solitary solitaire

I really like Solitaire, especially on the computer.  Sometimes I think I am addicted to it, because I could play it for hours if I had the opportunity.  There’s just something about everything having a place, being put into order, that I really like. A red four always goes on top of a black five.  If you win, all of the cards are piled neatly, sorted by suit, and are in numerical order. The cards dance and explode into confetti.  It’s the only thing I can organize, one of the things where the rules always apply, where I can sort of zone out and win approximately twenty-three percent of the time, according to the computer. It's not glamorous or cool, even though I changed the background to have pretty leaves, but it's okay.

I dressed up, it was nice

I'm not going to worry about anything ever again. [Insert mental expression of disbelief here.]  But really, I've decided. I'm just going to be happy.  I think I'm happy right now, which is new and exciting, and my weekend was nice.  Nice is such a bland word, fairly vague, but it serves my purposes here, it has the perfect connotation, perfect for avoiding specificity, which I am a champion at.  It's so weird to feel this okay.  I mean, it's normal, and good, but simultaneously abnormal.  Really good songs keep coming up on my pandora stations, I have two new books to read, and I'm not really behind on any schoolwork, as far as I know.  I'm not going to tempt the fates by declaring that nothing can get me down (way too risky), but things are okay right now.  I want them to stay okay.  I'm trying out this thing called hope again, that pair of shiny new shoes that aren't quite comfortable yet.  That's what it seems like to me, anyway.  Hey, it's better than Buffy's whole cookie dough metaphor, that was getting ridiculous. 

in which I start with a quote but am not an exam

The fascinating Edith Piaf once said, "As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face." 

I really hope she was wrong.  I hope to god she was wrong. 

I've been thinking about La Mome Piaf a lot lately because of this French project thing I'm doing, and her life scares me.  Horrible things happen to everybody (right?), so why not me?  Couldn't I get addicted to morphine and die at forty seven? Why not?  I'm sure she didn't predict that as being her future when she was my age.  

I figured that it's about time that I write an entry I actually publish, instead of ones that I don't, where I write things that I would never tell anyone, things that I am afraid to tell myself.  I think I've written about how writing things down makes them less real before, but I didn't realize the extent of this idea until recently.  It makes things more okay, less scary, because the words are physically there; you can see them marching across the page in neat rows.  Rows--these rows could say anything if you just glance for a second, rows holding symbols that form words that each mean something to form ideas.  If you squint, and look at them through your eyelashes, they are only blurry shapes.  Shapes aren't so frightening.  

i'd do all that catharsis stuff for you

I wish I could solve all of your problems, and put all of the scattered pieces back together.  I wish you were better than okay.

"personal truth"

I was in Ithaca once as a freshman with c and some old friends who have grown up and gone away since then, and we went to a coffee shop where a hippie woman gave us free mate and talked to us about personal truth. I can't remember exactly what she said, but Oedipus Rex was brought up in our argument against her, and we thought we were so brilliant because we had read it and argued circles around this woman, who was illogical, but just had a different opinion than we did.  We thought we knew so much, about how Oedipus' personal truth led to the truth, and how it affected his world.  Years later, in our theory of knowledge class, we were told that there was no such thing as personal truth; there is only the truth, and then there are our perceptions of the truth.  I personally don't see the difference, aren't personal truth and perception the same thing? Right now everything looks darker to me, and I am "perceiving" that we aren't talking, and I'm perceiving that I'm drawing away from everyone, even though that's not what I want, or need.  My personal truth is that I'm losing them, all of them, and it's my own fault. 

ode to d

My brother made me a bracelet so that I wouldn't forget him when I go to college. I thought that it was sweet, but kind of silly. Why would I forget him; he's my brother. He's one of my best friends. Unlike other people that come and go, he'll always be around to make me bracelets out of unevenly-sized clay beads, break out into harmonies, and talk about Harry Potter with me. I'll miss having someone around to make fun of for being obsessed with Apple products and not doing things in a logical order.

math doesn't like me

For once, math is not a codename for a person or action or event, math is what it is, and studying for my math test tomorrow is not working out. It's so frustrating-why don't I understand this? I thought I was supposed to be good at math once upon a time.

the "good" old days

I'm taking a break from writing my college essays. It's too exhausting. I'm writing about when I was ten, how I would sneak into the basement and read snatches of pages of my mother's copy of Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates, and how it caused me to stay sane during a time when everything was insane; about how those girls could be powerful even when I could not be, and how those fragments of a novel saved my life. I'm worried that it's too personal-it's probably not what anybody is looking for. I'm pretty sure it counts for something though, even though I'm not writing about how the book wanted me to save pandas or attain world peace.

Thinking about those days brought up a lot of memories that I had forgotten, or at least tried to forget, but I feel like this Foxfire essay has to be written, it's been whispering in my ear, asking me to write it for years, and now I have the opportunity. Even if I don't send it out, even if it's not perfect, it will be written for myself, so that I can never forget that Foxfire burns and burns.

only three

Only three this month-I'm slacking off, in life in general. I am not ready for the intense extended essay writing that will happen this weekend, the college essay writing that will hopefully happen and be completed this weekend, the everything else that is going on at the same time. I need to be more diligent, not rely on the adrenaline rush of stress to get work done, get things done earlier so that my insides aren't eaten alive by what I am feeling. I don't want to grow up and be responsible-to have all of these things that I have to do. c yet again halfheartedly tried to get me to skip school, though all the while she knew that we wouldn't, that we never do and probably never will. I think we need to think about skipping school to prevent ourselves from actually doing it-if I start asking myself why I do everything, would I ever get anything done?

streetcar

Writing here again, accidentally on purpose, when I should be writing about Blanche and Stanley, the moth and the Man, feels more right. I don't want to talk about the "palpable tension in the air" any more, I think it's more worth it to read the play than my essay about the play anyway, and is there any other way to show that I get it, I know, their worlds are irreconcilable, I know. I know that. How can they not be? I know I need to finish, I know I need to sleep, to eat, to dream so that I have enough energy to get up and do it all over again, riding my bike to school, going through another day of the same classes, doing more homework, practicing violin, the same worries about college and my life and school now repeating in an endless loop in my head, failing to sleep and eat the way I am supposed to, finally sleeping again. why why why-cue mental temper tantrum, because my mushy brain (everyone's brain is mushy) has lost the will to send out electrical impulses, I've lost the will to think and be and here I am now, nearing this point of Done-ness, my eyelids heavy with lost time.

I couldn't sleep again last night, and the spell checker is stuck on French spelling so everything I am writing now is underlined in squiggly red, like everything is wrong wrong wrong. I have dread in my stomach again, the place where it always lies, like a large stone that I swallowed inadvertently. I don't know how to make it go away, or how to be happy, or unstressed, or not worried, because it's always there, in my stomach. It's almost as bad as the dread I felt when I was little, the kind that I wasn't aware of because it was always there, and only realized it had been there after it had gone, when I flinched at loud noises and didn't realize that I'd been doing it until after I had stopped. It's back and I'm afraid I can't ever make it go away.

secretly five

I've recently discovered that I really like to read aloud, especially books by Roald Dahl. I am in the midst of George's Marvellous Medicine. I also like to make up little songs about whatever I am doing at the moment. For example, today I made up a really great song about wiggling my toes. Perfectly reasonable. Yesterday, I found out that it's a lot of fun to type in gibberish into google translate and click on the speaker to make it say the gibberish aloud. Depending on what language it's set to, the computer will pronounce the gibberish differently.

Because of all these behaviors, one would think that I like children. I sort of don't. Is that mean?

wish list

to make lists in my head, to be on time, to care about my grades, to go to college, to not go to college, to live in a hammock in the rain forest, to lie on a beach at night and look at the stars while the waves tell me a bedtime story, to read out loud, to be sung to, to travel and know that I can come back home, to have perfect pitch, to be funnysmartbeautiful, to have no homework, to hold hands in the park on a rainy day.

space

I love listening to happy music. Even when I'm not happy, it's comforting to know that somebody, somewhere, at some point was or is. I really wish that I could make happy music. I'm not quite sure how to.

I know I haven't written in a while, here anyway, and I'm not sure why. It's definitely a mental thing. I mean, it's not as if I have nothing to say all of a sudden, it's just...well, I'm not quite sure what it is, precisely. Maybe lack of sleep? Maybe I'm getting homework now that school has started. Maybe I still have some history reading to do and questions to answer. I think that might be part of it.

I keep thinking about how many people live on the planet, and how I don't know them, but how they each have their own separate lives that they are living totally separately from mine, and that they haven't even thought of me, and I've never thought of them, individually. Then I think about how vast the world, the universe, and everything is, and then I can't sleep. Sometimes I wish that I was a robot that could turn off for a certain amount of time, and then at the time I need to wake up, I would automatically turn back on, so that I would always be on time for school. It's sad that everything goes back to school. School has totally consumed my personality.

the why

I'm afraid that I say too much without actually saying anything at all, and I'm afraid that if I start to write most of what I think here, it won't be real anymore because it has left my head. My new literature teacher said that we can't hoard ideas; we need to share them with each other in order to have discourse, and accomplish things. I think that life is different than literature though, even though literature can tell us about life-what if your idea escapes and you forget? What if it was never a good one in the first place? Everything becomes more real once said aloud. There are certain things that I want to say but never do, and there is something that I said once but will probably never repeat, and there are stories I've written that will never be seen by anyone, because I am a greedy idea hoarder always hungry for words, for the right words, but they are always just out of my grasp. Writing is different than talking though, because you can be as honest as you want and say that it's only pretend, but if you're honestly pretending while speaking, you're lying. I don't like lying, no matter what you call it, so I like reading and writing words better than hearing and speaking them sometimes. A lot of the time. I like to pretend that I'm pretending and still have it be the truth.

movies I've seen in church

-Superbad

-The Piano (but only the violent/sex scenes)

-Priscilla Queen of the Desert

-Eurotrip

What religion is this, you may ask? Unitarian Universalism.

gorgeous?

I am in the car on the way to Philadelphia right now. Typing in a car is strange, and I've never done it before, but it felt neccessary a minute ago. I was looking out of the window and thinking, and somehow I started thinking about spelling, and then I thought about how the word "gorgeous" is spelled, which led me to think about Gia, which makes me sad. But anyway, I came to the conclusion that gorgeous is a strange word. It's gorge+ous. Gorge? I now have this image in my head of people looking at something beautiful, and gorging themselves on its beauty. If it's gorgeous, it's something worth gorging on. Realizing that this whole concept is really silly and inaccurate, I looked up the etymology of gorgeous. It turns out that gorgeous is from the Middle French gorgias, which means elegant and fashionable, perhaps literally meaning "necklace", because all of that comes from Old French gorge, which means bosom or throat. All of which I learned from dictionary.com, by the way. We didn't exactly bring our dictionary on the trip. And I looked up gorge by itself, and it comes from the same place. So I'm totally wrong, but also sort of right, in a way. I think.

This is one example of the several useless kind of things I think about constantly, and I apologize for its dullness. Then again, I can write whatever I want. I'll write something actual soon, most likely.

write right rite

I'm home again. Home meaning my dad and friends and the city that I love even though it's smelly and kind of empty sometimes. Even though home means doing more work and worrying about my future and other things that I am told are important. I'm so glad to be back, despite that.

I've just read all of these old crazy things I wrote on google docs over the past year, and I stopped and wrote a new one. I've written several letters to people with no intention of sending them. Well, not exactly people. More or less one person. It's really stupid. If anybody other than me ever read any of the stuff I write, I would be mortified. It's like a weird, slightly obsessive-compulsive, crazy person diary written to people. Also, I write in my diary as if someone from the future is going to read it. Is that so unreasonable though? I will probably read it in the future. Hopefully nobody else will though-I write the most stupid things. I wonder what Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary when she was my age. I think about her a lot, but I feel like I can't read The Bell Jar yet. I just don't think I can do it. Maybe when I'm a little less crazy? I really want to though-it has the attraction of playing with fire, or climbing really tall trees. It's like Legs baby.

Anyway, in some ways, I kind of wish that my unsent letters on google docs were read by their hypothetical recipient(s). I wish that they could understand why I'm writing. I wish I could understand why I'm writing. Frankly, I have no idea. I had this whole thing where I wanted to write more this summer so that I could get better at it, but I don't think it's working out so well. I've only ended up writing around once a month on average, and I'll probably write less for myself once school starts. It's not like I have anything important to say, and it's not like anyone ever reads this anyway. Why would they?

strangers

Summer=reading, and summer reading, but I always end up reading too many other books that are not assigned, and it's always late August or early September by the time I start SUMMER READING, which is of course the most important thing to be doing.

The library in this small town in northern Virginia reminds me of the Secret Garden, because there used to be a secret stairway hidden by ivy-covered walls that led to a sundial that was always wrong. Now I realize that the stairway was never really a secret after all, and that it leads to the main road, and that everybody could see it the whole time. Most of the ivy is gone now anyway. The library never has all of the SUMMER READING books I need, and always seems to be small and empty now.

Nearly everything in this town, even the library, is a stranger to me now, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I still have one friend here. She is back from Russia now and dancing to a cd on the boombox. We make fun of teeny boppers and blast Alejandro through open car windows. I can stop worrying about college and The Extended Essay long enough for Lady Gaga.

the bug in the shower

I was taking a shower this morning when I noticed a bug, perhaps a small moth, crawling along the back of the tub. It flew around for a little while and then came to rest upon a porcelain edge close to me. I cupped my hands under the shower, watching the water fill the hollow I made. I poured this water on the bug, and it was swept away down the drain.

I thought about what I had done. The bug wasn't bothering me, it wasn't harming me in any way. Why did I feel the need to kill it? I drowned the bug automatically and without thought, without thinking about the consequences of my actions. Then I started to think about what consequences could possibly arise. I came to realize that there would not be any. Moths do not have families that would miss them if they disappeared. Nobody would care that the moth was dead.

But what if I am wrong? What if I am only telling myself this so that my automatic disregard for life can be pardoned? I keep thinking about how tiny and insignificant humans are in the grand scheme of things. Are we any greater than moths? What if giants came around squashing us when we got in their way? They may not know that we have languages or people that we love. Does that make it okay?

I am not mourning the moth. The fact that the moth is dead does not affect me. The fact that I killed it does.

so here I am I guess.

I don't even see the point of writing here, but does everything need a point? I want to say yes, but here I am... Anyway, my point, I suppose, is that I'm left without a lot to do. It's finally the summer. My friends have gone away, and I'll be leaving soon as well. There's this weird limbo going on where we're all separated, and normally this wouldn't bother me, but it sort of is bothering me. Nothing is happening, but nothing isn't happening, exactly. The most difficult decision I've had to make this summer, so far, is what font to type in. There haven't been any adventures yet, no melting strawberry popsicles running down our wrists. I think what I'm trying to say is I miss you. Or something. That would be stupid though.