23:17 - Sunday, Feb. 08, 2004
disjointed, trust me
I get the impression that life is swimming before my eyes, like it�s watery, like it�s indistinct, blurry. It�s because I haven�t had time to sit down, think, and wonder for weeks and weeks now. Things happen and more things happen and they�re happy and exhilarating and depressing and confusing and busy busy busy busybusybusy. I didn�t even know or mind that I was stressed out, really cooped up hidden stressed out, until yesterday, when I was standing out on Sunnyside Lane with Nick trying to convince him to stay over Friday night, and realizing as I tried to convince him that it actually mattered, that I was invested in it, that what I needed more than anything was a night curled around him, laying awake, thinking, marveling. (I had the thought last week while we were half-asleep leg over leg arms entwined that if the world exploded right then, it would all be okay. I thought it was just me being caught up in the moment, but then I realized that the reason was that if the world exploded, Nick would find a way to look at it optimistically and then our point of view would warp, shift, and be sunny, and life would continue as usual... the world in pieces all around us.)

When he left yesterday, I put my head down on my closed computer, hands over my eyes, trying not to cry and succeeding, mostly... I was so busy I didn�t even have time to cry. I had to shower and get ice cream and run to volunteering, which I was already late for because I couldn�t get up off the couch. None of this is particularly depressing, but I could have easily sunk into my bed with the blinds drawn and stared at the ceiling for hours and hours just for the lack of any motivation to change things.

Every time I get like this I have to shift to absurdism. Even existentialist absurdism, that old second grade trick... stare out the window at the elm trees and wonder how we came to be wondering. To be succinct about it and all.

Andrew told me tonight that Chell wrote him an email before he left for Boulder: �Today I took my gun and I shot a duck and I put its head on my head.�
Andrew wrote back, �I�m leaving tomorrow, and I�m riding a duck back. I�ll see you in two weeks, because ducks are slow.�
On the way, he wrecked, and thought, that would have been the last thing he ever said to Chell: I�ll see you in two weeks, because ducks are slow.

Things like that make me happy to be alive and where I am.

Things like that and Alex�s obsession with meeting an albino before she dies, and the colour pink.

Pajama day at our last Thursday night together, everyone coming in and dropping their pants to reveal plaid pajama bottoms. The pile of pants in the corner that would have been the first thing people would have seen had they walked in.

The singing vowel �e� and the crack in the voice coming down, like a hint of falling into a reclining chair.

I miss being at Andrew�s and watching people. Everyone there is loud and obnoxious and none of them make any sense because they�re always blazed. And they want people to look at them, and it�s hilarious in the loud way, but then there�s Brendan, who is perfect for the atmosphere; he whispers, always, so no one will look at him or hear him. To Chris: �I think we should join a frat.�
Chris: �What?�
Brendan: �We should join a frat and then steal all their shit and put it in our house.�
Chris: (laughing) �Yeah. Yeah, we should.�

And the way the veins in the back of my right hand slide across the tendons, and the clock that gets stuck at 12:08 because I haven�t peeled off the display tag.

Sometimes I�m in my room improvising on the piano, and I hit a chord and suddenly I think that the guy in the room next to mine could be sitting on his side of the wall, a gun cocked, finger on the trigger lined up with my heart on the other side of the wall. It could be true so easily, and just because of a chord...

It all feels like a dream. My stomach hardly protests anymore.

I almost don�t want to be human sometimes because it implies a place of slavery to something, whether it be money or status or power or even another human. I don�t want to ever accept that, though I realize in the back of my head that I will, I�m going to finish college and get a job and have to pay mortgage on a house and budget my money on a sheet of paper and worry about the economy.

I can see it almost like it�s happening right now, and it is.

Somewhere Nick is going to be living in a utopian paradise, wandering the fields and building fires, and I�m going to know that in the back of my thirty-year-old head, having convinced myself that he really is illogical and turned my back. I will believe this entirely, that I wouldn�t want to be there, that it�s all just adolescent deviance and that I�ve grown beyond it. And I�ll see banana trees in my dreams and they will be haunting nightmares because of the paths I have and haven�t chosen.

�E-flat means nothing,� she proclaimed. �I am going to bring you out of your shell.�
no, you won�t. no one will.
The only reason I ever write in lowercase is to pretend I�m flatlined. I�m sick of being flatlined. I think of a heart monitor when I say that. composed, completely unlike a piece of music. composed...

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