The all-important question has been decided. I'm going to spend my life teaching physics to small children in penniless African countries, and Chelsea Briner will be the pilot who flies me around and makes touching documentaries of me.
The first distant babblings of this conclusion began when I mentioned to Chelsea in 6th period Calculus that this was really a weird way to spend time - sitting and staring intently while a teacher scrawled masses of foreign symbology on the whiteboard. More practical uses of life and time were thus brought to the forefront of discussion. Thus, physics and small children and Africa and no money.
Yesterday it rained on and off for most of the morning and afternoon, and I stood outside between classes, feeling drops burst on my head and shoulders, thinking nothing while my thoughts clashed in a land of their own. Later the rain diminished to a sprinkle and the sky began to lighten, and I looked out the back window and saw green, yellow, orange and red, brought to brilliance against browns and grays by the rain and the day's first sign of sunlight, and I knew that this beauty was wasted on a person who never dares to touch dreams to reality.
My mom told me today not to ride on the Greenway, said it was too wet from all the rain. I try not to do things out of spite, but I didn't feel that I had any option except riding on the Greenway. So I rode and listened to the air roaring into my ears in its annoyance, and watched how things stood still at the center of my vision and accelerated at the edges. I had to slow down now and then for a puddle, sure, but what could that matter.
I fear I'm sliding into an antisocial phase. There's only one person I really want to talk to, and I don't know what to say even to that person. Maybe it's not even conversation I want, maybe just being near. Near, and far away from all those arbitrary foundations I structure my life around. I can't see how people take any interest in that crap, and I can't imagine why they'd expect me to. Life isn't meant to be stretched taut over artificial complexity.
posted on Thursday, November 20, 2003
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