Live from New York, it's Tuesday Afternoon!
Monday, October 22nd, when-the-sun-hits-the-window-just-right PM
We're such a weird species. They say that we and dolphins are the only creatures that have sex for pleasure. (Have I already written about dolphins? I get the weird feeling I already wrote about dolphins.) I don't know if the dolphins think about it, afterwards. I don't know if they cuddle up in a bed of seaweed until one of them can't stand it anymore and cries out, in squeaky tones of disbelief, "what am I doing?" I really think we're the only ones. To be the only ones who enjoy it and think about it is utter nonsense. It has produced centuries of emo poetry in countless languages that defines us, though if aliens visited us, we would hide it all in embarrassment. The only way to win is to find someone who thinks about it exactly the way you do, so all the thinking done afterwards is actually pleasant and results in art expressions that aren't at all embarrassing.
...really, I bet the dolphins think about it harder than at least some men.
All these humanities classes are absolutely ruining my speech. There are a million tiny habits that I fight hard to keep from picking up, despite my innate mimicking nature. Never will I start a sentence with, "I feel like" or end a sentence with, "...I dunno, maybe it's just me." I will say, "I think" or "It is" with no excuses following. And all this apologizing! Our writing teacher was right; girls apologize too much because society expects a humility in us it does not expect in men. They all start by saying what problems they had with their writing, what they did badly, and then stop speaking altogether because they feel they haven't got the right. It's not just gender, either. My scientific background tells me that I should declare everyone else wrong, and defend the hypothesis that I worked hard to show was right. All passive verbs and qualifiers are struck from our language, because if they're not, we are summarily dismissed as failing to have made any sort of discovery worth hearing about.
I can't stop talking about my time abroad. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't, I can't, I can't. You can't pretend it was a vacation I went on, you can't pretend I can just blend in and act as I always did. It changed me, okay? It changed me in ways I like, though it's fading, and that's what bothers me - the fact that I'm slowly losing my slowed perspective on time and that the panic attacks are starting again. Few people have such a rare chance to see exactly what factors upset their lives and to see the effects of having all of it taken away and put back again.
I can't shake the feeling that if I do well in this place, I get to go back as a reward. This must be what religious people feel like.
Sunday, September 16th, 9-something-something PM
"I'm a senior now; it's too late." I've said this sentence many times, and in a few cases, it's true.
I want them to turn the world backwards for a day. Every left-handed person who normally curses himself for feeling clumsy, out of place, stupid, or just plain wrong would suddenly find himself full of grace and answers. The rest would have to content themselves with writing backwards and driving exceptionally well in certain countries, as we always have.
Everything feels like my first year at college, all over again. All the classes are easy, all my friends are on various floors of the same building, and I tried out for a bunch of plays I didn't get into. The only difference is that now, I know what I'm doing.
I feel accomplished. For my efforts, I got a cupcake and a dollar.
Wednesday, June 6th, back at EST
A war of words, a wound of lips from which flows words and cries that cannot be stemmed.
Never use the technology to go back in time - you can't save a moment. What's beautiful as a dark memory is ugly and plain when dragged into the light.
No matter what I do, no matter what I say, it can't change how I feel. I won't hide the words anymore, but I hope we remember that our actions make it worse.
Sweet denial, never leave me. Just let me hit the snooze button and forget what country I'm in for 5 more minutes.
Holy god, I really do only want what I can't have. Now, what I can have just needs to stop calling me.
I would give anything to know the real story of the first man and the first woman. I don't like the one that ends with "...and that's why you were born with sin, my children."
I know that they look at me and think only the words, "lab monkey." It's entirely unnerving.
Sunday, April 25th, a month and a half before I go home.
The seven deadly sins are a very inconsistent concept. Any rational person can see that most of them are just human impulses that are detrimental if enjoyed in excess. But where do anger and envy fit in? Envy, especially - who ever wants that? It's not something that can lead you astray if enjoyed in excess like the others because no one wants or likes it, and very few can suppress it. It's not like you can help but feel any of them, anyway. There just isn't enough prozac in the world.
What if I just don't like you? What then? (This is clearly the title of my autobiography.)
After college, part of me wants to run screaming back to New England. Another part of me wants to run screaming back to Europe. I'll probably end up hanging around school anyway, just another Jedi alumna who, instead of actually graduating, just faded into the background.
I stand up for myself fully and unquestionably with most people. Meanwhile, I let the people closest to me walk all over me.
This time last year: same story, different names. This time next year: same story, different names. I have the power to stop it, but apparently, I don't want to.
I'd been trying to get someone to read that story for quite some time, and had given up. And just like that, he asks me for every story I've ever written, and quietly prints them out to read them during work. It meant so much.
I have some of my deepest reflections on life when I stop and realize it's time to finally change the sheets on my bed.
Friday, March 23rd, snacktime.
I can say, as many times as I like, that I only write for me. One time out of one hundred, it is true.
Too late - it's all too late. I was on top of it all, last summer. I had no fear to drive me to secure my future, this time, because for once, I'm living in the present. The only solution left: cryogenically freeze myself for the interim between my return to the U.S. and fall.
I never realized how much of an iron grip Asia has on America; our food, our culture, our technology, our businesses. Here...everything is as it was, and anything that comes from the outside is grudgingly allowed as necessary at best. They kind of like Australian T.V. and clothes, but that's about it.
"Men are dogs." Who ever came up with that expression? Dogs are loyal, loving, prideful creatures; it's hardly an insult.
We all line up, ready for training. He goes down the ranks, testing us one by one to see who has a good defense. He jokingly swings his spear in a wide arc at me, giggling when I struggle and then trying to hug me. I push him away, too angry to speak. After one date, he's decided it's okay to pretend that he owns me. Great; now I can't respect him as a teacher or a person, and none of my new friends can respect *me.*
What does any of it matter. I hae the darkest lows and the brightest highs, and I don't know any other way to live.
Friday, March 16th, hell of late P.M.
A girl who weighs a bit less, with longer fingernails and longer hair (probably in its original hue) who is comfortable behind her glasses. That's what I see in my head, not the mirror. I should enjoy the body I'm inhabiting now instead of waiting for it to improve, no matter if my youth strips me of my fingernails and makes me scoff at the tedium of the bespectacled brunette.
I've spent so much time explaining things to myself by saying "my school is hard" that it never occurred to me that our science program might just suck. Actually retaining knowledge before I start studying and not getting left behind is altogether bewildering.
Those ivy-league teachers don't teach. They talk. They're not trying to actually impart their knowledge, or make sure there are concepts we leave with; they're. Just. Talking. And assuming we're too dumb to understand.
Love. Education. Money. Skillsets. Comfort. Pain. Home. Future. Identity. Friends. Intricate sci-fi world influenced by more authors and directors than I can count. Music. I really *do* have a 12-track mind. It's currently skipping on the "future" track.
All my children across the sea/will they grow up without me?
She called me an amazon. Amazons stand up to the people who wrong them. Amazons don't write when they should be practicing their swordsmanship.
And we'll live where no one can find us, and we'll learn all we've ever wanted to learn, but we'll be too far away from it all for it to do us any good...but we will have at least tried, in the space between time.
I'm tired of this game - I'm tired of the hunt. Accept me as one of your own, and let's play cards.
There are days when I can be shouted at, hit with swords, argue for the sake of argument...today is not one of those days.
We are none of us what we appear to be. There is no tolerance in this society for someone who does not endeavor to appear more than he is.
Obsession. It's mankind's most useful tool and deadliest psychological flaw.
You can't keep all your skills in top form. The saddest thing is realizing that you were once very good at something you can now barely manage at all. At least I can always write about what I've done.
It's right after he has yanked my trust out from under me that he holds out his hand to help me up. To be fair, I've done the same to him.
Saturday, March 10th, 2:34 AM
Reductivism. What a concept. That you can deduce the beauty of a painting by cataloguing all the lines and shapes and seeing if they add up to a number equal to or greater than "gorgeous."
I want a laboratory. I want an unknown piece of matter that was discovered inside a comet that came from a distant planet to look at in my laboratory. I would be too jealous to let anyone else look.
"We edit ourselves as we go through life."
I don't think my classmate really realized what he'd just said.
I cling to my work ethic as a foundation for my identity. For example, those unaware of it do not really know me. Or maybe they know a different version of Me. I fear that there are, philosophically, two of me; one, an old backup of the files left in storage at home, and another, constantly updating and changing vital bits of the internal code here.
I've gotten other people to use the word "trilemma." Ha.
I have always been obsessed with my vision of my future house. It's a sort of reverse houseofleaves; it seems bigger on the outside than it is on the inside. It would be all stone and glass and wood, thrown together as haphazardly as I am. And I'm going to have to build it myself, just to carry on the tradition. I might need some help. Especially with the koi pond.
I tried to put fake nails on to keep from biting the real ones, but they fell off. My fingers were, however, helpfully covered in toxic glue. Every time I'm about to bite one, I think, "No! Toxic glue." That's starting to be what I think when I think of you.
Wittgenstein was an odd man. He wrote a book. He decided that, in this book, he had solved all the problems of philosophy, so he went to go teach kindergarten.
Descartes was a brilliant man. He took a day off. He decided that, on this day off, he would forget everything he ever believed in, so he had to come up for reasons to believe in them again. (In the meantime, did he believe that the servant who brought in the tea existed? Or at least that the tea existed?)
For some reason, I shall always enjoy writing pages and pages of poetry to someone, and then throwing them away. It's easier to write if I don't have to worry whether or not it means anything. Ah, blame it on my favorite poets, for they are all bitter old men. Case in (beautiful) point:
"And through the spaces of the dark/Midnight shakes the memory/As a madman shakes a dead geranium."-T.S. Eliot
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