17:17 - May 30, 2003 belief systems
Believing in God isn't so strange, I suppose, in that that belief isn't any stranger than the belief in brushing your teeth. One gives you a reason to live a good life and the other gives you fresh breath. Every time I see a cross around somebody's neck I get trains of thought like this.
21:56 - May 28, 2003 spitting in the face of justice
It is blatant spitting in the face of justice that my dad is chased around by attractive women all the time and has found a wonderful, genuinely nice person that actually puts up with his shit, and that I have been completely alone for two and a half years. I can't attribute it to selectiveness either; though I have turned a few people down during that time(3 or so, I think, and every boyfriend I've had I've been the one who ends it), my dad turned down about 8 women in 2 MONTHS. And my dad, though strangely attractive for some reason to most women, in an excessively Abraham Lincoln-ish way, is not a nice person. Generous, yes. He has a penchant for fancy wine and good food, and has no problem throwing his money around to demonstrate. Funny, yes. His insanity never goes unnoticed (he wore a tutu in last year's comedy production). But not nice. And even after they see that side of him, the side that obsessively calls companies because he has this delusion that they're after him, twenty times a day, and says nothing, just grins insanely and mutters 'assholes', the side that silently stomps upstairs and yanks the plug of my keyboard out of the wall instead of asking nicely if I could play softer, not caring if I haven't saved the music I've been working so hard on to file or not, the side that won't let anyone else drive if he's in the car, who, once he decides who he cares about most in a group, will be sugar-sweet perfect to that person and a raging asshole to everyone else. He's only nice when he's in the mood or if it benefits him somehow in the long run. He's very smart, but so, so supercilious, and although we don't clash often, when we do I have never been as angry at another human being as I am at him. He is the only person in the world who has ever made me so angry I punched through the glass in a garage door. In these moments, I know there is no way he will ever lose.
I wonder sometimes if anyone ever feels that rage towards me, that, if they could, they would tear my smug little heart from my chest and rip it to bits. If anyone ever does I wish they would say so so I could do something about it. Because sometimes when I see my dad in me I wonder how much is there that I don't know about, and if I'm making other humans feel like shit, and if I am, I would want to know. But I guess I'm not because if I were maybe I'd be getting chased around by attractive men. ggrrrrrr.
22:18 - May 26, 2003 prime
I spent most of today and yesterday watching people my parents' age get tipsy and talk about the interior decor of their houses. There were a couple of points at which I would have liked to scream 'WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS?' but then again, if it truly makes them happy to care so much about the rusted antique flowerpot in the shape of a tricycle on the new (just sanded) wooden deck, then more power to them. It's just that I don't think it does. As much as I wish it were that easy to make someone happy... having a nice living room and a beautiful deck and a landscaper just gone in the garden and thick cookbooks under the big entertainment center... I can't see it being enough. Maybe I'm just jealous because I can't be assuaged with things like that. I don't know.
I guess it's somewhat the same as being able to talk about sex all through sophomore year and never getting sick of the topic. It wasn't like sex itself made us happy (none of us had had it) but we were perfectly content to analyze it for hours on end in the music library during lunch for the entire year anyway.
I feel like a middle aged woman because I'm constantly catching myself worrying about being 'past my prime'. I'm 19 years old, goddamnit. If I have a prime it sure as hell wasn't in high school.
00:05 - May 25, 2003 think/understand
ow, my mind hurts.... never try to think about the extent and limitations of communication at midnight after you just spent a day writing a piano/flute piece and eating barbecued chicken and a caramel sundae with your dad and his new girlfriend, who is suddenly just HERE and everywhere and eating dinner with you every night and gardening in your garden. but really. i remember the point at which my brain would whir to a stop and i would be like, 'ok! pretentious overload!' and i would just opt out of any discussion following... this point came many times when we would get to defining 'define'. once he asked me to define 'define' after a long discussion about i don't remember what and it was midnight and i said, 'ok. goodnight, nick. i am at the end of my nick threshold now.' and he laughed, and said, 'define 'nick threshold.''
anyway, even if we knew every language in the world and every way of communicating ideas that has ever been used, anywhere, ever, there would still be no way we would be tranferring a crystal clear picture of what's inside our brains to another human, ever. i am fairly, surprisingly ok with this, usually. we seem to do shockingly well with what we've got, what with all these soulmates running rampant and the like. i don't know whether i would want to see everything clearly through another person's eyes just because that person spoke the right combination of words into my ear. it would be a transformation, not just an understanding, and definitely too jolting for everyday conversation. so it's ok.
but i remember a day when i was sitting in the fort with andrew and chell and... i think aaron and greg. andrew and chell and greg were on mushrooms. i was not on mushrooms, but i felt like i was on mushrooms when i was listening to them. people were talking over each other and through each other and nobody noticed or cared or even thought about interruption as being a barrier to speech, but then everyone stopped at once and sat for awhile, and then andrew said something about how we all understood each other perfectly when no one said anything. and we all kept being silent and probably sat there in the fort for more than a half hour, silent, listening to and understanding what everyone else was thinking.
