... is just normal Texas. Texas is the weirdest.
Christmas eve, and it's sunny outside. Not too far away, there is a tornado threat. Palm trees shiver under pine trees, which sweat in the heat. Every front yard is a light show, blinking LEDs making me paranoid and crazy. I watch Rudolph and his compadres take the same two-step-leap 30 times in the space of a minute. A deflated pile of fabric by day, an internally illuminated and suggestively posturing snowman by night. A huge truck, a huge truck, another huge truck.
The lake is probably uniformly one and a half feet deep. A white egret stands on one leg, and pounces at a fish. It's bounty shines green in the sun which is still above the horizon at 5 pm. The egret drops the fish half a foot before gracefully snatching it out of the air again at a better angle for swallowing.
The bicycle's can shift while you're coasting.
Weird shit.
Christmas Day
This morning I rode the bicycle that took my mother around Ireland 40 years ago. My father ran in front of my pulling huge branches out of the path. Sometimes we had to get off the path to circumnavigate entire trees. I was barefoot. We passed an athletic woman, in her 50s, with a sheep on a leash. She was reading her iphone. The sheep said "bah." That was all.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
College Application Essay
Found this on Facebook as a Note. I should try to hunt down the other ones, though I remember being especially fond of this one. Forgive the pretentious title, I was young.
Once upon a time, a girl sat on a hill. She looked out over a city and watched the leaves tumble from trees in warm waves of decomposing life. She watched a crane, a bright yellow maze of steel bars, lift blocks into place. She saw mistletoe above her head, feeding off of the tree whose shade she took thankless advantage of. She thought of a friend who could, at one moment, be closer than herself and the next could be leaving without pause. She wanted to shout to the mountains and the blackberries how wonderful it was that they grew and moved. Instead she smiled, and prayed that if anything could be unstoppable, it was the cycles she observed. The parade of time, binding and unbinding, sleeping and dancing, was both below and above everything she’d ever experienced. She refused to forget that.
Pay attention to the fluidity of time. There are so many ways to get caught up in details, to detonate before the bomb is placed, to build reactions without fuses. Events are less powerful than trends, like currents overpowering fallen trees. I have never wanted to freeze time. The moments that I treasure are the rapids; when time is moving so quickly that it’s miraculous that I can even keep up. A frozen river is no river at all. All it has is hope to flow again.
No one analyzes a curve only by its endpoints. The derivatives are important through first, second, and n-th degrees until they’re zero again and again. The same is true of life. It’s terribly seductive to look at time as starts and finishes, instead of an unbroken flow of events. But any single second is an opportunity to begin or end, so any infinitely small instant is a potential point of inflection. This can get lost in definitions; motion is too easily forgotten.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Books Books Books Books
I also found a book of Italo Calvino's essays at Goodwill.
Then Christmas came around and I got a zillion other books.
There they are. This is intimidating.
The Electrical Reference is pretty exciting. It also teaches addition and multiplication. And how to bend conduits. I don't even know.
Most excited for Naked Lunch and Mythologies though.
Currently reading Dead-Eye Dick by Vonnegut and Unpopular Essays by Bertrand Russel. So I need to finish those too. And I never finished the Monkey Wrench Gang...
Friday, December 21, 2012
Drugs, Writing, and Magical Realism
Look, I'm not an English major. I was almost a French major, but, hear me out.
I think I'm drawn to literature about drugs, and even writing about them myself, because they create a world that's like the real one, is the real one, yet is totally parallel. I've only read one book that fell under the genre of "magical realism" (Bless Me, Ultima and I was really bored by it) but I think there are some similarities.
In the really harsh definitions of magical realism, they demand that there is magic, but in this definition that I stole from wikipedia there is no demand for that : "...man as a mystery surrounded by realistic facts. A poetic prediction or a poetic denial of reality. What for lack of another name could be called magical realism."
Junkie and Trainspotting demonstrate a fundamental poetic denial of reality. Heroin creates an alternative set of goals, an alternative hierarchy, an alternative mental state that exists inside of the real world. Hunter S. Thompson uses drug-addled adventures to create poetic predictions about the state of society and the future of the world. The American Dream is dead because while he hunts for it in this crazed state, the perfect way to find it, he can only see its shadow.
In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test the Merry Pranksters are in a tribe within a tribe. Counterculture within counterculture within Culture. Their emotions and their desires are based on experiences outside of the mundane world, yet must take place within it. Their motivations are mysteries.
I guess I should read 100 Years of Solitude and maybe some Borges and then we'll see if the comparison stands. I've just been looking for a genre to put all of this into, and I'm coming up short. I know my brother got me Naked Lunch for Christmas, so I'm excited to continue my obsession.
I think I'm drawn to literature about drugs, and even writing about them myself, because they create a world that's like the real one, is the real one, yet is totally parallel. I've only read one book that fell under the genre of "magical realism" (Bless Me, Ultima and I was really bored by it) but I think there are some similarities.
In the really harsh definitions of magical realism, they demand that there is magic, but in this definition that I stole from wikipedia there is no demand for that : "...man as a mystery surrounded by realistic facts. A poetic prediction or a poetic denial of reality. What for lack of another name could be called magical realism."
Junkie and Trainspotting demonstrate a fundamental poetic denial of reality. Heroin creates an alternative set of goals, an alternative hierarchy, an alternative mental state that exists inside of the real world. Hunter S. Thompson uses drug-addled adventures to create poetic predictions about the state of society and the future of the world. The American Dream is dead because while he hunts for it in this crazed state, the perfect way to find it, he can only see its shadow.
In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test the Merry Pranksters are in a tribe within a tribe. Counterculture within counterculture within Culture. Their emotions and their desires are based on experiences outside of the mundane world, yet must take place within it. Their motivations are mysteries.
I guess I should read 100 Years of Solitude and maybe some Borges and then we'll see if the comparison stands. I've just been looking for a genre to put all of this into, and I'm coming up short. I know my brother got me Naked Lunch for Christmas, so I'm excited to continue my obsession.
Sleep Deprivation Trip
The night before my last night in Madrid, I couldn't sleep. I laid in bed. I took a 2 hour nap later that day.
The next night I went clubbing until 6 am. I slept some.
The next night I didn't sleep at all, I left for the airport at 2 am.
I was on a plane for the next 24 hours.
I arrived in Corvallis at night, unpacked from Madrid and packed for Country Fair, and I left at 3 am. When I arrived I had early morning tea with my mother and started the day.
I don't know how to count the sleep deprivation. I usually just say 4 days. But it was at least 4 days, plus 9 hours of jet-lag, plus lousy (2-3 hrs) sleep the two nights before.
That night at the Country Fair, I went to that Ritz. Communal showers and a sauna left me clean and comforted. The only problem I felt was slight nausea, out of no where. We walked back towards camp through dark paths. It was a 15 minute walk that I had taken easily 100 times in my life. I didn't need light.
But my mother's eyes were worse than mine. I told her that I found the lantern disturbing, its LED turning the forest into blacks and whites instead of golds and shadows. But she insisted that it was necessary. How could I argue, it was night.
The lantern bothered me more and more. I walked in front of it to avoid seeing the source. I walked behind it to be more in the darkness. I found myself holding back tears. It swung as my mother walked, its path following her shifting feet and swinging arms.
The nausea increased and I felt seasick. The whole world seemed to move with the lantern. I watched the forest rock in front of me. I walked far enough ahead to be out of reach of the light, trying not to betray my panic. The world calmed down again.
I became aware that I was in an altered state. The trees were making patterns that I had never seen before. Branches seemed to switch places, creating tricks of depth. The nigh-time gray scale faded from bright to dark, then bright things looked dark and dark things looked bright. The shadows stuttered.
At this point I took on a I'm-tripping sort of mindset, and decided to ride it out and see what it would bring.
I got back to camp and wandered aimlessly. Everyone else was going to bed, but I said that I was going to walk the paths. Somehow I had trouble leaving, though. I milled around, a growing feeling of aimless fear joining my nausea. I walked one direction and saw the branches, still moving and switching and pulling the same tricks as before, but now it all felt very threatening. I walked towards the stage and saw the towering panels that made up the stage set. The negative space they created with the trees and the sky made me feel so small and helpless. The trees kept tricking, making shadows in ways I could not anticipate. This familiar world, where I lived for 2-3 weeks every year, looked completely different and beyond that, it hated me.
I started crying. Graham walked back from the bathroom and I asked brokenly if he'd ever tripped from sleep deprivation. He held me and told me about one time when he had seen dinosaurs in wall paper. Even though I felt safer with Graham, the environment was getting worse. Things seemed bigger. Light still made me sick. Graham suggested I go to sleep. When he said it, it seemed like the right thing to do. I got into my sleeping bag, laid down, and closed my eyes.
As soon as my eyes were closed, and my limbs contained in the sleeping bag, I felt my head fall lower than my body. I felt that I was hanging upside-down, underwater, in a coffin. I sat up, put my hand over my mouth, and held back a scream.
I switched my direction, so that my feet were where my head was and my head was on the other side of the tent. I no longer felt like I was hanging upside-down. I fell asleep.
The next morning, I felt better. But throughout the day, I would see the same branches, the same shapes that I had seen the night before and all of the feelings of fear and rejection would come crashing back down on me. It was somewhere between a flashback and being triggered. In those moments, I was mostly afraid that this place that had been home for so long would now always be a place of fear.
I wrote everything down in the form of a letter to my friend Eric. I felt a little better.
When I woke up the next day the place had lost its danger, and was back to being home.
Moral of the story, go to sleep. Also, sleep dep is a good way to have a bad trip.
A hard day
I woke up with a head full of dreams. As of tomorrow I'm going to start writing down everything I can remember when I wake up. It's like sitting through class without taking notes. So much thought and learning (of a sort) is lost by forgetting dreams.
I found out a high school classmate of mine died on the 18th. Josh Nelson. I didn't know him well, but he was in many of my classes, and I have a lot of memories of him. He had a very distinctive voice, and speech patterns too. In physics we were learning how to counterbalance something heavy with something light. He was our heavy. He sat in a leather harness for a long time, until he turned green and threw up on the classroom floor, at which point he was removed from his hanging position. He was a great runner, and brilliant kid as far as I knew.
It reminded me of Levi Duclos, who died over winter break last year. Again, someone I didn't know well, but who was still in my life somehow.
I can't imagine what his friends are going through.
Now I am somehow supposed to gather the courage to work on Paideia. I have been. It's going slowly but surely, I guess. I've been spinning fans to Pretty Lights "Out of Time" when I take breaks. My arms are tired but I feel myself getting closer to the -flow- that firedancers talk about.
Tonight I think we're going to the Country Fair for a solstice party. I hope that being there can clear my head.
I found out a high school classmate of mine died on the 18th. Josh Nelson. I didn't know him well, but he was in many of my classes, and I have a lot of memories of him. He had a very distinctive voice, and speech patterns too. In physics we were learning how to counterbalance something heavy with something light. He was our heavy. He sat in a leather harness for a long time, until he turned green and threw up on the classroom floor, at which point he was removed from his hanging position. He was a great runner, and brilliant kid as far as I knew.
It reminded me of Levi Duclos, who died over winter break last year. Again, someone I didn't know well, but who was still in my life somehow.
I can't imagine what his friends are going through.
Now I am somehow supposed to gather the courage to work on Paideia. I have been. It's going slowly but surely, I guess. I've been spinning fans to Pretty Lights "Out of Time" when I take breaks. My arms are tired but I feel myself getting closer to the -flow- that firedancers talk about.
Tonight I think we're going to the Country Fair for a solstice party. I hope that being there can clear my head.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
My dream last night.
I didn't write this one down right away because it was too dark and I didn't want to rethink it. It wasn't a nightmare, but I woke up breathing really heavily, and I was pretty emotionally involved in it, though not really scared.
There's some vague stuff I remember about a grocery store... but the important part is in a white VW van like I used to have. My friend Jordan had just killed a man. He'd shot him. Somehow the bullet had also injured Boots. Someone mentioned that it had hurt his hands, to which Jordan replied "there's not much of them left" he seemed emotionless, but also so hurt by it all. My other friend was drinking hippy tinctures like they were booze. He was trying to get drunk. It seemed so silly to be trying to get drunk off of healing liquids, especially when something so dark was happening.
He walked down the stairs to the basement of the van (classic dream architecture.) Then I woke up.
Maybe tomorrow I'll write up the crazy one about the kid I'm silly-crushing on. For now my eyes hurt from too much computer today.
It feels good to have written so much.
Christmas dream: I compete in FPS again and totally fail. The boy calls me and asks if we can film ourselves having sex in positions that look like one position but are actually others. I go to a movie theater and he's there with some other girl. He talks to me, goes over and kisses her, and talks to me again. Subconscious jealousy? Hope not.
There's some vague stuff I remember about a grocery store... but the important part is in a white VW van like I used to have. My friend Jordan had just killed a man. He'd shot him. Somehow the bullet had also injured Boots. Someone mentioned that it had hurt his hands, to which Jordan replied "there's not much of them left" he seemed emotionless, but also so hurt by it all. My other friend was drinking hippy tinctures like they were booze. He was trying to get drunk. It seemed so silly to be trying to get drunk off of healing liquids, especially when something so dark was happening.
He walked down the stairs to the basement of the van (classic dream architecture.) Then I woke up.
Maybe tomorrow I'll write up the crazy one about the kid I'm silly-crushing on. For now my eyes hurt from too much computer today.
It feels good to have written so much.
Christmas dream: I compete in FPS again and totally fail. The boy calls me and asks if we can film ourselves having sex in positions that look like one position but are actually others. I go to a movie theater and he's there with some other girl. He talks to me, goes over and kisses her, and talks to me again. Subconscious jealousy? Hope not.
The Rhythm of Life or and Explanation of the term "Mental Breakdown Wednesdays"
This semester there was a special rhythm to my life. Namely, I would work on Sunday night, and do little on Monday except go to class, and maybe get a head start on homework for Wednesday. On Tuesday, I would read all day for a class on Tuesday afternoon, then I would do a problem set, study for a quiz, and prepare for lab. That's a long day.
By Wednesday, I would often have some caffeine, and I would be spent from Tuesday. I'd be in class from 10 am to 3 pm or later. Then, I would be tired and crazy.
These nights would often end in me graffiti-ing a bathroom, telling one of my closest friends I had a crush on him, taking off my shirt and doing handstands, laying on the floor in the GCC and grumbling, or sewing a colorful pouch wherein to put a confession of infatuation. Very rarely would I get work done on a Wednesday unless it took place in the early morning.
Then, on Thursday, I would read all day for French that afternoon, then do a math problem set and a physics problem set. On Friday, I would experience similar feelings as Wednesday but there were socially acceptable ways of taking out that frustration. Like, getting shitfaced or dancing all night.
Anyways, this rhythm basically defined my life and mental state. I thought it should be immortalized.
You may notice that my Sociology reading is not budgeted anywhere. I don't know when that happened, but it usually did. Usually during the hours of 5 am to 8 am on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I guess.
Everything is darkness, and what isn't darkness is fucking Fluorescent lights.
Finals week was insane. Freshman year was nothing like this. Nothing. I'm going to try to describe the mind-fuck I experienced in its totality.
It all started at Spring-Fall Thesis Parade. It was lovely and I kissed everyone and drank lots of champagne, but specifically I slept with a friend (the boy from Benzos) and told another friend that I had written him a note on one of my many "Mental-Breakdown Wednesdays" that said "you are the most beautiful person I have ever met" and was in a little pouch I sewed and beaded.
They are housemates. Don't worry.
I gave him the note to much heart-pounding and awkwardness. Actually, all that happened was I was working on a Soc project in the ETC, and my partner happened to sit right across from him. So, we did the project and I happened to have the note in my pocket because I'd been planning to deliver it eventually... so I set it on his desk and said "This is for you I'm leaving." He said "Thanks" and smiled a little bit as I walked out. I probably shouldn't have looked back. His smile is incredible. I had an entire dream where all I did was try to describe his smile. This blog deserves a few dream journal entries, they've been good lately.
As for the other guy, we had sex again a day or two later and then the night before I left he came over just to cuddle, which was interesting. I really like him too, I just haven't had 8 dreams about him. We're closer friends though, by a long shot.
So I was dealing with all of this "what's he gonna say?" "what does he want from me?" "will this work" "why am I sleeping with my friend when I'm crushing on his housemate?" "why am I so attracted to ALL of the anarchists? They're dirty and weird..." going on while I had the hardest week ever in terms of school work.
Entry on the hardest weekend, now entry on the hardest week. This is a jolly fucking journal.
In a lot of ways, it was awesome.
I did a Soc final on Friday of reading week. I had kinda let myself go in that class, so I did a lot of studying for it even though it probably didn't require 8 hours of studying and 4 hours of testing.
Then I studied for Multi. I copied out all of the definitions, theorems, and proofs that we were supposed to know. It was six pages double sided. It felt incredible, because as I went through them I understood them. It wasn't that I had memorized them, it was that after all semester of problem sets and classes and quizzes and tests I had internalized enough math that it wasn't about memorization. I could understand these concepts because I understood math better. I could have choked on the test and still been proud and satisfied because of that. The test went okay.
Physics. I studied hard, and had something of a similar feeling as in math. Ordinary Differential Equations are my bitch. Waves and certain other sillinesses are not fully understood. But I think I got the important stuff, and I'll review the rest.
The test was bullshit. I had the math test from 1-4, and then the physics from 6-10. I left at 8:30. I was done. There was nothing else I could do. But everyone else stayed and kept working, even though the professor had told us he didn't expect us to take the whole time. Luckily, I had a bottle of champagne in my pocket and was able to start drinking about 30 seconds after walking out of the building. As planned, I walked into the canyon and yelled "I have of late but wherefore I know not [...] Man delights not me, no, nor women neither though by your smiling you seem to say so" into the calm darkness. I'd had that monologue stuck in my head all week.
Followed my friends around, smoking mugwort angrily, and proceeded to find out that everyone else had as much trouble with the test as I did. They just sat through it and checked their answers. I refuse to torture myself for nothing. I do not apologize.
Then came the french paper.
I slept in the next day, as I had earned it. By the time I got out of bed, I had 28 hours to read the last 30 pages of Proust, and write a 7 page paper in french about the prose rhymes in the book. I had already read about 80 pages of theory on them, and the other 200 pages of the book. Also, I had a thesis, and had put a lot of thought into it.
So I thought, no problem.
I finished the book at fucking 6 pm, leaving me 23 hours. Proust is hard to read, alright. Also, the phenomenon of Reed Releases started during finals week and wasted a lot of my time. They're confessions of love/lust anonymously posted on tumblr and facebook. They're frequently really awkward and juicy. Especially when everyone is to stressed and tied up in themselves to actually interact with anyone. Finals week was a perfect time for shit like that to catch on.
Anyways, I panicked a little bit, and had to go to the ETC. I still didn't feel okay, so I went to Em and borrowed her empty cigarettes and her mullein and lavender. I rolled almost 20 mugwort, mullein, and lavender cigs, of which I smoked at least one an hour for the next 14 hours. I also gave some away. The probably saved me. Finally, I went back to the ETC where I got something of an outline worked out and typed up all the quotes.
At 1 am I laid down in bed. At 2 am I thought maybe I could knock myself out with Death Note. In retrospect I should probably have watched something less TOTALLY AWESOME.
At 3 am I facebook chatted the boy from Benzos, who was still in the library. I decided that if I wasn't sleeping, I may as well be working. On the way back to the library I ran into a few friends who were going home. They thought I was crazy.
When I walked into the new pit Hugh laughed. I sat down and opened my computer, and he left his to sit next to me. He pulled out his fat sharpie that he uses for tagging and wrote FML on my arm. It still hasn't washed off. I laughed. Then I wrote.
The chunk that happened between 3 and 7 am was the best. It was about 50% of the essay. At 6 I started crashing. I went to the Stim table where this kid who's name is weird and I forget it all the time asked me if he could buy whippets. I said "yes, gimme an hour, I wanna do a bit more work." At 7 I was really hurting. I thought maybe whippets were an appropriate study drug in this case. No one else agreed, but it made sense to me. I went to the Stim table again, and we went back to my room. He paid about 50 cents a pop, which is pretty generous on my part, but I was gonna use his cracker so I didn't really care.
We went up to the second floor of the library, just outside of my math classroom. We took turns, sitting on the floor with little blue cartridges piling up between us. The hum final was about to start, and one of the cool freshmen walked by us trying to find a good place to do the test.
The guy was really paranoid, so we hid everything every time we heard footsteps. Still, she's pretty smart.
"Are you doing whippets?"
".... yes. do you want one?"
"Uh, no thanks, carry on."
We did. I had my first really dissociation experience on the ground up there. I closed my eyes, and I felt totally a sort of spinning. I opened them and the world did not appear to spin with me. My legs stayed splayed, unperturbed. I closed my eyes and felt the same spinning. Not a dizzy spinning, just an alternative stillness that had a bit more wiggle to it. And I felt that that space was where I wanted to be.
I did 5 whippets there, and then we went our separate ways.
I got the boy and Hugh and went to buy them breakfast. One of the Commons workers with whom I have a rapport asked me how I was. I laughed and acted like a crazy person. I wonder what he thinks of me.
Eating breakfast was fun. I mostly sat in a sad ball, laughing at what Hugh and boy said. Dylan came over and sat with us, being sad about his finals. GabeJake came over too. He had somehow confused the schedule and missed the math final Tuesday, so he was taking it on Thursday. He was also a bit perturbed. The vague happiness that sticks after a few whippets pulled me through.
I did some more work, but the whippets wore off. I went back to Chittick with Strugz Browne and did 3 more whippets. I also spun my fans a bit, which calmed me down.
Back to work.
Look, the essay happened. It was pretty good, in the end. Maybe I'll post it here after its graded, so I can look back on it. Some of my other essays are lost to dead computers, which makes me sad.
Fuck, finals week was crazy hard.
That's basically all I wanted to say.
It all started at Spring-Fall Thesis Parade. It was lovely and I kissed everyone and drank lots of champagne, but specifically I slept with a friend (the boy from Benzos) and told another friend that I had written him a note on one of my many "Mental-Breakdown Wednesdays" that said "you are the most beautiful person I have ever met" and was in a little pouch I sewed and beaded.
They are housemates. Don't worry.
I gave him the note to much heart-pounding and awkwardness. Actually, all that happened was I was working on a Soc project in the ETC, and my partner happened to sit right across from him. So, we did the project and I happened to have the note in my pocket because I'd been planning to deliver it eventually... so I set it on his desk and said "This is for you I'm leaving." He said "Thanks" and smiled a little bit as I walked out. I probably shouldn't have looked back. His smile is incredible. I had an entire dream where all I did was try to describe his smile. This blog deserves a few dream journal entries, they've been good lately.
As for the other guy, we had sex again a day or two later and then the night before I left he came over just to cuddle, which was interesting. I really like him too, I just haven't had 8 dreams about him. We're closer friends though, by a long shot.
So I was dealing with all of this "what's he gonna say?" "what does he want from me?" "will this work" "why am I sleeping with my friend when I'm crushing on his housemate?" "why am I so attracted to ALL of the anarchists? They're dirty and weird..." going on while I had the hardest week ever in terms of school work.
Entry on the hardest weekend, now entry on the hardest week. This is a jolly fucking journal.
In a lot of ways, it was awesome.
I did a Soc final on Friday of reading week. I had kinda let myself go in that class, so I did a lot of studying for it even though it probably didn't require 8 hours of studying and 4 hours of testing.
Then I studied for Multi. I copied out all of the definitions, theorems, and proofs that we were supposed to know. It was six pages double sided. It felt incredible, because as I went through them I understood them. It wasn't that I had memorized them, it was that after all semester of problem sets and classes and quizzes and tests I had internalized enough math that it wasn't about memorization. I could understand these concepts because I understood math better. I could have choked on the test and still been proud and satisfied because of that. The test went okay.
Physics. I studied hard, and had something of a similar feeling as in math. Ordinary Differential Equations are my bitch. Waves and certain other sillinesses are not fully understood. But I think I got the important stuff, and I'll review the rest.
The test was bullshit. I had the math test from 1-4, and then the physics from 6-10. I left at 8:30. I was done. There was nothing else I could do. But everyone else stayed and kept working, even though the professor had told us he didn't expect us to take the whole time. Luckily, I had a bottle of champagne in my pocket and was able to start drinking about 30 seconds after walking out of the building. As planned, I walked into the canyon and yelled "I have of late but wherefore I know not [...] Man delights not me, no, nor women neither though by your smiling you seem to say so" into the calm darkness. I'd had that monologue stuck in my head all week.
Followed my friends around, smoking mugwort angrily, and proceeded to find out that everyone else had as much trouble with the test as I did. They just sat through it and checked their answers. I refuse to torture myself for nothing. I do not apologize.
Then came the french paper.
I slept in the next day, as I had earned it. By the time I got out of bed, I had 28 hours to read the last 30 pages of Proust, and write a 7 page paper in french about the prose rhymes in the book. I had already read about 80 pages of theory on them, and the other 200 pages of the book. Also, I had a thesis, and had put a lot of thought into it.
So I thought, no problem.
I finished the book at fucking 6 pm, leaving me 23 hours. Proust is hard to read, alright. Also, the phenomenon of Reed Releases started during finals week and wasted a lot of my time. They're confessions of love/lust anonymously posted on tumblr and facebook. They're frequently really awkward and juicy. Especially when everyone is to stressed and tied up in themselves to actually interact with anyone. Finals week was a perfect time for shit like that to catch on.
Anyways, I panicked a little bit, and had to go to the ETC. I still didn't feel okay, so I went to Em and borrowed her empty cigarettes and her mullein and lavender. I rolled almost 20 mugwort, mullein, and lavender cigs, of which I smoked at least one an hour for the next 14 hours. I also gave some away. The probably saved me. Finally, I went back to the ETC where I got something of an outline worked out and typed up all the quotes.
At 1 am I laid down in bed. At 2 am I thought maybe I could knock myself out with Death Note. In retrospect I should probably have watched something less TOTALLY AWESOME.
At 3 am I facebook chatted the boy from Benzos, who was still in the library. I decided that if I wasn't sleeping, I may as well be working. On the way back to the library I ran into a few friends who were going home. They thought I was crazy.
When I walked into the new pit Hugh laughed. I sat down and opened my computer, and he left his to sit next to me. He pulled out his fat sharpie that he uses for tagging and wrote FML on my arm. It still hasn't washed off. I laughed. Then I wrote.
The chunk that happened between 3 and 7 am was the best. It was about 50% of the essay. At 6 I started crashing. I went to the Stim table where this kid who's name is weird and I forget it all the time asked me if he could buy whippets. I said "yes, gimme an hour, I wanna do a bit more work." At 7 I was really hurting. I thought maybe whippets were an appropriate study drug in this case. No one else agreed, but it made sense to me. I went to the Stim table again, and we went back to my room. He paid about 50 cents a pop, which is pretty generous on my part, but I was gonna use his cracker so I didn't really care.
We went up to the second floor of the library, just outside of my math classroom. We took turns, sitting on the floor with little blue cartridges piling up between us. The hum final was about to start, and one of the cool freshmen walked by us trying to find a good place to do the test.
The guy was really paranoid, so we hid everything every time we heard footsteps. Still, she's pretty smart.
"Are you doing whippets?"
".... yes. do you want one?"
"Uh, no thanks, carry on."
We did. I had my first really dissociation experience on the ground up there. I closed my eyes, and I felt totally a sort of spinning. I opened them and the world did not appear to spin with me. My legs stayed splayed, unperturbed. I closed my eyes and felt the same spinning. Not a dizzy spinning, just an alternative stillness that had a bit more wiggle to it. And I felt that that space was where I wanted to be.
I did 5 whippets there, and then we went our separate ways.
I got the boy and Hugh and went to buy them breakfast. One of the Commons workers with whom I have a rapport asked me how I was. I laughed and acted like a crazy person. I wonder what he thinks of me.
Eating breakfast was fun. I mostly sat in a sad ball, laughing at what Hugh and boy said. Dylan came over and sat with us, being sad about his finals. GabeJake came over too. He had somehow confused the schedule and missed the math final Tuesday, so he was taking it on Thursday. He was also a bit perturbed. The vague happiness that sticks after a few whippets pulled me through.
I did some more work, but the whippets wore off. I went back to Chittick with Strugz Browne and did 3 more whippets. I also spun my fans a bit, which calmed me down.
Back to work.
Look, the essay happened. It was pretty good, in the end. Maybe I'll post it here after its graded, so I can look back on it. Some of my other essays are lost to dead computers, which makes me sad.
Fuck, finals week was crazy hard.
That's basically all I wanted to say.
Benzos
My best friend took benzos a while back.
We were heading to a party. She ran off with my friend's dog while we tried to cross the street. I made sure someone was going to be with her.
I got bored of the party, and went back to campus. I ran into her, and Lyle, and Ben. I think I would describe their reaction to her behavior as "bemused." Anyways, she was moving as if all of her limbs were weighted. She was slurring her words and seemed unaware of her impact on the environment.
We waited in ODB while Ben and Lyle did something, lying on the floor. "I'm taking another one" she said. I asked what the recommended dose was, how many she had taken already... It had only been an hour since she'd first dosed. "I'm planning to take all of them tonight," she said. Her friend had sent them in the mail. I trusted him to give her the right dose.
She didn't seem happy. She didn't seem sad. She seemed in touch with her emotions, in the kind of way that lets them boil over before they're completely processed. But her emotions often get stuck in the processing stage. It seemed alright. She didn't want to remember, she said. That's why she took them.
We went to the GCC, because Lyle and Ben had things to purchase at Homer's. One of the rooms was still recovering from some kind of administrative Event. There were cookies, soda, fruit and water still sitting out. The tables were all covered in cloth, and the crumbs of whoever had used the room. There were still vases full of flowers.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of the night was right then. Lyle and Ben had departed to watch a film, and my friend and I stood alone in the room, watching our classmates walk by unawares of the treasure we had found. We could hear the hullabaloo of campus on a Friday night while we nibbled on our reclaimed loot. I stuck elements of the centerpieces in my hair, mostly roses and other blossoms. It was pinned in such a way as to accommodate many of them, and my head felt heavy afterwards. I wanted to put some in her hair. "Only the ugly ones," she said.
We left. She had wanted to escape campus, and also talk to a boy who she worried had feelings for her. We sat, waiting for the night bus in Eliot Circle. She leaned on me, her head drooping and weaving from side to side. I held her. When someone walked by in the distance she yelled "WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE HOW SMART YOU ARE?" Impassioned, she continued this train of thought. "Why don't Reedies realize how smart they are? They're so stupid for not realizing it." I think she vented a lot of things that she'd been holding in.
Then things got a little darker. She took the last pill. She couldn't remember taking the other ones, and was disappointed that there was only one left.
We were talking about her happiness. She was unhappy at Reed. I said I didn't know how to make her happy here. She said that happiness wasn't the most important thing, especially here. I still thought it was important, and I thought that it would make everything else easier.
This conversation continued. I said "I love you so much." She said "You don't love me enough." We were quiet for a while while I cried. "Are you crying?"
"Yes."
"Oh." I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was to the effect of that was not the intention, or that's too bad, or I'm sorry.
The night bus came. She talked to the driver. He asked what kind of benzos she'd taken. "It ended in -azepam," she said. "They all end in -azepam," he laughed. Liana came, and was entertained by her uncoordinated, enthusiastic thoughts. She flopped around the bus. She refused to wear a seat belt and fell on the floor. She invited herself over to the house of some people we didn't know who were riding the night bus home. We explained that it wasn't a party, it was their home.
She asked me to marry her, seriously. I said I couldn't. She asked why. I said we were too young and it wouldn't work. She was unsatisfied with that answer.
We dropped Liana off at the HoL, and my friend was going to go with her. I thought about leaving her and just riding the night bus back to campus. I decided to make sure I felt comfortable with the level of supervision she was going to get.
Walking up the stairs to G's room, she said "I want to die." I freaked out and she laughed. No one else heard. She also asked me to marry her again. I said the same thing.
She fell asleep in G's bed. I decided that was safe. I walked home.
I walked back, taking the long way on Ceasar Chavez that would let me walk down Unicorn Trail (previously known as Rape Trail) to get home. I like it. It's dark and small and feels like my nighttime walks in Corvallis.
My path took me by the Hotboxxx. They were having a party. I thought about just going up, and joining them. I decided I was too emotionally fragile to crash a party, even if I was friends with a few of the people who lived there.
I walked home, and sat in Chittick. Jordan was there, and the common room was full. They were loud and happy and frivolous and I liked the idea of escaping into that. And I did, in a way. I didn't think about how my best friend had just told me that, at the very least, she was having suicidal thoughts. That she felt so alienated. I didn't think about it, but I still felt it.
I had texted a friend at the Hotboxx earlier, and he finally responded. They were not going to be watching the gay marxist porn he had promised me, but I should "vien rendre visite" anyways. I stuffed 40 whippets into my purse, and biked up the hill.
He offered me booze but I wasn't really in the mood. I had a bit anyways and we sat on his porch and I listened to the conversation. The party had shrunk substantially, and now it was just a bunch of tired people lounging around in the cold. I used my coat as a blanket, and gradually sank into my friend. First we were sitting next to each other, then he laid down and I leaned against his legs, then I ended up in his arms. Everyone else was inside, by then.
We talked, and kissed. It felt so much better, to be wanted in this simple way. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked. When we got up, his couch was covered in rose petals that had fallen from my hair. We walked down the Unicorn Trail, and then onto the Psych roof. We made out there, till he said "I'm too drunk for this," at which point he walked back home. There was another pile of roses where my head had been.
I realized I'd left my bike in front of the Hotboxxx, so I went back to get it. He was walking towards campus too. I walked down the trail with him, and then got on my bike to go home.
This was the hardest night of my semester, I think. Kissing made it a little better. But I also don't know how to tell him what that night was like for me. We've since gotten a little more involved and it awful not being able to tell him that.
The next day, a dormie came up to me laughing. He said he had a "funny story" to tell me. His friend had been at the Hotboxx the night before, and he said she'd been annoyed that I had been cuddling with the boy. They'd had a "thing" of some sort, apparently. Then she'd been really pissed when we went off together. He then said that she'd been just fine once the boy had told her that we'd just gone off to talk and that's all.
I CAN'T STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE LIE LIKE THIS.
I texted him something silly and dramatic: "Did you lie to someone about last night?" No response.
I went to Canyon Day and talked to a nice carpenter/teacher who was very interesting and nice, and I interviewed the canyon manager to write an article for the quest. I drank apple cider. It felt awful. I called him. I think I texted him more. I wanted to talk to his housemate who was at Canyon Day, who I really admire and would take advice from any day, but he ran off before I could.
Finally, I walked by the Hotboxxx on the way to Safeway, and the boy happened to be outside. I told him what my dormie had said and asked him why this would be the case. He said that he was surprised and would look into it. Later he texted me that he'd talked to her and she was "fine" and sorry that it scared me. Not really a resolution, but I felt I had done what I could.
And the same thing goes for my friend. She doesn't remember anything she said, or did, that night. So I can't ask, hey, why would you say something like that. I can't say, oh, are you feeling suicidal? I can't tie our life, and thoughts back to that time because for her it didn't happen.
Later that day she came back to campus. She was still acting different, but insisted that the effects were gone. That night she made sushi for a party. Many people were drinking but there if there is one rule for benzos it's DON'T DRINK BOOZE. She took a sip after we'd all told her not too. I wondered if that was also... I don't know.
She remembers making sushi. She says that she must have been functional if she could make sushi.
We were heading to a party. She ran off with my friend's dog while we tried to cross the street. I made sure someone was going to be with her.
I got bored of the party, and went back to campus. I ran into her, and Lyle, and Ben. I think I would describe their reaction to her behavior as "bemused." Anyways, she was moving as if all of her limbs were weighted. She was slurring her words and seemed unaware of her impact on the environment.
We waited in ODB while Ben and Lyle did something, lying on the floor. "I'm taking another one" she said. I asked what the recommended dose was, how many she had taken already... It had only been an hour since she'd first dosed. "I'm planning to take all of them tonight," she said. Her friend had sent them in the mail. I trusted him to give her the right dose.
She didn't seem happy. She didn't seem sad. She seemed in touch with her emotions, in the kind of way that lets them boil over before they're completely processed. But her emotions often get stuck in the processing stage. It seemed alright. She didn't want to remember, she said. That's why she took them.
We went to the GCC, because Lyle and Ben had things to purchase at Homer's. One of the rooms was still recovering from some kind of administrative Event. There were cookies, soda, fruit and water still sitting out. The tables were all covered in cloth, and the crumbs of whoever had used the room. There were still vases full of flowers.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of the night was right then. Lyle and Ben had departed to watch a film, and my friend and I stood alone in the room, watching our classmates walk by unawares of the treasure we had found. We could hear the hullabaloo of campus on a Friday night while we nibbled on our reclaimed loot. I stuck elements of the centerpieces in my hair, mostly roses and other blossoms. It was pinned in such a way as to accommodate many of them, and my head felt heavy afterwards. I wanted to put some in her hair. "Only the ugly ones," she said.
We left. She had wanted to escape campus, and also talk to a boy who she worried had feelings for her. We sat, waiting for the night bus in Eliot Circle. She leaned on me, her head drooping and weaving from side to side. I held her. When someone walked by in the distance she yelled "WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE HOW SMART YOU ARE?" Impassioned, she continued this train of thought. "Why don't Reedies realize how smart they are? They're so stupid for not realizing it." I think she vented a lot of things that she'd been holding in.
Then things got a little darker. She took the last pill. She couldn't remember taking the other ones, and was disappointed that there was only one left.
We were talking about her happiness. She was unhappy at Reed. I said I didn't know how to make her happy here. She said that happiness wasn't the most important thing, especially here. I still thought it was important, and I thought that it would make everything else easier.
This conversation continued. I said "I love you so much." She said "You don't love me enough." We were quiet for a while while I cried. "Are you crying?"
"Yes."
"Oh." I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was to the effect of that was not the intention, or that's too bad, or I'm sorry.
The night bus came. She talked to the driver. He asked what kind of benzos she'd taken. "It ended in -azepam," she said. "They all end in -azepam," he laughed. Liana came, and was entertained by her uncoordinated, enthusiastic thoughts. She flopped around the bus. She refused to wear a seat belt and fell on the floor. She invited herself over to the house of some people we didn't know who were riding the night bus home. We explained that it wasn't a party, it was their home.
She asked me to marry her, seriously. I said I couldn't. She asked why. I said we were too young and it wouldn't work. She was unsatisfied with that answer.
We dropped Liana off at the HoL, and my friend was going to go with her. I thought about leaving her and just riding the night bus back to campus. I decided to make sure I felt comfortable with the level of supervision she was going to get.
Walking up the stairs to G's room, she said "I want to die." I freaked out and she laughed. No one else heard. She also asked me to marry her again. I said the same thing.
She fell asleep in G's bed. I decided that was safe. I walked home.
I walked back, taking the long way on Ceasar Chavez that would let me walk down Unicorn Trail (previously known as Rape Trail) to get home. I like it. It's dark and small and feels like my nighttime walks in Corvallis.
My path took me by the Hotboxxx. They were having a party. I thought about just going up, and joining them. I decided I was too emotionally fragile to crash a party, even if I was friends with a few of the people who lived there.
I walked home, and sat in Chittick. Jordan was there, and the common room was full. They were loud and happy and frivolous and I liked the idea of escaping into that. And I did, in a way. I didn't think about how my best friend had just told me that, at the very least, she was having suicidal thoughts. That she felt so alienated. I didn't think about it, but I still felt it.
I had texted a friend at the Hotboxx earlier, and he finally responded. They were not going to be watching the gay marxist porn he had promised me, but I should "vien rendre visite" anyways. I stuffed 40 whippets into my purse, and biked up the hill.
He offered me booze but I wasn't really in the mood. I had a bit anyways and we sat on his porch and I listened to the conversation. The party had shrunk substantially, and now it was just a bunch of tired people lounging around in the cold. I used my coat as a blanket, and gradually sank into my friend. First we were sitting next to each other, then he laid down and I leaned against his legs, then I ended up in his arms. Everyone else was inside, by then.
We talked, and kissed. It felt so much better, to be wanted in this simple way. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked. When we got up, his couch was covered in rose petals that had fallen from my hair. We walked down the Unicorn Trail, and then onto the Psych roof. We made out there, till he said "I'm too drunk for this," at which point he walked back home. There was another pile of roses where my head had been.
I realized I'd left my bike in front of the Hotboxxx, so I went back to get it. He was walking towards campus too. I walked down the trail with him, and then got on my bike to go home.
This was the hardest night of my semester, I think. Kissing made it a little better. But I also don't know how to tell him what that night was like for me. We've since gotten a little more involved and it awful not being able to tell him that.
The next day, a dormie came up to me laughing. He said he had a "funny story" to tell me. His friend had been at the Hotboxx the night before, and he said she'd been annoyed that I had been cuddling with the boy. They'd had a "thing" of some sort, apparently. Then she'd been really pissed when we went off together. He then said that she'd been just fine once the boy had told her that we'd just gone off to talk and that's all.
I CAN'T STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE LIE LIKE THIS.
I texted him something silly and dramatic: "Did you lie to someone about last night?" No response.
I went to Canyon Day and talked to a nice carpenter/teacher who was very interesting and nice, and I interviewed the canyon manager to write an article for the quest. I drank apple cider. It felt awful. I called him. I think I texted him more. I wanted to talk to his housemate who was at Canyon Day, who I really admire and would take advice from any day, but he ran off before I could.
Finally, I walked by the Hotboxxx on the way to Safeway, and the boy happened to be outside. I told him what my dormie had said and asked him why this would be the case. He said that he was surprised and would look into it. Later he texted me that he'd talked to her and she was "fine" and sorry that it scared me. Not really a resolution, but I felt I had done what I could.
And the same thing goes for my friend. She doesn't remember anything she said, or did, that night. So I can't ask, hey, why would you say something like that. I can't say, oh, are you feeling suicidal? I can't tie our life, and thoughts back to that time because for her it didn't happen.
Later that day she came back to campus. She was still acting different, but insisted that the effects were gone. That night she made sushi for a party. Many people were drinking but there if there is one rule for benzos it's DON'T DRINK BOOZE. She took a sip after we'd all told her not too. I wondered if that was also... I don't know.
She remembers making sushi. She says that she must have been functional if she could make sushi.
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