At seven o’clock I am planning to leave to drive TO SEE YOU PEOPLE IN SHEPHERDSTOWN so if I get there in one piece you all had better telephone me and tell me if you’re free to be visited sometime between now and Tuesday noonish.
DO YOU SEE THIS
BECAUSE I’LL HAUNT YOU
NO GETTING RID OF ME
TAKE THAT.
Other potentially-important things to note: because of waitressing, my meal schedule is ten thirty, three thirty, and ten thirty. So if any other weirdos get hungry at the wrong times, let me know and we can nosh in tandem.
Also I actually have no idea where I’m sleeping so if I can’t get hold of anybody you can find me camping in my car.
LOOK AT ME SPONTANEOUSLY PLANNING TO IMPOSE ON GENEROUS FRIENDS. I CAN SUPPLY YOU WITH NO COMPENSATION SAVE FOR LIBERAL KISSES. TELL YOU WHAT THOUGH I WILL ACTUALLY BRING A MARKER TO DRAW BEAUTIFUL PICTURES FOR YOU. HAPPY HOLIDAYS. GO UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: GOOD JOB NATION ON THIS CLIMATE AND ON COLLECTING PLEASANT CREATURES.
I’m grateful for every eyelash you have ever shed, even. I like you a lot.
Emotions are not things I concentrate on much. I never have. Crying is never been something acceptable in my life. My mother, until recently, never let me see her cry. I only listened to it through walls and doors, the sound of it drowning under the weight of the shower. My mother always told me she loved me, that she thought I was beautiful and gifted and smart and that I was going to do something great with my life and that she had faith in me. She just never let me see the sadness that goes along with the greatness and the happiness. I suffered a lot from that, this bucking need to sob, feeling as if I was failing her hopes in me by being consumed by sadness.
I think sometimes if it wasn’t for my brother, I would have ended up a shriveled raisin of emotion. For most of my life when the music was on too loud, to drown out the sound of my crying, his knocks would come and the box of tissues would be extended towards me and he would say, “It’s going to be ok. You’re allowed to cry. It’s going to be ok.”
When my heart was too full, and he saw me heading out to the water, he was often a few steps behind with the coat I forgot or the shoes I thought I didn’t need, wrapping me up and standing next to me until I needed to walk back. Always making sure I was not alone.
It is strange for a woman’s life to be emotionally soothed by a man. We are often taught to go to women for comfort, but I have always gone to my brother. Now, that is not an option and I stand here in this sea of emotion without the person I need the most because of things I can not change.
In the end, I think that is what I need though.
I have learned to prop myself up in these past few days. I have learned to smile into the rain and to feel things without fear and the road I have to travel in the next 10 days is going to be the longest that I have ever gone alone.
But I have my shoes and my coat this time, and even though my brother is not here to stand next to me, to put his arms around me and his head on the top of mine, I can feel him.
He is a breeze on my back, pushing me forward, showing me I am old enough, strong enough, to do this alone.
Sup bros been working lots of days now and I’m pretty good at it, but the bossest boss just told me that Edward and I don’t have to come back in until Tuesday night, so I’ve got a weekend freee! One whole weekend and I’m excited. If only I had money enough for gasoline to visit people.
(I might visit people.)
(I’ve had three hours of sleep every night this week so I might sleep instead.)
I feel a little creepy posting this because this is a video made by someone I was livejournal friends with yeeeeeeeeeeears ago, and we never talked much, but I remember she linked to this once and I was blown away and listened to it on repeat during some really stressful nights in high school.
I’ve been in a really weird mood lately— mostly, I think, because I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night, so I have all this time late at night where my rational mind’s become unhinged because I’m getting tired but I have no one to talk to— and I started thinking about that time period, those couple of years in high school, and back when I used to listen to this song. I remember spending lunch periods in the library, desperate to get away from the noise in the hallways, but still finding the quiet air in the library heavy and suffocating. I remember feeling like I wasn’t doing something right, like my body and mind were defective, and that I didn’t fit in where I was.
And, I mean, I know everyone goes through that growing up— I think that’s why I was so entranced by this song. We’re all so hell-bent on/proving our worth…/We’ve all been here before. And I think it’s fascinating how the internet connects experiences like that— how suddenly some teenager in a completely different part of the country (or maybe she’s actually my neighbor? who knows!) wrote a song that got lodged in my memory just because she happened to have some empathethic words at precisely the right time.
Anyway, I think she has a really beautiful voice and deserves to be listened to in general, but listen to this song especially.
Captcha just made me write DufHuk which isn’t funny until you say it aloud.
But, like, if all I use facebook for is posting links to people’s walls, does that make me enough of a spam-suspect that you need to implement the Captcha firewall EVERY time? Even in facebook chat? To the best friend I’ve been messaging since the years-ago night I first started using your website?
Tsk. At least I’ve somehow totally escaped the notice of whoever’s in charge of switching all profiles to Timeline. Determined to be the last person clinging to old technology. Take me to sea in the Titanic. Watch me drive off in my chariot.
For no reason, the first time I saw this (months ago) I studied it for more than half an hour. Like, I’d made plans that night; I’d told people I was on my way outside. And then I spent thirty-something minutes inspecting an animated image. Very weird. But, so, I didn’t remember that night until I saw this gif again just now, and then I was confused, and wanted to figure out what must have been so fascinating about it- punchline, it’s been almost thirty minutes and I still don’t get it.
Just, the longer I watch this, the more there is to see. And then I get stuck wondering about the illusion of movement and bodies and physical expression, and the amount of detail and consideration that went into drawing every frame of a second-long shot in a movie made before people took clips for the internet to repeat, so consider for a moment what making or watching movies must have been like back when there were animators who knew for a fact that nobody would notice how the tail-tip flicks again and the shoulders firm (just slightly!) as soon as the ears stop moving, but were so dedicated to the audience’s perception of the flow and halt of motion that they drew meticulously anyway. Okay? Watch how, just by his neck, the hair on his chest blooms. Watch how his eyelids flicker. Watch how, for just an instant, you can see the whites of his eyes at the inside corners- and why did they choose to paint the shine on his nose that way?
And the fact that you already saw all of this, connected and interpreted it before you broke it down: mind-boggling. What an amazing superpower we have. And don’t you think it’s weird how clearly we read emotion and intention into the features of an (animated!) animal? Is that because the animators created this sequence with a human understanding of body language, or because we project human emotions onto the movement of real-life animals, or because we’re inordinately clever at deciphering intention from a creature’s physical expression of it?
A larger fraction of my life has gone to staring at this than has gone to watching entire documentaries. What are brains even for.
Alright, this is hideously on-point for recent relevance, but I love my friends. All the insanity you creatures put me through is a statistically infinite improvement on the nothingness of boredom.
I spent four minutes searching on this table for my pack of winterfresh gum, which I had referenced in my mental stuff-finding catalog as being geographically here and toward the west side, but I looked all over the place and moved everything around and couldn’t find it.
But in the process of moving junk, I lifted up and set down my sweatshirt, and just as I was about to admit defeat and walk away I noticed that I could smell my minty gum somewhere. No adventure story: it was in the sweatshirt pocket, of all places.
Two in the morning and I’ve just decided to go walk around in the rain.
I’m telling you about it so we can all laugh at how this sounds like an awesome idea only to adolescent idiots (potentially a tautology, definitely self-referential), and even then only for a moment. So, yeah, I guess in a way this is simultaneously a note about my weird repressed sense of romance in nature’s reflecting the pensive melancholy of the byronic-hero-type, and about my tendency to deliberately make myself miserable for the fun of it, whatever that means. I’m in a black dress and stockings (which I’ve already put two runs in, by the way), and I’m leaving my phone behind because it’s too old and broken to risk short-circuiting in a thunderstorm, so this is about to go really, really well.
What’s always confused me about hollow needles is how the last edge of the needle goes in without hurting all over again or punching a circle of tissue into the needle stem like a cookie-cutter, but look how small this is- and they still managed to make the second piercing edge extra-sharp! Granted I actually have no idea what the source of this photo is, or whether those blood cells are actually blood cells and not fruit loops or inner tubes, but whatever, because if this is real (and I suspect it is), this is really cool. I just abused the word real, but I’m not sure if that’s technically included in the category of puns, so I’m going to leave it on the off chance that it’s not.
I hope none of you are afraid of needles because I’m fascinated by this photo. Sorry if you are, though. The boys in my life (Edward, Andrew, here’s referencing you) need to avoid reading things I write, or else get over it.
“Get over it,” being blunt, sorry for that also. Ten points for my bedside manner. “Stop crying. Gross, is that snot? What’s wrong with you? This is ridiculous; you’re being a baby. If you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to go get a bigger needle. I mean it, really. Just- no, fucking- SIT STILL. Yes, I’m serious. See, my face, this is my serious face. I’m stabbing you with this- I’ll hold you down if I have to, stop squirming- and you have six seconds to look away: four, three, too late whoops.”
