I'm Late. Again.

It's been a while since I wrote about something mundane and random, and I'm in the mood today. I don't have much time because relatives are coming and I'm usually that person who's never ready when everyone arrives. Today it might be Teagan, though - OK no it'll probably still be me, since I'm writing this instead of changing out of my sweats into real clothes.

Anyway, mundane and random: makeup. I think guys don't really understand what the big deal of it is - sure it usually makes girls look prettier (emphasis on usually), but why does it take so long? I like to take my time on it, and even though I spend about 5 minutes every day on it, I think I was pushing a half hour today. It's an amazing time to think - you have to focus on getting the right shade, layers and lines without overdoing it. It's systematic, though, and the results are pretty satisfying. The reason I took so long today was because I got infatuated with neuroscience again and have been thinking about it for the past two hours. I have all these ideas running through my head about treating paralysis by artificial nerve stimulation - it must be possible to use electricity and smart technology to regain the function of limbs. How would I do it? What would I need to know to do it? Who's already doing it and what will I have to work with after I answer those first two questions? It's stuff like this that gets me kind of obsessed. - it's the stuff my dad does, which probably isn't so coincidental. Oh God, I'm late already, the first relatives have arrived. Anyway, I was fantasizing about nerves while applying eyeshadow, which I thought was kind of funny. Maybe it's just me who has this whole meditation period in the bathroom with eyeliner and mascara, but I don't think so.

Now I'm starving, but the makeup is looking pretty good. Well, it'd better, since it took forever. But I'm still thinking... maybe I'll take it all off and put it all on again... haha just kidding, my mom would kill me...

Ramble

Sometimes I surprise myself with the stuff I come up with. I just went back and read through some of the thinking I did last year - papers which I made a point of transferring to my new computer so that I'd always have them a few clicks away. Anyway, it's all pretty fascinating. It took a lot to shape the final products of these papers, these records of my learning process. I wrote a page about what I think love is, and even though it might sound egotistical for me to say, I'm actually kind of amazed at what I wrote. One day I'll probably look at all of these things and see my 17 year old juvenile self, years and years behind in knowledge, but maybe I was actually pretty dead-on in expressing myself last year...

Anyway, that's a side note, I guess. What I've been thinking about is the future - well, when am I not thinking about the future. I spent the last 24 hours with my siblings, traveling to Pennsylvania to visit our grandmother and bring her back to our house for "Lasagna Sunday" - Christmas #2 with my mom's side of the family. We made a pit stop at my aunt's on the way back (my mom's sister). For most of the trip I was wondering what it would be like to live like this, out in the suburbs where a Friday night is spent in a shopping center because it's the most exciting thing for miles around. I think about what I want in this instant of my life - overwhelming exposure to the world beyond my front door - and get dumbstruck to think that this is the country I live in. There's nothing wrong with a suburban life, that's not what I'm saying, but am I going to be doing that one day? Will that be what I want in twenty years? I spend time either overcome by how much I have left to learn about life or afraid that one day I'll lose the desire to learn all of it. Weren't our parents the way we were at some point, unwilling to settle for a home life and prepared to see the world?

I know that everyone has to make choices about what they want. I guess here's where it ties together - last year I wrote about how love is about learning that other people need you more than your own hopes and dreams ever will. How does this compare to the fact that I've always been taught to go for what I want and let nothing stop me? Already I'm thinking about it in my head... if I want to be a surgeon, that's a lot of time lost for exploring the world... then again, I can't learn everything there is to know... if I was a doctor overseas, I would have to leave my family and would probably have little option to start my own... but then would I have a family at all if I was working as much as I would need to?

It's all far too much worrying for me to be doing at this point, because I'm sure what will be will find its way. But that also scares me - how much control to I have over it? Am I stupid to think I can accomplish everything?

I'm so tired of worrying about all of this. I'm doing it again - focusing more on the future than on the present tense. That drives me nuts. I then miss what's happening right in front of my face. And all this worrying makes me feel like I'm selfish for being so concerned about myself. I guess I have to learn that too, but I think learning selflessness is a right of passage for aging. You have to make those selfish mistakes the first time to learn not to do it again, to see what you miss out on when you're only focused on yourself. I think that's how our parents became who they are - they saw that their future lies in the hands of their children, not their own. It's just such a mess of being aware and unaware, of learning and succeeding and failing... It's ridiculous to try to pin a definition on life, since the topic itself is more daunting than anything imaginable. It's just a thousand things at once - it's happy, sad, love, hate, anger, passivity, satisfaction, frustration... everything. I just don't like when it's all those things at once - that's what really gets me at times. I can take it all in small doses, but maybe growing older is being able to live with it all at once, which is something we have no choice but to learn...

Back To Refusal

So I just deleted the post I had for today, since I have so much more to write about now. I posted the lyrics to Shawn Mullins' song Lullaby around 11 this morning, but I should have known better than to think that would suffice for this day. And not that much has happened anyway, except that I just saw that movie PS I Love You and I haven't cried that much in so long.

It's just that I don't really cry at movies, and I thought that this one was just going to be another cute movie since it was described as the "perfect date movie" in the paper. Well, I don't know what date that writer is going on, but that movie would be hell for any girl who's just trying to look pretty. It was about a woman who has to learn to live again after her husband dies, and learns it by following the letters her husband left for her after his death. It was realistic, which is why I could cry so much - they didn't try to make it seem like all she needed was his memory to survive. She needed more, which was what she needed to learn.

OK well it does sound very cheesy, but see it yourself and you'll know what I mean. I just don't know how my brother made it through the whole thing without shedding a tear, while I had them running down my face after the first 20 minutes. My sister was the same way, which makes sense. I think I just needed to cry, since I haven't in such a long time. Even my mom said that - "You haven't cried that way in a long time," and while my first thought was, "How do you know that?" it was true. The last time I cried that much was when she told me she had cancer. That was over a year ago.

And now I'm back to normal - I'm already forgetting what it was about the movie that had my heart tied in knots. Once again I'm back to believing that life can be what I want it to be, instead of what it really is. It was just such an honest portrayal that I needed to see, and the honesty was refreshing. I think maybe I felt better crying about someone else's life instead of my own, since that's what I've been refusing to do. I still refuse to, but at least I had a two hour break from this constant refusal...

How Not To Get Lost

I went driving this afternoon with the intention of doing errands, only to realize that I didn't actually have any errands to do. Errands are just an excuse to go driving for me, anyway, so I decided to go without an excuse this time. Although technically I was "at the bank" if you ask my mom.

I decided after a few minutes that I was driving to clear my head and get out of the house after being inside so much in the past few days. That was part of it, but as I kept driving, I realized I was challenging myself to get lost. I went across town to the part I don't drive every day, but was dissapointed in that I kept finding myself in familiar places. I think the longest I lasted was about 2 minutes in an unfamiliar neighborhood before I was back on a main road. I didn't realize how interconnected everything here is, and that after living here for 18 years, I do actually know a lot of it. I was surprised that I couldn't physically get lost here, because I've always thought that there were parts of town I didn't know at all. Well, I was wrong then and all I really discovered was that this town isn't all that big.

I then realized that I knew this all along, and if I really wanted to get lost all I had to do was cross the border into another town. But of course I didn't want to do that. Why was I driving, then, if I only wanted to get lost in familiar places? Maybe I was looking for something new and unfamiliar in a place I know so well. The fun was gone when I did actually cross the border and now had serious potential of getting lost. It was a strange drive, overall, because I didn't even have good music anyway. I went through an old CD from the summer very quickly, one I had made at a very different time, and found that none of the songs were really that good for thinking.

Then I thought maybe I'm driving to be an anonymous part of other people lives, but that's not so easy to do when you're driving a bright orange car. It just doesn't happen - it's like every time I take that car out, someone recognizes it. I had to go back to my first reason - maybe I'm just driving to clear my head. Yet I've spent too much time clearing it out lately, so maybe I was looking for something to distract me from all that frantic mind-cleaning. I don't know what I expected to find - it was just neighborhood after neighborhood, stoplight after stoplight, left after right after left.

But whatever I was doing, it worked - I wound up walking out of Starbucks with my favorite drink in hand to hear a little voice in my head saying, "Time to go home." I came home and now I feel better than I did, even though I'm not sure what I felt before my dissapointing adventure into the vast jungle of my hometown. But I was happy to come up the driveway and see that my mom, brother and sister had gotten home from shopping, so that the house wasn't so quiet anymore. Maybe I'm not that tired of my family - maybe just tired of being in the quiet?

Time To Get Up

OK well family time was good while it lasted, now I'm all family'd out and ready to move on to the next thing. That sounds awful, I know, but everyone gets what I mean. At some point, when we we halfway through Ridicuously Large Dinner #2 (#1 was Christmas Eve), we all kind of got tired of it. Well, the kids did, at least. I mean so many good things happened today - we all recieved great gifts, we enjoyed staying in pajamas till mid-afternoon (which would never happen otherwise in this house) and we even enjoyed watching the dog run around with jingle bells on his neck, astounding us with the delight he took in being so noisy. It was a good holiday, and yet I was aware that these holidays will also change. I think we're all ready for it, too, because we're old pros at pulling off these kinds of Christmases.

They'll change soon enough - Teagan will be out in the real world next Christmas, maybe even flying home for the holidays for a brief break from real work. I plan on making my own changes, and though I have no idea which ones will have occurred by next Chrismas, I know some will have. It sounds bad to say it, but maybe my grandmother won't be around anymore, which would change a lot. What happens when we start having Christmas at one of my sibling's houses, with new additions to our own families? I like thinking about it, because every set of traditions needs to be fixed up from time to time. To me, Christmas has always been a time for being with the people who mean the most to us, and I could see at the table tonight that for my brother, my sister and I, there were a few people missing. I know we're ready to move on because we now know that family extends beyond genetic similarities.

Now that Christmas has passed, it's the post-holiday daze that ensues - everyone gets sick of their family after a while and is ready to get back on the road. I'm still worried about that road, because it's not as cheerful as some other peoples, but now I have a direction to head towards - change. If I've learned something since last Christmas, it's to seek what makes you happy. I know I go on and on about how difficult that is, but I know for sure that it's always a challenge worth facing. I don't want to pretend that I have an inevitably rough path ahead of me, because I'm choosing it myself. Yet I know that last year I wouldn't have known enough to make that choice, to decide what's best for me when it's not the obvious answer. Maybe I'm wrong, too, but I'm also willing to make mistakes if they'll bring me closer to the truth.

As for my parents, they're probably a little more wary of these changes - they've walked in our shoes before and know, to some extent, what lies before their children. But they see the need for change too - they see that our family of five could use a little expanding in the future, that a little more drama might make the holidays more exciting for all of us.

We're still on vacation for a few more weeks, which might get to be rather long if I spend too much more time in this house. To quote my uncle, who will be arriving on New Year's Day for some more family time (ack!)... "Let's Get Crackin'!"

Family Dinner

It's finally Christmas Eve, and it finally feels like it. I've been spending a lot of time with friends lately, knowing that there would be family time later, and now I'm ready for it. I forgot that times like this, when our whole family is together at once, are getting less and less frequent as time goes on.

However, as our time together decreases, I think we tend to appreciate it more. We get in fewer petty arguments, we enjoy better meals, and we actually talk to one another instead of running out the door to be somewhere else. Well, I'm guilty of that lately, but I'm glad they don't hold it against me. Tonight we're all making dinner together - food is a thing we do, apparently, because our holidays usually depend a lot on the menu :-). Tonight we're giving Mom the night off, even though she's been cooking all day for dinner tomorrow. TJ made the appetizers, Teagan made the salad, Dad's making the tuna and whatever's on the side, and I took care of dessert. That basically means the ovens have been on all day, so that Mom gets a little time in the kitchen with each of us as we take care of our part of dinner.

Somehow today is different - we're all still doing our own thing, but are more mindful of one another. My dad was in the den, watching football by the fire while doing some paperwork (he's awful about working so much, but he does it more of as a habit than anything else). Teagan was in her room, but not in the standoffish way she can be - just lounging, especially since the one person she'd be talking to instead of us is now in Ecuador without a phone or a laptop. TJ was showering for about an hour (it's genetic, I swear) and came to find me in the basement to start a game of pool after I finished working out. It was nice to know that we're all here and staying here for the day - tomorrow will be the same way.

And now I've gotten all dressed up to go nowhere - corduroys, a new sweater, new shoes... nowhere, that is, except to the kitchen to start on the 7 layer dip and brie. Soon it'll be the five of us, talking about God knows what for God knows how long. We always do, and yet it never gets old...

Merry Christmas :-)

Waking Up On The Wrong Side

I woke up so frustrated this morning. I hate it when that happens - it's not too often, but usually it happens when I'm brought pretty blatantly to the life I'm living. It was the kind of thing where I just don't want to get out of bed, even though my only hope for relieving the frustration is to go do something about it. I got that feeling like I was stuck under the covers - why get out when it's only going to be harder than it's been?

It was a strange feeling to have, I admit, during a break from school and after being with some very good friends the day before. It probably was the combination of the two that did it - being with these friends somehow reminds me that this isn't going to last forever, as I once thought it was. I'm not worried that I'll lose them as friends, but this can't be our lives, living here and being together. Nor do any of us really want it to be, but personally I just see what I had a year ago and feel the overwhelming need to find something to compete with it, something that I can look at and say, "Oh, yeah, this is definitely better than last year." But then I wake up in the morning and look at what I can't have and get overcome by it.

I can think of my happiness on a meter, like a speedometer, only it's happiness levels that increase left to right instead of miles per hour. It's probably a completely inaccurate way to track happiness, but at the moment I can picture it in my head. It seems like I've spent so little time in a stable state at the far right of that meter, while the rest of the time I bounce violently back from one end to the other. I refuse to let myself be happy in this moment, being here, because I know it's temporary and I'll soon have to get back to work - I can't let myself forget that. I'd probably have woken up in a much better mood if I was able to forget that.

Sometimes I get frustrated to the point where I consider how futile my frustration is. Why do I get so worked up about it? Because I care, obviously, but caring to the point of waging internal warfare has to be a sign that I'm overdoing it a little. I can't help but care about all of it - what's here, what's at school, what I have, what I don't have... and yes, I intentionally put those subjects in their respective places between those commas. There are times when I wish I was good at letting go, so that maybe life would be a little easier, but then I jump right back and realize that not letting go is something I do for a reason. This is probably a part of myself I should explore - why do I hold on to things so tightly? Perhaps it's simply just a fear of losing things that matter to me, but I know it's more than that. I know I do it for a reason, and not a bad one either - why does letting go always have to be the right answer? I think I convince myself that I can take the emotional strain of holding onto everything that still matters to me. Sometimes, like this morning, I feel a strong urge to let go of all of it. I then realize that I could never let go, because holding on so tight (even when people are telling me give it up) is how I live my life. I have yet to find enough reason to change this part of myself, and though the lines that are being drawn daily in my life make it harder to bear, I also grow a little better at understanding what's important to me by knowing what I hold on to the most.

Faith and Fear

I've kind of been thinking about this blogging thing over the past few days. I finally have relief and peace effortlessly, every day - relief and peace that I used to cling to Iridescence to find. For some strange reason I'm finding it difficult to write when I'm happy - perhaps I no longer feel the need to remind myself that life is good, when it seems so apparent to me now.

I still have worries - how do I tell my parents that I plan on filling out transfer application forms? What about the day I wake up and it's January 15th, the day I have to go back to work and can no longer live in this blissful and carefree state? It will happen and I don't deny that - I just have to figure out if I'm going to take complete advantage of this newfound (or re-found?) freedom or live conscious of the road that lies ahead. I think I'll do the former.

Anyway, there are so many things I could say, but I feel that they would mostly be worries. Why is it that when I'm spiritually unsettled, all that comes to mind are life's joys, while when I'm spiritually content, all that comes to mind is everything in life that's ultimately unsettling? I wish I could pick one and be 100% joy all the time. Yet it's so hard - when everything crappy, I'm inclined to motivate myself with hope; when everything's comfortable and happy, I'm inclined to want to tear it down and convince myself that it isn't the way it feels. I think about what I don't have, what I want and may never get, what lies ahead of me that I can clearly see, what lies ahead of me that I will never see until after it's gone... endless. I feel guilty, having this satisfaction that I've missed - as if feeling this way is unjustified and unrealistic. When will I ever be able to say, "Screw realistic! This is what I want!"?

We all know that that's the ultimate - knowing what you want and going after it. Yet I never know if that's what I'm doing - when do I go after it and when do I not? When do I stay and wait, and when do I go running? There are so many things I do without realizing it, so much time spent unconsciously living.

There are still so many things I want, but which I am either too afraid or too sensible to go after. Well, maybe there's no difference between those words - fear and sensibility may as well be synonyms. I hope I can strive for insanity, life without fear - living without obstacles. Is any fear really useful? What if we could understand the world to the point where fear no longer exists? Perhaps that's one of my ultimate goals - to understand the world to a point where I no longer fear it. It may take a lifetime to achieve, but maybe I could do it.

Conversely, understanding is so passive a word. What parts of my life do I have the power to define?

Perhaps all the parts that I'm afraid of touching?

Fresh Dirt

It's really quite nice to not be overthinking my life at the moment - I'm on break in more ways than one. I didn't have to analyze, worry, interpret, tolerate, or anything today - I spent the entire day dealing with the Great Christmas Tree Debacle of 2007. Which, though it could easily have been the most frustrating thing ever, was thoroughly entertaining both in hindsight and while it was occurring. Long story short - one christmas tree, tons of little lights, a few strands of tinsel, lunch, a leak, a broken christmas tree stand, rapidly siphoning the water out of the tree stand, a speedy trip to the hardware store, and all in all an undermanned rescue operation for the hardwood floors. Doesn't make sense? You get the drift anyway.

It was still fun because it was a mess. Now, whenever I look at the Christmas tree I will undoubtedly think of the excessive and unexpected hours getting it to look as pretty as it does. And it doesn't even have any ornaments on it yet...

I've spent an amazing amount of time outside in the past few days, making up for the dreary ones during finals when the only time I put a coat on was to grab dinner. The skin on my hands is probably pretty rough and my back's quite sore from the shoveling and lifting and everything, but all in a good way. The house looks the way it does for Christmas again, which I'm convinced is the way it should look all year. Why not leave the lights up year-round? Who said that they had to be a Christmas thing, since they look good all the time? The only people who get to use those lights year-round are like owners of outdoor restaurants, since they get to wrap them around trees and have a quick solution for an ambiance. Absolutely nothing wrong with that - I love those places.

And my hands and toes are still cold from being outside (or because my dad refuses to turn up the heat... maybe that too...) and I'm pretty sure I have a ton of sap in my hair from that tree, but I'll wait a little longer before taking a hot shower because I don't really mind being this kind of dirty...

Homeless?

So I wish that I was missing something right now. I am, a little, but not nearly enough to make me want to be anywhere but home. I mean I could be at school, and that'd be OK, but I don't have the overwhelming sentiment that my life is being split in two between my life at school and my life at home. They're the same life, which I guess is a good and bad thing. It's surreal, being back home again and not having any work to do, academically or socially. Yeah, I guess that sounds weird, working socially, but it is.

But to have my feet up, to be wearing slippers and preparing for a lunch made by Mom is strangely abnormal as well. Where was I at this time last year? I had one life, which was nice, and made my life a little more organized. I didn't have athought in the world about college or life beyond the small place I called home. Now where am I? Confused, because I'm kind of a subtle mess right now. I say subtle because it doesn't really show, to me or anyone around me, but I am. That makes it only more difficult to reorganize it, since I don't really know what to do about what I can't detect all the time.

I just don't know what I should be feeling right now, but I'm thinking that it's not this. I'm at home, but it's still my only home - other people come home for Christmas to take a break from their hectic lives, but I'm just floating from one place to another until I get home and can finally breathe. What's that all about? And I don't even know what's left of the home I'm at - everyone else has it figured out fine, and I'm the stupid one who's still stuck thinking "What's going on?"

I hate to be that person who doesn't live life fully and completely. I am NOT that person who fears the future, who hangs on to what they know to avoid learning something new. I'm trying to learn something new while making a new life and putting the old life somewhere safe and quiet, but I'm doing it all out of order. I've got home on the back burner - this isn't where I live, and I'm OK with that and I get it. But where DO I live?

See, confusion. I've let go of home without building a substitute home - it leaves me homeless. Oh I know, believe me, I'm taking advantage of finally being with my family, in my own room and with friends soon, but I feel guilty doing it, like this shouldn't mean so much to me. And I get the questions - "How's school?" "How are your friends (at school)?" - and can answer them honestly - "It's good," and "They're good" - because those aren't dishonest answers. But how do I explain that "good" is never enough?

Motor Therapy

I woke up this morning to one of New England's finest days: freezing rain falling on top of black ice and old snow. Really, it doesn't get that nasty anywhere else in the world :-).

What I failed to realize was that such weather would coincide with a thick sheet of ice covering my car by midday. Nice. Actually, it wasn't bad, because it was nice to be responsible for taking care of a car again. After breaking apart the ice shell my car had developed, it was free for a drive - but I was surprised to find less comfort than I usually do while passing cars on the highway. Maybe it was because they were unfamiliar roads to drive - I actually had to pay attention to my driving, instead of letting my hands and feet automatically attack the roads I've driven so often - letting my mind wander elsewhere.

What is it about familiar roads that's therapeutic? I can think of one of my favorite routes right now: the long backroads through old forests and perfectly manicured houses - some houses new, and some older than the trees. I know where to brake and where to accellerate by memory; I know just how much to pull the wheel with my fingertips to navigate the tough spots, where the road dips into a ditch before violently swerving to the right. There's always the risk of there being another car in precisely the wrong spot at the wrong time, but the threat is never fulfilled.

I guess to most people my driving seems reckless - I'm not surprised, especially after describing how I prefer to drive with a wandering mind. But that's the only way I've ever been able to really drive - finding the edge between being careful and being reckless - and I've probably pushed across that lines a few times too many to maintain a good reputation. The scary part is that my parents still think I drive more responsibly than my sister, and they're still right. But it's got to be something genetic - she and I have led surprisingly similar lives, so it only makes sense that our similarities would extend right into our driving styles. We both like to go fast because it means that you only slow down for things that really matter. We both need the same music - either something that has absolutely nothing to do with life at the present moment or something that has everything to do with life at the present moment.

Driving alone is best when you have something on your mind that you have no way to get rid of - not that you necessarily want to get rid of what's on your mind, but the act of leaving bits and pieces of it scattered on familiar roads somehow puts life back into something that mildy resembles sanity. And then there are the drives where theres nothing at all on your mind, when you're just driving to be suspended for a moments, a minute, an hour. It's escape to nowhere in particular - escape to the grocery store to get a loaf of bread for dinner. Actually, I've made the trip to the grocery store more often for no reason than for a good one, I'm pretty sure. I even got called out on it once by my boss, since I pass work on the way to the store and can be rather noticeable if I'm driving a bright orange car.

All I need now is the drive home - long highways, one after another, leading to an actual destination. I don't know what sense I'll find on those roads. Maybe I'll even find some insanity, which is worth just as much as sanity, believe me.

I also need to get a different punctuation mark - I'm noticing a significant and unneccessary increase in my use of the dash...

Not So Vicariously, After All

So how is it, that after such a good day, I'm about to go to bed so frustrated? It could be because the day's over and I have to go back to work tomorrow, but that can't be it because I'm not really doing work tomorrow. I wish that was it.

No, I guess it's because I come back to realize that being alone today was the happiest that I've been in a while. How do I react to that realization? I don't even know. What I know is that I finally felt relieved, walking the streets of Boston. Relieved of the pressure of having to make my life work, to make it be what I want it to be. I just want it to be what it was today - just the process of following my feet through a familiar city, with the sole aim of finding a box of chocolates for our dinner hosts (Hello Candy, as my mom calls it). I didn't have to be anybody or do anything. I was just walking along Newbury Street, on my way to find my sister across the river. Somewhere on the Mass Ave bridge I found the relief I was looking for - I found the real world. I found a city that didn't revolve around final exam grades or who did what on Saturday night. And while Boston isn't really my favorite city, I was so grateful for it just for being part of the real world. It shows up on a map. It matters to the rest of the world, and for once I could be a part of something that mattered to the rest of the world.

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at, but that's all true. Why do I have to feel guilty for preferring to be alone than with other people? I'm told that I should crave the company of the people I spend every day with, but I realize that I just get by until the next time I can be alone - working out, showering, taking a train, driving...

It's just that I haven't been this way in so long, and now I don't know if I'm allowed to think this way again. I don't know if this is a disease or a symptom - am I getting back into old habits on my own, or is it the result of something else? And why does it have to be a bad thing? It just does, because I'm told that I'm supposed to be building new relationships and finding myself. Well, why is it that I can find myself so easily on a bridge over the Charles River but have such difficulty doing it elsewhere? It's such work to be satisfied day to day here, while all I need is a long coat, gloves, and a destination to walk to.

It seems like all the things I look for, the things I want and the things I hope to find are dissolving just before I'm close enough to touch them...

Boston
Augustana

In the light of the sun, is there anyone?
Oh it has begun...
Oh, dear you look so lost
Eyes are red and tears are shed
This world you must've crossed
You said

You don't know me, you don't even care
You don't know me, you don't wear my chains...

Essential and appealed
Carry all your thoughts
Across an open field
When flowers gaze at you
They're not the only ones
Who cry when they see you
You said

You don't know me, you don't even care,
You don't know me, you don't wear my chains...

She said I think I'll go to Boston
I think I'll start a new life
I think I'll start it over
Where no one knows my name,
I'll get out of California
I'm tired of the weather
I think I'll get a lover and fly 'em out to Spain
I think I'll go to Boston
I think that I'm just tired
I think I need a new town, to leave this all behind...
I think I need a sunrise, I'm tired of the sunset,
I hear it's nice in the summer
Some snow would be nice...

You don't know me, you don't even care
Boston... where no one knows my name...

Momentarily Vicariously

I really should stop spending so much time inside, but there's work to do and the weather's pretty rough out there. I climbed up the hill to work out today with snow beating down on me - I swear it wasn't snowing ten minutes before.

I'm looking forward to Sunday, when I'm going back into the city - I'm meeting my sister so that we can drive out to a friend's house a few towns away. What I'm especially excited for is the two hours I have to spend (not kill) in the city on my own, waiting for her to get off of work. I get to be outside around Boston for all that time - I'll be walking past the huge shopping district on my way to meet her at work, so I'll probably stop to absorb the insanity of the stores at the holidays. Who knows, maybe I'll get sucked in by the holiday atmosphere and go shopping myself :-). I do have some gifts left to buy (including one for said sister) and there's probably no place better to shop for her than in the stores where she already spends too much time.

The traveling and fresh air is what I need - I can't think of any better Sunday right now than the one I have coming up. Mass in the morning (yes, I know I'm a church nerd), train for a little more than an hour through the suburbs, lots of fresh air and crazy holiday citygoers, meeting up with my favorite sister (OK, she's my only sister, but she's still my favorite), heading out for a nice home cooked Sunday dinner with people we've known since childhood, and then I get to confiscate the car and drive back here with it. After being cooped up studying these past days, some time moving and breathing on my own is exactly what I need.

It's remarkable how quickly I can readjust myself by spending time alone - I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is it bad to need some time alone, especially if it tends to happen kind of often, as it does with me? I think that's just what I'm going through, now, and I'm not worried about it. Well, maybe a little - aren't I supposed to be depending on other people though? I can never decide if I'm being too independent, because it's landed me in trouble before and I can't help but be wary of it. Somehow, though, I think I can tell now when it's too much. It's just that it's so much of a relief for me sometimes to be with myself - I'm not on someone else's schedule or someone else's topic of conversation. I can only hear what's going on in my head, which can be amusing or enlightening depending on my mood.

It's the same reason why I love art - it's all about what's going on with you, not really what's going on with other people. I don't think I'll be able to go to an art museum with other people now and really see the art - I get too preoccupied with where everyone else is and if I'm keeping them waiting. The next time I go to an art museum, I won't really see anything unless I'm alone. It's now just about getting up the courage to spend that much time with my mind when it's being so provoked by art. That's what frightens me a little bit about art - it can set my mind spinning out of control, where I usually don't let it go. A good work will confuse me a lot, and confusion is something I could use more of in my life right now. But I'm going the opposite direction anyway - I'm going to the city to clear my head on a cold December day. It's hard to ask for confusion, so maybe it'll come upon me when I least expect it. Actually, maybe that's what I'm going to the city for - a dose of other people's confusion, so that I can keep my distance but still feel everyone else's rush of uncertainty. Detaching myself to live vicariously, if momentarily, through the lives of perfect strangers?

Sounds good to me...

A Better Moment, Captured

OK I really should go to sleep now, since I didn't sleep much last night and I'm trying to get back on a normal sleep schedule, but my iTunes shuffle is on a roll and I really can't fathom ending this amazing lineup of songs it's putting together right now. It's like some crazy marathon music moment or something, and I can't turn it off until a crappy song comes up. Maybe the next one will be Clay Aiken and I can finally go to sleep! But now the music's put me in the mood to stay awake forever - if I was at home, I'd be walking around the house, loving the darkness of all the rooms. I'd be in the kitchen with a glass of water that I'd keep refilling just because I didn't want to go to bed.

I miss those nights, the ones that are so good that I can't imagine closing my eyes and putting the night to rest. That's what I'm going home for - people say they're going home to sleep, but that's exactly what I don't want to do when I get there. I want to be awake as much as possible ( OK yes I will probably regret saying this, but hypothetically speaking this is all that I want). I can't wait to be alone in the kitchen at night, with just a few small lights on, sitting on the counter and kicking the cabinets with my heels because I just can't go to sleep. And by the way I definitely cursed my iTunes, because now the shuffle sucks, but I'm writing this so I can't go to sleep just yet.

Now it's Imogen Heap, which reminds me of late nights last year. It's good music for winding down - there's something about her music that makes me breathe fresh air. What's a better way to go to sleep than breathing fresh air? I probably get that feeling from the way she almost whispers when she sings, so that you can hear the way her lungs are inhaling and exhaling. It's the kind of thing that would annoy my mom, but it's music that's sweet enough to make me fall asleep.

I'm glad I actually got a real post out of this day - I don't like to go more than a couple days without getting to spill my mind out like this. Why does it happen late at night? Because it's when I'm finally alone, I guess. Goo Goo Dolls!

Could you whisper in my ear
the things you want to feel?
I'd give you anything to feel it coming
Do you wake up on your own
and wonder where you are?
You live with all your faults
I want to wake up where you are
I won't say anything at all
So why don't you slide?

Kate!

must... think... happy... thoughts...

phew so being cheerful all the time isn't easy :-P Not that I expected it to be, but I'm getting bored and it's hard work being perky. I'm thinking of all the things I could be doing other than killing time. That's an awful expression, anyway - why on earth would anyone want to kill time? Hopefully I'll eventually get to the point where I don't want more or less time - when I'm just able to take life's moments for what they are, one at a time.

I spent too much time inside today and can't think of anything refreshing to write about. Hmmm... something positive... I had an awesome iced coffee today. It all depends on getting the right ratio of half and half and sugar, plus coffee that's not burned always helped. I made a good one today... Oh tiring. I can't seem to get something to inspire me... I'll settle for some good song lyrics. I could either pick the next song that comes up on random on my iTunes, or I could spend a good deal of time picking a significant song for a reason. I won't tell you which I've done...

Kate - Ben Folds

She plays wipe out on the drums
The squirrels and the birds come
Gather 'round to sing the guitar
Oh, I...have you got nothing to say?
When all words fail, she speaks
Her mix tape's a masterpiece
Walks through the garden
So the roses can see
Oh, I ... have you got nothing to say?

And you can see daisies in her footsteps
Dandelions, butterflies
I wanna be Kate

Everyday she wears the same thing
I think she smokes pot
She's everything I want
She's everything I'm not
Oh, I ... have you got nothing to say?

She never gets wet
She smiles and it's a rainbow
And she speaks and she breathes
I wanna be Kate

Down by Rosemary and Cameron
She hands out the Bhagavad Gita
I see her 'round every couple days
I wanna meet her so that I can say, "Hey ..."
Kate

She never gets wet
She smiles and it's a rainbow
You can see
I wanna wanna wanna wanna be
Kate

A Slow Day on Uppers

Oh good, I'm back here again :-)

Over the past two days, a lot of small things have happened. I've gotten overwhelmed at the frustration my roommate was causing m. I got over it and could breathe again. Someone I know has a roommate who has undergone some crazy change and is no longer the person she used to be. I've heard the story more times than I can count, and realized that I felt negative every time the subject came up with this friend. I let go of that, too. I met the person who I've lived across the hall from for three months (you know what I mean - I knew her name and face, but not who she was). She's not happy either, but I'm glad that she finally got to know me, so that I'm one more person who can make her laugh when she needs it.

I can't do everything, but I can do something. I can't know the world until I know myself - until I see how I'm a part of that world. I am a part of this world, in more ways than one - it's the small links that tie people together, the ones that make you present somewhere. It's because people recognize me that I am here, and I want to recognized only in a positive light when there's so much negativity being thrown around. That's all it takes - don't be the person who calls to mind life's frustrations. Why do we sit around and talk about how tough our schedules are, how much we don't like our roommates, or how awful the weather is? I frankly just don't want to talk about it anymore, because bitching life out has never been an effective strategy for spreading holiday cheer.

I wrote christmas cards to my grandmothers today, which was wonderful since I can't exactly be negative to my grandmothers. I got a package from my mom with these cute little christmas lights that look like happy santas. My roommate was gone the entire day because she was holed up in the library, so I got the room to myself, meaning that the door was open and I could work at my own pace with hallway ambient noise, periodically interrupted by people wandering in and out. Dinner was delicious and fun because we sat around for a while doing nothing but making art out of silverware and styrofoam. Well, actually, that was just me.

Anyway I had a lovely day because I realized that it's pretty much impossible to have a bad day if you're being positive. DUH why is that rocket science? I dunno, it is for some reason. I'm having a conversation with my brother about how our sister eloped and how he got an earring. Oh and he's calling Mom tonight since Dad's out of town for three days, and I'll call her tomorrow and tell her the hilarious story I've been meaning to tell her. Roomie's being a negative nancy again, so I told my brother I want to give her Haribo gummy bears and show her how good the pineapple flavored ones are. I would, but I don't have gummy bears and would rather just let her be with her boyfriend and her negativity, since that's all she wants. I don't know why she wants it, but she does, so OK. Whatever floats her boat.

Tomorrow will be lovely too - I'll probably get bored of having no work (if I'm not already), but I'd rather that than some other things. I'll talk to Mom, mail these letters, get some points back on my chem test, maybe pick up my lab report (wonder how well I did on it?) AND listen to christmas music!!!

One week:-)

Last Monday

I'm in a music bum kind of mood. It's not a day to dress up because the weather's absolutely awful here, so I'm wearing a favorite concert t-shirt with a non-descript hoodie, jeans and socks that don't really match. My hair's not bad today, but carries evidence of being exposed to this weird slushy rain we've got going on up here. I realized this morning in class that I have no idea how to do taxes (nor do I really understand how tax returns work) since I've never had a job that paid anything but cash. I wasn't all that phased by it. I come back to my computer after class and what goes on iTunes? Dispatch, lots and lots of lovely live album Dispatch. Oh and I decided that I'm not a big lover of stale heater air, so I've got the fan going in our room even though it's not even 30 degrees outside. Waste of energy? I think not. I'm doing the environment a favor and sparing it from stale heater air (ew).

Why does this make me a music bum? I don't know. Just trust me, that's the mood right now. I feel completely ready to hop on a tour bus with some obscure band and pretend I know how to play a guitar (though no smoking for me :-P - I have a pact with a friend to honor). And even though I showered last night, I kind of don't feel like showering for a while. YES I know that sounds strange/makes me seem like a grubby weirdo, but it's the honest truth at the moment.

What is this day? It's my last Monday of classes, the last real Monday I'll have for over a month, so that might explain the lack of motivation to work. At least I'm not taking a nap, which is what I'm usually doing at this time on a Monday. Even though I had coffee this morning, I probably could pull off another hour of sleep right now anyway, but hypothetically these two hours before 11 would be a good time to get work done (Look at all the work I'm getting done!). Ugh, the coffee I drank an hour ago just started kicking in, so that every part of me feels awake except for my eyes, which kind of sucks as a feeling. I'm sure that if I started doing real work, I'd feel more awake and productive, so maybe I should do that.

Orr I should plug in the christmas lights, check my email and tune the guitar I don't have...

Genetically Related Minds Think Alike

So since my last entry was about my mom, how about a little bit about my dad?

What I love most about him is the fact that he and I have the same mind. I know you're supposed to be an equal mix of your parents, and though that's probably true, the way I think comes straight from him. I think that of my siblings, my sister is 50% my mom and 50% my dad; my brother is 75% my mom and 25% my dad, and I'm 75% my dad and 25% my mom. The good thing is that my parents get along really well, so any mixture works.

I remember that for our 5th grade graduation, we were asked to write down what we wanted to be when we grew up, and the cutest answers were read aloud at graduation to entertain our parents. I made the cut with my answer of, "When I grow up I want to be a patent attorney because my dad says I ask too many questions." Of course, the only reason I wrote "patent attorney" instead of "lawyer" was because I knew my dad was a patent attorney and I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about. My sister and I get that from him - we're pretty good at making stuff up and sounding believable (I've gotten better at it since 5th grade).

Haha OK I know that sheds a pretty awful light on my dad, but it actually is an awesome trait to have (he doesn't abuse it, I promise, and works hard to make sure my sister and I don't, either). But he's always told me that if being a doctor doesn't work out, and being an artist doesn't work out either, I could do law in my sleep. I know lawyers pretty much have an awful reputation overall, and are criticized for being liars, but my dad's been through too much to be a liar at heart. He's seen life at its best and its worst, and has brought himself up from nothing to be able to provide a great life for his family.

I hope I never have to go through the trouble he's gone through, but I know that I would have the strength to get through it because he has. Well, actually, neither of my parents have had it easy, to give my mom her due - both their fathers died uexpectedly when they were juniors in high school. I don't want to dwell on it though - they don't, so respectfully I won't either.

Point is, I can tell my dad thinks I'm something special. I don't know if every daughter thinks that, but he's always been fascinated to hear what goes on in my head. He says my sister is more technical, and though I know he likes to talk mechanics and design with her, he talks life, art and politics with me. He loves the way I listen so hard when he talks about the doctors he's working with, the surgeries he's observed and the new inventions that will give more hope to the future of healthcare. He's the one who reminds me that I can do what I want to do with my life, regardless of who's backing me and who's pushing me back. Likewise, he listens when I talk - he's probably the reason I speak and write the way I do, since I feel the need bring myself to his level to communicate my ideas clearly. I don't fight with my mom often, but I pretty much never fight with my dad. He doesn't write me off as his moody teenage daughter, and for that I am eternally grateful. He makes me think I'm worth listening to.

Yes, he can be so headstrong and stubborn somtimes. He can totally miss the point when my mom's talking and not realize he did, which is frustrating for all of us. He can get way too excited about work, but then I'm glad he loves what he does (he's not really a patent attorney by trade anymore. I could tell you what he does, but I'd have to kill you... just kidding. I have no idea what he does exactly - he basically puts together medical companies and is the world master of networking). But his flaws are my flaws. I get the least annoyed when he does that thing he does, because I know what's going through his head. He answers the cell phone because it brings him one step closer to sealing the deal, finishing the project, and putting his kids through college. Yet he didn't miss our soccer games as kids; he cut the lawn almost every saturday of every summer (his free therapy); he spent endless hours cleaning out the gutters to make sure the house he's worked so hard for stays dry; he's driven miles and miles for whatever we need of him, and he's kept my mom driving through life, too.

He probably scares the shit out of people who cross him in business, but it works for him :-). Hopefully I will never have to use that trait, but don't think I can't...

P.S.

It's snowing, really snowing, not the cheap stuff that melts in an hour. I'll wake up to snow tomorrow (today) morning...

Missing The Homeland I've Never Met

My stomach hurts and I don't know why. Don't you just hate it when that happens? I decided to take care of myself and get a ginger ale... and fig newtons. They're fruit, they've gotta be good for me, right? I'm still not sure if that was a great decision, since the stomach still hurts (10 fig newtons later). Sleep would probably help, but I've been doing too much of that lately. I've currently settled for water sugared up on instant tea mix... why is it that I think the cure for a stomachache is to eat something? That's probably not always the best option, come to think of it.

Oh well, thinking about eating... dinner tomorrow night is pierogies, which is my ABSOLUTE favorite dinner here. Of all the things to love, it's a pretty weird choice - most people get excited about chicken parm, taco night or steak and cheese subs. Nope, I'll take potato and cheese pierogies with carmelized onions any day. They remind me of home because they're 110% Polish, like my mom's whole side of the family. For some reason they aren't served with sour cream here, which doesn't make any sense since my mom's always called sour cream "Polish Ketchup" because it goes on everything. They're also super greasy here because they're basically cooked in butter and then rolled in some more. Altogether pretty poor nutritionally, but no one loves them more than me, hands down. Even better - though no sour cream, they ARE served with kielbasa and sauerkraut (neither of which I usually eat, but they just top off the Polish fiesta going down in the dining hall). Having written that, I wish I knew the Polish word for "party" so that I didn't have to resort to Spanglish.

Why don't I know more Polish, actually? My mom's never made it a priority - she claims to be awful at languages and pretends to not remember a thing, despite whipping certain Polish phrases out at unexpected times and then blaming it on the fact that her mother "said that all the time," and I've never heard my grandmother say that before? I kind of get the impression that she was all Polished out in her childhood, coming from such a patriotically Polish family. You'd think that she'd embrace it more than she does, right? It's not that there's any spite between her and her heritage - she just seems to prefer to keep it quiet. It's one of those things that I think she's really proud of, but chooses not to flaunt it because she doesn't see how it's all that relevant to everyday life. I wonder what she thinks about the fact that her children therefore identify more with their Irish background than their Polish one, even though all three of us are twice as Polish genetically than we are Irish.

There are certain things she's held onto, though - Opuatec, or however you spell it, is always at the Christmas table. It's basically the same unleavened bread used to make the hosts at church, except this consists of two pieces of bread, cut out similarly to the paper snowflakes hanging on my windows at this very moment. These two rectangles of cardboardy bread are joined by a thick layer of honey, so that they basically make a honey sandwich (!). The tradition is that before enjoying Christmas dinner, each guest at the table breaks off a piece of the Opuatec, so that figuratively everyone is sharing the same meal. I think there's a blessing beforehand - I wish this tradition happened more than once a year so that I could remember it better than this.

I guess Christmas is the one time of the year where we really do Polish stuff - pierogies are inevitable on Christmas day, as breakfast or lunch (or whatever you call it when you eat all day, take a two hour break and then eat dinner). The pierogies have to be fresh, a requirement which can be met with the most diligent efforts to find somewhere in New England that makes them. The secret source for the freshest pierogies happens to be a church somewhere in Bridgeport, where little old Polish ladies get together a few days preceding Christmas to crank out several thousand slices of Polish potato and cheese heaven...

I CANNOT forget to put my Polish heritage on my Christmas list...

Choose the Best Answer from the Following:

I know it's a little early for most people to be thinking about what happens a year from now, but now that I finally have time to relax after a few study-filled days, I find myself looking towards the elections in 2008. Republican or Democrat? Will we elect a woman president? Will we elect an African-American president? A Vietnam War veteran? A friendly neighborhood ex-mayor?

I've never claimed to know anything substantial in the realm of politics, and I've never wanted to. It's an endless fight of public relations, ratings, and just getting the most votes. Politicians categorize themselves for the ease of the voters - Republican means you'll stay at war and emphasize security, Democrat means you'll work for the people who get overlooked. Why does it have to be one or the other? If I were to ever run for president (not happening) I would run as an independent, just to escape the endless labels and judgments that people place upon a party.

How about the fact that I don't know how to choose one or the other? I don't know how to choose my own security over the aid of the poor, and vice versa. I don't know how to vote against what my parents will vote, since I can take a guess at how they feel and see how my own opinions no longer mirror theirs. Suddenly I'm voting against the two people who taught me so much? Or are they right and I'm wrong, since they're the seasoned voters and know how to see politicians better than I do? Am I wrong to look for the humanity in a presidential candidate, since politicians are pretty much assumed to have as much compassion as a cardboard box?

I find myself looking at the candidates names and backgrounds and imagining seeing them in textbooks years from now. Would Hillary Clinton be the mistake of a first woman president who was no better than any man before her? Would Rudy Giuliani be one of those guys who looked good on the bill but cracked under the pressure of being a world leader? Would Barack Obama turn against the honesty he preaches, succumbing to the Republicans and failing to execute his exit plan from Iraq? Of course we don't know the answer. I can make positive and negative sentences about the presidency of each candidate: "John McCain was ineffective on the world level because of his deep personal connection to international warfare, and thus was criticized to bring his emotions to the business table."

OK I know that it sounds like I'm being negative here, but politics aren't really ever a positive subject, are they? It's all about who looks the best in the newspaper and on TV - it's all about image. I don't think I'll ever really get it for that reason, and I probably will never try that hard to get it. Yet I'm still at the point where whatever I choose could be a huge mistake - at least my vote is one of millions, and we're all in it together...

Calling It A Morning

Hm... It's beyond midnight and time becomes nondescript. Technically it's morning, but that definition couldn't be further from the truth. There's nothing fresh about this hour, no promise of more daylight to come - these are just the stale hours after night has fallen when time seems to slip away from the clock. 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 - they're just numbers until finally the sun shoots some light over the horizon, finally relieving the tension that precedes it - relieving the worry that it would never come.

Unless, of course, you're writing a paper, in which case you hope morning never comes and that each hour would stretch to be a little longer than the last. I actually am not in that situation at the moment, but I'm tired of staying awake simply because I can sleep in tomorrow (today?). The building on the other side of my window is mostly dark - most of its inhabitants have called it a night and are enjoying their sleep, whether or not they know it (they're asleep - they won't know they're enjoying it until they wake up and want it back). Usually I like the night because it's peaceful - everyone stops what they're doing to take a rest. That doesn't seem to happen to college students, however - we go and go and go so that the paper will be finished in the real morning, the one that comes after a couple hours of sleep that have to act as a substitute for a whole night's rest. Night is usually a great time to listen to music, because finally the ambient noise has died down - instead I still hear the occasional click of the lock on a door, of a voice calling down the hallway, of flip-flops pattering by.

It's just what I've noticed - night is no longer everyone's time to rest. In fact, some people have it all backwards - they sleep during the day and go all night. Why waste the daylight? To me, the daylight is for moving, talking, acting, and working. There's a transition - when night first falls, the activity is electrified as lights are switched on over pages of books, photographs and posters on walls, and sidewalks under the dark sky. Yet it slowly dies down, until you find yourself where you started out, back in bed, getting the sleep you wanted since you woke up the day before.

Now that I officially woke up yesterday, it's time for me to call it a morning and go to sleep today...

Disclaimer

Yes, I realize that on this blog it appears that I'm obsessed with Ben Taylor and that song. Well, you know what? I am. Deal with it.

Nothing I Can Do

This song has been stuck in my head all day, but it's one of those songs that I don't really mind having around for a while...

First morning ever to have seen the sun
Must have run the other way
Until she found that it was only getting earlier that way
When she spun one-hundred eighty degrees
And beheld the sweet light rising through the trees
She fell to her knees and she began to smile, because
She had been in darkness for a long long while
And she said,

There is nothing that I can do
But belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Singing this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd rather do.

And the first lesson ever to have learned its way
Must've been suprised
All I can say is im just glad that I survived,
And the first river to have met the sea,
I believe he must've sighed, said
All this rambling I'm glad to finally find
that after all I haven't just been wasting my time

There is nothing that I can do
But belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Singing this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd rather do.

Just so long as your flying around high
Whatever you find out in the sky
Just dont forget to fall down sometimes
I'm easy to find, look around you
It's a good thing that I finally found you

There is nothing that I can do but belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Singing this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd rather do.

-Ben Taylor

Confessions of a Roommate

My roommate is quite possibly the most unpleasant person on the planet at this very instant. It's quite an experience, really. Coaching a TV will make the football players play better. Yes, indeed. You and your boyfriend are actually going to last. Yes, indeed.

Perhaps I'm here to learn how to deal with this. Actually, that's exactly why. God has a twisted sense of humor and feels that I need to go through this at this point in my life. I need to learn to tolerate people I can't stand. I need to learn from her mistakes, although I think I was never stupid enough to make her mistakes. I need to learn to tune the things out that don't matter to me and not get worked up about things getting in my way. OK, got it.

But seriously, you think she'd have some kind of humility to realize that she sounds like an idiot. Period. And no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get eye to eye with her without making all these judgements about how stupid she is. I'm not talking academically - she's pretty decent in terms of intelligence. It's that she's stupid in life experience. She's just been raised a completely different way than I have and doesn't see life as a constant learning process, as a world of possibility. So I get it - God's teaching me to value my open mind, and I've never learned anything faster than this.

OK wow now I'm really getting a little scared. It's entertaining, I mean, to watch this meltdown over a football game, but I think she really might break down if they lose. How could something so little matter so much? I understand being a sports fan, I have my own team, but I don't get this level of involvement. At some point don't you realize that it's just a game?

Or, to be philosophical, is life just a game? At what point to we throw in the towel and start laughing at the ridiculousness of it all? Does it really matter what I do now, at this moment, when ten years from now I'll just look back on it? Of course it matters, because what I do now dictates what happens ten years from now. But really? Maybe at some point I will look back on my roommate and understand her, understand how her mind works. It just seems so closed to me. How could her mind be so deprived of imagination? Imagination can be a curse, but it certainly is a much greater gift. In fact, the curses brought on by imagination - such as dissatisfaction and mental claustrophobia, among others - are also gifts in disguise. They move us forward, keep us searching, keep us stretching our imaginations...

I realize that my posts are beginning to have less and less focus as time goes on. That's fine by me, if you can handle it. This is my way to let my mind wander, because I know that I'm keeping it on too short a leash otherwise. This reminds me to breathe, to take a step back, to look for what I missed before.

And this is also my way to make fun of my roommate without anyone really knowing. I won't lie. But seriously, everyone needs to loosen up and laugh sometimes! Really!

Home

I'm sitting on the couch at home, next to a slow-flickering fire and the slightly muted words of Frank Sinatra, considering a hot cup of cider and wondering if I should go out tonight or just stay here and listen to my parents talk about nothing. Well, I know that I'll end up out of here, but I secretly would be just as happy to stay here. How many people can talk to their parents the way I can? They're the ones who taught me how to have a conversation. I don't just mean that they taught me to speak: they taught me to sit around a dinner table for two hours after the meal's over, to simply talk and listen. Both my parents are the perfect mixture of adult and kid - there are times when I can really see who they were at 27, when they first met. I suppose that's the best thing about their relationship, the fact that no matter how old they get, they'll still joke around and laugh and make fun of each other the way they did years before they had a family to take care of.

The best part for me is that I'm literally half of each of them. There was a point last night, after all the family had left, where I was lucky enough to sit in the kitchen and talk with them the way the three of us did last year. I was on the kitchen counter, one of my favorite places to sit, while my mom was sitting at the counter and my dad was standing. It became clear to me that there's something unique about the way they know me, as opposed to the way they know my brother and sister. It's likely that I will always be closest to them, because they taught me how to listen the best. It also helps that the three of us - my mom, dad and I - are all the youngest children. There's another bond there that the don't have with my siblings.

I'm not saying that they play favorites. They certainly don't. But at the same time, I think I'm the luckiest one to know them this well.

hahaha ok they're actually kicking me out of the house. literally. glad to know you guys missed me, too :-)

Awareness

Did you ever get overcome with an awareness of your humanity? Like have you ever sat down and been hit with the realization that THIS is your life? This isn't a dress rehearsal - you will only get this once. You will look back on this one day as your past life, hopefully as something you don't regret. And what's even stranger to think is how you won't even remember all of it - this present moment, insignificant as it is, will probably not make the cut as a file to be saved in your mind. There's absolutely nothign we can do about it, other than embrace it. We have to love these little moments, because it's nearly impossible to go back and re-love something that you overlooked in the past.

Even stranger (and more morbid) - did you ever get hit with the realization that this all ends? Have you ever been faced with the awareness that one day the people we love most will no longer be here? One day we will have to say goodbye. We will feel our hearts ripped through our throats, we will hear the planet split in half, we will feel all the stars shattering down around us. And we will be strong enough to go on, of course, but we will have to experience this. I'm sure there are even awful truths sitting around me now, that I'm not aware of but will hit me over the head in time. It's life, to feel all of this - but it only takes one dose of that pain to change a lifetime.

I don't want to feel it anytime soon - of course not. But I will feel it. I can hope and pray that things will go my way until then, that I'll be lucky enough to find the happiness to make my imminent pain bearable. I'm truly afraid of never feeling that pain at all, because that would mean that I succeeded in detaching myself from the reality of love and life. I certainly don't want that, so I will have to let myself cry eventually - I will have to let go, let my tears fall faster than they ever have.

But I know what I do and do not want to let go of. I'm learning every day what to keep and what to get rid of - it's those things that I want to keep which keep me coming back to life to find more. They give me hope that there's more out there, that one day I will find a happiness that overcomes the pain most likely ensue. I believe in the good - I believe that true pain is only true love.

And why talk about love at a time like this? What I intended to write about was how much my father understands my mind, but I suppose this works too. That's love, there - perhaps his sight of my mind is how he overcomes the pain. But I need to remember that life isn't all about the pain - it's the other stuff which really counts. It's feeling safe when my dad really does know how my mind works, and loves me all the more for it. That's what I'm thankful for - that which makes the pain worth feeling.

Ramble

Ah it's been too long since I could just let my mind go. I've just been thinking of things to blog about for the past... 5? days. All of them were ridiculously insignificant and thus perfect blog topics, and now I can't remember them.

So what's on my mind right now? I'm feeling the James Taylor playing, because I'm in a Fire and Rain kind of mood. "My body's aching and my time is at hand/I won't make it any other way..."

I am in a pretty great need of a break from everything, but then aren't we all. Is there ever a point when we don't need a break? I'm sure there is, but it's at times like this when it seems like such a state of existence isn't possible. Mmm so gloomy! Time to cheer up. But I also already wrote about Thanksgiving about two weeks ago, so I can't go off on that one. Hmm what to be perky about? I have one of those calendars with the spanish saying of the day on it, and saved the one from the day before halloween: "Disfrazate do ogro!" or "Put on the ogre costume!" Now who would really yell that out loud?

How about the fact that I've got work to do and have no motivation? What else is new. Instead I'm being a cheesy girly-girl with my friend Claire online, which feels pretty damn good. I love this girl - I met her two summers ago at work, saw her pretty much every day for two months, and now we talk all the time. She's only a sophomore in high school, so she's young, but she and I are so much alike. Sometimes it just works that way - you just click with someone and that's it. I've actually only seen her once since two years ago, but it doesn't make a difference. How does that happen? Sometimes as hard as I try I just can't get close to people, and other times it just works so easily. I'm sure it has all to do with people's personalities, and some people just naturally get along better than others. But other times its easy just because there's no pressure - make of it what you will, it could be temporary or everasting and it doesn't really matter. They're few and far between, those relationships - they're not necessarily the people who make the biggest difference in your life, just the people who laugh at the right times and somehow know how to cheer you up, even if they don't really know you at all. They're little gifts, just bouts of comfort wrapped into one person who you hardly know and hardly have to know. I don't miss Claire like crazy, but I love talking to her - how does that work?

insert conclusion here

Feeling Dry

I was just walking outside when I was suddenly overcome by a strange longing to be in a boat. Don't ask me why - boats have always been my dad's thing, not mine. But there was something about the way the mist is tonight - humid, but cool, with a small breeze that doesn't really come from anywhere in particular - that reminded me of boating on the Cape. At one point tonight I just looked up at the sky and was reminded of being out there on the ocean, with no sound but the water making contact with itself and the boat's hull. I think I was longing the quiet that boats usually coincide with. True sailors don't go out there for cocktails or to fish: they go just to be out there.

Not that I would really know, because I've never been loyal enough to the water to be a sailor. But maybe everyone wishes they were a sailor at heart, because I think we all want to be closer to the water than we are. Why shouldnt we? I'm certainly not a fan of being landlocked like this - I guess I don't notice until I'm hit with an urge like this, an urge to be with an unimaginable mass of water. It's humbling, just to be one person in all those waves.

To all the people out there who have their oceans - love them for the rest of us who don't.

Quick Note

a new music discovery of mine: Ben Taylor (son of personal favorite James Taylor)...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HAzk6_nWE5E

The Punch Line...

People can surprise you in the most unexpected ways. I was nicely reminded of this several days ago...

Who would you consider to be a typical Dashboard Confessional fan? If that fan was accurately represented by the majority of the crowd at the concert I just went to, that fan would be a female between the ages of 15 and 20, probably heartbroken in some way or another, and probably from a suburban town where music is spread more by word of mouth than by any other mechanism. At least, this was the face of 85% of the crowd at said concert. What fascinated me, however, was the crowd of guys I was sitting next to: forgive any stereotypes in the following description, but they looked more like they belonged at a 50 cent concert instead of a Dashboard one. Baggy sweatpants, sideways baseball hats that look like they would serve no practical purpose on a baseball diamond, alchohol smuggled in - you get the picture. But they were there, and caught my attention from the moment I sat down when the one nearest me made a point of asking me several times who the opening bands were, if I had heard of them, and damn don't they suck?

The situation only piqued my interest in the unneccessariy long 45 minutes of set-up before Dashboard made its entrance (or should I say before Chris Carrabba made his entrance, since he IS the band). I think that of all the people in the concert hall, these guys were the most upset by the delay (well, the alcohol consumption probably didn't help). Likewise, when Dashboard finally DID come on, no one was more excited than these four guys, who fully participated in the "I LOVE YOU CHRIS!!!" chants. They didn't hesitate to marvel out lout at his talent - my favorite quote of the night had to be "God, He's a SCIENTIST!"

But seriously. Isn't Dashboard supposed to be for teenagers who are searching for ways to express and understand their own desolate love lives? Apparently not - these guys made the concert that much better for me, since it wasn't just the usual crowd enjoying this music. Music, just like anything else, has its stereotypes: Rock is for the people who are too cool for Pop, Hip Hop is for the people who understand rhythym too well to be able to tolerate Pop, Alternative is for the people who are deathly afraid of the title "Pop," and Pop itself is just for people who aren't cool and who are too oblivious to realize it. But here we have the barriers being broken - the people I would least expect to give Dashboard Confessional any time of day have appeared to be some of his most dedicated fans :-).

Just another example of God's sense of humor, I suppose. He never fails to amuse us, if only we take the time to get the punch line...

Unsinkable Feeling

I realize that I've been pushed off an edge. I also realize that I'm off that edge, but other than that, haven't really gone anywhere. It's like I'm suspended in the air, not going up or down or left or right, just floating like this. I don't know how far it is down - it could be a two feet or a thousand feet - and I don't seem to care. I should care. I should care a lot, let myself fall to discover how far it really is. But I don't care, and I don't know what to do about it.

Caring makes all the difference, but can you make yourself care? It's just that when I got pushed off that edge, I forgot that I was supposed to obey the laws of gravity like everyone else. And now what do I do, hanging up here without any gravity of my own to make me care?

I think I just don't want it to be that simple - I don't want to go, "Oops!" and Boom be down there with everyone else. I'm sure some ridiculous inner part of me is just completely against any idea of discovery of this unknown, but what's on my mind now is just that I'm floating. What happens if I find gravity and let myself fall down? I'll probably get up and start running and be fine. What happens if I stay floating? The possibility of more. But more than what? More than what I think is below me - perhaps if I float long enough I'll find some ground that looks better to me than this one does. It's all about perception - I'm sure if I changed my perception I'd see the ground differently and be excited to meet it. But what causes one to change perception like that? Belief, unfailing belief that your current perception needs to be changed. Well, this one does. But I don't want to change this perception. This is the way I see it. This is the way I want to see it.

Why do I want to see it like this, if it's giving me this much of a problem? Because I'm too much of a dumbass to get off my high horse and put my feet on solid ground. Right now I don't want solid ground - I want to stay in the saddle and move as fast as I can over the ground (literally and figuratively, I suppose).

I want to see something else, but not a different perception of the same thing. I want to see something else entirely. Is that wrong? I'm telling myself it's wrong. But I don't want it to be wrong, because it's what feels right. Right now, I want to see something else entirely and don't want to feel guilty about that want. But I do...

So I'm floating, aimless and endless, stubborn and guilty, because this is what I want.

Afternoon

Hmm. Friday afternoon. Definitely one of the top moments of the week - the workweek is over, followed by two free days to do the work you didn't do during the rest of the week. But right now, there's a time lapse before the work for Monday needs to begin - everyone is entitled to the right of a lazy Friday afternoon. We're still on a weekday, and thus no weekend work must occur.

So what am I doing on this Friday afternoon? Well, usually I'm watching all the TV I missed during the week, eating some sort of junk food (most likely candy) or wandering around the halls until dinner arrives. This Friday afternoon, I'm waiting for my lab partners to arrive for our Biology date, but since they haven't arrived yet, I'm sitting in the basement listening to someone I don't know play the piano. It's just me and him here, and he's pretty good, so I'm secretly hoping my lab partners won't show for another few minutes.

It's finally getting cold, and I'm reminded of why I love New England. There's something about the way you can see the crispness in the air here, the way sunlight seems to exude no warmth at all but is still beautiful to look at. A lot of people don't see it, though - whenever I hear someone say, "GOD it's COLD!" I just sort of smile and say, "I know, don't you love it??" Usually I get something along the lines of, "NO," "Are you crazy?" or "It's not this cold in Maryland!" - the latter of which comes from one of my favorite people in particular (please note the sarcasm).

Ah, they've arrived...

Two Weeks and a Day...

Eeek a little sore of late, but it always feels just as good as it does bad. Thanksgiving is in two weeks and I couldn't be more excited - sleeping in my own bed, being at home in general, eating the best food in the world and a TON of it... I'm salivating just sitting here typing about it.

On a diferent track - yesterday I thought about how irritating an open mind can be. It means you can't give up on anything - you can accept it, but you can't give up on it. Of course, this means you have to learn to walk away yourself and take responsibility for choosing your own battles. Does that make sense? With an open mind, anything can be explored virtually forever, because there's always a new way of seeing it. The curse here is that even if you are capable of doing so, we sometimes just plain don't have the time for it. I suppose the best way to go through life is to understand as much as you can, regardless of time, but there's always an agenda.

And today I was thinking about childhood. You know John Mayer's song '83? It's about how he wishes his life was more like it was when he was six years old, with superman capes and lunchboxes. Do I wish my life was more like when I was six? I was surprise to easily answer no. If I was only six now, even though I'd be having the time of my life, I wouldn't know it. I wouldn't know as much as I do now, and there would be all those years ahead of me of learning that I don't really feel like reliving. Middle school? No, thanks.

That's kind of a big deal then, the fact that I would rather live at this age than in my childhood oblivion, isn't it? Even if I know I'm not really as happy now as I was then, I'm so much more aware of it. I see so much more going on every day than I ever did at six years old, and it would make it impossible to go back. Even though life was great then - carefree, irresponsible - I never knew how or why. Now that I'm faced with the challenge of giving all that up, I know how to appreciate it.

So admittedly, I'm going home for Thanksgiving to secretly pretend I'm six years old. I'm probably going to wake up around 9 to smell the turkey already in the oven. I'll wear what I slept in until about 3 in the afternoon, watching the ridiculous parade on TV and stealing bits and pieces of all the food that's "FOR LATER!" when my mom's not looking. And I'll be able to sit back after dinner, eat the rest of the bread that everyone left for me, and never ever want to get up again.

But at the same time, it will be better than all the last. My parents won't hold back in the stories they tell us. My siblings and I won't hold back in the stories we tell them. And best of all, we'll all be more thankful than ever just to be there :-)

25 Things To Do

To Do:

1. Sing more
2. Smile for no good reason more
3. Tune out my roommate more
4. Dance more
5. Listen to Pandora more
6. Check my mail less
7. Spend more time with music in general
8. Go to Chile
9. Calm down and stop getting overwhelmed by nothing
10. Figure out why it's overwhelming me in the first place and deal with it (eventually)
11. Read the headlines more
12. Stop being so goddamn negative
13. Spend more time on YouTube (tons of music - why did I never realize it before???)
14. Daydream about Thanksgiving and the month of December (check!)
15. Finish my work for the next two weeks so that I don't have to work for two weeks (maybe)
16. Drink more water
17. Regain an appetite, it's a good thing
18. Spend more time in the shower. Time under hot water is always time well spent.
19. Research enzyme activity, the chicken pox, and incest (don't ask)
20. Drive the new car!
21. Stop thinking about the number 21 and think of another To Do
22. Get back to work
23. Listen to Mr. Alligator on my dashboard: "Your wrinkled synopsis wouldn't have been very thorny."
24. Remember how good these three weekends are going to be and relax
25. Breathe more. I'm developing a habit of forgetting to

Moving

I spent this morning traveling, which was exactly what I needed. In fact, I wish I was still on a train, following the rails to the next station, or the one after that, or the one after that...

It's just that sometimes I need to move, especially when I'm overcome with a feeling of immobility. I was so relieved to see roads and houses and highways this morning - relieved to see that the world has kept on going the same way it used to. I wish I was a part of all that still - the real world, I mean. I miss everything about mobility - the left lane, double yellow lines, no lines at all, stop signs (...and not stopping), bad drivers, road rage, speeding, the way the traffic lights all change to flashing yellow at 10 PM in my hometown - everything.

It felt so good to be anonymously traveling across the state, paying $7.75 for an hour and half of pure inner peace. I'm truly myself when I travel - no relationships, no obligations, no appointments - just me, moving. I don't understand how some people don't like it. It gives me a momentary belief that I'm seeing a little more of the world that I hadn't seen before, which is ridiculously liberating in the most basic way. It's also why I love cities - every moment is different than the last, with new people and new situations and endless blocks of new experiences waiting...

Can you feel that I've been feeling a little confined lately? It's probably a good thing I don't have a car, because I would have used way to much gas simply driving around to nowhere and back just to feel the movement. You probably could spend an entire day wandering the subway system of New York City alone, just getting off here and getting on there and seeing where you end up. On the other hand, it probably would take only an hour or so to travel the whole streetcar system of San Francisco, but probably would recieve the same effect.

When does this need for movement subside? I know it's something more common in younger people than older, because younger people are less prepared to settle down in one place, but what will ever make me stop moving? Do I need to meet someone who will keep me in place, who won't let me go and pull me back but who will hold me tight? God, I almost hope that never happens. Since when did I become one to be wary of commitment? I suppose I've been this way since I lost something to commit to...

Good Morning, How May I Help You?

I think perhaps breakfast is my new favorite meal. Maybe this is just a temporary affinity to the first meal of the day, since I had a particularly good one this morning. I never used to like it, because it meant ten minutes of cereal and water before starting yet another day of work. But today's Saturday, and while I'm still up to my elbows in work (procrastinating right now, in fact), I was overcome with an unusual and atypical excitement to get started with my day. Granted, I had breakfast at noon just after releasing an extreme amount of endorphins at the gym, but a side of cheerfulness with my waffle was especially nice.

It's just that everything begins again at breakfast. You get your first helping of fuel for the day, hopefully prepared by enough sleep to take full advantage of that fuel. Have you ever noticed how subtly social breakfast is? It more often is eaten in a car, on a train or in a plastic booth at Dunkin' Donuts than at a proper table, and is often accompanied by a newspaper rather than a friend or business associate, but everyone does it. There's something invigorating to me about being part of the world's morning hunger craving - standing in line to order a bagel kind of puts you in your place, in a way. Yes, you're tired, yes, you're hungry, yes, you can't think of anything you'd rather do than get back into bed, but yes, everyone else feels the same way. Good Morning, how may I help you?

And then there's the best breakfast of all, which I always take for granted - a bowl of cereal at the kitchen counter. What's so special about eating carbohydrates hopped up on sugar and preservatives, racing through the bowl to insure that the last few mouthfuls won't be soggy from sitting in the milk for too long? Absolutely nothing, except for the fact that everyone else does it too. We're lucky to hate breakfast for being so early; it means that we have so much to do that day that an extra hour of sleep just didn't fit into the schedule.

Or maybe you just skip breakfast entirely, like I do on my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I gotta stop doing that.

Hopefully I'll see you at breakfast more often :-)

Later That Night

Up until lately, I've considered myself a strong person.

What is a strong person, you ask? Or perhaps you wouldn't ask that, you would kind of assume to know what those two words mean when placed next to one another like so. A strong person is one who endures through trials and tribulations. A stong person is one who continues to make their way towards the light at the end of the tunnel, despite whatever darkness they have to walk through to get there. A strong person has an infallible faith that everything will indeed be alright.

I suppose I fit the above descriptions, but I have a new problem with them. Who's to say that I haven't just been faking this strength, that my continual drive towards the light is really just a continual escape route from the darkness? I think the truly strong thing would be to let myself get beaten down, to let myself get changed by the things that hit me. A strong person should be an emotional mess - hit over and over and not afraid to take the beating. A strong person calls for the beating, because they know that the truest strength is having the strength to learn from their mistakes.

And I don't know if I've learned from my mistakes. I don't know if I really meant to endure after all, but managed to do it because I knew nothing else. I didn't know enough to get angry when I was wronged. I didn't know enough to let go after the first two times I got pushed away. Why do I regret this now? Because I'm being told that I'm strong enough to get through anything, when I really have no idea if that's true or not. Anyone can get through anything, as long as they keep breathing and keep eating. But the strongest people will see the punch coming and not flinch - they'll let themselves get hit instead of pretending it's not happening.

What scares me is that I can't see the punch. A week, a month, a year from now, I'll look back and realize that I'm bruised, but was either too stupid or too strong to dodge the fist. I fear that I don't flinch because of my ignorance, not because of my strength. I fear I don't flinch because I can't see the punch until I've already covered up the resulting bruises - maybe I cover them up to pretend they never happened. But a truly strong person would face the punch eye to eye and take it, all of it, all of the hurt and the pain and the wonder of learned knowledge.

I suppose one day I'll be able to stand in the ring and see the fight that's coming at me. Hopefully by then I'll have figured out whether or not to fight back.

Beginning

OK, so I've never bought into this blogging thing, but I think I need to try it before I make any final judgements. If nothing else, I currently have a strong need to believe that my mind can be changed. There's something about life that makes me hesitate before making anything final, since change is both inevitable and unpredictable.

Essentially, I simply need a place to express the thoughts that I can't stop fighting. No, probably not too much about my personal life, although ultimately everything that comes out of anyone's mouth is based in their personal life. I've learned thus far in my life that my mind is too complicated to shut off, to sit still for one moment, to BREATHE. It's always moving, often in every direction but the one I want it to. My lack of a one-track mind is hindering me at the present moment in my present state, and I simply need a place to let go of it.

So here it is, a blog. Are blogs just places for people to vent to perfect strangers about their personal lives, too afraid or embarrased to say it out loud? Possibly. But I've finally come to realize there's not too much wrong with that, because sometimes you just need to be the voice and not the ears. I get it. Or, at least, I think I do. I suppose the beauty is that I'll find out.