11 April 2000
-From Fish, my quote of the day: "Tell me why,
why won't you love me for who I am, where I am? He said 'cause that's
not the way the world is babe. This is how I love you babe.'" Stina
appreciates that one I'm sure too... some good ol' New Mexican "Hearts
& Bones". Now all I want to do is to go home. Well, Debate
Nats & then home. Maybe I'll just go home directly from Swarthmore.
-I am so good at screwing myself up. I should put that on my summer resumes.
"Excellent skills at self-destruction in all facets. Works
well with others in effort to undermine self at all possible levels." I
think that's neat.
-THAT is a lot of packaging. At least it's not a bomb.
-I need to figure out if I want to do my Census thingy or not. I really
have objections to about, well, all of the questions for one reason or another.
I'm tempted to send it back with a long list of my objections, but I don't
know if anyone would read it or if I'd be held in contempt of state or what.
Dubious.
-I never get tired of the "Watership Down" movie. It may be
animated, but I could watch it all day long. Maybe I will...
-"Confidential"??!? I'm sorry, but you just gotta admit that's
funny. I think I should start saying "confidential" things behind
HER back - really mean, nasty, untrue things & when she asks say "Oh,
I'm sorry, I had a CONFIDENTIAL conversation with someone!" What
a load of crap. & besides, confronting me in front of Driscoll is
a REALLY confidential way of handling one's life. Je-sus.
-Excerpt time. Actually, whole e-mail time. This is just WAY too
relevant on about 80 levels to leave out. An e-mail, from Mesco, exactly
2 & a half years ago, to the day, dated 11 October 1997: "It's
not necessarily true or good, just something to think about..... 'Time ticks
by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've
missed the chance to have other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded
like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.' --Douglas Coupland
Maybe when you get right down to it, all stories are war stories
and all stories are love stories....but you need to let yourself live either
way...." Chew on THAT.
10 April 2000
-Glory Junction?? I don't know if I WANT to spend
much time there.
-From my Dad: Life is not an inalienable right. Think about it.
We take it for granted that death (an alienation from life, to be sure)
is inescapable. With that in mind, how can life, something guaranteed
to be imminently alienable, be INalienable? The Constitution codifies
& protects absurdity.
-What a disaster of a day. I hear one thing from one person who isn't
even sure & it sends me into total tailspin. Not that I appear to
be missing anything. But being back on unsure footing with the truth is
something I tire of desperately easily. I think that the thought-speak
I wrote about in a short story "Earth to Earth" years ago should be
instituted as planet-wide policy. One should only be able to make an effort
to cloud one's thoughts & otherwise, thoughts are the base-form of communication.
& it'll be clear if their thoughts are being "blocked" or
not. Imagine how differently we'd live, how much more intelligent behavior
would be & seem. For now, I'm stuck on Earth & not on Ulanghi.
But I suppose I can dream.
9 April 2000
[from Long Island]
-"Sanctuary" is the perfect word for it. Thank
you, Zirkins!!
-Snow in April. I woke up, looked out the window, & was convinced
that I was dreaming. The whole day was coated with swirling surreality.
Snow softens everything, even in unfamiliar worlds. This has been
what Dylan must have been talking about, Time Out of Mind.
-People's kindness makes me want to cry.
-I'm tired of thinking about what I deserve. It's never what I get. Or
I never seem to think it is. Except when things are working out &
then I think it's more than I deserve. But I'm giving up on that whole
"things working out" idea, so... I give up.
8 April 2000
[from New York City]
-Most of the tournament on Friday, it seemed people couldn't
determine if my eyes were watering from my cold or if I'd been crying. I
was among those people.
-Waiting in the Broome St. lobby for 2 hours, I realized how much of my planning
was based on friends always being there. No knock on Gris (Hell, I'd done
more or less the same thing to him coming back from Dartmouth. Though
he'd had Schneider & even Zack to fall back on.), but what a bitter pill
to swallow in light of this week's losses. Every song wafting through
from the deli was extra salt in the wounds. As if "Wish You Were
Here" on the car ride in hadn't been enough. At least I finally figured
out who was lying - making that particular song extra difficult.
-Theme for the trip? Waiting. As Dugan observed last morning, it's
a bad sign when you see the same people coming back after you saw them leave.
7 April 2000
-Well, I won $5.25 in poker & then watched the M's
win 5-2. These are the only good things to happen to me in the last 72
hours. Why does it feel like it's been longer than that?
-What kills me about all this is that, much like Lisha's somewhat surprising
analysis of the bag-scene in "American Beauty" (see her 6 April [she calls it "FOUR - SIX"] - click link
above), everything was beyond my control. The actions of about
five other people, in addition to the actions of a few germs finding their way
to me, created the whole running fiasco. There's nothing I could've done
differently to change any of it. Which is why I find it so strange that
right now, my feelings can entirely be captured by listening to the extralong
15-minute live version of "A Murder of One" that I have an MP3 of.
I think you can find it at annabegins.com too (now click
the OTHER link above!). In the midst of this song, Adam Duritz
yells out "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry now" about a bazillion
times. & the plaintive urgency of this message seems to embody my
soul today. Surprise: confusion, instability, paradox. Not
new themes, but I didn't know they'd feel so distant from the realm of my free
will. I need to figure out what the message is here or I'm gonna go bonkers.
Maybe I'll find it on the subway in Harlem.
-After giving my Dad a brief synopsis (very abbreviated, in fact) of the events
of the past 3 days, he said, completely matter-of-factly, without any hesitation,
"So, you're not going to New York this weekend." I think that
just about sums it up. But here I go.
6 April 2000
-Confidence? Never heard of it. That must
be that mythical beast that whenever it shows signs of coming around, suddenly
disappears without a trace. Save a possible claw in the back for good
measure.
-Blocking people on IM strikes me as rather immature. Who am I supposed
to believe?
-From an e-mail to Shannon dated 6 April 1998 (2 full years ago): "On
the college news, I've gotten in to 5 of 6 schools I've heard from... Brandeis
still has the best offer (though Berkeley still hasn't reported on the Regents
Scholarship... one way or the other). So, we'll see. It's looking
more & more like Boston is my future home, however. I could do much worse!
I wish I could visit, though... I've never been to Boston & I'm not sure
I want to commit to it for 4 years without ever seeing it. Though I've
heard nothing but good stuff from others, so I probably shouldn't be concerned.
Anyway..." The more things change... Freez, you can fill in
the remainder of THAT blank, I'm sure.
-Welcome back to being Everybody's Best Friend & Nobody's Lover. Familiar
territory, to be sure. Maybe in another 14 months, I'll have another chance.
This cynicism won't last too long, I hope, but tonight it just feels fervent.
5 April 2000
-A fine, fine line between defensive & deceptive.
& perhaps not mutually exclusive. But certainly more than linguistic
similarity. Sometimes it'd be nice to shut off my brain...
-"Uncomfy as heck" is really sound analysis for how this feels. Maybe
I should emulate Niver & stop going to that class. I wonder if he
knows.
-Wow, I couldn't've been much more wrong. Ever feel like the world just
ended & you wonder why you still exist? Any second, I swear I'm going
to disappear. A Mack Truck would've been far kinder, I fear. "All
is darkness, anger, pain, & fear," as S&G say in "The Sun
is Burning".
4 April 2000
-Good ol' Sherman breakfast. & with the fog
rolling in & everything. The scenery never changes, but the scene
is so rarely stable.
-Where the hell is Zack? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm getting well
too used to having a single & all, but I haven't seen the kid in almost
a week. & while Tina Turner could, on some strange netherworld, be
seen as captivating, I doubt she'd be THIS captivating. Makes one wonder.
-Oh well. It's just Opening Night. The M's are on their way to a
161-1 season!
3 April 2000
-Electric.
-Brandzy's book comment was perhaps the least funny thing I've ever heard in
my life. I mean that quite literally. & it actually caught me
off-guard. For a few seconds, at least. Good thing that today, I
will not be fazed.
2 April 2000 Introspection, My Worst Friend* (Current)
[from Chicago]
-Those were almost normal dreams. Hm. Well,
normal's an exaggeration - I guess I mean "not extremely disturbing".
I've been thinking too much again... maybe it should be disturbing, but
I don't see it yet.
-Janna is a Yupette. Like a Muppet, but wealthier & more spoiled. Like,
a Yuppie, but younger. That term needs to catch on.
-Joe Edlow & your-mom jokes don't mix. I've created a monster.
-I've got to learn to start trusting my instincts. I might hate my intuition,
but it's always right. Guess it's as good a source of advice as anything.
-Sitting in Midway waiting for that late plane, I noticed this cute kid sitting
on her bag by the window. She seemed to have that spark of life, of intelligent
thought, of vibrance. Then I noticed she was reading one of those mass-media
magazines - it occurred to me her spirit was dying, or perhaps slowly decaying.
In five years, I can see her vacuous & sad without realizing what hit
her. Airports are living embodiments of the great American tragedy.
-You can feel close to anyone if you go through enough with them. In that
sense, Katie's right.
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers",
by SWClayton.