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| It has been a long time.
I hate self-reflective statements; phrases that sound straight from the scripted mouth of a psychologist. That said, I am a different person now than I have been in the past.
I also hate giddy optimism; naive positivity in the face of difficulties and sadness. That said, I am not sad, depressed, or tragic.
I hate braggarts; whether on an emotional or materialistic platform, people that place themselves above others are simply not attractive or good company. That said, here goes:
I think I am a better person, lately, since whenever it was I wasn't the better person. I am generally logical. I stopped smoking [often]. I smile more. I have interests, and they are mine, and I explore them on my own. Trendy is not my goal.
I think I am a better thinker, recently, since I was a young teenager. Comes with the age, I suppose, like an acquired taste but for the mind. I don't know why; a combination of teachers, friends, experiences; acquired tastes and abandoned cliches. I am less mindless.
Right now, I am not a year older than I was before, I have not had a life-altering experience, nothing monumental has happened to make me return to Xanga (though I have missed it) other than the desire to write something. In the past two years, I have discovered how much I love writing. I don't know if I am coherent all the time; if my logic flows. I never know, in fact, until I read what someone thinks about it. I wrote a story for my English midterm--we had to pick three characters from a list, put them into a situation, write in their voices, and have them convey some kind of meaningful message--about Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), and Meursault (L'Etranger/The Stranger) and a night in prison. Incomparable, really, was the feeling that came with finishing it. It was six pages long, and the best thing I have ever written.
I wish I had more to say, something meaningful or beautiful or heartbreaking or impactive, but right now I don't. I have something inane, embarrassing. I think I have a crush on someone. Yes, a crush. Cue the Valentine's decorations and purpleish-pink heart confetti. I've known him for a considerable amount of time, and I'm still not sure if it is a crush or just friendship--we are quite good friends. I don't think anything will ever happen; the ones I like never like me back the same way. Is that unfortunate, easier, harder?I don't know.
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| I saw the Rosewood Thieves in concert a few nights ago, in a used bookstore. They were fantastic. Much better than the second singer, some country-style woman. Shameless, yet unaffiliated, advertising: the Thieves on iTunes.
Lately I have been wishing for snow. Not flurries, sleet, hail...powder snow. I want the kind of snow that falls and when it lands it makes that noise. The inexplicable sound of a restful, calming softness. It has no onomatopoeia. I want the snow of a cliche: when Central Park is coated in a perfect frothy layer of snow that looks like cappuccino foam. It is the Central Park of all the Hallmark holiday cards, where below an image of a snow-covered paradise it says "Happy Holidays" in red, glossy, and intentionally messy script, as if you had stumbled upon this perfect winter scene and had to share it with the card recipient.
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| The past seven days have not been good.
I'm still losing weight. Or at least I think I am, stupid fucking scale always wavering. I try to zero it perfectly before I step on it but it never is guaranteed. Even when I think I've lost it is entirely possible that it's the same damn weight as before. But if I am still losing, if my methods are working, this paragraph is useless. I still feel and look fat, so I suppose scale-or-not I'm still stuck.
I made a resolution to myself about halfway through the first quarter to bring up my grade in calculus. I also decided that my success in calc was dependent on my success in losing weight. If I could lose more--clearly a subjective, unpredictable and oh so unlikely prospect--I could certainly manipulate defined--or at least definite--terms. And I did. Discipline. Discipline is key. I did poorly on a math test once this quarter, but I used the one-test-drop get out of free no charge no blemish on your record no guilt given to us by our teacher. This, combined with various good and or better grades, brought my quarter one average up to a 92. Bien fait, I told myself. Five points up, five pounds down.
That's the tradeoff, five pounds for five points. Keep it going. How good it will feel when I get to a 100 and still measure pounds in increments of five.
Then fuck fuck fuck it had to all change crashing huge wave deep purple disappointment. Let me just say, I study. Shit, man, do I study. I make guides, outlines, reference sheets every stupid fucking thing for a fucking worthless (but you see it's not really worthless) number. I did this studying for physics and--be blunt, confront it now or forever hold your peace--got a 65.
It stabs. It's the thing that sharp like a knife like a sword like a needle pokes and prods and irritates an burns. It speaks. It says "you think, little miss, you little mis you think you can succeed that easy? What would ever give you that idea? You want it all you earn it all."
My deal (up calc down fat) with myself was incomplete. It yawns like the great big vast blue ocean at feeble attempts. It's not the 65 that bothers me. That, I can deal with. It's the fact that I tried tried tried and fuck no way no how did it all work.
Learning to live with disappointment is a skill. But being idle, feeble, is unacceptable.
Fuck the old and in with the new. I'll clip my fingernails down to my hand to make them slip down my throat and pull out my failure. My lips will sting with tragedies, visceral stories of vomit and tears. I swear I fucking swear I'll do it. I am impassioned. I can do anything.
If at first you don't succeed, try try try try do it again until you do.
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| I have not posted here in a very long time. I suppose I feel I haven't had much to say. Nothing insightful or witty; profound or tragic. Recently my life has been a mundane frenzy of college applications and standardized test scores.
I started reading a new book today. It's called "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." At first impression, the title is unappealing to me. Who does the author think he is? I wonder.
It may be the most incredible book I have ever read. I have read 100 pages today, and I would not be surprised if I finish it tomorrow. I'm not able yet to articulate exactly what it is that I love so much about this book, but I suppose it has a lot to do with the realness of his writing. Its brilliance is almost tangible.
Here is an excerpt; the main character, the author, has lost his parents to cancer and is now taking care of his 8-year-old brother, Toph. They are currently at Toph's school's open house.
We are pathetic. We are stars.
We are either sad and sickly or we are glamorous and new. We walk in and the choices race through my head. Sad and sickly? Or glamorous and new? Sad/sickly or glamorous/new? Sad/sickly? Glamorous/new?
We are unusual and tragic and alive.
We walk into the throng of parents and children.
We are disadvantaged but young and virile. We walk the halls and the playground, and we are taller, we radiate. We are orphans. As orphans, we are celebrities. We are foreign exchange people, from a place where there are still orphans. Russia? Romania? Somewhere raw and exotic. We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows--a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone's imagination. That's why Matthew wants Beth and me dead in a plane crash. His parents are old, bald, square, wear glasses, are wooden and gray, are cardboard boxes, folded, closeted, dead to the world -- We ate at their house actually, not long ago, accepting the neighborly invitation sometime before Matthew's plane crash comment. And we were bored to tears in their stillborn house, its wooden floors and bare walls--the daughter even played the piano for us, the father so haughtily proud of her, the poor bald guy. They owned no TV, there were no toys anywhere, the place was airless, a coffin--
But we!--we are great-looking! We have a style, which is messy, rakish, yet intriguingly so, singular. We are new and everyone else is old. We are the chosen ones, obviously, the queens to their drones--the rest of those gathered at this open house are aging, past their prime, sad, hopeless. They are crinkly and no longer have random sex, as only I among them am still capable of. They are done with such things; even thinking about them having sex is unappealing. They cannot run without looking silly. They cannot coach the soccer team without making a mockery of themselves and the sport. Oh, they are over. They are walking corpses, especially that imbecile smoking out in the courtyard. Toph and I are the future, a terrifyingly bright future, a future that has come from Chicago, two terrible boys from far away, cast away and left for dead, shipwrecked, forgotten, but yet, but yet, here, resurfaced, bolder and more fearles, bruised and unshaven, sure, their pant legs frayed, their stomachs full of salt water, but now unstoppable, insurmountable, ready to kick the saggy asses of the gray-haired, thickly bespectacled, slump-shouldered of Berkeley's glowering parentiscenti!
Can you see this?
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| I went to visit some friends last weekend. On Saturday, there was a fair in a town near them.
Walking through the 'Treasures' section, made up of old donated items, was quite a hollow feeling. The barn was full of old baskets and fake flowers and dinner glasses and sets of teacups. When I walked in to it, time was suspended for a second and I felt as if I had just become a character in a photograph turned sepia from age, and should gleefully look at all of the pleasant knick knacks and cutesy decorations for my 1930s home. I couldn't help but wonder why the majority of these things hadn't been thrown out to begin with. When my polaroid glimpse ended, though, I realized I was in the middle of a stampede of people, all clamoring about to try to claim the items that were probably identical to those that they had given away themselves. People were actually pushing through to claim the sets of complete teacups.
They didn't have to worry, though. The fake flowers were sold first.
eugenio recuenco
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