I really should not read Savage Love, a highly dysfunctional sex advice column, before going to bed. Why? Because I get weird dreams.
I do not want to have any more dreams about making out with Nick B, or conspiring with Jen to lie to my mom, saying I'm lesbian.
Other dreams of last night that don't make sense include: camping out on an asphalt basketball court in a forest surrounded by buildings.
Die, subconscious, die.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Went to T's house today, where she warned me not to download exe files from Kazaa for fear of viruses, and not to keep my laptop on overnight in college, for fear of overheating. I will keep this in mind. She made me some miso soup, and I was duly impressed, because I've never had homemade miso soup.
I watched "Adaptation" with her, which she probably burned. It was good, yes. Profound, yes. Beautiful, in its own way, and I grudgingly agree that it really does deserve the title of "best movie of the year," as judged by Washington Post critics anyway. Yes, even over "The Two Towers." "Adaptation" is about Charlie Kaufman, a writer writing the screenplay for a dramatization of a book about orchids, aka the movie you're watching. So it's a movie about the writing of the movie... The acting is very naturalistic, and I recognized many things from life captured perfectly, from that little smile waitresses give you, to the politely charming and emotionally detached smalltalk of people at parties. It's basically the movie version of "To the Lighthouse," with similar thematic emphasis on the superficiality of plot and structure, and the importance of seeing and celebrating life as it is. (Though it has more plot than TTL) The funny thing is, immediately after a scene in which the screenwriter's twin brother, who typically writes thrillers, becomes Charlie's partner with the script, the movie becomes plotted and structured, with one increasingly unbelievable event following another in an incredibly cliched manner. I'd say the first half of the movie, without drug addicts, voyeurism, car chases, adulteresses, armed psychopaths, man-eating alligators, and people dying in each others' arms rings much truer, but I think that indeed is the point.
Something funny; at T's house, I called Malex, wondering if we could drop by, but of course he wasn't in. Turns out he was at Lauren's house with Janis watching Trigun; he'd called me and gotten my answering machine a little while before, and had actually come over and banged on my doors and windows. When I got home, I gave Lauren a ring, and through her had a long and zany conversation with the Trigun crowd over the phone.
More Trigun, Friday; Lauren is also holding an anime party on Saturday.
I watched "Adaptation" with her, which she probably burned. It was good, yes. Profound, yes. Beautiful, in its own way, and I grudgingly agree that it really does deserve the title of "best movie of the year," as judged by Washington Post critics anyway. Yes, even over "The Two Towers." "Adaptation" is about Charlie Kaufman, a writer writing the screenplay for a dramatization of a book about orchids, aka the movie you're watching. So it's a movie about the writing of the movie... The acting is very naturalistic, and I recognized many things from life captured perfectly, from that little smile waitresses give you, to the politely charming and emotionally detached smalltalk of people at parties. It's basically the movie version of "To the Lighthouse," with similar thematic emphasis on the superficiality of plot and structure, and the importance of seeing and celebrating life as it is. (Though it has more plot than TTL) The funny thing is, immediately after a scene in which the screenwriter's twin brother, who typically writes thrillers, becomes Charlie's partner with the script, the movie becomes plotted and structured, with one increasingly unbelievable event following another in an incredibly cliched manner. I'd say the first half of the movie, without drug addicts, voyeurism, car chases, adulteresses, armed psychopaths, man-eating alligators, and people dying in each others' arms rings much truer, but I think that indeed is the point.
Something funny; at T's house, I called Malex, wondering if we could drop by, but of course he wasn't in. Turns out he was at Lauren's house with Janis watching Trigun; he'd called me and gotten my answering machine a little while before, and had actually come over and banged on my doors and windows. When I got home, I gave Lauren a ring, and through her had a long and zany conversation with the Trigun crowd over the phone.
More Trigun, Friday; Lauren is also holding an anime party on Saturday.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
I'm not sure that I like it that Malex has changed his name to Mike. He may also be dying his hair; and his moving to California is inevitable. It's like he's trying to transform himself into a different person, who is too cool for us. I don't mean it like a snub; just that the summer is ending with the days peeling off, and Mike feels as far removed as a person on the moon.
People drift apart, and Mike pushes off the banks and quietly slashes the moorings and goes gently into that good night.
People drift apart, and Mike pushes off the banks and quietly slashes the moorings and goes gently into that good night.
Around sunset on Sunday night, my parents picked up Jen at her house in a deer-infested neighborhood. When we returned, we would see four deer and a fawn at a moonlit crossing, eyes glowing like lamps, but in the meantime, we saw Pirates of the Caribbean at White Flint Mall. A pleasant surprise in that more people turned out than expected. Along with me and Jen, Janis came in tow with Lauren, and some Janis-groupies I don't know... James, Jessica, and some unintroduced person, who are only names and faces to me.
Pirates was absolutely hilarious. Movie critics seem to give it less credit than it is due, because they compare it to every single pirate movie released in the last 40 years (C'mon! Erol who??). See though, I was born in 1985 and had fun, you old farts. Yes, all the characters are cliches. Yes, not everything makes sense and many things are contrived. Yes, it is a movie inspired by a theme park ride. But it's not a theme park ride I've ever been on, and if people hadn't told me it was based on the ride, I'd never have made the connection. Unoriginal maybe, but everything's fresh to a new generation.
Constant debate between me, Janis, Jen and Lauren over who is hotter; Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom. I maintain that Orlando Bloom looks like a mishappen potato; Janis says that I'm just calling him the ugliest thing that I can think of and that he does not really remind me of a mishappen potato or any related tuber; but no, there are uglier things than mishappen potatoes; Orlando Bloom honestly does look like a one (potato). Janis helped me sort out the plotholes in Pirates also. We had a really long discussion about the physics of shooting forks from cannons, the weight of gunpowder vs the weight of cannonballs vs the weight of forks, the relative motion of a ship required to smack Orlando Bloom with a yard-arm, the effectiveness of a warship crewed by two people, and the appropriateness of mooring a rowboat at a ship's stern. (Janis remembered something about it in Moby Dick; apparently it is there to help men who fall overboard.) Random note: Probably nobody else cared, but I got a kick out of watching the HMS Intercept dismasted with chain-shot, because it was something I'd only previously read about in naval adventure books. Chain shot rocks! Give 'em a whiff of chain-shot, arrr!
I should note, for the record, that Lauren says Keira Knightley is sickeningly beautiful, and we all concur. (She looks like Natalie Portman, and was her double in Attack of the Clones, and also can act. She has grown her hair long since Bend It Like Beckham and looks better for it.)
We talked in the mall parking lot after. I found it touching and a gesture of good will that Janis and the people she was driving home stayed with me and Jen and talked until my parents came to pick us (me and Jen) up. She joked that she wouldn't leave two teenage girls alone in a mall parking lot, especially not with the full moon turning us into undead skeletons, though the counter-joke was that you wouldn't leave two teenage boys alone in a parking lot either, not because something terrible would happen to the boys, but because something terrible would happen to the parking lot. Lauren talked about Otakon and meeting Vash's voice actor, from Trigun. Let it be said for the record that Lauren is officially cool because she laughs at my lame jokes. We get along like fire and wood, except in a good way.
Quotes, in context and without:
Disclaimer: Quotes may be attributed to the wrong people, who may have been standing/sitting in the actual quotees' general proximity. All quotes are paraphrased. I, in a great display of narcissism, will also procede to sometimes quote myself. Alas, one of these quotes are funny anymore, and most of them are completely random. You have been warned.
~
(about one of the criminal charges made against Johnny Depp's character, Captain Jack Sparrow, in Pirates)
me: "Impersonating a cleric of the Church of England.."
Jen: In eyeshadow!
me: Johnny Depp is actually the first gay Anglican bishop!
~
Janis: You are the gayest bunch of sailors I have ever seen! Get me a new crew!
(about her school project, Moby Dick presented as ballet, complete with faux pegleg)
~
Lauren: Johnny Depp is definitely hotter. He's not like Orlando Bloom... *falsetto* "Oh, Elizabeth!!! *crying noises*
(in reference to Orlando Bloom's wussy crybaby character in Pirates of the Caribbean)
~
Jen: We shall combine the French and the German language to get.. GRENCH! A language that is strangely angry yet effeminate!
me: They'll invade Poland, and then immediately surrender!
~
Jen: I was saying things out of the German phrasebook. Ruchita yelled, "Stop threatening me!" (mock tone of injured bewilderment) But I was just asking her if she'd like to buy a train ticket....
~
2001 Space Odyssey on Monday night, all in good company at Mike's house: Janis and Lauren again (who seem inseperable), Silvia, Malex, Valex, Nick, Rob, Erica (it was pleasant seeing her again so soon) and a Bivalve I suspect is Arthur, who I never got to know well in high school.
It was a funny movie, though not intentionally. Only because it was so easy for us to poke fun at the prospect of a HAL9000/Frank/Dave menege a trois. Oh yes, and the monkeys. It was a good party movie because of the artsy weirdness; plus, it had great thematic swathes of total silence, so we could punctuate it with our witty and banal conversation.
Quotes:
Valex: God, that's good! (in response to Malex groping him)
~
*PS: I indeed do know who Erol Flynn is. Please don't kill me.
Pirates was absolutely hilarious. Movie critics seem to give it less credit than it is due, because they compare it to every single pirate movie released in the last 40 years (C'mon! Erol who??). See though, I was born in 1985 and had fun, you old farts. Yes, all the characters are cliches. Yes, not everything makes sense and many things are contrived. Yes, it is a movie inspired by a theme park ride. But it's not a theme park ride I've ever been on, and if people hadn't told me it was based on the ride, I'd never have made the connection. Unoriginal maybe, but everything's fresh to a new generation.
Constant debate between me, Janis, Jen and Lauren over who is hotter; Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom. I maintain that Orlando Bloom looks like a mishappen potato; Janis says that I'm just calling him the ugliest thing that I can think of and that he does not really remind me of a mishappen potato or any related tuber; but no, there are uglier things than mishappen potatoes; Orlando Bloom honestly does look like a one (potato). Janis helped me sort out the plotholes in Pirates also. We had a really long discussion about the physics of shooting forks from cannons, the weight of gunpowder vs the weight of cannonballs vs the weight of forks, the relative motion of a ship required to smack Orlando Bloom with a yard-arm, the effectiveness of a warship crewed by two people, and the appropriateness of mooring a rowboat at a ship's stern. (Janis remembered something about it in Moby Dick; apparently it is there to help men who fall overboard.) Random note: Probably nobody else cared, but I got a kick out of watching the HMS Intercept dismasted with chain-shot, because it was something I'd only previously read about in naval adventure books. Chain shot rocks! Give 'em a whiff of chain-shot, arrr!
I should note, for the record, that Lauren says Keira Knightley is sickeningly beautiful, and we all concur. (She looks like Natalie Portman, and was her double in Attack of the Clones, and also can act. She has grown her hair long since Bend It Like Beckham and looks better for it.)
We talked in the mall parking lot after. I found it touching and a gesture of good will that Janis and the people she was driving home stayed with me and Jen and talked until my parents came to pick us (me and Jen) up. She joked that she wouldn't leave two teenage girls alone in a mall parking lot, especially not with the full moon turning us into undead skeletons, though the counter-joke was that you wouldn't leave two teenage boys alone in a parking lot either, not because something terrible would happen to the boys, but because something terrible would happen to the parking lot. Lauren talked about Otakon and meeting Vash's voice actor, from Trigun. Let it be said for the record that Lauren is officially cool because she laughs at my lame jokes. We get along like fire and wood, except in a good way.
Quotes, in context and without:
Disclaimer: Quotes may be attributed to the wrong people, who may have been standing/sitting in the actual quotees' general proximity. All quotes are paraphrased. I, in a great display of narcissism, will also procede to sometimes quote myself. Alas, one of these quotes are funny anymore, and most of them are completely random. You have been warned.
~
(about one of the criminal charges made against Johnny Depp's character, Captain Jack Sparrow, in Pirates)
me: "Impersonating a cleric of the Church of England.."
Jen: In eyeshadow!
me: Johnny Depp is actually the first gay Anglican bishop!
~
Janis: You are the gayest bunch of sailors I have ever seen! Get me a new crew!
(about her school project, Moby Dick presented as ballet, complete with faux pegleg)
~
Lauren: Johnny Depp is definitely hotter. He's not like Orlando Bloom... *falsetto* "Oh, Elizabeth!!! *crying noises*
(in reference to Orlando Bloom's wussy crybaby character in Pirates of the Caribbean)
~
Jen: We shall combine the French and the German language to get.. GRENCH! A language that is strangely angry yet effeminate!
me: They'll invade Poland, and then immediately surrender!
~
Jen: I was saying things out of the German phrasebook. Ruchita yelled, "Stop threatening me!" (mock tone of injured bewilderment) But I was just asking her if she'd like to buy a train ticket....
~
2001 Space Odyssey on Monday night, all in good company at Mike's house: Janis and Lauren again (who seem inseperable), Silvia, Malex, Valex, Nick, Rob, Erica (it was pleasant seeing her again so soon) and a Bivalve I suspect is Arthur, who I never got to know well in high school.
It was a funny movie, though not intentionally. Only because it was so easy for us to poke fun at the prospect of a HAL9000/Frank/Dave menege a trois. Oh yes, and the monkeys. It was a good party movie because of the artsy weirdness; plus, it had great thematic swathes of total silence, so we could punctuate it with our witty and banal conversation.
Quotes:
Valex: God, that's good! (in response to Malex groping him)
~
*PS: I indeed do know who Erol Flynn is. Please don't kill me.
Been reading "The Fall of Berlin 1945" by Anthony Beevor, which is historical nonfiction. Would like to finish it before the end of summer on the 23rd for me, because I won't have time to do scholarly reading outside my actual schoolwork, and will resort to reading trashy Terry Goodkind novels like the post-teenage fantasy dork I am. Anyway, this book has good quotes:
Suddenly someone shouted above the noise, "Silence!" We saw a small dirty soldier with two Iron Crosses and the German Cross in Gold. On his sleeve he had a badge with four metal tanks, which meant that he had destroyed four tanks at close quarters. "I've got something to tell you," he shouted, and the carriage fell silent. "Even if you don't want to listen to me, stop whingeing. We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win the war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won't be a single German left in a few weeks." It became so quiet in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.
..and also...
A deserter from the 500th Straf Regiment told his interrogators the well-known Berlin remark, 'The only promise Hitler has kept is the one he made before coming to power. Give me ten years and you will not be able to recognize Germany.'
Suddenly someone shouted above the noise, "Silence!" We saw a small dirty soldier with two Iron Crosses and the German Cross in Gold. On his sleeve he had a badge with four metal tanks, which meant that he had destroyed four tanks at close quarters. "I've got something to tell you," he shouted, and the carriage fell silent. "Even if you don't want to listen to me, stop whingeing. We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win the war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won't be a single German left in a few weeks." It became so quiet in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.
..and also...
A deserter from the 500th Straf Regiment told his interrogators the well-known Berlin remark, 'The only promise Hitler has kept is the one he made before coming to power. Give me ten years and you will not be able to recognize Germany.'
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Okay, Pirates of the Caribbean, 9:10 tomorrow, White Flint Mall. Janis, Jessica, Jen, and the lone A-name, Angie are all arranged. Nick and Malex kinnae come, poor lads (being responsible, as always... Nick has work on Monday, Malex has college stuff).. but we shall see you at Screen on the Green on Monday. :)
Now I go to Best Buy.
Now I go to Best Buy.
Called Janis last night, got her answering machine. I didn't leave a message; I hate answering machines. You know how some people hate having their picture taken? Well I hate answering machines in the same way, knowing that sometime somewhere my voice is on tape. Anyways, people always sound different on the phone and on answering machines.
This morning, went to UMBC to get my textbooks. Cars make me woozy; not so much the speed as accelerating or decelerating or making many turns in a parking lot. My mom said that since the parking lot was basically abandoned I should practice my driving. Haha, no. Painkillers + heavy machinery = bad.
Jen called while I was gone, sounding strangely tense and high-pitched on tape, saying that she has her Bryn Mawr local picnic tomorrow afternoon and cannot watch Pirates. I assume she means only the 3:20 showing; perhaps she can make it at 6:20 or 9:20. I don't think she got my blog update about rescheduling the 3:00 showing to later though since I checked my blog this afternoon and apparently the edited version of the post still wasn't up. Stupid bloggerhead. I called Jen back at four something and got her mother, who said she was at Best Buy but would call me back. Later my mom asked if I wanted to go to Best Buy to get some Toshiba-thing, and I said no, I was expecting a call. Yes, it would've been funny to meet Jen at Best Buy (presumably the Rockville one) but with my luck I'd probably drive past her car on my way there and her way back.
The best laid plans of mice and men...
Casey e-mailed me. She is my roomie. After looking at my resident papers more closely, I realized that I am not living in a suite with three other people; the only thing these three other people have in common with me is a mutual bathroom, which we are responsible for cleaning. Two of these people presumably live in the room next door. Only Casey shares a room with me. Anyway, she e-mailed me, on my old account, which is otherwise a desolate wasteland of porn and spam (which are not mutually exclusive). I couldn't discern much of her personality from it. I have her phone number, e-mail and AIM though. May contact her, when I stop procastinating, but fear I will get her answering machine.
This morning, went to UMBC to get my textbooks. Cars make me woozy; not so much the speed as accelerating or decelerating or making many turns in a parking lot. My mom said that since the parking lot was basically abandoned I should practice my driving. Haha, no. Painkillers + heavy machinery = bad.
Jen called while I was gone, sounding strangely tense and high-pitched on tape, saying that she has her Bryn Mawr local picnic tomorrow afternoon and cannot watch Pirates. I assume she means only the 3:20 showing; perhaps she can make it at 6:20 or 9:20. I don't think she got my blog update about rescheduling the 3:00 showing to later though since I checked my blog this afternoon and apparently the edited version of the post still wasn't up. Stupid bloggerhead. I called Jen back at four something and got her mother, who said she was at Best Buy but would call me back. Later my mom asked if I wanted to go to Best Buy to get some Toshiba-thing, and I said no, I was expecting a call. Yes, it would've been funny to meet Jen at Best Buy (presumably the Rockville one) but with my luck I'd probably drive past her car on my way there and her way back.
The best laid plans of mice and men...
Casey e-mailed me. She is my roomie. After looking at my resident papers more closely, I realized that I am not living in a suite with three other people; the only thing these three other people have in common with me is a mutual bathroom, which we are responsible for cleaning. Two of these people presumably live in the room next door. Only Casey shares a room with me. Anyway, she e-mailed me, on my old account, which is otherwise a desolate wasteland of porn and spam (which are not mutually exclusive). I couldn't discern much of her personality from it. I have her phone number, e-mail and AIM though. May contact her, when I stop procastinating, but fear I will get her answering machine.
Friday, August 08, 2003
The Plan
Pirates of the Caribbean on Sunday at 3:00 (or the time closest to 3:00) at Wheaton Plaza. If there are problems, contact me.
Update Blah: Nick has a Vassar thing on Sunday from 2-5, and is going shopping on Saturday afternoon. Me and Jen most likely can't do Saturday morning, meaning that this thing is either going to be Saturday night or Sunday night. (aka 9:20 on Saturday, 6:20 or 9:20 on Sunday. 6:20 on Saturday is sketchy.) This of course means no matinee.
Update Update Blah: Malex can't come, and Jen has a Bryn Mawr thing, have not contacted Janis yet...
Pirates of the Caribbean on Sunday at 3:00 (or the time closest to 3:00) at Wheaton Plaza. If there are problems, contact me.
Update Blah: Nick has a Vassar thing on Sunday from 2-5, and is going shopping on Saturday afternoon. Me and Jen most likely can't do Saturday morning, meaning that this thing is either going to be Saturday night or Sunday night. (aka 9:20 on Saturday, 6:20 or 9:20 on Sunday. 6:20 on Saturday is sketchy.) This of course means no matinee.
Update Update Blah: Malex can't come, and Jen has a Bryn Mawr thing, have not contacted Janis yet...
Wherein Angie Discovers She Is A Jew
Holy Jesus! According to this rather comprehensive online quiz, I am 100% Reform Jew. I knew I wasn't totally an atheist, but 100% Jewish?? I am floored! ^___^
Yay! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish!
Holy Jesus! According to this rather comprehensive online quiz, I am 100% Reform Jew. I knew I wasn't totally an atheist, but 100% Jewish?? I am floored! ^___^
Yay! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish!
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Oooh, woozy. See, Malex, it's eating that makes me faint, not not eating that makes me faint. I don't even get hungry, but eat a little every once in a while as a matter of routine. Also, being online makes me nauseous, so I have to rest a lot, while I check my spam mail. I've stopped bleeding though, and can now rinse my mouth and brush my teeth (gently). I talk with a lithp. I can technically pronounth 's's if I really want to but it'th just eathier talking with a lithp.
What have I done today:
-Downloaded some very nice mp3s from the Warcraft III soundtrack. That is a quality game.
-Downloaded Cartman's German Dance and the Animaniacs song "Schnitzelbank." Along with Rammstein, Sturmwehr, Blind Guardian and E Nomine, which I already have on my computer, I am one day going to burn these and Ride of the Valkyries onto a CD I shall call "Evil Kraut Music."
-Got my UMBC residential information. Apparently I live in Chesapeake House with three other suite-ies. I should contact them but I am lame and unenthusiastic about this. Erica, during camping, said she got along with her roommate like oil and water and T's roommate has been ambiguously hitting on her. Since everyone I know's roommate sucks, I'm not sure I really look forward to discovering if I have better luck. However, they are (and right now these names mean squat to me) ... Casey S Lord from Denton MD, Ethel Mojoko from Silver Spring, and Melissa L Roche from Staten Island. There, if they Google themselves, they should find my blog.
-Andrew D wrote me back. Aw, how sweet!
-Edited old blog posts, mainly because I have this annoying pattern of randomly omitting words. Aka, last post: "... In existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always [be] the person who's left out." I'm sure there are many such mistakes all over my blog. I don't feel like hunting them down though, and if you do, no, you will not get a cookie.
-Read a news article about two Iraqi boys injured in the war who are in England getting outfitted with prosthetic limbs. Prompted me to do surf websites about prosthetic limbs. Find it jarring when website operators who are amputees engage in... limbchat: "Hey Bob, what's your favorite knee?" "Oh, John, I was wearing XL47 yesterday but it's really a bitch going up stairs, but my aunt's friend at church recommended LightLeg2000!" "I have one of those, Bob, and it works like a dream! I'll stick it in the scanner so you can see what it looks like!"
-Speaking of news articles... my friend Azoriel (yes, Nick S, the one named after a demon) has been giving me lots of links as of late. Here's one which is rather amusing from the New York Times: G.I.'s Have X-Ray Vision.
-Am on the fence about gay clergy and gay marriage. Peer pressure though makes me say I am all for it for fear of being labeled a bigot. More about this later. Now... time for dinner, then bowling.
What have I done today:
-Downloaded some very nice mp3s from the Warcraft III soundtrack. That is a quality game.
-Downloaded Cartman's German Dance and the Animaniacs song "Schnitzelbank." Along with Rammstein, Sturmwehr, Blind Guardian and E Nomine, which I already have on my computer, I am one day going to burn these and Ride of the Valkyries onto a CD I shall call "Evil Kraut Music."
-Got my UMBC residential information. Apparently I live in Chesapeake House with three other suite-ies. I should contact them but I am lame and unenthusiastic about this. Erica, during camping, said she got along with her roommate like oil and water and T's roommate has been ambiguously hitting on her. Since everyone I know's roommate sucks, I'm not sure I really look forward to discovering if I have better luck. However, they are (and right now these names mean squat to me) ... Casey S Lord from Denton MD, Ethel Mojoko from Silver Spring, and Melissa L Roche from Staten Island. There, if they Google themselves, they should find my blog.
-Andrew D wrote me back. Aw, how sweet!
-Edited old blog posts, mainly because I have this annoying pattern of randomly omitting words. Aka, last post: "... In existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always [be] the person who's left out." I'm sure there are many such mistakes all over my blog. I don't feel like hunting them down though, and if you do, no, you will not get a cookie.
-Read a news article about two Iraqi boys injured in the war who are in England getting outfitted with prosthetic limbs. Prompted me to do surf websites about prosthetic limbs. Find it jarring when website operators who are amputees engage in... limbchat: "Hey Bob, what's your favorite knee?" "Oh, John, I was wearing XL47 yesterday but it's really a bitch going up stairs, but my aunt's friend at church recommended LightLeg2000!" "I have one of those, Bob, and it works like a dream! I'll stick it in the scanner so you can see what it looks like!"
-Speaking of news articles... my friend Azoriel (yes, Nick S, the one named after a demon) has been giving me lots of links as of late. Here's one which is rather amusing from the New York Times: G.I.'s Have X-Ray Vision.
-Am on the fence about gay clergy and gay marriage. Peer pressure though makes me say I am all for it for fear of being labeled a bigot. More about this later. Now... time for dinner, then bowling.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Since everyone has deep thoughts about camping, I feel I should put mine here.
Malex said that he's sick of me following him around, which is something I was angsting about all during camping, because I was having a hard time interpreting it. Now, it's a pretty obvious statement, but the matter is whether he's sick of me following him around or whether he's sick of me following him around. Because the crux of the matter is whether he doesn't like me following him around because he doesn't like me, or if it's just the following him he doesn't like, or if it's the following that makes him not like me. And how long it's been going on for, whether it's just in Rocky Gap or over the last two years wherein he's been sick of me.
Sometimes I feel like the reason why I am so socially detached from people is because I don't invest myself emotionally all that much in them; I don't know your goals, your fears, your aspirations, your favorite food, your favorite color, your dream lover, what book you'd take with you on a desert island, the most embarrassing moment of your life, the happiest moment of your life, the worst moment of your life. And for the most part, I don't really care, so I guess you could say that I reap what I sow, because I don't care about other people therefore people don't really care about me. But often it feels that I'm afraid to care too much about certain people because it ends up that I like and need these people far more than they need me (nobody really needs me for anything) and one day these people will discover this loser Angie-site latched to their leg sucking their blood or whatever and scrape me off. So that's all there really is to it, because I need Alex emotionally but he doesn't need me because he has other people.
I am not quite sure how this bizarre dysfunctional relationship started but I think I have some idea.
See, the thing is that despite being with all you fine people for the last four years, I feel that I hardly know you, and in camping all of us fell into clearly divided groups, like The Mads, and then Nick&Alex (who seem like best guy-buddies) , and then Lisa who freely associated with everyone, and then Paul and Erica. It was minorly depressing, to physically be with people but not be able to really connect with anyone.
Ideally in friendships everyone in that social circle is a friend of everyone else. These are the tightest-knit and most fulfilling of groups, very bonded and insular. Often though, I feel that I'm not really friends with a lot of people, but merely know people as 'friends of a friend'. And you have to actively form your own group of friends (by calling/IMing/talking to them/arranging social shit) while cliques are gelling instead of trying to join groups that already exist, because in existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always be the person who's left out. This is something I didn't know in 9th grade, when I was already part of a small insular group, and was unaware of this group's potential to seperate and expand. I fully expected to be with Nick, Malex, Rob, Puffy and Andrew for the rest of high school and was rather bewildered to find Nick and Malex branching off in different directions. I'd have a hard time becoming friends with people they were friends with; we'd have nothing in common except for mutual friends and nothing to talk about. I read something that says the best way of making conversations is to ask people what they're doing, since that's what they like talking about. "What are you reading?" "What music do you listen to?" So on and so forth I guess. This sounds helpful, because the majority of my conversations these days are basically like "What's up?" "Nothing." I think I've discovered since that in order to become friends with someone, beyond 'friend of a friend', you actually have to hunt them down individually (not with a gun, but with a telephone or something) and talk to them one-on-one while they're not around the mutual friend, and forge your own individual bonds independently, or they'll forever be talking to you through a middleman. This is too late for me though, at least in terms of high school, but it is good knoweldge for the future.
I make no sense. May post more when coherent.
Malex said that he's sick of me following him around, which is something I was angsting about all during camping, because I was having a hard time interpreting it. Now, it's a pretty obvious statement, but the matter is whether he's sick of me following him around or whether he's sick of me following him around. Because the crux of the matter is whether he doesn't like me following him around because he doesn't like me, or if it's just the following him he doesn't like, or if it's the following that makes him not like me. And how long it's been going on for, whether it's just in Rocky Gap or over the last two years wherein he's been sick of me.
Sometimes I feel like the reason why I am so socially detached from people is because I don't invest myself emotionally all that much in them; I don't know your goals, your fears, your aspirations, your favorite food, your favorite color, your dream lover, what book you'd take with you on a desert island, the most embarrassing moment of your life, the happiest moment of your life, the worst moment of your life. And for the most part, I don't really care, so I guess you could say that I reap what I sow, because I don't care about other people therefore people don't really care about me. But often it feels that I'm afraid to care too much about certain people because it ends up that I like and need these people far more than they need me (nobody really needs me for anything) and one day these people will discover this loser Angie-site latched to their leg sucking their blood or whatever and scrape me off. So that's all there really is to it, because I need Alex emotionally but he doesn't need me because he has other people.
I am not quite sure how this bizarre dysfunctional relationship started but I think I have some idea.
See, the thing is that despite being with all you fine people for the last four years, I feel that I hardly know you, and in camping all of us fell into clearly divided groups, like The Mads, and then Nick&Alex (who seem like best guy-buddies) , and then Lisa who freely associated with everyone, and then Paul and Erica. It was minorly depressing, to physically be with people but not be able to really connect with anyone.
Ideally in friendships everyone in that social circle is a friend of everyone else. These are the tightest-knit and most fulfilling of groups, very bonded and insular. Often though, I feel that I'm not really friends with a lot of people, but merely know people as 'friends of a friend'. And you have to actively form your own group of friends (by calling/IMing/talking to them/arranging social shit) while cliques are gelling instead of trying to join groups that already exist, because in existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always be the person who's left out. This is something I didn't know in 9th grade, when I was already part of a small insular group, and was unaware of this group's potential to seperate and expand. I fully expected to be with Nick, Malex, Rob, Puffy and Andrew for the rest of high school and was rather bewildered to find Nick and Malex branching off in different directions. I'd have a hard time becoming friends with people they were friends with; we'd have nothing in common except for mutual friends and nothing to talk about. I read something that says the best way of making conversations is to ask people what they're doing, since that's what they like talking about. "What are you reading?" "What music do you listen to?" So on and so forth I guess. This sounds helpful, because the majority of my conversations these days are basically like "What's up?" "Nothing." I think I've discovered since that in order to become friends with someone, beyond 'friend of a friend', you actually have to hunt them down individually (not with a gun, but with a telephone or something) and talk to them one-on-one while they're not around the mutual friend, and forge your own individual bonds independently, or they'll forever be talking to you through a middleman. This is too late for me though, at least in terms of high school, but it is good knoweldge for the future.
I make no sense. May post more when coherent.
I had the two wisdom teeth on my left side extracted today, and am feeling rather woozy. Being put to sleep is rather bizarre; I remember them sticking a syringe in my arm, drawing blood, then drawing blood in reverse (???!!!) by pushing on the syringe handle. This probably was to put me to sleep. Then they told me to stick my arm out straight, and they put it into a bracket of some sort. The next thing I remember is having a large block uncomfortably in my mouth to keep in open and thinking "Holy shit, I'm in the middle of surgery" and being kind of annoyed by having a block in my mouth and wanting to go back to that warm and fuzzy place in my brain and then I remember the room looking different and the nurse saying, "It's over." What's weird about it is that I never actually remember falling unconscious, that hanging sensation you get as you're on the verge of falling asleep. One moment I'll be quite conscious following some train of thought, and then the next moment I'll open my eyes and realize I'd just been out, and that my train had derailed into the realm of dreams. It's like one moment what you're thinking is fully comprehensible and then agabateazb zabeatah balkhetklahtalhlhb wa.
Like that.
After it was over the nurse took me to the recover room where I slept on a cot, and I have to say that that was the best and sweetest nap I've had in a long time.
The left side of my mouth was all numb and there was gauze in it. I went home, and went to sleep again, and when I woke up the Novacain had worn off and it hurt like the dickens between the time the novacain wore off and the painkillers I took came into effect.
I'm all drowsy, currently, and when I take the gauze off to change the dressing there are two gaping sockets in my jaw.
Like that.
After it was over the nurse took me to the recover room where I slept on a cot, and I have to say that that was the best and sweetest nap I've had in a long time.
The left side of my mouth was all numb and there was gauze in it. I went home, and went to sleep again, and when I woke up the Novacain had worn off and it hurt like the dickens between the time the novacain wore off and the painkillers I took came into effect.
I'm all drowsy, currently, and when I take the gauze off to change the dressing there are two gaping sockets in my jaw.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Happy Campers
Friday
Erica picked me up at three thirty on Friday afternoon, and as we drove up, every radio station systematically died on us until we were stuck with country and Christian Rock by the time we lurched into the park. Our tents were split between two camp sites, and over the course of the next two days I would trek between the both of them along a forested gravel road. Scattered to the side of the road in the woody shadows, gypsy-like, were other sun-burned families with pitched tents, trailers and RV's, laundry lines stretched between trees with clothes hung out to dry, and blue woodsmoke rising through the air, and children who would travel through the camp on the back of pick-up trucks, legs dangling out of the back.
The fire at the other campsite was already lit and smoking, albeit weakly thanks to Nick. This very much (comically) exasperated Lizzie and Ruchita, who arrived later, complaining, "Leave it to the women!" Despite Nick's protest of it being physically impossible to make the fire any bigger, it indeed did get bigger, after Lizzie manfully split some wood for kindling. We all roasted weenies on a stick, or in the case of Erica and Lisa, veggieburger patties. Veggieburgers are green and lumpy and look like goose shit, but they taste real good and I think I'm addicted to them. I felt very rugged roasting my food over an open fire.
Erica is apparently vegetarian because she feels that meat is an inefficient use of energy; Lisa only eats free-ranging meat after she heard the awful cries of dogs that were being tested on in the lab where she works. We joked about this: "And ever since that moment, I no longer eat dog meat..." But seriously, after that, she thought that cows, which are penned up like the lab dogs, must cry also. (I didn't think about this then, but this is something my non-beef-eating grandma believes too. You aren't supposed to eat the ox that plows your fields, and supposedly it sheds tears when you kill it. My aunt says this is a rural Chinese superstition, and my mom says it is a holdover from Indian Buddhism, which I take with a grain of salt.)
This is something I notice about Lisa: she's very empathetic with everybody, and is upbeat and positive and looks at the world with wide-eyed enthusiasm, loving the forest and sky and the softness of moss.
We went swimming in Lake Habeeb sometime during that "roasting meatlike objects over a fire" period. I noticed that as we get more primative, eating is not an "event" in your day like a normal meal, at a table with a definite beginning and an end. So we ate, went swimming, came back and ate again (or for people who arrived later, for the first time) in a very fluid and unstructured manner. The evening was hot and humid but the water was surprisingly and pleasantly cool, and we tossed a frisbee at each other and socialized as if not chest-high in water, doing rather little actual swimming. There was a roped off part of the lake where we were supposed to swim, but the lifeguard had gone (apparently he is gone after six) (though someone had appropriated his high chair to get a better view of a beach volleyball game) so we slipped under the ropes and went into deeper water like rebellious teenagers. On the lake bottom the imported beach sand comes to an abrupt end, turning into thick black mud that is very soft and pleasant on your feet if you don't think how disgusting it is, and lake plants curl at your ankles, making you feel like you're caught in something. Though Paul, who knows these things, said that the lake at its deepest is 20 m deep, we didn't go nearly so far because those plants pulling at us were rather disturbing. Malex got partially pantsed, which did not look half bad.
We went back to our main camp site, the one with the screen house over the table, to eat, again, and toast smores. Malex yelled at people to not eat the chocolate by itself. It got dark- very dark in comparison to our illuminated suburban nights; out came individual flashlights that made small and pathetic dents in the darkness, and candle lanterns inside the screen house that made it quite hot inside, and an electric lantern set outside next to the fire and the night pushed in on us. We tried unsuccessfully to tell stories by the campfire, we whose common culture is determined now by the tv, the internet, the newspaper, books, radio and school. Oral tradition flickered and died; me and Nick ended up alternating in telling the Scary Story of Zimbardo's Prison Experiment. (Philip Zimbardo is the president of the American Psychology Association, and he is infamous for creating an experiment on prison life at Stanford.) I wonder how he would feel if he knew he were the subject of campfire mythology; we no longer have ghosts and vampires and franken-monsters to be afraid of; our horrors are ourselves and the modern world.
The skies opened up and it rained. We fled into the screen-house with the hot lanterns, and tarped the mesh screens to keep the water out. With the skies closing in on us and the lights from the center of the table, the Madrigals sang and sounded beautiful in the forest. I always find it amazing that they can sing without sheet music, and whether it's twelve people together or three, they always manage to blend their parts together. Malex and Nick protested the exclusiveness of this activity though. Nick sung/howled Kumbaya very loudly and was shouted down. In the end we all ended up singing Beatles songs and the Lumberjack Song, which everybody knew. We had great fun but perhaps the commonness of the music made Ruchita and Lizzie impatient to be singing their own songs again. I think the Mads, when they sing, have so much fun and comraderie they often forget just how it feels like not to be them.
We went and played Mafia in the actual tent, and it was creepy. A park ranger rapped on our "door" with the annoying sarcastic comment, "All in favor of being quiet?" and we were embarrassed and went to bed. Me and Erica and Alex and Paul went back to our own campsite, where Paul observed that the sky was suddenly remarkably clear. He strapped on a red headlight (the wavelength or something of which allows it to illuminate things without ruining a viewer's night vision) and hauled his 100 pound telescope out of the trunk of his car. We helped take it to the nearby field and were setting up when great beams of light coronated the horizon of a nearby hill and a ranger's car, with its high powered lights, rumbled over the hill down the gravel road and blinded us to high heaven. Malex, shirtless in his swim trunks, went to ask what was the matter but Paul who was less scantily clad decided it'd be better if he took care of it. The ranger, very politely, simply made sure it was indeed a telescope and then was on his way, apologizing for ruining our night vision. I thought it was rather annoying to be checked on by rangers twice in one night, despite their noble intentions, but was distracted from this thought, or every other thought, by simple astronomy.
It's probably not the most exciting of hobbies if you think about it, peering at tiny blips of light through a telescope, but I found it very serene annd calming under the heavy silence and the pinprick lights of a scattering of stars, clearer, brighter and more beautiful than anything that can be found in the city. There was a fog rising from the ground, but we looked through the trees at Mars (which according to the Washington Post is closest to the Earth on August 1, and according to Paul, indignantly, is not) and saw it in great detail, with its ice cap and dark splotches on its red surface. Mars would swim out of the telescope's field of vision as we looked at it, more like a creature under the lens of a microscope than a telescope, and Paul commented that normal non-astronomical people seldom think of celestial bodies as moving objects, and the epiphany that the sky is constantly moving, or rather, the Earth is moving under it gave me a fantastic feeling of revelation and peace. We looked also at the Square of Hercules, and some double stars that were actually double-double stars on closer observation, and some other things, and when we looked up from the telescope Erica noted: "Mars has moved again" and indeed, it had. Paul pointed out another celestial body to us, a haze of light shining over the trees to our left: Cumberland, where the C&O Canal ended, and where some prison was built, and there was a historic district. He could list no other city merits. After a while, it had become chilly, and mist clouded Cassiopeia, and we no longer needed flashlights because we could see through the night with the eyes nature gave us.
Saturday
I woke up the next morning and trotted down to the other site, feeling very much like a homeowner who's going to greet the neighbors down the block. Breakfast. Sometimes I thought that I heard the sounds of rain, and would do this repeatedly through the day, but it turns out that it was just rainwater splashing from one layer of leafy canopy to another. Nick and Malex drove to Cumberland to buy some stuff for his contacts- Cumberland the backwater city in rural Maryland, where the C&O Canal ended, made glamorous by Paul's introduction to it as a celestial body; a haze of light to our left in the nighttime forest. In any case I couldn't go because Malex said "there was no space" in the van, which to me was like a kick in the gut after everything that "there is no space" implies. But he didn't say it knowing that precise wording would hurt me, aside from the fact that there literally really was no space. Lisa started a game of Taboo which she is a great fan of, often asking about activities by wondering if they are "more fun than Taboo?" Taboo is a game in which someone has to describe a word on a card without being able to use certain other words, so his or her teammates can guess the word. Ex: the word on the card is Drunk, and the person has to give hints to his teammates so they can guess the right word, without using the worlds alcohol, or drinking, or something. This was fun, and we got better as we went.
Went to the camp store to get oil but were met up by Malex and Nick there, and Malex said he had oil, so we didn't need to buy it. We got flipflops for Lisa and firewood, and then we went back to have lunch, and then we split up for either kayaking or hiking. I went hiking with Nick, Malex, Paul, Erica and Lisa, on the loop trail around the lake, which is like four miles something. Malex set a brisk pace, so a lot of the hike was spent looking down to make sure you didn't trip over things, as opposed to looking at the view; we joked about having the River Anduin (you know, the Uruk Hai) music start playing as we marched through the woods. I don't think this prevented us from enjoying ourselves, other than having Malex stop every once in a while to let us catch up with him. Halfway around the lake was the resort, where we went in to fill our water bottles, which was in an area fantastically hilly with hammocks stretched lazily between trees, and grassy, with flowers. We also hit the beach and swam a bit to cool down and watched kayaks and sailboats glide by beyond us in deeper waters, and then went on hiking. I liked this area better, once we were out of the forest and now really had a clear view. Across the lake we saw clouds casting shadows on the vast mountains we had hiked through (and then a whole lot we hadn't been through); while I was in it I had kind of missed the forest for the trees, so the view made me appreciate it more. We walked by areas of shrubs and flowers where there were wild blackberries and raspberries (and also a strange, bitter, but obiquitous bright red berry), and lamb's ear, a soft and felty flower. Malex and Lisa ran ahead; the rest of us followed Nick at a normal pace until we'd gone a full circle; he went back to the camp. I went to the camp store on the beach with Erica and Paul, and we got ice cream (or rather Paul got ice cream and Erica bought some for me) and Erica and Paul went back to the campsite.
I joined Lizzie, Ruchita, and Dena on the beach, as well as Lisa who'd gone ahead. It was the same beach as Friday evening's swim, but looked different with the sun out and the sky full and blue, instead of setting pink. I lay down on a towel on a beach and tanned a bit, creating a mold in the sand where my body was, while Lisa commented on the beauty of the sky, and Dena and Ruchita read beach paperbacks. I fell asleep blissfully and woke up and we got hot we went into the water (except for Lisa, who napped) and made a sand castle and Dena dove like a mermaid and made her golden hair float, Ruchita wore kelp behind her ear, looking Hawaiian, and everyone coronated themselves with crowds of lakeweed and Dena took pictures. At one point Ruchita was trying on a lakeweed necklace, and was wondering if it went with her crown and sprig behind her ear, or if it was too much, giving aquatic plants all the serious cosmetic contemplation of a fashionable woman's jewelry. I had had no idea that Dena, Ruchita and Lizzie could be so giggly. We came out of the water and lay in the sun again and I stared at the sky which looked like a blue dome above us. We were very mellow and refreshed by the end of it.
We went to take a shower; I took a long time figuring out whether I wanted to (because the bathrooms are dirty but the lake is clean, or at least feels clean) so went in last and came out last. By the time I was back in the campsite feeling very happy about the invention of hot water, people were hard at work cooking fajitas in a group effort, roasting bell peppers over the fire (now made again), or (Ruchita) chopping onions or (Nick) slicing peppers or (Dena) browning the onions in a pan. I rinsed out some cans (of chicken.... I didn't even know there was such thing as canned chicken and thought it was tuna) (for recycling), browned some onions, and then slacked off. Malex toasted fajita skins in the pan, melting cheddar on them, and damn they were good. I fried some bananas, but they turned out gooshy, though greasy and tasty. We made smores, concocting ways to melt chocolate on graham crackers, or just eating chocolate graham crackers with marshmallows, thereby combining the chocolate and the graham cracker.
Paul, with his meteorology knowledge gleamed from his passion for astronomy and his pilot's knowledge test, saw cumulonimbus clouds backlit by lightning and predicted rain for us; we put outside things inside, tarped the screen house, and played Mafia outside around the fire until we became listless. As it started raining, me and Malex and Nick retreated into the tent with Ruchita and Lizzie, where we sat as if in a small room mostly silently among ourselves with the lantern swinging from the tent's peak. The rain abated some; Malex and I got kicked out and went back to our own campsite, and went to sleep. Malex went into his tent with Paul, and I went into my tent with Erica, and I heard the drumming of rain against the tent and saw the lightning flashes blue through the cloth and talked to Paul and Malex in their other tent a few feet away from ours, their voices carrying through the tent walls so that you could hear but not see them like disembodied voices. Me and Erica had only one flashlight (mine) between us since Erica had forgotten hers and I planted it in the middle of the tent like a lamp where it lit our tiny room like a sapphire bubble, the only light source in a tiny world, and I felt very lonely in the middle of a tent in the middle of nowhere.
Sunday
I woke up the next morning to church bells; God knows where they came from. All of us woke up at approximately the same time, which is a phenomenon in tents. Since there is little privacy and the rustling of plastic and unzipping of things is very loud, once one person gets up, pretty much everyone else must as well, even people in the other tent. Being in the other tent may provide a barrier against watching people of the other sex change, but it's no barrier at all against noise. Conversation (and other exchange of noise) between two closed tents can be carried on perfectly well. Malex had gone off to wake up the unfortunate sleepers at the other campsite with his CD player blasting "Fanfare for the Common Man" on speakers.
It was dreadfully lonely at night, but in the morning, everything seemed clean and refreshed in the forest with rising blue woodsmoke. Camps are good places to face mornings. We ate breakfast and packed up, and I marveled at how Paul's tent could fit into a small bag. (I thought I lost my wallet but actually didn't)
Lisa said we could've stayed for a week.
Friday
Erica picked me up at three thirty on Friday afternoon, and as we drove up, every radio station systematically died on us until we were stuck with country and Christian Rock by the time we lurched into the park. Our tents were split between two camp sites, and over the course of the next two days I would trek between the both of them along a forested gravel road. Scattered to the side of the road in the woody shadows, gypsy-like, were other sun-burned families with pitched tents, trailers and RV's, laundry lines stretched between trees with clothes hung out to dry, and blue woodsmoke rising through the air, and children who would travel through the camp on the back of pick-up trucks, legs dangling out of the back.
The fire at the other campsite was already lit and smoking, albeit weakly thanks to Nick. This very much (comically) exasperated Lizzie and Ruchita, who arrived later, complaining, "Leave it to the women!" Despite Nick's protest of it being physically impossible to make the fire any bigger, it indeed did get bigger, after Lizzie manfully split some wood for kindling. We all roasted weenies on a stick, or in the case of Erica and Lisa, veggieburger patties. Veggieburgers are green and lumpy and look like goose shit, but they taste real good and I think I'm addicted to them. I felt very rugged roasting my food over an open fire.
Erica is apparently vegetarian because she feels that meat is an inefficient use of energy; Lisa only eats free-ranging meat after she heard the awful cries of dogs that were being tested on in the lab where she works. We joked about this: "And ever since that moment, I no longer eat dog meat..." But seriously, after that, she thought that cows, which are penned up like the lab dogs, must cry also. (I didn't think about this then, but this is something my non-beef-eating grandma believes too. You aren't supposed to eat the ox that plows your fields, and supposedly it sheds tears when you kill it. My aunt says this is a rural Chinese superstition, and my mom says it is a holdover from Indian Buddhism, which I take with a grain of salt.)
This is something I notice about Lisa: she's very empathetic with everybody, and is upbeat and positive and looks at the world with wide-eyed enthusiasm, loving the forest and sky and the softness of moss.
We went swimming in Lake Habeeb sometime during that "roasting meatlike objects over a fire" period. I noticed that as we get more primative, eating is not an "event" in your day like a normal meal, at a table with a definite beginning and an end. So we ate, went swimming, came back and ate again (or for people who arrived later, for the first time) in a very fluid and unstructured manner. The evening was hot and humid but the water was surprisingly and pleasantly cool, and we tossed a frisbee at each other and socialized as if not chest-high in water, doing rather little actual swimming. There was a roped off part of the lake where we were supposed to swim, but the lifeguard had gone (apparently he is gone after six) (though someone had appropriated his high chair to get a better view of a beach volleyball game) so we slipped under the ropes and went into deeper water like rebellious teenagers. On the lake bottom the imported beach sand comes to an abrupt end, turning into thick black mud that is very soft and pleasant on your feet if you don't think how disgusting it is, and lake plants curl at your ankles, making you feel like you're caught in something. Though Paul, who knows these things, said that the lake at its deepest is 20 m deep, we didn't go nearly so far because those plants pulling at us were rather disturbing. Malex got partially pantsed, which did not look half bad.
We went back to our main camp site, the one with the screen house over the table, to eat, again, and toast smores. Malex yelled at people to not eat the chocolate by itself. It got dark- very dark in comparison to our illuminated suburban nights; out came individual flashlights that made small and pathetic dents in the darkness, and candle lanterns inside the screen house that made it quite hot inside, and an electric lantern set outside next to the fire and the night pushed in on us. We tried unsuccessfully to tell stories by the campfire, we whose common culture is determined now by the tv, the internet, the newspaper, books, radio and school. Oral tradition flickered and died; me and Nick ended up alternating in telling the Scary Story of Zimbardo's Prison Experiment. (Philip Zimbardo is the president of the American Psychology Association, and he is infamous for creating an experiment on prison life at Stanford.) I wonder how he would feel if he knew he were the subject of campfire mythology; we no longer have ghosts and vampires and franken-monsters to be afraid of; our horrors are ourselves and the modern world.
The skies opened up and it rained. We fled into the screen-house with the hot lanterns, and tarped the mesh screens to keep the water out. With the skies closing in on us and the lights from the center of the table, the Madrigals sang and sounded beautiful in the forest. I always find it amazing that they can sing without sheet music, and whether it's twelve people together or three, they always manage to blend their parts together. Malex and Nick protested the exclusiveness of this activity though. Nick sung/howled Kumbaya very loudly and was shouted down. In the end we all ended up singing Beatles songs and the Lumberjack Song, which everybody knew. We had great fun but perhaps the commonness of the music made Ruchita and Lizzie impatient to be singing their own songs again. I think the Mads, when they sing, have so much fun and comraderie they often forget just how it feels like not to be them.
We went and played Mafia in the actual tent, and it was creepy. A park ranger rapped on our "door" with the annoying sarcastic comment, "All in favor of being quiet?" and we were embarrassed and went to bed. Me and Erica and Alex and Paul went back to our own campsite, where Paul observed that the sky was suddenly remarkably clear. He strapped on a red headlight (the wavelength or something of which allows it to illuminate things without ruining a viewer's night vision) and hauled his 100 pound telescope out of the trunk of his car. We helped take it to the nearby field and were setting up when great beams of light coronated the horizon of a nearby hill and a ranger's car, with its high powered lights, rumbled over the hill down the gravel road and blinded us to high heaven. Malex, shirtless in his swim trunks, went to ask what was the matter but Paul who was less scantily clad decided it'd be better if he took care of it. The ranger, very politely, simply made sure it was indeed a telescope and then was on his way, apologizing for ruining our night vision. I thought it was rather annoying to be checked on by rangers twice in one night, despite their noble intentions, but was distracted from this thought, or every other thought, by simple astronomy.
It's probably not the most exciting of hobbies if you think about it, peering at tiny blips of light through a telescope, but I found it very serene annd calming under the heavy silence and the pinprick lights of a scattering of stars, clearer, brighter and more beautiful than anything that can be found in the city. There was a fog rising from the ground, but we looked through the trees at Mars (which according to the Washington Post is closest to the Earth on August 1, and according to Paul, indignantly, is not) and saw it in great detail, with its ice cap and dark splotches on its red surface. Mars would swim out of the telescope's field of vision as we looked at it, more like a creature under the lens of a microscope than a telescope, and Paul commented that normal non-astronomical people seldom think of celestial bodies as moving objects, and the epiphany that the sky is constantly moving, or rather, the Earth is moving under it gave me a fantastic feeling of revelation and peace. We looked also at the Square of Hercules, and some double stars that were actually double-double stars on closer observation, and some other things, and when we looked up from the telescope Erica noted: "Mars has moved again" and indeed, it had. Paul pointed out another celestial body to us, a haze of light shining over the trees to our left: Cumberland, where the C&O Canal ended, and where some prison was built, and there was a historic district. He could list no other city merits. After a while, it had become chilly, and mist clouded Cassiopeia, and we no longer needed flashlights because we could see through the night with the eyes nature gave us.
Saturday
I woke up the next morning and trotted down to the other site, feeling very much like a homeowner who's going to greet the neighbors down the block. Breakfast. Sometimes I thought that I heard the sounds of rain, and would do this repeatedly through the day, but it turns out that it was just rainwater splashing from one layer of leafy canopy to another. Nick and Malex drove to Cumberland to buy some stuff for his contacts- Cumberland the backwater city in rural Maryland, where the C&O Canal ended, made glamorous by Paul's introduction to it as a celestial body; a haze of light to our left in the nighttime forest. In any case I couldn't go because Malex said "there was no space" in the van, which to me was like a kick in the gut after everything that "there is no space" implies. But he didn't say it knowing that precise wording would hurt me, aside from the fact that there literally really was no space. Lisa started a game of Taboo which she is a great fan of, often asking about activities by wondering if they are "more fun than Taboo?" Taboo is a game in which someone has to describe a word on a card without being able to use certain other words, so his or her teammates can guess the word. Ex: the word on the card is Drunk, and the person has to give hints to his teammates so they can guess the right word, without using the worlds alcohol, or drinking, or something. This was fun, and we got better as we went.
Went to the camp store to get oil but were met up by Malex and Nick there, and Malex said he had oil, so we didn't need to buy it. We got flipflops for Lisa and firewood, and then we went back to have lunch, and then we split up for either kayaking or hiking. I went hiking with Nick, Malex, Paul, Erica and Lisa, on the loop trail around the lake, which is like four miles something. Malex set a brisk pace, so a lot of the hike was spent looking down to make sure you didn't trip over things, as opposed to looking at the view; we joked about having the River Anduin (you know, the Uruk Hai) music start playing as we marched through the woods. I don't think this prevented us from enjoying ourselves, other than having Malex stop every once in a while to let us catch up with him. Halfway around the lake was the resort, where we went in to fill our water bottles, which was in an area fantastically hilly with hammocks stretched lazily between trees, and grassy, with flowers. We also hit the beach and swam a bit to cool down and watched kayaks and sailboats glide by beyond us in deeper waters, and then went on hiking. I liked this area better, once we were out of the forest and now really had a clear view. Across the lake we saw clouds casting shadows on the vast mountains we had hiked through (and then a whole lot we hadn't been through); while I was in it I had kind of missed the forest for the trees, so the view made me appreciate it more. We walked by areas of shrubs and flowers where there were wild blackberries and raspberries (and also a strange, bitter, but obiquitous bright red berry), and lamb's ear, a soft and felty flower. Malex and Lisa ran ahead; the rest of us followed Nick at a normal pace until we'd gone a full circle; he went back to the camp. I went to the camp store on the beach with Erica and Paul, and we got ice cream (or rather Paul got ice cream and Erica bought some for me) and Erica and Paul went back to the campsite.
I joined Lizzie, Ruchita, and Dena on the beach, as well as Lisa who'd gone ahead. It was the same beach as Friday evening's swim, but looked different with the sun out and the sky full and blue, instead of setting pink. I lay down on a towel on a beach and tanned a bit, creating a mold in the sand where my body was, while Lisa commented on the beauty of the sky, and Dena and Ruchita read beach paperbacks. I fell asleep blissfully and woke up and we got hot we went into the water (except for Lisa, who napped) and made a sand castle and Dena dove like a mermaid and made her golden hair float, Ruchita wore kelp behind her ear, looking Hawaiian, and everyone coronated themselves with crowds of lakeweed and Dena took pictures. At one point Ruchita was trying on a lakeweed necklace, and was wondering if it went with her crown and sprig behind her ear, or if it was too much, giving aquatic plants all the serious cosmetic contemplation of a fashionable woman's jewelry. I had had no idea that Dena, Ruchita and Lizzie could be so giggly. We came out of the water and lay in the sun again and I stared at the sky which looked like a blue dome above us. We were very mellow and refreshed by the end of it.
We went to take a shower; I took a long time figuring out whether I wanted to (because the bathrooms are dirty but the lake is clean, or at least feels clean) so went in last and came out last. By the time I was back in the campsite feeling very happy about the invention of hot water, people were hard at work cooking fajitas in a group effort, roasting bell peppers over the fire (now made again), or (Ruchita) chopping onions or (Nick) slicing peppers or (Dena) browning the onions in a pan. I rinsed out some cans (of chicken.... I didn't even know there was such thing as canned chicken and thought it was tuna) (for recycling), browned some onions, and then slacked off. Malex toasted fajita skins in the pan, melting cheddar on them, and damn they were good. I fried some bananas, but they turned out gooshy, though greasy and tasty. We made smores, concocting ways to melt chocolate on graham crackers, or just eating chocolate graham crackers with marshmallows, thereby combining the chocolate and the graham cracker.
Paul, with his meteorology knowledge gleamed from his passion for astronomy and his pilot's knowledge test, saw cumulonimbus clouds backlit by lightning and predicted rain for us; we put outside things inside, tarped the screen house, and played Mafia outside around the fire until we became listless. As it started raining, me and Malex and Nick retreated into the tent with Ruchita and Lizzie, where we sat as if in a small room mostly silently among ourselves with the lantern swinging from the tent's peak. The rain abated some; Malex and I got kicked out and went back to our own campsite, and went to sleep. Malex went into his tent with Paul, and I went into my tent with Erica, and I heard the drumming of rain against the tent and saw the lightning flashes blue through the cloth and talked to Paul and Malex in their other tent a few feet away from ours, their voices carrying through the tent walls so that you could hear but not see them like disembodied voices. Me and Erica had only one flashlight (mine) between us since Erica had forgotten hers and I planted it in the middle of the tent like a lamp where it lit our tiny room like a sapphire bubble, the only light source in a tiny world, and I felt very lonely in the middle of a tent in the middle of nowhere.
Sunday
I woke up the next morning to church bells; God knows where they came from. All of us woke up at approximately the same time, which is a phenomenon in tents. Since there is little privacy and the rustling of plastic and unzipping of things is very loud, once one person gets up, pretty much everyone else must as well, even people in the other tent. Being in the other tent may provide a barrier against watching people of the other sex change, but it's no barrier at all against noise. Conversation (and other exchange of noise) between two closed tents can be carried on perfectly well. Malex had gone off to wake up the unfortunate sleepers at the other campsite with his CD player blasting "Fanfare for the Common Man" on speakers.
It was dreadfully lonely at night, but in the morning, everything seemed clean and refreshed in the forest with rising blue woodsmoke. Camps are good places to face mornings. We ate breakfast and packed up, and I marveled at how Paul's tent could fit into a small bag. (I thought I lost my wallet but actually didn't)
Lisa said we could've stayed for a week.
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Turn Off the Idiot Box
Watched two episodes of "Jag" today back to back because we have cable and Jag is a constant on the USA channel, which has lots of similarly patriotic programing. I used to watch it in middle school and my mom still watches it. It was a better show before they started taking it to Afghanistan and whatever country is fashionable to invade at the moment; I felt it rather cheapened and sensationalized the premises, concentrating more about the gimicks than the people. I guess post-911 popularity got to its head.
My mom is watching some strange Bruce Willis movie right now, about him as a cop or FBI agent or in some other hard-boiled testosterone packing occupation. In any case, he has to protect this savant autistic boy, who inadvertantly cracks a government code, from being killed. Now, why on earth do all autistic kids in movie have to be savants? Is there no such thing as dumb autistic people? Are normal autistic people too "uninteresting" for daytime televison? It seems like a rather patronizing point of view.
Watched two episodes of "Jag" today back to back because we have cable and Jag is a constant on the USA channel, which has lots of similarly patriotic programing. I used to watch it in middle school and my mom still watches it. It was a better show before they started taking it to Afghanistan and whatever country is fashionable to invade at the moment; I felt it rather cheapened and sensationalized the premises, concentrating more about the gimicks than the people. I guess post-911 popularity got to its head.
My mom is watching some strange Bruce Willis movie right now, about him as a cop or FBI agent or in some other hard-boiled testosterone packing occupation. In any case, he has to protect this savant autistic boy, who inadvertantly cracks a government code, from being killed. Now, why on earth do all autistic kids in movie have to be savants? Is there no such thing as dumb autistic people? Are normal autistic people too "uninteresting" for daytime televison? It seems like a rather patronizing point of view.
Assorted Topics Party Mix
Topic 1: I feel sorry for Saddam, as a father who has lost his sons if nothing else. I heard on the radio that $30 million is going to the Iraqi tipster who helped us catch the sons, but I have mixed feelings about this. While I am grateful that.. uh... the war on terror... or WMD... or whatever it is now.... is going well, it seems like a rather vile thing to do to betray your own country and (if it was the case) guests (symbolically at least) under your protection at your house. However, it is hard to judge: I am reminded of, due to my History EE, the accusations of treason made by British diplomats to German nationals who tried to warn them about Hitler's ambitions and convince them to go to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia before something else was attacked. I doubt neither Qasay and Uday nor the rest of Saddam's regime did the tipster any favors in the last ten years; perhaps he suffered from persecution like the rest. And houseguests like Qasay and Uday who (I'd imagine because of their violent natures and dire straits) force their way in by putting a gun to your head are hardly houseguests at all.
Topic 2: AP exam results- 4's in everything. IB exam results- 5's in mostly everything, even Chinese. Booya. Physics was a 4. Math Studies, from last year, was a 6. I am getting a diploma, yippie-skie-yay.
Topic 3: What I Did Today.
I went to the Oral Surgeon (no Malex this is not a sexual euphemism) for my consultation on my wisdom teeth extraction. I need to get four extracted through surgery, but we've decided not to do all four at the same time, so it's two on one side, then two on the other. Date of first surgery is next Wednesday, date of second surgery is yet to be arranged. It makes me kind of nervous with possible complications and everything and having a big gaping nose from my mouth to my sinus.
Also went to Rock Creek Park and splashed around in the creek with my pant legs rolled up. Walking on the rocky (well duh) creek floor is better foot massage than anything my mom managed in Hong Kong. Water bulges against the weather side (if such terms can be used for a water current instead of wind) of my legs in compacting ripples like the grooves of a record; on the lee side, there is a little dimple where the water is more shallow. I fell in at an area where the creek flew whitecapped and bubbling over a terrace of black rocks, the water level high from thunderstorms, got wet up to my waist, cut my right big toe on something sharp. Pretty dumb, wading in Rock Creek, god knows what's in it, but I am young, and invincible.
If people ask me about what I did while I was young enough to have energy and not good senses, I can tell them, God as my witness, that I walked in a (possibly polluted) creek, and it felt good.
Topic 1: I feel sorry for Saddam, as a father who has lost his sons if nothing else. I heard on the radio that $30 million is going to the Iraqi tipster who helped us catch the sons, but I have mixed feelings about this. While I am grateful that.. uh... the war on terror... or WMD... or whatever it is now.... is going well, it seems like a rather vile thing to do to betray your own country and (if it was the case) guests (symbolically at least) under your protection at your house. However, it is hard to judge: I am reminded of, due to my History EE, the accusations of treason made by British diplomats to German nationals who tried to warn them about Hitler's ambitions and convince them to go to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia before something else was attacked. I doubt neither Qasay and Uday nor the rest of Saddam's regime did the tipster any favors in the last ten years; perhaps he suffered from persecution like the rest. And houseguests like Qasay and Uday who (I'd imagine because of their violent natures and dire straits) force their way in by putting a gun to your head are hardly houseguests at all.
Topic 2: AP exam results- 4's in everything. IB exam results- 5's in mostly everything, even Chinese. Booya. Physics was a 4. Math Studies, from last year, was a 6. I am getting a diploma, yippie-skie-yay.
Topic 3: What I Did Today.
I went to the Oral Surgeon (no Malex this is not a sexual euphemism) for my consultation on my wisdom teeth extraction. I need to get four extracted through surgery, but we've decided not to do all four at the same time, so it's two on one side, then two on the other. Date of first surgery is next Wednesday, date of second surgery is yet to be arranged. It makes me kind of nervous with possible complications and everything and having a big gaping nose from my mouth to my sinus.
Also went to Rock Creek Park and splashed around in the creek with my pant legs rolled up. Walking on the rocky (well duh) creek floor is better foot massage than anything my mom managed in Hong Kong. Water bulges against the weather side (if such terms can be used for a water current instead of wind) of my legs in compacting ripples like the grooves of a record; on the lee side, there is a little dimple where the water is more shallow. I fell in at an area where the creek flew whitecapped and bubbling over a terrace of black rocks, the water level high from thunderstorms, got wet up to my waist, cut my right big toe on something sharp. Pretty dumb, wading in Rock Creek, god knows what's in it, but I am young, and invincible.
If people ask me about what I did while I was young enough to have energy and not good senses, I can tell them, God as my witness, that I walked in a (possibly polluted) creek, and it felt good.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Stuff
What've I been doing... I've been going to Lebanese Taverna and Monkey Mall. Normal things.
Tacked myself onto the list of people going camping in Rocky Gap State Park on August 1st, next weekend, probably much to everyone else's dismay. Malex said on Sunday night there wasn't enough room in the Malex-mobile for me with him, Nick, and Dena and all those gosh-darn tents, but apparently, as plans stand finalized as of Monday afternoon, there is enough room for Karina. She's always been smaller than me. At any rate I've gotten a ride with Erica Morgan who I don't know all that well except that she sat across the aisle from me in Pyschology in junior year I think and I remember watching her a lot and occasionally attempting to draw her. Her face gets blurred in my head with Debb and occasional Victorian ladies of Pre-Raphaelite oil paintings. That I won't have anything to talk to her about for the four hour round trip to/from Cumberland while Nick and Malex and Dena and Karina make memorable gay jokes in the Malex-mobile and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept I would've had to join the merry nine campers a day late and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept my parents would have had to drive around rural Maryland for eight hours total (two hours to Cumberland Saturday morning, two hours back, two hours to Cumberland Sunday afternoon, two hours back) (assuming I'd on my conscience let them) is of no consequence to anyone, because there is no space for me in the Malex-mobile. In all fairness Karina probably faced a situation like this too, so it was merely a calculation on Malex's part of who he likes better.
Went to Screen on the Green on Monday with Malex and Karina. We were supposed to watch Mutiny of the Bounty on the Mall but it was raining cats and dogs, a formidable challenge for even our umbrellas, jackets, plastic, blankets and towels, so we went to Chipotle, blooming into social animals, and then Borders, where we retreated into antisocial shells. It was fun though, mostly walking around in the evening and the middle of the night. I was amused that on the Metro to Rockville Station where Malex's van was, we were all silently, simultaneously and independently checking out the guy sitting across from us. Karina said, after a brief silence, as we got off the Metro: "Did anybody think that guy was hot?" and we all agreed, spontaneously, telepathically knowing exactly who "that guy" refered to. Malex said it was a particularly unattractive Metro car; there really was only that guy to look at. I personally thought he looked better in profile than from the front, as it is with some people. Malex dropped Karina off at her house so that luckily enough for her, she was inadvertantly quite clear of the van before me and Malex had a Something the Hell Happened. (One of those things between a Falling Out and a Dialogue where the next day people who weren't with you would still be like, "Something the Hell Happened between you and Alex last night.")
See, Malex wondered if I was insulted that he chose to give Karina a ride to Rocky Gap and not me, and I didn't answer, and he gave me time to collect my thoughts. Here they are:
It was on the topic of why there is this wormhole in time space that allows there to be enough room in the van for Karina but not for me but the answer of course is that I am obnoxious and while I am a person who you would not object to watching screen on the green with I am not a person who you would trust with teamwork activities such as setting up tents. (or directing Sharon's Personal Profiles and fucking it up so that my media productions teacher says 'i think you owe sharon an apology' like i enjoy screwing up). It is very discouraging that someone on the brink of college and independence should feel all of eleven years old again and it seems that I am not entering college but middle school where an unspoken communication passes between people and they all in a group move away when you enter a room and there are times when i would like to be anyone except for myself. High school was great in that I could sit down and eat a sandwich at at least one table with nobody objecting to my presence, because having every single cafeteria lunch table turn you away ('this seat is saved for someone, there's no space for you') and eating standing up is the shits. (and also standing on the outside of a great barrier that is more transparent and invisible than glass yet harder than crystal that stretches in each direction between you and the rest of the world and warmth and people who laugh all the time and loneliness that is not a thing and a demon you can kill so much as a giant spreading deafening nothing empty of anything at all.)
There is a small core of people within my world. Everyone else exists outside of it, like Sharon and Ruchita and Lizzie whose lives seem so tidy and well-organized and so together like little suburban lawns. People walk the bridge across the gap between my world and the other all the time. Most of the time they leave; Nick has left and Malex is leaving, but also they come in and I think of the letters that Andrew and Doug wrote, and they wrote not because they had to but because they wanted. I think though that I have a strong and quiet pillar of humanity that I share with no one, and if that is taken away only then would I contemplate putting a pistol in my mouth and shooting myself. And it will not be taken from me because I have either the faith or stupidity to believe that things will be all right for me in the end and I may come out a better person.
I really feel bad for sending Malex on a mad guilt trip though (having conveyed some of the above to him in the midnight dark through an intensely awkward silence) because he's a nice boy and all he said was "Well you're kind of distracting." Jesus Christ, I bet he didn't know I was such an emotional piece of work. :P Hell, I didn't either. This, my friend, is why you should date MEN.
Malex called the next day with a "Hope you feel better" message on my answering machine which would've been funny had my parents gotten it (I can imagine: "What... did you have a fever?") but I got it and he invited me to watch Trigun with Janis and Lauren and it was a good show and Lauren was great and we got on swell which goes to show how well I can get on with people one-on-one if they aren't defensively huddled in with twelve other people at a party. And then I came home and had issues and read some All Quiet on the Western Front which made me even more depressed and had more issues and then checked my family email because my mom was expecting a message but there were 401 messages most of them spam probably all of them except that my connection kept dying at message #137 so I kept trying to Get New Messages and I'd get 136 of 401 and then my connection would die and I'd try again and get 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 so that I got four duplicates of each spam letter: 4 times 136. So I deleted them all, turned the computer off and went to bed.
I am sorry that Haie Westhus died because I liked him.
Today I got my learner's permit (very belatedly) so that hopefully a year or so from now I won't need to find space in someone else's minivan, and wrote, the old-fashioned way, to Andrew at camp and Doug the Eagle Scout and Jen recovering from surgery at home.
What've I been doing... I've been going to Lebanese Taverna and Monkey Mall. Normal things.
Tacked myself onto the list of people going camping in Rocky Gap State Park on August 1st, next weekend, probably much to everyone else's dismay. Malex said on Sunday night there wasn't enough room in the Malex-mobile for me with him, Nick, and Dena and all those gosh-darn tents, but apparently, as plans stand finalized as of Monday afternoon, there is enough room for Karina. She's always been smaller than me. At any rate I've gotten a ride with Erica Morgan who I don't know all that well except that she sat across the aisle from me in Pyschology in junior year I think and I remember watching her a lot and occasionally attempting to draw her. Her face gets blurred in my head with Debb and occasional Victorian ladies of Pre-Raphaelite oil paintings. That I won't have anything to talk to her about for the four hour round trip to/from Cumberland while Nick and Malex and Dena and Karina make memorable gay jokes in the Malex-mobile and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept I would've had to join the merry nine campers a day late and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept my parents would have had to drive around rural Maryland for eight hours total (two hours to Cumberland Saturday morning, two hours back, two hours to Cumberland Sunday afternoon, two hours back) (assuming I'd on my conscience let them) is of no consequence to anyone, because there is no space for me in the Malex-mobile. In all fairness Karina probably faced a situation like this too, so it was merely a calculation on Malex's part of who he likes better.
Went to Screen on the Green on Monday with Malex and Karina. We were supposed to watch Mutiny of the Bounty on the Mall but it was raining cats and dogs, a formidable challenge for even our umbrellas, jackets, plastic, blankets and towels, so we went to Chipotle, blooming into social animals, and then Borders, where we retreated into antisocial shells. It was fun though, mostly walking around in the evening and the middle of the night. I was amused that on the Metro to Rockville Station where Malex's van was, we were all silently, simultaneously and independently checking out the guy sitting across from us. Karina said, after a brief silence, as we got off the Metro: "Did anybody think that guy was hot?" and we all agreed, spontaneously, telepathically knowing exactly who "that guy" refered to. Malex said it was a particularly unattractive Metro car; there really was only that guy to look at. I personally thought he looked better in profile than from the front, as it is with some people. Malex dropped Karina off at her house so that luckily enough for her, she was inadvertantly quite clear of the van before me and Malex had a Something the Hell Happened. (One of those things between a Falling Out and a Dialogue where the next day people who weren't with you would still be like, "Something the Hell Happened between you and Alex last night.")
See, Malex wondered if I was insulted that he chose to give Karina a ride to Rocky Gap and not me, and I didn't answer, and he gave me time to collect my thoughts. Here they are:
It was on the topic of why there is this wormhole in time space that allows there to be enough room in the van for Karina but not for me but the answer of course is that I am obnoxious and while I am a person who you would not object to watching screen on the green with I am not a person who you would trust with teamwork activities such as setting up tents. (or directing Sharon's Personal Profiles and fucking it up so that my media productions teacher says 'i think you owe sharon an apology' like i enjoy screwing up). It is very discouraging that someone on the brink of college and independence should feel all of eleven years old again and it seems that I am not entering college but middle school where an unspoken communication passes between people and they all in a group move away when you enter a room and there are times when i would like to be anyone except for myself. High school was great in that I could sit down and eat a sandwich at at least one table with nobody objecting to my presence, because having every single cafeteria lunch table turn you away ('this seat is saved for someone, there's no space for you') and eating standing up is the shits. (and also standing on the outside of a great barrier that is more transparent and invisible than glass yet harder than crystal that stretches in each direction between you and the rest of the world and warmth and people who laugh all the time and loneliness that is not a thing and a demon you can kill so much as a giant spreading deafening nothing empty of anything at all.)
There is a small core of people within my world. Everyone else exists outside of it, like Sharon and Ruchita and Lizzie whose lives seem so tidy and well-organized and so together like little suburban lawns. People walk the bridge across the gap between my world and the other all the time. Most of the time they leave; Nick has left and Malex is leaving, but also they come in and I think of the letters that Andrew and Doug wrote, and they wrote not because they had to but because they wanted. I think though that I have a strong and quiet pillar of humanity that I share with no one, and if that is taken away only then would I contemplate putting a pistol in my mouth and shooting myself. And it will not be taken from me because I have either the faith or stupidity to believe that things will be all right for me in the end and I may come out a better person.
I really feel bad for sending Malex on a mad guilt trip though (having conveyed some of the above to him in the midnight dark through an intensely awkward silence) because he's a nice boy and all he said was "Well you're kind of distracting." Jesus Christ, I bet he didn't know I was such an emotional piece of work. :P Hell, I didn't either. This, my friend, is why you should date MEN.
Malex called the next day with a "Hope you feel better" message on my answering machine which would've been funny had my parents gotten it (I can imagine: "What... did you have a fever?") but I got it and he invited me to watch Trigun with Janis and Lauren and it was a good show and Lauren was great and we got on swell which goes to show how well I can get on with people one-on-one if they aren't defensively huddled in with twelve other people at a party. And then I came home and had issues and read some All Quiet on the Western Front which made me even more depressed and had more issues and then checked my family email because my mom was expecting a message but there were 401 messages most of them spam probably all of them except that my connection kept dying at message #137 so I kept trying to Get New Messages and I'd get 136 of 401 and then my connection would die and I'd try again and get 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 so that I got four duplicates of each spam letter: 4 times 136. So I deleted them all, turned the computer off and went to bed.
I am sorry that Haie Westhus died because I liked him.
Today I got my learner's permit (very belatedly) so that hopefully a year or so from now I won't need to find space in someone else's minivan, and wrote, the old-fashioned way, to Andrew at camp and Doug the Eagle Scout and Jen recovering from surgery at home.
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