I am armed with the past and the will and a brick

I think 18 was the best year of my life so far. Full of everything new and success and triumph and only good things.

I'll be 20 soon, and as good as the last year was in a lot of respects, just... fuck, so many shitty things happened. I'm going to be pretty glad to say goodbye to 19. Most of them weren't even in my control. They just occurred; they forced themselves on me.

The feeling of being actually, truly sad seems so foreign, but it happens every so often lately. This summer and this year. It is such a piercing feeling. I feel like I have a strong and mostly immovable core, built up over the past five years of rapid changes and new situations and outer storms and conflagrations. That's comforting. And when some terrible arrow cuts through it all, I feel so awful I want to vomit. Each time it's a new kind of pain, foreign and surprising and mesmerizing.

I think I should stop expecting things and instead just let them happen. It always seems to work out in the end.

It's strange, the way certain songs will always be associated with certain periods of time in your mind. I've been listening to Frightened Rabbit again; the last time I did that was winter break. Hearing it again brings up so many different and conflicting emotions. I remember walking through the woods at home in the snow with my headphones in, feeling absolutely exalted and terrified and sad all at the same time. Heartbroken and euphoric, confused and enthralled. Snow always makes me feel better. It makes me want to set off into the unknown. I can remember the happiest moment of my life, one of absolute and pure euphoria and freedom. After thinking I was going to die for three months, after feeling absolutely crazy and insane and unspeakably awful, I walked home in the snow and it just broke like a fever. It fell away and I watched fat flakes falling from the gray sky; I could see them a hundred feet up hurtling toward the earth. I felt like I was dying, or melting, or falling apart into a million exalted pieces. Every so often I feel so happy that I don't think my skin can contain it.

But yeah, every time I listen to Frightened Rabbit now I'm back in the woods, feeling exalted and uneasy, happy but bitter and a little disillusioned. Tonight I just feel a little nostalgic. I want to go back to last year, before my family decided to finalize all of the fractures that had been there for so long, before the last traces of my childhood burst apart and disappeared into the ether. I always saw it coming, though, and I feel like I've been divorcing myself from home for the past four years, trying to make the final break less painful.

It's been a strange day.

Back... again...

The whole returning home thing is becoming a recurring theme this summer. It's a little strange. Pittsburgh was nice, though. Maybe I'll write more about it later.

OMG CUTE.

Reminds me of the dream I had the other night that was full of fluffy kittens, no joke.

Also reminds me of the baby squirrel we saw running around in that girl's hair at the Roxy.

End, again.

Leaving NYC tomorrow, unfortunately.

Waiting around with my sister while she cleans her apartment (I keep trying to help but it doesn't seem that there's much I can do) for the person who's coming over later to maybe live with her for the next year. We'll see.

I had a great time, but I'm feeling pretty melancholy today. Maybe it's PMS, more likely it's a combination of that and Father's Day really just dredging up a ton of horrible emotions. I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like I'm an open book about most things. I'm not really ashamed of anything, or prudish, or any of that. But when something actually hurts me or bothers me in a way that is more than superficial, I can't talk about it. It stays corked up on the inside and even if I desperately want to say something the words catch in my throat and die.

And so instead of doing something fun right now, I'm in my sister's apartment, alone, thinking about my newly broken family and trying to fight back tears. It isn't working. For some reason, having someone see me cry is absolutely mortifying.

No Cars Go

Literally.

Thirty miles to Philadelphia and the car starts making a weird rattling noise. Good things. We turn around; now it's 1:30 and I'm sitting in the living room, waiting.

I find that depriving myself of sleep to the point where I don't really care about anything works really well for situations like this that involve a lot of waiting. Time just floats by without you noticing.

Ostensibly I'll be in NYC tomorrow. Ostensibly.

Off Again

I'm going to NYC tomorrow, the long way. Driving to Philly first (or maybe Trenton? I'm not sure) and taking the train. So I guess I'll be there tomorrow night? Even I'm not sure.

It's hard to make plans when the time frame changes every day. Still need to buy a plane ticket back.

I'm excited, but a little nervous. I'll take my film camera again. Why not? Apparently my sister isn't talking to my dad. Shit. I hope this doesn't get awkward. Maybe she was just lying to make my mother feel better. Or being lazy.

I don't know. I can't be angry or distant, can't take sides, and I hope to god she doesn't want me to do any of those things. I resent her just a little for her distance.

But still, I'm really looking forward to spending time with her.

Dancing Days

Kenna told me to google the dream, so I did.

I don't have anything better to do right now, admittedly. I'm thinking of a photo for today and waiting to take a shower (I just went for an 18-mile bike ride... and it's hot out).

Anyway:

On birds:

To see deformed or odd birds in your dream, indicates that you have a unique outlook and perspective on romance and love. The dream may also represent a lack of understanding in affairs of the heart.

On Asia:

To dream that you are in Asia, suggests that you need to adjust to some situation. If you are traveling to Asia or thinking about visiting Asia, then your dream may indicate your anticipation of such a trip.

To see an Asian person in your dream, represents an aspect of your own self that is unknown to you. Additionally, to see an elderly Asian person, represents wisdom and knowledge.

On airplanes/airports:

To dream that you miss your connection flight, indicates that you are feeling helpless and trapped by some situation. You feel that you are being held back, either physically or mentally. Alternatively, the dream may also suggest that you are feeling disconnected in some aspect of your life - work, relationship or home life.

To see a busy airport in your dream, signifies the desire for freedom, high ideals, ambition, and hopes. It is an indication that you are approaching a new departure in your life. Some new idea is taking off or is ready to take off. You may be experiencing a new relationship, new career path or new adventure.

On being in a taxi or hailing one:

To dream that your are hailing a cab, suggests that you need to ask for help in order to be able to move forward in some waking situation.

To dream that you are in a cab, indicates that you are being taken for a ride. Someone is taking advantage of you.

So... I need to ask an elderly Asian person for help, and they will then take advantage of me?

I'm seriously chuckling at the thought of someone specifically being Asian having ANY kind of meaning. Aren't they just people? What if you're an Asian and there's an Asian person in your dream?! If you're Asian and YOU are in your OWN dream, does it mean that there is always an "aspect of you that is unknown to yourself"?

Also, the site told me what seeing my own grandparents meant, but wtf does it mean if you see someone ELSE'S grandparents?

God, what a total fail!

Strange

I had the strangest dream last night. No, really.

First, Polly and my Dad told me that I could go to the Philippines this summer if I wanted to. I said yes, of course, and we tried to plan it out. I got on the plane to go there and we stopped in Thailand first. We were at some strange kind of wild animal park, but it was part of the city, and I just wandered through alone. I started to feel a little nervous. I saw these strange birds on top of a few poles, and one flew down into my hands. It started to burrow, and created a little suction pocket so that it was actually stuck to my hands. They were like some strange combination of cat and bird. Other people noticed and did the same thing. I realized I didn't have my camera with me and started to freak out a little bit, and decided to go back to the hotel or whatever to make sure I'd left it there. I saw a few people I knew on the way out (I think that was part of a different dream, though).

Somehow, I ended up instead at the Manila airport (though in my dream it wasn't SUPER ghetto). I was going to catch my flight home. I went through security and everything and then I realized that I didn't have any of my luggage or my passport, and that I couldn't go home. I started freaking out a little. I took a shower in the airport bathroom (which had showers?) and walked around in a towel. I ran out of the airport dripping wet and wrapped in it, trying to find a taxi. I didn't have any luck on the top floor (where you catch the airport-endorsed ones), and instead people just gawped at barely-dressed me, so I went outside and ran down to the front of the building, which looked more like a courthouse or something from outside. All of these kids were in some weird kind of internal part of the first floor, having a party. I tried to talk to one of my friends and ask for help but she was on drugs. There was a creepy-ass basement thing with a strange elevator of sorts that was more like a small metal cage, but I quickly realized that was incorrect because you couldn't take your luggage up or down it.

I stood around on the street for awhile, trying to see a taxi to hail. Found one, waved my arms like a maniac, and he came over. He wouldn't take me back to my hotel unless he could see my passport. As I talked to him, a car full of Indians was making fun of my rapid arm movements and laughing disdainfully. I was crying and I didn't know what to do and I confronted them. They told me that my smooth-talking skills were lacking, and that I should've been able to get him to give me a ride. I asked where I could catch a taxi that wouldn't make me show a passport, and they said that the only other place was across the street. We all crossed the street (?) and I started to talk to them. I said I was nervous because I wasn't supposed to take taxis alone (totally true, who knows where they might take you?) but didn't have a choice, and that I only had a few hours or I would miss my flight and not be able to get home. They softened a little towards me and understood more. We talked for awhile, and they were still kind of mean, but not as mean. Then I looked at my phone and realized that the time it listed was 1 pm, and my flight was at 4, but my clock was actually off. Kevin told me the real time was 4 and I had to just scrap the whole "catching my flight" idea.

After awhile I realized that we were actually in the Indian grandfather's limo, heading who-knows-where. It was packed full of strange people. Kevin was there, somehow, and I asked him when HE planned on going home, since I was trying to leave as soon as possible. He didn't understand when I told him I was trying to rebook and I had to tell him like twenty times. We got back to my room (incidentally, it was the REAL room I stayed in in Manila last year) and I straightened it out.

I don't know how anything resolved, but when I got home I realized that my parents had been playing tons and tons of computer games in my absence, because there was a scoresheet tacked up on the fridge.

Shut it off!

I am really kind of scared about what the next three months are going to be.

I cannot, cannot, cannot be my mother's therapist. And yet I'm the only person around, and so it's falling on me.

I am completely and utterly the wrong person. I can cope with this objectively. I can't cope with it when you tell me every single detail of how fucking terrible you feel and how awful my father is UGH. I want to scream. I am SO incredibly fucking angry but there's nothing I can do about it. It's misplaced rage that can't be released, ever, because I can't hurt you anymore than you're already hurt.

This is so fucking unfair. I feel like everything in my life is conspiring to ruin my happiness. What the fuck?! Finally I'm intrinsically, actually happy, and finally I feel at peace, and that's when everyone else in my life decides to try to make me as fucking miserable as they possibly can.

I'm okay. Sigh.

A Mini-Project of Sorts

I started another 365-ish project, except it's just for the summer this time. I'm on day 20.



It's a relief to have a real camera now, instead of a point-and-shoot. The results are so much more satisfying.

Summer is usually a big long period of reflective thought, for me. A lull. What the hell am I going to do when I'm a part of the real world and get two weeks of vacation a year, tops? That'll be fun.

I've been thinking back to my past selves and musing upon how distanced I feel from them. I was never the kid who wore her search for self on her skin. I wore what felt right, nothing crazy. No statements, just a nice shell. I didn't go through those phases. I was never a punk, or a skater, or a goth, or even one of those middle school nerds (I was nerdy, but not in the same way). I did start listening to Sonic Youth and Elliott Smith in seventh grade, but that's something else entirely.

Instead of trying on different clothes, I tried different outlets of expression, different modes of being. Nothing ever seemed to stick. I read a book every day in elementary school, absorbed in fantasy worlds, devouring anything that fell into my lap. I miss that. I played sports - soccer and then basketball and then softball, for five or six years. It stopped being fun. I used to write poems everyday; I used to think in verses, stumbling upon couplets in the middle of the night. I wanted to be a writer, but my stories petered out and died in the middle, and the characters never had the ring of truth. I stuck with poetry longer, but I don't do that anymore. I remember when that was "my thing." My teachers would coo over them and praise me, have me read them aloud (while I died of embarrassment, seriously), submit them to contests. I was good. And then I just... stopped. I didn't know what to write about anymore. I was smart enough to know that my angst was dumb but too young to have anything substantial to write about.

Impasse.

I played piano and then violin for six years, but as with everything else, I just kind of hit a wall. I was good but nothing more than that, and I didn't enjoy it enough to be more than that. Our house is full of the flotsam from my attempts at self-actualization.

Eventually I found photography, and I think that's the one that's stuck. For eight years now, I think. I think it allows me to look for what my poetry was getting at all along - capturing a moment, evoking a visual, restructuring a sublime mental image. The paralysis I felt with everything else - the inability to fully express what I meant because of my own limitations or because of the medium's - is generally eliminated. Photos can be a halfway point between reality and theory, and I think the constraints inherent in the medium make it more challenging and fun.

I don't know, but I think I've found it. I can't think of a medium of expression that would better suit my personality, or something I would be happier doing for the rest of my life.

Unemployment Blues

Kevin and I saw a turtle yesterday when we went for a walk. He was cute, and couldn't run away. HA.

Anyway, the job hunt is going shitsauce. I kind of figured it would. I got offered interviews while I was still at school and then they'd hired everyone by the time I could come in person.

I don't really know what to do. I'm pretty sure trying brick-and-mortar stores is going to be a crapshoot. I've just kind of been browsing craigslist, which actually seems to be working better. We'll see, I guess.

I'm not sure how much I care whether or not I make money this summer, which might be problematic for my parents. I don't know what to tell them.

Money made so far this summer: $88 in photo royalties. Received one large photo of my face, a weird book, and a $40 computer manual as compensation. So far, my hobby has been paying off in the form of weird odds and ends and foreign magazines. I should have a shelf devoted to it. Maybe if I put some more stuff up for sale I can make at least a little more. Better than nothing.

I'm kind of feeling like this will be a summer of odd jobs. I don't know what else to do. I should just try phone sex, really. That shit pays a lot and the stories would be great.

In other, MUCH BETTER news:

1. My sister got a cat! His name is Laurence and I am SO jealous.

2. KENNA IS COMING IN A FEW DAYS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I AM SO HAPPY

:D

Back in the US

I don't know how to feel (not about being back from the UK, just about life in general).

It feels kind of like watching a bad movie that will just end, eventually. As though it's life projected onto an astral screen.

I feel intrinsically happy but also frustrated and helpless. I want out, a little. I want a year to pass.

What purpose in these deeds, oh fox confessor, please?

My parents are pretty much getting divorced.

If not officially, in every other sense of the word.

I've seen this coming since I was ten, but it I can't make it stop hurting. When I'm at school I can ignore it. When I come home, my mother is an emotional wreck and my father is just gone.

It's no one's fault.

Life is shitty sometimes.

I shouldn't be that upset, because I can't do anything about it and I'm getting older and soon I won't come home for extended periods of time and it won't matter if my parents live in the same house or are together. I shouldn't be upset because I had a great childhood and a fantastic relationship with both of them which is more than most people can hope for.

Part of me wants to break things and just sob and sob, but a larger part of me recognizes the futile nature of getting deeply upset over this. Life is not perfect; sometimes things that really suck just happen and you have to deal with them. There isn't really another option.

I kind of wish I didn't know that. I want to act out or be awful or just run away from it. I am jealous of my sister for being older and out of the house and more distant from it emotionally. I want it to be three years from now when things have worked out. I hate being confronted with the ugly reality of someone I love feeling totally shattered, left trying to pick up the pieces and start over at 55. I don't want to be the one comforting my mother; I don't want to feel like someone needs me. I don't want to know that she doesn't want me to feel this way but that there's no other way for me to feel. I don't want to see the faults in people I really, really love or see them wound one another or have either of them cast in an evil light.

I can't put my finger on what part is breaking my heart. My parents are human and there is no point in placing blame, and realistically things might not change that much. They'll probably be happier in the end.

I think it's just the feeling of "home" crumbling apart, the death of a concept and the realization that what I thought the future would be is not what will actually happen. It has to happen sometime.

I feel like I'm falling into ice water every time I think about it.

Hey, there's a letter for you

I feel cold, robotic, and hate-filled.

Angry for no reason.

I kind of need to get out of here. I have so much work to do and I have zero motivation. I just want to go home and curl up with a book in my own bed, or maybe stare at the ceiling for an hour. Anything not here.

Rains

It is thunderstorming for the first time this year and it almost feels like I'm home in my own bed.

It is raining so hard I can't see the sky.

Thank god.

Here is a list of ideas for the new Split-Cam I got, because I will forget, otherwise:

- double landscapes
- powerlines
- overlaid portraits (sky, artwork, trees, anything...)
- maps on faces
- twinning

Oh but I

Today was a little overwhelming. I think I spent at least ten hours trying to write a good three-page essay for US Foreign Policy, and I don't even know what "good" was supposed to be. Fingers crossed that whatever my hands managed to wring from my brain was at least C-material, because that thing was 30% of my final grade. I like that class because I feel like it's challenging, but I hate the fact that everyone is older and more knowledgeable, has had the professor before, and in general makes me feel like a total ignoramus.

I have a presentation on Wednesday and a 12-page essay due on Thursday that I haven't started yet. Deep breaths.

Tonight is a little break, though, I guess... at least a couple of hours worth, since I was either in the library or in class from 7 am this morning until 4:30 in the afternoon. I walked around in the rain, talked to Kevin back home and my mother, who is actually in California (same time zone for once) visiting her sister.

I've been listening to Gulag Orkestar all night, imagining bomb shelters and Eastern European summers and toy pianos abandoned on less-than-picturesque beaches with gulls in the skies above. I am ready for summer and slightly craving oppressive heat, the kind that makes it so that you no longer give a fuck what you're wearing and just want to be as close to naked as possible.

I need space to think. I can feel my brain trying to check out, and my fight-or-flight instinct inclining more towards flight, but I keep reminding myself it's a little too early.

I own every bell that tolls me

Strange dreams last night.

We were on a train hurtling through the countryside, and it looked like the countryside in the Philippines... rainforest-y and rice-paddied, alternatively. We were slaves and we were trying to escape, but some woman at the front was watching us. Finally we convinced everyone (I think there were four of us). We ran through the forest and over the hills and then the forest was Oregonian and we were hiding in a thicket surrounded by snow. One girl was left out and she came tunneling through the snow with a Bible in her hand because a verse told her where to dig through the snow, and we were all together.

Then it started over and we were back on the train like in the first part, but everything was different. One girl had to get up on the wall and be the clock, and I was annoyed that the motion of her hands as they counted the seconds conflicted with the other ticking clock. She couldn't see out the windows and we couldn't convince her to leave. No one wanted to, and somehow escape seemed impossible and everyone was watching us more closely. It was slipping away. Finally I ran away but no one came with me, and the forest changed again like before, but I was the one outside the snow, with Tala and a bunch of my friends inside. I was holding the verses and trying to follow the instructions to dig through, and I could hear the people inside, but I could never get it right, and so I just kept scooping the snow away with my hands. The wall never seemed to get smaller and I don't know if I ever got in.

In other news, we don't have a place to live for next year nailed down yet. Ha.. ha... ha.

Waitlisted... like a FOX!

I think I am going a little bit nuts from stress. Which is probably why Kenna and I have a random shit blog called Shrike People now. You should check it out.

I am waitlisted for two classes, which are almost the ONLY classes I can take to fulfill requirements. Jesus fucking christ. If I do not get in to at least one of them I will rip out something's heart. It could be an artichoke's, but we'll see.

Anyway, my horribly crippled schedule as it stands now:

MWF, 10:20-11:20 : Spanish Comp/Conv (301)
MW, 12-3 : Photo I
MW, 6-7: Self Defense for Women
TTh, 9:40-11:20: Colonial Latin American History (141)
Sunday, 7-8: Ghanaian Music and Dance

KILL ME. I just want to take fucking International Organizations or Econ 100, is that too fucking much to ask?

Mulled

I feel like I am slowly slipping and falling over and everything, everything is covered in a sheen of beauty.

It's all sideways.

Brevity lets you fill in the spaces between words with something better than what would have been there originally.

I had a great day, the kind you would read about in a book, full of twists and turns and with a very happy ending. I am curled up into a ball of safety and warmth and I am prepared to have the best sleep ever, then bust my ass tomorrow with a workout and homework. This has been great.

I think the world it will anoint me, if I show it how I hold it

Sometimes I think the line between romance and bastardized, crass reality is pretty blurry.

Like taking something you thought was beautiful three years ago out of the box and realizing that it just seems cheap, sentimental, simplistic, ugly; you thought it was transcendent but it's actually just pap. Things that used to cohere seem a little too disparate to share the same space comfortably. Why do things go from glorious to trashy to disgusting to glorious again and how can they drift around in the spaces between those words, never completely affixed? I think sometimes my problem is that I don't pin anything down. Everything is beautiful and then ugly again if you've stared at it long enough.

I am sleepy but all I can seem to do when I try to fall asleep is lie there for hours, thinking. I am confused, because there is no real reason for me to be an insomniac now. I'm not terribly stressed and I stopped drinking caffeine late in the day. Maybe I am keyed up and I just haven't realized it yet. April frightens me this year.

A year ago, exactly, I was on a plane back from the Philippines. A bookend. I feel like I divide my life into plane flights now, which isn't so bad, and which is also why I enjoy flying alone. It scares me to think of myself as a continuum, rather than a loose conglomeration of fragmented selves. I associate with past iterations of myself the way one looks at old photos in an album. When I came back last year it was severe culture shock, like some kind of benevolent post-traumatic stress disorder, complete with flashbacks. I tried so hard to acclimate myself to life somewhere else that when I came back it was difficult to adjust. Everything reminded me of the kids and the people I worked with, and whenever my brain was unoccupied memories came flooding back in to fill the space. My mind was always somewhere else, touching down in reality only occasionally, when necessary. I miss that. I learned so much while I was gone and I feel like I'm just losing it slowly, because so much of it was intangible and indescribable. I don't want it to fade into distant memory, to become something insignificant, but that's what it will be eventually.

The few times I was really upset in Manila (and there were a few... sometimes it was hard), I remember lying in bed, crying, drawing a mental line back home, crossing the ocean and the vast distance. I always got that strange feeling where you know that you're far away but you don't feel like you are; it seems like your surroundings might just be an extension of your hometown, altered slightly. It happened in Thailand, too. In both cases, I was literally halfway around the world. I miss the swelling feeling of empowerment and beautiful isolation that comes with the realization that you are very, very far away from home and totally on your own, which was one I got every so often at my barangay.

I've just been thinking about it a lot lately, as it dawns on me that I've been back for a full year. My life felt kind of... stagnant for such a long time. I was so sick of waiting. And then the past year and a half was nuts. Maybe too many new hats for such a short expanse of time.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

... I don't really want to go back to school.

My flight leaves at 6 am tomorrow. This means we have to leave for the airport at 4:30, which means I would have to get up at about 3:30, which would be 12:30, Oregon time, and which means that I'm not going to bed tonight, because there is actually no point.

I have so much homework to do and so much everything to do and I didn't do any of it and I BLAME KEVIN. All his fault. Boyfriends are (wonderful, but still) timesucks of the third degree. Last night we walked around my neighborhood for an hour at 3 am just talking.

I'm trying to get a job at one of the nicer ice cream places downtown. That sounds like the least ambitious thing ever, but fucking hell, that is ALL I want. I just want a job I don't hate. It doesn't have to pay a lot. I'm worried that they won't hire me because I won't be back in town until early May, but that's still a month before Ohio State students get out, so... I don't know. I'm hopeful. If my only option is what I did last year - being abused by management and the elderly for LESS THAN minimum wage, I'm just... not going to take it.

It's really lovely here. Most people envision the Midwest as full of cornfields, or simply disgusting. Today there is a breeze and it is spring; the flowers are coming out and it's 65 degrees. Why the hell would I ever want to go back to school, to finals and research papers and deadlines that keep getting closer and closer? Six more weeks...

Like Kenna said, I just want to bring my friends here. I miss spending time with my parents. I'm really looking forward to this summer; it looks like I'm going to DC with my dad for a few days, catching a train to Philly, seeing my relatives there, maybe seeing Anna and a few other people I know, then catching a train to NYC to maybe visit a few more friends and spend a week or two with my sister. This sounds like bliss, especially because she actually has air conditioning this year. Plus, it won't be expensive! I'll only have to pay for a one-way flight. Awesome.

You know, I think if I could choose any existing building to live in, I would live in the Smithsonian. That's where some of my fondest childhood memories were born. I was three when my parents took me there for the first time, and they lost me because I was so enthralled by the giant squid, all laid out in a glass case in formaldehyde, that I ran away and found my way back to it. They found me with my nose pressed up against the glass, hypnotized by the dead leviathan.

More please

I want to be home longer. It's impossible to have time for my family, Kevin, my friends, myself, and a jobhunt in just a week.

I left my camera at Kevin's apartment after a ridiculous night (the way you're probably interpreting that is, by the way, incorrect) and I feel like I lost an arm. That might also partially be because the right side of my body has yet to fully regain function.

I fell off my bike for the first time in about fifteen years. Seriously, the last time I must've been six. I realize that math is incorrect.

I'm not sure what happened, but I was going down a hill and then I felt something jerk and the bike flung itself to the side and something flung me to the other side and I remember thinking "oh shit, this is going to hurt and this really, really sucks" and the milliseconds ticking slowly and then I was on the ground. And a few seconds later it hurt. I got up and the old man behind me was asking me if I was alright, and I said yes, definitely, in a far-too-alert fashion, and he told me to look at my elbow, which was in tatters. I shrugged, grabbed my stuff off the pavement and ran away, because my flight instinct had kicked in fast and hard and all I wanted to do was run away and proverbially lick my wounds in the shadows. Upon further investigation I realized I was missing quite a lot more skin than I had initially thought. And my helmet was cracked, meaning I probably hit my head way harder than I actually realized. Great. It all kind of hurt and I was kind of shaken up, but I was four miles from home so I decided to just keep going... bleeding the whole way, because all of the bathrooms at the park were locked. It's great to bike around covered in blood.

Going home was great, because I got to pick the gravel out of my skin and because the shock had worn off and everything was starting to really hurt. It still hurts. I couldn't pick anything up with my right hand for two days, and for some reason it hurts to flex the muscles. My ribs are bruised and my shoulder is fucked. I do have a really great bruise on my right side that's a nice shade of purple and continuing to grow, however, so I have that to look forward to.

It's been a few days and I think things are fine... no permanent damage, hopefully. I'm mostly weirded out by the fact that I didn't react very strongly when it happened. I did a LOT of damage to my skin and muscles, but I felt fine for a strange amount of time and later I could barely move without involuntarily yelping in pain. Weird. I'm not too broken up about this, though I guess it seems like I might be judging by how much I wrote - I just want to document it because I can't even remember the last time I hurt myself this badly (which isn't that badly... it's not like I went to the ER).

It appears spring break is half over, and this is unfortunate.

Click Click

Home again, which is nice. Connections through Midway are much better than connections through Houston, because it takes like... two or three hours less time. I think I like going to school far away because it seems a little badass and because I'm different than the 90% of the student body that's from the Bay Area and getting to explore a new area, but fucking hell I wish I lived closer when it's time to finally take the flight home.

On landing, the woman next to me grabbed my arm and the girl next to her freaked out. People are wimps about turbulence. It's Chicago... of course it's windy.

Between Chicago and Columbus I ended up sitting next to the mother of a girl I went to middle school with (and kind of high school... that's complicated though). She gave me updates on all of her daughter's friends and all of the "people in my graduating class," which was awkward, because the people she told me about were pretty much just rich, white, annoying people who I was never friends with and never liked. Still interesting, I guess, but I kind of had to feign surprise and sympathy and excitement for people I didn't care about to keep things from getting awkward. Short flight, luckily.

I'm not sure how, but I stayed up until 3 AM (EST). That's about 40 hours. I read Kevin my paper and found some pretty bad errors... hope that doesn't hurt my grade.

I crawled into bed and slept until two in the afternoon. It was blackout sleep. Like, one second I was awake and it was night, and the next second it was afternoon already. So strange. I wanted to go for a bike ride or something today, and it's beautiful, but my body seems more inclined to just want to lie around and do nothing, which I guess is okay for a day.

I want to

I would like to be as badass as my parents were in college, which I will designate as "fairly badass," based upon the negatives from 1974 I've been scanning.

I just want to go home. Not because it's home. I just want to get away for awhile. I was looking at the dark circles under my eyes this morning and realizing that they were pretty horrendous, even though I feel like I've been getting enough sleep. My self-esteem is absolute shit and I think I'm actually going nuts. Getting away for a week will be good, I hope.

I have a paper due Friday that I will probably finish at about 5 am that morning after not sleeping at all and staying up all night packing and oh my god I am totally beat and I don't want to do this at all.

Kenna and I went for a hike down to the river today and it was sublime. I want open spaces and water and anything uncultivated.

Also, things I think are bad ideas:

- ironic tattoos

Navel Gazing

Beauty and self-love are such strange concepts. I will shamefully admit that I think about both a great deal. I shouldn't, but that's another issue.

I had pretty terrible self-esteem growing up. I always knew I was smarter, but it's not like that matters when you're seven, and more than anything, it makes you a social outcast. I was a pretty adorable preschooler but I had a bowl cut, was boyish, precocious, and probably annoying as hell. When we would role-play power rangers, I had to be the yellow one (second tier, for a girl) or, worse, the monster. The girl who got to be pink had french braids and hair ribbons, neither of which my blonde bob was conducive to, and neither of which my mother could handle. Meanwhile, the older kids in the neighborhood (2-3 years ahead, and there were four or five of them) would make fun of me, harass me, hide my shoes on top of the playground equipment where I couldn't get at them, and all sorts of other things.

Once, when I was about five, we were playing on my neighbor's swingset, and the worst one, an older boy who was sitting in a tree, threw the wooden handle of an ax at my head as I swung back and forth. My father saw him from our kitchen window. He sprinted over, grabbed the boy out of the tree, and shook him violently, yelling.

That kid is the only person I really hold any kind of grudge against. He has a rat face now, so I guess karma got him in the end.

Parts of elementary school were just as bad. I was still somewhat socially awkward (I feel horrible saying it was because I was smarter than the other kids, but really, that did make it harder to relate), and worse yet, physically awkward before everyone else was. I was 5'4" by the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, and going through all of those beautiful bodily changes that everyone else had yet to experience. I was the odd one out, always.

I guess things were better in high school, aside from a really terrible bout of manic depression (everyone goes through rough spots in adolescence, but I had paranoid delusions, lost ten pounds in two months, slept about two hours a night, and actually thought I was going to die), but I guess what this all is supposed to explain is my terrible self-esteem. I grew up thinking I was absolutely hideous. My first assumption was that people probably didn't like me. I assumed they wouldn't even remember who I was. When I was eleven I practically tweezed my eyebrows off because I hated them and hated my face and wanted so badly to conform to the standard of beauty that I saw reflected everywhere, because I wanted to be a pretty girl. The end result was way worse. Sophomore year, someone told me that they thought they were in love with me and thought I was beautiful, and my honest response was: "is this a joke?" I didn't think he could entertain thoughts like that and actually be sane.

That insecurity never seems to go away, no matter how hard I try. I still feel like a fat and awkward eleven-year-old on the inside. I don't want to feel that way; it goes against everything I believe in, and yet I can't shake it. Some days are better than others. I am confident as long as I don't think too hard about it.

The funny thing that I have realized over time is that it truly does not matter what other people tell you. When you have low self-esteem you crave the affirmation of others; you want people to tell you that you are wonderful and pretty and everything else, even though you feel guilty about wanting it. Then, when someone does tell you any of those, it's hollow. Yet you still crave it. I have a boyfriend who tells me I'm beautiful all of the time, and I know he's not lying to me, but I'll never fully believe him or internalize it, no matter how much I want to, at least not any time soon.

Why is it so goddamn hard to be comfortable with yourself? I am on an intrinsic level; I just don't like the superficial part. I hate that. I think the worst aspect is that I know I shouldn't care, but I do. The contradiction makes me feel worse than poor body image ever could.

Hum

Today I feel like I need to get out of here. I spent an hour yesterday looking at airfares and planning trips that will never happen. Where did the perpetual stir-craziness come from? I wasn't always like this. Sixteen was a really bad year for me and I think something inside of me just snapped a little, even though I'm happier than ever now. My tolerance for stress is lower. My flight instinct is stronger. I seem to have a need for perpetual motion. Where'd that come from? I was the calm child, the one who could sit still, the one who could read books for hours without budging. Now I have problems sitting through a movie.

I don't understand the agitation or the constant need to move or flee or run away. I don't have anything to run away from.

I remember talking to my sister about it. "Do you feel like you get tired of places quickly? Like they go stale faster for you? Do you feel like you have moved on before everyone else has?"

"Are you always just passing through?"

I feel that way. Passing through, touching, never staying, never sticking.

Second semester of senior year, when all of my graduating class fanned out across the country/other countries, I went the farthest. I went almost exactly halfway around the world. Twelve-hour jet lag. It felt good to leave. I had been waiting for it for years; waiting to LIVE instead of just waiting and waiting to finally be loose.

I'm going to school on the other side of the country. My mother said, half-jokingly, "people are going to think you don't like us."

I didn't know what to say to that. I love my family, actually. I miss them, kind of. I am bad at missing people. Including people I love. This makes me feel broken. I thought a lot about divorcing myself from home. Going away as an end, not a stage. I miss the place and the visual associations and the memories attached to them. Familiar things that I thought were beautiful, over time. I am confused by my ability to completely romanticize everything and to simultaneously be unromantic. How does that work, exactly?

My mother took it as an insult, though I know she wouldn't have told me that. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It just felt necessary, and distance is just ever-increasing and meaningless numbers outside of a certain radius. But I don't know why it felt necessary. Am I just running away from someone who I used to be?

Whatever it is, I want to flee to everywhere.

I've been following a moonshadow...

It's been awhile. I'm pretty terrible at this all, so far. Life has conspired against me recently and made me horrifically busy (well, not horrifically - it's been nice).

The past two days were strange, almost magical. Sleet and hail and then sun and then more hail and sun, and then the water droplets on the tree branches glittered like thousands of chandeliers. I don't know what it is, but as soon as I see that kind of afternoon light, I'm pulled towards it, outside and down the road.

Today the sun disappeared by the time I'd gotten my camera, but it was still lovely, and I went to the cemetery (I've been spending a great deal of time there... hmm). I decided to take off my shoes. Remember how I said it hailed? There was still ice on the ground. Ice and cold, cold mud. Brilliance. I'm not sure why I felt the need to, but it seemed right for what I wanted to achieve. When I take photos I feel like my body just kind of disappears and becomes a tool. I always seem to end up haphazardly clothed or in awkward positions, whether I'm the subject or the one behind the camera or both. My mother is worried that I'll be one of those tourists who takes one step too far over the edge in pursuit of a vista. Luckily, landscapes aren't my favorites.

When I came back to my room, the floor was covered in cardboard and my roommate was constructing a giant (3.5', maybe?) tape dispenser. This made me very happy.

Kenna wrote about missing Texas, and I kind of miss home, too. I don't really know what it is. It's not even the people who live there; rather it seems more like a sense of place. I miss open spaces and cornfields and summer, even. Golden days. A more disorganized setting. Things are more ordered here than they are anywhere east of the Mississippi. I miss slightly older surroundings. There is something romantic about flatlands and cornfields when you haven't seen them in months. I know they exist here, but at this point in time they might as well not, since I have no way to get there.

I miss the wooden surfaces and light at home. I am never drawn to people or specifics of place; I don't miss a specific café or my mother all that much. I miss thunderstorms and golden light and lying on a hardwood floor looking at the sky through a lattice and feeling warm and close to the earth.

Odd thoughts

Yesterday was beautiful. Today was... just odd. I dunno.

I had a beautiful thought, though, while going for a walk in the night.

If the recession just gets worse and everyone's out of job, will there be more street musicians? Because even if they can't get any money, they won't have jobs, and if you don't have a job and don't have any hope of getting one, why not just create art all day? If you can still eat, that is, I guess. However unrealistic, it is kind of divine to imagine a world where people just play music and paint and everything else because the gears of the universe seem to have ceased turning.

Those are my parents. In like... 1975, I would guess.

I'm in love with our old family albums. With everyone's old family albums. It's strange... I don't really have much nostalgia for my own childhood, since it kind of sucked (just... socially and emotionally difficult; my parents were great), but I have a sense of nostalgia for everyone else's past. I love old photos so much. I'm trying to take more portraits now, partially because they're interesting and I avoided it for so long because I'm sort of shy, and partially because I know that those are what will be important in thirty years.

I Drowned A Little

But only a little.

The weather was pretty magical, really. Enormous gobs of sleet falling from the sky and splatting everywhere, melting on contact. Phenomena that exist only in the air, suspended, for a second, are strange. Frozen mayfly missiles!

The sleet broke up everyone's routine. People scurried, hunched over, and I just let it fall on me because, really, I didn't have anywhere particular to go and I was wet already.

I feel like the city I grew up in was much more black and white than Portland. Residential, commercial, and industrial were all very separate. You had to drive to go into downtown, and so there was a divide. We had stinking hot summers and (occasionally, like this year), very, very cold winters. 100+ degree swings. Clear demarcation between the seasons. This feels like some strange kind of suspended existence, unaffected by time.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day. I got some new coffee for myself and another bag to send to my sister, and the scent is wafting up from the bag on the other side of the room. Delicious. If I didn't feel totally wretched and if I wasn't in desperate need of a good night's sleep, I'd make a cup.

Good Weekend

Hello, blogspot. You've tempted me for so long, and now the time has arrived to finally use you. I give in.

It was a good weekend, mostly. I kind of forget Friday night. Saturday, though, was wonderful! Kenna and Anna and I took the bus downtown and went to Hawthorne. Chatted up the owner of Smut and found out how it all started, and then he kind of slyly gave us a few things for free. It pays to be friendly. I feel like I'm getting better at talking to strangers. Instead of just being, you know, petrified and probably off-putting and pretending to be suddenly busy whenever I might have to talk to someone I half-know.

I need to buy more dried cranberries.

I went for a walk over to the cemetery today. It's so... enormous and beautiful. I like to just walk around and read the headstones. I guess that's a little morbid, but they're fascinating. I guess I'm a little morbid - that's probably a better explanation. When I was nine or ten and we still got Columbus's craapy Dispatch, I read the obituaries every day. I can't help it. Death is fascinating and familiarizing it keeps it from being frightening. It was strange; I saw a woman running around with her two dogs, and eventually they settled down by one grave. The dogs sat there and she lit a candle, and they were all still for ten or twenty minutes, like she was performing some kind of ritual. She probably was. I felt like a voyeur, perched several yards above on a hill, on one of those gravestones that doubles as a bench, observing her.

Anyway, photos from this weekend:









It's like I'm in a sepia-toned funk. No good.



More later, maybe.