i'm frightened by the devil, and i'm drawn to those who ain't afraid
Hello, friends! Once I'm gone and lots of hours ahead of most people on my flist, and hopefully online less and doing things more, be said things reading or doing homework or knitting or doing things with people, I really do intend to update this more frequently, as well as the Northern Ireland blog that I'm going to be setting up in the relatively near future, which you'll be able to find at www.naturalog.net.
The past couple of days, I've been in a really weird place, one that I can only compare (and even to that only somewhat) to how I felt before I was going to leave for Germany. I spent the weekend with Screech (my partner), and most of it was... well, in all honesty, really bittersweet. I really loved being able to have that last weekend with him... that last chance for cuddles and kisses and falling asleep in each other's arms, but it was really hard, too, especially as Sunday drew to a close and he had to leave to head back up to Ft. Wayne because of work in the morning. The prospect of spending 4 1/2 months away from him is... well, neither of us are looking forward to it, but we're viewing getting through it as more or less our only option.
I've also, in some ways, been going back to the past a lot. I've been rereading a certain passage from a letter that two of my teachers (one of whom I'm still in contact with today) gave me on my last day of school in Germany, and that made me cry when I read it for the first time... I posted it in German in my old journal, but I'll post a translation here. Pardon the roughness of some of it- a lot of the concepts and phrases are hard to translate, and German is often such a wordy language. (It's influenced my English a lot, which is part of why I write so damn much sometimes.)
"You make the impression of someone who always acheives what they set their mind to, yet simultaneously, you have been influenced by the classic German virtue of the capability of reflection, which, since the War, is thinking about everything (and really everything) three times before you decide anything. America and Europe find a dynamic combination of thinking and doing in you. You have -- or so you have seemed to us in the past weeks -- developed a great love for this country, for its people and customs, its everyday life and the small, quiet gestures which make us Holsteiner into what we are- mostly relatively calm people who rarely form friendships hastily (there it is again, the old German in us!), but constantly and deeply hold to what holds people together and think most about other people. Friends one makes here are often friends for life. Here, one doesn't pay much attention to shallowness (is that a word?) and flourishes, and someone like you (in some ways), runs contrary to us northerners, as you excite us with your intensity, bring us along with your desire for experience, and ground us with your directness."
For some reason, I've been going back a lot to Maggie lately. As some of you may know, she isn't talking to me, and I'm still working through some stuff from our relationship, both with what happened during it, as it was ending, and afterwards. I discovered last night that she's removed me and Screech from her livejournal friends list (she knew Screech from Manchester), and although I, in all honesty don't really care, still found that interesting. I've also been put on limited profile view on Facebook (although this isn't a recent development, and also apparently something that she regularly does with people of whom she isn't particularly fond). A few other things come to mind, but they're neither here nor there, I guess. Anyways, I, in a roundabout way, ended up on her non-livejournal blog, which she updates more regularly. While reading backposts to see if she posted anything around the time of our breakup (I was interested to see what, if anything, she had to say; the answer is apparently nothing), I found something related to something I had done.
First, a little bit of backstory. Maggie LOVES American Idol. This past season, she was particularly taken with the (admittedly quite good) contestant Jason Castro. By particularly taken, I mean obsessed. Hundreds of votes a week obsessed. A few weeks after we had broken up, when I was still hanging onto the possibility of someday getting back together with her while coming to terms both with the fact that that wouldn't happen and with the fact that I didn't really want that to happen and just starting to work through some stuff relating to our relationship, I was also in the throes of my eBay addiction. At around 3am, when I may as well have been slightly tipsy (in fact, that probably would have made the situation a little bit better, as I'd at least have that as an excuse), but was in fact quite sober, I bought (using buy-it-now, not an auction) a set of six Jason Castro buttons, and then contacted the seller and told them to send them to her with no way of identifying the sender. This was one of those ridiculous last-ditch attempts at getting someone to like you again that I generally look down upon and call, well, ridiculous, although this seemed like a great idea at the time. (Note at the time. By the time I woke up the next day, this was no longer a good idea.) (I just remembered that this was finals week, which should redeem me at least a little tiny bit.) So while I was reading her blog, I came across two posts about the buttons. These buttons... well, in some ways, they did what I wanted them to at 3am, except for, you know rejuvenate our relationship and get us talking again. (Although maybe that could have potentially happened, since she did text me asking me if I had sent them, and I replied that I hadn't since, at that point, I had realized how dumb what I had done was. Even if I had told her this, though, I really, really, really doubt that would have changed anything. If anything, it probably would have made our relationship more tenuous.)
And so that's gotten me thinking a lot. I don't regret doing it, necessarily... it did make her happier, at least, and I know that she's not terribly happy in her current situation anyways, but I don't like it when I do things that I don't necessarily know my own motivation for, if that makes any sense. Also, I don't like it that I did something that stupid and irrational.
I leave for Northern Ireland on Thursday. That's the day after tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to going, although I'm scared that I won't have a choir to sing in, and since I won't have a guitar... I won't have much music going on at all, which is not good news for me, especially as far as my mental and emotional well-being is concerned. I really wish I was in classes of some sort now... I thrive so much on academic work and critical analysis that I've almost gotten to the point of having to write research papers just because over the summer in order to keep myself sane. In all honesty, had I not had Screech around so much to provide me with (admittedly very welcome) discussions, I probably would have had to do this. I'm a lot angrier in the summer. Not angry in the mad sense of the word, but angry in the radical sense of the word. I just have all that energy in my head and nothing to channel it into.
As a going-away present from my dad, I got a used Nikon D70, as well as a few lenses and a bag and some random other camera stuff, some of which belonged to my grandpa before he died. I'm happy about this, and am excited to go away and have so many new things to take pictures of.
Also, I am going to take a few days off of school in October to go and see an Ani concert in London. I am excited for this!
The past couple of days, I've been in a really weird place, one that I can only compare (and even to that only somewhat) to how I felt before I was going to leave for Germany. I spent the weekend with Screech (my partner), and most of it was... well, in all honesty, really bittersweet. I really loved being able to have that last weekend with him... that last chance for cuddles and kisses and falling asleep in each other's arms, but it was really hard, too, especially as Sunday drew to a close and he had to leave to head back up to Ft. Wayne because of work in the morning. The prospect of spending 4 1/2 months away from him is... well, neither of us are looking forward to it, but we're viewing getting through it as more or less our only option.
I've also, in some ways, been going back to the past a lot. I've been rereading a certain passage from a letter that two of my teachers (one of whom I'm still in contact with today) gave me on my last day of school in Germany, and that made me cry when I read it for the first time... I posted it in German in my old journal, but I'll post a translation here. Pardon the roughness of some of it- a lot of the concepts and phrases are hard to translate, and German is often such a wordy language. (It's influenced my English a lot, which is part of why I write so damn much sometimes.)
"You make the impression of someone who always acheives what they set their mind to, yet simultaneously, you have been influenced by the classic German virtue of the capability of reflection, which, since the War, is thinking about everything (and really everything) three times before you decide anything. America and Europe find a dynamic combination of thinking and doing in you. You have -- or so you have seemed to us in the past weeks -- developed a great love for this country, for its people and customs, its everyday life and the small, quiet gestures which make us Holsteiner into what we are- mostly relatively calm people who rarely form friendships hastily (there it is again, the old German in us!), but constantly and deeply hold to what holds people together and think most about other people. Friends one makes here are often friends for life. Here, one doesn't pay much attention to shallowness (is that a word?) and flourishes, and someone like you (in some ways), runs contrary to us northerners, as you excite us with your intensity, bring us along with your desire for experience, and ground us with your directness."
For some reason, I've been going back a lot to Maggie lately. As some of you may know, she isn't talking to me, and I'm still working through some stuff from our relationship, both with what happened during it, as it was ending, and afterwards. I discovered last night that she's removed me and Screech from her livejournal friends list (she knew Screech from Manchester), and although I, in all honesty don't really care, still found that interesting. I've also been put on limited profile view on Facebook (although this isn't a recent development, and also apparently something that she regularly does with people of whom she isn't particularly fond). A few other things come to mind, but they're neither here nor there, I guess. Anyways, I, in a roundabout way, ended up on her non-livejournal blog, which she updates more regularly. While reading backposts to see if she posted anything around the time of our breakup (I was interested to see what, if anything, she had to say; the answer is apparently nothing), I found something related to something I had done.
First, a little bit of backstory. Maggie LOVES American Idol. This past season, she was particularly taken with the (admittedly quite good) contestant Jason Castro. By particularly taken, I mean obsessed. Hundreds of votes a week obsessed. A few weeks after we had broken up, when I was still hanging onto the possibility of someday getting back together with her while coming to terms both with the fact that that wouldn't happen and with the fact that I didn't really want that to happen and just starting to work through some stuff relating to our relationship, I was also in the throes of my eBay addiction. At around 3am, when I may as well have been slightly tipsy (in fact, that probably would have made the situation a little bit better, as I'd at least have that as an excuse), but was in fact quite sober, I bought (using buy-it-now, not an auction) a set of six Jason Castro buttons, and then contacted the seller and told them to send them to her with no way of identifying the sender. This was one of those ridiculous last-ditch attempts at getting someone to like you again that I generally look down upon and call, well, ridiculous, although this seemed like a great idea at the time. (Note at the time. By the time I woke up the next day, this was no longer a good idea.) (I just remembered that this was finals week, which should redeem me at least a little tiny bit.) So while I was reading her blog, I came across two posts about the buttons. These buttons... well, in some ways, they did what I wanted them to at 3am, except for, you know rejuvenate our relationship and get us talking again. (Although maybe that could have potentially happened, since she did text me asking me if I had sent them, and I replied that I hadn't since, at that point, I had realized how dumb what I had done was. Even if I had told her this, though, I really, really, really doubt that would have changed anything. If anything, it probably would have made our relationship more tenuous.)
And so that's gotten me thinking a lot. I don't regret doing it, necessarily... it did make her happier, at least, and I know that she's not terribly happy in her current situation anyways, but I don't like it when I do things that I don't necessarily know my own motivation for, if that makes any sense. Also, I don't like it that I did something that stupid and irrational.
I leave for Northern Ireland on Thursday. That's the day after tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to going, although I'm scared that I won't have a choir to sing in, and since I won't have a guitar... I won't have much music going on at all, which is not good news for me, especially as far as my mental and emotional well-being is concerned. I really wish I was in classes of some sort now... I thrive so much on academic work and critical analysis that I've almost gotten to the point of having to write research papers just because over the summer in order to keep myself sane. In all honesty, had I not had Screech around so much to provide me with (admittedly very welcome) discussions, I probably would have had to do this. I'm a lot angrier in the summer. Not angry in the mad sense of the word, but angry in the radical sense of the word. I just have all that energy in my head and nothing to channel it into.
As a going-away present from my dad, I got a used Nikon D70, as well as a few lenses and a bag and some random other camera stuff, some of which belonged to my grandpa before he died. I'm happy about this, and am excited to go away and have so many new things to take pictures of.
Also, I am going to take a few days off of school in October to go and see an Ani concert in London. I am excited for this!