Something To Muse Over

As if I don't do enough of that these days. I checked my "thoughts" tab and I have 17 of those pesky things. Talking about various things that quite honestly just repeat themselves over and over again. I have no more original thoughts, just trite sayings repackaged in shiny word wrapping.

I would be sure I am boring people, but I only have five people who read my blog, so there is not much of a problem there. And I missed the disjointed way of expressing my thoughts, because it was so easy to digress forgivingly and hide my thoughts behind beautified words and phrases.

. . .

Stella first transferred to our school in grade nine, and our first impression of her was "bookworm and computer geek." She was the girl who read in all of her classes, going through a book every three days.

I was the girl who read while walking down the halls, narrowly avoiding trees and lamp posts and the tangy metal lockers painted brown-green-blue. Who volunteered at the school library in part so she could get new books before everyone else saw them.

Maybe we were destined to be friends.

Or maybe we were only friends because we sat next to each other in BTT, and I was the only girl in the class aside from her who knew how to code a website.

On the bus ride to Niagara Falls she, horrendously bus-sick, slept on my shoulder, and I wondered, what happened to Nora? Since when had I stopped sharing everything with Nora and hung out with Stella instead? Nora, who was as close to a best friend as I had ever had. Stella, who I now walked home with for lunch every single day.

The week we got back the principal's office called for Nora. She went and did not come back for the day. Later on she told me the principal accused her of changing her (and a lot of other people's) grades in our science teacher's grade-book.

"Do they think that, even if I did change it, I would be so stupid as to give myself a really high grade?"

That was what she said. She thought another friend of hers was responsible.

But I remembered doubting her, even though I would have trusted her just a year ago. And I wondered how that had happened. How I had come to realize she was not all that innocent.

. . .

The first time I went back I met up with Clover and JJ. We watched movies at Clover's house and played some Wii game. Then we walked through the dark roads near Finch and Vic Park to JJ's house. Her parents were still awake, anxious, because she had called nearly an hour ago and forgot to call later.

As for my parents, well, they had no idea I was walking outside at midnight.

There are a lot of things my parents did not know about me. A lot more things they still do not know about me. Late-night excursions outside was only one of them.

But for some reason nearly all of these things involve night-time.

I may have a too-deep love for the night. It is, after all, where my dreams flourish. Entangled. Silvery-black. I have written about dreams, and written about night, and I must have written about hiding things from my parents.

So when we stayed up until three in the morning, watching silly dramas that made no sense and trying hard not to sleep, I should not have felt odd. Not at all.

Not nostalgia. I do not know what that means anymore.

. . .

I can feel it in my throat, first. A tingling feeling that trickles down to my stomach. I refuse to believe it is my heart. It strikes when I am at my house, or else when I am with a friend, or else when I am at a party. It is perhaps envy, I think, but that cannot be so when I am alone. It should not be nostalgia, as I am wont to believe, because how can you be nostalgic in your own home?

House, I mean. How can you be nostalgic in your own house?

But the tingling, breath-taking feeling lingers. It starts to hurt to breathe. I am longing for something, I realize. Desperately longing for something that is not quite there. I am reminded of it alone, or else with friends, or else with strangers. It is there when I laugh. It is there when I cry.

Undefinable. Yet ever present.

I think I want something tangible, because I am too materialistic to want something intangible. I want something I can touch, something I can hold. Something that does not ring in my ears as laughter does. Something that smells sweeter than the crumpled shirt by my bed.

I want it so badly I cannot breathe. I can only want. I let it fall down my throat, and when it passes I am normal again, only left with a faint maybe I should.

Maybe I should. But what is it that I should?

I call it nostalgia, even though it cannot be nostalgia, because how can you be nostalgic when you are still in your own house?

Such a ridiculous notion.

. . .

I still talk to Stella sometimes. She is the same. Bookworm. Computer geek. School-hater. A little bit paranoid. Very much so adorably hilarious. I think that is why we all loved her.

She took onto me because I was slightly more computer-literate than everyone else. Not by much. And because I put up with her rants. In return I learned about the precarious situation I was placing my computers into (the ever-present and ever-imminent bot-net threat), why I should play whatever game it was that she was interested in at the time, and someone to walk home with for lunch.

Where she would complain about vegetables.

And we would both agree that we liked potatoes.

She is the first person I talk to when I am going through my list of Canadian friends. And the one who always responds.

But I have not seen her in years.

I always think I am about to lose her. So close. One of these days she will just be a name, and I will stare at it and never muster up the courage to talk to her again. One of these days I will forget the Toronto skyline, forget the summer bright nights and the TTC through Vic Park-Finch-Don Mills. Where Fairview is. The newly renovated Fairview, all huge and glamorous and confusing.

The feeling in my throat is back again.