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20:06 - March 08, 2003 Dilemma, 11:00 AM: I am woken up by Justin Timberlake crooning (too nice of a word for what he was doing) 'Cry Me A River' from my suitemates' room, loud enough that had I put it on MY stereo and cranked the volume up to about 15, it would have been about the same decibel level, measured from my ears. Anyway, it was about 70 and sunny outside, and midterms start Monday. What to do?? What to do?? Solution: bring my books up the mountain with me and study on the edge of the first Flatiron. I left at about 1:30 and dragged my books up there, studied music theory in Chatauqua Park at the base of the mountain from about a half hour, then started up. As it turned out, though the sun was scorching, the snow on the mountains was, largely, still all there, and what wasn't there was running in a solid brown mud-river down the path. In shorts and sandals, I couldn't navigate up much more than a half mile without being up to my ankles in snow (very strange, I tell you, in 70 degree weather. your feet WANT to be cold, being submerged in snow and all, but they kind of feel they don't have the right to.). Eventually I stopped trying and just set up camp under a tree facing east, out over campus, and studied the rest of my theory and some economics (doooomm!) and ate Girl Scout cookies and almonds. I didn't, however, take into account that much of your balance is sacrificed when you come down as opposed to go up. I was slipping and sliding all over the place and had spattered mud all over my legs, and had gained quite an audience (smug Boulderites and their dogs and 300 dollar hiking boots) until finally I got far enough down that it wasn't quite as much of a mudslide. A woman who had been walking slowly next to me and I walked the rest of the way down together, having a conversation about how all subjects in school are the same, and it doesn't matter what your degree is because it won't matter a whit for your job in the long run, as long as you have a degree in SOMETHING. (Sometimes I'm shocked that more cynical people than me exist.) She had her degree in engineering, but she never said what her job was. I caught the Hop for two blocks to the Buff Bus stop because my legs were starting to complain, and the Buff Bus pulled onto Euclid a second before the Hop. I groaned audibly, and the Hop driver said, 'Oh, don't worry, honey, we'll catch up to the Buff for you,' and then she screeched off in mad pursuit, much to the dismay of all the other passengers. It was a failed endeavor, though, as the Buff Bus driver was the AngryBusDriver and is ALWAYS squealing in mad pursuit of, I don't know, something. I'm tired in a way that I haven't been in awhile.
19:41 - March 07, 2003 I don't know about theories anymore, because I think I've lost my faith in them. That one night when I felt perfect and free because I thought I'd found something important out from my childhood that would change me permanently and drastically (without even any effort on my part, of course). That freedom lasted six hours. Six hours, and then I woke up in the morning gasping for breath, as usual, knowing I'd been forgetting to breathe in my sleep again. I keep thinking it has to do with what we know, but I don't know how to un-know what I'm finished with, purge it completely clean. If I had been born a thousand or even a hundred years earlier, I wouldn't be able to wax poetic about anxiety and depression and whatnot because it didn't exist yet, or didn't have a name, at least. I don't know if something can exist like that if we don't have the tools to comprehend it. None of this matters though unless I figure out how to fix it. (Everything would be better if I moved to Australia/if I got rid of all material possessions/if I found love/if I found the boy I lost/if I was teaching music/if I was writing good music/if I had a car/if I were famous/if I were rich/if I were so poor I had nothing to lose/if I were a nomad/if I could climb mountains....) ...I would. (ha.) The only thing that keeps me alive sometimes is knowing I will look back on this and snort derisively. Snorting derisively is a sign of somehow being above what you're snorting at, and whatever plateau I have to climb to to be above this, please, lead the way.
01:49 - March 07, 2003 since lately i've felt anxiety up behind me like a storm cloud at my back, i savor these moments when i can (see last year, about same time [this particularly]; it's the same, seasonal, cycle... the need for something to help you live, to help you stop thinking these crazy thoughts about dying and not breathing, something to keep you from minding that you've done nothing all your life and will continue to do nothing, and your politics and your psychology don't matter because they'll just end up changing. most of all it's the nameless panic, the panic that grips without explaining its motives.) but right now there are still those moments when i can still forget. i want to be able to call them back quickly, and from not so long ago of a time, so that they seem more real after they're gone.
00:26 - March 06, 2003 I had the choice of going to listen to someone lecture on alternatives to war, which I'm really interested to hear about, or staying at home playing stupid computer games, which my body itself was leaning towards. Instead, I went to a concert and listened to mostly atonal modern music composed and performed by grad students in a tiny auditorium and then ate chocolate cake and drank Perrier at the reception.
17:50 - March 05, 2003 Whenever I sleep in the middle of the day I have dreams like that; either terribly disturbing or insanely wonderful. I can still see his face, green and claiming to be red, and that mixing perfectly, in front of my face as I type this. With each flash of it I get more and more exhausted.
00:13 - March 04, 2003 I get to sleep until 11 tomorrow, it being Tuesday and all, because I'm a college student and can schedule my own classes (to a certain extent, when that certain extent involves dropping classes at 9:30 that are inconvenient to my sleeping schedule)... hah. linguistics. I hate psychics... wait, a stipulation: I hate ACCURATE psychics. This one knew me head to toe as soon as I stepped though the door. The party had hired one, so I went, free of charge, and she knew I was there simply because it hadn't cost me anything, and lay down the tarot cards with an authority I'd love to be able to imitate in any situation, let alone in one concerning a profession hardly anyone has any respect for. Apparently, Colorado is not my place. I need to be near water. You want the good news? I'm at a crossroads and it will be difficult to pick the wrong path. Bad news? I'm going headfirst back into depression, I'm an incurable cynic, and she sees no romance whatsoever in my cards. (Tell me something I DON'T know.) It's lonely in there. Let people in. You're dark, you're dry, you've got the kind of wit people get on their deathbeds. She's staring at me like I'm the devil incarnate, but with pink flowers in its hair. Until this point I'm a little transfixed, but when I start talking she tells me everything I say is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And so I gather my (dark, dry, buahahaha) cynicism and go, 'look, i have my whole life up in my head here and you have a deck of cards. so who's wrong?' She slaps the timer. She glares. I leave. Hee hee, I'm tipsy so it isn't my fault, which is what I tell everyone when I get downstairs. I'm laughing out of a different side of my mouth though when someone tells me the same psychic told her her boyfriend's birthday is the anniversary of her father's death, and she was right. So maybe I am a cynic who's destined to die alone (but near water!). oh well.
11:08 - March 02, 2003 The thing is, I don't know if it's even possible for me to drink enough to lose my inhibitions. Even spinning the idea of dancing in the basement with everyone wasn't appealing. Or it was appealing, but not enough that I could bring myself to do it. I don't dance. I have never danced. Sitting on the couch with someone later, before he was too drunk to talk about it, I asked him this. 'Do you think it's possible for me to get so drunk that I would dance?' He laughed. Said he didn't know, but we could test it out. I didn't want to, though. I was already feeling sick stirring in my stomach, fucking alcohol. He tried, he danced like an idiot, saying 'look, look, I look like an idiot, you should come look like an idiot with me.' He was nice about it. I wanted to. I think I would like dancing if I could forget about image. I can't even imagine forgetting, though. I can't imagine looking, and especially feeling, so carefree as everyone else, and I couldn't imagine it later when it became shirtless down there and everyone started hooking up, or a few people at least, and by that time I was long escaped to the couch, in a ball, stoned by then as well, thinking about everything, trying to push out the regret. Regret is such a vague and general concept to me by now that I often don't know what it pertains to when I feel it. I don't think I regret not stripping and hooking up with someone random; definitely not. But I regret that I wasn't born the kind of person who could do all of that and not even think twice about it, not have any qualms about running up and down the stairs in a bra, not having any problems dancing in a packed room with a bunch of people you'll have to see every week for the rest of the semester. I won't drink because I'm afraid of puking, I won't do any hallucinogens because I'm afraid of bad trips, I won't dance because I'm afraid of ridicule, I won't speak in public for the most part because I'm afraid I'll start stuttering again like I did when I was little. Everything is fear. Fear, fear, fear. I'm so tired of it. I put my feet out and I kicked at him when he tried to take my hand and get me to the dance floor because I don't know what I would have done if I had had to look him in the eyes for more than five seconds, or if I had seen anything there that knew, was condescending, and that laughed. I kept telling myself again and again who he was, that he was the kindest boy I'd met in awhile, and there would be nothing in his eyes that would read like that, no matter what. But I kicked at him anyway, and then I ran back upstairs and sat on the couch listening to everybody puking around me, music and soundtrack to this fucking party. At 2:30 a.m., in the living room, the bass from the basement dance was coming up through the floor, and everyone was in couples around me, wound in sleeping bags, tangled in blankets. I could hear their gasps and their sighs. This is what shapes people. I'm never at these parties, not hardly ever anyway, but this is what shapes most people. I don't know how it feels and I don't know how it would feel in the morning. Everyone seemed okay, though. Exchanging phone numbers, comparing hangovers. I can't tell if they remember, and if they remember, why they aren't hiding. I can't imagine that either. I'm not sure what's off here, whether it's them, or me, or neither, but something is.
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