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."