all the stars were just like little fish (you can see through the ceiling? yes, i can.)
Airports make me so sad. They're like non-places. I never remember what they looked like afterward, and everyone is so busy going somewhere else that they don't even care where they are or that the walls are gray and the food is sort of bad and very overpriced and everything smells like luggage. The light makes us all look tired and shabby, and it makes us look as though we might fade away entirely like ghosts if we're on the tired and shabby side to begin with. And I can't shake the feeling that the whole world is like that when you peel off the paint, that everyone is tired and shabby and on their way to somewhere else and that my flight will never come or that my flight will come but that when it lands I'll find that the new place is just the same as the old place in every way that matters, and they both smell like luggage. Luggage and disinfectant and hamburgers. Sometimes, if I have a long layover at an airport, I end up riding the moving sidewalk back and forth over and over just to appreciate something. Moving sidewalks are neat.
Sometimes I eavesdrop and people-watch, which is funny and sad at the same time. I end up hearing the same bad jokes and the same talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives until I think that maybe all the rest of humanity is living on the same mental plane and only I'm out of sync and I'm never going to get properly aligned with the dominant frequency. Everyone is reading the same books, these books about brilliant computer hackers and dashing detectives and beautiful spies, the kind of book where the ink rubs off the pages and stains your fingers as you read. Except that some people are reading e-books, now, which I find mildly disconcerting. I don't know why. Maybe it's only that I, personally, would never want to read a novel that way.
In the Asheville airport, I sat in front of these girls from my college, and one (probably neurotypical) seemed obnoxious because she kept trash-talking her exes for really stupid things and going on about how she used to date girls but "went back to" dating boys because girls are all such duplicitous bitches and saying that she hated all her classes and was failing everything more or less on purpose. And she kept ignoring-- in a really obvious, I-am-snubbing-you-so-bug-off manner-- the (probably not neurotypical) girl sitting next to her, who admittedly came across as equally obnoxious because she kept trash-talking her parents for really stupid things and cussing gratuitously and bragging about how she used to hit boys in high school if she thought they were looking at her in a particular way. She had a really loud, unmodulated, nasally, monotone voice, which I don't think she could help, but which was intensely grating to have to listen to. And she kept saying the same things over and over and invading the personal space of the first obnoxious girl.
Anyway, I'm back in Pennsylvania now and I think I did reasonably well on my midterms. It's good to be in my bedroom at my parents' house; it feels much more like a space that's mine than I think any dorm room ever will or could, and I appreciate how much it is mine a lot more after being away for a few months. It's full of the detritus of more-or-less an entire childhood and adolescence spent here. Layers of sediment, of years, of coming and going obsessions and interests and aesthetic preferences on the walls and on the bookcase, in drawers and laid out under the bed. You just can't achieve that sort of effect with half of a room that you live in for less than nine months. Also, dorm floors at my college are usually made of linoleum tile, which means I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm sleeping in a school cafeteria or a public bathroom. My parents and I are being really, genuinely nice and friendly and talkative with one another because we haven't seen each other in a while, which is great.
...Oh man, I don't know if anyone other than me actually likes or listens to these, but I don't care. Recording the music I listened to and liked during this period of my life seems somehow important. I...guess it just strikes me as something a thirty-year-old me might want to remember? Something like that.
1. Violet, Hole
2. Back When I Was 4, Jeffery Lewis
3. The Latest Toughs, Okkervil River
4. The Calendar Hung Itself, Bright Eyes
5. Silent All These Years, Tori Amos
6. The Kick Inside, Kate Bush
7. Casper the Friendly Ghost, Daniel Johnston
By the way, never ever ever ever look at usernames or read comments on youtube videos. Just ignore those parts, okay?