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.