I don't always believe this is true but I'm going to fall back on the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. And maybe sometimes a song is worth more.
Note: to be viewed listening to Daybreak's "Split in the Sidewalk". (
Download here.)
"I don't see why people complain about love...
I don't see why people want to throw it away
Because I can tell you, I can say
love's alright with me
it's taking up most of my time"
I don't know how but we're going to be okay.
"All right, I can say what you want me to
All right, I can do all the things you do
All right, I'll make it all up for you
I'm still in love with you
I'm still in love with you."
[Stars - Heart(live version)]Sometimes just staying conscious, staying awake, staying alive makes me so tired. But it's gotten to the point where I could never give up. If only for one reason, one person, and I don't care how that sounds to anyone because I know what I believe. As much as I appreciate Problems of Faith class -- fuck all the theories of metaphysics, because I know what's real to me and to me that's all that matters. I know that I'm making a huge sweeping generalization but honestly if this is all I have, and if there's nothing after the life I know, this is all that matters.
Aside from the meaningful parts of real life ... junior year hit me hard last week. I was ridiculously stressed out because of the junior paper, a few tests, and a lot of homework, and beyond that I was pissed off that I was stressed out because I understand that I'll get through it (I mean, think of all the Jesuit High School tools who have made it beyond junior year in the past...) and in the long run it won't matter anyway.
I played at Coffeehouse, which was exciting! Honestly, not in an oh-tell-me-I-rocked way, I felt like I could have performed a lot better ... I was nervous in spite of my excitement. But there's one more to go this year, and a lot of people went out of their way to tell me they liked it, anyway. Making music has actually become a fairly significant aspect of my life; it's definetley an outlet for my cliche teenage myriad of emotions and most of the time I'm glad to just be creating anything at all.
Until the next time I feel like procrastinating, with all my love...
"I want more, for you!"
[Stars]
"We will always be a
light"
After the (amazing, wonderful, fantastic) Stars concert ended Thursday night, Lauren and I crossed back over the Ross Island Bridge and took the long way home. "We're going to go past my old house," she told me, although I was driving. "Then let's go by mine, too," I agreed. They were both on the way home.
Patton Court was steeper than I recalled. All I could really remember about the house I lived in with my mom till I was about eight were small, specific things, like how once an Easter egg was hidden in the numbers nailed beside the door, and wearing tap dancing shoes on the deck, and being afraid of coyotes in the forest behind the house. "We used to be so rich," Lauren mused; her old house was huge, one of the highest points in the West Hills. We drove the loop around her neighborhood and she told me about alcoholic neighbors, holiday parties, picking blackberries. It's funny, the things we remembered.
Today I found myself in Northeast Portland on 21st Avenue in front of the house I lived in with my dad until I was about five. Very little came back to me: tacky pink and green hippopotamus wallpaper my dad tore down from my bedroom walls to paint them white, the childless, ultra-liberal next door neighbors I'd visit and receive Golden Books from, the old man in the green house next door. I wonder now if the couple welcomed me or thought I was annoying; I wonder if the old man was lonely. Once I was walking our dog Shortstop with my Dad when Shortstop was attacked by a pit bull; I had to run home to tell my stepmother to call the vet, and I almost got lost in spite of our house being less than three blocks away. Another time I threw rocks to break the glass windows in our own shed, because an eight-year-old neighbor boy encouraged me. Later, however, my conscience got the better of me, and I confessed to my mother and later to my father. The rickety swingset in my backyard, marvelously unsafe. The steep carpeted stairway. A Superman-themed birthday party and cheating in "Pin the 'S' on Superman".
Twelve years ago, I believed what people told me about right and wrong, and the tooth fairy, and Heaven. I didn't know you. These things come back to me in vague waves of memory but that's not who I am and although they happened to me, it doesn't feel like my life. Maybe it's just been too long for me to recall how I really felt; maybe I'm omitting some profound part of me and it's unfair to say none of it meant much aside from just being my past. But you know?
"There is only one thing. There's nothing after that but you and I. Nothing after that but you and me."
I realized today that if there's no God or Heaven and Hell, and if all we and our world is, is a result of science and evolution, if my perception of reality is total bullshit and I am nothing but a thought floating in space, it doesn't even matter. Because I know what I believe is real and what matters, and that's love, and I'm going to live according to that.
"For once, let's just allow ourselves to be whatever it is we are."
[Garden State]
"I would love to be alive
I would love to know that we will never die"
[
Second Sunrise]
I get chills when I sing along with these lyrics ... go to their Purevolume site and listen to "It Felt Like a Movie, So I Had to Do It". A little Taking Back Sunday poser-esque but I really like that song.
For some reason I had it in my head that once I got through finals, life would be a little more manageable. But HEY junior paper and college night and Mr. Cammann being more and more of an asshole every second period class! I mean it's fine, I'll get through it like everyone does, but it's just sort of a thing that feels unneccessarily stressful, you know?
It's nice to have Lauren home and wonderful to be able to see her all the time but kind of still terrible to consider the circumstances and think about why. Same with Nic. I'm really grateful for the time we're all spending but it seems like no matter what else I try to focus on, the one big thing is always there and for me it always seems to fill the silence like a flood.
"And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time."
I don't have a lot to say except that I'm really grateful that with all the sometimes insane shit thrown into my life, I've been blessed with some of the best people in much more of a lasting way.
Here's
a song. You're something I'll believe in. Love love love.
