21:12 - April 17, 2003 followup
an appropriate follow up to the brief (one sentence) rant on poetry: a poem.
you'd think they were happy or something. the way the dance in their
flowing colourful clothes, and their beaded necklaces, and their
knit hats, in a perfect circle, to ceaseless unbroken
djembe beats.
one would not suspect that they mean to project this dance. that they mean to send vibrations over thousands of miles of ocean, sealed ears, locked
minds, with history, without textbooks, with numbers, without credibility.
with a dance.
hope comes up like violets when you see these faces. their framework, their
back muscles from pounding on these drums, and the blue cloudless
sky and the mountains. you cannot picture any of these people holding assault rifles or collapsing in a pool of blood on a sandy desert stretch.
hope comes up like violets on a sunny downtown street
as far from death as my head from the clouds
19:11 - April 17, 2003 circling like mad
It's so strange, I have these phases. Like on Tuesday I went to the rec center for no discernable reason and worked out for an hour. When I got back, I felt amazing, despite every muscle in my body hurting, and so the next day I went again, and today I went again, and I still feel amazing.... I will continue to go until I don't feel amazing anymore and then, probably, I'll stop.. even though that will be the worst time for me to stop because it won't have done me any good in the long run. I have issues when I look around the center though and I see ninety girls in a row on the treadmills running and running and not getting anywhere. It strikes too close a chord to my life.
Although actually that's not true at all, never mind.
I won't ever be a poet. My language is good, but my setups are terrible. I never claimed to be, but despite this, I still get A's in poetry... it's odd how bad an Intro to Creative Writing class can be at, um.. writing.
11:56 - April 16, 2003 u.k. pictures
as promised, i have pictures from my u.k. trip.
23:24 - April 15, 2003 silence
Nobody owes me anything... I owe no one anything. I have to keep remembering that, repeating that, re-believing it.
I can put my hand flat on the blue rug or flat on a boy's chest and it won't make a whit of difference. There's a spot on peoples' necks where you can squeeze lightly and they will suffer irreparable damage and die.... it could happen to me or anyone else at any time. As if there wasn't enough to lie awake in bed thinking about: the silver barrel through the window, the unlocked front door, broken elevator cables, tilted floors (if I think hard about it right now the laptop will slide imperceptibly towards me on the tabletop, backwards). If these aren't real fears, as they aren't, they really aren't, (I mean.. logically... I'm not stupid, I know this), then what ARE real fears? Not breathing, singing for my nine-person voice class, worrying about closed vowels in the midrange, covering my ears when the Scattergories timer goes off, not breathing, the pervasive banana smell in here, not breathing, the rockslides, being alone forever, ending up as a business major, not breathing....
These are not real fears.
These used to dictate my life.
I like to think they don't anymore.
I like to think.
Sometimes nowadays I forget how much I used to like to think, would look forward to it, look forward to getting in bed and pondering everything that had happened or could ever happen or couldn't happen but was still fun to think about. This is the kind of neurotic behaviour that has gotten me into trouble my whole life. If I hadn't thought about the fire alarm and its impact on my ears for a full day and a half and faked stomach flu to miss fire drills, I wouldn't have had to sit in fifth grade with earmuffs on, tears streaming down my face and surrounded by concerned, confused ten year olds, or run out of the IMAX theatre if I hadn't thought too hard about my rolling stomach.
I was staring hard at Nick the other night, his darting coffee eyes.... the only person I know who seems to think as erratically (even aloud) as I do. Oddly enough, both of our pogo-ing brains, together, breed talks of hippie communes on the coast and living off the land. and silence. These two music nuts, waxing poetic about silence.
My mind will never embrace silence the way it was wired to do. These two unnattainable goals, braided together.. mutually exclusive, probably, but hopefully not: silence. and ideas.
00:01 - April 15, 2003 nothing is changing
When I see someone pretend to not meet my eyes and press the elevator 'close' button repeatedly and avoid looking up as I frantically try to put my key in the door and get in and catch the elevator before it closes because the other one is invariably broken, I like to think they're in a hurry because they're really tired or sick and in a bad mood and just want to get to their rooms. Unfortunately, I know this is never ever the case.
y'know, it's perfect outside; it's spring, everything and everyone is growing and changing, blah blah blah.... but nothing is changing for me.
