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Saturday, March 23, 2002
Sometimes I just don't want to hear any voices or any sounds anymore. I draw inside myself and try to defend myself from it all. From the world.I don't know how I got this way. I don't know how to make it stop.
The nighttime is my time, after everyone's gone to bed, and there's finally some peace.
spake the voices
Yeah, as if the Greek stood a *chance* ...
spake the voices
I am so physically tired that my legs ache from the full-body stretches that I keep convulsing into. I didn't sleep well or long last night, and had the strangest dreams, though nothing that forms a coherent enough story to relate here. I know I should do Greek, but ... tired.I'm going to go up to my room and see whether the bed or the Greek wins.
spake the voices
The Princess and the Warrior was ... well, I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't that. It was, of course, well put-together, well acted, well shot-- a movie worth seeing, and certainly of the quality I would expect from the Run Lola Run people. But the concept, the story itself, I'm not so sure I like. I'll have to think about it more, and probably see it again. But for now I won't say anything more for thsoe of you who haven't seen it yet.
spake the voices
Friday, March 22, 2002
On Wednesday as I walked past Bowdoin Square I heard loud voices coming from the subway station, voices that soon congealed into a chant as a group of people came out of the station and started walking towards a nearby building. Eventually I could make out the words: "Too few dollars, too many debts! Too few dollars, too many debts!" They walked over to the building, shouting, chanting, and as I waited to cross the street, finally a cheer went up, and applause. The lights turned, and I crossed, wondering what made them cheer, clap, cease their chant. Surely they hadn't magically caused some god to add to their dollars or erase their debts? Had they been looking for a smile, an affirmation, for someone to say "I am with you, I will help"? Was their task somehow ended, simply, there at Bowdoin Square, with applause concluding a chant, as if it were only a performance of sorts? I don't know, I'll never know.Last night I went to a meeting for the parents of music students at my old high school, to try to save the marching band. The music program is nothing like what it was when I was there; the budget keeps getting cut and there's simply not enough staff. So for two hours we sat in a room trying to pinpoint the problem, at what exact point in the process we were losing money and support, though somehow everyone that anyone talked to about the music program managed to put on a smile and speak of support for the arts and agree with everything that was said about the program needing more money, more teachers. Somewhere in the process someone wasn't aligning their actions with their words. So we listened to people talk and come up with ideas, questioned them, tried to separate personal motivations and biases from their arguments to see what they were really saying, tried to keep everyone focused on the same topic, not whether the drama program had enough funds but whether there would be a marching band next fall. And we listened and talked and in the end decided to send a letter to the superintendent, one of endless letters it seems, because letters can be sent and letters can be overlooked or thrown out or otherwise ignored-- but what else is one to do? What else do we have? And I feel like washing my hands of the whole thing because I've dealt with this music department frustration for so long, tried to change things for so long that now that I'm not actually in the school anymore I just don't want it to be my problem.
Lately I feel impotent, like the letters, because I see the events of the world happening around me and no matter how many letters I write I am only one person with a piece of paper and I am as lost as it is in the shuffle of paperwork in the world. I shouted no! at my New York Times headlines when we went to war with Afghanistan, I grit my teeth as they come closer and closer to making a fetus a person, I am shocked when I read articles that explain our self-serving, inhuman policy in countries I had no idea we were involved with-- but I don't know what I can do. I think I am a social reformer by nature, because I always want to change things, fix things, make the world work better. But I can only go to so many meetings and discuss so many things with people who already agree with me before I start to wonder whether anything I do will ever have any effect at all. My powers are so small-- I have my vote, and my power as a consumer, and my power to write letters. But as one person my little powers are really nothing in a world of people who disagree, or worse, don't care, or don't take the time to look beneath things and see what's really going on. Because the fact is that it's not things like abortion where there are two clear sides and people fight for each side that are the problem, it's issues like human rights and music programs where no one you talk to will ever say "I am against human rights" or "I don't think there should be funding for music and the arts in schools" but at the same time no one will move their hand to back up their words. People hear the words and go on about their business thinking that everything's okay, and don't realize that what they're told doesn't necessarily have any relevance to what's happening. I can't pretend I'm any better myself, because the facts are buried in the back of the newspapers (when was the last time that I read an article that wasn't sent to me by a professor or listed in the New York Times headlines that get emailed to me every day?) and even then are you likely to get the whole story? How do you ever get the whole story?
After the meeting Thursday night I was tired, not physically tired but mentally tired of trying to fix what I see wrong with the world, an all-encompassing restless tiredness that keeps me from focusing on my Greek and keeps me from forming the words for this entry but also keeps me from falling asleep easily as I wonder and worry and feel helpless. I am tired of not knowing, but so much time and energy are required to really know what's going on. I am tired of not changing things, but so much time and energy are necessary to make even the smallest inkling of change, if that. But I'm starting to think that I need to read the articles in the back of the newspapers, and watch what I buy, and start writing all the letters that have been left unwritten all these years, because I will never hear of the crowd at Bowdoin Square again, and I can wash my hands of the music program at my high school, but no matter how tired you get how can you ever wash your hands of the world?
spake the voices
Thursday, March 21, 2002
I'm as stoic as can be when I'm sad, but I cry when I'm angry. If that isn't a bitch of an inconvenience I don't know what is.
spake the voices
Today is lovely and warm, and when I went out to rent the video I wore my shoes without socks, and had rolled up the sleeves of my blouse to make it shortsleeved. Driving down the street today, with the window down and Queen loud on the radio, you'd hardly believe that yesterday a thick wet snow was falling, unexpectedly, midway through the day, outlining black tree-branches, delaying plane flights, flinging itself in my face as I walked around Government Center, soaking through my light jacket and sweater and freezing my forehead so that I couldn't crease it as I squinted at snow-covered street signs. You'd hardly believe it. The weather this year has been bizarre even by New England standards.
spake the voices
I now have in my possession a subtitled copy of The Princess and the Warrior.WOO HOO!!!! *dances with glee*
spake the voices
I always see myself in the people around me, and sometimes I see my future in them. In some ways it seems like time doesn't travel in a straight line, but in circles, and I imagine that history repeats itself each year, or each decade, and I wonder what part I'll be playing in someone else's story when that time comes. Sometimes it's little things. But then sometimes, I see my future so clearly in another person that it's blinding.Last year when I went on my overnight visit to Colgate my host took me over to East Hall to visit her friends in the fifth floor suite. I sat there, silent, on the lower bunk of the main room bed, and watched as the girls talked and laughed and tangoed arcoss the floor. Afterwards, as we went downstairs, my host told me how much they liked it up there. "There's just one girl they don't really get along with" out of the four people that lived in the room, she said.
Months later, I got my housing information, and found out that I'd gotten the suite, as I'd hoped. But her words echoed in my head. "There's just one girl they don't really get along with..." Would I be that girl? I felt like the pattern had to re-form, somehow. I never had any trouble with my roommates all year, but still I wondered if I was really the odd-one-out. It wasn't until Maggie asked me to live with her again next year that I became convinced that it wasn't me. Maybe it doesn't have to be anyone. Maybe.
But sometimes history does repeat itself, and I find myself falling into the patterns set by someone before me. And sometimes I can see others doing the same thing. But I fear it more often than it ever actually happens. I look at others and I see myself and yet I only see the bad futures as being mine. And I start to wonder, how much of our destiny can we choose, and at what point do we all start becoming our grandparents? And I just keep imagining other people's futures for myself as if only by anticipating them can I prevent them.
Sometimes I don't make any sense.
spake the voices
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
I'm here, I just don't have much to say. Which seems to be the case every time I'm home. Ah well.
spake the voices