and you find yourself weeping at 70 miles an hourand music makes you weepand you have had your worst day and your best dayon the same day of your lifeand you lie in bed in the middle of the daysearching the ceiling for answersand all you find are cobwebs & fingerprints'and you want so hard to make some kind of connectionand yet you can't touch peopleand you feel more desperate than beforeand there is never enough time or enough loveand you feel like your senses have been deadenedand someone tells you that you're like a raw nerveand you say that if you do nothing else in your life at least you have loved passionately and been lovedpassionately...
I feel this SO much. Every day when I'm walking through my high school parking lot in the freezing cold air with my breath coming out in vapor I want to scream out and run and jump and fly and make people notice me and love me but every day I just bundle up and go to class and sometimes raise my hand and sometimes try to be funny but pretty much every day I just end up coming home at three and doing most of my homework and writing letters to the people I really love.
"When will it snow?
It's been raining for hours
and why do I feel so alone?"
[Lisa Loeb]
So, I had a pretty unique way of discovering reasons to be grateful, this Thanksgiving.
On our way home from dinner, I got an unexpected text message: "Can you come over? I just need to be with someone. Preferably you." When we got home, I set out onto the dark wet streets. Nothing felt unusual.
Coming around the corner past the radio towers, the steering wheel jerked out of my hands -- I skidded towards the left and then overcompensated towards the right, and shit. It just happened so fast -- I crashed the car.
I was stuck in a ditch on the side of the road, right alongside the cemetery. I called my friend, and then my dad, and spoke to several people who slowed down to check if I was okay. Which I was. It was only eight or so when my dad arrived, and in less than an hour, we got pulled out of the ditch and I was able to drive home.
I'm grateful that I crashed on the side of the road without the pole. I'm grateful there were no other cars on the road when I skid, and I'm grateful that the cars which passed did stop to check. I'm grateful that there was no damage to me or the car. I'm grateful that every person I texted while I was waiting for the towtruck -- their first inclination was, "are you okay??" And I'm not going to lie, seeing the graveyard in the flashing lights of my hazards offered some chilling perspective.
So maybe it wasn't the ideal way to spend a holiday evening. But it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Right click and download:
"Dottie in a Car Crash" (a cool mashup).
To the friend I didn't end up getting to be there for...
"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting."
[Hook]
Less than a month till I won't have to count down anymore...!!! (Those exclamation points are my online expression of pending joy.)
"Be Still My Heart" ... says the Postal Service. Please enjoy.
The Georgia trip and School of the Americas protest was pretty amazing. Mainly I experienced a lot of exposure and therefore gained a deeper perspective on a lot of things involving human rights and world peace. Sounds hippie, right? Yeah, there were parts of it that were over the top, like the overenthusiastic lady who tried to sell us "Diva Cups" and the speaker who suggested we throw George W. Bush into the sea. Or something to that effect ... I can't say I'm totally opposed, but come on now, let's keep our expectations realistic. But for the most part, the people I saw and met were amazing -- probably some of the most admirably passionate people I'd ever been around. Meeting some high schoolers who were intelligent, liberal-minded, and interesting also gave me a lot of hope, and a sense of belonging. (Because I'm SO those things, right?)
There's a whole fucking lot of injustice in the world. But what I've come to decide is, no, I can't just repeat my ever-handy "what can you do, right?" I cannot save the world on my own but if we all get together I'll sure as hell do my part. I'm not sure I could ever have the amazing conviction and dedication I saw in a lot of people at the Ignatian Teach-In and protest, but it is something I will strive for.
It's funny, though -- it becomes much easier to hope and work towards world peace, than it is to keep the tension low between hotel roomies, small groups, etcetera. I don't really have a solution for my frequent frustration and consequential aggression, or more often, passive-aggression. I want to say it'd be easier if we could all just have one big Fight Club but that's sort of not the point, is it?
"I said I'm going to buy this place and watch it go
Stand beside me baby, watch the orange glow
Some will laugh and some just sit and cry
But you just sit down there and you wonder why
Oh, I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war
if you can tell me something worth fighting for
And I'm going to buy this place, that's what I said
Blame it all upon a rush of blood to the head."
[Coldplay]Oh God, and I saw the best concert of my life last week. Death Cab for Cutie. Stars opened. Totally amazing music and a wonderful experience, and I really don't have the words to describe it all any further.
Oh my, oh my, tomorrow is just another faux Wednesday -- that is, a Friday in disguise!
Looking forward to it.
So I'm going to be completely unoriginal and not care -- the song of the season is definetly still
"All These Things I've Done" by the Killers -- I hear it anywhere and everywhere, and
always, at the bridge, someone will scream, "shh, guys, this is the best part!!" and start harmonizing with "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" before some non-hardcore headbanging and dancing. Enjoy.
November is moving along nicely. Last weekend I went to an amazing Decemberists concert, I'm now in the midst of a four-day weekend, Wednesday is the huge Death Cab for Cutie show. The next day I'm leaving for Georgia to attend the protest against the School of the Americas, and the next week is another four-day weekend for Thanksgiving! School has been getting harder, and I've been working harder, too. (Not like it matters to anyone else, but I currently have four A's, two B's, and one C+ ... thanks to Mr. Cammann's terrible chemistry class for that last one.)
Last year, I didn't work very hard or care about getting good grades, and I think it's because I had no incentive to work towards. But the way my dad seems to operate is, work hard, take initiative, and I can do what I want. It's definetly good motivation ... and of course, there's always college to think about. So I've been doing fine, I guess. I have truly been living for the weekends.
One thing I notice a lot are the dynamics between my friends and their parents. For me, even when I'm on good terms with my parents, we are still very distant. Sometimes I find them perhaps obnoxious or helpful, but I honestly don't have much emotional attatchment, at all. I feel like an ungrateful bitch, but I don't really like fraternal shows of affection, either. When I go to my friends' houses I notice the different relationships, and it seems like everyone is closer to their parents than I am. And while this makes me jealous, at times, and I wish I had something like that ... I don't want that, with
my parents. I'm not even sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but I don't really understand myself, and again, it makes me feel like a bitch.
But. What can you do, right?
I tend to say that a lot and sometimes I think it's a healthy, relaxed outlook on life -- but from time to time, I wonder if it's just too dismissively passive.
I'm waiting for something.
"We don't know where we're going
But we'll get nowhere if we've forgotten where we've been."
[Maria Taylor]
"Please remember me, my misery
and how it lost me all I wanted...
circles round the well, and where it spells
on the wall behind St. Peter's
so bright with cinder gray in spray paint:
'who the hell can see forever?'"
Every time I pull out my old red notebook, which used to be my most reliable place to write in, I feel like a traitor for not writing in so long. But then I think that maybe "the red books" were just meant for a certain time period of my life.
Relatedly, I've been listening to Jimmy Eat World's "Clarity" a lot lately. Which I used to be obsessed with and gradually just stopped listening to. It, too, reminds me of a very specific point in my life -- where nothing happened. Somehow, it's still very vivid to me. Mainly I just remember winter night drives home, by myself in my stepdad's car which I used to drive ... the sunroof would be open to the frosty night air and to the stars, and I would speed pointlessly and scream along to "Crush," "
Just Watch the Fireworks ," and "For Me, This is Heaven." I've seen so much and been so many places since then. It's funny to think about.
Mainly it just makes me nostalgic for any sort of sad past. Like saying goodbye. Like waking up at four in the morning and knowing that from that point on things would never be the same and not yet realizing that what I needed to do was hold on, without holding anyone back. And lying three to a hammock as close and as together as we could possibly get.
Again. Things have changed a lot since then. And I don't know how everyone else feels about me, but I'm convinced that the good
won't come out of me. So as easy as it would be to second guess everything and doubt myself, I'd rather just sit back and not only accept things how they are, but enjoy them.
Inspirational as fuck, huh?
"Nowhere and then nowhere, living trapped inside the chase
Our weakness is the same: we need poison sometimes.
So take another drink with me.
Look into my eyes and blame no one."
[Jimmy Eat World]
I feel this SO much. Every day when I'm walking through my high school parking lot in the freezing cold air with my breath coming out in vapor I want to scream out and run and jump and fly and make people notice me and love me but every day I just bundle up and go to class and sometimes raise my hand and sometimes try to be funny but pretty much every day I just end up coming home at three and doing most of my homework and writing letters to the people I really love.
