00:02 - June 11, 2003 rather be this
At every house along Orrington we stopped and pointed and flew into another era in our heads. What we never realized is how many houses with tower rooms there are along this street, maybe because she claims never to have BEEN down this street, but I can't claim the same ignorance because I learned to drive pacing this pavement, Ingleside to Emerson and back and back and back. I have a purple red fiery leaf in my pants pocket that I plucked off a smokebush with my teeth. It jumped out at me. Everything else was green. Forever when I turn the corner from my street onto Orrington I'm going to remember the path that has no end and my brain will warp into south or west, tilting and dizzy, unsure. If we had been walking toward the lake it would have taken a damn long time. As it was, it took a long time anyway, but it only ever irks me in a really detached way, like I can't really be bothered to take precious brainpower to worry about something as mundane as time or how tired my feet are. I keep remembering how dismissive I sound, and how I think that every single time, and how I'm really more interested than usual, and just can't process everything all at once. I've decided that I like that. I'd rather be overwhelmed and awed, but confused, than be understimulated and bored, but in control.
00:30 - June 09, 2003 this jumps
Strange how ideally you can say 'I don't care what someone's beliefs are as long as we get along' offhandedly and even believe it, but how then these differences come up and hit you in the face and suddenly are impossible to deal with. It might be a matter of just being closeminded and unable to try to accept other viewpoints, but then it might not, it might be just that you can't get along because you're really not speaking the same language, you don't see the same things in enough of the same way to get anything across. I have a friend who likes to drink and skateboard, and I don't try to lecture him on grammar or on music theory, for christ's sake, I just drag him across the floor on his skateboard and laugh when he crashes into the counter. There's enough common ground in laughter and in the shared delight of a good skateboard crash that can easily transcend everything, let me tell you. But lately I'm not that into talking. I feel suddenly the weight of everything I've ever said right on my shoulders and it feels like I've spent my whole life talking, which I have, which we all have. What I don't feel on my shoulders is where it's gotten me. I'm sure it's gotten me somewhere, as everywhere is somewhere, and anyone you ask says I change drastically every year (and who knows, maybe that's just me being manic rather than any real journey) but I can't wrap my mind around where it's gotten me right now, only that I can barely open my mouth now without it seeming redundant.
I'm really frightened that the reason I'll never find a soulmate (pardon the phrase) is because I can't imagine being happy spending my days in and out with one person and not getting that grungy headed feeling of just wanting to be alone so I can be quiet and think. I am not a good conversationalist. I spout offhand remarks intermittently, but someone has to be talking to me for me to do that. I just don't see myself, even with a friend, able to put up this people front for very long. I don't know. There's enough for me to think about but never enough for me to say.
See, I really miss people, and when I think about missing them I think about it in fragments; it's easier. I think about my head against the pillows in the fort listening to Andrew and Chell and Aaron talking about making Andrew's skull into a bong, and Aaron trying to explain communism to me while drinking a 40 oz and still staying perfectly clear, and me moving the ladders in Borders and listening to Lara reading Beckett out loud, and Nick and I perched on top of a red cliff on a rock that was shaped like a lounge chair, talking about flying off the edge while Camille slept in a crevice protected from the wind a few feet below. Smaller fragments, 'has to go through its logical process, we can't just fall into anarchy, Communism is the logical next step, but it has to be absolute....'/'I'd be confined to my floaty chair and be an angry old man, smoking pot all the time and yelling about the past...'/'would you push me if I stood? would you laugh if you saw me falling like it was a cartoon?'/'on Guam our currency is big stone wheels.' Even smaller. The rough orange couch and the beer spill under my left foot, my hair straight up in the air seen from the rearview mirror and the wind, my bare feet curled around the rock, whose sweater I'm touching in this immense group hug, whose camera flash is that, whose smile.
12:49 - June 08, 2003 confetti
It was strange last night, the hour drive home even with no traffic; everywhere except the expressway, where I was going too fast to see it, on every other road, Touhy, Ridge, Oakton, Central, there was gray confetti blowing around on the road like a ripped up paper bag or like the world was coming apart at the seams. Off over by the edges where no one was, but still blowing into the road. I thought 'sulfur' and I thought 'warscape' but I didn't think 'colourless party'.
