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11:54 - March 15, 2003 We went to a party Thursday night (terrible idea for me and my 8:00 class) and ended up talking to a girl who told us that our creative writing teacher, at the last grad student reading, had gotten semi-trashed before his turn (not on the free beer available to everyone, but on a bottle of wine in a paper bag) and then proceeded to stand at the lectern, starting to read things and then stopping, saying they weren't good, crumpling them up, and tossing them over his shoulder. Then he would start another and this whole process would repeat. Finally he just said he was done and sat down and continued drinking..... poor Louie. It's so accurate though. Sounds exactly like him. I must get into the music school soon or else I'll be in college for six years.
20:00 - March 13, 2003
Also, in Geography:
11:14 - March 13, 2003 It is very light upon very dark and my mouth is completely dry. The aftertaste of peach lemonade sits on my tongue for hours, and saliva wells up in my throat intermittently but never makes it past the back of the tongue. I have not had a real panic attack in over a year but I�ve had two this week. In voice, unable to breathe suddenly. And today�s, stretched out over hours and hours of shakiness. It starts in the cafeteria, eating catfish and cucumbers and pasta; something above my left eyebrow pops and readjusts, and suddenly the whole room is completely out of whack; tilted; spinning. My stomach makes its first protest quietly, amid the silence in my head. March 12. It is starting again, goddamnit. again. I escape home and try and try and try to write music, black notes on white page, only octaves emerge, octave after octave after octave of G major, A minor, G major. I have to do this for school, I have to do this so I get in next semester, I have to do this because if I cannot concentrate on something wonderful right now I�ll break into a million pieces. I can�t write anything. My head expands, my stomach contracts. I should stay home and read, except staying home and doing anything is beyond my will; I go to Andrew�s and I put my things down and find a corner chair and blankly watch what they�re watching; a documentary on pyramids. And then we smoke a joint and go see a film on crop circles in Europe. I�m writing this for my own records. Fear my melodrama. Fear it! But it�s all true. Stepping down to the bus stop time moves too fast for my head to grasp it. My throat shakes. I want more than anything to grab Andrew�s coat and stop his stumbling toward the bus and tell him I have to go back to my room and most of all have him understand me. The brown back seats of the bus rise in my view. He doesn�t stop, because I say nothing at all. I slide into a seat next to him. I tell him I�m freaking out, and I say it (why?) jokingly. Andrew can see past jokingly, he knows I�m serious about it, but he doesn�t know how far past it I am. These streetlights across my face and the closed windows and the tiny tiny tiny amount of leg room, the anticipation of the tiny theater and the rows of seats with people on each side, the darkness, the heat, the flickering exit lamps, never enough to see by. It has gotten to the point where anxiety is its own entity. Anxiety about being anxious about being anxious about.... I never can remember feeling sicker than at whatever present moment I�m in. It�s like the memory closes in and all you can think of is right now, my throat, my stomach, my hands, my coat, my face. My fucking fucked up head. Andrew is asleep, Jeremy is laughing. I get swept up in it, these crop circles, the geometry of it all, the perfection. I don�t think about aliens, but I think a lot about it not mattering how it happened, if we just appreciated what appears and try to make our own appearances once and again. I keep getting swirled up in it myself and marvelling at things I can never remember three seconds later in order to keep marvelling, and then snapping abruptly out of it and seeing Andrew contort and twist painfully in his sleep. I always get tears in my eyes whenever I see him sleep. He writhes like he�s being torn apart. I can�t watch it. I know he�s fine. But I forget things in the moment, like how many contradictions exist for each other contradiction; and my mindset is very much a present one, so at this moment everything is how it is; the shadows of the unknown cast their down on fields and leave these perfect patterns; my throat is hot and closing quickly, my hands twitch, he shifts and struggles in his sleep, my head pounds, and I forget to breathe. It�s all that moment, it�s all I know. On the bus home I begin to think about it being worth it. Worth it, I mean, for the moments after, when it all snaps back to clarity and there�s a bigger sense of relief, and I guess, safety, than anything else you can imagine. I am on this bus going home to my warm bed and my chocolate cherry ice cream and it is a beautiful cold clear night and I have survived this; I am fine. That thought is everything. Everything. I didn�t leave the theatre or sit crying in the hall, I didn�t miss anything, I didn�t whine to Andrew or Jeremy; I just closed my eyes and kept sitting there, kept forcing stillness, forcing myself to wait. I wait for hours. And the hold finally breaks.
I could not go back to a flatline after this, never. As soon as I got home, about an hour ago now, I took the emergency Paxil I had hidden and threw it in the dumpster, right into the center of a bag of coffee grounds. And then I went to the Haven, giddy. �Do you have any rice and bean burritos?� I asked. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine because it all balances out in the end. For everything I suffer I will feel that much more amazing afterwards.
00:20 - March 11, 2003 this piano sits and collects dust, the music on the stand curled up at the edges into little whorls, fingerprint whorls like my pinky. creativity has taken flight, mad flight, frantic flight, away from this godforsaken place where there is sunlight and there is warmth and instead of sitting and skating across the ivories (tickling them, one might say) i go outside and hike, hike for the purpose of not thinking. this is not good for creative output, music or otherwise, writing included (sorry excuse for why this journal has been shit for the last few.. few somethings..) lately i have been thinking too much; therefore i try not to. it's warm, and it's sunny, and i have midterms, but so what? hiking is way way more important. besides, it doesn't work. (trying to be not thinking.) even over at andrew's in my customary haze, i want to throw myself into someone's arms or at least curl up into a corner on that cigarette-gutted couch and wail about my 'headspace' (new word); 'i'm just not in a good headspace right now.' i think that was a taylor phrase, as is customary of beautifully incoherent yet perfect phrases that pop up unbidden into my head now and again. but.. headspace. it's right. the space in my head does not feel good. it feels sick, and acidic, and muddled. [flashback: 'I want to know why I'm so terrified of throwing up. I want to know why, when I'm feeling sick, thinking about sex makes it worse but thinking about food doesn't. I want to know why everything in the entire world has the capacity to make me feel nauseous... movie theaters, tv screens, computer screens, the i-max theater, heights, small spaces, large spaces, cramped spaces, quiet spaces, boats, trains, certain boys, certain smells. etc.etc.etc whine whine complain complain....'} datewise, this is perfect: march 11, 2002. one year ago today. look at my archives; i shit you not. i didn't even mean to do that, but it's a perfect portrayal of this time of year. different location, different life. same problems. this gets me thinking about patterns, and the swing of things, and eventually i can't think anymore.
i thought the most wonderful thing ever was andrew and chris jumping on the abandoned bus in the lot and then deciding they wanted to live in a bus and then making plans to buy a bus and live in it, completely serious and completely stoked, until reality set in. but before reality set in....
15:34 - March 10, 2003
16:29 - March 09, 2003 In other news, two weeks from now I'll be speeding away from London Heathrow Airport, out into the southern English countryside, no plans, no destination, no anything.
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