Old Habits and New Thoughts

I was going to start a new blog, but since this is fairly anonymous anyway (my old friends have probably long forgotten this) and I'd like to have a place where I can look back and see how my writing has grown—or not grown, perhaps—I decided to pick this back up.

I had been working on this for a while, it's not really anything but words spilling. At some points in my life I had felt this way, not lately though because I've been happy in a way I hadn't been in a really long time. I have some plans and it's okay if they don't go really as planned, I am okay with not knowing for sure this time.

Also, since it's probably more interesting (mostly for future me) if I recounted my days instead of only writing melodramatic prose:

Tomorrow I am going to get lunch with my friend, Terry, and then we'll study together for our final next week, then we'll get dinner with our other friend, Seth, who said he knew this smoked meat burger place. I'm not too sure how smoked meat and burgers can be said in the same sentence, but I guess we'll see. Thursday is relatively planless, but on Friday I'm going grocery shopping with my new beau, Damian, and we're going to make an improvised hotpot. Next week I have two finals, and then I'll finally be free (well, hopefully, depends on how these two finals go) after five years of undergrad. Terry and Seth and I are going on a trip to Maine in May, although I do need to start planning that, and my parents are coming for convocation, and I think I'll go visit my family for the summer, but these are far off plans and I haven't really thought too much ahead yet.

There is a lot happening, and I'm pretty apprehensive, but mostly excited. I do have a lot of doubts, but I've been going to a local church lately for their gorgeous music, and they always say to have faith, which is what I think I should do. I just have to keep forging ahead no matter what happens and have faith that everything will be okay in the end.

I'll aim to update semi-frequently, nothing too serious, just a bit of chronicling of my days because it's more fun to keep it up if I pretend that I have an audience.

Well, without further ado:

would you forget me?

I can let you go in the morning as long as you come back to me at night. without fail, without doubt. you can be with the sirens or the witches or the court of roses, as long as you come back.

if you and I have no regrets, nothing to turn back to, what does our parting mean?

. . .

Adieu.

Despereaux’s mother believed in insurmountable fate, and perhaps so do I. Someone once wrote, “There are people in our lives who were only meant to pass through.” To share with us a lesson or a story or a vivid dream before they fade into the ephemeral. Three years ago, I would have rejected that thought with a brief panic. I would have quelled even the faintest hint of it with a sharp breath.

Tonight, I sit in front of my laptop. The illusions have faded, the memories no longer hurt. In my life I only really had one regret. Tonight, I feel that regret slipping away from me.

Decisive. Strong. Courageous. Independent.

Everything I want to be, everything I am not. In writing, I discard the husk and face my demons. You are not good enough, they whisper. You will never be strong enough to shake us off. My poison is reality, and writing is my antidote. Here, I can objectively say what I should do and mix it in with a batch of optimism. I should and I could. And I would.

I will.

I will, surely.

I will, maybe.

For two years, I cried. Long, lonely sobs, the cold truth of who I was and what I had done snaking its way around my heart. I put my headphones on and tried to sit in front of a screen, too, tried to free myself of a ghost that would trace its chilling fingers around my shoulders and sing in my head.

Dark, darker, let the emotions drain until there is only void.

In those dark nights, I could not imagine ever feeling free. Maybe Fate is only pulling me up through another loop in this rollercoaster, maybe my demons will break out of their confines and drag me back to their lair. But tonight, I have lit my heart on fire.

. . .

can I just close my eyes

can I just close my eyes

can I just, the music is so loud, I’m drowning, I’m falling, the halls are hollow, my voice, my voice, can’t you hear me, I’m screaming, I’m stifling, I’m holding on and I’m pushing it all away

. . .

The snow is cold on my face. It melts on contact, of course, but by then it is too late. I watch as they cloud my glasses, my vision fading into my mind.

In the dark, they are always the same. The Queen, her ever elusiveness, her reluctance to take responsibility for the throne. She closes her eyes and hopes that the inevitable will go away. When the knight in shining armor, when the prince of light himself, when the brother of Fate comes, she is one step closer to falling back into her prison.

She runs away, every time, she fights off her pursuers and flees.

Syrena is everything I want to be.

She is strong, she is cold, she can read people’s hearts and not let them get to her. She fights by herself, defeating legions, defeating her captors, defeating the very fabric of reality. She is the Queen, because they will accept no one else, they do not want to accept anyone else.

Yet even she runs away from the insurmountable.

We each have our prisons, the keys tantalizingly out of reach. We paint the walls and call them home and wait until they fade from the jarring. For the longest time, I thought my prison was reality. I tried to run away from it, to no avail. Why did something so innoculous hurt so much, why will it not leave me alone?

The demons come howling. They knock on my doors, rattling the bars as they pass by, whispering, jeering, mocking. If everything is such a big deal to you, then everyone will think nothing is really a big deal, they screech. Why do you cry, they admonish. You should not cry so much, there is no reason to cry. No reason to feel so upset, they laugh, silvery hollows. How can you be suffering if so many people have it so much worse than you?

Are you crazy? You are, aren’t you?

My mind is my true prison.

Reality is only a construct.

There is really no reason for me to feel this way, objectively speaking. There is no reason why the Queen should run away from what is perhaps the greatest honor. No one really understands, unless they too stretch out reality until it hardens into jagged shapes, scraping at the heart until it is raw. Sometimes what you feel is not real, no matter how real it feels, it is only your mind laughing at you as it dangles the key close, close, closer then throws it barely out of reach.

Do you want it, it asks, do you want to be free? Of me?

Yes, you say. I would rather be plain, flat, emotionless, anything but these vivid colors that scream at my eyes and spin me round and round on this false pedestal.

Of course you never had a chance. Once learned, the mind does not forget.

Normality is the key, it does not come to those who lust after it. The more you reach out, the more it falls back, teasing, coy, flirting with those who do not care for it.

Why does your mind torture you so when it is only torturing itself? Why can it not run away from its own trecherous grasp? Why do I stay up so late to spill my thoughts onto paper, only to shove it into the corners when I wake up?

Will I remember tomorrow the cold fantasy I felt tonight?

How long will this illusion of happiness last?

. . .

music like mercury flowing through my veins

take my soul and keep it captive

pillars of light my staircase to a false heaven

steps like feathers covered in tar

deeper, deeper

spiraling

. . .

Doubt is like sand sifting through to the bottom of your heart. Each tumble of grain scratches at the walls, reminding you of the inevitable drop at the end.

In the winter I always order iced drinks. Coffee, tea, even smoothies. Smoothies are of course the ultimate enigma. Why do I keep ordering something that I know I never like? I have unfortunately fallen in love with the idea of them, a silhouette, just enough to keep up the insanity but not enough to make them palatable.

Anxiety is something you can never outrun. When the clock strikes twelve, the stories come. A traffic accident? Criminals robbing at gun-point? Apocalypse come early? The clock taps furiously. When you open the door and stare into a thousand pairs of eyes, the whispers grow frenzied.

Those whispers belie a more grotesque reality: that they are not whispers, but knowing laughter.

The road is long, monotone, I want to close my eyes but this is what I have always wanted. It has been a while since I really enjoyed the journey. Lately, the destination becomes overwhelming, especially how out of reach it is. The trees drag by in lines of green, gray, and black. Fantastical creatures live beyond the canopy, their eyes stalking the car. The mile markers are keys to a great piano that only entralled one. Sunlight filters like fairy dust, landing on the asphalt to make dark shimmering lakes.

My biggest lie is my love for adventure. It is the idea of it, a spell, a lullaby, taking me by my hands and luring me into the bright of day where I inevitably wake up and crawl back inside. Happiness, too, it eludes me, it puts on the airs of a French queen right before her beheading. The vultures of paranoia encircle me, just at the edge of my perception, patient, consistent, waiting for the lull.

Inevitable. Inescapable. Eventually the fears become prophecies.

Insurmountable.

Fate.

. . .

softly, softly, are you a horrible person? am I a horrible person? you say I am heartless, heartless, flitting like a bird through these tangled vines

razor teeth, razor teeth, you hold me down, we spin around, in the mist we wait, we wait to be found, to be found and discarded

I pick up my dreams and set them down, life is art, art is knowing when to move on

. . .

Why would you throw away three years like it was nothing?

There are no teary goodbyes. It is an instant affair, once the decision is made. Standing steadfast. No longing looks. Head held high, pacing forward, always forward.

Sometimes it is uncanny, how all the people and all the places can be such a blur, and how neatly I can pack them up and stow them away. People have dates, locations, expiration times. They turn into oversaturated polaroids stacked in the attic.

Was it a defense mechanism? Maybe I can know with years of therapy.

New places, new people, new adventures, it does not matter what they are or who they are, I always dive deep, head first, no reservations, no holding back. Maybe this time is not quite right, maybe the sand is too dry, or the sun too bright, maybe the best had already gone by; none of it matters because right now I want what is right now.

Surely they will still be waiting for me when I wake up in the morning.

But I will not wait until then.

Falling out of love is not instant, however abrupt the ending. For me, it is always inevitable. I was always never truly in love, so falling out of love is merely a formality, to demonstrate the finality.

What is real is what is in front of me after the night settles, after the whispers waltz in, after I fall back onto the soft void of my bed and stare at the ghosts that haunt me. What could have been, what would have been, what could never be and would never be and yet so tantalizing idyllic deceptive. How real is reality, how real are these wisps of stories braided together like fog?

Uprooting my life is as simple as flipping the page.

Planting it again is as ephemeral as the light dancing across the words.

One day the pages will fray, the binding harden and crack, the paper musty and heavy, sinking into place. One day the wide-eyed girl will no longer visit this library.

Tonight, we lose ourselves in our own minds.

. . .

tell me darling, why do you keep feeding your demons, why, oh, why darling, you try to run but you keep them on such a short leash, you turn to look at me with such a wistful smile, darling, you run, you slam the door but you smash the windows, you jump from the swing but hold on to the rope, darling, why, why do you need them so much?

why can’t you wake up from your past?

. . .

Have I lied before?

I lie all the time, to other people, to myself. Mostly to myself. I had said I have no regrets; that cannot be true, so patently untrue. If I had no regrets, why would I have these demons nipping at my heels?

There are many shades of reality, each one painted by a demon. Each so fresh, so real, their soft pastel watercolors bleeding into the bold acrylic. Rococo and romantism. My two favorite styles. If I close my eyes for long enough, I can almost feel my skin melting into the canvas, my soul weaving itself under the paint, where I too can pretend that I have frozen myself in that perfect moment where everything was just right and everything will go just right.

Which one is real anymore? Does it even matter?

No artist tolerates reality, Friedrich Nietzsche said.

There is no illusion more deceptive than reality, the pamphlet I picked up at the laundromat said. The artist reflects at length on reality and then magnifies it and turns it into a shimmering work to be shared with the audience, a group of strangers harbouring a thousand contradictory realities.

A group of strangers can have a thousand contradictory realities. I, too, have a thousand contradictory realities. My artists are my demons, instead of shining light they shove on shadows, instead of an audience there is only me. I alone walk down this neverending gallery, the long and dark hallway punctuated by angry canvases.

This is what could have been.

Idealistic. Realistic. Fantastical. Grounded. Just a little bit more, I just wanted, I just thought.

Someone once told me, you don’t have to always be happy. Some days you can be sad, and that’s okay, if you were always happy then happy would be normal and you’d be forever chasing more happiness.

Late at night, I feed my demons with greed. Sheer desire, naked, grotesque, I can feel my weak will crumbling against the gnarling teeth. This is my addiction, I get under the covers and I cry, I make myself so miserable until resignation sinks in, and then, then, I reset my expectations, I start the new day without looking back. These demons tear me down and I rebuild myself. Some days I even hold a paintbrush and go over the lines.

I have invited many people to the exhibition, but they simply shake their heads. Why do you torture yourself like this? None of this can be real. All of this can be real if you only tried. They see the art in front of them as art, and the reality in front of them as reality.

To me, art is merely reality in another dimension. Reality is merely art made present.

Soft rhetoric to comfort myself with as my demons drag the curtains over my eyes.

Find Freedom On This Canvas

I have been listening to this song about Bob Ross, who happens to be one of my two favorite artists (Turner is the other one). This song reminds me of why I picked Turner's work to imitate for my painting class, and why I spent so much time into it—that sense of endlessness and that a piece of art can express what words cannot. I see art sometimes as a drudgery (after all, I only painted decently on my still life picture because I sat behind a perfectionist that made me feel bad), but maybe I have been going about it the wrong way.

A long time ago, I drew because I liked it—so much I dreamed of becoming an artist. Coming from a family of pragmatists who could not understand anything except academics (I mean this not as an insult, but my parents never even signed me up for the stereotypical music classes because they were hopeless in that field), this was not much of a dream at all. I never knew what my parents wanted me to be when I was young. I don't think any of us looked that far.

Somewhere in elementary school, drawing became a chore. It was a class, after all, and when people like your art they want more and you feel like you can't let them down. One of my classmates was really good at horses, and I tried to learn her style, and when my classmates asked me to draw a horse picture for her I was absolutely mortified.

I never quite did this with writing—maybe I have been influenced subconsciously but I never set out to copy someone else's style. I write from my heart, but I haven't drawn from my heart very often lately.

I drew a picture of what I thought Veronica's character in D&D would look like (she is a grey elf ranger), and it's one of my best drawings lately (in terms of anatomically correctness and expression). But what I really want to do is draw the pictures that haunt my mind, the same way I put them to words. I want to draw that void where the wind blows through, and the grass flows like sand.

I want to paint that quaint town nightscape, with the lanterns glowing faintly under a hazy sky, set against towering rugged mountains. I want to hear the stories from my art.

And maybe it is true, maybe every day is a good day when you paint.

. . .

I had completely forgotten when I gave Sam her nickname how ironic that would be, but this time I want to talk about the real Sam. I am—I won't lie—quite infatuated with him. What started out as simple gaming buddies turned into quite a fiasco. (And talk about a fiasco—Cain, who quite the benign Youtube-watching, Facebook-lurking guy, has now become a fanatic LoL addict on the verge of becoming a rager too.) I'm finding myself logged in to a particular place not for any other purpose but to catch him online—and on his end, I know he's been pretty much glued to his computer to chat with me when he has lots of other things going on (eating, for example).

I know Khajiit has taken this nonchalantly—even with a bit of joking encouragement—but I wonder if that is really how he thinks. Obviously, I don't want this to turn out like how it did with Yuma and I, and Khajiit and I have completely different rules when it comes to stuff like this, but, well, I still have to ask.

Does it count as cheating if I really, really like to spend time with someone more so than I normally would anyone else? If so, is Khajiit really okay with it? And if not, can I keep it this way—just really good friends—because it's pretty nice the way it is now.

Sometimes I feel a bit silly. Sometimes I wish I weren't so flippant with regards to such serious stuff—and yet, I think I have been this way ever since kindergarten when I decided I had a crush on two cute boys in my class. What can I say? I have always matured faster in romantic-attractions more so than my actual maturity.

. . .

Alas, I am hungry again. Must set out for food.

And Who Can Say Why Your Heart Cries

Last week, Dray emailed me for the first time in two years.

Looking back on it, the whole ordeal was ridiculous. I had taken something small and completely blown it out of proportion (and even now, I tend to do that, but perhaps not to such an extent). We still have quite a lot to talk about, even to this day, even after all this time, and perhaps he hasn't changed at all. He is still that hit-on-all-the-girls type of guy. I am.

Well, whatever I am now.

Lately, this blog has been more about my relationships than it has been about anything else. In some ways, it has been inevitable (it's not gossip if no one knows what or who you're talking about). I could write about my university life, but somehow it's less interesting to write about and much more interesting to live it out. I have had so many fun moments (like tonight's outing to see fireworks and have ice cream), but they don't translate to words as well as I thought they would.

My last few stories are all about Nick and Katie, and that is rather morbid to think about.

Katie Scarlett stood on the half-shielded balcony, where the rain touched her bare legs. She looked over the moss-covered steps leading up to the door. A few days ago, she had almost slipped on those steps, and Nick had held out his arm to catch her.

This exact scene I have written about numerous times, but from different time frames. The same steps. The same slippery moss. The same drizzling rain.

The same dead Nick Haverford.

In fact the very title, On the Other Side of Saturday, is the same I have chosen for a variety of stories, albeit not all about Katie and Nick.

Some nights, I lie in my bed and I can hardly believe that Yuma and I were once in a relationship. I think about him and I cringe, although I don't know why. Khajiit and I do not have a perfect relationship, but it is such a wholly different dynamic that I can hardly imagine life now any other way.

It is so unfair, isn't it? I broke such a nice boy's heart and I get to go into another nice boy's arms. If there is one thing I could change in my and Yuma's relationship, it would have to be ending it earlier, before I got to hurt him more.

But that's the past.

Tomorrow evening, Khajiit will be boarding the creepy van to Islandtown. In a month, I will be moving into our shared apartment. Last year, when I had him promise to room with me in the fall, I thought we would just be two good friends sharing an apartment. Things sure have changed a lot.

In my latest version of the story, Joss Ritchell saves Katie from her visions of Nick. Would it be fair to say Khajiit is my Joss? In dealing with our various mental health issues, perhaps that is not too far-fetched.

Joss suddenly stood up, walked over, and pulled one of the gardenias out. He took his pocket knife, slit his thumb, and let the blood drip down onto the petals.

Everyone watched as the blood rolled cleanly off the petals, without leaving a stain.

Or maybe I should just sleep.

Push Or Knock; Or Roundabout Gone

Some things I wish I felt more comfortable talking about, out of principle, because I know part of my inability to talk about them stems from a societal prejudice: my mental state, sex, and my inner dialogues. One of my favorite bloggers of late, The Bloggess, does all of these perfectly, so if I were completely honest with myself it's not just societal prejudice but also me.

Then again, how many of us are brave enough to talk about sex in a public forum?

The other two are harder to write about, for me, but they are easier to hint at. To skirt around the edges, like in Fragonard's The Swing, which I drew once as a book cover for my French textbook. Both rococo and romanticism I learned from my European history class from sophomore year.

The other thing I remember from sophomore year was a hazy mix of staring out windows and anonymous crowds rushing past. I wrote about it a lot before, things I kept locked up in the depths of my laptop and hid for two years before I showed some of them to Yuma.

. . .

There is an old Chinese legend (one thing the Chinese have no lacking of) that a poet, late at night, could not decide whether to use "push" or "knock" in his poem to describe his character's internal battle when opening the door.

These days, the two words together mean deliberation.

When I was younger, around seven or eight, I always wondered how people remembered all of these proverbs and legends and folk lores and idioms. It wasn't merely enough to know a saying, you had to know the story behind it too. There were entire books dedicated to the formal four-word proverbs and their origins that schoolchildren my age were required to know.

That, added to the pictorial nature of Chinese words, and you have to wonder: why is it not fading away in favor of something much easier to learn?

I like to cite the poetic nature of it—because, to me, no language is better suited for poetry as Chinese is—down to each word imbued with meaning, but who am I to say? I am neither a poet nor am I a proficient writer of Chinese.

. . .

Khajiit says the younger generation of French people are slowly abandoning the rigid structures their language imposes upon them in favor of their own blend of French. What the equivalent would be for Chinese I do not know, but I hope it does not happen.

Because it is a language of thousands of years' worth of stories, legends, and lore, and there is a part of me that finds peace in allegories.

. . .

Writing for many people is ultimately a cathartic process. Haruki Murakami speaks of writing as a poison, and writing to overcome that poison. Natalie Goldberg believes you should write "what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about." Tim O'Brien uses his writing of a fictitious yet real world to make sense of the absurd yet very real world he had to live in. Andre Aciman repeatedly writes about place as a cover to what he really wants to write about.

For me, writing is about making sense of the past. It is about digging up what I have buried in the past—what I have been afraid to face—and putting them in front of me to finally digest after all this time.

I have been told many times, by many people, that I do not have the courage to face reality. That I am weak, that I do not have the determination. Writing is a cheap alternative, a way to pacify those claims without having to make any painful progress. I can say that writing has helped me to name my demons, but in the end, didn't Seymour Glass still shoot himself? How far can you go with writing when your demon is reality itself?

. . .

It is now six in the morning. This far north, the sun has already risen, although I wouldn't know sitting here in the basement of the tallest building on campus. I woke up yesterday morning at 8:25AM, with ten minutes to spare for my morning class, and with an apathy that has set in lately, told myself it didn't matter and fell back to sleep. The next time I woke up—fully, truly awake—it was already getting dark.

On the bus from New York, I thought about how I used to tie myself to the road. The music I listen to, the colors I love, they all have one trait in common: they're hollow. This emptiness inspired historical fictions, with Vermont and their Green Mountain Boys being my favorite, although any road could evoke endless stretches of fields and the nonchalant wind mussing up my hair.

This is my American dream. The loneliness is only a requisite.

For some people, a vacation is a relaxing break, and when they get back from their far-fetched locations they can settle down and work another half year in their fascinating fields. I am from a family fueled by wanderlust—my father, who cannot settle in any one place for long, no matter how tempting the place; or my mother, who takes to trips as other people take to hobbies.

I can stay in one place for a very, very long time if I had to, and if it were the only option in front of me. I would be okay with an entire year without vacations if it meant a regular schedule and the expectation that this is it. But once I am on the road, no amount of travelling will satisfy me. I have been on day-long trips, and week-long trips, and month-long trips, and it is all the same. If I start, I cannot stop.

. . .

Deep in the nights, we talk frankly. Khajiit about his cuts, me about my panicked nature. He tells me to take a deep breath. We talk frankly but nothing much meaningful ever comes out of it. We revert to the same conversations.

My parents say I never write about anything truly meaningful. It could be because I do not show them the extent of what I write, or because I have not, in their eyes, suffered. I have not lived an entire year on pickled radishes and plain rice because I could not afford anything else. I have not woken up before sunrise and come home way after midnight working in a lab to sustain a meagre way of life. Compared to that, I have lived a life of luxury.

I think it is more than that. When Khajiit and I give someone on the streets a dollar, I wonder where our moralities lie. When we talk so frankly of being nineteen-year-olds and of the world giving us more responsibilities than we can handle (Khajiit more so than me, obviously), of, as he calls it, "Everything conspiring against me," I wonder if we truly know ourselves.

Through this year of tumult, political and personal, can I claim that I know myself?

. . .

The first time I formally learned about allegories was also in sophomore year, when my English class read Lord of the Flies. There is something to be said about things coming full circle.

Some Old Things In Drafts

"I know there's something in the wake of your smile, I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah."—Listen to Your Heart, Roxette


Molly Lambert has an interesting way of writing. She starts out with something ordinary, like telephone lines against a sunset, and expands it into something seemingly unrelated, like Hamlet, and then wraps it up with a post title and a link title that are completely different. And the pictures too. They make every post something special, something worth reading (it helps too that the pictures break up the dense text).

I wanted to clear out my drafts because the number of total posts was misleading (some of them will probably never, ever see the light of day) and also because I reread this the other day and remembered Molly. She is something special. She has since left "This Recording," but she was the reason I read through all of those wordy posts even though I knew I had assignments of my own due the next day.

There are days I wish I could write like her. But that takes skill. That takes discipline, tremendous amounts of it. And with my brain addled with lack of sleep and the instantaneous skimming I have acquired by reading through my collection of food blogs, I don't have that quite yet.

It is the difference between the good writers and the great writers, although I am not either yet, and perhaps at this rate never will be.

I still remember this particular post. Telephone lines breaking up the sky. Some sort of strange irony that they are not at odds but instead harmonious. I stared at two pigeons today in the middle of campus, watched them squeeze under the wrought-iron fence, their heads bobbing. I did not know pigeons bobbed their heads before "Pooch Café." Even though I must have seen a hundred pigeons before, if not more.

What else have I never known?

Yuma asked me today if I had read Tea's latest blog post, and of course I have. I am subscribed to her in my RSS feed, I cannot escape it. He said it reminded him of me. What were his exact words? Something about being angsty, and it not being the point that I refuted him with the concrete fact that I was not hurt.

But he is more often right than I am. Yesterday a boy in my English class (for engineers) walked with me to my next classroom, and told me he was going to go to the engineering library. He had taken the long way by walking with me, but he said the shortcut was closed. Yuma said he was "hitting on me," but he has been saying that about almost every boy I have talked with. Is he really right, or is he being insecure?

We are reading The Tale of Despereaux right now. Or rather, Yuma is reading it to me, chapter by chapter, on nights when we can both fulfill our promises. We are on the chapter where Despereaux's mother says, "Adieu." It is a sad chapter. There are more sad chapters following it.

I told him, "When we get to the happily ever after we will be able to live happily ever after as well."

His answer was, "We'll see." It is his answer for the future, for our future. He is living it day by day, that is his way of coping. I am living it by focusing on the end. That is my way of coping.

I told Nyx today that I might be visiting Beavertown during my Thanksgiving, and that if I do I would like to see her before I go back. She asked, "Are you going to see Yuma?"

And then said, "I heard you guys broke it off."

Have we?

Yuma introduced me last night to his going-to-forbidden-places-and-physics buddy as "my ex." He signed off one of his chats to me today as "my lovely." Maybe this is his double life, his way of separating what he feels and what he wants to feel. But I am assuming now. I am taking a literary book off the shelf and remarking on its symbolism without going inside the head of the author.

When he read my blog the other night Yuma said, "I always get nervous when you write about me. I don't know what you are going to say."

Maybe that is part of the problem. There is a part of me I do not speak of, a part I only write of. No matter how much we talk and how much he asks me, he will never know my true impression of him. Sometimes I do not know either. The words come out and they are just right, they hint at something I otherwise would never have guessed. Or they are not right, and I erase them, and try again and again.

One of my other drafts was about an airport terminal. Maybe I will post it some day when I have the chance. It is silly now, because I have fulfilled my flying dream, I have seen the vast blue sky at an altitude above the meanest rain cloud.

Here is an excerpt of it, of one of the very last paragraphs I wrote before I got distracted by something else:


I have not been imagining things for a very long time now. It is because of content—when I am happy, I tend not to want to escape through my mind. At least I thought I was happy. In many ways, I am. I love being able to lean back and knowing that someone will catch me before I fall. I love skipping down the halls and not being alone. I have had one too many solitary hopscotch games.


But there is a part of me that is the loner in the rain, the one who is perfectly happy to be cold and drenched and with no one else to reach out with a hand. The one who can watch snow drift for hours and be at peace, because there is not a soul to take this away. Not a soul to break the news of reality.

It is silly to mention this now. Yuma says there are boys here who will make me happy. Who I can cuddle with and not feel lonely. I always stop listening before he goes on.

Tea said I should only chase after him if I am absolutely, 100% dedicated. And I see why now. It is extremely frustrating to reach out every time and be rebuffed, to want to be upset but knowing it would only weaken my stance. On the bright side I will probably be much better at sales pitches by the end of this.

I am all out of milk now, although not yet out of cereal. I was going to buy milk this morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, but when you go to bed in the not-so-early morning you wake up in the almost-not-morning morning. And other things happen. Like today I went to a roundtable discussion with several other engineers from other years and with some company reps from this oil and gas company, and they have all been mentioning internships and Jessica and I are left with wondering what we should do.

"My GPA will be so good this semester," Jessica said. "I am going to get straight As because the classes are so easy."

I am going to get straight As too, or at least I have to, or else I will not have the 3.7 GPA I need to keep my scholarship. It is a scary proposition, but I have heard it is do-able. At least for this semester, which means I will at least have the money for next semester, and maybe I can live it out that way, or maybe I can just learn to the best I can and not worry about grades, because those things come naturally after learning.

And lots and lots of work. Which means lots and lots of time.

Yuma has repeatedly mentioned that I should just do the things I want to do and not worry about conforming to his schedule. But I cannot do that. Because if he is unwilling to compromise then the only way I will get to talk with him is by compromising myself. It is silly, it is hard, and it is taking its toll on my preferred bedtime.

I suppose that is inevitable.

Rhett Says We're On Everest

Eighty-something pages into Gone With the Wind, I've finally met Rhett (officially), and I have to say, he is a bit of a disappointment. He has a weird mustache, and he's over thirty years old, when Scarlett's only sixteen. It was acceptable back then, and in some places, still acceptable today, but I don't attach any romantic inclinations towards men over twice my age with mustaches and appear "cool" (I'm pretty sure this "cool" does not have the connotations it has now) looking.

However, he's got a cool (modern definition) name, and with a name like Rhett, I will forgive his other faults so far. For the time being. Besides, I do want to see how the drunk Tarleton twins will handle Scarlett's new fancy (if she gets over the cousin-marrying fiend first, that is).

On a more personal level, yesterday, Zephy and I started from Base Camp (our school) and hiked up Mt. Everest to arrive at the peak (our homes). Along the way, we scaled numerous icy paths and lumpy rocks, and made a pit stop at one of the camps along the way.

Zephy rang the doorbell (sophisticated technology), and after a while, Vincent opened the door.

So we went in, took a rest, and watched some adorable mountain critters (kittens) play with each other and running away from us. That last part was kind of sad, but at least one of them liked us, so we mostly played with him while dangling the cat toy (a good distance away from us) for the others to play.

I've also not updated for some time, so a brief recap of things that happened before my outlandish hike up the ever-daunting Everest. Wednesday there was a lab in chem, whereupon we played with super-concentrated HCl (6M, which is half the strength of stock HCl) and vaporized magnesium strips (technically, the magnesium was not vaporized, it merely ionized into Mg+2 and the gas given off was hydrogen, but it sure does look like the magnesium was vaporized). The next day, Argon and Reese and I had a discussion about Reese's awful lab skills, mainly pouring chemicals (which he claims is "in the family," as his sister was awful at that as well). We were all glad that Reese did not participate in the lab I had the day before, because, as Mr. Coffee had said, "One drop of this stuff on your hand, you'll feel fine, and then after a while, you'll say, 'owww.' More than one drop, and you're in serious trouble."

On Thursday, my SAT scores also came out! I'd been waiting for them for, uh, pretty much since I got them over with, and I did way better than I thought I would, so I'm happy. No more icky SATs (not even SAT IIs anymore). I also ran the mile run, with more than a minute over the "health" limit, and half a minute more than what I had accomplished last year, but I blame my current non-activity in health class, instead of gym, as the main culprit.

Today (and tomorrow), all the state parks open for free (most of them are free anyway, as I later realized), so my parents and I went upstate to a place with mountains, streams (with fish), and lots of campsites. We watched a few people fishing for a while, then we went nearby to a waterfall. All in all, it was an eventful day. Plus, I found a few more nice songs from a playlist someone else compiled, so I'm going to listen to those while writing my multiple perspective narrative. (Argon had trouble with the "creative" writing part, so I tried to explain with a complex system of where the input from the surroundings spurred personal output, which altered the environment and thus creates more input, and so the cycle goes on. I think this made it more logical than creative, but oh well.)

MID—
Rhett: 0.5
Scarlett: 1

Procrastination and Another New Beginning

If it were completely up to me, school would assign no homework at all, and we would only have to do work in class. It's totally plausible, with after-school group study sessions to review materials covered in class, without the plethora of distractions home (and, quite often, my laptop that happens to have internet access) offers.

I would never, ever finish an assignment five minutes before it's due.

Argon would know. He's very concerned with my current ability to handle schoolwork right now. It's a little disconcerting, actually, how often he says I seem so stressed out.

I'm not. Really. I just mock-complain a lot, because my mind goes blank every now and then and I don't know what to say. Interesting, coming from a girl everyone thinks is really quiet.

Anyway, the point of this came from my current status of procrastinating instead of doing my English notecards, as I totally should do, had I been the good little girl I was back in... uh, seventh grade? I finished my homework ahead of time back then.

In fact, I still blame that guy in eighth grade, who always did homework in class and got caught (as opposed to me, who always did homework in class and never got caught) as my major corrupter. I did get a key chain as compensation though, but that's another story.

As I was saying. I had been procrastinating, when I roamed upon my Gmail tab (not accidentally) and spotted Tea. I immediately made myself "visible" and said hi.

"Hi," Tea said. "You know I blog, right?"

Oh, Tea blogs?

"I know now," I typed. Blogging reminded me of all those semi-attempts I had at blogging prior. And my half-hearted posts that collected dust.

Oh yeah. Pleasant memories of a self-proclaimed princess of procrastination.

"Well," Tea said. "Read this."

And she promptly sent over the link to her blog.

Which, I have to say, looks all amazing, partly because I myself have never accomplished such prolific projects of such massive scale. (It's also amazing otherwise, but I've always been uncreative with praise and such.) I scanned through the latest post--mentioning me as Ginny, which is evidently where I got my screen name from--and the quite... interesting turn of events. This, on some scale, is sad, because I had been there half the time, and I caught on to only two parts of the conversation, namely Irving's ad and Dino's bot-like voice. Oh well. I was always slow to react.

But this raises a very valid question.

Why am I not blogging?

Or, to phrase it in terms that strike my conscience the most:

Why am I not continuing to blog on those blogs I've started?

Posing that as my "Question of Subconsciousness" as I work on my remaining six notecards, I realize that it's because blogging had never been fun. It's always been something I wanted to do when I wanted to write about all the things that troubled me, but I channeled those into stories instead.

Oh, and this reminds me, I'm a little upset that I didn't get even an "honorable mention" in the Reflections contest (Boris did get second place for his poem, though, which I remembered him printing off on the day it was due, probably because we were both in the library that morning with last minute edits), but then I realized that winning wasn't the reason I wrote. I write because I want to visualize my emotions.

It's why most people don't get the things I mention in my writing. I use a lot of references (I like historical ones the best). I describe things with a novelty that is only completed because of the connotations of the words themselves. And I write with how it sounds in mind, because to me, the words are often more important than the plot.

But those were stories.

This is real life. And real life is supposed to be fun, because it's pointless if I go around being moody all the time.

(I had a discussion yesterday, as it chanced, with Stella, a friend of mine back in a world far, far away, about the meaning of life. Or lack thereof, I suppose. We ended up mulling over what existence meant, why we still lived and hung on to our lives, and the rather disturbing thoughts Stella had.)

Real life, and Ginny-world (Nephria, as it is called, for the Unenlightened), are two drastically different things. I've forgotten that writing could be just, purely, unequivocally about fun, and that's where I had gone wrong on my Quest O'Blog.

So, a fresh start?

In 2010.

Maybe.

But first, my five remaining notecards. English teachers may not be able to count, but NoodleBib unfortunately can.