wanted: pen pal

I've had this thing lately about wanting a pen pal, someone to write to on paper instead of writing to myself all the time.  I guess that this blog is like having a pen pal to some extent, except for the fact that I often find that the way I write or speak varies somewhat based on who I am speaking to.  I would really like to see if I can speak to someone else as honestly as I do when I speak to myself.  It would also be interesting to see what other people say.  And with paper, you can doodle in the margins.  There's something about paper.

so I'll brush my teeth and think of you, looking at photographic ghosts of your past, our past, but we didn't know each other yet. 


that one day in a green room filled with sunlight, I, unintentionally, became a tool of your procrastination and we talked about books we've read and our childhood and books in our childhood and how they are really one and the same.


I used to draw horses obsessively, now I obsessively draw faces everywhere, because they are all around, always following, always watching I don't know what but it doesn't really matter because it's not usually me I don't think. we talked about the horses but not the faces and that's just fine.

the seventy-six bones of the axial skeleton

I can name them.  Well, most of them.  Remembering all of the facial bones is hard.  Maxilla, mandible, two nasal, (two?) vomer...that's all I've got.  Ethnoid? That's one, right?

Let's pretend that I have been writing consistently, as per usual.  Let's also pretend that I don't have oh, say, around one hundred really dense pages to read for one class tomorrow, and that I don't have any other work for my other classes tomorrow.  

Let's pretend that college is easier than I thought it would be.

Now that that's settled. [acknowledgement of intentional sentence fragment/delusions] 

I was briefly thinking about doing the thing where you write a whole novel during the month of November, but then, I stopped thinking about it.  Then I thought about how November isn't over yet.  Then I thought about how it would actually be kind of insane to start now, considering I don't have any ideas for a novel.  Then I thought about how if I ate another bite of raw spinach and chickpeas, I would throw up.  I did it.  I didn't throw up though.

Usually this is the point where I ask myself some sort of abstract question that I've been thinking about.  There are too many right now to even begin.

I miss doing this, writing.  I need this to be okay, and I haven't been keeping myself okay.  I am cheery on the telephone. "Everything's great, classes are great, I'm totally on top of everything," I believe it when I say it.  It's mostly true, except for the end bit.  I'm sort of on top of some things.  

I I I

I'm sure this is fascinating.  

It would be funny if someone read this and fell in love with me.  Sometimes I read things and fall in love with people for a few minutes.  It happened a couple of months ago, but I got over it after a day or two.  It probably wasn't love; it was just that aching in your chest when you want someone to be something, better maybe, or know that there are other people in the world who feel the same way as they do.  That's kind of how I interpret love.  I've never been in love with anyone, but I think that that's how it would feel for me.  I think I would need to read something they wrote that they didn't want to share with anyone in order to fall in love with a person.

I don't really know where to go from there, except to say that I will write more. But not for you, for me.  It's kind of a selfish thing right now.

getting grimy/unintentional stupid "poetry"

I'm writing less here and more on my own, mostly because I know that people read this occasionally.  And while that is cool and everything, it produces very different stuff. Mostly less angsty.  Not as much swearing, either.  Not that there's anything wrong with swearing, I just think I use it gratuitously when I write for myself.


As usual, this is a product of procrastination.  This is going to be a very long, but very productive, night. I will practice violin in the music building, even though it is far away.  Everything sounds better in there.


Drop an apple, dust it off. Even if the white flesh is speckled with dirt
it can't hurt
when my teeth mark the skin
I can see how crooked they are
a space in between
that means I'm wise beyond my years
it's not that though
I am an underachieving genius who worries about the future
that's not wisdom
that's staring at a screen notebook dots and lines
trying to make it into sense
not knowing or believing that anything is complete
or good
so I think some more
and eat apples
and drop them on the floor. 

ahhhhh

I'm such an idiot
no one can read this ever 
I just reread some old posts
I'm such an idiot 
this is not a poem 
this is me freaking out and abandoning sentence structure
my poems are awful
I'm such an idiot
no one can ever find this blog
did I mention I am an idiot?

I missed this

One room next to mine is blasting jazz.  In the next room over, someone is practicing a monologue.  None of it bothers me, I like the noise, but I'm not sure why. I feel like I have been really busy all day, but I also feel like I haven't done anything at all.  I missed having work to do, learning things.  I can't find one of the readings for one of my classes, and the reading for another seems like such touchy-feely bullshit that I don't even feel like doing it.  But it's okay.  I am finally doing things.

Right now, I'm learning Bach's Violin Concerto in a minor. It's kind of the most exciting thing I am doing right now, because for once in my life, I want to be able to feel like I am good at playing the violin.  Good good.  Actually good.  Like if someone were to hear me play, and he or she said, "Wow, she's good".  That's what I'm talking about.  Right now though, it doesn't sound like a concerto so much as it sounds like notes.  I'm working on it.  It will be better someday.

I don't want to write about how school and life and everything has been so far, because there is both too much to say and not enough.  I wish I could talk about the people I've met and the things I've done, but I'm not sure I want to.  I think that all I need to say is that I am more myself here.  Except more extroverted.  Which is not me at all.

I think I am writing like Hemmingway right now. Or Camus.  Or someone who is not a good writer.  I'm no Dostoevsky. 

packing isn't fun

I'm afraid I'm bringing too much stuff to school with me.  Almost done packing.  It's kind of overwhelming, because I'm so afraid I'll forget something, and I think this is part of why I'm bringing so much stuff.  And I don't know when I'll be done.  There are flashes of it feeling real, but somehow my room looks pretty much the same, so it doesn't feel real that I'm leaving tomorrow.  How is my room still so messy after I packed up all my crap?  What is even left?  I don't know what to do with anything.  My dad said that he wanted my room to be clean before I left, but there's no way that's happening.  Not because I don't want it to be clean, but because I don't even know how to clean it at this point. But I can't write anymore, I have to finish.

I've been writing a lot lately on paper instead of here.  I missed paper more than I realized. The thing is, whenever I'm packing I come across my Harry Potter diary that I've written in sporadically since I was around seven or eight, and I always feel so overwhelmed that I need to write. I think I started abandoning it when I realized it had become the place where I pined over boys, and I didn't want to be that girl who always talked about the boy she liked. The thing is, there are so many qualities that I don't mind and even enjoy in other people that I would hate for myself to have.  I guess talking about stuff like that is one of them.  I like it when my friends talk about their boy problems or whatever, because I like listening to them.  Maybe I'm a good listener because I don't talk...


I always imagined someone finding my diary in the future and reading it, a la Anne Frank.  But I really hope that doesn't happen, because I think that I didn't sound totally vapid only about twenty-five percent of the time.  Whenever I go back and read my diary, it really embarrasses me.  It's like I'm reading the words of an entirely different person.  But it really makes me think about how I'm constantly changing, becoming more myself each day. 


I'm still not done packing though.

Whenever I think of August, I think of old creaking porch swings, but not on porches, on verandas.  There is a wrinkled old man sipping iced tea or mint juleps or lemonade and he tells stories sometimes, but only if you stop and listen.  He whispers to himself all day, his brown hands fluttering.  There are road maps on his hands and face that show ghosts of labor and smiles and pain, and sometimes he'll tell you what they mean but not why, you have to figure out why for yourself, maybe the humming cicadas know.  At night the stars weave uncertainly down to the earth and children catch them in jars, and the old man watches and smiles.  But he warns the children to let the stars go, because otherwise they'll die, and then nobody else can see them.


Not that I spend my summers in the deep South or anything.  That's just what I feel like August is, or should be.

holy shit i'm tired

My best friend is moving away today, my brother is coming back today.  I had to say goodbye to her and then I stayed up way too late last night.  I'm leaving for college soon, and it hasn't completely sunk in yet.  I've got a job that I haven't started yet, and honestly don't really want to start because I'll be there for less than three weeks anyway. And come on, who wants to be a telemarketer?  Nobody, that's who.  Especially since I would be calling people while they are at work. What up with that?  And then someone has to be bored or desperate enough once every hour that I am there to actually buy the magazines I'm selling.


I'm so excited to leave for the mountains. Nothing is going to be the same anymore, but I think I'm okay with it.  I'm not worried about leaving for school or missing my parents because I'm never with both of them at the same time anyway; I've already left two homes.


Next year, I want to be myself, but better.  I want to be better at something.  I want to be more extroverted, get better grades, become a better writer/musician/anything.  I want to have my own thing.  I want to be ballsy enough to make Gold Lion happen and for Cypress to design the t-shirts. 

creepin on new yorkers who i can't stop thinking about

She was drew crossed with vanessa, except not particularly pretty upon first glance, but she had this energy about her.  She was standing with her boyfriend in the subway, her arms around his neck.  They were both messy, disheveled, cool.  I watched as she perfectly applied dimestore lip gloss, almost red.  The train wobbled, but she didn't need a mirror. She kissed the excess away on her hand, leaving two perfect maps of her mouth behind. She smiled, laughed, seemed so alive and whole. Her eyes sparkled when she talked about how she loved to carry her teal backpack around with her, how perfect it was.  She was a grown child, with overall shorts and that backpack and that cheap lipgloss, but there was something so adult about her too, something I have had yet to experience.  She knew something I didn't.  She was happy and in love and didn't really care about what happened next.

so.

I feel like I haven't written in forever, mostly because I've been...doing things.  So weird. But really.  Let's see. Within the past few weeks, I graduated from high school, went to visit my mom and played in an international youth orchestra there, and went to NYC.  All of the little things in between have prevented me from writing anything at all, here or otherwise.  Justification complete.


It's funny how even though you've done something before, you forget what it's really like after a while.  When I play with an orchestra, even just at school (my OLD school! I don't go there anymore!), I feel really good.  I'm seriously trying to think of a better word to use.  Content? Complete?  Connected? Something that maybe doesn't start with a c?  "Good" is the perfect word.  All of the others reflect some of what I felt, but the best way to say it is "good".  I just feel whole and happy and challenged and like I'm actually doing something for once.  I'm making a sound, everybody's making a sound together.  It's good.  Even if we weren't super great or anything, it didn't really matter.  I was doing something that I loved.

hey, you there..

I write in the second person too much.  Gross.  It's a bad habit.  I kind of go back and forth between the first and second person, and who the fuck would think that that isn't annoying?  I'll try to stick to the first person right now. I I I.  I.  Yes.  Okay.  I can do this, for sure. 

I think I like writing in second person because it feels more like I'm telling someone something [resist urge to add "you know what I mean?"].  I probably do it because I feel weird saying "I" so much.  As if anything I have to say is super important.  I'd like to think that I'm super deep and stuff, which also involves less use of "I". But honestly, I'm probably as introspective as some photography chick, the kind with arty photos and cool hair.  If I were speaking to someone right now, I would tell him or her that he or she knows the kind of person I am talking about. 

The thing is, I generally write how I speak, or as Cypress has said, "good, clean prose".  It's so clearly prose, nothing vaguely poetic or funky about it.  But because I write how I speak, and because I generally speak to people other than myself, I start to accidentally write to someone.  Not usually anyone in particular, but to the vague misty wall of You.  So.  Um.  I guess that's it.  Okay.    

struck by lightning

That's the literal translation of "love at first sight" in French.  I like when these things happen, things that translate into something completely different that captures the same idea so perfectly.  Not that I've ever experienced love at first sight or anything.  But don't we imagine it as something that is so instant and powerful that it causes you to feel as though you already know the person you've supposedly fallen in love with?  I'm not a romantic, and I don't really believe that it is love that happens at first sight, but it's nice to think about that.  It kind of goes along with the whole idea that we each have a soul mate, someone we were destined to be with since the day we were born.  Soul mate in French is literally soul sister.  Just saying.  


Things are going to start changing soon.  The thought has been buzzing behind my eyes for the past couple of weeks now, lurking behind the normal.  It's like Chronicle of a Death Foretold; I know that Santiago Nasar dies from the very beginning, but I don't know how or why, or what happens in between.

I am sunburned on only one of my shoulders, because I cut up my gay-straight alliance shirt to look cool.  There is a thin white line where my skin was protected by the strap of my bra, and all around it is red with freckles.  It doesn't look like my skin anymore, it looks older and a little leathery, and then I worry about skin cancer and what my skin will be like when I am old.    

analyze this, sucka

What's so wrong with telling stories?  Our lives are just stories.  Maybe they have deeper meaning, but we can't find out until the end.  When we're dead.  And can't find out anything anyway.  Because of that whole being dead thing.  Seriously though, try to analyze the themes of my childhood.  Really, I dare you.  


I like to write things that don't need to have any sort of deeper meaning.  Maybe I want to tell the story about the girl waiting for the bus in the hot sun with four freckles under her eyebrow. Isabel Allende wrote The House of the Spirits to tell a story about her family, and she laughs whenever people try to analyze her work.  I saw her speak a couple of years ago, and she talked about a student who wrote some epic paper about why the dog in The House of the Spirits is so big, and what it represents.  She laughed, saying, "I just wanted him to be a giant dog! There was nothing behind it!"  As much as I love when writers plan their themes, motifs, symbols, whatever, I love stories.


My blog is my story.  It may not be interesting, or eventful, or funny or tender.  It probably won't change the way you think about the world.  It's just me.  


This is actually most likely inspired by my lack of enthusiasm for Paper 2 of the IB Lit exam tomorrow.  Ughhhh.  I can't believe I haven't complained about them yet.  Physics will kill me. 

headache

Literally.  I have a headache.  Think ax blade cleaving into the left side of my skull.  I feel empty or something, and a little sad.  My last week of high school, most of which will be spent taking exams, starts tomorrow.  This is not an "Omg, I'm going to miss you all so much!!!!" post.  This is different.  I don't know how to distinguish it from that.  I'm excited to leave school.  I probably will not miss a lot of people.  But I will miss the ones I love.  I don't know what is going to happen.  I don't even know where I will be this summer.  I need money for school, but I want to see my mom, and let's face it; how can I get a job in rural Virginia? I don't know what to do.  I'm writing like an emotional Meursault.  I wish I could write poetry.  I wish I knew the closest amtrak station to where you will be.


I have a headache and I'm missing you already. 

sermon

I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and today, we had a youth service.  Long story short, it involved me writing a sermon.  Here it is:

My family first came to this church at the suggestion of my younger brother.  Both of our best friends went, and I think at the time, my mother wanted us to have some religion in our lives.  It was a month into my freshman year of high school.  On my first day, I nervously approached the door to the youth group room after following someone’s directions, and sort of peered in before I entered.  I was glad and kind of surprised to see so many people from my school in the room, and it definitely helped that my best friend was there.  The meeting that day was a week before a con in Rochester, and I remember being very confused and slightly embarrassed when everybody was talking about it.  I didn’t know what a con was, and I was too afraid to ask.  To this day, it is very difficult for me to make new friends, and even talk to people I don’t know, and back then, I felt nearly paralyzed with fear.  Even though I was really scared, slightly uncomfortable, and didn’t actually say anything on that first day, I wanted to come back, and I did, for the next three years.

My first day might sound like it a negative experience, but it really wasn’t.  I think I sensed a camaraderie and openness among the kids in the youth group.  It was something I was attracted to, something I wanted to be a part of.  I’ve come to realize that I didn’t join the youth group solely for the religious aspect of Unitarian Universalism.  If I had, I think I would have just gone to service.  I joined the youth group so that I could feel like I was part of a community, so that I could feel like I had friends.  And I got what I came for.  I am a part of a community, and I do have friends.  But I also have a place that actually allowed me to think about and develop what I truly believe. And though I wasn’t intending to examine what exactly it is that I believe, youth group gave me a reason to do just that. 

I don’t know whether I will continue to go to a Unitarian Universalist church, but I’m glad that I spent my high school years here.  It provided me with what I needed at the time, which I can’t exactly verbalize.  It’s the feeling you get when you’re sitting in church during the Christmas Eve service, when the sanctuary is lit entirely by candles.  I think what I’m trying to describe might be love.  

swedish fish: kathryn::hubris: oedipus

I love Swedish Fish.  The candies, I mean, not actual fish from Sweden.  I actually can't stop eating them at the moment.  I mean, I could if I wanted to, but I don't want to.  Thinking about it has actually brought up some worries about next year for me.


I might have forgotten to say, but I'm going to Bennington College next fall [insert super-excited dance here].  I visited and loved it, and it may sound stupid, but lately I've been thinking about the whole freshman 15 thing.  And I know that we're supposed to love our bodies or whatever, but I'm pretty sure that a step towards loving my body includes not gaining fifteen pounds.  Which brings me back to the Swedish Fish.  What if I can't control myself, and end up with cavities, and...and...obesity? I would not know what to do.  Colleges usually have gyms (Bennington included), but I really hate exercising, for the most part.  I love to walk (which doesn't count as exercise, because it's easy) and ride my bike, but that's about it, I think.  In any case, I really hate running. So much.  I don't run unless I'm trying to catch a bus.


I've already spent so much time hating the way that I look, and I'm kind of sick of it.  I'm just not sick of it enough to run.  Running actually makes me miserable.  But someday, I want to look in the mirror and like what I see for a change.  Which means no more Swedish Fish next year.      

i'm in love with judas

Not Priest.  The Lady Gaga song.  Have I mentioned my love of Gaga?  Do I really need to?  If you're reading this, you probably already know about it.  This is a Lady Gaga post.  

I want to go dancing. In a dark club, I mean.  The kind where everyone loses their self-consciousness and just moves, without worrying about whether their dancing looks funny.  I want to dance in the dark.  I want to go to the Monster Ball again, and feel the way I did while I was there, to feel like I was someone, or something, to feel like I was beautiful and powerful, because when I was there, I SCREAMED and wanted to cry with pure joy, because for a couple of hours, I truly loved myself.  I loved myself because I was commanded to, because someone roared at a stadium of 18,000 people and said they would love themselves for who they were, because they were born that way. I don't really care if it was bullshit, I don't care if Lady Gaga didn't really mean it. I don't care how far away she was, or that she couldn't see my face.  I don't care that she does the same thing almost every night.  She was speaking to all of us. She cried, and snarled, and bore her teeth, and sang to us, for us, about us. And it worked.

When I grow up, I want to be like Lady Gaga.  I want to be able to say that I love myself, or at least put on a good enough show of loving myself that I can convince everyone else to love themselves too. 

I gave up.

On the whole poetry thing, at least.  Right now, I'm in a hotel room in Bennington, Vermont, and I think that it will be required that I have Ben and Jerry's ice cream at some point.  I'm also listening to "Don't cry for me Argentina" on youtube, on repeat. I am not going through some sort of breakup. That's just what I feel like doing.

It's so beautiful here. I wish I could write a poem about it. You can actually see stars.

poetry month, according to ana

A poem a day? I don't think I can do it. I'm not really a poem kind of person, but I'll try.




closed eyes stare into darkness
listen to breathing
count
second by second, an imagined ticking clock
a mind races but never wins the peace
that it haphazardly
doggedly
naively
pursues

distract me from myself

email, paper mail, homework. Check that feeling I get when I see the big envelope in the mailbox. Check myself.  It's just junk mail from Sears.  We don't shop there.  Check the small envelope.  Don't care, don't want to go there.  Check the box inside saying they don't have to consider my application. Someone else on the waitlist who is bummed should be able to go.  I'm bummed though. The only schools left are harder to get into than that one.  Check myself again.  Doesn't matter. Nothing matters.  I've gotten into really great schools.  I just want to know.  Check the chores on facebook.  Sent that message I was supposed to send.  Check the group for the play.  Did I do this, staple this, type this, write this on looseleaf and not in my notebook, edit this for a higher grade, find this?  Check dates, calendar, travel expenses, location, place, time.  Try to figure out what to do with my school, college, summer, brain, life. 

To be a girl
young woman
whatever
in a city isn't so hard
I mean,


She might look over her shoulder 
only to see her own shadow
She might expect 
someone to spring out of the bushes
on deserted streets


She might already know what to say if a
mugger
rapist
attacks in an alley
She has already imagined it 
Different streets
different scenarios
similar result


She isn't very concerned
It could be irrational
She could be paranoid
She wouldn't mind losing some cash

or a phone

She knows that statistically speaking,
she is more likely to be raped by someone she knows


When she walks in the winter it's darker
Shadows leap higher
wind moans louder
She wonders whether anyone could be out mugging
in this weather


When it's warm
she doesn't need to walk as much
She gets on her bike instead and flies
races cars
her shadow swims beside her 
to a place where she can't be touched

behavior of kathryn when she tries to do homework

Commentary on "Behavior of Fish in an Egyptian Tea Garden" by Keith Douglas


Sometimes, people write poems.  Sometimes, these poems are about fish. "Behavior of Fish in an Egyptian Tea Garden", written by Keith Douglas, is a portrait of an attractive young woman being watched by a variety of men, who are mostly ugly.  Douglas uses extended metaphor, visual imagery, and some other third thing to do something important, like telling us about life.


This poem has a lot of fish in it.  But guess what?  The fish in this poem aren't really fish!  Instead, they are men, but the poet uses an extended metaphor to say that the men are like fish.  The woman isn't a fish though--she is a white stone.  She is cold and unresponsive, much like a stone is when you try to talk to it.  She is also white.  All of the fish like the white stone, presumably because it is shiny.  The woman is shiny because she wears red lipstick and nail polish; she wants to be watched.  She is eating ice cream.  All of the men/fish, from all walks of life, watch her eat ice cream.  She does it kind of sexily too; she "slyly...slips in a morsel of ice cream".  Some of the men try to get with her, and they "nibble or tug".  But at the end of the day, she is all alone, because they only want her (most likely) hot bod.


The purpose of this poem is probably to show how this woman is objectified.  She will never be worth anything more than in some man's "collection"; will never be more than a trophy wife.  This is sad, but Douglas shows that she believes she has no other option, which is created by his use of the color red.  Red is a pretty sexy color.  She tries to be sexy with her lipstick and nail polish.  You know what I mean.


In conclusion, men are fish, that lady is a stone, and they want her, but she's waiting for a richer guy to come along.  The lady likes ice cream and money.  The men like her lady-ness.  I liked this poem.  The end.




I really can't do homework anymore! It's so hard! Right now, I'm supposed to be doing a lab for physics. It will get done eventually. Really.

just feel it

One of my favorite memories from being part of an international youth orchestra during the summer two years ago is not, incidentally, about music.  I learned how to dance, to music, with a boy from Mexico.  Well, not really a boy, a young man; he was twenty-something, I don't really remember.  Unfortunately, I don't remember the dances I learned either.  One of them started with an m though I think.  But anyway, it was one of the most fun nights I had, different from the rush of performing, but really really fun.  Because it was the summer, everyone was outside on a backyard terrace thing, and there was a boombox playing traditional Mexican music, and there was soda, and everybody danced.  Everybody knew how to dance too, it was so cool.  Apparently in Mexico, they have parties pretty often where people just get together and dance to music for hours.  New destination?  

"sometimes, it's nice to hold hands." -you

Everything is too confusing and I don't know how to talk about it.  Why is everything so difficult?  I tried writing a letter.  It didn't pan out, exactly.  It went a little something like this:


Dear You,


So.  Well.  Here it goes.  Sometimes, I have these super fun things called emotions (I know you hate them too, but they exist.  Like flies. Or mayonnaise.), but they're not always super fun.  convenient, per say.  Sometimes, I feel really terrible about myself uncomfortable and sort of sad when... 


 ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I hate the world


And so the "letter" ends.
Why did I ever think I knew how to speak English?  Ever?

ack

I have been convincing myself that I have "the consumption!", more commonly known today as tuberculosis.  I'm not sure why I have been so fascinated with it, because it's a very serious and deadly disease that I'm pretty sure most people don't really get nowadays in the United States.  I pretend to cough up blood, and then in a strangled, hoarse, and very dramatic voice, I lean on someone's shoulder and wheeze, "'Tis only the consumption, child! I shall be moving on soon, don't worry about me!" Then I clutch my chest and cough some more.  For some reason, nobody else thinks it's funny.  I need a job or something.

winter

In the winter you can see where all the dogs piss, you cry when the wind blows, because it snatches the tears out of your ducts without a please or thank you.  When you have to take the bus after your day, it gets dark, and you walk home in the cold, in the dark.  You lost your keys at your boyfriend's house in a moment of foolishness when you took them out of your pocket and threw them on the basement floor.  They were poking you.  Other things seemed more important at the time.  You tried looking for them, but they disappeared into the abyss of things that aren't where you were sure you left them.  Now you have to rely on someone to let you into the house, or you break in through that secret way in the back, and your bike lock is useless, because the key is gone.  Sometimes when you go through the back, you see a rabbit in the yard, or at least where the yard is supposed to be, under all of the snow.  You can see where the rabbits hop and poop and eat the rose hips from the rosebush in the front of your house too.  When you get inside it is warm and there is a dim lamp, and christmas tree lights on the wall.  The living room is filled with yellow light.    

if science were magic...

Have I ever talked about how much I want to travel?  I want to see the world, to smell new smells that my brain hasn't even conceived of.  Not necessarily bad smells. Good smells, like rain, or curry.  You know what I mean.

I think I've heard somewhere that smell is the closest link to memory.  What if you have a moment that you want to remember forever, but instead of a photo album, you had a...SCENT ALBUM! Wouldn't that be so cool?  You could take the smelly (not necessarily in a bad way, I must reiterate) things that are around you during, say, your wedding, or the birth of your child (on second thought, maybe not the child one,) and somehow store them, writing down the date of the occasion. Or maybe you record the smells on the day you meet the most important people in your life, but of course, you would have no idea if he or she was going to end up being important or not.  So what you could do is catalogue the smells surrounding your meetings with everyone you meet, and discard the ones that don't end up mattering in the long run! 

I have the strangest ideas.  I may need to be stopped. 

it's all good

Math homework, pandora, warm socks. Denied from a college, accepted to others. I can't remember how to factor a cubic polynomial, but I'm still fuzzy on why I have to in the first place? I'm supposedly finding the point where the tangent of a curve meets the curve again (because it's a cubic function, so it's like you flipped half of a parabola upside down). I understand the problem conceptually until the middle of it, when the example in the book factors the equation of the original function to somehow find the point...anyway. I don't want to go to school on Monday. Yuck.

Sorry kids, but I think I have stopped thinking. Which sort of affects writing.

Why has flamenco music come up on my pandora? Also, did you know that there is a genre called Gypsy Punk? For realsies. Then again, there is Wizard Rock, so why not?

superhero

I haven't written in a while.  I don't think I've had the time really.  I'm all done with applying to colleges though, so that should help a bit, right?  


For one of my college essays, I wrote about how I want to save the world.  I hope that they understand that I do not suffer from delusions of grandeur, but that I just have this feeling that if I could solve everybody's problems, everything would be better.  I've started to do this thing where I ask a person whether he/she has any problems that need solving, and if he/she needs any advice.  I say it like I'm joking, but I'm really not.  My hope is that if I present the question as a joke, somebody will answer with another joke, and that within their joke lies the truth; the problem that needs to be taken care of.  I hope that I have the answers.  Even if I don't, I can make it sound like I do.  Later I'll confess that I don't actually know how to fix what is wrong, that I can't save the world yet, that I need some more time.  I will be disappointed.  The save-ee will be disappointed too, but not as much as I will be, because he/she never really expected me to be able to save them in the first place.  I will move on to the next person.  They will tell me that they do not have any problems.  I will accept their lie without questioning it, understanding that maybe people don't want to talk about their problems to some weird, falsely-cheery, seventeen year old girl who acts like she cares.  (The truth is, she actually does care, but it often  seems like she's pretending.)