So you could write an art house film and I could make my debut
Right now my feet are asleep as usual and I can hear my sister listening to Fortunes Fall in her room and today I got a postcard from Taiwan and how is it that I talk to people I've never met more than I do the people that I see at school nearly every day? I have this internal monologue that's constantly saying do-your-work-stop-messing-around-skins-is-so-great-wait-do-your-work and I have to read All the Pretty Horses and finish all my apps, like, yesterday but right now I want to finger paint all over the walls and run through the rain and never comb my hair again and move to Africa to teach English next year instead of going to college and I don't know what my mom was doing in 1977 but there must've been something wrong with her if she wasn't a Shaun Cassidy fan.I'm really cold which I suppose is also usual and I'm writing run-on sentences which is usual as well but grammatically not a problem for me since that's how I think anyhow. I've got this metaphor running through my head about wasted plans and battling dragons and it doesn't make any sense but I guess what it's telling me is that I ought to be writing, want to be writing instead of writing my app essays and reading Cormac McCarthy and why aren't I sleeping when I could be should be should be?
Maybe you had her, maybe you lost her to another
There's a guy at school who looks exactly like Sid, beanie and squarish nerdy glasses and ironic t-shirts, only he's a redhead. But he's still Sid to me and every time I see him I can't help but wonder what he's thinking, and I can't help but romanticize it and think that he's thinking wonderful thoughts. I have this habit of rooting for the underdogs and the quiet ones, always, because they're the ones that you can't ever read, the ones that are probably thinking the most amazing things that the rest of us could never even understand. A part of me wishes I knew Redheaded Sid, so I could find out what's inside his head, but then there's a part of me that likes that I'll probably never know him, because he might cuss a lot at inappropriate times or he might hate the Beatles or he might smoke, or whatever. He might be someone not at all like who I imagine him to be.Tomorrow is Wednesday, which is halfway through the first week of break. I'm not sure of the date exactly, or how many days there are until Christmas, because I don't keep track of that and don't really care. It's still raining and all the days look the same and I actually sort of miss the sun, but I want it to stay like this forever.
And boys soldier on
Sometimes words play themselves over and over in my head in these rhythms that I've never heard before but seem so familiar, and I can't get them out and I can't write them down because I'm not sure what they are but still I have this compulsion to write now right now and do nothing else until I've done that. I've got dozens of blank journals and a nearly infinite supply of hard drive space but I don't have a story to tell and I think that's the biggest problem.The rain hasn't let up in days and right now I've got the hiccups and this evening I took a nap on the couch while my dad was watching the news, which is really just the weather report, rain rain rain, over and over again. I've got no plans for the rest of the week so I can get everything done that I need to get done but instead all that time to do with what I wish making me feel energized I just feel sluggish. I want to sleep, sleep, sleep, and somehow it's nearly 11 at night and I'm not sleeping and now I have this sudden longing in my stomach for "The OC."
No expression no expression
It's nearly eleven and I'm wearing my mom's old law school sweatshirt and a pair of pink pj pants and I'm cold as usual, but tomorrow I'm going to sleep in. This afternoon my sister had a camp reunion in LA so my mom and I spent four hours at this mall that has a zillion escalators, and I bought a sweater and a thermal and a jacket and every time I look at clother now I'm either thinking of being warm or of winter formal.It's been raining all day today, and that's really the only sign of winter so far as I can tell. I drank a hot chocolate tonight even though I wasn't very cold because it seemed wrong to order a cold drink at Starbucks as the cold rain poured down outside. My mom did anyway though. While she was ordering, I looked up at the wall, where there was a mural of Eliot and Twain and Dickinson sitting in a cafe drinking tea and writing novels and, as I imagine, discussing all the wonders of the world. I think it's so peculiar what parts of my day I remember and what parts I forget. Sometimes nothing seems momentous and sometimes everything does, and it really all only lasts a minute.
There's a voice in the back of my head telling me I wrote nearly that same sentence yesterday, but it doesn't matter because it's that same voice that won't let these thoughts go.
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
Today I had the words "trace us back trace us back" stuck in my head, which is a lyric from "Hysteric" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but of course when I couldn't get it out of my head I didn't know that, so I wrote it on the fingers of my left hand and traced all the veins on my palm in pen. I sat doing nothing in most of my classes today and I was out of paper and so I traced the veins on my palm in black pen and then in red pen. I'm now listening to Florence + the Machine, and I think the lyrics are pure poetry, and I made nearly 200 cookies tonight and so all the scribbles on my hand have washed away. At some point today, maybe in Euro while I was doing nothing or in photo while I was doing nothing or maybe in econ, I considered getting a tattoo, having my favorite words, lyrics with me all the time, a part of me.But of course my favorite words change all the time and so I couldn't commit myself to something so permanent. I can't commit myself to anything, really. Tomorrow is Friday and it's the last day before break, which I'm so excited for, because I miss not waking up at 6 AM and not sitting in econ surrounded by idiots for an hour a day and not being behind on "The Vampire Diaries." I'm going to San Francisco in a two weeks to go to a special exhibit of Impressionist paintings, and I'm going to buy a winter formal dress, and I'm going to finish my college apps and sleep a lot and watch "Skins" and write and enjoy the weather and pretend that the two weeks aren't going to end.
I wish I was better at living in the moment.
You and I will fly out of this town
I don't know what to say right now or even what to think, and I think I'm in way over my head and I'm beyond my depths and I'm trying to make a new cd for my car but nothing sounds right to me right now. If things were the way I want them to be, or think I want them to be, I'd text you and tell you about how I've never liked "The Goofy Movie" and how I think I'm going to end up like Holden and that when I’m sitting at my desk in class I know you're behind me and to the right a bit even though I can't see you.I'm feeling restless again, which is typical for me, I guess, and I want to change, change everything and dye my hair and run away to somewhere beautiful, but of course I can't, because that's not who I am or who I've ever been. It all comes down to me being real and not fictional and not a dynamic character and not someone who people notice because I'm just too damn scared to speak up. To you I'm nothing and I don't expect anything more than that because I'm not the type to make things happen for myself.
I've been listening to the same two songs on repeat for the last two days, and there's no rhyme or reason to it so far as I can tell, and I wish we could just be without any rhyme or reason. There's no rhyme or reason to anything in my head anymore, but for some reason I don't think you'd care. Tomorrow I'll see you again and I probably won't speak to you but that's okay, because a part of me still believes in the idea that everything will work out for the best someday.
I know it's been such a long time
This is a passage from my "novel" and the grammar is horrible but that's the way I like it. I've got a lot on my mind right now and I can't get it straight and I don't want it where it can be found by anyone besides myself, so here's this and maybe in 24 hours things will make more sense to me.
I bury myself in your shoulder, losing myself in my tears. It’s Sunday, lazy Sunday, and we’re sitting on the grass and the wind is blowing my hair and you’re pulling back my hair playing with my hair and you want to fix it all and you say that everything is going to be okay you know it’s going to be okay and I love you I know that I love you but I’m scared because what if you can’t what if I break what if it breaks and it all falls apart and what if it’s so broken so broken that it’s gone it’s hopeless and you can’t fix it? All that’s still all that’s for sure is right now right here, you and me and the wind and the trees and my heart and yours and I love you. And even in the uncertain future where it could break it could all fall apart I love you.
Is there something wrong and you can't put your finger on it
Again I'm sitting here listening to my James Blunt pandora station, and I'm dissecting my brain, but not literally of course, or I guess rather I'm dissecting my psyche, or basically I'm trying to figure out why I am the way I am, but I guess it takes a lifetime or longer to figure that out. I'm shy and silent and thoughtful and ridiculous and obsessive-compulsive and self-conscious (and I'm pretty sure everyone hates me because I'm pretty sure people only say certain things because they feel like they have to) and awkward and I can't believe I'm actually taken the time to do this right now when I have a journal on my nightstand titled "my thoughts" which is basically the same as this since no one reads this anyway, except for this is prettier and lets me post pictures and I type much fast than I write. But the problem, really, is that I can't do either of those things as fast as I can think.Last night at about 10 o'clock my sister and I sat on her bed and looked up at her Beatles poster and told John Lennon how amazing he is, and I guess what I'm realizing is that some things are just too big for me to fully understand, and those are the things that I want to fill my life with. God, I'm pretentious.
Ooh baby baby it's a wild world
I've finished the first season of "Skins" and I'm heartbroken and I know that there's got to be something wrong with me since I care more about fictional characters than I do the people I know in real life, and now I'm sitting here and putting off starting the second season and I'm trying to define "loneliness" and I wonder if I make myself feel this way and that way or if it's just the way that things are. I'm in one of those moods where I just want to drink hot chocolate and wear a giant sweater and lounge around in the Gryffindor common room even though I'm a Ravenclaw, and I want to watch sad movies and write my stupid novel with its stupid fictional dreams, but then I guess all dreams are fictional, aren't they?I'm tired of school and pointless work and all the minutes every day that I spend waiting for someone to do something, for the teacher to start class or for the bell to ring or for someone to show up or for the hands on the clock to reach 9:30 so I can feel like it isn't too early to go to bed. I put on my new shoes tonight and they hurt my feet right away. They're so cute, but I feel like not forcing myself to wear them just because they're cute is something that fits in with my life philosophy, or at least the philosophy that I've been trying to make my life philosophy, which is basically "fuck it", and so if the shoes hurt and make my toes cramp up then I'm not going to wear them.
I just don't want to disappoint anyone.
There's no light that's left to shine
Tumblr is broken and it's left me frustrated and bored, and I've been watching "Skins", and I'm five or six episodes in, I think I've lost count, and Sid/Cassie break my heart. I think it's that he's so oblivious and she's so lovely but she's out of it as well, in a Luna sort of way, and she says "wow" all the time and he always wears that stupid hat, and I know in the end they're going to end up together because they have to and it's tv and plus I read the wikipedia article, but for now I feel like a teenage girl and I want to bury myself in this and the movies I got for Chanukah tonight and all these fictional characters, because a lot of the time it seems like they're more reliable than the non-fictional ones, especially now, as this month is long and the weather's strange and there are things that I don't want to be doing but I know I ought to do, and my thoughts keep on tumbling out of my head in these run-on sentences that end up in English essays and result in less-than-perfect scores.I'm tired, I suppose, that's all it is really, and I want it to be winter break already, and I wish I knew what to say to you when you tell me something about that boy you like, etc. etc., and I wish that what I say could at least once at some point actually be right.
Remember that your eyes can be your enemy
Day 12 — The person you hate most/caused you a lot of painThe worst parts of my days are those times when we're engaged in the same conversation with several other people, and are both speaking on the same topic but not looking at each other or speaking directly to each other or acknowledging each others' presences. The farther removed I get from you, the more I seem to hear about you, and the more I wonder how I put up you and your baggage for so long. And that's what caused me the most pain - the decision to stop putting up with it, having to watch as our whole tower of Jenga blocks collapsed because of the one piece I pulled out, wondering if I did the wrong thing. Still wondering if I did the wrong thing.
I think I hurt you too, and for that I'm sorry. But I'm not sorry for all the rest of this mess, because you've revealed to me more than anything else I've ever experienced, how unbelievably flawed everyone is despite their insistence that they are perfect. We all have these defense mechanisms that we pull out and hide behind when things get bad. Mine is silence, and yours is counter-attact, violent and angry and irrational and one-sided. Even with my shield of silence in place, I've never felt so defenseless in my life.
But in the end what you did was show me who I am more clearly than I've ever seen before. It doesn't seem like you did the same, though, and that's what I'm most sorry for.
You stare politely right on through some sort of window to your right
Words don't always come easy to me, which is strange, I suppose, given that I love words more than nearly anything else. But lately I don't want to speak, because lately I feel like everything I say is taken the wrong way, misinterpreted, or twisted by the listener to mean what he wants it to mean. I guess what baffles me is that so many people speak without meaning anything at all - and when I say something, what I say is what I mean. Wouldn't things be so much simpler if we all just said what we mean?
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