(no subject)
i'm on the verge of hurting my back, it's happened before, (even in elementary) and a war wound--from bending into an ice-machine at work. i'm laying on ice and i hate having to think between lay and lie, and i'm often wrong, but i'll never change it. i'm ok with colloquialisms, except for who/whom, because a teacher once told me that she didn't even teach the difference, it didn't matter. but it matters for the SAT and my whole life i've found important what matters to the SAT, even analogies. i still care about analogies. how else can you use so many colons? my room is clean and there is still so much to organize. and my car is broken and as much as i love it, the unreliability kills me. but not more than the fact that the next one's on me. in a perfect world, my grandfather would realize he was blind and give me his other car. but he doesn't understand why i don't clean the first one he gave me, and he thinks i clutch too much and speed too much and revere too little. there's no one else it could go to though, and at least i've always been polite. in a more real-world scenario, he'd crash and no one would get it. all he sees is the periphery, and it's cloudy at best. and i guess to him, oncoming traffic isn't in his peripheral vision. i haven't been on a plane in years and i miss it. the feeling that i have no other course of action than to do. it's one place where i oddly don't daydream. i write letters, and observe. i once listened to the LoTR soundtrack (HA, that i would automatically abbreviate that, as if i said it often, as if everyone said it often) on the plane (and had a discman) next to this young, black, mother, who didn't seem much older than me, but was surely much more hip-hop than me (hello, colloquialism. my mother would insist "I"), and i just knew she judged. who was this white 14 year old geek? (really, i thought dweeb, but there really is no cool word for what i'm saying. no one calls anyone "lame" anymore. we're all douches.) i felt like a douche getting a ride home with the tow-truck guy. he was nice, my age, but missing some teeth and explaining that he used to live in gibsonville. i knew he thought he'd made it listening to 102.1 jams in his pimped-truck in the big-city, and i said i went to UNCG and hated that it was in my home town. he mentioned how nice the houses were, and did i live here? or did my mechanic? and i said i did, and could he hold on a second while i figured out which drive-way he should unload my car in? and now i'm a douche 20 year old driving a lexus, feeling judged by all the recessionistas, and knowing that there are kids younger than me with nicer cars than this loaner, which is my only saving grace. i'm not at all good at reading. i swear i used to love it, and in the middle of each book, i do. until something else comes up and i never finish. the last few novels i've read on my own time, of my own accord, i've re-read at least three times the beginning and mid-middle, for i've come back to realize i remembered nothing. proust is due soon and (thank-god for online renewal) i haven't even started. and twice my grandfather has asked me what i'm reading, like we would bond, when really he just reads tom clancy and the like, who i know i will never read, for all the literature i'll never get to (i'm a snob, too good for clancy, too good for proust, way too good for poetry), and i say "i'm reading proust. it's a french classic." "what's it about,' "i'm not very far." "i mean, what's the plot? what's the story?" "it's literature." "what's it like?" "....i'm five pages in." it was miserable trying to convey to him that Franny and Zooey was character-driven, really. that the plot was a breakdown of a girl unable to realize her religion? but really that it's not about religion, it's about finding a hub/center/place? i didn't even try. but he would have laughed. i gave him the jungle and 1984 because he hates the FDA and its currently lack standards and thinks obama is a socialist who he hopes to god fails. and i told him i didn't mean them to fuel his political fodder, but anyway, i'm trying. maybe he'll think of me when the computers he hates in his Honda break he blame socialism. for as familiar as sounds are, my dogs will never get used to this new washer and dryer, and every spin of the drum clanking something. it's a pain to reassure when you're calm. there's no empathy in telling a baby that he's ok after a while. you just can't wait for him to realize that there are more uncomfortable things than gas in the long-run. i told my sister that it must suck trying to anticipate needs to an infant. she said it was not that bad now. that really, it's a few possible wrongs, acid reflux, gas, hunger, uncomfort, or sleepiness. for all those basic needs, and for all that can be done for them, the baby is still unsatisfied. i understand the grand-schema of things, that for all my plangent teen-angst woes there were thousands of actually miserable people in the world. tell me you have a headache and i'll look you in the eye and say "some people don't even have heads." but really, as you know me and my "broken" back that i'm favoring, i don't mind complaining about the simple things. but this baby has already seen the worst, immunizations, probes, being taken from the womb one month early, etc. and you want to tell him that he's not poor or sad. that he's loved and taken care of, and all his needs are attended to and really, wouldn't it be fair for everyone to realize that? to be able to push through the bad and protect the good? i want to know what really changes people. like what jump my dog recently failed so that now, he is timid, and lunges far away and takes a running leap, which really is a leap of faith, if he could comprehend that a failure to land with momentum hurts more than a failure without it. and i hate the realization that so much of human interaction is pandering. i was recently too kind to say that i hated a cheesecake made by a family friend, when really it's not his cheesecake but the reality that i hate all flavored cheesecake, really. chocolate raspberry (as he made) especially. and i cooked every fucking meal for three days, and had no "fun" at all of playing wii, cards, or even chatting for i had meals to be made. and i was complimented out the wazoo--but i'm sure it was more for the realization of the work and the gratuity that no one else had to do it that brought on the compliments. everyone panders rather than understands or takes fault.