(no subject)
I pretend to study harder than I actually do. I sit and play tetris between flashcards (or study a flashcard now and then, between tetris) and see the most beautiful hours of the day rushing past the library window. My glasses feel strange on my face today. Sometimes I have to stop what I'm doing to let a thought consume me.
To stop and stare at Ted's baseball cap on my floor, and imagine him wearing it, and imagine dancing.
To stop by the alley and explain to someone that yes, this is the building that is boarded up now, that is where the fire came from and this is where I was sleeping. Here is where the smoke billowed out, here is where I stood, shivering and watching. I can still smell the smell when I walk by, and I'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but is it the smell of 2 people dying here? Burning here? I can't keep that fear away, and I don't know if other people can smell it or not. And I'm afraid to ask.
"I feel a fool for the way I act at night," I tell someone I've just met, "sloshing and careening from person to person, singing but not dancing, shaking without moving.."
To actually say words means more, somehow, than just to write them-- they slide out easily, though, and I don't care what impression I am making--maybe it's a new stage I stand on now, or maybe it's just the drugs. I'll never know, and tomorrow I won't remember exactly how it felt to say some of these things out loud. If I am embarassed, I'll just tell myself I've got it all wrong. It's easy to talk to strangers and its easy to blame a substance and its easy to believe what you want to. It's hard to know how others see you and hard not to feel that the passage of time has different speeds.
Hindsight's20/20? Like hell it is: memories are always distorted. You remember things through the lens of how you felt, not how they actually happened. We all know this is true, but how do we reconcile this confusion, and make it stop?
Today I stop to look at this row of light green trees filling out on a long sidewalk, I tell myself to do this because it is perfect. It's amazing that I actually have to stop everything in order to notice that, Yes, I'm at a university, and Yes, I'm really walking on this gorgeous earth with a sense of entitlement and possession-- (as if any of it is really mine-- or anyone's!), and No, not a single beautiful thing my eyes feast upon is a dream.
Can you imagine how the universe laughs as we exchange deeds for land and mortgage houses, really believing certain special pieces of paper mean anything at all? As if we won't all die in a fraction of eternity, in the time it takes the world to chuckle to itself and say, "ah, where were we? Oh yes.."
The law students greet me as they come in. They hurry. Walk with heavy steps. Assert themselves. Photocopy. And I pretend to be working-- reading or typing up study guides. Shelving or doing research. This job is weary of me, and I of it. It means nothing to sit here and answer questions and pretend. In the most obvious way, I get the sense that most jobs mean nothing, and if I had any sense, I'd stop in my tracks and run the other way and do everything in my power not to graduate college and have a career. I'd grow vegetables instead, and have a lot of kids.
Why is it that when you're world weary, you feel as though you've always been that way, and when you are happy and the sun is on you and you are looking people in the face, you feel as thought you will always be that happy, and nothing could change it? I've been thinking about that. I guess it's just that, however you felt in the past really doesn't matter. You can't remember feelings accurately, I think we've been through that. It's like when you're healthy, you can't imagine how bad it feels to be sick--you just can't recall that type of uncomfortableness. Or you forget what it's really like to miss someone, and scold yourself for being so silly once they're back.
Sometimes I have to sit and type or talk for hours before there is one single sentence that means anything, and I'm not even sure I've done that much. Still, it feels good to be irresponsible, say things that I'm not sure of as if they're true, and neglect reality & school.
I'd like to listen more, to what other people are trying to say. But often it seems, when you're ready to listen, that the chatter stops and you just hear yourself breathing.