ugg    10:23am 10/11/2008   currently in a rather low state of motivation. finished a shitty rough draft of the first act of this play thing i'm writing. it's a bit of a monstrosity right now, all sorts of things stitched together, but i have an idea of how to make it work, so that's always good. when it comes to theater, community, and collaboration... since i'm not 'teaching' it anymore and don't have to worry so much, it's getting hard to actually care at all. trying to write something about voting and it keeps turning into an angsty rant about how i had no right to vote in local elections here because i didn't know much about what was going on and i shouldn't have a say in things like that equal to that of people who have lived and worked here all their lives. which kind of goes against the feel-good vibe people are trying to get from this. slept uneasily last night and today i have a cough. hope i'm not getting sick. no time for that. but right now i really want to sleep and be nowhere and nobody. i've been wanting that more and more recently.        Read 1 - Post       02:26am 08/11/2008   how did i become this person? or have i always fundamentally been this way? if that's the case, why did i start feeling so disgusted with myself? 'you don't need to disappoint me i can do that myself'        Post       01:39am 06/11/2008   i know this is goofy as poo, but i just took a really kind of stereotypical myspace picture of myself and i think it's actually kind of pretty... so i put it up on my fb profile and now i feel a little emo and dramatic, but at least it's a change from my usually goofy-looking pictures of myself. the fact that i feel like i have to justify it is probably not a good sign though, so i'll most likely take it down tomorrow. also this is a really silly thing to be thinking about, but thought i'd share. blah blah blah oh life.        Read 1 - Post   in front of all the open doors    07:55pm 02/11/2008   Went to the "One Mad Day" cast party last night and managed to get myself more messed up than I've ever been, I think. Not sure how it happened exactly... pretty sure that I won't be doing that again any time soon. I had never been sick from drinking/ smoking before. Managed to get out of sight of the party in time, which is a good thing, and then Peter Frost found me and walked me home. And I kept apologizing, because I never thought that I would be that person. The girl that got so drunk she had to be taken care of. And I was aware mostly of what was happening - time blurred in some areas with delays and dilations that really let me know that I was not doing so hot, which is how I was able to get my stuff and get out in time. It's weird how survival instinct kicks in like that. Down the stairs from the upstairs room, weaving my way through the crowd, grabbing my coat and purse, weaving back out and into the night. And then a block later I was sick and I could barely even feel it. The walk home was very long and cold and I was maybe half-asleep for most of it; I know what happened mostly, just not the specifics. And then Peter Frost told me to clean myself up in the bathroom and I asked for water and then pretty much just hung around the toilet until like 8 in the morning - daylight savings didn't help with the whole losing-track-of-time thing. I know this is gross to talk about, but I think vomiting is one of the most honest - and ergo, embarrassing - things that anyone can do. Because you can't hide what's in your stomach, what you've put there. I think at one point after throwing up I said "all my sins remembered" to myself, because that's what it was. Spread out to be seen, not ensconced and therefore ignored. Mostly I'm glad that it wasn't worse. I didn't throw up at the party, I didn't have to go to the hospital, and even though I've been exhausted and nauseous today, there's not much permanent damage. I'm just going to be taking it easy for a while. But that does make me wonder, what made me drink so much? I was given a little thing of tequila as a present for being a dramaturg which I sipped on; then I finished off what was left of my gin - between 1/4 and 1/3 of a bottle; then I had most of a beer; and then I smoked. It was probably the smoking that really threw me for a bender - I had been a little unsteady on my feet before that but smoking just made me lose mental traction entirely. At least I was aware enough to know that... Yes, I've been stressed, but so has everybody. About school, about what direction my life is going in, about where I fit into this little microcosm that I'll be leaving in 6 months anyway, blah blah blah angst let's drink! or not.        Read 1 - Post       01:18am 01/11/2008   sometimes i wish that i were either a lot better at lying to myself or didn't do it at all. mostly i'm just wallowing in ambiguity. which is how it always is. sometime i feel like i don't know who my friends are at all. a lot of that is probably my fault for being a bit of a recluse, but it's discouraging, trying to put myself out there without being too intrusive, without being the person people dread inviting. is there something wrong with me? did i change? or is it a simple misunderstanding that, because i am myself, i'm blowing out of proportion? big party tomorrow night - cast party/belated halloween party. will probably pre-game and go for a bit and then duck out, hoping someone will come after me and ask me to stay, and knowing that that is not how my life works, or probably should work, and go home to quietness feeling embarrassed? relieved? angry at myself? tired? probably most of those. it feels like such a delicate balance between not putting myself out there enough and doing too much, and so i err on the side of being an introvert to avoid the embarrassment of being unwanted. it just doesn't stop me from being lonely and wondering what's wrong with me and what i'm so scared of. i like smoking on cold nights, walking around, leaving the ghosts of smoke and my breath behind me. i pretend they are other ghosts, and i know that they aren't. let's just get all the pessimism out in one shot, shall we. i don't understand what my life has become in the past few years. months, even. there's no trail i can follow backwards to see what exactly changed, how i am where i am, doing what i do. blah blah blah same old shit.        Post   busybusybusy    01:01am 30/10/2008   TO DO tomorrow - guitar class - work - dramaturgy presentations 2-5 - gender studies dinner/discussion? - review spanish - pull stuff together for Theater & Collaboration, figure out what the class needs to do over the weekend friday/ weekend - work - class - figure out what people are doing for halloween - make costume - read rest of spanish play - read 'the surrounded' for tuesday - work on playwriting! - email safa - buy granola - 'one mad day' closing & strike - cast/halloween party next week - VOTE - watch election day coverage - work in NA Lit thesis - more T&C - Guy Fawkes' Day - rehearsal? - playwriting! - guitar! - email advisor somehow i got very busy this semester. if all goes well, next semester i will only be taking 3 classes, plus my research scholarship (whatever that ends up being) and whatever other theater stuff i blunder into. gahhhh.        Post   arrrgh    12:13pm 28/10/2008   ok, so I haven't really liked a music ensemble teacher since 6th grade, but I haven't really had to deal with one since high school until this year with Class Guitar. and this guy just doesn't really know how to teach - what I've learned has been from the textbook and practicing on my own. however, his curriculum doesn't really follow the text and he's pretty inconsistent in what exactly he expects from us; one minute he's having us play a fairly simple exercise slower so everyone can get it, the next he's doing something really quickly on a much higher difficulty level and is surprised when not everyone gets it. plus, on the midterm we just had that was mostly over music theory, he put in trick questions, like asking for the names of notes out of order. it's clear that i know them and what order they go in, but because i didn't pay attention to his stupid little tricks i have to take it over. that's just petty. i know that i haven't been practicing as much as i should be, but still, i'm pretty disappointed in this guy's teaching skills. maybe he's better as a private tutor, or even just learning an instrument is better with a private tutor, but it's been kind of frustrating so far. anyway,        Post   the song 'cecilia' really works if you drop in 'insomnia' instead    05:57am 16/10/2008   can't sleep. going home soon. i'm scared about failing in the real world because i don't even know what i want to fail at anymore.        Post       04:44am 12/10/2008   sometimes, when i drink, i can't sleep. walked home from the cast party and looked at the moon. it was a pale thumbprint tonight, a hint of something rather than a thing-in-itself, that kept fading behind the clouds, and then it started to rain. 'i'm not sorry i met you i'm not sorry it's over i'm not sorry there's nothing to save.' one day? i hope that i can unambiguously unhesitatingly say that. about everything. everyone with whom i wish it were true. my finger has mostly healed now. there's going to be quite a scar, i suppose. i cut the stitches out. somehow the skin is still uneven, like it remembers the wound, how it opened as easy as anything. the healing process is still somehow miraculous to me. i saw it open and the blood well up, and now it's whole. not a scratch. just memory, and a certain difference of feeling between the two parts, as if the nerves are somehow different on either side. 'by all accounts you really should have died...' should try sleeping again. we'll see what happens.        Post   i am in love with 'this will destroy you'    12:54am 11/10/2008   the thing that the actors missed most about my play is that there's a lot of bitter/gallows humor. and you have to remember that because that's the 'in' i need to knife you. that's the game of art, isn't it? how much can i affect you? how deeply can i wound you? contact is not always kind. but it's better than nothing. the nights recently have been clear and cold. i like walking in cold (not TOO cold) nights - it's like the quietness becomes embodied in how the cool air feels against my skin. like i'm walking through quiet and breathing quiet, and i can feel the difference of temperature in my body for every breath i draw in of quiet. i like walking along the streets in the night, i like seeing the trees in streetlamps. foliage always looks fake in streetlamp light, the yellow kind? it looks like you are walking in a soundstage full of plastic plants. the unreality of it. i like how the pavement reflects the light a little, in the places where it's been worn most smooth. glows like something worn and tired and oddly at peace. it's been clear and the moon is waxing, i think? i see it while walking and i have to stare, at this pure white half-hidden face, so different from all the yellow streetlamps, and i am mesmerized, i want to stare at the haggard face and ask it questions: why? it's completely open, open to the bone, and honest, and for all that nevertheless silent. exactly so. "we are all free. exactly." oh satie.        Post       02:03am 08/10/2008   i'm thinking, i'm thinking, i'm thinking... finished my spanish paper, or at least just sort of stopped writing. the spanish is ok i think, doesn't quite stick to the prompt, but i dunno what else to write. we're reading things from the romantic era, which i have sort of a love/hate relationship with to begin with; very, very often i can understand it completely, can totally dig pathetic fallacy because who can't who has walked in the rain before when they're being thoughtful? i can understand the glory of being swept up completely by emotions, the odd pleasure of being entirely involved in something, even if that something is desperation... babbling, i suppose, which is in its own way very Romantic. but i clash with it too, because so much of it is self-delusion. take the play 'don álvaro o la fuerza del sino,' the play i just wrote a paper on. it follows this guy who, while trying to run away with the woman he loves, accidentally kills her father (she runs off to become a hermit out of guilt), becomes very close friends/perhaps lovers?? with one of her brothers, who then discovers who he is, challenges him to a duel, and loses; then álvaro runs off to become a monk only to be found by her other brother, who challenges him to a duel, loses, álvaro seeks help and instead finds his former lady-love, who rushes to her fallen brother only to be stabbed by him for leading to their family's destruction, and álvaro kills himself. but before that he blames all of his misfortune on fate, which isn't really true at all, it's just a way for him to escape taking responsibility for his actions. the problem with drama is that it's so easy to get so caught up in it that you can fake sincerity. and once you can fake sincerity all is lost. but what's the alternative? you can't be sincere on command - that defies the entire point of it. so instead we wander around painfully self-conscious, analyzing everything, rooting after any and every possible unconscious ulterior motive, when sometimes it's better to just feel, to just be carried away. there needs to be a balance, but both sides argue against the possibility of mitigation/compromise. i want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real... finally starting to get over cold i think. and having this paper done, even if it's kind of mediocre, is a big relief. town crier is in a few days and i'll see my play performed, which i'm excited and terrified about and don't really know how to react to. but should sleep.        Post   somehow getting sicker    11:19pm 04/10/2008   been sick all week. now it's moved into my throat and all of a huddle i can't really talk or swallow and there's an itch in the back. getting a little frustrated with my body - i've already missed a week of work and two full days of classes and got an extension on my spanish paper that i haven't started yet. but my body isn't playing right. i can do reading, i can do busy work, but i don't have anything to give that's asked for. it always becomes impossible when it's asked for. and having to write an essay in spanish is going to be pretty hard too. i like all of my classes this semester, i really do. i just wish that i was taking them one at a time. also i need to have a chat with the registrar to make sure that advanced playwriting is being counted as my advanced creative writing requirement. i wanna fade.        Read 1 - Post   oh october    12:11am 01/10/2008   somehow got very, very sick this week. well, maybe not all that sick, but everything hurts and sleep is difficult. thinking is difficult. even my ear-holes hurt. that just isn't fair. is there a more technical term than 'ear-holes'? seems to be some sinus-y thing. i hate being reminded of just how much my head is made of up snot. especially when there's something wrong and the snot is goopy or stuffed up or greenish or just hurts for whatever reason. ugh. and this is a bad week to be sick because there are many projects to do, writing and such, in more than one language, and i don't really feel capable of thinking about something that hard because then my head starts to hurt more. hopefully i'll sleep tonight. 2 tylonel pm and 2 nyquil. last night did not sleep for more than snatches until i called in sick for work, and then i dreamed very strange dreams. my throat is not sore so much as the lymph node on the left side of my neck is going berserk. blah blah blah sickness let's see if i can sleep.        Post   and if you don't love me, let me go    02:56pm 28/09/2008   here's a song that just seems right at the moment "Love Love Love," The Mountain Goats King Saul fell on his sword When it all went wrong And Joseph's brother sold him down the river For a song And Sonny Liston rubbed some tiger balm in his glove some things you do for money and some you do for love love love Raskalnikov felt sick But he couldn't say why When he saw his face reflected In his victim's twinkling eye Some things you do for money And some you'll do for fun But the things you do for love Are gonna come back to you one by one Love love is gonna lead you by the hand Into a white and soundless place Now we see this As in a mirror dimly Then we shall see each other Face to face And way out in Seattle Young Kurt Cobain Snuck out to the garden Put a bullet in his brain Snakes in the grass beneath our feet Rain in the clouds above Some moments last forever And some flare out with love love love        Read 1 - Post   quite frankly    01:12am 28/09/2008   musing on the long exhale. i'm tired of this shit. i'm tired of these games that i somehow inevitably invariably lose. (the only way you win is if you die before you lose; every success ultimately turns to failure) (in a dark mood, if that isn't already obvious.) someone told me recently that i shouldn't give up hope in the relationships department, that i'm not forever doomed to be attracted to relationships that would probably fail and hurt me worse and unattracted to relationships that might potentially break that pattern. then again anything can potentially break a pattern if you don't actually try it. i just want to turn to air, or ash, or water. dissolve. or give up whatever part of myself that gets stupid and lonely and hopeful and just focus on the practical things that i actually need to deal with. i'm tired of wrong timing. i'm tired of things not being quite right, the stars not quite aligned - just close enough to fool me, not close enough to click. i'm tired of standing upright. i'm tired of breathing in, to be honest. not all the time, no, but enough now to make me think about doing something about it. not entirely in earnest, but a little. maybe watching the wire was a bad idea. putting thoughts in my head. 'he just sat down.' who knew it was that easy? sweep me up. convince me i'm wrong. don't later prove i'm right. my oh my.        Read 1 - Post       11:07pm 25/09/2008   been watching 'the daily show' and 'the colbert report' every day they're on the past two weeks. they're angry. they've been hit, like all of us have, and they are letting us know how deeply we've been hurt by showing us their wounds. it's scary. things have been reminding me of india lately, so when i walk on campus, i feel like i'm walking in a dream, and whoever is dreaming it is about to wake up, and so much of the reality that the tiny sliver of the population to which i belong is going to crumble. then again i'm always suspecting the end of the world, and i've been reading a lot of jeremiah, and far too much of it seems terribly appropriate. blah blah blah the world is always going to end.        Post       12:56am 24/09/2008   tired. managed to cut my finger really kind of badly on sunday - had to make a trip to the ER and get three stitches. i was ok for the most part until the blood loss started getting to me and the pain kicked in and then i saw what it actually looked like under my hasty bandage and i started freaking out a little bit because skin isn't suppose to be open like that. the doctor stabbed me with anaesthesia which in one case actually went through my finger (i found the exit wound) which hurt like a fucking bitch and then i watched him sew my skin up. skin isn't supposed to have curved needles emerging from it, either. so that was an adventure. the cold has started coming, and headaches with it. there's not a whole lot more to tell - i've been busy but never quite busy enough to prevent me from brooding and getting melancholic and misanthropic (to steal a phrase from satie). it's hard to give up any dream when you don't have an immediate replacement.        Post   someone's gotta say it    11:51pm 20/09/2008   fuck mr. darcy, and fuck lloyd dobbs for giving every girl (or boy, for that matter) unrealistic expectations about love.        Post       02:04am 20/09/2008   took a nap today and ended up sleeping through rehearsal, which is mostly ok because i'm not really required to be there anyway, but being there probably would have been a better use of my time. did manage to have one of the nicer dreams that i've had in a while, in which i could touch someone and terrible things DIDN'T happen as a result of that, so you know, at least my unconscious doesn't always hate me. after i woke up pretty much smoked, ate an entire thin-crust pizza and half of a pint of ben & jerry's 'dublin mudslide' and watched the first episode of 'firefly' (for nostalgia) and then three episodes of 'the wire' (for... something else). in some ways it's sad that friday nights are often my most hermit-y nights of the week, and in other ways i'm mostly ok with it. my house has adopted a cat - perhaps unwisely, but i wasn't going to turn it down once it was clear that she was friendly, clean, and housetrained - and so i've been spending some nice quality time talking to her, following her around, and generally being kind of ridiculously excited that there's a kitty around who seems to like me. again, hooray for some sort of contact that probably won't lead to a shitstorm. there's a poem by anne sexton that i read this summer, the first in the last collection she wrote, 'the awful rowing toward god,' before she killed herself, about her growing up. 'like a pig in a trenchcoat i grew.' and how while she grew up in this world the world refused to touch her, 'even though touch is all.' i think that i agree with that statement a lot. touch is all. contact is all, even if it takes the form of collision, ships in the night crashing into each other or at least being rocked by the other's wake. here we spend so much of our time alone, untouched, untouching, unfelt, unfeeling. or maybe that's just me. a lot of things touch me even if they don't know that it is me that they are touching. and i try sometimes to touch back, but i am afraid. i am afraid of touching what does not want to be touched, because although all touch is ultimately a (sometimes necessary) intrusion, what right do i have for some people? what right do i have to touch? especially because touch sometimes leaves bruises. blah blah blah extended metaphor.        Post       12:48am 18/09/2008   so the play, that i wrote, that i started last summer, that i rewrote last fall and then again this summer, after i had learned more? it's being produced, which is cool and also terrifying, because so much of it is my life distilled onto paper, distilled and reconsidered and diagrammed and then left alone because i can only do so much. i have a terrible habit for trying to stuff everything overflowing with meaning and significance (and so all of my sentences become run-ons). and that tendency gets me into trouble, because i end up showing so much more of my hand than i ever intended, than is either safe or wise. and even more than that, there's only so much that i can give out of myself, and that applies so much more than to writing. i've had this conversation before, how i always take things too seriously, and how that inevitably freaks people out and gets my heart broken. but honestly? honestly? wisely or unwisely, i don't want less than the meaningful, than true and beauty and true love and all of that stuff that probably isn't real. i don't want to waste my time. right now, at this moment, i don't want less that what can devastate me or save my life. blah blah blah babbling.        Post

thepunslinger Friends Info Calendar     skip     Backward Forward