Cue every beautifully desperate, rain-embracing song you can think of. Off the top of my head, "Come Clean" by Hilary Duff (haha) and "Strong Pursuit in a Pearl District" by
Council Crest. Blast it loud. Imagine every possibly harmony you could sing and choose one.
"I want to see a new day when it never stops raining at all
And I don't seem to care that I'm so unprepared for an early September rainfall."
Yes, it's the first real Portland rain that I can remember since last year. And kind of nice, running through the rain ... wisps of hair sticking to my face, smeared mascara, wanting to tear off my soaking wet t-shirt and break free. It kind of adds a final "fuck-it" to running, and somehow, this makes it more enjoyable.
This week was better? I guess? Super stressful school-wise, but considering the pressure, I think I managed well enough. No cross country meet either, so that probably helped. You know, I'm turning into a real bitch. Yesterday I totally got into a fight with the St. Andrew's Nativity School kids by throwing water at them through their open car window and then dumping the rest on the leather driver's seat ... I
know, who
does that, right? I think if people who see me at school saw me on the weekends around my friends like Clare and Jimmy they'd be surprised at what a good and pleasant person I can be. Not that I'm bragging, though, far from it... just, pretty much, the worst of Jesuit brings out the worst in me.
I really miss my east coast lovers. Really, really miss them. I'm living in your letters. And picture e-mails, texts, and phone calls. I'm hanging on.
"Time just proves too much, and we're wearing down again.
Should have been fall, with the memories of summer
The burn of the sun and the cold, oh fall
you're a comfortable lover but I just can't take all the decay."
[Gratitude]
You start to believe that you are a writer when you're lying on your back, staring at the ceiling, thinking, "how can I best describe this moment" ... and the next minute you've got your notebook and a sharpie and you're scribbling furiously away about how the ceiling moved you. Maybe you understand what I mean. You're a writer when you think about things in terms how how you can write about them.
"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."That's from the book
Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky. I re-read it this weekend for the first time in a few years, I'm pretty sure, and loved it. So, so much. As soon as I finished, I was filled with an ache to write, and this is what came out onto the paper:
Reading the amazing lines of this book brings no solitude to my loneliness. It makes me think of mistakes that I've made and the people I've hurt and how sometimes I'm sad for no real reason except that there are people who I truly and deeply love, and one day will have to let go of. ... this book makes me want to bawl my eyes out because I miss you so much.
I spent the weekend with Clare Robeck. On Friday night we watched
Vanilla Sky with Sam at her house, and Saturday morning her mom took us to a hot springs lodge,
near the Columbia River. Between us and my book and emotions and writer's tendencies, it was just one of those times when I couldn't stop thinking about things. I couldn't have taken a walk or even a drive without thinking about the greater meaning and backstory of everything I saw. Consequently, we spent some time contemplating our personal frustrations ... but it was nice, and for the most part, it was a fun and relaxing weekend.
Yesterday it hit me just how right Chuck Palahniuk is:
"My point is, if I'm honest, my life is all about me."I could tell you that what makes me happiest is loving my friends Lauren and Tai, and what brings me the most pain is letting down my little sisters just by being away. And you could empathize, you could take part in my joy, but no matter how much you cared, you could not feel just what I feel. And the same from me to you. And I think what love is, is finding someone ... and having all these reasons to be happy, and all these broken hearts, make more sense. Maybe all love is, is finding someone that makes you feel like you -- and life -- make sense.
But I'm just 17. So. You know.
"Please make me not so crazy, make me fall apart.
Make me think beautiful, unexpected thoughts.
I should mean more."
[Jamison Parker]
This picture is me wearing a "speakerphone hat" listening to a song that the owner described as "Santa Claus is Coming to the Ghetto, or something like that." The owner of the hat happens to also be the owner of the house on the
front cover of Chuck Palahniuk's book
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk Through Portland, Oregon. I happen to be seventeen.
And oh-so-subtlety witty. Bwa ha ha.
My birthday was Thursday and I didn't do much but it was nice nonetheless. I got an appropriate amount of attention (haha) and several nice notes -- most of which basically said, "Happy birthday! You're great! But you seem sad..." which was... fine I guess, kind of funny. From my father I scored Death Cab tickets for November, which I'm really looking forward to that. I recently had
Plans burned for me and it is fantastic! One amazing song after another but I am particularly obsessed with the album's acoustic love poem, "I'll Follow You Into the Dark." Allow me to send it to you on instant messenger because if you are a good person you deserve it.
So I've been hating cross country lately, right? So of course I'd been dreading Friday, because Coach Roth and all the upperclassmen were building it up to be a very hard workout. And it
was. Thousand repeats, a set of four. And although there were frustrating moments in the workout, and quite a lot of pain,
"Team Zero" worked diligently to stay together and to come in at the proper time every single repeat. At the end of practice, we had a sort of competitive 800-meter race. [Final time = last finisher's time + amount of time between first and last runners.] So it is a full-out sprint and we
have to stay together in order to get the best time. True pressure, and I was full of terror and desperation as the quickest girls used valuable breaths to shout encouragement to push me forward faster. Never once in this race did I give up, and honestly that's a first for this season. Physically it killed me but we finished strong and all in all it definitely brought us together on more than one level. So although I still don't feel that great about the season thus far, it was a far from discouraging practice.
Then I watched
Crash at Sam's house with a large group of people. Oh my God, great movie, but possibly the most draining one I've ever seen. I don't want to say much except that it affected me deeply and although it's gruesome and terrible at times, it's something nearly everyone should see at some point. Please. Rent it.
"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we
crash into each other, just so we can feel something."
And today! As for further explanation for the above picture. I roped my fellow junior journalist Katherine Bakke into coming with me to help write a column called "Unraveling the Fringe: Exploring Portland". So today we drove many miles (much of them on wrong turns) to explore Belmont, Clinton Street, and the grand finale of the Our Lady of Eternal Combustion Church. At the last we met Reverend Chuck E. Linville, who is featured in
Fugitives and Refugees as one of Portland's distinctly strange and lovable weirdos. He creates and drives art cars, belongs to the
Cacophony Society of Portland, and is a registered minister(along with his dog Reverend Bill). Full story coming soon. For real. But yeah, we talked for over an hour and a half and it was totally awesome. It made me love, love, LOVE Portland even more than I already do.
But alas. I've got to be at Jesuit at 6:15 am for morning practice. You know what that means... um if you didn't, it means, goodnight.
"Well I never pray, but tonight I'm on my knees, yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind
I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now!"
[The Verve]
Today after school the cross country team bussed it out to Tualitin Hills. Matching in green jerseys, short shorts, and golden racing shoes, like every meet. Watching varsity race, warming up, striding across the grass field was unsettling and didn't help to lift the dread from the pit of my stomach. Sooner or later I found myself among dozens of teenage bodies, with more or less miles under their belt than I have.
Bang.
I start out fast. Although I've been discouraged, I can't help but hold on to a little bit of hope that something will fill me and help me to fly. I think of my love and my pain - my friends, my sweet sisters, everything that's gone on in the past year - everything that's inspired me in the past.
One by one, however, runners pass me. And I do nothing to stop them. If anything, my steps move slower. It's true that the odds are against me based on my recent training, but I am physically capable of beating them all. But that's not the decision I make. I just can't be motivated. Eventually I make it to the finish line, and instead of following the other athletes staggering back to the Jesuit tent, I make my way to the woods. I duck under the roped-off boundaries and walk until I'm out of sight - there, I sit down and hold my head in my hands and cry.
This is not about running.
I don't know how to explain myself except that nothing that I do feels completely right. And so much of what I say and do reflects someone I don't want to be. It's just too much.
"Nothing to fight, nothing to choose
maybe it's good, learning to lose..."
[Jason Robert Brown]
Last night I made a summer collage on my wall and got rather sentimental. Some pictures I couldn't stop laughing out loud to myself, others I wouldn't dare surpressing my smile. Just thought I'd share ...
Looking back on all these memories, I think maybe that day on the dock was the happiest moment of my whole life. Driving down to the waterfront we were stuck at a railroad crossing: dozens of train cars blurred by and we patiently waited and harmonized to Simon & Garfunkel… and I found myself thinking that I could have sat there with these people for hours, just waiting.
And when we did get down there. It was so pretty, the sun shining down on the Willamette River, and the water reflecting our beautiful Portland. We were all so happy; my friends skipped and leapt down the ramp to the dock and I ran ahead to take a photograph of our joy.
So there we all were, with nothing but each other and everything in the world. When I would turn to one person or the other, euphoria would take ahold of my body and I left so full of love I could fly. Smiling, singing, and embracing as wakes from the boats gently rocked us all; I swear there was something unreal about these beautiful and fleeting moments. All I know is, I’ve never felt such vibrant happiness as when I looked into the eyes of my friends and felt true love.
"You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold
as the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn
the song I've been trying to say."
[Arcade Fire]
On my to-do list for this week:
- Write letters
- Get blank discs and BURN SOME TUNES
- Go to Political Awareness Club
- Finish Diary by Chuck Pahlaniuk
- Turn 17!
Have a good one.
One nice thing about Blogger, I've discovered, is that there's not quite the same social pressure to update as Xanga. I don't know why this is but it's definitely the truth. And the comments? Here, they're few, but golden -- for the most part. Keep them coming, far-away friends.
Ohhhh it's 11:11 am by my clock. Damn it. As some of you may know, it hasn't been the good luck charm that it's supposed to be. And for anyone I
haven't warned, 3:33 is my least lucky time EVER. It's beyond superstition at this point. Terrible, miserable things have happened at 3:33 and if I glance at the clock
once in a bad day, it's bound to be that time. No joke. Just a word of warning, haha.
Second week of school ... wow, just two weeks? I feel like it should be about a month now, at least. The weekends are kind of my recovery time -- for people I
want to be with, things I
want to do, things I
try to feel. It's a lot harder during the school week to control all this, and for me, honestly, it's been an inevitable cycle of finding myself sad. I broke down a little Tuesday night because I realized I couldn't even do anything to change the way I was feeling, and nothing anyone could've said would've changed it either, but at the same time I didn't want to feel completely alone. Late at night I ended up on the phone with Sam, crying, just kind of lost, I guess -- and it's hard putting your friends in the position when they're unhappy with how they see you're feeling, but finding there isn't much they can do about it. I've been there, it's fucking maddening. And then I'll get frustrated because I wish I
could be healed by the love of my friends, because honestly? As much as I bitch and kid about not having any, they
are there, there are
tons of people who care about me, but sometimes I just can't feel anything back.
Eventually, I
had to hang up the phone -- it was past midnight and I had a cross country race the next day in Canby. I fell asleep listening to the song "Fix You" by Coldplay. The lyrics of which I doodled during periods 1-4 on Thursday. And when Sam gave me a note at lunch, the same lyrics stuck in my head were drawn across the top:
Tears stream down your faceWhen you lose something you can't REPLACEIt was probably the nicest letter I've ever been written.
So yes. This is pretty blatant honesty, not encoded, as maybe it should be in a blog like this, but I'm sad. However. For all the strength I feel drained of, for the lack of motivation in running and so much else, for the great distance of the time that I can find something to look forward to -- I have love. If nothing else, I have love. I could hold on forever, and maybe it'd be the only thing that kept me alive. But I'd be alive, wouldn't I?
Love.
"You cannot give somebody joy, but you can find it by trying
You can't save someone from death, but you can love them while they're dying."
[Gratitude]
Hello, today was fine. During the school year Sundays are kind of a waste, and just the time you spend doing homework, chores, whatever you didn't get done earlier in the week. Although this is a three-day weekend, so that theory is a little out of wack, but you get it.
This is Lauren and her friend Mark
This is a personal interpretation of college I sent her
Bwa ha ha. Ohh college.
I've started writing what I call a novel, five pages long so far but you've gotta start somewhere. I guess the thing is, sometimes when I'm writing in my diary or writing letters or something I start feeling repetitive and melodramatic. And my 'novel' is a firsthand account of a fictional character who just happens to be going through everything I am, and none of it can be stupid or a lie because it's not me, it's this character. And when I'm writing like this I can give myself a voice of how I want to sound. Which just happens to be very much like Brian from Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned because I just finished reading that a second time because it's just that good:
"He was a kid, you know; he could have been me, four years before, fucking ignorant and dumb, scared of not being cool, scared of not fitting in. He really could have been me. That was what I started thinking. And I didn't like the idea of being made fun of by someone I used to be, some kid who was scared and who wanted to be something, anything but himself."
Also this weekend I spent Friday and Saturday night watching two sequential Richard Linklater films: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, with Ethan Hawke and Judy Delpy. Basically there's an American guy and a French girl riding a train to their respective destinations in Europe, and they get involved in conversation, and connect -- from that point on out, the whole movie is basically one conversation. The second movie too, actually, with a substantial break in between, but still. It's totally romantic; however, it's not bullshit. And it's just beautiful. The connection the two make, the insights they point out and the details they appreciate, these are just two perfect movies in my opinion. Please, please watch them. One particular moment of conversation in Before Sunset was so intense and moving and real that it just made me want to get up and not waste another second doing anything meaningless; I just wanted to do everything and affect people and change the world.
... and here I am, blogging away online, but maybe I could at least inspire you to rent the movies? Here's probably my favorite quote of both movies, probably because of its current relevance: "You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made up of such beautiful and specific details." Ahhh. I think a couple girls from school are coming over tomorrow and re-watching them with me, so I'm looking forward to that.
I'm also looking forward to going to sleep and nuzzling up in my new down comforter. It makes me want to hibernate until December. Mmmm so comfortable.
"But me, I'm not a gamble.
You can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening
by the morning, won't exist."
[Lua, Bright Eyes]
So. It's a Friday night and I'm home, re-grounded. Rough week? You could say that. Especially considering the fact that I just wrote a short conversation with myself. Hmm.
The thing about school is, I don't mind the education. With the exception of the already heavy homework load, the concept of going to classes and electives to obtain skills and knowledge is alright, you know? Sure, there are other things I'd rather do, but learning
can be fun. However, that's not really what school is about anymore; at least, that's how it feels like at Jesuit. It's about who you're sitting next to and whether you're better than them or not and whether you're dressed well enough and OMG-you've-
got-to-be-kidding-me-she-went-down-on-
WHO??? And I'd rather just avoid
all of that. This made clear, my classes are alright -- I'm still feeling out a few teachers but I like my religion teacher and my history teacher a lot, so I'm looking forward to getting to know them better. My trig teacher is Vietnamese and speaks rapidly with a heavy accent so I'm honestly counting on his online lecture notes to get through the year surviving math. I don't like my Spanish teacher either because he is extremely OCD and also somewhat hard to tolerate based on the fact that he talks to his students as if we were fifth graders. Whatever.
And school-school, the social aspect? I can't say I'm digging it. It's not like I feel rejected by any people or group but I never really feel like I'm a part of anything, either. I've got a very few but very awesome close friends, then the people who get offended when I say I don't have that many friends(because there's a difference between people you talk to at school and people you actually spend time with), then the people I pretty much despise for one reason or another, then the many faces and bodies that don't really mean much to me. Let me stop here and say that it's as obvious to me as it is to everyone else that my attitude isn't really a big help to how I've been feeling. It's just harder to motivate myself to be happier, and so easy to just let myself be sad. You know? Because I know I'm not the only one. But it's just not as easy to connect with people when the people I've connected with the best are gone and no one is really at all like them. In my eyes, at least.
Speaking of that, Tai left Thursday morning. I was already grounded but as I'd previously told my dad, after Tai leaves there's really nothing he can take away from me that I would miss -- considering the three people I hang out with most often I'll rarely see during cross country season, anyways. So I got a ride from a couple other graduates, Margaret & Megan, and we went to Red Robin with Tai. The girls had to leave, and after they did Tai and I took the MAX and headed over to Sam's house for dinner. I felt awkward, for some reason, which was weird because I feel totally welcome and embraced by Sam's family, but the conversation got so strained/strange(?) that I went so far as to compliment Mr. & Mrs. White on their light fixtures. What can I say, I'm a charmer.
And then. Tai, Sam, and I went and laid out in the hammock together. Fingers interlocked and legs tangled up and laughter mixing with whispers and tears. And as we sat there holding each other I couldn't decide whether I was trying to hold on to my youth or run far away from this heartwrenching in-between stage and let it all go. And this is maybe the first time that I've felt --- or at least that I've admitted I've felt -- that I want to move on. I want to be ready to go. I felt like we three were a picture of the Iron & Wine album
Our Endless Numbered Days. It was just one of those totally beautiful and bittersweet teenage moments, though, you know?
Then came the goodbyes. Which I won't dwell on for long. Taimi drove me home and we stood out in the driveway for a bit, working up to the summer's end. We hugged goodbye and maybe cried and that was it. ...and I was trekking up the hill to my front door where my dad's figure stood with crossed arms, and all he said was, "we'll talk about your consequences tomorrow". So thanks, Dad. Of all the things you could have chosen to say, I hope you're glad with what you settled on. Because it sure as hell inspired me to hope for the future. But in case anyone wants to know, I'm grounded again, through my pre-birthday weekend. Pretty lame but it's not like I had any big plans anyways, right?
And yeah. Today was the Green & Gold Cross Country time trial -- basically an unofficial race -- and I sucked it up. This is getting pretty long so I won't write too much about that but basically I ran worse than I did last year and my run today decreased my chances of lettering this year by about a million. It's not like running has ever been my number one priority, but I do care, and it's just another discouragement. Whatever, I don't think I could live myself with I quit, so of course I'll keep trying.
Stay with me?
"And if it's over, just remember what I told you
It was bound to happen, so just keep moving on
There are no perfect endings."
[The Perfect Ending, Straylight Run]
