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12:16 - April 04, 2003 It is rare, lately, that I feel like this. The more I notice them lamenting a wasted Saturday night if no-one has gone on a liquor run, the more I want to scream. I'm not knocking vices, or knocking alcohol in particular, even, and I must admit watching Aaron stagger around with his grin stretching over the edges of his cheeks and watching Andrew hug everyone and say they're all his best friends, along with other things, is entertaining, but the only time I start having a problem is when once the alcohol option is x'd out, everyone just sighs and grumbles and finds other places to go, like home, or plays videogames and watches comedy central all night. I can't stand that. In Evanston we never did that. We were bored because we were bored, sometimes, but not because we couldn't find any alcohol to make us forget that we were bored. Putting it that way to them would be easy enough, and they might even listen and agree, but in the next minute it would be, 'fuck it, we're getting beer.' However, at this point in time, as referenced before, I don't mind, and I'm not thinking about.
15:19 - April 02, 2003 Simply: I can't breathe and the room is spinning. You have nothing to do with this fading scene.
16:44 - April 01, 2003 It's not enough to just say this, but it's shorthand. I have no words in my head fit for the screen, or fit for speech, even. I have no words in my head, period. That isn't to say that I'm particularly depressed or sad or bored, as I'm not, really, if just because I've got insane amounts of homework (mostly music homework). I haven't really seen very many people yet, either. There's a lot to do but it's mostly responsible, adult-related things like cleaning and finding summer storage and calling for that summer job. I'm not in the mood. It's weird, in a group setting, in a group setting with a group I would never normally find myself in, talking in more intimate terms than I would with any of my friends here. It's practically forced, but it doesn't feel that way. Sometimes I have to go out into the hallway and breathe and breathe and breathe and repeat: my throat is not closing up on itself. Anything could happen and it would be worse than this. And it will be true.
09:36 - March 30, 2003 I liked the countryside but I didn't like London. In Wales it's almost worth it just to see the signs; in two languages, one language severely lacking in vowels and overflowing with consonants. (I took a picture of a word that stretched at least ten feet across an awning, in tiny type.) We drove straight into Cardiff on the main road and it looked exactly like America (as I said to my dad, struggling to drive on the left side of the road) except that that sign pointing to the superstore said 'Archfarchnad', (and the 'Services' sign was something like 'Gwasanaetheiu'). He nearly drove off the road in laughter. Something about that word hit him squarely between the eyes. Also in Wales, they have this sign, a yellow road sign, that's much like the 'school crossing' one here, except it depicts obviously old people, with bent backs and canes, crossing the street. Old people crossing. Wonderful. And the bus (called the 'Bws Caerdydd') has a neon sign on the back that reads, 'Please Let Us Out!' and a little smiley face. At times, mostly in Windsor, the extravagance sickened me. I was much better off looking at the (preferably untouched) ruins of old castles and abbeys in the smaller towns; Tintern and Llandaff, Wales; Old Sarum, the Cerne Abbey (which, as it turned out, was more than a few humps of grass). Even Stonehenge if you cut out the guard ropes. But Windsor Castle killed me. Every room, each bigger, in square feet, than my entire house, filled with valuable paintings, everything gilded in gold, the plush chairs, the four poster beds, the famous dollhouse, the turrets and the gardens.... well.. the Queen only lives there less than a quarter of the year, and the rest of the time it just sits there, impeccably cleaned every day, endless tourist groups sliding through it, oohing and aahing. The people without homes who could be living there. The money that is spent polishing the un-slept-in four poster beds and hiring guards, that money that could feed entire countries. We saw countless homeless in the Underground stations in London, more by far than even New York, and nobody there gives them anything. One woman with long dirty red hair was curled in a corner at the turn in the stairs down to the Piccadilly Line, in the theatre district. This stampede of people, all coming from Les Miserables, swept past her without a glance, and if they acknowledged her at all, it was with a shake of the head. When the last person went by, she started to cry, covering her face with a tissue. Her bucket had twopence in it, one coin. In a better world I would have stopped and given her a clean tissue and asked her what I could do to help her, something that would last, something that would matter. But I was running after my dad, who had the keys to the hotel and who has no patience for sympathy. We had been fighting, and he said nothing, just pulled me onto the train. As we walked up to our hotel a half an hour later, he said, suddenly, 'You can knock Communism all day long, but they feed their people and they medicate their people. In Beijing I saw no one begging, no one.' Walking through St. James park the geese were all gray and regal and the creekside cafe was filled with terrible hotdogs and disgusting things like kidney pies. To one side the creek was filled with birds (Diana's Memorial Walkway) and cherry trees, and to the other construction trucks roared.
21:20 - March 28, 2003 more later, of course.
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