Road Kill

Watching Bear Grylls eat every animal he comes across and trudge across the Sahara dessert made my situation look a lot less dramatic and less interesting... but nonetheless, I've got an intense British narrator dictating every event in my head...

"...and now she waits patiently for the grandfather to return home, so that the rest of the family can eat. Watch now as she distracts herself with the computer, chewing on her nails to dull the hunger. If she were to indulge in anything from the fridge, it most likely result in food poisoning..."

Watched a strange movie tonight. It was probably the most romantic thing I've seen in a long time. It was called "I'm a Cyborg, But it's OK." Basically about a girl who grew up with her grandmother who thought she was a mouse, ends up believing she's a cyborg, tries to charge her batteries by inserting wires into her open wound and plugging them into the wall... After landing herself in the loony bin, she ends up falling in love with a man who thinks he can steal people's souls. It was absolutely beautiful the way he pretended to open up her back to put in a make-believe device to convert food to electrical energy so she would eat. And he sung to her through a plastic cup attached by a string when she was recovering from electric shock therapy while he was in isolation... two completely messed up people found each other from the strangest circumstances... it ended as they were camping out after a failed attempt to gather a billion volts of electricity from a bolt of lightning so she could fulfill her life's purpose of blowing the earth up... it made me wonder... can two people with that much baggage really find love? Will they eventually leave the hospital and continue their relationship and grow together as people? Or...?

Watching Star Wars now... Poor Obi is fighting over a pit of molten lava... He is my favorite, you know...

Yuck... he just ate another scorpion...

Pin a shooting star
watch it fall, fade, flicker--
death to all hope,
doom to all dreams--
wish only on your feet

but given any chance to feel the river's wrath
I'd take my place in line.
One step is all it takes
to loose your footing in the stream
and tumble across the grainy pebbles,
laughing all the way.
One thing to regret the bruises
from protruding rocks
and another
for your feet to feel thirsty for cool water,
dry and cracked
from walking along side the bank.

Who is my favorite Lord of the Rings character? Who, I wonder...

I'm such an idiot...

Flat Tire

Today was like spilling oil on white carpet. Or maybe kicking over a baby stroller into open traffic. Or burning the country flag at a football game. Today just sucked.

So the penguin said to the duck, "at least you can fly, you jackass."

THIS close to punching John in the face. Damn the repercussions... I'll have to get him back somehow, before I forget to be mad at him. I can't hold on to a single stupid grudge for very long.

Headache... aspirin...

Stupid drama...

Intersection

When I went to the Hollingsworth Winds concert last night, I think I learned a little about life watching Dr. Jossim conduct. That woman is just amazing. Seeing her dance on the podium made even me want to get up, get confident and find my own orchestra to conduct, or at least take control of my life. It's a shame not more people go to these things. It's a glorious experience--I take back ever "I can just listen to a recording" comment I ever made, because in truth, nothing can top a live performance. Except maybe being the one performing.

Describing my situation with the cello to my aunt, she asked me--jokingly--sort of--if I was in a relationship with it, and it made me realize I do spend more time with this thing than I do with one single person a day--except on Tuesday. I do think of Nick more of like a partner in crime than just an expensive wooden artifact used to produce sound. I fair tackled John to run after Martha when she tried to take off with it...

It's hard to believe that I am completely different from ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago... how much more change will there be?

I'm relieved to say that I'm not frightened anymore by the concept of change.

I'd say bring it on.

Dead End

There is nothing quite like watching someones head getting blown off in slow motion.

As terrible as that sounds, it's true. Part of you screams, "oh, yuck! How terrible!" and the other part is admiring the distance the glistening spray is getting. Well, you could be perfectly sane, and just stick to the "wtf" part.

(I watched Tommy play some post-apocalypse game when I went to offer my help in studying for his math test Monday. Very graphic.)

I was drama-free all but two days. I knew my mother's genes would show up someplace--my mind can't function without turning inward on itself and slapping around the voices to get them talking...

"Why the hell are you so quiet?"

"What? What do you mean?"
"We were just minding our own business, no need to shout!"
"See? Nothing major is happening, we can relax..."

"What do you mean relax? No such thing! Get your ass back to work making this girl miserable or I'll send you packing!"

"Yes! Yes, of course..."

So I stumbled off of the path of clear-headedness with a much-needed talk with my aunt, who pointed out a few things for me that I didn't expect to hear. Have fun in college? Don't worry so much about the future? It's okay to have mushy, irrational, heart-pounding emotions? They're good for you? Normal, even?

I'm faced with a decision, a choice. Take the sidewalk, where I know what's ahead for the next five miles, and where it ends, or jump the yellow and black caution signs signaling a dead end at the end of the concrete and just see what's beyond the brush, to see how far I can go without turning back. Who knows, it might be that--a dead end. I don't know. In doing so, I forfeit the right to walk the clear-cut pathway, and have to wander along the curb until I find another road. Is it worth the risk? Should I follow my heart, my nerve, and do what I know is the only thing that would make me happy? Or should I play it safe, maybe take the chance that I could learn to like the sidewalk, even though I really want to go off-roading? There are scarier things than snakes in the grass... and I'm sure the harmless looking side could easily harbor some delectable trouble in the dark spots...

But I've always done that. Taken the lighted path and hoped the uneven cracks would be enough to trip me up, to make me learn balance, to grow. Maybe I need a good dose of actual danger to bring me to my senses, make me see that I'm an idiot.

But I don't even have a flashlight... not a clue... they don't write manuals on this sort of stuff, of following your passion. What about regret? What if there's a no trespassing sign just off the gravel? I've bounded over the hurdle for nothing.

Ah, so many but's and what if's.

It seemed so simple a few hours ago on the phone...

And you know what? It probably is.

Speeding Ticket

It might be possible to return to normal life--my head finally returned from its epic voyage in the clouds. I still find myself looking for the birds, craning my neck to peer around the corners, but I know I'll never fly.

Then this college thing finally gets interesting--and it's almost over...

Sailor Moon personality quizzes suck. I've gotten a different answer every time.

I think I'm going to bust out the violent video games...

Oh! I went to the underbelly to get something to eat, and who was there but a group of very obviously Russian guys. I loved listening to them banter back and forth and their heavily accented English when they each ordered like ten dollars worth of food. It made me forget for a while that I was lonely, and feel very itty bity and girly standing next to someone six and a half feet tall. I imagined what I'd say to one if I had the nerve...

"So, you are from Russia?... Oh, that's nice, I've never met anyone, uh, Russian. We totally creamed your ass in the 1980's Olympics, eh?"

That is, if I wanted a death wish. He looked like he could string my intestines up for christmas lights with his teeth. But is it bad I thought he was attractive? Why the hell do I like people I don't have a flying ice brick's chance in hell with? It's always the dangerous ones with me. No, not the trouble-makers in the back of the room jeering at the rest of us losers, but the ones that can actually hurt me. Like a bird who likes the smell of cat litter...

Yuck. That's wonderful, Joannie. I really wanted you to compare yourself to a creature who enjoys the scent of cat piss...

Cruise Control

Finally found what my hobby is--walking. I love to walk. Did nothing but that for close to four hours today in total, outside normal travel. It fills up the holes that friends and music leave gaping.



Along my epic quest to the bank after making three pointless ventures from the music building to TuTu's to my dorm, I realized I hate most of my clothes. Wouldn't it be nice to have a wardrobe reflecting the me now instead of my days of fifteen dom? I haven't gotten a new pair of jeans since I was in tenth grade, and even those were hand-me-downs. So I decided I was going to go shopping soon, dunno where--probably thrift stores--and maybe ask my mom to go along, since I automatically associated clothes shopping with her. Then it hit me--I am just a little girl lonely for her mother. It doesn't matter what she does, what she says, what she doesn't do--I still seek her approval, I want her attention, her hugs, anything. She was just never there.

Happy day, I have money in the bank. Can't spend much of it, though.

Had a dream last night--pretty vivid--and in it I was suppose to play this piece titled "Sounds," a cello duet with piano accompaniment. I remember what the second cello part looked like for the first few measures, and I might recall the sound of the piano, but we'll see how far it goes when I laboriously try to recreate it.

I think I want to try and pick up guitar.

Have a few performances next week. Can't say I'm stoked about the cello trio thing--nervous as a duck trying to fly after being pushed off of a six story building--but I think the orchestra concert might not go as bad as I feared.

In astronomy lab, I was looking for M31, a hazy object near some orange star. I looked up, and said, "hey, is it like a gray fingerprint smudge?" They were like, "yeah, yeah! That's impressive, that you got it so quickly"... then I looked around, and saw many other smudges, and realized my binoculars were out of focus and I was really sighting distorted stars.

Quartet rehearsal... hm...

That black guy at TuTu's makes GREAT coffee.

Dashboard

I think I can finally move forward. The light switch clicked for me today, and it took but thirty seconds. What a refreshing feeling, to just let it all go, go to hell for all I care, and look inside and like what I see.

I guess everything happens for a reason--it's too painful to think that we're gliding pointlessly forward in time by coincidence. Even if I'm wrong, I don't care. If my delusion makes sense, I'll live with it. I'm tired of trying to strip away the layers to see what's beneath--there's nothing there. Nothing but me.

How long will this last? A night? A week? How long before I start yearning again, start pounding away at humanity? I hate being hormonal...

Walked the lake today again, alone with my ipod on shuffle. Halfway through, I started working on my smile, getting both sides to match. My lopsided grin is not going to get me a date. So I tried--by various contorted facial expressions--to do the physically taxing task of lifting my dormant eyebrow as well, and I looked like a psychotic freak strolling down the path, occasionally humming and chuckling at nothing as my face twitched and spasmed. Yep.

I look forward to the day I look back at all these pointless, muddled posts when I'm fifty and say, "boy, were you stupid. And so needlessly brooding..."

Well, to you, my fifty year old self, I say this--"screw off."

Fog Lights

Walking the lake with the ever-tireless Stephanie, I surmised there should be something morally wrong with having all six pistons shooting off in my head when I can barely keep my eyes open. It's living torment to have those impulses working against each other.

Yay for not having jury duty after all. That I am happy about.

On the very still and quiet jaunt around Hollingsworth, my mind finally twisted around itself and wrung out all my wrongs for me. I started thinking about the flawed mind and whether or not every assumption I had, even ones about myself, were wrong. If that's the case, how can I live with myself, this stupid body controlled by senseless logic and chemical imbalances... how could I possibly begin to love myself when I can barely accept it? What now, then, came the question. How am I going to live. What do I believe. Fuck everything else--I'm the one that has to go to sleep on my conscience at night--what do I think? And you know what?

I don't know.

And it feels refreshing to say it. I don't have a goddamn clue. No one's sat down with me and said, "Now Joannie..." Even if they did, I doubt I'd believe them. I can't know all the answers, and I never will. Ninety years old and I won't be any different, except maybe I'll be better learned in atrocity.

It briefly crossed my mind that maybe my current crisis is punishment for not being religious or something, but I don't believe it. God and that whole mess is something I don't care to pretend to know about, but if anyone were to ask me, I'd say he's a pretty sadistic character to create and judge us like that. Like pulling the wings off of grasshoppers and condemning them for not being able to fly...

Going to be a long day... but it's beautiful out.

Gas Light On

In the thrall of Valentines Day, I completely overlooked Friday the 13th.

Had a wonderful quartet rehearsal today.

Not much to write about. My mind is goo.

On second thought, I gave the trumpet a toot or two after too much cello angst, and it made me feel better to just aimlessly blow hot air. Like screaming in a different language, maybe. After seeing Jacqueline Du Pre perform the piece I'm working on and effectively destroy any and all accomplished feeling I gained over the last two weeks or so, I felt like a change of air, so to speak.

Road Rash

<---- You know you'd tap that. When you get a thrill from almost colliding with a skateboarder, you know you're deprived. I wrote yet another poem today, this time in English. It goes as follows:

Maybe I do want you to find my star
however dim and shyly hidden
behind clotted clouds of chortled mist
ah, but you don't know me--
my own skin doesn't know me
soul of a bride--
mind of a hermit--
ship me off, please--to Pluto with Pikachu

Finally, I found my favorite animal. It's been sitting there in front of my face since I was five. I love toads.

Nothing epic like wolves or rhinoceroses. Toads.

Oil Change

I wrote a poem the other day, in pscychology. Rather odd, since no matter how wonderful I might find poetry, I don't enjoy an abundance of my own stuff. It's short--

I stake no claim on this land

yet I feel it drifting away

torn away with crimminal sweetness

It doesn't strike me as anything special now, but it does mean something to me.

Got good work done on the cello today. There is hope after all.

The deepest layer of hell is reserved for cowards. I should know, it says so on my ticket.

My fourth position is a little flat, I've noticed. When I go for a F arrpeggio, the top note is always off. Bothers the piss out of me, almost as much as the slight angle my soundpost seems to be at. It might be time to change strings, but I hate new strings... the ones in my case have got to be older than the ones I've got on...

I'm also talking more outloud, to myself, the cello, to people... I wonder if anyone's getting annoyed yet. The more that seems to come out, the less important my words seem to be.

The laundry room is lonely.

Open Road

Another Monday passes... not nearly as bad as they have been going. I actually feel pretty good right about now. I was told today I've improved, but more importantly I affirmed what I had on the back burner all along--that praise and admiration have to come from within. You can't honestly expect to play beautifully if you hate the sound of yourself. It's not really our job to look for compliments, either, so he said... that our job is to not get told off for doing something wrong.

Another interesting point he made... cellists, psychologically, are the darkest, most introspective, emo people of the orchestra. We have a higher suicide rate than any other section, apparently.

Go figure.

So I'm not melodramatic because I'm a woman. It's because I'm a cellist. Well, I guess it compounds itself in my case...

Traffic Jam

I think I've taken to walking the lake at night. The lights on the water, the passing people, the thrill of possibly getting stabbed (j/k...sorta), the dark, twisted trees... It's like taking a stroll through my mind. A lot comes out and a lot goes in.

Christ, they keep it cold in J.R...

I found I have no true calling. I've never noticed before, but after I get out of college, unless I go right back, I'll most likely be a bum. Agh! Coming from a stellar student. A directionless arrow, I am...

Carrying my ipod more. Walking last night--oh, what a walk--I discovered that I have always wanted to join a band and scream the paint off of the walls. That's something worth dying for.

Dang, I've gone through a bottle of water and the rest of the apple juice... still thirsty...

Maybe I'm not an arrow--that implies I have to be moving faster, straighter--but more like a drifting balloon.

Despite my lack of passion, I seem to be living life a lot more dramatically lately. Whatever it is I'm feeling, I'm absolutely feeling it. Doesn't help when I'm feeling listless. I could crap my pants for the intensity of waiting for the internet to load.

I wonder what that crazy family is up to... No, no I don't... Never mind, they can have whatever they're doing. I don't want it.

I was filling out a survey the other day, and I got stuck on the easiest questions. I ended up scrapping it...

Wonderful.

Crash

Only when I just get over being nauseous, my stomach rolls over in disgust of myself. Really, Joannie, really?! Good god, I take a good thing and throw it away with both hands! I should be institutionalized for the things I do to sabotage myself.

I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like discarded banana peelings left out on a wet, slushy sidewalk. It's Saturday. Nothing to focus on. Nothing to be driven towards. Thinking about the cello makes me sigh internally, so deep a sigh I can't move for the gravity of it. Insane... And I call myself a musician...

"Whirlwind romance," is what Steffie called it. Indeed... I don't know what to think. Maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I am. Maybe I should let him go while he still has a chance, time to run. I'm so selfish... There could be monuments to the level of hypocrisy in me. I try so hard to belong, to be similar, to run on some one's wavelength. I don't have a wavelength anymore. Maybe this is it, right now. Complete angst. Ugh. I have a headache.

I think about him more and more now, Kenny. That's never a good thing. I wonder if his selfish action was so selfish after all. It was his life, his choice. He didn't give a damn if he hurt the hundred people in his life. He didn't care about being right, nice, or proper... At least now I have someone to talk to when I'm alone in the car.

Yuck, I'm shivering now. Why do I get so cold when I get like this? I can't believe I'm indulging myself this way. No one needs to know what's going through my head. I should be able to snap out of this, get back on track. Nothing's wrong, I'm set, why am I like this? No wonder why they call women melodramatic.

I think I'll go take a nap. I hate the weekends.