We live in a beautiful world...
His eyes met mine briefly, wide and dark and unfathomable. I soaked in the sleek brown fur and black markings, shimmering gold like a hallucination under the autumn sun. It's like a drug to me, the way it fills my heart to bursting just to see something so beautiful and perfect and living. Watching the squirrels and chipmunks getting ready for winter makes me feel more alive (or at least more willing to be alive). Their jaws stretch wide to hold acorns as their paws claw furiously at the pine straw covered ground. I want to help them, to bury little gold mines of acorns for them to find later, but I don't think it would work. So I just watch and it's impossible to suppress a slight smile because it feels like the warmth of alcohol rushing through my veins, only ten times better. If you just watch closely, noting every twitch of every muscle and every piece of shining fur, it is miraculous. I don't understand how people who believe in god don't marvel at least as much as I do at the absolute perfection of animals. I would think they'd be even more inclined than me. But regardless of anyone else, I will continue to melt into pure wonder every time. And it's things like that which keep me going beyond the nightmares that wake me up in a sweat with images of car wheels and animals impossibly entwined in my head. It's ironic that the same things that make me feel the worst are the things that make me feel best. Situational irony, I guess. The second I fall in love the camera angle changes and I'm back in the world of my nightmares.
But if I walk outside with my iPod playing the most beautiful songs I know, watching the world in all of it's beautiful colors, it feels like walking through a movie. The music highlights every single indescribable detail and nothing has ever looked so good.
This is how I deal with not being with you right now. With so many beautiful things, with green parks and goofy faced dogs, with autumn sunlight on autumn colored trees, and with the sculpted body of the praying mantis on the sidewalk outside, it is impossible not to believe that everything will work out.
On the wall next to my bed I've got the strip of paper from my fortune cookie taped underneath the picture of you with lettuce hanging out of your mouth: "Relax and spend some time with a loved one." If I could, I'd find a bar here exactly like the one we sat at in Montreal. I'd sit with my elbows on the dark polished wood and marvel at the different types of glasses hanging above me. I'd get a margarita and a cosmopolitan and drink them all by myself and maybe I'd be so happy I'd laugh and talk to the bartender all night about you. Maybe I'd be so sad I'd cry and smoke a cigarette and talk to the bartender all night about you. I can see it going either way. Lying in my bare bed with all the sheets and blankets and pillowcases in the wash, with my throat aching from my (our) cold, it feels like I'm in some sort of infirmary. A visit would be nice. And some warm food. It's been hard to eat since I've been back. You spoiled me permanently with those sauteed portabellos and homemade baba ganouj and pancakes. A spoonful of peanut butter here, a paper cup of smoothie there, and I poke at some cold, oily noodles on my tray and feel sick. I want a hot sandwich, and fresh bananas with pure maple syrup, and homemade pasta sauce. I want your nice wide, low to the ground bed instead of the narrow, raised one I'm in now. And oh my god do I want you. I can't imagine any sort of perfection beyond what I imagine next year will be like. And what I imagine next year will be like is almost exactly how I remember last week. With a little bit less of your mother. (Maybe there will be more of mine, though.) It is 1:13 am and I know you're on your way home from work. It's late and I'm hungry and I wouldn't mind going to sleep, but the anticipation is building inside of me as the clock keeps moving. And I guess you know I love you.
neon golden, like all the lights...
Looking down through thousands of feet of night air, Montreal is heavenly. Everything is gold crosses melted into the black sky, with the river cutting a shining, shivering black gash across the land. My heart continually swelled farther up into my throat to correspond with every inch the plane sank towards the earth.
Five days later the city disappeared behind me under a sick, clouded sky and I closed my eyes, refusing to believe it was gone.
Back here, everything is colder but otherwise identical. The buses inhaling and exhaling students, the asphalt smeared with construction dirt, the flickering yellow squares of the parking garage windows, and the half-finished building outside my window offer nothing new to look at. There is only the same gray-white tile floor, the same yellow-brown furniture, and the same blank concrete walls. It is suffocating.
I walked the same path today that I walk every alternate day of the week. It already feels surreal that I was ever gone. The whole process of the day felt as though it was melted over me, holding me, covering me - a quicksand of routine dragging on me at every turn.
But tonight, remembering how
real our laughter was on Saturday night, remembering how grateful I was that you held on to me when your mother was visiting, remembering the ridiculous restaurant hunt and the way my cheeks stung with the cold, I felt overwhelmingly happy.
In spite of everything in our way, I've got more hope than I've ever had before.
she has a way of tormenting me with her words that makes me feel so helpless to retaliate that i cant stand it.
and i wish i could be alone right now but i cant, and that leaves me feeling helpless too.
it is 12:24 am and officially wednesday. thank god im leaving today. i hope the break will give me time to let go of it but i have to admit, its gotten well under my skin, pricking at me every time i try and make a move.
its too bad the time to drop classes is over.
my suitcase is packed and zipped up and ready to go. i want to walk out the door right now. i dont want to come back.
at the very least i want to attack the rest of that pint of ben&jerrys in the freezer, but its 12:31am and there is some guy in the room that i dont really know.
so ill just lie in bed and bitch to you, because i can.
i am pretty much living for wednesday...
Raleigh Charter didn't prepare me for having uptight professors who don't give a shit about me. I suddenly miss high school like crazy.
I'm sitting in class sucking on a Berry Lime Sublime smoothie and listening to the professor talk about crystal meth and Buddhist gangs in his soothing Australian accent. It is completely surreal, especially in the setting of this gorgous high-ceilinged room with its hardwood floor and the sun-bathed tree limbs brushing their still-green leaves against the panes of the four windows lining the far wall. Outside, you stand in the shade and shiver but when you get into the sun you sweat. My solution is just to stay inside, wrapped up in blankets and feeling sleepy. This is especially easy to accomplish with the new addition of the television in our room (thank you, Trevor). The class is now talking about holes in the brain and mixing methamphetamines with Red Bull. I'm starting to feel nauseous. Yesterday after computer class I talked to a very attractive boy for quite a while after class, and I just felt even better about my relationship with Simon. I'm leaving for Montreal next Wednesday and the simple thought leaves my hands shaking with excitement. Wanting nothing further than friendship out of the boys here is an indescribably comforting feeling. And I used to be so afraid that I would be tempted... it seems funny now.
jamie is kept in a reverse prison down in georgia
where she doesnt have to worry about being touched
back in carolina the kids who knew her
say they miss her, but they wont say how much
and when everyone else's backs are turned
they whisper rumors and fairytales of her demise
but jamie's not gone, she's just down in georgia
and she doesn't have to worry about prying eyes
that girl in her reverse prison in georgia,
the one i haven't really known in years,
inspires dirty words from kids back home
and she occassionally inspires me to tears
thinking about jamie down in georgia
it has a way of minimizing all of my own fears
and i wish i could tell her i miss her, but
i dont really miss her. we havent spoken in years.
a cement box with a girl inside and music filling it up with the kind of feeling you wouldn't expect to associate with a place like this. the street below the window looks strangely distant through the cloud-shaded unblinded triangle of the window on the fourth floor and everything has a half-second life span. last night the music in my ears blurred the night in my eyes and every street light, every brick, every bicycle was distorted and surreal. the ache in my legs after the hour in the echoing heat of fetzer gymnasium slurred and stuttered my movements. my collapse into bed was less than graceful but i was well beyond caring. i felt sleep curtaining my eyes and the dreams i slipped into were malicious and frightening and i ran for my life, choking for breath through tears of terror and clutching my cramping sides as i stumbled forward. i woke up well past class time and the day was gone just as quickly as it had come, a rush of disappointment and stupidity that faded into a sense of not caring. so im lying here in bed in my cement box and the music is filling me up with the kind of feeling i wouldn't expect to associate with a place like this.
sometimes its 12:47am and you just dont feel like doing much of anything. not even sleeping. so you lie in bed and just... be.
I dare you.
1. Reply with your name and I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of ice cream to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must answer the question I ask you for #7.
i changed my template without thinking about it and thereby deleted all my links. if i forgot you and you want me to add you just leave me a comment. or something of the sort.
jesus christ
i dont understand how this quiz does it but....
Rachel's Existing Situation
Unwilling to extend herself or exert undue effort (with the possible exception of sexual activity). Feels that further progress requires more from her than she is willing or able to give. Would prefer reasonable comfort and security rather than the rewards of greater ambition.
Rachel's Stress Sources
The tenacity and strength of will necessary to contend with existing difficulties has become weakened. Feels overtaxed, worn out, and getting nowhere, but continues to stand her ground. She feels this adverse situation as an actual tangible pressure which is intolerable to her and from which she wants to escape, but she feels unable to make the necessary decision.
Rachel's Restrained Characteristics
Willing to participate and to allow herself to become involved, but tries to fend off conflict and disturbance in order to reduce tension.
Clings to her belief that her hopes and ideas are realistic, but needs encouragement and reassurance. Applies very exacting standards to her choice of a partner and wants guarantees against loss or disappointment.
Circumstances force her to compromise and to forgo some pleasures for the time being. Capable of achieving physical satisfaction from sexual activity.
Rachel's Desired Objective
Longs for a tender and sympathetic bond and for a situation of idealized harmony. Has an imperative need for tenderness and affection. Susceptible to anything esthetic.
Rachel's Actual Problem
The tensions induced by trying to cope with conditions which are really beyond her capabilities, or reserves of strength, have led to considerable anxiety and a sense of personal (but unadmitted) inadequacy. She attempts to escape into a substitute world in which things are more nearly as she desires them to be.
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