make

All I want to do is create things.
I've suffered a severe allergic reaction to hair dye and fallen behind on my work. I don't know how to get back on track. I don't know how to get started because the piles of work are too tall for me to see over. I am in another student film so I don't have weekends to get work done in. All the drugs they have me on make me sleepy, weak and dizzy. Ihave to get my schedule worked out for this january and next semester, I have to start thinking about study abroad. I am not sure how to get where I am trying to go. I crave guidance and I need help but I don't know who to turn to. I can't believe my two best friends are gone. They anchored me, with them around we were going through all this together.
I don't understand how people transition from school to work, I don't know what skills I need to get a job, I don't know what kind of a job I want. I would love to work for a magazine, I would love to do something involving DIY and design. I feel like I need to get started on all of these things right now but I can't find the time with the work I have to do and the depression that weighs on me.
I want a mentor, a role model, an advisor. I don't know where or how to find this person. I want a big sister, someone to fall back on, someone who's advice I can trust.
I feel silly spewing about my small life on the internet. But I don't think that any life is small and this way at least my thoughts are released into the universe.

take

Take me there, take me away
to a little place, a small space
where I can be enclosed, enfolded in your warmth and safety
I can do anything if I have company
I can do anything if I don't have to do it alone.
I feel all the possibilities for different ways life could have gone
slipping by with every second.
Every glance carries a weight
there are voices singing to me and I can't see them
can't reach to their bodies.
I need the physicality of another person,
I need you

long gone

My two best friends at school didn't come back this year. I feel a little lost.
I am so sick of being sad.

Procrastination

Just think of all the things I could have accomplished If I only put them off for half the time I normally do.

memory loss

Sometimes I look back on my previous posts and I don't remember writing them.

I feel so disjointed these days.

The mystical magical sought after being.
The hairy little monster between my legs will eat you up.

Big Hair, Big Lashes

I want to be in a super glam girl band.

I Love You Really, I Don't Mean This

Fuck you for making me wonder
Fuck you for making me think
even for one second
that your heart is changed
I need to know you love me completely
Every second of the day
or I need to know you don't
But I won't let you play
any games with my time
my summer's too precious
too porous and fleeting
to spend it dreaming of you
if you wont be meeting
me halfway along
If you expect me to wait
I need a good reason
I need to be sure
cause you've had your time
to see other girls

I hate you
for seeming to be
better at this
whole deal than me

You Were Right About The Stars

Wilco soothes my aching brain. 'I assassin down the avenue' - so good

Spending my day in the library again, I am more concerned with design and color and wind and folded paper than I am with taking a literal definition of art from a stream of consciousness book for an analytical essay.

The trees have been blowing dried buds in on Nora and I where we sit with our open windows. The big green leafy one has been flirting with the dainty white flowered lovely.

I've been reading and loving www.ohjoy.blogs.com.

Bookish Angels

I am in the library and the pouring that I've been anticipating has finally come.
My dear Nora and I went and rested our foreheads against the frame of an open window, kneeling on a bench. I stretched my arms out into the rain. The breeze alternated between warm air flowing out from behind us and cool air blowing in from outside. The rain came in waves of monsoon through spring shower. Sometimes the water drops were huge, plodding down from the sky to pebble my arms. Water dripped on the inside of my elbow from the window. When the wind blew droplets into my eyes i put on my sunglasses so I wouldn't have to close them. We watched girls with and without umbrellas running and tripping through the wet. The lightning and thunder was exhilarating. I felt so refreshed, washed clean of my stress over finals. Gorgeous.
I've been in and out of the library since one today. I am getting jack done. I have come to the conclusion that I don't know what makes a good essay, let alone how to write one.

These bookish angels peering down from the rafters
seem stern and malicious some days
watching over generations of students
trying to mend lazy ways
they hold books and scrolls looming over us
like prison guards waiting to strike
I can't get work done in their unblinking gaze
but they keep me as long as they like
releasing me into the grim light of dawn
to drag myself back to my room
I feel their disapproving glares on my back
as I plod ever on towards my doom

$1,000,000

I am so not engaged in my schoolwork right now. My favorite classes are over so all those long, hard, satisfying days struggling with my work in the art studio are over. Letting it all loose in improv sessions for acting class is gone. All that I am left with are essays and final exams.
I was reminded the other day that grades actually have jack shit to do with how smart you are. I keep trying to tell myself that I don't care about them but I am so caught up in the idea that they matter in some way.
Of course I don't actually have any real interest in doing something with my life that requires getting good grades.
The whole exercise feels pointless.

Today is one of those odd late spring warm, cloudy days.
I stood underneath the million dollar tree earlier
It was still wet from the rain last night, drying slowly in the moist air
It is called the million dollar tree because my school had to redesign the plans for the library additions when students protested cutting down the tree. They lost 1 million dollars to save it.
And how very worth it it was
this behemoth is priceless
his skin is the wrinkled gray of an elephant
Bulbous warts decorate his trunk
And every spring he retains his youth
With paper thin, silk soft new leaves
they are green tinged with rose
filtering light through the shelter of his branches

All The Things I can't Remember

I am surfing the web looking for a reflection
The garish neon green of new buds out my window looks wrong against the dull browns of wood and the cold greys of clouds reflected in water.
Every now and then I feel like crying, mourning for a little girl who I can't help. There is so much that I can't remember from my childhood. I only remember the way it made me feel. People ask me what was so bad about my father. I find it impossible to produce an answer in words. How do you express the incredible guilt and fear, confusion and desperation created in a child's heart through years of mental abuse and manipulation. The word brainwashing sounds to people like something out of a science fiction novel, a spy movie. They don't realize the real world applications it can have on a child when her torturer is one of the people she is supposed to trust and love more than anyone else, one of the people who is supposed to take care of her.

Watching Myself

Tonight is my movie premier for the student film i starred in last semester. I am nervous. I have no idea how it is going to turn out, I just know it isn't my best work. I can't stand to watch myself on video if I am actually trying to act. When I'm just goofing off it is usually fine, often funny. I'm worried that this film will only be funny because it's so bad. Let's face it, the script is nothing special. It is a low budget c movie put together by a bunch of college kids. It is all melodrama and genre switching every 5 minutes. The film swings between drama, road trip movie, romantic comedy, horror film, comedy and spoof. Maybe it will actually be good, I'm just nervous. If I ever do become an actress I wonder if I will be able to watch myself in movies. I wish that I could see how everyone reacts to this one without them knowing I'm there.
I've talked about it so much now that I think everyone has high expectations. A TON of my friends are coming, my mom is driving down from New York. It is nerve wracking. It's funny. I don't really get stage fright, but having people see a movie I did, that is something different. I don't have as much control, we didn't do real rehearsals. Plus in the few clips I've seen I mostly look like hell. The makeup girl tried to curl my hair which doesn't work very well for me. It just looks stiff and messy and it is in my eyes a lot. It is all going to be ok though. I had a lot of fun doing it, that is what matters. It's my first movie.

I over-think things. I get into a mood of analyzing my every word, every person's actions. It only serves to confuse me. I have a feeling that I need to have everything figured out right now. I need to get everything done right now. But I have all the time. All the time in the world.

Now for the important question. What do I wear?

walking on water

I saw a man walking on water the other day. It was a sunday, I was sitting in the dining hall eating brunch when I saw him stroll across the lake without a ripple. it was a trick of the light, a reflection from one window onto another. But I like how magic can be possible in those small moments, before you realize what it is you are seeing. Who know, maybe he did walk on water, maybe the same man I saw walking down the path was a trick of the light. It wasn't in any way a religious experience. He was just going for a stroll.

I was eating alone and I decided to slow down and just sit, look at the lake, eat in peace. When I actually slowed down enough to taste my food I realized it was crap. Dining hall waffles. yuck.
I ate it anyway, I'm sick of cereal.

Trails

Yesterday I found some secret trails in the woods. Not so secret really, trails by nature never are. The beer bottles half buried under leaf mulch from before the first snow say something about their use. But they are secret to me. When i am under the budding trees, on top of the hill away from my school I feel alone in the best way. These are the places I go for peace. The places I go to see the sky, see the sunset, see the horizon. I need views, I should have been tall.
Today I was walking my paths, meandering through the woods towards my dorm. It is the best kind of gray day and I was enjoying the gentle glow of the faded orange-tan-brown leaves covering the ground. It started to drizzle as I was taking pictures of a log - fungus as inspiration for dress. I put my camera away to feel the rain. The air is so fresh today, with the perfect breeze to keep it moving. I ruined my leather jacket in the rain, it is distressed now but oh so worth it.

The Trees Won't Tell

"Hey Nora, can I have one of these cigarettes?" I asked earlier this evening, smelling the full pack of American Spirits that had been sitting in my friend's room for weeks.
"Umm..Sure." She answered, looking at me a little funny. I tucked a cigarette behind my ear as I'd seen my friend Holden do, feeling kind of cool and hypocritical at the same time. As I left I asked if I could borrow a lighter, and she dug around for a while until she found the only one she owns.
"I hate to fuel this habit." She said, frowning as she handed me her blue bic.
"Don't worry about it." I said, "I only do it every now and then."
We kissed good night and I walked out in the drizzle towards my dorm listening to 'How We Operate' by Gomez.
I bypassed the path to my dorm and instead headed for the trail through the woods, around the lake. When I got out of the light pollution of campus I walked a little further and inexpertly lit my cigarette. I barely inhaled the first cautious puff. It's not that I'd never smoked before but this was only the second cigarette that I smoked on my own without the numbing effects of alcohol. As for why I was standing in the middle of the woods in the freezing drizzle at 11:30 pm when I have plenty of friends who would be thrilled to hear that I was smoking, I'm not entirely sure I can answer that coherently.
Part of me simply didn't want to be a hypocrite or make a fool of myself. I was certainly glad to be alone as I coughed my way through each inhale. But more than that, smoking is something I was doing just for myself. It is both my own private rebellion and my secret little safety blanket. I stand in the trees and the wet smoking and I am completely alone, making a decision for myself even though I know it's something I'm not supposed to do (and I do feel a little bit cool despite the coughing). The smoke is a familiar thing, reminding me especially of my brother Steven who is currently in Iraq. He always used to beg me to keep him company while he smoked on our porch. I usually said yes even though I detested his habit and thought he was stupid for wasting his money and jeopardizing his health. I enjoyed those quiet, meaningful little talks we had too much not to indulge him.
Besides, even if I get addicted at least the craving and the secret of it would momentarily keep my mind away from my undeniable anger and my unfounded feeling of directionless-ness.
I won't ever tell most people about this habit. Steven was all too thrilled when he got me shit-faced drunk at his going away party for boot camp and he found me outside chain smoking with a couple of his buddies which I don't remember at all(That's a story for another time). The last thing I'd want him to know after years of bitching at him about it is that I'm now occasionally indulging in his nasty habit.
My mother would be dissapointed in me, I wouldn't be living up to people's ever growing expectations. Most of my smoker friends would probably happily consider me to be one of them, except for those who would also be dissapointed in me. There would most likely be plenty of people happy to see me fall off my high horse. But I didn't fall, I quietly dismounted. Though I certainly don't plan to quit bitching at all my friends and family who smoke.

Out in the woods I turn away from the lights of the dorms. I stare up at the grey sky framed in bare trees and I smoke and I cough. But I feel good, comfortable out here, unjudged amongst the trees. When my cigarette is gone I extinguish it in the snow with a satisfying hiss. I enjoy the old cigarette taste in my mouth as I walk back. It reminds me of nights hanging out with Steven when he's gotten home at 3 and I'm still up, or standing with Holden in the freezing parking structure so he can have a cigarette before we go sit in our favorite cafe which he loved first and then introduced me to.
In my dorm I kind of want to go borrow some nail polish remover to fix up the sloppy manicure I gave mself in Nora's room but I don't feel like washing away this smell just yet and I don't want anyone to know.