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Saturday, June 09, 2001
my ear is bleeding because a bug bit me while kate and i were picking strawberries. i don't want to cry about the summer-smell anymore, but everything is still weird on some level. as i suspected, the band banquet was the true end of my high school experience. i still can't get over my Most Spirit in Band award and the John Philip Sousa award and the long flowing green dress with the skirt that shimmered dramatically whenever i spun around and the wonderful things that people wrote in my yearbook. i have a lot of spunk, apparently, and my antics at lunch will be missed. somehow that sort of thing is what matters the most. the last four years had meaning for me, and maybe, just maybe, i've helped to make them have meaning for other people too.
do you ever have the feeling that there's something that you absolutely need to say to someone, and you're not sure quite what it is or how to say it, but you know that it means something and needs to be said? i am going to start writing a letter now, and i don't know if it will be the first or the last draft, or when if ever i will send it, but it needs to be done, and now is the time to do it.
the band banquet. words. when i have no words, all i can do is compile the random fragments of lyrics that dance in my head like i did on the dance floor tonight. description would make it less than what it was.
you are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen zoot suit riot, throw back a bottle of beer... and if you get the choice to sit it out or dance, i hope you dance... i will survive, as long as i know how to love i know i'll stay alive... wheredidyoucomefrom wheredidyougo wheredidyoucomefrom cottoneyedjoe... we like to party-- we like, we like to party... greased lightnin', go greased lightnin'... did you ever know that you're my hero Thursday, June 07, 2001
so, no more band room for me. i'm done over there. i wish that meant that i was done at the school, but there's still the litmag to put out, and tonight i have to revise it so i can give it to the advisor so she can run it past the administrators so that they can approve it and the office can print them up. nothing is ever easy.
the entire upstairs of my house smells like shrimp. i noticed it this morning, and pointed it out to my father, who could barely smell it and didn't think it was a problem. but we had a hot day today, and when i arrived home after work the kitchen and all adjoining areas smelled very unpleasant indeed. my father had by that time deemed it good to take out the trash (from whence the odors came) but it was too late. i have no desire to go up there right now, even though i'm hungry. later this evening perhaps i'll burn some of the incense that mere gave me for graduation, and hopefully that will improve the situation. it's occurred to me lately that incense might be particularly useful for influencing my moods. it's odd that i never thought of it before, considering that smells have such a strong effect on me. like last week, for some reason the basement smelled like a hotel room; like fresh towels and soap. it reminded me of going to sea mist in the summer, and it made me happy. the band banquet is tomorrow, and i think that will really symbolize the end of the school year for me. today i decided that i didn't really want to wear any of the dresses that i own, so on my way home from work i stopped at the SalVal (aka Salvation Army). after pawing through dresses for twenty minutes, i found a really nice one. unfortunately, the words necessary to describe it are eluding me at the moment, so you'll just have to be satisfied with knowing that it is dark green, floor-length, and short-sleeved. my textural vocabulary seems to have disappeared for now, which is too bad because the beauty of the thing is in the different textures. dammit, i hate it when i can't find words. i will now brave the odorous upstairs to find myself some food. bleh. It's more than a feeling
reading over the last post, i just realized how melodramatic it sounds. get a grip, amanda. (i say that to myself a lot. not that it really helps.)
secretarial work isn't so bad. at least, not today. for several days i have been studying the migration patterns of shop orders and invoices around the office. for days it just looked like random movements, like a bunch of meandering cows. but today it all started to make sense, from the birth of the shop orders on the printer to their journey to the graphics computer to their visit to the shop and their subsequent return to the secretary's desk, now yellow after molting their white copies somewhere along the way. and then the birth of invoices to match each shop order, the separating of white from yellow and the stapling of shop orders to the matching white invoices, and then another journey for the yellow invoices: down to shipping, then back later to be filed with all the rest of them. and then the white invoices sent away forever for billing purposes. a whirlwind of paperwork, always fluttering onto the desk like tagged birds that have been recaptured so i can fill the computer with information about them and then send them on their way again. and i'm starting to get to know where to direct each one when it lands on my pile of work. before today i was about as confused as they were about the situation. *sigh* i've been thinking about invoices as birds all day, but now the analogy seems silly and inarticulate. at least real birds instinctively know where to go. these silly things always need to be guided. i came home early today so i could get things done, but i utterly failed to accomplish anything. dammit. Oh, life is like a maze of doors Wednesday, June 06, 2001
*sigh* i feel a bit like Ayla from The Clan of the Cave Bear lately. Right after she's cursed with death by the priest of the Clan:
Ayla saw the woman she loved overwrought with grief and ran to her to comfort her. But just as she was about to throw her arms around the only mother she could remember, Iza turned her back and moved away to avoid the embrace. It was as though she didn't see her. The girl was confused. No one saw her. When she approached, they turned away or moved aside. Not deliberately to let her pass, but as though they had planned to move away before she came. And by the way, if you haven't read The Clan of the Cave Bear, you ought to. It's good. Anyway, I do feel dead. Like a ghost or something. It seems like I've been forgotten by my former classmates. People talk about me more than to me, and more about things that we did in the past than about any plans for the future. I don't hear any news about my friends and what's going on with them. When I call, pathetically looking for companionship, a quick conversation is all they have time for before they return to their busy lives. I am no longer involved. Of course, that could just be my fear of abandonment going haywire again. Really, though, the door to high school has closed behind me, and the door to college has not yet opened. I am in an in-between area, an interval where I belong nowhere. I don't exist in either place. Where am I right now? It's not precisely an otherworld from which I can return after the passage of a moon. It's a hallway between two things. There's nothing in the hallway, and I'm trying to talk to people through the doors. Well, no, I can't say there's nothing in the hallway. There's my family and the shop and invoices and riders and main panels and grommets and drill-pressing and vinyl-weeding and who knows what else. And yeah, in case you haven't picked up on it, I've been working a lot. And I got to work in the shop as well as the office. Yay. Time may change me Sunday, June 03, 2001
first off, there is a really good discussion about discrimination against homosexuals going on at Wockerjabby right now. go. read it.
well, graduation was today. sadly, it was held inside. this was screwy because the band was crammed into a really small corner of the gym (whoever thought that was a good idea should be beaten with a small tree) and we weren't allowed to have as many guests. we were given seven tickets for outdoors, but we could only use three for indoors. so my parents went, obviously, and the grandparents had to flip a coin to determine who got to go. it was disappointing, because they all drove all the way out here for graduation, and then they couldn't get in. later we found out that they were showing graduation on closed-circuit tv in the auditorium next to the gym, so the other three grandparents came and saw it there. but it wasn't quite the same. and man, it was hot inside. so, i marched in, i sang, i played, i listened to a couple very good speeches by classmates, and i got my diploma. and then sat for a half an hour while eveyone else got theirs. afterwards i tossed my cap and blew bubbles on my way out, and that was that. went home and hung around with my friends and grandparents and laughed and relaxed and realized that while no one is really dependable, maybe they don't have to be. maybe being there sometimes is enough. so, some final details to take care of in the band room, a bit more filing to be done, the band banquet on friday, and then that will be all of high school. i feel like i should say something philosophical right now, but nothing's coming to mind. ah well. i'll wax poetic on anotehr occasion, perhaps. Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine  |