it might not be all bad). You also read all these other people's essays. It just sounds too cool. There are also these other Seminars, just so much to learn.
So I think an explanation for why-Coe-not-St.Gen's is necessary. Because people have asked me, and because I want to remember when I'm older. Coe is just this group of people wanting to learn and do funky stuff in the mean time. St. John's is more a group of people trying to learn and learn more than the people around them. Does that make sense? It's not that I wouldn't be happy at St. John's. St. John's is this really great place, and they form all these nifty bonds with each other, and they understand the same types of things. But Coe is just friendlier. Less hoity-toity. More set on the idea that all people are equal, just different. Coe is really dead-set on that. And also on the idea that well-roundedness is a very good thing. Since I'm not really sure what I want to do with my life, I'm thinking well-roundedness would be a good idea.
Besides all this, Coe has some community-thing going. They're really big on the idea that they're a community. I don't get community. At all. In the least. Nada. But I think I want to. Because it's important to a bunch of people who are important to me. And because it feels like something worth having. Something good. Because if I can understand community, then maybe I can also understand family, and then maybe I'll understand mine a bit better. And because it feels like I'm missing out on something. Just because.
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Post by fico on Apr 19, 2003 20:27:09 GMT -5
4.19.o3
9:01pm. I am feeling very random and sporadic. I had a very calm day, and now I'm feeling restless; but I don't want to go anywhere. I want to have a deep, intense discussion with someone, but I don't have the patience to read an intense thread on trapdoor. I want to sit and feel music through my whole self, but I don't want to stay still for so long. I want to write something, but I'm having enough trouble focusing my thoughts for this. I really want to talk to someone on the phone, because s/he and I always end up having cool conversations, but it's Saturday night, and s/he isn't home. Blargh to not being happy with what you have.
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Today was a very exciting day. Last night, Bet and I had a sleep over. The last time we did that was way back right before I went to Iowa, and even then, Kim was with us. I can't remember the last time it was just us. It was cool. I have recently cleaned my room, so we slept over my house. We laid out some blankets and slept in the middle of the floor. It was good to be able to lie down in there again. And to look around at all the many many things on my walls.1 We talked a little last night, but she was really tired.
This morning, we woke up around noon because the dumb dog wouldn't shut up. Two kids from down the street wanted to see Airlia. The dog was going crazy because they kept knocking on the front door. So Bet and I were effectively awake after that. We had a simple breakfast in the kitchen, just cereal. But we ended up talking. Bet is going to Syracuse next year. This is huge. It's her top choice and everything. Only it costs a lot, so it took a while for her parents to decide they could send her. Anyway, we went up to my room after a while, and we were just talking. We talked about a load of stuff, college, growing up, changing, cause-and-effect, everything. Names, people we know and people we don't, Friends, The Future, Life, everything. It was beautiful, because Bet is still Bet, she just has these parts of her I don't really know about. Like, she still feels the same as she always did, so she's still the same person. But on the other hand, her person is different. Kind of like, like Nialle said this thing recently about how she and her friend Telly both think of their Selves as their thoughts, and their emotions are seperate. With Bet, it's like her Self is her emotions, and those feelings haven't really changed. But the way she thinks and what she thinks about, the things her emotions are focused on, that has changed. So it's still her, but "her" is different. It was really great to lie next to her and talk about stuff. Catch up. We've both been kind of blind to each other for a little while, since we're drifting apart a lot. It was cool to have 20/20 for an hour or two.
I walked Bet to her car, because I was going to get the mail on the way. I rarely get mail, but I still like to check. I mean, friends send me mail and whatever, and it's just fun to see. In the box, there were two envelopes from Coe. The thick one was stupid, just asking me to tell them about my stay last weekend. The thin one was awesome. I'm in the Writing Center! I am. Which, honestly, I kind of expected, but that's just because I'm cocky and overall conceited. But seriously, I'm in. This kicks butt.
So I took a shower (after hugging Bet and then saying good-bye) and went over to Chaia's. Told her the good news. Her daughter is home from college for a bit. (It's Passover.) I ended up talking to Chaia and her daughter, and then I made fried potatoes, and then we went up to her daughter's room. Chandra had come over, so we just hung out up there, talking. It was all very relaxing. I had these cool conversations with Chaia's daughter2. We talked about all kinds of things before Chandra came over. I caught her up with my life. Things like that I'm bi and that I dated someone and whatever. Things she never really expected of me, 'cause I was always her best friend's little sister. She was always a little too sissy for me, and I was always a little too boyish for her. We liked each other well enough, but we didn't have anything in common, so we didn't hang out. It was nice to hang out with someone without having to have anything in common.
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Now I'm back from Chaia's, and Airlia is asking me to take her to the store. I think I will, and then I'll start calling people until I reach someone, because my house feels really small and insignificant and not-good-enough right now. Like I need someone other, something outside, something not-this. And I really need to just talk to someone right now. Bad. Big and Bad.
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1. I want to talk about my walls. My walls are plastered with stuff. I have posters all over. Some Rue got me, some Bet got me, one I'm borrowing from Rue (a Harry Potter one). Then I've got these two paintings in frames that I've loved forever. They were laying around my house for ages, just wherever. And I finally convinced my mom to hang them on a wall, my wall. I've also got countless pieces of artwork. Most of it's mine, but some is Rue's, and one is Airlia's. I've got this leaf that Makor made me, it's made of clay and hangs on a ribbon; that's hanging up. I've got this cork-board type of thing with loads of pictures on it. the room is just busy, and I love it. It's just were I am right now. All hectic and sporadic and random, but still tied together because it's still me. Too much fun.
2. I guess it's really weird that she's always "Chaia's daughter", but I haven't been able to figure out an appropriate name for her yet, and I really want her's to suit her, so nyeh. Deal with it untill I manage to receive a small stroke of genius.
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