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"September never stays this cold
Where I come from, and you know
I'm not one (I'm not one)
For complaining (for complaining)..."
- Great Romances of the 20th Century, Taking Back Sunday
Yeah, it's all cold all of a sudden... nobody told me yesterday, and I wore shorts and a t-shirt and almost froze in the 50-degree weather.
I wish I could go hibernate or something...
I don't think I'm going to do well this winter. In fact I feel like I'm going into shock, that the static images of my dreams are becoming more real than reality. And it's not unreasonable to doubt the reality of a life that changes not a bit from day to day, from year to year...
posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2003
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Life, painstakingly ordinary at the moment, has robbed me of all excuses for being out of it. The only things clear in my mind are too emotional to trust, and even those are washed out a constant flood of meaningless input and neuronic excretion.
Checking the mail for a one-way ticket to a beautiful nowhere...
posted on Sunday, September 28, 2003
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I neglected to mention yesterday that my dad and I spent all of the afternoon and evening shoveling and wheelbarrowing twelve cubic yards of mulch from the driveway to the backyard...
Church was only interesting while there were still burrs to pick off my shoelaces. It got pretty dismal after that - but it was enjoyable while it lasted, plucking the burrs off and smiling as I remembered how they got there. I left them all in a small pile near my chair. I told myself it was because I wanted to mystify the next person to come by but I think it was just because I didn't want to have to carry them to a trash can.
posted on Sunday, September 28, 2003
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It didn't happen, but Friday was still good. Mellow is probably more like it - very mellow, even with the presence of DDR and the inevitably accompanying "Blow My Whistle Bitch."
English class, first thing in the morning. For an hour and a half. Chalifoux was making her rounds on the network spyware, so after I typed my rough draft in, I also typed in a message in large font, saying that she should find something worthwhile for us to do, since almost nobody was getting anything done. Predictably, she saw it. Then she hijacked my computer and typed on my screen a lengthy, wordy, and badly spelled response, in which she called me consumerist and briefly soapboxed about how teaching is not a commodity, or something like that. I was briefly confused about what the hell that had to do with anything, and then I regained the use of my Backspace key.
She ended the class by saying that we were never going to spend Ex Day in the computer lab again, because almost nobody had gotten anything done. I managed not to laugh out loud, thankfully. Although - I probably may as well have. After class, she told me that she sensed I didn't trust her, and asked me why. I said I'd think about it; then as I walked away I said that I'd try to formulate an answer that wouldn't be too offensive. Stupid of me, but great fun. But I really did think about it, and she's right - I don't trust her. In fact, I can't stand anything about her - her condescending manner, her opinions, her false good cheer, failing to completely conceal her bitchiness. Call it instinct, or maybe a conflict of personality.
Then Physics Lab, in which was revealed the first really good use for computers in school, and then a movie, Stand and Deliver, which wasn't bad, in Calculus. After school I went with Hannah to this Funworks place - she was going there to see an old friend of hers and wanted me there for backup. This friend, Vanessa, had three others with her, and they were all DDR maniacs. I try not to be instinctively prejudiced toward people like that, but... it's hard. They got me to play DDR, though, and I managed to actually beat Hannah once. I hate myself. The air hockey was much better - I got two out of three against Hannah.
The whole time at Funworks wasn't that great, though... so we went to Lake Pine afterwards. That was much better - the mellow bit.
So emotionless, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't write it here if I tried. And I don't have even the will right now. Some things are between individuals, not between writers and readers.
posted on Sunday, September 28, 2003
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I want to wake up tomorrow, and see that I'm somewhere I've never been before, where the sun shines golden yellow, not the purpled white so frequent here, all day on fields and forests and clear streams. I'd walk all day with a good friend or two, people who know how to enjoy a perfect silence, and explore and watch clouds and marvel at how simple it can all be. I'd watch the sun go down and the stars come out, and wake up to see sunrise the next morning.
posted on Thursday, September 25, 2003
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"Dazzle" is one of those words that ceases to make sense if one looks at it for too long.
posted on Thursday, September 25, 2003
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I think that by now, at least a third of my class has had a blog at some point. Occasionally I'll visit one or another - well, actually it's more like a binge when I do, or perhaps a chain-blog-reading, or even - and, well, it's odd. It's not necessarily the content of the blogs themselves, although that's sometimes very odd, or excessively personal for such a casual reader as myself, or too-much-informationized. What's odder is the feeling that I'm in some gallery, with works of art lining the halls - in the typical manner of art galleries, I suppose. Some have a definite cartoonish style to them; others invoke the image of a somber portrait in dark hues; others are color photographs in high-resolution glory, or more contemplative in black-and-white; others are reminiscent of the beautifully flowing colors of Impressionist paintings; and still others can only be transmediated into one of those self-impressed postmodern paint-splattering jobs.
I wonder where mine would belong in that gallery; it certainly lacks the flash and glamour which are the most eye-catching qualities of many of those. Reading them, I feel that comparatively little happens in my life - not with regret or envy, but with acceptance of the fact that not all are cut out for an intensely extroverted lifestyle and that I'm not either, and with the thought that, even if it was entirely a matter of choice, I would probably rather glow for a long while than burn out fast, even if I do sometimes feel that I'm missing out on a fun time.
Other times, I wish for the other extreme, the scenario I've discussed with Hannah of being stranded on a middle-sized tropical island with only a small group of people. A sense of purpose in my life is often lacking, and increasing the energy of my social life seems to only make the hole larger. Of course, I don't feel that at that time - not until later does it begin to ache, though never painfully. On the other, more whimsical hand, if one is stranded on a tropical island, the objective of life is nicely simplified, becoming living itself. I'd probably hate it after a while. But I do need a change of pace in some form.
posted on Wednesday, September 24, 2003
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Also, I loathe Monday mornings.
posted on Monday, September 22, 2003
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School was canceled on Friday as well as Thursday, as it turned out. As a consequence there was a lot of plan-making and hanging out (on review, I see that the last phrase could be amusingly mistaken for "plan-hanging and making out"), and some nastiness which I don't have the slightest desire to recount yet again. All the hanging-out was executed (unfortunate word choice, perhaps) on Friday and Sunday; Friday was a movie with the regular crowd - as well as Chelsea, who I'd heard of many times but never actually seen, and who was a fairly agreeable sort of person - and Sunday, hereafter referred to as "today," was a DSFBC meeting at Trevor's house.
There were a lot of details, but I don't feel like taking the time to recall them now. My bad, I suppose. There are also some which I don't quite feel comfortable blathering about on here, which is not particularly good. I sometimes feel like making this a private blog - most of what I've been dwelling on lately has been stuff that I don't want to disclose to many people (though that stuff isn't all negative by any means). The upshot of all this is that I've been leaving a lot out recently, through both a desire to keep some things quiet and plain old neglect.
If I've failed to get this across, hear it now: life has been good lately. But I don't know how much detail I should go into. Enough for now to say that certain barriers can be forced to evaporate if one forgets about them for long enough.
posted on Sunday, September 21, 2003
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It's just after noon on Thursday morning and I'm lying in bed, listening to the wind and rain and Something Corporate. I have my window open as much as the angle of the rain permits, which is less than usual because Hurricane Isabel is making herself acquainted with the region. This also explains why I'm in bed, and not 4th period AP Physics.
I've been holed up in my room for about 14 hours now, which divides into about five hours on the phone and nine hours asleep. I called Hannah last night, mostly just on impulse, and two hours or more flashed by in what seemed like a few minutes (here for details which I haven't the boldness to say outright). Except for a couple brief exits to get food and wash up for bed, I've been in here the whole time. It's very mellowing, and I'm reluctant to leave for such pedestrian necessities as breakfast and a shower. Getting on the phone again seems the right course of action, although I've already spent two-and-a-half hours on the phone just this morning.
posted on Thursday, September 18, 2003
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First period Compsci makes me happy, for the sort of reasons which are the only type I can currently appreciate: simple ones. I am tired; this class is easy. Being tired in this class is a vast improvement over being tired in a difficult class. Also, if I can manage to focus, rather than blogging or surfing or whatever, I can do the homework which I abandoned the previous night in favor of sleep.
Having stated this potentiality, I feel that much more confident that it is actually true and will now turn my attentions to The Scarlet Letter, of which I have to read eight more pages by second period. Not by any means a bad book, but somewhat rambling and lacking in any conspicuously appealing qualities.
posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003
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"Tonight is a story of love
And two broken hearts set by one
And all he wants is a sign
Of how she's making her mind
All we ever wanted was
Love and love and happy afternoons
Watching TV from your room
While you're laying in my arms
And I know it's not fair to me
To see this love walk right by me
Say, will we ever meet the right way
Again, again
Tonight I will sit next to you
To see if you act like we're through
To make you laugh is all I want
I'll hold you while tears fill our eyes
Love and love and happy afternoons
Watching TV from your room
While you're laying in my arms
And I know it's not fair to me
To see this love walk right by me
Say, will we ever meet the right way"
- All We Ever Needed, The Early November
posted on Sunday, September 14, 2003
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I was cleaning the sinks a few minutes ago and saw myself in the mirror while I did so, and noticed just how pitifully sinister a figure I cut at the moment. Deep, dark spots beneath the eyes; hair that's scruffily outgrown its cut; longish, patchy stubble on the sideburns because I didn't get time to shave them this morning; and a few razorburns and miniscule scabs, again because I didn't take more than a few moments to shave. I can probably chalk up at least half of those to lack of sleep, a topic which I've not been able to purge my mind of for some hours. I really will go to bed soon, just not quite yet.
Part of the reason I didn't have much time to shave was because I was picked up at home today, a little earlier than usual. Amy was driving the trebuchet in, and since I live pretty close by, I rode with her so she wouldn't have to unload it by herself. Ah, the trebuchet...
Yesterday was the day we'd decided on to put on the finishing touches (wheels and a hook) and do practice throws. We put on the hook first and got a few short throws with that - and then our counterweight chain broke. While not insurmountable, this was something of a setback - we had to go pick up a new, heavier chain from Home Depot and figure out a good way of rigging that. The wheels also took substantially longer than expected. As before, Thomas and Chris were both out by nine, and we weren't throwing until about ten last (Thursday) night. Amy and I did about two dozen test throws, and managed to get a good idea of what kind of hook angle and string length worked best - which meant that once the competition started, we had a setup that we knew would work. That night, we measured about 140 feet for the best throw. Today, during the competition, the best of our first set of throws was 138 feet, beating the previous record of 104. Then, later, another group got 145 feet. In a desperate rush for the prize (sic), we gave our arm more torque by lengthening the chain and did a couple more throws. We were lucky enough to get 148 feet - a win by a three-foot hair.
After school, the usual crowd went down to Carmike 15 and saw Pirates of the Carribean, even though very nearly all of us had seen it before. I don't think it was quite as good the second time but it was still a pretty fine movie. We had dinner at this place called Mar y Sol (I think?), obviously a Mexican restaurant, and happily a very good one.
Okay, bed now.
posted on Saturday, September 13, 2003
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On to things written outside of church. Saturday was spent, and I mean all of Saturday, constructing a trebuchet for AP Physics. Chris Nance, Amy Blevins, and Thomas... whose last name I don't know, but anyway, they were my trebuchet group, and I'm very glad I was working with them. We'd been planning for a while, and finally met at Amy's house six days before the due date (this Friday) to begin construction. We were all there by around noon and began finalizing plans and gathering materials, began construction, made a trip to Home Depot for wood and all the other stuff we needed, had lunch, continued construction, had dinner, and continued construction. Thomas left a bit before dinner, and Chris left close to nine. I left at about ten, and by then we'd very nearly finished the whole thing. The base and frame are done, the arm is complete (counterweight and axle) and mounted on the frame, and all our nervously calculated dimensional clearances turned out to be good enough. All that remains is to put wheels on the base and hammer some sort of hook into the end of the throwing arm. The frame is four feet tall, four feet long, and eighteen inches wide; our arm is 47 inches long. Our counterweight is a large, solid cinderblock suspended by chains from a five-eighths-inch bolt at the end of the arm. Our axle has PVC bearings.
For one day, it was a tremendous amount of progress, and I for one am feeling very proud of the product. We still have yet to see if it'll throw worth crap, though.
posted on Monday, September 08, 2003
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(Written yesterday in church. Stupid of me to not post it until now, but oh well)
I dreamed through last night, glorious pasts and slight nightmares all in succession. I awoke remembering things I hadn't thought of for ten years, with a newly rediscovered understanding that even so long a time as sixteen years is still entirely composed of a finite number of small, bite-sized chunks of memory, with the occasional dramatic shift here and there.
I am in church right now, writing on the back of a tiny pamphlet ("Upward Basketball - Where Every Child Is a Winner!"), and have a new theory - that the huge success of Colonial Baptist Church is due to its incredibly adept emotional manipulation (a skill prevalent in a number of areas other than religion, but obtrusively obvious in this area at this time to this person). Going to a worship is like having some dealer pushing heroin on you; these people are pious junkies - that much can be easily seen in the blankly smiling faces, their reflexively upraised hands. They are defined by the drug and would be crippled without it.
Today, however, the sermon is very interesting. Part of the Scripture reading used was Romans 7:7-12:
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. I know, absolutely know that I'd never read this passage before, because it jumped out at me so strongly. I first thought I'd misheard, then, looking at the text, took it for irony or some sinner-persona. I was astounded when I found it was neither. It seems analogous to that distinctly non-Christian saying, which in all of its doubtlessly countless iterations goes to the effect that the punishment creates the crime - the implication is that humankind has no innate moral sense independent of God's law, which in turn suggests that the law is, to the purpose of humanity, arbitrary.
posted on Monday, September 08, 2003
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Plans for yesterday had been in the making for several weeks, and the general thrust of those plans was that the "usual suspects," as my dad refers to my friends and I, would be going to some lake or another for an afternoon. For the great deal of the planning period, the lake in question was Shelley Lake. On the day before the event, the lake became Falls Lake. On the day of the event, the lake became Pullen Park (because we could swim there), and Pullen Park became Erica's house (because it started raining rather heavily). How lakes turn into parks and parks into houses is beyond me, but it all seemed to work out okay.
It was one of very few alternatives left to us, and somewhat more of a laid-back experience then lakeage would have been, but it was great fun. We watched Donnie Darko, a fairly weird movie, and ate food that we'd all brought, and reinvented amusing ways to waste time. Sounds just like every time we go over there, I know, but there seemed something special about yesterday. Maybe it was just me, but it wasn't until quite a while afterwards that the thought I love my friends began failing to pass through my mind at least once within a given five-second interval.
I went over to Trevor's afterwards, spent the night there. There was a lot of Soul Calibur 2, and The Count of Monte Cristo (good movie), and fairly agreeable discussion on the nature of beauty, and heated argument on free verse, and probably a lot of other stuff, only I can't remember it all just now and, in fact, am not certain that the whole of it all was ever properly committed to memory, especially in light of five o'clock bedtimes.
Since this is a three-day weekend... I forget where that was going, wait, I've got it now - this is a three-day weekend, which means there wasn't any school today (!). There was some potato salad that Claire brought to Erica's that she didn't want to take back home. Hannah said she'd take it home, only she was spending the night at Erica's. So, somehow, I decided that it was very much my responsibility to take the potato salad home and deliver it to Hannah's house the next day. Partly random, partly because I hadn't ridden my bike much lately, and partly because I figured I wouldn't be doing much and thought seeing Hannah, if only briefly, was a good idea. I ended up spending, I don't know, forty-five minutes or an hour there (during which time I polished off no less than one full glass of ice water), and so that was cool.
posted on Monday, September 01, 2003
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