Right now I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed with a fan standing next to me like a child waiting to be noticed. I'm doing work for my internship at Baystate Parent magazine on my laptop. I'm not a journalist, but if I was, I'd be sitting in this exact same position. This internship is already teaching me so much and I've barely even started.
I sit on my bed at night, after everyone has gone to sleep, and go on the computer, or read. Lately I've been watching True Blood. But this night is different, for a lot of reasons. For one, I am getting work done. Also, I look different today. Just a little bit. After Liz dropped me off today, it only took the time from walking to her car to my house to formulate the decision to cut my hair. Not a lot, just a little. So I found scissors and went into the upstairs bathroom and chopped through select locks of my hair and they fell into the sink and separated. Then I gathered the hairs up in my hands and put them in the trashcan. The pile of hair looks like a little sleeping animal. My hair doesn't appear that different, but I know it is and I love it this way.
I am so equally divided in my feelings about how my life is at this exact moment. I don't like trying to sum up into words such broad feelings so I will let these events speak for them. Tonight I remembered that I have no way to get to work tomorrow because my mom won't let me drive the car without my license. I lost my license, and everything else in my wallet, at a Dom show in Worcester last Thursday night. Losing my wallet has caused me so much stress. I can't drive my car and I have no access to money. These two things combined make me feel incredibly dependent and very small. However, and I think this is metaphorical for my whole summer, I can't say that the show wasn't worth it anyways. It was so fun and lately fun with my friends has been so ridiculously freeing. It's like so much, including having no money and a future full of uncertainty, is just completely worth it. Today my group of friends unintentionally segregated into cars based on gender: four boys in one, four girls in the other. Before we could leave Calico & Cream and go back to the lake, Kathryn helped Parker attach his bike to the top of the car. I sat in the other and watched them through the window. I was loving the music that was playing and I couldn't help but feel like I was watching the whole scene as part of an audience. Why was the image of my friends, with their hair wet from swimming and their sun-tanned shoulders, attaching a bike to the roof of the car and then riding away, so poetic and beautiful to me? On the ride home I felt so in love with everything. I thought about how lucky I am to be able to appreciate this deeply when I simultaneously feel more fearful than I have in a very long time. I know it's the good kind of fear though; I know that for everything scary that's about to happen, there is something equally as exhilarating. Then Liz dropped me off, and I already told you what happened after that.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
New Year
Well I didn't blog "tomorrow" but who was much surprised by that. I don't do this often but I am forcing myself to blog even though I am not particularly compelled to right now - merely because I am trying to force the habit. Yesterday was the most fun day I've had in a while. Liz came home from California and we sat on the rail trail to talk. It was so beautiful and nice to be outside. Spending more time outside would be my New Year's resolution if New Year's Day was tomorrow. Then we met up with Steve and went to my house. We went to the farmer's market in Holden to buy lettuce, fudge, and a tomato, and we cooked dinner. Then Kathryn came over and it was a little mini dinner party in honor of Liz's return. Later that night, Kelsey joined us and we drove around Worcester aimlessly and blasted five-year-old hip hop songs that we all know the words to but don't really remember how it got that way. The best kind of fun is the kind to which you can say "I don't even know why this is so fun."
What a transitional summer this is. I've had a lot of people tell me the summer between your freshman and sophomore year at college is supposed to be the worst/ weirdest. That makes sense, because I can't logically deduce which of the two worlds - here, and school - I really feel like I belong in more, even though I like both. This creates a feeling of restlessness and of homelessness. And also, I am constantly plagued by the pressure to be doing MORE MORE MORE, to be having the MOST amazing and life-changing summer, to be destined for the greatest things. Do you know what I mean? I don't think I felt this kind of pressure before I went to college. In two weeks I am "moving" to New York City for a month. I've never seen myself living in a city but the past couple of months has drawn me to it immensly. I see this as a trial run: if I like it, then I might be taking a look into my future, if I don't, then I need to go live in the woods and go cold turkey on shaving my legs. But I can also see things turning out in a way that I will always have a special place in my heart for both of those lifestyles.
Sorry this blog is mostly pointless, but now I'm on a roll. Yesterday I found my cell phone from last year and read my texts that are still saved. I used to hone a habit of deleting pointless texts and saving meaningful ones, so this phone is an amalgamation of the most heartfelt, emotional, and intense thoughts that broadly sum up my senior year and summer before college. It's so weird guys!! It made me wish that I had that kind of stuff saved from this year, and also worry that my life now is so poorly-documented compared to the way it was then. But my obsession with documenting (I blogged every day last year!) often pulls me away from the present. I am a bystander on the sidelines of my life, taking pictures so I be in touch with my current feelings forever. I am constantly concerned with how the present moment will look and feel to me in three months or a year. My other New Year's resolution is to know that it is okay for some things to belong only exactly when they occur, and not a year later when I find them stored in a dusty and broken phone on my shelf. To know it's okay to leave them behind.
This is what I am trying to accept as true: everything that I want to do is easier then I think it is, and none the less rewarding. I swear!
What a transitional summer this is. I've had a lot of people tell me the summer between your freshman and sophomore year at college is supposed to be the worst/ weirdest. That makes sense, because I can't logically deduce which of the two worlds - here, and school - I really feel like I belong in more, even though I like both. This creates a feeling of restlessness and of homelessness. And also, I am constantly plagued by the pressure to be doing MORE MORE MORE, to be having the MOST amazing and life-changing summer, to be destined for the greatest things. Do you know what I mean? I don't think I felt this kind of pressure before I went to college. In two weeks I am "moving" to New York City for a month. I've never seen myself living in a city but the past couple of months has drawn me to it immensly. I see this as a trial run: if I like it, then I might be taking a look into my future, if I don't, then I need to go live in the woods and go cold turkey on shaving my legs. But I can also see things turning out in a way that I will always have a special place in my heart for both of those lifestyles.
Sorry this blog is mostly pointless, but now I'm on a roll. Yesterday I found my cell phone from last year and read my texts that are still saved. I used to hone a habit of deleting pointless texts and saving meaningful ones, so this phone is an amalgamation of the most heartfelt, emotional, and intense thoughts that broadly sum up my senior year and summer before college. It's so weird guys!! It made me wish that I had that kind of stuff saved from this year, and also worry that my life now is so poorly-documented compared to the way it was then. But my obsession with documenting (I blogged every day last year!) often pulls me away from the present. I am a bystander on the sidelines of my life, taking pictures so I be in touch with my current feelings forever. I am constantly concerned with how the present moment will look and feel to me in three months or a year. My other New Year's resolution is to know that it is okay for some things to belong only exactly when they occur, and not a year later when I find them stored in a dusty and broken phone on my shelf. To know it's okay to leave them behind.
This is what I am trying to accept as true: everything that I want to do is easier then I think it is, and none the less rewarding. I swear!
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
From a Faraway State
This morning I awoke at five thirty to screams from someone who sounded like they had either been shot or watched someone very close to them be shot. Turns out it was neither, it was my two year old cousin Esther, and after about an hour of screaming/ crying/ laughing/ running around, she appeared at my bedside giggling and hiding plastic horses under my legs. I don't know how I feel about children in general, but I like this one. Even though the way I woke up this morning was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
I'm in Florida right now and staying at a house with a back door fifty feet from the ocean. It's pretty cool. All there is to do is lay on the beach and read books and hang out with my family. This is an okay deal, especially because I would be doing equal or less activity if I were home right now. And I'm feeling so good about my summer finally! All of it, including the idle days I spent mulling around with Kelsey etc. and trying to find something to do that is at least as entertaining as following some weird girl from our middle school around in our car. Tonight I spend a long time getting really worked up for the Glee season finale, and somehow didn't feel as fulfilled by it as I had hoped. Maybe that's a life lesson to never ever expect to be fulfilled in any way by television. Anyways afterwards I went onto the deck and faced the ocean and I couldn't see it because it was night time but I obviously knew it was there. It was beautiful and it was pitch black. When it doubt, go outside. And I mean for that statement to solve bigger problems than being disillusioned by Glee.
More tomorrow!
I'm in Florida right now and staying at a house with a back door fifty feet from the ocean. It's pretty cool. All there is to do is lay on the beach and read books and hang out with my family. This is an okay deal, especially because I would be doing equal or less activity if I were home right now. And I'm feeling so good about my summer finally! All of it, including the idle days I spent mulling around with Kelsey etc. and trying to find something to do that is at least as entertaining as following some weird girl from our middle school around in our car. Tonight I spend a long time getting really worked up for the Glee season finale, and somehow didn't feel as fulfilled by it as I had hoped. Maybe that's a life lesson to never ever expect to be fulfilled in any way by television. Anyways afterwards I went onto the deck and faced the ocean and I couldn't see it because it was night time but I obviously knew it was there. It was beautiful and it was pitch black. When it doubt, go outside. And I mean for that statement to solve bigger problems than being disillusioned by Glee.
More tomorrow!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Florida '10
My list of things to focus on so I can try to get excited to spend next week in my least favorite, hot-as-the-blazes state with my extended family:
1. Reading a lot of books
2. Getting a tan
3. Taking pictures
4. Going shopping
5. Listening to music as a metaphorical getaway from my relatives
6. Riding my bike on the beach and away from my relatives
7. Drinking a lot of beer and
8. Repeating 5 and
9. Repeating 6
10. Guilting my relatives into giving me beer
edit: I just found out that the nearest grocery store to where we're staying is ten miles away. So scratch 4.
1. Reading a lot of books
2. Getting a tan
3. Taking pictures
4. Going shopping
5. Listening to music as a metaphorical getaway from my relatives
6. Riding my bike on the beach and away from my relatives
7. Drinking a lot of beer and
8. Repeating 5 and
9. Repeating 6
10. Guilting my relatives into giving me beer
edit: I just found out that the nearest grocery store to where we're staying is ten miles away. So scratch 4.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Rumble
the first of june
found me in my house, and hearing
the "woop" of a boy, from the forest or
from the train tracks:
the ecstasy bursting through
his lungs and out of his mouth
and the sound waves flying straight
to my ears, and mine alone!
for this boy is my lover, or maybe
even my soulmate, or maybe
just a stranger but probably
not.
the first of june
found me running
through the door, and under the trees
that did not shield me from the
heavy the
tender the
fanatical rain
that soaked through my t-shirt and
outlined my bra in a matter
of seconds!
and I "woop"ed back at
the boy in the woods, who was
waiting for me, obviously,
and my voice flew from my
mouth and left me behind on
the wet wooden deck and
found the boy the
lover the
stranger
and he did not call back but
I know he heard me.
found me in my house, and hearing
the "woop" of a boy, from the forest or
from the train tracks:
the ecstasy bursting through
his lungs and out of his mouth
and the sound waves flying straight
to my ears, and mine alone!
for this boy is my lover, or maybe
even my soulmate, or maybe
just a stranger but probably
not.
the first of june
found me running
through the door, and under the trees
that did not shield me from the
heavy the
tender the
fanatical rain
that soaked through my t-shirt and
outlined my bra in a matter
of seconds!
and I "woop"ed back at
the boy in the woods, who was
waiting for me, obviously,
and my voice flew from my
mouth and left me behind on
the wet wooden deck and
found the boy the
lover the
stranger
and he did not call back but
I know he heard me.
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