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Saturday, August 18, 2001
Odd. I don't cry when I'm sad, but I freeze up and can't breathe. Odd, and also inconvenient.So, I've goodbye to everyone, watched The Emperor's New Groove yet again (Bewaaaaaaaaare the groooooooooooove!!) and packed everything away in the back of the van. For the record, my stuff takes up a 4.5' x 3.5' x 3' space. I have yet to convert that to metric. It's not a cubic meter, but I don't think it's too bad. =)
So. Everything's about to change. I've been waiting for this for months and months now, but all of a sudden my muscles are tensing, trying to hold me back. I think part of it is the fear that the experience won't live up to the anticipation. For the last year, I've endured because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; I can see where I'm going and how I'm going to get out. I'm worried that I'll get myself into this, and I'll only be trapped again.
But not that worried. I know that I am ready for this because I know that I can no longer stay where I am. I'm restless. And so, here I go.
Computer should be hooked up on Sunday or Monday. See you on the flip side.
One day more
Another day, another destiny...
~Les Miserables
spake the voices
Friday, August 17, 2001
my mind is racing and my thoughts repeat themselves over and over in my head, singsong, until they trip over each other and turn into gibberish and i can't concentrate on any one thing for more than a few seconds before i'm distracted by something else i can't remember a simple list of four things long enough to write them down and my head is starting to hurt with fragments of songs floating through it and new razors have smooth plastic handles in pretty colors and damn all that financial crap i should take care of before i go and boxes i don't have enough boxes and i said goodbye to two people today who i won't see again until november at least and some things are fleeting and i don't know it and i don't want to grow apart and i'm obviously very tired but there's too much stuff on my bed to sleep and if i move it it will all be mixed up on the floor again instead of in piles which make sense at least to me at this particular moment in time and junk and papers to organize and i don't know why i saved all this and well this is certainly insanity if i ever saw it.
spake the voices
Wednesday, August 15, 2001
Thank you. I now have a complete and total understanding of the psychological need for funerals/wakes/memorial services. Wonderful, just wonderful.
spake the voices
My mother woke me up at 6:30 this morning and asked me to put on my glasses for a minute. Last night we had gone on a fruitless search for a pair of glasses, so I assumed she was trying to figure out something to do with getting new lenses, though why it needed to be at that time of morning wasn't clear. But when I put on my glasses and saw her face, she didn't seem at all interested in them. "Come here for a moment." So I followed her into my sister's room, where she gently tried to wake Krista up. Things were starting to make sense to me in ways I didn't want them to. "Come sit down," she said, patting the bed next to her. "Oh no. Oh no."We'd sat like this before on the couch in the living room, Mom in the middle and Krista and I on either side. It was the "bad news arrangement." As we sat there, she tried to explain that our uncle had died and gone to Heaven, trying to connect the concept of death to what we'd been told at church and turn it into something comprehensible to a two-year-old and a four-year-old. Heaven to me was the shiny poster hanging in the basement with the sun and fluffy clouds and a rainbow on it against a silver sky. It didn't make it any better; even then it was a fairy tale that couldn't explain why my father had dropped the phone and run out of the house a little while before.
I sat down. "I have some bad news," she said, in one of those ways which makes the news perfectly clear. "Oh no. Oh no." "Dad called. Your grandfather died last night." That wasn't the way this was supposed to happen. He'd been ill and in the hospital of course, and Dad had been going up to visit him fairly regularly for the past few weeks, but he'd been expected to live up to year with radiation treatments. He had just decided to have his other hip replaced, and he'd nearly recovered from the first hip operation. We were going to go see him on my way out to Colgate. I had not gone out to see him since he went into the hospital, and suddenly it started to feel like my priorities had been all wrong somehow, because how could this happen without me seeing him first?
Mom was still talking. "There are some things you can do during the day to get ready for when we hear about the arrangements..."
I could see in my head two-year-old Krista and almost-five me as Mom handed us each a paper bag and told us to pack anything we needed for a weekend at grandma and grandpa's. We went around the house putting our favorite toys in the bags, forgetting completely about practical things like clothes and toothbrushes. I don't remember what my mother did when she found out. We were stupid about funerals then. Did we need our most important toys? Were we coming home ever again? Was it the apocalypse? Overwhelmed, we were unhelpful.
Arrangements. This might mean leaving a day earlier than expected, making packing a greater priority than before. Digging through boxes, pulling out the dress and shoes that I hadn't expected to need until sometime after I'd moved in at Colgate. Putting them in an overnight bag instead. Wondering when Dad will call, and how early I should start calling my friends to tell them the Friday get-together is probably off and trying not to forget all the little errands I have to run to get everything I need for college. My other grandparents left this morning on a plane to Florida, and I wonder when they will get the news.
The night before the funeral my grandparents-- not my uncle's parents, but the ones from the other side of the family-- drove Krista and I to their house, to get us out of the way. Sitting in the back of the car, I told them gravely, "My uncle died." "Yes," they said, "we know."
spake the voices
today i've wanted to cry, or hurt someone. moody. i don't know if it started when i was biking past the stupid boys down by the college and one felt the need to videotape me coming down the street while another jumped out in front of my bike and screamed and the others (four or five of them) stood around and laughed and looked dumb. i didn't swerve for the kid in front of me; it was somehow a reflection of the blank gaze i developed in elementary school when the other students were making fun of me, to pretend i didn't hear. i rode straight ahead and the boy sidestepped out of the way looking somewhat startled, and the other boys were yelling something i couldn't hear, and i flipped them off as i went by. i hate it when i feel like i'm being bullied, even if the aggressors are harmless and stupid. i often wish i could make a great show of force that would gain people's respect, even as something inside me says that force brings fear, not respect. i'm so foolish in my fancies.after that people were only clutter in my day, crowding me and filling my ears with their gibberish. for some reason i wanted confrontation and conflict, as if emerging victorious from a battle of wills could somehow redeem me for being an ass for someone else earlier in the day. there were three customers and two salespeople in the whole of lenscrafters, yet everything was too close and too loud and i left empty-handed, telling my mother that maybe we could get new lenses put in my old frames. it's hard to find a pair of glasses that you like when everything around you makes you tense and when you look in the mirror you can't see anything beautiful in your face because your eyes are trying to hide back in your skull, somewhere safe and solid.
spake the voices
Well, as long as Rabi's brought up the subject of honesty and identity in blogging, I might as well talk about it, because I've been thinking about that lately too.Am I honest in my blogging? I think I am, as honest as I ever am with myself. Blogging in some ways represents my inner monologue, and though I can often fool myself and hide my weaknesses on a daily basis, when I sit down and think I try not to deceive myself. When I really think about it I can be painfully blunt with my honesty. This is where all that comes out.
But, even though I am honest, what you read here is not necessarily an honest picture of me. That's because it's not complete. I've said before that I blog to get things out that I don't get out during the day, to purge from my mind the clutter of my thoughts. So that's what you hear, the things that echo in my head.
Less clear, perhaps, is the person that I am during the day. You read my thoughts, but not always my actions, conversations, daily life story. That's a separate part of me that you don't see much of. If you saw me in real life perhaps you'd think I'm not the same person that you read about. (People who know me in real life as well as here...am I right?) How I present myself to the world is as important a part of me as what goes on in my head.
And the picture is not complete without both halves: who I am by day and who I am during the night. You do not know me until you know both.
spake the voices
Monday, August 13, 2001
I really don't want to think about all the things I'll be doing for the last time this week, but my last riding lesson at home just came and went, and while I'm not precisely sad about it, I know that's one of the things I'll miss. I wonder where I'll stand on the Colgate equestrian team. Am I good? bad? mediocre? Will I like the instructor? the horses? Will the people be rich snobs with fancy clothes and boots? (I have the absolute minimum in riding clothes; my single pair of rubber boots has lasted me several years now and is falling to pieces; I wear breeches until they get holes in embarrassing places; my first show jacket was a suit jacket from the SalVal.) I don't know quite what to think, but I keep telling myself that after eight years of riding I *should* be reasonably good.I've been troubled lately. I am always very supportive of my friends and I always speak in their defense, when they're getting picked on or when people are talking behind their backs. I can always tell them that people are being stupid and have no right to behave like that. I can stifle rumors and put people in their places. But I don't know how to say, They are right, what you did was wrong, but I support you in your wrongness, because we all make mistakes. I can say that, but I can't fight in the same way I usually can. I can't battle the masses and tell them they're wrong; I can't tell friends that the accusations are unjust. I can only sit in my silent support and watch what happens, like my recurring nightmare where the cars are about to crash but the driver won't hit the brake pedal. Slow motion, disaster inevitable.
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out"...
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it didn't work
Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn...
~Queen, "Under Pressure"
spake the voices
note: amanda is not allowed to have long naps like that in the afternoon anymore. especially when she hasn't accomplished anything today. sheesh.repeat after me: night is for sleeping. night is for sleeping.
was that remotely convincing?
spake the voices
Sigh. Can't you just tell that it's Monday?But, in better news, Mollie is coming home! Yay!! =)
spake the voices
Sunday, August 12, 2001
smell of my grandparents' house. dog fur, distant cooking-smells, mothballs, woodstove. (wow. i know i'm usually quite sensitive to smells, but never have i smelled this many completely random memories just wandering around my house. this is absurd. what's going on here?)
spake the voices
smell of bread rising. (you'll be getting these updates until random smells stop accosting me and drawing me back in time.)
spake the voices
Updated Spoken, Escape, and Dragon, just so you know. Nothing overly exciting, but some amusing quotes and such.
spake the voices
I'm feeling sick to my stomach with homesickness for the home that I haven't left yet. It's not home, precisely, but some of the people around here, and some things which seem like they'll never change but I know they will just as soon as I turn my back.Over a friend's house last night I tried to take in the music we were listening to, the smells of her house, the warmth of our friendship, the things that make me happy. The memories form around the songs and the smells. I think I will remember some things forever, but I can't experience them forever, and that's where the pain comes from. If only someone could convince me that something was real!
I feel sick, but I can't stop listening to music that chokes me. Even if I turned it off, it would still play in my head. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for anything else.
Out on the highstreets,
Dim all the lights now,
Bright colored tears again...
~Bandits, "Catch Me"
spake the voices
