This all happened to me so very fast... Just think about it—there I was, during the happy gorgeous warm end-of-spring, inducted as a Thespian, going to the library almost every other night, dinner/phone/and park with Dirk...Man oh man, I wasted all of that. Just think—gorgeous fun wonderful youthful prom, gorgeous borrowed lavender satin dress... (Thoughts disjointed, yes, and ooo, that rhymed.) Gorgeous spring, sunsets, warmth, friends...and then I came here—altogether too soon. The summer was great, but the work, the pain, the suffering, plague, and pestilence that have insinuated themselves into life-as-I-know-it since... Not that anything then was truly better, per se, but it was familiar, and, boy, the idealized version looks nice nowadays. Now I long for my far-away chap, I download movies, I then burn CDs of those movies, I talk to people online, and drag myself up 3 flights of stairs to (1) get home (2) see friends in other dorms (3) pass the time....
As Kerouac so concisely put it: "Where go? What do? Sleep."
Although one of my last statements there raises a rather curious question (is that redundant? ^_^):
Is this home, truly?
Will it ever be home?
Hmmm...
(Yes, I know, I have an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic. My h.s. physics teacher once told me that's essential to being a writer, along with being jealous of every wonderful piece of writing that's not yours... He was kidding, of course, but it's nice to think that I may have the "writer's temperament," so to speak. Whether that temperament means I'm deranged or not, well...)
Where Do We Go From Here?
Well, it just occurred to me, as of the last few days, that it is now most definitely getting on towards fall. That, my friends, is a glorious thing. Just imagine. Fall. Nice walks down leaf-strewn paths late in the cool night...man, that's the stuff to live for, no kidding. Nights when the heat on the third floor won't suffocate you...now those, those are to be treasured. But who, pray tell, who shall I walk with? The guy's so far away...
Yes, I realized that last real sentence ended with a preposition. Yet, one must ask the question—one that has been asked many a time as of late—does it really even matter?
Anyone Who Actually Looks Happy to See Me Is Preferred...
This is not summer camp. It is now getting on to fall. The leaves are falling already. I'm going to be here all year, aren't I? And then for perhaps the summer, and then three years more...and then grad school... Yes, this is obvious. But I just did my first load of laundry in a month and listened to my stereo for the first time in about as long, and yeah...this is real, isn't it? We don't just go home after a few weeks or a month or so...we stay, and we work, and we get thrown in with other people and watch anime. Watching anime is fun, too. But wow. This is it. This is the end we sought in h.s. Not that it's bad, just ... different. (Although, of course, I merely say that with my audience in mind, no reason to let those who don't know me very well, yet who nevertheless have my screen name, worry needlessly over me, now is there?)
No, I Don't Hate Everyone, Yes, I Have Friends, Yes, the Dorm Is a Fine Place to Live, But Here're My Thoughts Today
I identify with the guy with the burned-out face—and perhaps it's because I assume that he, like me, is somehow apart from this smush of sex and wild youth that rages on campus each weekend and some weeknights—he, too, may be held back by some force beyond his control, namely the little devil bacteria that colonize his skin, eating him alive. I just walked past him, and as I open the door to my dorm, I catch the scent of—what is that? Summer? Fall? Spring? Just the scent of leaves, perhaps, a scent that goes with the changing of the seasons. Yes, it's a cliché that's as old as, well, the seasons themselves, perhaps, but it's a true one. That scent...it's hard to believe that it's September 20th already, and that, as of tomorrow, fall will be "official." Somehow it feels like I haven't yet "taken ownership" of my place here. I can't even speak of there being "my" place yet, because no one place, social or locational, truly belongs to me yet. Perhaps it's because I don't "own" anyone, per se, on campus yet. (Always with the "yet"—what am I waiting for? But perhaps it's not so simple, even, as waiting for something—although I get the feeling that something, anything, some undefined event must happen before I can open myself up to this place, give myself to a location again like I did in high school.) There is no one's time that I can tug upon, no one's will that I can bend, however so slightly, to pull that person to my dimension, and that seems to bespeak a lack of importance here. It makes me think of the way people stare off into space while eating dinner with me... But perhaps the problem is one of being stuck between mental states, really, or, if not stuck, refusing to take a position which I don't truly believe is necessary to take: I don't want to be like everyone else, playing up a false sophistication just because—what?—3 months have passed since I left high school? Consciousness is a process, the neuroscientists will tell you, and it doesn't have definite divisions.
The Above Idea Continued
It's so maudlin, the false sympathies, the sentiment that each person on a freshman floor professes to feel for all the others, regardless of age, sex, creed, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, &c. Why don't people just come out with their biases right now? Oh, yes, but then they would say, No, I don't have biases, you must be biased yourself, accusing me of such treachery. "Bitch!" they'd say, snorting with disgust at my bluntness as they'd walk down the stairs, recounting random episodes from their daily lives, glorifying in something, I'm not sure what it is that they seem to revel in, but it can't be anything true, for I'm defender of that—yes, how lofty of me, to speak in such terms, but what I mean is that their drinking can't be considered lofty, their ambitions are mediocre at best or, if not, they are destined for failure, for who can be said to have truly succeeded in all aspects of life? Although this brings into question my own ambitions or lack thereof—I have an ambition to succeed in an as-yet-unknown field, doing something...it's all rather vague...and yet I also have hope to sustain some sort of lasting partnership with a member of the opposite sex someday, a pursuit which will most likely be at cross-purposes to the rest of my goals... It's all so confusing, and it's all a big digression from the here and now—which is what I always do, as of late, when confronted with the reality of my life here—I withdraw to idle speculations on the future of all of this, which, although definitely necessary, (planning is always necessary, the putting-together of puzzle pieces in advance is key, one must look at the picture on the box sometimes to know where to go, what to do...) is still just that, another step back, a way of putting it all aside... But who knows.
More Thoughts
This floor I live on is like the pop-culture-meets-community-service-people floor...it's weird... They all play guitar, or some other rock 'n' roll kind of instrument, and my dorm is the "Leadership and Service" dorm...specifically catering to all of the fake, insincere people who put "Community Service" down as one of their interests on the application because they think it'll cover up the fact that they're really drunks... It's as if everyone here is an MTV Real World wannabe... Look how hip we are, living in the midst of Forest Park, St. Louis, MO. After all, if Cara (a university graduate) could get on the Real World, they seem to think, well, hey, there's a whole world of fake reality TV shows out there for drunkards...uh, I mean, wonderful beautiful people...like us...
But, see, I scare myself with all this depression—again, not because I'm stupid and want to kill myself, but because I just can't deal with things or people or deadlines, and I don't want to be one of those stupid casualties, the kids that fall by the roadside that girls here pity and say, Oh, I really feel sad for so-and-so, she went home for good...
Not to mention that I could ruin the possibility of having that kind of future I want if I just become a college drop-out...I don't know what my problem is...although I know other people are having the same problems I am yet somehow miraculously getting past them...
Ah, reminds me of this really satirical cartoon in Guitar World magazine one time: "Productive?" the guitar guy says, leaning haphazardly over the other guy. "Ants are productive." Then, proffering some pills, he slurs, "You wanna be an ant? These'll get you there..."
About The Isolation Theory
You simultaneously want to be taken care of and be in charge...there's a dichotomy...the isolation theory says that you want to be better, and you know you're the only one who can do it right, so you take it upon yourself and keep everyone away, because even if you want them there they'll screw it up and you don't want that. They don't understand you anyway. Then there are new people, and you do the same thing with them, you still want to be taken care of and be the best. This is normal—if you're human, you've gotta have something, neh? But you want to have it all, you want to do it all yourself, and this is the fundamental problem we're facing here. Socialization vs. propriety vs. getting work done... To be the best, you have to have other people agree that you are, so you need the other people, you lean on the other people, but is that the same kind of leaning you do when you're leaning on someone for utter helpless lifeline type support?
The older people we know had to move on, had to change, but when they didn't come back and take care of us it kinda did seem like a betrayal... When they came back they hung out with people they'd formerly despised, and then we got the notion that, hey, wow, they've become jerks, they've lost their sense of judgment, and they don't take care of me anymore. They don't say, Aw, you're wonderful, cute, talented, they just go hang out with [name omitted to protect the innocent] or something, because they don't know any better.