meddlesome little feelings

To kick off spring break, I watched a million Grimes videos, grew sick to my stomach by way of yogurt-covered pretzel consumption, and baby-sat. I have a presentation tomorrow that I feel less than prepared for. My confidence is waning. There is a bad mood brewing beneath it all.

While watching the little ones today, I lay on the couch and closed my eyes, listened to their noises but didn't pay attention for ten minutes. This is a bad way to go about it; why would anyone want me to watch their children? But I have a headache and my eyes were begging to be shut.

These kids. Two blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauties and two brunette, brown-eyed mischief-makers, each with a true blue personality, each with a smile that could light up the heavens. I will never get beyond how telling the faces of small children are, especially those one knows really well, those whom one has taken the time to look at. Sometimes the baby smiles at me and my heart stops. Sometimes I look at their feet or touch their hair and I cry. Everything is so fleeting and transient and also so wonderful, sometimes I feel as though I am failing to take it all in and process it adequately.

I went to return Martha Marcy May Marlene to Redbox and the couple in front of me was a well-dressed, hipstery type. He wore a blazer and hat. She had a line of words tattooed down the middle of her back, what they said I couldn't decipher, and her left forearm said "always." in typewriter print. People being people, being light-hearted, discussing food or something. People. People people people.

the sun through the storm

It's been an interesting week, a strange year, and I feel like taking a second to document it this way, publicly, despite the fact that I could use a journal, because something I have been thinking about a lot lately is being more open and learning to connect with people. I don't think that being online and engaging in constant interaction via our various technological gadgets comes anywhere near the sort of true human connection that we need for maintaining a healthy sense of well-being, but I do think they can help when used correctly. While it is depressing to sit around looking at other people's lives and not actually living, upon deciding to leave the house and make an effort to talk to and connect with people, good things do begin to happen, and I think that being on the internet and having that sort of reassurance that comes from online interaction, whether it be with strangers, close friends, or acquaintances, can aid in that process, or has at least helped me a lot at this point in time. 

I have been feeling lonely and self-centered lately, there's no denying that, but I also made a long-winded post about it and, while my feelings are still mixed about whether it was a good idea to share the details of my most intimate thought processes with a very high number of internet strangers, it helped me realize a few things; it is important to be open and honest and talk through feelings, it is alright to not have all the answers, and it is alright to worry about what people think of you, write about it, and then put that writing up somewhere as a way of getting beyond that worry, because in the end, the people who think well of you will always think well of you, the people who don't care won't care, the people who don't like you still won't like you. And that is all okay. Realizing all of that made today go a lot smoother. I had a group presentation, which I was really nervous about, but I somehow wasn't nervous on the drive there and during the moments leading up to it, I didn't let my voice quiver or tears begin to flow while speaking. I tried to engage myself with the audience, think about the fact that people are just people, and an interesting discussion ensued between my group, our classmates, and our professor.
After being so successful, I told one of my supervisors in the writing center and she was really proud of me. "You?!" she said. "YOU gave a presentation and didn't get nervous? That's fantastic!" I asked her about going to observe a religious ritual with me for my anthropology class and so we are going to do that either this weekend or the one after next. I am getting involved in other things I never would have before as well, like going to see The Hunger Games with my favorite English professor and her family, along with a few of the other girls who were in my adolescent lit class, which just sort of came up as a last minute plan. I had a long conversation today with someone who was in the ten-day class I took over summer and asked him questions about his life prior to college, because he's twenty-eight years old, and I always wondered how he got to be where he is now. He has a refreshing point of view about school, truly appreciates his teachers and enjoys his classes, maybe because he has a bit more life experience to back it up. Even a month ago, I would have never actually sat down and asked questions and made conversation after something so simple as making eye contact on my way to clock out. I am excited to be branching out and trying to get to know people better, especially in light of the fact that I will be going to university soon and have a whole new crop of interesting personalities to begin to understand and enjoy, even if I will very much miss all the wonderful people I am just starting to truly get to know here.
One of the beautiful things about humans is you meet each other once or twice, maybe go separate ways, but the connection is always there, and perhaps you meet again somewhere down the road, and there is even more to ask about and understand. And if not, there will always be fond memories.
While walking today in the beautiful sunlight, with a wonderful breeze kissing my arms and face and hair and moving my dress around my legs, I thought about all the beautiful days I'll miss in this little town when I'm elsewhere, and also all the beautiful days I have missed and will miss elsewhere. It's kind of mind-blowing to consider that there are beautiful days happening all over the world, and most of us are privy to only the minutest percent of those beautiful days, and it makes me wonder why I spend so many of those beautiful days holed up in my own little world, not going out, not getting to know people, not getting to know my environment, not doing the best possible work I can or creating anything, when my time to do so is so limited. So I suppose this blog post is a celebration of sorts, and also hopefully a glimpse into the sort of documentations I intend to continue in this little corner, one in which thoughts will flow and be shared without embarrassment or forethought (just as I suppose it always has been). A celebration and contemplation of the little old life that I am so privileged to be living.

mind-numbing textual interference

thinking strange things
having strange feelings
disengaged but so tied-up all at once

treading lightly
treading swiftly
treading slightly

making a concerted effort to care (about both myself and others, more and more) 

and coming home at the end of the day and feeling drained but better but still so conflicted 

but it will get better, won't it? 

wishing the night away

I'd really love to see a Darger in person. These slides are pretty amazing.

sometimes i think

Sometimes life is so exhausting I just want someone to share it with. My marvelous lover will eventually, someday, come lie around with me, reading, breathing, watching. I want a strange detachment. Automatic detainment just isn’t my style. I think there’s much to be said for the couple who can care without suffocating. Everyone wants to know where everyone is. I want to know how everyone is. I want to love a million people but focus on those who will love me back.

Sometimes I think about people who say they think too much, but after thinking about it, I don’t think one can ever think too much. Our minds are meant to transcend our own painful existences, and I think this is only possible if we think through all of it. The key is ceasing to dwell on the unknown. Think about the good things, and the bad, but don’t go full thrust straight into angst-ridden anxieties that have yet and probably will not come to pass.

The most beautiful thing I can think of is calling someone late at night, just to say, hi, I love you, I hope you sleep well tonight. Sometimes we need to share a million things, sometimes we need to share everything. Sometimes we need to share nothing, because it’s automatically understood. I hope someday I have someone who will be silent with me. I hope someday I have someone who will let me breathe and think that in and of itself is a wondrous occurrence. I think the ability to sit and be is becoming a lost art, and I think we all need to further our studies in it.

I think sometimes it’s not important to know every cultural reference, but it is important to know the color of the sky and the shape of the moon and the color of your best friend’s eyes. 

(Written June 8th, 2011. 
Sometimes I think this little bit of writing the only thing I've ever written that holds any merit. 
One time a boy I liked made a video of himself reading the last half to a camera and sent it to me in an email,
and I watched it over and over, and now I read that part in his voice, the only voice that has ever read my writing aloud.)

something like a book review

"You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.

-Joan Didion, Blue Nights, Pg. 64

After being on the library's hold list for three months, I inhaled Joan Didion's riveting memoir of her daughter's death in five hours. The writing itself is fragmented, feels extremely stream-of-conscious-y, and permeates with grief and regret. Her memories of Quintana are sharp and seeking, filled with bittersweet details. As I finished, I couldn't help but contemplate the place Didion is in at this point. At 78, she has spent about three-fourths of her life in the public eye, yet is left behind without her husband and daughter, a picture of senile loneliness. The reason any of us wants a family is so that we are not alone, and it feels as though Didion has been left exceedingly alone, prematurely, unable to cope with what was "not supposed to happen," even unable to forgive herself for passing through the moments that she commemorated but didn't fully appreciate, something which is so incredibly human and universal. Blue Nights is a painfully resonating read, and a good one.

Also see this interview with Didion at The Believer.

My favorite excerpt:

 VIII. FINDING THE RHYTHM

BLVR: When do you feel like you’re most writing?

JD: When I’m finding the rhythm.

BLVR: Are there times when you’re writing when you feel like you’re evading writing?

JD: Of course there are times. There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they’re evading writing.

BLVR: And what is the nature of the evasion? Not thinking?

JD: Not thinking, yeah. Not thinking.