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Last night I went over to Trevor's. I 0wned at Soldat and he pretty much whipped me in Virtua Fighter 4, so we both felt pretty good about our skillz. We also watched Equilibrium, an unremarkable movie if one should ignore the action scenes, which were, I can say with some certainty, the coolest I have ever seen in a movie. Somehow, while the sun rose, we ended up playing Virtua Fighter again after a very long conversation. We went to bed eventually, and slept in very late.
I do this thing, it seems, where I break out in a continuous cold sweat the day after I stay up way too late. I don't actually get that sweaty, but I feel very stuffy, very heavy-lidded, and very chilled. There are no headaches involved, though, for which I'm grateful. That happened today on the way home, in early-mid-afternoon, but it passed after showering and getting some breakfast down (breakfast was at about 4 in the afternoon).
Anyway, Hannah had a one-day respite from ASP today. She's been there for a week, and is leaving tomorrow for another week. Keep in mind that she is the only one at her church who is staying for both weeks, and her lack of good sense will be evident in short order. At least she means well. ...Well, probably. Actually, in all likelihood, it is all a part of some large and unfathomably evil plot, and many small innocent animals, erstwhile residents of the Kentucky forests, lie as heaps of ash, victims of certain radiative powers.
The other elements of DSFBC arrived at her house today by various means and spent a couple hours in that vicinity. It was good to have the group whole again, but, as we painstakingly established, every single one of us was sleep-deprived, so energy, other than that of the last-burst-before-dropping-dead variety, was not in abundance.
I biked there and back; on the way back, I noticed that honeysuckle was still blooming. As I stopped to have some, I noticed just how amazing the sunset was, with the evening rainclouds blowing out. Sunsets after a rain are always the most beautiful, it seems. From my bedroom window, which faces west, I could see the perfect shades of orange and pink on the forest pseudo-horizon, as well as the dappled gray clouds against the darkening blue sky overhead.
posted on Saturday, June 28, 2003
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A lot of the songs on The Ataris' new CD (So Long, Astoria) bring to mind driving across the huge, empty plains of Montana, and the constellations and meteor flashes I watched for hours some nights. No idea why. But it makes me think of how much I'd love to go back to Montana, and sit under those peaceful skies that stretch from horizon to horizon...
posted on Thursday, June 26, 2003
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This evening, Diana, Erica, Trevor, and I went over to Elena's. It really was good to see friends again, and we had a great time talking and watching Analyze This, but it made leaving somewhat saddening. It seems I can't say goodbye to friends anymore without looking back wistfully.
After the long ride home with Trevor, I biked out to a dark, quiet part of the neighborhood, and watched stars and fireflies and breathed the heavy fragrances of summer. Feeling a little lonely, I considered for some time the idea that the stars would keep burning even if there was no one left to see them. Of course, there's a very similar arboreally-inclined saying, but it seems infinitely more tragic in the case of stars.
(Another entry written last night on notebook paper.)
posted on Thursday, June 26, 2003
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Back from the stay up at Grandma's and the family reunion. Wasn't a particularly large reunion; it was held in a house, and there were less than 50 people in there, the majority of whom I'd never seen before. There was exactly one person my age present - a first cousin of the feminine persuasion. That was a... "not unwelcome" development. Without her around, I don't think I could have stood 4+ hours of strangers claiming shared blood. My uncle mentioned to me that her mom had also been very pretty at that age, which I found amusing.
Anyway, not the most eventful of weekends. But it wasn't at all bad.
posted on Sunday, June 22, 2003
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Erica's at Hilton Head, so the battered remnant of DSFBC straggled over to Adventure Landing for Putt-putt and arcade games. I was undefeated at air hockey, the Soul Calibur II machine ate many tokens, Trevor and I blew zombies apart with various and sundry firearms... Hannah and I made a bet that whoever lost our game of air hockey would have to play Dance Dance Revolution. At the end of the game, we both walked off to the DDR machine, me with a wicked grin on my face and Hannah with extreme reluctance. I ended up joining her out of sympathy; we were both hopeless failures at it. However, Trevor laughed at us, so we made ourselves feel better by making him play. Miniature golf was appropriately spiteful, with the hurling of myriad and lame insults (as well as water cascading from the heavens).
I'm very tired, for whatever reason. Tomorrow we're leaving to go to a reunion for my dad's side of the family in the North Carolina mountains. We're not getting back until Sunday, so unless Fate smiles upon me with particular warmth there shall not be much blogging between now and then.
posted on Thursday, June 19, 2003
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Okay, so I'm at Michael's and it's some obscene hour of the morning. Trevor is also here, and the three of us have just finished watching the entire Trigun series. The whole series, that is, besides the first few episodes, which we'd all already seen multiple times. This was about twenty episodes of about twenty minutes each. We've spent rather a great deal of time at this.
I'd already known it was an awesome series and all - hero rocks, funny as hell, etc. By the end of the series, though... well, I never expected anything that good. I actually teared up when one of my favorite characters died. Color me fanboy, I guess. But right now, I can't get over how... powerful it was. And yet, hilarious. Only in anime, as Trevor and I both said to each other at more or less the same time.
Go to bed? Nonsense. This group doesn't get together often, and there's a lot of catching up to do. Or at least pillowfights. On second thought, pillowfights are much more probable.
posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2003
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Boring day, more or less.
posted on Monday, June 16, 2003
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Imagine Luke Skywalker about to plunge into the heart of the Death Star, ready to deal the finishing blow to the Empire, when he suddenly loses his nerve, pulls out, stammers to his stricken wingmen that they don't know what's in there, that it could be a blazing nuclear inferno or a dead-end maze of steel, while the galaxy looks on and wonders why he was a coward right when it mattered, and he goes back to Dagobah as the assault falls apart, back to sitting beside a swamp and hating himself.
Imagine a boy, a heartbeat away from speaking a simple truth that could change his life, but bailing even as he has the words about to burst out of his mouth, thinking that it's too early, because he really has no idea where this could land him, but knowing that someday it'll be too late, and dreading that day, because ignorance of the future can't hide you from the truth forever.
(Note: this was actually written at one in the morning, while a thunderstorm raged outside. But I don't have a computer in my room, so I had to make do with scribbling this down on notebook paper and waiting until now to enter it.)
posted on Sunday, June 15, 2003
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Lake Pine has today been twice encircled by dual footprints, one set belonging to Hannah and the other to me. First walk around - fun but uneventful. Then we decided we really ought to explore a side trail or two, so we casually ignored the looming storm (although Hannah did grab a raincoat from her car) and walked halfway around, to a trail that was closed for repairs. On the way there, I pointlessly ripped my shirt on a pointless chain-link fence. Climbing really would be easier when naked, in many ways. You know where your body is, and unless you're tremendously fat or something, you don't have do worry about bits of yourself getting caught on, say, stupid fences that don't have a right to exist! or whatever else may be nearby. But when you've got a shirt hanging off you - damn things can't stay out of trouble - it'll snag, and rip with a sound painful to mine ears. Painful, that is, if it's my shirt. Otherwise funny. I'm not going to talk about this anymore because it was really a bit humiliating, and very much annoying. Ah well, I got a lot of usage out of that shirt, as my brother before me.
But lo! it got better from there. Shortly after I detached from the fence (which there really wasn't much point to climbing) and we resumed our journey toward the far side and unexplored territory, the clouds, which had been rumbling with thunder in an attempt at being ominous for at least twenty minutes and thereby annoying Hannah, decided they really did have the gumption to kick up a storm, by Jove, and started pouring the proverbial rain upon our heads. Lots of it. We explored the side trail, found it led to Apex Community Park, then started heading back at what must have been a rather sedate pace because we really took a long time getting back, and not just because we sighted disgustingly cute (fuzzy, yellow-and-brown) goslings. Anyway, Hannah was thoroughly dampened and I was soaking wet (no raincoat, you see) by the time we got back to the car... so after waiting for the rain to stop, Hannah drove us both back to her house. I drank Ovaltine for the first time and was loaned a substantially less hydrated shirt, then headed home after my mom called and heckled us. Close to two-point-five hours total, I think. Awesome afternoon. Definitely beat sitting around, even the good kind of sitting around.
This evening, we went to a prayer service at St. Raphael's (in North Raleigh) for Mr. Stapleton's daughter, Angela, who has an inoperable brain tumor. It was... sobering, but at least wasn't funereal. I don't know what they'd do if their only daughter died, though...
Note: this post belongs in yesterday's section. Posted after midnight, so Blogger thinks it's Friday. They ought to fix that.
I don't want to hear about it being Friday.
posted on Friday, June 13, 2003
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"Are you going to live your life
Standing in the back, looking around?
Are you going to waste your time?
Got to make a move or you'll miss out
Someone is going to ask you what it's all about
Stick around; nostalgia won't let you down
Someone is going to ask you what it's all about
What are you going to have to say for yourself?
... Want to always feel like part of this was mine
Want to fall in love tonight
Here, tonight"
- A Praise Chorus, Jimmy Eat World
There are a lot of nights when I've felt that, and hoped that just maybe it could come true. Once I was even listening to the song at the time... not hard to guess how that felt.
posted on Thursday, June 12, 2003
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I seem to have slept very well last night. Right now, I can't bring myself to feel unhappy about much of anything. There may be a little frustration lurking in the back of my mind, but it seems to've picked up on the general mood of things in there and kindly decided to just let it go.
Also, I only realized very recently that the whole butterflies-in-one's-stomach thing is not merely some concoction of primitive emo kids (ahem: poets), but is actually an observable phenomenon. Not that I hadn't noticed the sensation before, oh no - I just hadn't made the connection between the fluttering and the butterflies. I feel kind of stupid now, but in an upbeat sort of way.
posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2003
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Went to the library the other day and picked up somewhere between four and ten books (use your imagination and make up a number, lazy ones; I'm tired of doing all the work around here), among them William Gibson's newest book Pattern Recognition and a favorite from three years back, Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I jumped straight into Prelude to Foundation and finished it in well under a day, and was delighted to find that I still enjoyed it immensely, despite the fact that I was reading it mainly for the purpose of hearkening back to the summer after seventh grade. Asimov has a way of describing the far future that's incredibly minimalist but pulls me in nonetheless.
In the same day I finished rereading The Songs of Distant Earth (Arthur C. Clarke) as well. Thoroughly science fiction, and depressing in all the right ways...
Pattern Recognition is quirky but great. Unlike Neuromancer and all the cyberpunk stuff, it's set in the present day; however, it still retains all that grittiness. And the way Gibson has of describing things is formidable - it goes straight to the essence by a route that's often amusing as well as both mind-rendingly specific and brief. Haven't finished it yet but I'm enjoying it.
On to other postings, with the book commentary done with. I felt a need to get that out of my system, but I don't have to feel good about it.
posted on Tuesday, June 10, 2003
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Since I can't sleep in, I think the solution is to start going to bed sooner. Not a very appealing idea, but going to bed by midnight or so should do the trick.
posted on Monday, June 09, 2003
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Last night, I never got around to recording the events of the last few days, so I'll do that now.
Trevor came over on Friday. Erica was at Hannah's from Thursday until Saturday, so we cooked up a covert DSFBC meeting, initiated at about ten-thirty on Friday night and ending close to one in the morning. I'd been out before with little warning in a similar time frame, so I didn't figure my parents would mind. Trevor and I didn't tell them we were meeting Erica and Hannah at Hannah's house, however - we just told them we were going out to wander around on our bikes. Anyway, we had fun - walked along a gigantic power line corridor in the woods with thousands of fireflies flashing overhead, wandered through Hannah's neighborhood, etc. In an attempt to curtail the destructive electromagnetic powers of a certain individual, I stole Hannah's glasses with Trevor's assistance and managed to retain them until Hannah started aiming to sterilize. Eventually we went back to Hannah's house and sat on her back porch for a while, and devised interesting ways to fit excessive numbers of people on a hanging bench, and talked. Going home kind of sucked...
My parents apparently got suspicious at the length of our "bike ride" and ended up calling Hannah's parents and getting the whole story. They were all unhappy that I deceived them and stuff, but only grounded me for a day. Claimed they would have let me go if I asked them, they did. I'm not sure I believe it, but I may as well try them next time.
On account of groundage, the four of us didn't get to have a less secretive meeting on Saturday, so Trevor just went home that afternoon and I sort of sat around, until my dad asked if I wanted to go see The Core that evening. So we did, and it was a decent movie. Nothing extraordinary, but nice special effects, reasonable plot, and believable characters.
posted on Sunday, June 08, 2003
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Talking to her is like looking through a wormhole in space, trying to communicate across countless light-years - seeing and understanding, but knowing that the two realities aren't connected in any conceivable way. It's like meeting someone who I used to know very well twenty years from now, and laughing over shared memories, but not managing to actually strike up an honest conversation. But as she sits a half inch away from me, I can't believe that there's no way around it. She orbits the same star as me, on the same planet, in the same geopolitical sector, a short bike ride away and often much closer. She is anything but a stranger who I'm seeing for the first time in twenty years. Nothing so stupid and pointless has any right to exist; and I'll try to break it down in the only way I know how: by not giving up.
posted on Sunday, June 08, 2003
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"Here in this diary I write you visions of my summer
It was the best I ever had
There were choruses and sing-alongs
And that unspoken feeling of knowing that
Right now is all that matters ...
... I guess when it comes down to it,
Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up
These are the best days of our lives ..."
- In This Diary, The Ataris
I'm done with my sophomore year. Okay, yeah. Another year of high school finished.
I'm halfway done with high school. Now I'm starting to get a little upset. Lots of friendships are already half over.
I'm five-sixths done with my whole conventional education. I can't find words to describe how that saddens me. This isn't a part of life I'm ready to leave behind.
Maybe it's wrong to wish I could keep my life in the opening credits forever. But as soon as the plot's started, you know it has to end sometime.
posted on Thursday, June 05, 2003
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This isn't a news blog - at least, it's not a blog in which I write about news of widespread interest. But there's some stuff I have to gloat over:
"Whether we believe the advent of violent video games adds anything to value of society is irrelevant; guided by the first amendment, we are obliged to recognize that 'they are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature,'" Judge Morris S. Arnold wrote. Games are free speech, you fascists. Go play Deus Ex, then consider that soft porn is protected under the First Amendment.
posted on Tuesday, June 03, 2003
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Interesting that Hannah would mention that about feeling something missing: it's exactly how I felt at this time last year.
I wonder if her feelings on that matter will progress the same way mine did...
posted on Monday, June 02, 2003
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"I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free, without shackles of any kind, without care, without pre-occupation, without thought even of tomorrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy, without any counselor save your eyes. You pull up, because a running brook seduces you, or because you are attracted, in front of an inn, by the smell of potatoes frying. Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides you in your choice, or the naive glance of the servant at an inn...
...Love always has its price, come whence it may. A heart that beats when you make your appearance, an eye that weeps when you go away, these are things so rare, so sweet, so precious, that they must never be despised."
- "Miss Harriet," Guy de Maupassant
posted on Sunday, June 01, 2003
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I'm beginning to think I've got some kind of flu and not just an ordinary cold. I'm too weak to do much besides amble around the house, and I've been having chills and a splitting headache. Don't viruses have anything better to do?
posted on Sunday, June 01, 2003
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I've come down with a rather nasty cold and am somewhat dislocated from joyous conditions. Said cold prevented me from getting more than five hours of sleep last night, but at least my dad was nice enough to let me stay home from church. I've really done nothing at all this whole day except lie around, and read, and doze (and write whining blog entries).
Suphedrine isn't helping that much, either. Stupid cold. Beautiful day and I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to see it.
posted on Sunday, June 01, 2003
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The first full day of summer vacation has been suitably awesome.
We were planning to go to Shelley Lake today, but the weather was unwilling to commit to being sunny so we all just went over to Erica's instead. We climbed trees (or at least some of us did). We sat around. We played ping-pong; we played ultimate; we threw water on each other. Let's see if I can think of everyone who was there... Elena, Erica, Trevor, Hannah, Claire, Diana, Sam, Rini, and myself... I think that was everyone.
I remember playing several games of ping-pong; first Hannah and I played Diana and Sam, and creamed them; then I played Hannah and was beaten by a fairly small (and therefore not overly humiliating) margin. Then we all went out to the front porch and shot the breeze until the pizza got there. The pizza was devoured in astonishingly short order, and sometime after that I kind of wandered into the backyard.
It's such a great thing to be able to abandon self-consciousness, and sit in a tree or hammock, and let thoughts crawl lazily through one's mind while watching the clouds sail unhurriedly through the sky. I'm not sure how much time passed while doing that; it could've been a few minutes or it could have been three-quarters of an hour. Hannah was out there too (in Erica's backyard), and Rini was off somewhere relatively by herself, but everyone else was off doing whatever (baking or something?). It felt timeless out there, just lying and watching the sky through the leaves and branches of the tree above me. It's good to know that even if I don't often connect to Hannah that well, I'm still at ease in her presence.
After some indeterminate period of time, everyone else came out. They seemed to sense the mood present and respect it, but it still wasn't quite the same. Self-consciousness returned rather abruptly when about four more people laid down (crosswise) on the hammock, due in no small part to having Claire right beside me. Nothing against her, but I don't know her well enough to feel comfortable about letting my mind float while her presence is that pronounced.
And so it came to pass that we went and played ultimate at a park a rather short distance from Erica's house. It was fun; Trevor was being moody all afternoon and didn't play, however; he didn't seem able to just enjoy himself.
Then, after playing ultimate, there was again lot that kind of blurred together. Hannah and Rini did some brief and giggly sparring (most amusing); then Rini went inside and came back out with a cup of water, drank about half of it, and ended up throwing the rest at me. Naturally, I was obliged to return the favor with a full cup of water. Then Rini threw water over those who were lounging on the hammock; and then Elena and Sam ganged up on me, for what reason I don't know. The end result of all this was about a half-dozen soaking wet people.
After we all went back inside, Trevor, Erica, Elena, and Rini went upstairs; all I gleaned on that was that Rini was sick and was coughing a lot. Hannah and Diana played piano downstairs while the rest of us lounged around some more, munching on grapes and suchlike, and that was about when parents started to arrive. It seemed like a lot more than four-and-a-half hours that we spent at Erica's.
That evening, to celebrate my dad's birthday (which wasn't actually until Monday), we went to see the Flying Karamazov Brothers at the outdoor ampitheatre of the art museum in Raleigh. They call themselves jugglers - and that they do well - but they could be comedians, musicians, actors... I think it was the most talent I've ever seen in one place. They were hilarious, not only with planned jokes but with spontaneous ones as well, and amazingly good jugglers, both as individuals and as a group. They sang a ludicrous call to intermission with well-trained voices, performed a skit about the "Polish Appalachian Clog Dance," made double entendres by the score. I was expecting it to be good, but they were way better than that.
Like I said, an awesome day.
posted on Sunday, June 01, 2003
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