Thursday, July 15, 2004
yesterday was fun: woke up early, went to a theme park&rode lots of shaky rollercoastery rides, had good lunch and frozen yogurt, ate too much for dinner, did math stuff. and the math stuff was fun, so much so that my adrenaline levels were way high and i couldn't get to sleep until about two in the morning. as a result i woke up at eleven today all groggy and silly.danny&i talked about summer yesterday and how it's weird that everything is just suspended during those three months, and most people don't really have close friends or exciting things to do at home it seems. then there are those people who pretend they're busy, and those who, like us, admit that we spend our time taking naps or watching really old movies at home. i still have to watch la dolce vita and an american in paris before sunday.
missing people sucks, and the whole "yes i want to forget them and move on" mentality dueling it out with "no no no i don't want to forget"-ness in my head is causing my dreams quite a ruckus. what sucks more, though, is feeling lonely and not having anyone to miss. then the world is just lost. i've been getting little spurts of those lately, and then i assign people to those feelings which is silly and slightly unhealthy. i do genuinely miss cathy, though. but i don't really want to make that mixtape with hidden messages if i'm honest with myself, i mean i do want to make it but i don't know who i would make it for.
on the upside, math doesn't suck quite as much as i remember. camus is dead wrong on the true love thing, i hope. yesterday i also saw a documentary on the telly about this old old couple, and the wife had suffered a stroke and much brain damage which left her unable to wipe her own ass amongst other things. the husband is this old man who's like, 63, and he's there with her every minute of the day spoonfeeding her and giving her massages so her muscles don't atrophy, and saving money so she can maybe get stem cell surgery. and isn't it stupid, i was envious of her and her marriage for a moment before i remembered that i should really be grateful for my young healthy body.
also, this doesn't convey my life succinctly at all. so if my babbling streamofconsciousnessy blocks of text feels like me just taking a big shit on you all, then don't read it. the same goes for my emails, although if you don't reply to my emails i have a tendency to get miffed. i am really not so kind and generous as i would like to be. duke de h, will it ever end? i mean end before my lifetime ends, so i can have a couple of years of peace and perfect contentment before i call it quits? i've taken to combing my hair half an hour a day as to prevent hair loss as i age, and the only reason i lift weights is so i don't get osteoporosis in my old age. is it stupid to try and immunize myself to the ills of aging when i should be enjoying my youth? seizing the moment seems like it should be an extreme and i remember that i decided it was much more about balance and subtlety but i can't remember the reason. i've babbled enough for one day and thus will go read camus.
here is something else, from July 14, 2002, which is almost two years ago:
"Help! Help! I'm becoming cattish and mean!"
and from July 17, 2002:
"Every time I conclude that god doesn't exist, I look at holocaust victims who still believe in god and wonder if I'm wrong.
What do I believe in? I used to believe in love. I used to believe in happiness, and that everything was eventually going to work out. I am starting to have doubts. I am pestered by guilt whenever I refuse to go to one of the five different worship services that my mother attends. Surely this is not normal."
and this, this blows my mind, both from September 1, 2002:
"I'm so bored I want to rip out my teeth one by one. There's just this weird itch inside my gut that is beckoning me to reach down my throat and rip out all my intestines. Crack my skull open and drain the brain juice and knead the dough or something. Jesus. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Jess used to say things like "I'm going to reach down your throat grab your clitoris and pull out all your guts" or something like that and now I wish someone would because I'm just going insane wanting to crawl out of my skin. Isn't this what happens to ex-druggies? What the fuck. I don't even do that much drugs."
then, a few hours later, this:
"I just came back from the early morning prayer things and now I have officially stayed up all night as it is just about a quarter past six in the morning. I had forgotten how nice morning air is. I haven't felt it for a long time.
There was a slight fog that made the bridge disappear midway and the sun was all scattered about reflecting the little water droplets in the air. It's a perfect morning to take a stroll along the river with a warm cup of coffee in hand and a person who would make me want to sing "oh, it's a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you."
The morning prayer service was not voluntarily attended and it was my fourth church service in twenty-four hours (call my mother and tell her she's insane, please). But the brief walk back more than made up for the shitty service. I'll write with prettier words when I have the energy. Now the streets are crowded and the air is getting filled with car gas, so I am going to sleep.
And this morning I am not so wasted, although still young."
and this from 9/29/02 is odd because I've been reading his copy of the Fall lately:
"So the only thing that prevents me from being a materialist is the fact that I would like to be more than biochemical matter. I would like to think that if I collapsed from a heart attack on the road while I was jogging, people would remember me for a long time and I would live on, in spirit, like my English teacher."
and I'm not sure where this came from, because it reads March 2, 2004, and I don't know what the hell I was doing then but March was one of my least self-conscious months this year:
"Grab her by her frail fragile shoulders and shake the life out of her, slap her around the room and knock her head against the walls until she loses her firm grip on the key and you can almost steal it out of her bony pale hand, her skin so thin over the blue blood vessels that protrude so sharply like a web, like a net. But look at her. She is so thin, with her skin pulled tout over her bones. She is so beautiful, the way she flutters around in little girls' dresses designed for those ten years younger than her.
Beauty is the most compelling plea for life."
Did I write that? Did I read that somewhere and think it was great, and so scribbled it as possible future inspiration? (If I stole it from you please let me know) I want to say that was me because of the little girls' dress reference and I seem to remember writing it, and this makes me curious, for the following reason. My behavior as of late has been that of someone extremely uncomfortable with herself, especially in the physical aspect, uncomfortable yet narcissistic and vain. On March 2nd of this year I sure as fuck wasn't working out and I don't remember a nagging voice in my head, and I don't think I started working out again until after break which was April, and March 2nd was, as far as my behavior was concerned, the peak of my being comfortable in myself. I think. So if I wrote that, on that day, then where does that leave me? Now I just do it because I'm bored, or so I keep telling myself, maybe I've just become much more apt at deceiving myself? My behavior has nothing to do with my state of mind? I don't know. But looking through old journal entries is fun, and also kind of reassuring in that I had enough wits to keep a record of all my silliness which doesn't strike me as all that silly, and some of it actually quite eloquent, and we all go through this so I may as well have written it down, right? Some really good material there to be worked through, which makes me happy. Editing my writing nearly always makes me happier than actually writing, because it's so much more approachable, and I can do the nitpicking that is second to my nature all I want. What awful sentences, but I don't care right now. They're also reassuring because I remember feeling so empty when I wrote those words and I look back at them and it seems that I wasn't all that empty, I was quite full, so right now when I feel empty I am guessing that I'm really not. It's kind of cool to be able to go back and look at those old journal entries and see patterns and some strange logic in myself. It feels like math, but the good fun kind, which actually is all math, as long as I keep on top of things and don't end up with a crap teacher like I have for the past six months. And this is all rambling but every once in a while there's a line or two here that is worth salvaging and according to HVK and I believe him, if I can use 1 out of 40 pages I scribble that's a good success rate so. Write I shall. And try not to let myself get lost in self-introspection as there is still a world out there, which works in the same system as my small one, but on larger scales and small worlds have a tendency to get complicated. I cannot believe I once spent an entire term not talking to anyone. How the hell did I pull that off? I cannot believe I wrote "I should give up on the whole friends thing for a while." I cannot believe mails from Alistair were the only human connection I had for three months. (Not that Alistair is not one of the greatest human beings on earth.) I cannot believe how little I remember and that is why I should write everything down, including everything painful, because I will look back on them all and see how great those times were. Yeah, I'm gone.
posted by styrene at 11:57 PM-comment?
