this damn crush

I had a few days where I thought I was completely free from it.

Day -2: we kiss for a half an hour, my shirt comes off and he asks to touch my breast and we keep kissing with a crowd of people bumping into us, saying silly things around us and I wonder if maybe we should stop but there's no reason to stop and I want it and there's a distinct possibility that we won't kiss again for five months.

Later that night we cross paths a few times, but we never stick.

Day -1: We are avoiding eye contact. Or at least he is. The weird vibes turn me off and I avoid him.

Day 0: He asks if I want to talk about it via facebook because he hasn't found me in my office. We talk. He wanted to make sure I felt good about consent. I wanted to know what page I should be on, to put us on the same page, to know what flirting all the time means for us. He explains that he has a girlfriend, that he's tied down. I ask him if the flirting is okay. He says yes, that they've talked about it once.

Day 1: It's fading. I feel freer. We're still avoiding contact but not in a bad way.

Day 2: I even think about other people. He does something stupid and I don't even register it as endearing.

Day 3: We're both at the scrounge, and I involve him in my conversation so that maybe we can move towards being friends.

Day 4: Awkwardness mostly gone. Barely look at the back of his head in class.

Fastforward ~1 week. We are in the imaginary numbers.

Monday night of finals week a bunch of us are studying together in the basement and its just hitting me in waves. I put on the songs I've been listening to for weeks and he stands up and turns around and tells me how he listened to Overgrown this summer at his internship. We joke about smoking a cigarette together and when I bum one off someone four of us go to the psych roof but they make me smoke it by myself. He walks close to me. He jokes that I'll have to bury him after tonight. I offer various options, and we decide to send his ashes to the stratosphere so he'll get spread everywhere. At 3:30 in the morning I leave and go home, kicking myself because it's back full force.

I used to be annoyed that my friends didn't think it was cute that I had a crush on him. Now one of my buddies is convinced we would be great and it's making it way worse. And he stopped being so hot and cold. I can't deal with him this warm.

I'm a fucking child but I'm so high off this but I feel so guilty because he's off limits and not even mine to borrow. But apparently flirting is okay.

The only part that hurts is that I feel like I can see exactly how happy I would be if we could actually date and it looks amazing. I know it's all in my head but I feel like this year would be golden with a little more sex and a few more kisses and it's just so close and so far.

I should go meet someone new. This boy though.

Snap game 2 strong for the ephemeral medium which is its defining characteristic

A Constant Puzzle

I think an interesting type of writing would be one where there is no promise of a final conclusion, but only a series of small ones which constantly undermine each other. In fact, I want the reader to be having an idea at every moment, not necessarily because they are easy to have, but because they come unbidden. Maybe the start as blobs and get sharper with reading and rereading, but then they cut each other to shreds! And just at the moment when there is a huge pile of ideas, each struggling to stand, the reader is left alone.

Or maybe I'm just projecting how I feel writing to how I hope my reader would feel. This is expected, because I always argue that a good work transforms the reader into the subject. Then again, I am notorious for having to choose the media I consume based on who it turns me into. I might be too easy a reader to mold.

I need to finish If on a winter's night a traveler before I really know anything about reading, right?

I'm ashamed that...

I don't like to think anymore, it stresses me out

sometimes I'm so afraid of letting my mind off its leash that I bring my phone to the bathroom

all of my heroes are white men

I don't have enough cognitive power to remember all of my thought processes from start to finish

I don't try to fix every broken thing

my reaction to these failings is shame and not acceptance or motivation to change

I am impatient to be less lonely

I haven't figured out how to be an ally to the Ferguson movement

my room is a mess

I procrastinate

I'm not fully convinced of my own argument in this paper

I'm afraid for my friend, who may be in trouble with the law, and there's nothing I can do

I read my OkCupid profile to remind myself of who I am


... for some reason confessing all of this to a void makes me feel better about it.

herbert blau was a huge nerd

“It is the hauntedness of being-perceived in the beginning which is in Artaud--whom Derrida has studied as a mirror of thought--the reason for madness. It is also the ontological basis of what for Artaud is Original Sin, the idea of an audience, the specular entity whose name suggests the Word, the thing heard. The audience--the ones who look--is the look of the Law. It is the audited reflection of originary division and primal separation. [...] It is a sign of the original bloody show in the ritual drama, the loss of precious parts of ourselves that are only re-membered in dreams. It is the preying eye of the specular ego which depreciates us and soils us in the name of a lethal power which steals both word and flesh. It is the insinuating difference in a structure of theft, or rather the double that inserts itself between ourselves and birth, [...], the nothing that posits itself between us and origins, what comes to be the history whose name is death.” (17)

blau u have a newborn child put down the bong.

jk this just blew my mind 2 smithereens.

i love finals but i hate finals but i kinda wanna always be this amazed and if finals are how that happens then i guess i love finals

picky picky

all I want is a cheap trashy fountain pen or 10 (since I lose things) why are there no options on this fucking continent

why was the black pelikano limited edition

whywhywhy

ok I'll go to bed and stop whining

trying to write a final

Is time fragmented? Is my body? Is my memory? Is my narrative?

Yes, but not really in the way that I have to write about for my paper.

Do I experience a combination of self-rejection and self-perception? Yes. Is it torture? Sometimes.

Does it trap me in my immediate experiences, outside of the possibility for reflection or progress, in a liminal space between interiority and exteriority?

Why are you interrogating me?

Answer my question.

thinking about violence

I hate quantum mechanics for the way it makes me feel while I’m doing it. I hate that the math seems to obscure the concepts for me, not illuminate them. I also hate a feeling that happened just once. I hate that after two hours of thinking and scribbling I looked at the work I had done for my final exam and had a strong desire to stab myself in the eye with my mechanical pencil.

Not just a mechanical pencil, but specifically a drafting pencil. Before the .7 lead peaks out there is a slender metal tube that extends from the taper after the grip.  The inside of my left eye ached for that little hollow cylinder, and my right eye could almost feel it already. My hand trembled, not because I was about to do it, but because I wanted it so badly.

I’ve engaged in the dark art of  “self-harm” as they call it. I don’t feel like it really deserves the umbrella term. I have cut my hand to watch it heal. I have cut my stomach to distract myself from other pain. And thanks to quantum mechanics, I have almost maimed myself because I wanted to.

I hope that the distinction is clear.

Violence to eyes, from writing implements. So key to each other, suddenly opposed. It’s disgusting. They don’t deserve each other, not in that way.

tummy troubled by mindgames

god this boy and I made out for like half of thesis parade and we're acting like nothing happened and this is just ridiculous I'm seriously considering talking to him but that seems pretty drastic so we will just see.

post script

"What is theatricality? It is theatre-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations which is constructed on stage starting from the written argument."

"What is theatricality? It is theatre-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations which is constructed on stage starting from the written argument."

"What is theatricality? It is theatre-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations which is constructed on stage starting from the written argument."

"What is theatricality? It is theatre-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations which is constructed on stage starting from the written argument."

-barthes

far escape

Farscape plays behind my Mini-Orals presentation tonight. It's not done, my French reading is not done, I have 1 hour tomorrow to finish both of them if I give myself 8 hours of sleep.

Endless.

Until December 15th.

This Friday is Spring-Fall thesis parade. Kisses will help, dancing and champagne will help.

Well, today I give myself 7.5 hours of sleep. I choose that invariably now, unlike two years ago when I would shoot for an integer multiple of 1.5 regardless of the n I ended up with (though I generally wanted at least a 2.) Well times have changed now and that is how it is. This is how it is.

Nothing is particularly special tonight, which is why I can't work. Work is about special things. I want to work on mysteries and questions.

BEDTIME

Going home before midnight can I get a hell ya?

So.
Some good things happened.

Today I brought up not being sure about continuing next semester as a student consultant, and my boss held me back and said that my partner was really impressed with my work and would want to work with me again.

I went to my thesis meeting with all of my work freshly erased by my computer, and my advisor didn't give a shit and just talked about getting ready for mini-orals and writing.

I cut my hair two days ago and thought it was a disaster but it's actually fucking cool.

Still not getting laid, still not eating well, but I played squash with a friend outside of PE class so I'm exercising!

And I've seen two cool lectures this week, one by Junot Diaz that probably changed my life and one by Mia McKenzie which was pretty good too.

Ok Ok if this is life I can work with it.

the brain!!!

I hope that I remember thursday november 13th doing whippits in the pitch dark thesis office with Not I playing on a computer 10 feet away and dissociating from my body and crying out as I returned to it

okay, call it a night.

limerence

I just woke up from my third dream about him in two weeks. I guess that doesn't sound like a lot, but I've been dreaming very intensely, colorfully, dramatically-what do they call that-vividly.

And I learned a new word today: limerence. The Wikipedia page put me a little at ease, because I always feel so dirty when I'm in that zone, but it used words like unbidden, involuntary, compulsive, and they all take the blame off of me. It's nice. I try to be good.

~okay this one goes before sambeckett but it didn't post?~

Sammie Beckett puts it in perspeckett

dawg beckett is so good at writing.
ugh he is magic
dude i was not even that taken by godot
like not all of it
but winnie man
winnie is it
un petit malheur
encore un
sans remede
something like that
which is like
wow
and Not I dude dude
that shit made me like rocky horror more.
just cuz i kinda think about the mouth a little when i see that other mouth
i changed my profile picture to billie's mouth
it's facebook official
i'm smitten

my thesis peaking out behind this window

I never thought too much about the idea of opening a new window. It's certainly more romantic than opening a new tab.

I'm trying to do some thesis. I'm nested in the ETC. Water, textbooks, notebooks, pens, pizza. Pizza. It's not working.

I saw Interstellar with Justin and Andrew. Someone raved about it in sci-comp the other day. The boys loved it and marveled at the science and the drama. It didn't click for me. It was too long, the characters were half-baked (maybe they were actually high that would explain a lot) and the science... well... it didn't seem a lot more real than magic. Why muddy your magic by calling it science?

Anyways, it sunk me a little that I couldn't be amazed like everyone else. Worse, it made me feel like less of a physicist, that I don't cream when general relativity plays deus ex machina and physicists play deus. Wow, harsh Jules. I just get angry when anything makes me feel like less of a physicist. Maybe that's why thesis progress is coming slow today.

I've been having amazing dreams. Yesterday in the library I dosed for 2 and a half hours, comfortably folded in an armchair. Closed eyes against closed knees. Someone dropped a piece of paper on my closed book which said "sleep is for the weak." Half-awake, I scrawled "dreaming is fucking awesome" on the other side and then started to record my dream. I had moved to New York with Amy. I was going to job interviews. For the first few I was nervous that my faux fur coats were sending the wrong impression. After many interviews, I was finally dressed in a sleek professional sheath dress, presenting myself and blowing the competition out of the water. My student consulting partner gave me a personality quiz about myself, and told me that Dobby only got one right. I walked around the office where I was interviewing and hid more quizzes about myself. I turned a corner and there were a bunch of monkeys. One of the monkeys bit my hand and I tried to yell help, but I just breathed raspily. I woke up, breathing "heh" out of my throat in the silent library. Good thing I couldn't yell.

Then last night I dreamed that Neal and I took a weird opiate. It was a tiny, crunchy black pill. I reeled around a walgreens/hardware store, unable to find what I was looking for. We rolled around in the grass. It was lovely.

Maybe I'm settled enough to do my physics now.

rib-caged

when you are trapped by your own humanity :P

This unfortunate tendency to begin books or chapters of books with a quotation

Am I supposed to be reminded that the book is in conversation with elements of culture from the past? Am I supposed to remember that other people have thought the same thoughts, maybe more neatly than this book or my interpretation of it will arrive at? Do I disagree?

I think that the place for a quotation is after all is said and done. I don't want to read a chapter  contextualized by a sentence, but I will react to a sentence based on the chapter. In fact, when I finish a chapter or a book I almost want something to react to. Not to tie a bow, exactly, or even to "hammer it home." To use the hammer metaphor, I think that reading a book can feel like tapping a nail, slowly sinking it into wood. Maybe the climax strikes a little harder. But at the end of a book, the nail is never all the way into the wood. A quotation at the beginning of a book makes me wonder if I should start hitting. A quotation at the end of a book would be a final swing with extra follow-through. I think that this jolt might shake me in a way that makes the whole nail more important.

I feel like writing because I have been reading and because I am still so destabilized from my nightmares.

Nightmares on Halloween

The first one was mild. I was being tattooed. The tattoos were on my upper arms, and not at all what I expected them to be. Two of them were Chinese characters, in green, and the third was a sunrise of sorts inscribed in a circle. In my dream I was thinking of what clothes I could wear to cover them, or what I could get tattooed over the characters. I vaguely remember Elspeth talking about her bad tattoo, on her chest, where an f looked like a p. The word was just a random set of letters. Meaningless. When I woke up it took me a few minutes to realized that my arms were unmarked. The sense of disconnection with my body continued until I fell asleep.

The second one was hellish. I was running through the woods with friends. We were chased by saber-tooth tigers that looked more like sloths. They caught us, and then transformed into people. We were held in a corral of sorts, but it wasn't locked. I think that we were being tortured, but I never experienced the torture. There was just an air of injury in the "cage." We were scared and hopeless, but at some point I realized that I could just walk out. I left, and made it back to a city and I told someone where I had come from. They sent me to therapy. After telling the therapist what happened, I ended up going back to the corral. I think it was part of a plan to free everyone. When I got back it was worse than when I had left. A cruel woman that I don't remember from before was directing the operation now. They had captured the president of the country that we were in, and were torturing him. They covered him in insects that bit him. They carved into his hands (maybe I was feeling the cat scratches pressed against my pillow.) They put him in a metal box, with his head in a glass bowl looking out at me so that I shared his pain. At the climax of the dream, they were somehow putting pieces of his wasted body in an oven with sizzling oil on top. When I asked if they were going to kill him, they said they couldn't but that they would kill a friend who was also in the corral. I was screaming and crying and so afraid. I decided that we had to escape, but I was worried that they had told me this as a trap. We left, found a car, drove through the dry woods until we ran out of gas as we approached a highway. My friend wanted to hitch hike but I thought that everyone on the road worked at the torture-ranch. I don't remember if that is how the dream ended because it had a feeling of endlessness. No matter how escaped I was, I would end up there again, or maybe I had never left.

evening, unindicated

I am below ground again. I am below ground often. Reading En Attendant Godot I have a special appreciation for the timelessness of the situation. It might be summer, it might be winter but it is fall and it is 7 pm.

I read two articlettes about Beckette, both of which quoted Robbe-Grillet. Alain, the man who taught me to read. I have Le Voyeur sitting lonely on my shelves, three quarters of the pages still waiting for a paper knife. Maybe winter will come with the luxury of reading a difficult book. Difficult because it's in French, and because it's new or whatever.

I've been rereading the Belgariad, if that gives you a sense of my capacity for intellectual stimulation. For those of you who don't know me, which is all of you, I have read those thousand or more pages more than thirty times, I think. I lived and breathed that book in Switzerland. My first love was a character in that book, if anyone is my first love. Reading it is like throwing a blanket over the toes of my brain. It is so safe. I read it so quickly; half-memorized sentences fly through my filters before I can question the style or vocabulary or questionably racist political structures.

My officemate is back and so I won't be able to write much more. I never feel like there is a time or a space that is big enough for me to write. I'm thinking about renting a cabin on the coast in december.

Back to physics.

OH WAIT incredible discovery: Alain Robbe-Grillet was trained as an agricultural engineer which gives me a perverse hope that I will find what I'm looking for one day.

concrete cubicles

Sound leaks into my thesis office, wrapped in echoes. We're the kind of underground that you expect not to be bombproof, but you'd still come here first if there was an emergency. Not only because there's a pie and a half in the fridge, but because something about the white, pockmarked walls says "survival."

I work here sometimes. Those times are a blur of furrowed brows and scratching pens against gridded paper. Sometimes, I turn off the lights and curl up in my office-mate's chair and watch movies alone in the silence. Those times are little doses of total relaxation. I see the darkness in high definition. The cold floors shine sharply, reflecting the crack in the door.

Coming back to school after fall break has been strange. I've been cutting myself slack: breath here-sleep there. I forgot how to stop myself from feeling doomed at the beginning of the week, looking down the barrel at all of the homework that was ready to shoot me in the eye. Now it's Wednesday, and I'm ready to aim and fire. My job will be the only thing that falls by the wayside.

So. Okay. That's all.

National Coming Out Day: Because Your Feelings Aren't Valid Until You Label Them

I know that there are totally legitimate reasons for National Coming Out day, but I feel like the same show of support could be made in a context with less pressure. There are way better reasons to hate National Coming Out Day than because you feel like labels are doomed to be lies. Obviously it's naive to treat coming out as just a matter of courage when it's usually a matter of safety. I also get that some people feel like a label makes all of the confusion go away.

a hypocrite in the sunset

I took adderall and did work today. I bitch and moan about how people take study drugs to do work, and how it's dishonorable because it makes me feel like I owe it to my studies to eat amphetamines. Well, I didn't take it out of guilt, or panic, or any sort of necessity. And now, 8 hours in, I don't feel guilty or satisfied or anything in particular. It helps that I wasn't actually much more productive than usual. My reading speed was about the same, except that I didn't skip a single word. That was pretty thrilling. When I started doing thesis reading, though, I couldn't do it unless I took notes on every important thing, whereas usually I feel like I can just underline or write in margins. On the one hand, it meant that I spent almost 4 hours on a 15 page paper, but it wasn't wasted.

The most important thing was that the initial rush reminded me of the hunger for knowledge and the joy of doing research. That's a feeling that the stress and the drama and the physics department help me forget. I was impatient, packing my books in my thesis office, because I wanted to get back to reading. I know that I have that feeling, I had it even when I was in Hell sophomore year. Junior year, not so much. A little bit on the final paper for J-Lab.

I want all of my work to have that feeling. I think I need to seek it. I need to remind myself why I'm working. I need to tell myself that it's a joy, not a chore. That's what adderall gave me for a few hours: the investment. Not at all what I expected. I thought it would be pure efficiency. Nothing is pure.

It's been a pretty solitary day. Isabella studied with me for a while. I told her that it bothered me that she and Elaine were hooking up. Whatever.

Last night was my first beer garden. It was kind of a blur. I got way too drunk, but Liana and Neal and I had a blast. I woke up at 5 am on our couch and went up to bed.

At 5 in the morning it was pouring rain. Walking to school at 10 I saw that the first leaves had been kicked out of the trees by the rain. Now I'm sitting on the front lawn while the sun sets. The perfect temperature of the afternoon has become a little less-so with the evening dawning.

My thoughts get lost. Paragraphs get shorter.

Il faut se lever plus tot le matin, pour voir le monde sans couleurs.

Grad School

I'm flip flopping on grad school so hard. Some days it seems like it's exactly what I want and I'm overqualified, other days it seems like I'd be miserable and I barely make the grade.

And I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

something clever

Sipping wine in the loft of the studio where we'd have sex later, I said something clever. Not clever in the snappy sense, but clever in the whispering to myself "Julia, do you actually have that much self-awareness?" way.

I said that I had trouble realizing that I was sad in the moment, so most of my life feels like it's the best it's ever been. There are exceptions, but they are so bad that I fade them out so that I barely remember them. Sophomore year, for instance, I was being steadily beaten to a pulp, and I can only see that now. Junior year, apart from the week of frozen tears and madness, I only processed when I wrote my letter to the department. The week of tears is a foggy blur.

writing cycles

Not a lot to say today. I'm stressed and lonely, so I'm going to go to sleep soon and see what the morning brings.

I'm in a stage of my writing cycle where my own words feel foreign and I wonder where they come from. Even before I start reading I worry that I won't remember the person who wrote any of it.

Nerves. Also, my body is rejecting something. My digestive system has been grumpy for a month now--ever since I came back to school. I thought it was the scrounge but I've been scrounging less and still my belly is unhappy. What will it take? For one, I want to start exercising *at all.*

Also, I wish there was someone who would call a therapist and set up an appointment for you and maybe take you there oh wait that's a parent Julia you're all grown up now get your shit together.

Four Now

Hi,

It's all pretty simple. I arrive on time, like a syncopated boot hitting against the forest floor, walking up hill sometimes, skipping down, a pattern surely hidden under gasps and stumbles. I arrive on time. If I'm not going to make it walking, I ride my bike. If I wake up and my eyes are blearing I rub them and run water over them until they are caught up with my schedule. I arrive on time. Usually.

I had sex with new people this week. I think that age is contagious. I didn't feel young with them, I don't feel old with my classmates, is this heaven? Am I at that perfect graceful age when I can be anyone? I am someone, and that's the trick. Young enough that to be someone is easy, old enough that that someone could be me. It sounds simple when I type it but when I open my mouth the chaos in my head threatens to drain out over my tongue, the sudden change of pressure pulling at the threads.

So, what I mean to say is that somehow it works but I hardly believe it. He invited me back for more, but I'm not sure if I should. The age difference is so huge, and I don't think my daddy issues fit this mold. It's easy to fuck him but hard to kiss him. I've seen a picture of him when he was 24 and he looks younger than me, I think. Who knows, I've never known what my face looks like. I told you, I think, that I always knew a face a few years older than the one that actually existed around my eyes. My special brand of dysmorphia.

I smell roses.

Dear dear dear myself how and who will take care of you.
I do not believe that people can help me consciously, unless they are trained and paid to do so, so I will find a therapist soon. Then again, I say that all of the time.

Mess mess mess people in the kitchen are speaking tangent to my ears. I am speaking tangent to the truth.

Oh I read the most beautiful play. Antigone, par Jean Anouilh. Oh my god. "Antigone is calmed now, from what fever we will never know." I would translate that play. That would be a nice exercise. I think I'll write my midterm paper about it. I made the mistake of reading it in the morning, and by 11 am I was balling on the couch and it was far too early to be crying so hard.

Love,
Me

oops

broke up with my girlfriend, got a new twitter, stayed up all night, wrote an embarrassingly preachy response for my french class, I am presenting my summer research to the department tomorrow

everything will be okay and maybe someday I will know what matters

It's the only thing that seems positive right now

Even though I know it wasn't-isn't all

good, I felt something there that is being

beaten out of me here.

Dog Mountain

Tried to decompress from burning man by climbing a mountain. It was a good start. 

Burned-out Blues

I'm sitting in a cup chair, cinnamon cider seeping out of my bloodstream, Silvio Rodriguez singing sweet and bitter notes from my laptop speakers, and whispers of Burning Man hiss across my feelings.

So many feelings. Old, fermented, Calvados feelings from last year that came running when they heard their names called in the subtext of the lecture hall. New, raw, fruit smoothie feelings that are chunky in my throat, catching as I try to process them. I'm reeling from experiences as subtle as a moment of eye contact or as overwhelming as a K-hole while the man burned. I can't dissect their importance because they're in a ball of Burning Man that bursts my heart. It's mostly wonder, but some of it isn't happy and some of it hurts. The hurt isn't good or bad, it's just pain, and most of it is recycled. The joy of connection, the guilt of unwanted intimacy, the confusion of lies.

I feel alone. It feels empty and full. Colors dance in my memory with the smell of nothing. My eyes feel heavy but resist the fall. Dull pressure across my mind.

Decompression. The word beats with my heart. A mystery cure that I imagine everyone else has tasted, but I am ineligible, as I arrived home on the day that school started.

I will take care of myself somehow.

Burning Man

My social media spheres are littered with contempt for Burning Man. Hell, I even contributed. A company that sells chakra themed sun glasses had a Burning Man specific ad, which I screenshotted and shared.

It's easy to see the things that are dumb about Burning Man. And honestly, I'm surprised that people who complain are surprised when Burners tell them that they "don't get it." That's why they find it so ridiculous: they can't make sense of it.

I think that's where the magic comes from. You let go of what makes sense. Pages of packing instructions, scary stories of hour long windstorms, the long drive with the car riding low... for what? You don't know yet.

^I wrote the above before leaving for Burning Man.

I'm not really ready to talk about it yet. I need to really decompress, and I've been getting back into school so it's impossible right now. This weekend, hopefully, a few hour or two to think about it. Plenty of people take a week, but I am notoriously efficient and I have a life to live.

Nothing is simple but I'll be honest, most things are beautiful in one way or another, and that is the optimism that I will admit to.

things don't have to be complicated to be beautiful

The only complicated pieces of my life are no good at all. Edith and I are still a mess. I'm so disappointed in how this has panned out. Maybe the disappointment will overwhelm the anger and that will make it easier for it to come to a conclusion.

Anyways, a friend of mine is leaving tomorrow to go live her life so I have to go say goodbye.

once, I felt artistic

I had a date to the Portland Art Museum. It worked. I mean the museum. I went to the Art Place in my mind, and started having all sorts of ideas and dreams. I mostly wanted to do 24 Arts, with 24 people and 24 hours of pure Art feelings and doings and nothing else. 24 is totally arbitrary, any number. But basically I want marathon art, followed by an exhibit, including some fun and games like group meals and documentation and things. Maybe a trip to the art museum to kick it off, get outside of our pre-doings.

Okay, lets be real, I planned it out more than this. Bella wants to go to the party soon though, so I can't be too detailed.

-Start by setting up you supplies at a station in the SU (know your media or at least be ready to use a few)
-Go to the art museum
-Come back, start
~have some group meals pre prepared through the night, then have a cook out late in the game as we're setting up the opening.~
-have a bunch of art up! Party?

Lame? I dig it.

I just got spoon fed a bite of Tillamook Mudslide by surprise and it was amazing.

Just because I saw her tonight and it made this whole senario seem like such bullshit

Here's what I did with Benzos/my newer thoughts.

When I have misunderstood I start erasing things.



I am barely breathing, and I'm saying WRONG WRONG WRONG and wiping my memories along with my conclusions. Everything becomes fuzzy: the sun melts into the clouds and I fall into oceans of grass with no blades, all dull.



Maybe I hate to be wrong so much that I try to forget that it ever happened, or maybe I'm just trying to purify my information and throw out invalid data points.



I would rather remember; I would rather be confused but remember it all. I would rather not have to dig for smiles because a subconscious part of my brain has decided that the important part was all of the tears that I didn't see.



I want to scream when I feel my mind moving like this. I want to install magnets under my fingertips that attract all of the beauty I have experienced, strong magnets that won't let it slip away because something pushes me to wash my hands while I hopelessly watch the salt and dirt flow into a porcelain sink. I want the sound of my voice to sing callouses over my life and protect it, there, where it is. I want to always be touching it.



Here is an example. The biggest loss of my life, since I have never been to a funeral. I remember when it started, but only because I wrote it down. I drafted our demise. The memory is like acupuncture needles in my chest, shaking with me when I cry, making raised red spots around the entry wound to remind me that they were there.



She received a felony in the mail. The wrinkled white rectangle spit out pills, round and white, like small wedding cakes. She saved them for weeks. With no particular auspicious sign, a warm, dark night slipped the envelope into her pocket, and a pill into her mouth.



She ran into traffic. Oregon traffic at 11 pm, so I really mean the road. Am I her mother? She was chasing a dog. We parted ways.



I found her again. Her core dragged her extremities like excess baggage. Her heavy head drooped to her heavy chest and heaved to look left or right. Her feet fell so hard that it's a wonder the concrete didn't shatter. She couldn't remember, which thrilled her, because the pills were supposed to make her forget.



She drooped and I sat, and the carpet held our bodies like a nest. “I'm taking another one,” she slurred. I ask about the proper dose and she said that she'd take all of them tonight. What could I do but trust the friend who sent them?

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 so I thought it could be healthy. It seemed alright. She didn't want to remember, after all.

We follow our way into a new building, letting others chose our direction. The rooms were brighter, and we sneaked away to find an unlocked door with the remnants of an Official Event left lonely, waiting for us. It was beautiful: a gift and a privilege strewn with crumbs and cookies that hadn't found a host. We stood together, invisible to the world, watching through a window in the door. Bodies walked by that never looked our way. We could hear the hullabaloo of Friday Night, so far removed from this quiet treasure. Vases of flowers littered the room. 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. Maybe I felt closer to her. I wanted to put some in her hair. "Only the ugly ones," she said.

Our raid complete, we returned to the outdoors and spun dizzy circles all the way to the bus stop. We sat on cool steps and she opened the envelope for the last time. “Where are they?” There was only one pill left. She was confused, had she lost them? No, I explained that she'd taken all of them. The last one slid past her tongue at almost the same time that her frustration found words. She yelled at the people walking in the dark, too far to see: “Why don't you see how smart you are?” I guess I shouldn't have assumed that it was them she was talking to. How loud do you have to yell to reach your own ears? A question for the ages.

She said that she was unhappy, and I said that I didn't know how to make her happy. She said it wasn't so important to be happy, especially here and now. I told her that I loved her, so much, like it was a consolation prize. She said I didn't love her enough. She asked me if I was crying. She was surprised.

The bus came and the driver asked what she had taken. “It ended in -azapine” she said, and he laughed, saying that they all ended in -azapine. She fell off of the seats, denied the need for a safety belt, fell softly between the passengers' feet. She tried to follow people as they dismounted, mistaking their journey home for a pilgrimage to a party. She asked me to marry her and for some reason it scared me. We got out at a friend's house, and I was unsure if I should follow her in. I went with her to make sure that there was someone there to look after her. Ask she walked up the stairs she said “I want to die” and she laughed and I stopped breathing.

It's not the kind of thing that you can predict an arc for. Now I'm talking about the depression as well as the drugs. The next evening she made sushi and tortured us by drinking alcohol as we begged her to remember that people die from that cocktail. She claimed that if she could make sushi she was sober. Later she insisted: “I remember making sushi!” as if her arms hadn't fallen like rocks, as if her neck had bones in it, as if she'd spoken with her own voice.

I don't know if we're at the end of this trip. I don't remember what it sounded like when she giggled her flippantly suicidal remark. But I remember the angles that the stair's made at that instant. I remember a gleam from the banister. What am I forgetting?

We are far apart now, physically and emotionally. I can't talk to her. It's too much for her and she doesn't want to speak to me anymore. She says I've made it worse, she says it as if she was prey and I hunted her.

It's not my friend in that body, it hasn't been her for years. Or at least, that's what my censorship tells me. I know that we held hands once but I can't feel her fingers. I remember looking into her eyes and saying a spark that lit them, glowing reflections of the incandescent bulb by her bed. I remember clay in her hair, her laughter echoing in the cups she made. But I feel like I'm inventing the memories. It's as if I wasn't actually there. I was a ghost and she must have looked through me. I couldn't have been there for her joy because when I walk past P204 I can still see the silhouette of my outstretched hand when she told me not to touch her. I can't be in two places at once. I feel a marionette string holding up my arm as we get further apart, like a tug on my sleeve as I stand in the hall and try to find smudges from erasers beneath graphite lines that I'm suddenly pushed to retrace and retrace. They're bold mistakes.

She says that she will contact me if something changes, and that I should do the same. I should have called her at the beginning, that night, such a difficult night, and stopped this river from carving such a majestic canyon in us. We used to throw around the word “soulmate” but now it sticks in my throat--who designed that word--it is ugly and dry and fits no mold that I have in my mouth.

This is not the story that I meant to tell. I wanted to remind myself that I don't remember the pieces that she said were lies. Eating chocolates in your room is a fantasy. Driving north is a dream. Our feet, side-by-side, in the cradle made of couches, like the smell of food from a restaurant I have never been to.

These pictures are left out in the sun, and they are fading. I took the glossy prints of her off of my wall, because they broke my heart, I put them in a drawer. Some things are lost to darkness, some things are lost to light, but I'm not sure that she has a shadow because it has been so long since I saw her.

It's the end of the story and I've found oxygen in my lungs again. I doubt everything. I will make up these tales until I don't know what is real and when I see her again I want the truth to drench me and saturate my mind. At this point, I will believe anything.

Unsure whether to laugh or cry

I know which would be healthier. Did I write about the electro final? It was torture, I had a terrible panic attack during and after. It finally ended hours later when I carved "CHAOS" into my stomach with a knife. The knife was dull, so it was almost invisible in a few weeks. But moments after the jagged S had beaded blood on my abdomen I started laughing. How could I have taken it all so seriously? Didn't I ever want to get laid? No crop tops for the first few weeks of summer, missy. What a choice.

Not that there wasn't any damage done. I definitely said fuck it to the quantum final. Imagine if I had counted the tears. Maybe next time they break my heart I'll get a bucket and fill it with salt and water and blood that I buy from Ottos and I'll stand in the breezeway and poor it over my head and say "At least this time it didn't come from my body."

Or I'll just give them a receipt. Excuse me, physics department, but I have had to use a lot of my own blood and salt to write this thesis and I have bought some replacements, please send the check to mailstop 1011.

Um. I realize this sounds a lot darker than I expected it to. I'm not saying I don't need therapy, but I'm saying that these would be melodramatic things that would make me laugh because the feelings that back them up are really so thin. It's the best way to shred the veil of sadness over my life though. I embrace it, and then feel how hollow the thing that I have just held in my arms actually is.

I did the same with Edith. I wrote this new version of Benzos last night (between the hours of 12:30 and 2:30 am) that is so dramatic and exaggerated. It helped.

heart so heavy

is a beautiful song.

though the earth still spins round
north still up and south still down
hey I get confused
I get turned around
the world's gone crazy

I think that I was in love once, but the memory is hazy

it was long ago in a very flat land
I fell in love with a brown eyed man
who said I'll shake you, and take you
for all that I can
well I headed west when the shit hit the fan
staying north of the equator
oh looking for something greater than love
but nothing was greater

with a heart so big and a heart so full
a heart so heavy

I know what the map's about
the coast goes north the coast goes south 
and the ocean, it flows right into your mouth
like a delectable beverage

my job was counting the curls of smoke rising up from the reckage

intoxicated against my will
I've got a rosebush here with thorns that could kill
a roof sagging under a serious bill
I've got lavenders on my windowsill
the perfume's hanging heavy

no don't come in yet don't open the door
I'm not dressed I'm not ready

with a heart so big and a heart so full
a heart so heavy

sweet romance please stay away
keep you gone for one more day
oh keep that delicious longing away
I can't take it

I can pump up to play the part
and I can't fake it

~fuckIcan'trememberwhatgoeshere~
I can't hold on and I won't let go
I can't say yes and I won't say no
and I'm stranded, shivering in the rain and the snow
totally naked 

with a heart so big and a heart so full
a heart so heavy

~Rebo Flordigan
supposing I actually remembered all of the lyrics right.


oof my heart is heavy though. Well, it is a little lighter because I tried to express to Edith how much this tangible pause is hurting me. But the physical pain makes it impossible to forget. My organs are tense. I thought that maybe I could adapt the Benzos post into a writing sample for the creative writing class that I want to take, but now it just feels like the beginning of the end. Too much. Can't.

I think maybe if I could rewrite it maybe it would help me sort things out.


 Anything to feel whole again. More art. More self.

The thing that made it harder today, that took me to the point of breaking the silence, was talking to a friend who had felt very anxious when I had felt carefree, and I didn't realize at all. I think that I am an empathetic person, maybe too empathetic, so it shocks me when people feel so differently.

When I have misunderstood:

I start erasing things.

I am barely breathing, and I'm saying WRONG WRONG WRONG and wiping my memories along with my conclusions. Everything becomes fuzzy: the sun melts into the clouds and I fall into oceans of grass with nary a sharp blade. Maybe I hate to be wrong so much that I try to forget that it ever happened, or maybe I'm just trying to purify my information and throw out invalid data points. 

I would rather remember; I would rather be confused but remember it all. I would rather not have to dig for smiles because a subconscious part of my brain has decided that the important part was all of the tears that I didn't see.

I want to scream when I feel my mind moving like this. I want to install magnets under my fingertips that attract all of the beauty I have experienced, strong magnets that won't let it slip away because something pushes me to wash my hands while I hopelessly watch the salt and dirt flow into a porcelain sink. I want the sound of my voice to sing callouses over my life and protect it, there, where it is. I want to always be touching it.

Why are we so weak, that we can't remember two versions of the same story? What part of this humanity contract (signed in bile XXX, what is my name) precludes remembering my life start to finish? I never throw away my drafts when I'm writing. What breaks inside of me to cause the loss of all of this information?

Maybe. Something. On the tip of my tongue. The next letter of the word. The right adjective. I before E. Inventing words. Clowthy. LOST.

The Oldest Profession

The oldest profession usually refers to prostitution, but let's be real, physicists were around before anyone got laid.

This might be a good alternative title for my Scientits zine. Not that it's any less provocative, but at least its not weirdly objectifying.

I'm tired and I'm going to lay in the sun

but not before I write a little bit.

I don't want to tell people about Edith wanting to "pause" our friendship. I mean, I do want to, but mostly because I want to understand how it makes me feel and what it means, and maybe excuse my behavior when I punch Andrew in the face (hypothetically) or just avoid social situations when I'm feeling sad (current status.) I really don't want people feeling like they have to take my side or be supportive. Telling the void can't be so bad though, and the void was always good at processing.

So. How does it make me feel. Well, at first I was angry and sad because I saw three years of good times and creativity and energy and laughter being thrown away. Then I examined my memories more closely and wondered if that's what it really was. Now I don't know. I'm not even sure who she is. I don't even know if I want to trust her again. I don't understand anything that she has done for the last year, and if I'm less generous year and a half. I think that part of that was that she didn't tell me key things that affected her. Now when there is something in her life that I don't understand, I have to ask myself: is it because she's not telling me something? Or is it just another thing that I can't really question because that would be "invalidating" but can't understand either. It's not just a matter of understanding, but supporting. I am sure that she has reasons for these choices (some of those reasons have come out months later) but if she doesn't feel like she can explain them to me then what kind of friendship is this.

So there's a key point: When I question her decisions, it's not because I think they're wrong but because I don't understand the reasons behind them. I do see why it would come off as doubting her, because of course I assume that she's given me all of the relevant information. I can try to be more strategic about my questions, but she could also take my questions for what they are: a desire to understand, and be a part of it all. When I can't understand her life it's impossible to be a part of it. I'm sure there is a way for me to agree with her that any choice she makes is a good one. Maybe not, but at least the majority of them. Why did we go a year+ without me understanding anything she did.

Of course the easy explanation is that we aren't actually compatible as friends.

What else do I feel. I feel unappreciated, I feel wasted. When she first wanted a pause I was like, yeah, cool, do what you need to do, I felt the need to get my thoughts in order too, just because mine are pretty much ready to share and yours aren't is just because you were off exploring Europe and otherwise occupied.

Well, that was not the right explanation apparently. One of the reasons that I took time to emotionally stabilize (not because of our relationship but because of school) so that I could figure out what the problems were independent of how I assigned blame. I did this because I did not believe that the problems were her fault (or my fault) even when I felt that way.

When she called the break a "self-preservation thing" that made her the attacked party, and me the attacker. Sorry that being there for her for 2 really fucking hard years (for both of us) caused her so much pain.

And we're back at the "we should not be friends" conclusion.

Fuck, I remember what that afternoon felt like, I remember the feeling in my abdomen, I remember crossing Division Street on my bike with tears running down my face, hell, I almost broke down in the elevator, it's incredible that I made it as far as the bridge before I started crying.

That's when I thought that she thought we shouldn't be friends anymore. Well, it didn't take long to convince me. But now I don't know if that's what she meant. It's what I heard though, and that's one of those things that is hard to unhear.

When I got home she had said things that sounded like she expected progress someday. If either of us thought that something had changed  we were supposed to contact the other one. SURE. DEFINITELY. Whatever.

I just almost sent this message:
final word: this is fucking me up and it is on you to decide when you are ready because me thinking about all of this is leading nowhere good.

I would probably regret it later. And what would it achieve? Right now it feels like every day is worse than the last but maybe it will get better. There's no way for me to know that. I can try to stop thinking about it. Basically there's nothing I can say. That's the point of the break, that I say nothing. It would have been so easy if she hadn't said those things.

Maybe I need to come to terms with the fact that it's not her saying those things that matters, it's that she felt them. She felt like I was invalidating and disrespecting her when all that I was trying to do was make her feel validated and supported.

This was in a relationship where there was no room for me. I was okay with that. I didn't mention school, I talked about her bad days, and her boyfriend troubles, when inside I was screaming QUIT YOUR JOB AND DUMP THAT ASSHOLE and outside sometimes I said those things but she ignored them. I told Anya that I would tell him what I thought of him the next time I saw him. He was here last night and the pit in my stomach was too deep. Maybe next time. I just need more externalizable fury. The hurt is too deep right now.

Back to the point: I could handle feeling like I was just doing whatever she needed. She was going through a genuinely hard time, she was having trouble handling it, it's okay. Now I find out that she thinks I made it worse? Clearly a little breakdown of communication.

I know that a relationship can't work when it's all about one person. I know that people like to hear other people's problems, and like to help out, even when they're in a tough place themselves. My problems were all school and they were off limits. Even when she didn't directly say "no reed" she made fun of Reedies and mocked our issues. I told her one day in the ceramics studio that it made me uncomfortable. I don't remember what she said. I never remember what people say when it doesn't change how I feel. Like, I don't remember what S said after I told him that the last time we had sex it was not consensual.

Okay, it's getting to be time to get my shit together. I'll stop ranting, or pause ranting. If this bullshit gets me back into journaling then maybe it will all be worth it. I CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT WOULD MAKE THIS WORTH IT. I CAN'T IMAGINE TRUSTING HER.

Fuck this.

It's funny because this is not what I expected to write at all. Not a lot of sun left either. Spending too much times in caves doing science or trying to cheer up my little brother and his Mono.

When is it me?

I leave for Country Fair on Thursday. Maybe that will be me. Scary. Exciting.

It's friday, how about a broken heart

"This is about self preservation. It's not just the lack of validation I've felt for a while, but the disrespect, intended or not."

Passed the background check blog can go back on the internet

phew am i rite?

So I had a panic attack in front of the board of trustees, the faculty, some senior staff, and students

Not sure when my glue will have set enough to go back out into the world. For now I am naked in bed still tearing up now and then. Veronica Mars is helping.

Guess what happened. Mary James told everyone that she admires my hard work.

After I freaked out at my brother's high school graduation I think it's official: Affirmation brings on my panic response.

This is going to be hard to explain and I think I need therapy.

25 minutes of cat vines does not erase the eye-gouging.

Jeez that last Game of Thrones episode though.

In cheerier news, I saw two shooting stars during the gory screening, because we projected it on the wall that abuts our back yard so we lay in the grass to watch it and the sky lay on top of us.

And then I fucked around on the internet for another hour because I was still a little traumatized.

I only remembered to wish on one of the two stars though.

I can't tell you my wish it won't come true.

Who am I jeez.

weltschmertz

I've been hiding from the sun pretty sucessfully.

It's been a while since I created something. I have some materials sitting beside me. I feel like the real materials are gray matter, and that blob of cranial goo has been strangely silent on the "productive activities" front. It feels good about seeing friends or looking at screens, even biking down to the Starlight Parade, but when my heart or spleen or what ever other organ tries to pull it towards the thing that gives me the most pleasure, this silly brain of mine goes flaccid. It even suggests that I ought to read about Electron Microscopy before I bother doing any art.

I've been sick since the rained out interview, but as I get my energy back I'll convince my brain to follow its dreams.

And there you have it.

for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody

This line in V for Vendetta is where I cry.

I've been burrito'd in blankets on the couch since 5 pm, reading, interneting, reading V for Vendetta, housemeetinging. It wasn't really an enjoyable 6 hours, but I was feeling poorly so I didn't have much choice. I thought about inviting someone over but I didn't want to mope with company. I got really chilled this afternoon at an interview, and it's hard to recover from that without a full night's sleep between me and the 3 hours of dampness.

Yeah, the interview was a barbecue in Laurelhurst Park. It was fun, I met some interesting people. Social anxiety sat on my shoulder throughout, but I tried not to let it weigh me down. They'll have us around for more interviews, and I get half off a sensory deprivation float, so it was a pretty good deal even if I did lose an afternoon to bodily trouble plus some aporia.

I just saw a video simulating a euthanasia roller coaster. Considering writing a story about a group of people who have decided to die for science or something, who get to know each other. Question the meaning of life/death etc. Wow I am feeling heavy feelings today.

No reason I should be (apart from reading V for Vendetta) because I have some good news as of yesterday:

I HAVE EMPLOYMENT pretty much nailed down. I'll be working at OHSU doing electron microscopy stuff and it is pretty much ideal. I can't believe it actually happened. I'm going to check out the lab on Tuesday, and then Wednesday-Friday I'm going to the symposium on Bioimaging at the Nanoscale.

I know that this post doesn't really merit the title, but I've been a little too fuzzy to really recount the last few days. It was a wild weekend, but now I'm stuffy and sitting on the couch and I can't dream myself back into a state of excitement.

Some other time, some other journal, maybe. I promise this summer is off to a good start.

broken vows

I did it. My honor is forever marred.

I smoked weed, after I swore: "Never Again!" not 6 months ago. Weak, savage, animal that I am.

I only did it because I was with other kids who don't smoke and it's funny because I feel like it's how weed is supposed to be smoked. Giggling because no one can roll a joint and half of it spills onto the mirror-table. Sitting around in the dark taking tiny hits and telling stories.

Parties are poison.

I mean this quite literally, we went to a party and part of the "show" was a dude breaking fluorescent bulbs into a bucket. I fled the scene, having attended an Environmental Chemistry lecture on heavy metal poisoning a mere 3 weeks prior. I paced dramatically, I googled the periodic table on my phone, I looked up the mercury content of fluorescent bulbs and just generally spazzed while the rest of party was closed up in a garage that was rapidly filling with toxic fumes. Finally, I texted Neal my concerns and he came out. I milled nervously for several more minutes, explaining my concerns and also my reluctance to make a scene about it.

Neal finally volunteers to talk to the "artist" who was his friend. He comes back with the good news that the point of the "piece" was to recycle properly, and that the friend had sprinkled sulfur over the shards to neutralize the mercury.

Let's rewind again, sitting in the park across the street with Liana and Anna, watching the clouds do their cloudy voodoo in the sky, watching strange yellow flashes wink at us to the northwest of the sky, hearing a strange man barking across the street, barking back, talking about feelings and how to process and what people need. 2 hours of that left me solidly chilled, but also emotionally fulfilled somehow. It was difficult but also easy, and it made going back to the party a shift that I was interested in. I didn't want to talk to anyone there except my friends, but I guess that's normal. I just have this fantasy of going to a party and meeting exciting new people! It never happens. If it ever does, it's through other friends. I guess that's reasonable, I just dream of running off with a stranger and just getting along. Dynamics with my friends are always better though.

Melaina made me a ring out of wax. I stuck a bottle cap to it, and then a fridge-poetry word: vapid. It was a mood ring to match the one from our kitchen that I put on tonight. That was not my mood but when have you known a mood ring that was accurate?

Anyways, Melaina stole it back and we went out to witness the "art" and "music."


Now I'm sitting on the couch because the housies have gone to bed and Liana is next to me and there's Talking Heads leaking from my speakers in tin-foil Youtube flavors. I want to listen to Retrograde by James Blake but it was overwhelming Liana.

a reminder for bad days

http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-an-entj-destroyer-of-worlds,36075/

no more teachers

I didn't even really try on the quantum test. Just pass me, Lucas. I didn't need to spend another hour and a half playing with your stupid symbols. It was an interesting problem, but the issue with interesting problems in quantum mechanics is that the moment you write them down in Math they lose most of their originality, and the rest you approximate away.

Well, that was this morning. I turned it in outside of his office, and then went straight to the gym. I ran for 5 minutes, walked for 5 minutes and then ran a little more but I was over it just like the Quantum exam. There was a little bit of do, but definitely no try. Thanks Yoda.

I walked home to a cold shower. My housemates bought champagne, not even Andre, a whole step up from Andre, and I drank it from a martini glass and we laughed.

I was reading over my lab report. I was constantly suprised--every sentence--that it was legible. The funniest thing happened when I was turning in my electro exam. It was bullshit hard, and after the third hour I started panicking and so I decided to cut my losses. I had stopped crying and composed myself in order to face my "professor." Walking to his office, I see my least favorite professor. I avoid eye contact very intensely. My head was turned away from him.
He says "I liked your lab report."
I stop and say "Really?"
He says "yeah..."
At which point I kind of lose my composure and barely peak my head in the door as I turn in my electro exam. I drop it on the post-doc's couch and left.
He said "all done?"
and then as I walked away trying not to cry "Have a good summer!" comes out of his stupid office.

And then I cried for a while and doubted everything and basically regressed about a month in terms of dealing with my feelings towards the department and physics as a discipline. A week ago I was ready to write a huge complaint about the least favorite professor and now it seems totally futile. They are all terrible.

So If I'm not gonna do physics with my life I guess I need new hobbies.

Post-Script I'm pretty obsessed with this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr4fIcvPXDA

impulse

me and two friends just went in on 82 feet of rhinestone chain. we are gonna make tiaras.

(yes)

(i love soldering)

trying to study and thinking that there should be more science themed porn in the world

Google images will not give me any pictures of a shirtless man staring quizzically at a test tube and that is all I really need right now.

The SpacePirateShip

Liana's painting of me

disappointing art

My recent encounters with art have been dissappointing. I saw The Last Five Years which was supposed to be some honest-indie-musical-theater that ended up being only slightly more than a gimmick.

Then the Portland Opera puts on Pirates of Penzance and their dramaturgue gets defensive when someone asks why they're putting on an operetta and I think to myself ooooh shit. And indeed, it is a terrible mistake. About as much substance as a meringue in the Sahara.

I need something to blow my MIND.

On that note I'm thinking of seeing Die Antwood in a week or two. 

goals

1) be sincere, but not nostalgic
2) rinse
3) repeat

my memories

realizing that maybe my memory wasn't fried by research chemicals, but instead by the fact that going to class and studying physics felt like torture all semester, so my brain has hazed it out.

Even before I had taken any drugs, high school became a blur because I had decided that I had misinterpreted most of it in the moment, and the only value in the experiences was the distance I had from them. As I become very aware of where my memory fails me or stays put, I find the damage is not visible when recalling events when they're prompted, but only when vaguely reflecting.

This isn't very clear, my head is still slow from Renn Fayre, but I feel more at home in it now that I can trust it a little bit more.

Anyways, if I ever need memories I know where to look.

people of early net

I was ankle-deep in a sea of balloons, carrying a roll of mylar over my head, and I anxious to leave but I was listening to a stimulating conversation. I think I agree with them. I think "Early Net" is what our generation should be called by the future. That's our definition. The silver cylinder and I walked out onto the soggy quad on Sunday afternoon of Renn Fayre 2k14. Synth-heavy experimental music moaned from a 35 foot geodesic dome as I headed home with my gift and and my fatigue weighing on my shoulders.

We joke that it should be called Rain Fayre. On Saturday morning I lay on my back looking up at a plywood roof two feet above me. Rain knocks on the platform, and my friend and I hide in the steerage of the pirate ship I built with my housemate. I feel pride and water, but not the cold because the drugs are distracting me. Knots in the wood warp and reform with rainbow auras as I blink at them.

I finally kissed him. It was the end of thesis parade when everyone is milling outside of Eliot and the drum korps is straining against their blisters. It was so soft. It was like falling onto a naked bed and sinking down into the seams. I want it again and again.

May Day

Light escapes from the living room windows and sees the shadow of my Renn Fayre project, pale sherbert blades of grass in a neat rectangle. I was painting those flats at ten in the morning, and I finished pinning the sails just as it was getting too dark to see. It was a full day. Overall straps swung around my ankles in 90 degree sunlight while I tried to create an aesthetically pleasing space-pirate ship out of questionable sketches and half-baked plans. I drank deeply from hydrating cocktails of orange juice and water. Physical exertion.

Mental exertion too. No fewer than 3 friends shared crises with me today. One had me so shocked that I was unable to deal with it. I sat on the floor and cried for a while. I am still overwhelmed by guilt. I don't know what to do. I tried to talk to him but it took two hours for him to show up and by then I had dealt with the shock by continuing to build. It's so hard.

Anyways, for a few hours I was worried that Renn Fayre would be ruined by all of the issues around me. People are not happy, or healthy. My people aren't, at least, and that breaks my heart. I feel like I would do anything to help them but nothing comes to mind.

Now I think it might be okay. I think I've been a really strong supporter for everyone in my life and that has had non-negligible consequences, even if they are still sad. And me? Well, I've had a lot of support too, but I am lucky enough to be my own best friend, my own sister, my own parent, my own bad influence as well. Sometimes to be propped up by so many things in so many ways traps you in a locked position. I don't feel trapped. I feel balanced. How else could I have taken so many shocks so easily?

I'm waiting for my room to cool down.  I think I will try to get it in better order before finally going to bed.

Genuine

Some of what he says disgusts me, but the way he says it is the song that I want everyone to sing no matter what the words are. I want heartbeats to pass through lips. Irony is a flatline. I wish a could purge it, I wish a could run steel wool over my porous mind to shed the grime that refracts my presence. I expect to have something to tell, but the speech is empty at the podium and the audience sends their regrets in absentia. Polish anything and it shines, we find it's all made of the same thing.

I can't imagine someone touching me. I wonder how I will feel in a week. I will dance into a crowd and drums will kiss courage into me and then I'll face the people. What will it feel like. It's amazing but I sometimes wonder if everything is about to fall apart. Our experience is built on a thousand social contracts, and a few of us break them every day. When the critical mass crosses over... it could be that nothing happens. I see everyone at a stasis--if the worst were to happen and my dream come true--and they are trying to pick up where they left off while avoiding eye contact and the exchange of mutual blame. Anyone could say to anyone "You let go, you brought it down," but people hate to speak in unison and the chorus would overwhelm the diva. I just can't imagine how one could strengthen the contract, I only see trust dissolving into dust, blown to the edges of the map in ancient stacks of what used to be.

I think I have a hidden store of energy. Perhaps the exhaustion is just habit. Or the release is simply ritual. In any case: something is not as it seems. I should be fighting in a crowd tonight but I am writing in my bed because my record is the only idol I have to worship. I'm also tired and quiet and personal.

Distance

I've traveled. I've followed the sun and she's followed me. We've met in the middle on fleeting days and missed each other on brief nights. It's light forever, or dark for lifetimes. We've never been close, and I look up from my labyrinth to measure our separation. Constant, constant confusion. The same sun feels different through new skies. The same burns peel pink every summer, and I touch the raw skin with fresh fingers.

This year won't leave me sleep. I'm sitting calmly for the sunset. My head droops as the months birth each other and my vigil shivers in the cold and the spring. I have never been so tired. Sap tickles from my hands and glues them to the ground. Roots I grow pierce my sides, because I am the only water for miles. My body begs for a cool afternoon breeze, a signal of salvation. The blinding light sees through me, it makes me small against the glowing shadows. While I wait for a night I remember how I was impatient for the day, and I wonder if this is what it is to be full.

Mirrors walk by, their bodies welcoming. The glassy faces tell a different story, and I try to hear the conversation we should be having. It is all soft touches and bumps tonight, accidental contact. When I can't believe in people I believe in art. And beneath even that, there is a layer of knowing unknown, the promise of the learnable. People are lessons disguised as teachers. Feelings are forgotten memories that have found a softer bed.

When I climbed the hill, I had not made up my mind. I planned escape routes as I walked towards what I wanted. I was ready to duck out and run wide to avoid my clearer hopes in favor of muddled imagination. Not ready to admit or commit, my path stayed strong against the torques of impulse. Falling back into the shape I had twisted out of, my back yelped in pain. A sweeter sound than mumbling groans. Sometimes I dream to hurt.

They say look no further and I shut my eyes. Figures dance across the red glare of the blood in my lids, persons dissolving into each other and questioning my motives. I can't hide because they come from me, and I start to see that no one put them there. Outlines condense and I blink to see them more clearly. The current and the past blend into dark suggestions that I didn't hear for so long. Audible now, echos from inside, they amplify until I believe them blindly.

I wonder what it is to be warm, here in the winter-nest of isolation. It's not the feeling of dirt, though I've felt warm dirt. Truth can be warm, but only in small doses and warmth that does not persist is only a stutter of the ideal. I felt a tingle in a familiar chair, sitting down again like the last again, and this time sinking a little bit deeper than every before that was before this ultimate again.

A hand held out to me. The picture makes me sick. I will tell any story to distance myself from that reach. The depth keeps it fresh, stored in the dark where only I can corrupt it. Choosing taste, my fairy tale of decisions grows wings and flies home. I wander and spin in circles, moving not up nor down, but just wondering which way the incline points. I dream to the beat of my steps, counting tip toes until I wake up sweating and dizzy, and a ship sets sail without me. Oarsman wave goodbye underwater.

There is a drive to build houses in all of us, and I want to shelter under paper. My history drowns on shelves until it's bound into books. Walls can reach terrible heights, brick by brick and click by click, assembled with graffiti pre-painted and the mason's impressions fossilized in the foundations. Dedication and preface are all they will ever be, but they shed rain and salt winds that would chill me to my core.

Bent in pieces and scattered on the floor. Mouth muscles clench and sigh because they are determined to rule. They ride through the night screaming a warning and I absorb their confidence. I never know when to close my window or how to open a rusted latch, yet I do both instinctually with my nature sabotaging itself into unfavorable selection.

The fact remains: to feel unwelcome is worse than to be turned away. I bring my own darkness because no one turned on a light. They believe it's unnecessary in broad daylight, but some things are outside the visible spectrum.

what does it mean

Sometimes I have nightmares that I'm being chased. There is always a moment where I am hidden and my pursuer is near by, looking for me. Then they find me and I make eye contact with them and they're no longer villains, just empty and full. I walk towards them to let them kill me. That's when I wake up, every time.

Hum Play MXIV

I walked down the hill, smiling. An altoid dissolved in my mouth, sugar and LSD making their way through my tongue. Soccer moms walked by me, avoiding eye contact. I slipped into the Hum Play line as it was standing up to enter Vollum Lecture hall. I filed in with my friends touching me.

Stepping on seats to cross the audience, I absorbed the excitement. I hugged the old cast and squirmed through the new one as their breath quickened and the hour hand clicked closer to seven o'clock. When the opening credits rolled, I was crouched on the ground, a serious Reed political science professor standing against the wall a few feet away. I threw my glitter and fell into my seat.

My body was tense with laughter, and my depth perception flitted in and out of operation as faces grew and distended. A physics professor sat with her feet on the table, and though I couldn't hear her words I was glad that she was there.

The cup on the floor was full of gin, but I wanted water so badly that I decided to pretend. At intermission I knelt by the water fountain and drank and drank.

After the play I "helped" clean up. I had monopoly money and tampons in my fists, but no clear goal with either piece of litter. Finally I was relieved of my wandering efforts, and scurried to the balcony to reflect  with a friend.

Walking home to breathe before heading to the after party, the trees dipped and stretched. The parking lot curved concave and the cars sat like jelly beans on its surface. Shadows and lamplight tickled the cartoon scene. I felt like I was in a Miyazaki movie. Mottled trees hung above my forehead as I tiptoed up the slope. I felt like a child again. I walked up the hill, laughing.

quantum midterm

I decided I would leave to do some last minute studying for the quantum midterm in 7 minutes. Hum Play is today, I just finished the softball logo, I'm thinking about going to the Tattoo place maybe to talk, I need to start my Renn Fayre project and plant my garden.

On the other hand, Nitrogen Day went swimmingly and so did my J-Lab presentation and the electro midterm was alright I think. I'm in the finals for my perfect summer job, me vs one other mystery Reedie, but I think I've got it on lock. It is a perfect job for me. It is everything I've struggled with perfectly nested in everything I am good at. Plus it leaves me plenty of time to work on my own projects and also play and pick berries and lay in the sun and travel Oregon on the weekends!

And I guess that's my life. I realized that this semester I've gotten so close to all of my friends as I distance myself from my work. I feel so lucky to have had that experience. Even when I felt isolated and was crying every day all I had to do was go to commons or invite people over and they would come and spend time with me and make me feel like a worthy person.

Look, I don't know when my artistry will come back (probably summer, lets be real) but I think a little genuine synopsis never heart anyone.

at a minimum of the absolute value of the derivative

my mood swings have been less severe lately (for a week). But now I'm feeling a little down and I'm worried they'll come back. Thinking about trying to get some long term birth control so I don't have to deal with the monthly insanities.

I don't really have time to write anything right now, because I have to print out transparencies for screen printing nitrogen day stuff. I'll put the designs up here; I'm proud of them.

Whenever I do have time to write I play Doge 2048 or I watch TV. I need to make sure I'm doing meaningful things with my down time.

I found the digital sketchbook of a senior physics major. I thought of him as a total misogynist an creeper but the art makes him seem more human. I find it hard to distrust artists, but that's my mistake.

public diary diary public

Writing something here... in this loft of the student union, and in this pile of secrets so mundane that I haven't told anyone about them...
It feels like masturbating in public.
I guess it feels like masturbating when I write at home alone too.

Liana Paints Me and I Type Without Looking

She's mixing paints right now so I have a moment to practice.  Its funny how a moment of intense concentration and purposeful focus can drain your mind of shit I forgot where i was in this sentence. Liana asked me what I was typing, and I responded stream of conciousness, like what I usually write. Her eyes get wideas I respond, but they get wide when she pulls her brush downor to the side or looks up for a moment and briefly pauses. Or when the strokes
I took a mometn to put on the best of blI hope that the words ton't become what I type, because it's hard enough as it is.
Heart of glass
I cried all morning. The kind of crying you can't escape because it has no direct source . I was feeling buzzwords like greif or hard work, or acknowledge or compensate shudder my whole body. Praise broke me down. Just thinking ... No, feeling. And now the sun has a low and golden quality that hasn't managed to invade the house yet. and I saw rainbows mise en abime in the sky Another comment from Liana.
More wide eyes.Her eyes widen like she's discovering something. It makes me regret that feeling, because it used to happen in physics, or I would work only to acnticipate that feeling. Well, now I work in dread of the feeling of inadequacy and isoclation. That's pretty overwhleming, there's no room for discovery. Lok at that, I can't escape it.
My notbook from physics 200 and electro 1 is sitting in the direction that I am not supposed to look, so I'll pay it no mind. My car peaks out from he edge of the window a red phantom at the harshwhite sill. It's a little too far in the direction that I am supposed to look, so I go back to my irregular eyecontact with  the artist. The
Dreaming
Liana takes a moment to mix a second color. My face is the color of the sky right now. we'll add some  mossy green. Not mossy in the common sense of the word, not mossy like liana's flannel, but the moss of the trees we saw in front of the library before we encountered the infinite rainbows. Oh, no no, there was more brown. Maybe not it is conventionally mossy. A pe sticks out of her hair, just an inch and a half of its halffoot length, the rest is eaten by her hair, vicious beast that it is.
The Tide is High
THe beat sickens me., but I can laugh at my sickness. My shoulder starts to hurt from the angle that I'm sitting at. Really its hurting from all the other punishment that I put it through. It just manifests itself in this moment without any other pressures. Finally the little voices Another comment from Liana
Hah songs about love. A cute freshman commented on a buzzfeed quize that I took. What element am i? Uranium, and he's plutonium. I need to get out more. Mee a little bit of red on the pallette no that's the wrong direction look into the corner.
Can I tell you what I'm looking forward to? Drunkhearsal for Humplay is on thursday. An exersive in restraint and hedonism. Restraint, because last year I drank way too much and only remember 15 minutes of it and threw up all over my backpack and in a bowl and in the pathroom I'm sure and I treid to force feed eggs to a vegan who was just trying to tell me how much she looked up to me and how vegan she was.
Anywways, there's room for improvement. The play is so funny this year, I will be able to let go of the bullshit I think.
Darling
My face is green now. When I stop typing there's a strange silence, even though we're listening to debby harry's dulcet tones. Dulcet tones, like earthshattering sex, so overused. So overused that I can use it Ironically? Surely not. We have stylistic standards after all.
Copying this diary into a word document is my new stress control. It's more reliable than porn, and I get a feeling of accomplisment as the word count inches towards the ceond half of a hundred centuries. And I'm seeing the arc of my life like I never have before. I wonder what the effect of printing it will be.
I have a new appreciateion for the mental mechanics of writing, doing this without looking. THere is a visual balance to sentences that I can no longer engage with. There are also calculations that I make, this time while wri
Liana comments on the golden light that is inviting itself in through the front window. A frequent evening visitor, I expect it. I even remember the sillouette of the giant plant out front that will project itself through
Debby is singing in French. I started reading frenchpoetry alloud the other night in the French house. I was half showing off, but half singing because the shapes my mouth made were so gracefull and comfortable and sweet. I remember times I've translated on the go, and my mind felt the same as my mouth. I'm a fool for not signing
Liana asks for placebo. We're now listening to the best of full album, and a childlike joywashes over her as unbridled angst tickles from my speakers. Her mouth silently mumbles the lyrics. It's in the water.
Angst ball!!!!
Nitrogen day. Or I didn't finish things that I was excited about. On friday, the HSS draft deadline rears its scaled and mottled horns to roar a call to the bear gardn for all seniors in that division. The party should be messy, but at least we're out of the spring break lull and into the madness that is the final quarter of the year. The final quarter before senior year.
LThe thing that I'm realizing si that I looked forward to junior year almost the same way as I have been looking forward to senior year. Some ideal of exhaltation. ONE who has passed the qualfears nothing. One who has a thesis fears nothing. One whio is in advanced physics classes is never doubted, one who is in senior symposium is only adored.Liana asks what i"m writing again. Even though I'm doubting my excitement, i still believe in it.
Change your taste in men.