HELLO??? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME????
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Memory
Isn't it odd that all of this- the way the keyboard feels under my fingers now, the way the air smelled today, the arguments I had with my mother, the expressions on people's faces, the clothes I'm wearing, the colors of the carpet, the times I've had with my friends, the lesson at church today, the groggy way that I woke up from a dream this morning, the dream I had last night- all of this will soon be a memory, and some day after that it won't even be a memory anymore; the insignificance of it all will allow it to slip through the paths neurons tunnel in my brain until someday it will be as if Sunday February 25, 2007 never really happened, never really mattered?
Maybe someday I'll read this blog entry and struggle to remember today in all of its mundane focus, and I will not be able to recall anything from today, not even the way my face looked in the morning.
It is all terribly sad. It feels so significant now. And all of my life is made up of days like these, days that melt in the bitter winds of memory until they slip away.
Maybe someday I'll read this blog entry and struggle to remember today in all of its mundane focus, and I will not be able to recall anything from today, not even the way my face looked in the morning.
It is all terribly sad. It feels so significant now. And all of my life is made up of days like these, days that melt in the bitter winds of memory until they slip away.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
invisible
I came out of helping with the church services in a retirement care home to find my mom reading Invisible Man, which we are reading in English. She said,
"Being invisible is worse than being hated or denegrated. It's worse than anything, because it's almost as if you are not there."
I noticed she said 'you.'
"You're not invisible, Mom," I said.
"But I feel like I am," she said. "If someone shouts in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, is there really a noise?"
"Yes, yes there's a noise."
"But how can you say that?" she asked, and she wasn't really talking to me, even though it was only me in the car.
"Because there is an objective, scientific truth, that there is noise. Truth isn't just subjectivity."
"But if nobody is there to hear it..."
"I don't know what to tell you."
"It just feels like I don't make a difference in the world. Not just in your life, but everywhere."
"I've told you over and over that you make a difference in my life."
"What if there's nobody in the forest to hear you shout, but shouting is your only hope of feeling visible?"
In that moment the possibility of letting go of my prejudices and anger and completely understanding my mother came about. It was as if a screen was ripped away, because I knew exactly how she felt, and I could empathize, but at the same time I was angry with her for telling me those things, because everyone feels like that, and why tell me if nothing I say can make her feel any differently? It was just such a weird moment. I was thinking, then you're screwed, but I obviously couldn't say it. And then she said,
"But you know, you're not responsible for the way I feel. I choose how I respond to your actions."
I know I'm not responsible. I know my mom knows that to. But sometimes it seems like the unspoken parts of these conversations consist of, It's your fault I feel invisible, Lindsay, which made me defensive and less empathetic.
I'm feeling very oddly nostalgic. I found a lot of old letters in my room yesterday from middle school and ninth grade when things were so terrible. They were letters with Kayte and Shauna and Siobhan, and all of the terrible necessity of those days came back.
So I'm feeling like reading or watching The Hours. But since I won't be able to do that until tomorrow, since I can't go to the store on Sunday and I don't own the book or movie, I'll quote bits of it from Wikiquote:
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.
Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease, completely. All this must go on without her. Did she resent it? Or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.
If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being.
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.
To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.
There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.
That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.
I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer f-ing pride and stupidity.
I especially love the second to last one.
Michael Cunningham is AMAZING! And whoever wrote/directed the movie.
I'm feeling really weird right now if you can't tell.
"Being invisible is worse than being hated or denegrated. It's worse than anything, because it's almost as if you are not there."
I noticed she said 'you.'
"You're not invisible, Mom," I said.
"But I feel like I am," she said. "If someone shouts in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, is there really a noise?"
"Yes, yes there's a noise."
"But how can you say that?" she asked, and she wasn't really talking to me, even though it was only me in the car.
"Because there is an objective, scientific truth, that there is noise. Truth isn't just subjectivity."
"But if nobody is there to hear it..."
"I don't know what to tell you."
"It just feels like I don't make a difference in the world. Not just in your life, but everywhere."
"I've told you over and over that you make a difference in my life."
"What if there's nobody in the forest to hear you shout, but shouting is your only hope of feeling visible?"
In that moment the possibility of letting go of my prejudices and anger and completely understanding my mother came about. It was as if a screen was ripped away, because I knew exactly how she felt, and I could empathize, but at the same time I was angry with her for telling me those things, because everyone feels like that, and why tell me if nothing I say can make her feel any differently? It was just such a weird moment. I was thinking, then you're screwed, but I obviously couldn't say it. And then she said,
"But you know, you're not responsible for the way I feel. I choose how I respond to your actions."
I know I'm not responsible. I know my mom knows that to. But sometimes it seems like the unspoken parts of these conversations consist of, It's your fault I feel invisible, Lindsay, which made me defensive and less empathetic.
I'm feeling very oddly nostalgic. I found a lot of old letters in my room yesterday from middle school and ninth grade when things were so terrible. They were letters with Kayte and Shauna and Siobhan, and all of the terrible necessity of those days came back.
So I'm feeling like reading or watching The Hours. But since I won't be able to do that until tomorrow, since I can't go to the store on Sunday and I don't own the book or movie, I'll quote bits of it from Wikiquote:
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.
Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease, completely. All this must go on without her. Did she resent it? Or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.
If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being.
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.
To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.
There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.
That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.
I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer f-ing pride and stupidity.
I especially love the second to last one.
Michael Cunningham is AMAZING! And whoever wrote/directed the movie.
I'm feeling really weird right now if you can't tell.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
a socio-political theory (why the consummation of Marx's dialect is impossible)
I have been thinking about political theory. I have decided why communism can’t be reached (I also am not sure if it would work even if it was reached, although I truly love the idea of communism and hope someday it can happen somehow). Basically, I’m arguing the implausability (is that a word?) of the consummation of Marx’s application of the Hegelian dialect.
So the historical thesis+antithesis–>synthesis process has to lead through hunting/gathering, feudalism, agriculture, monarchy/theocracy, and capitalism in its path to to the perfect communism, according to Marx. I’m going to talk about the vanguard (not Lenin’s) between capitalism and communism, since the rest of the process can be empirically proven with history.
Capitalism requires a pretty free economy, the extreme being Laissez-Faire. I think a free economy is hand in hand with a free media, because media networks really are just economic corporations. So capitalism contains free media.
Or, I would argue, it contains the illusion of free media. Here I reference Chomsky’s analysis. We think our media is free in the US because it’s not really as overtly propagandist or as politically obvious as the media in authoritarian states. So it is easy for us to believe the media is free here when in reality it is overcome with flak and controlled by many corporations and network monopolies.
So keeping that in mind, when communism has been attempted in the real world, like in Russia or China, it has been attempted in countries that have not achieved capitalism but rather remain in authoritarian states. My argument is that the only thing that made a communist revolution possible was a media controlled by an authoritarian government (I’m not arguing that communism as a steady-state isn’t possible, just the transition to it through Marx’s dialectial progression). The people subjected that revolted, according to Chomsky, never really bought the crap the media was feeding them. However, these communist revolutions didn’t follow Marx’s dialectical model, since they arose from authoritarian states.
If communism arises out of dialectical materialism, though, then it arises in a capitalist country in which, according to Chomsky, people are insidiously manipulated by what they believe is a free press. And what is that press controlled by? Capitalism. So people believe they are receiving legitimate information when in fact the information has been filtered through the workings of the capitalist economy.
I believe this means Marx’s idea of a communist revolution in a capitalist nation is never possible, because people in these capitalist countries are indoctrinated by the media. Revolutions can occur in authoritarian countries where people don’t buy the media, but those revolutions don’t follow the dialect laid out by Marx. I think that proletariat revolutions can only occur if the proletariat aren’t being manipulated by capitalism. People that are indoctrinated by a pro-capitalist media won’t revolt, because they are manipulated to agree with the press, which never attacks the economic system.
So I think that because of Chomsky’s theories about the media, Marx’s consummation of dialectical materialism is impossible.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
This is the letter I wrote to myself
My mother called EF tours today at 1:45 p.m. and cancelled my Australia trip. They will send a check for $2850, which I will give to my orchestra teacher, who will give it to my anonymous benefactor, along with my letter of explanation.
I feel choked up inside about it. But I think I did the only thing I could do.
I got this letter in the mail today that I wrote for myself at Civitan. (They have us write them to our future selves, and they mail them in the middle of the winter, months after June).
These letters are always a bit weird, because around Christmas you'll read this and try to remember the wyou you were now, and you'll feel a bit split. But we are all the same person in the end.
I have been bouncing up and down a lot, but the experience was still amazing. Having Josh, Olivia, and Emily here made me feel so safe and protected.
I know there will be slipups between now and when you read this, but the sine wave is not depressed; it always comes back up again. Remember how you felt this week when everything was perfect... when you were hypomanic and hyper but confident and so authentically happy. Remember the roof. You were so real in that moment, panic attack and all.
Believe in yourself, because you have it in you. It comes out the most at Civitan. You don't have to care what other people think about you. You don't have to try to be cool. You can be yourself, and it's enough. If it's not enough for someone, they're not worth pretending for anyway.
I (you) stood in the lobby and jumped up and down and screamed to kareokie (sp?), and I was young. Nothing else mattered, really, except all of the possibilities that moment bore. Right now, your future holds the most possibilities and opportunities that it will ever hold. Every second you spend regretting, every second you spend wearing a mask, every second you spend obsessing about saying the right things is a wasted second, a crashed possibility.
You ran around with shaving cream in your contacts and your boyfriend wiping it off of you even as you smashed him in the face and hives appeared on your arm, and you were happy. The maks and the fear and the threat of failure and regrets can never give you that.
-Lindsay
Carpe diem.
NNGUNNGU
Don't forget.
I'm not sure if this letter helps me at all to decide which of my options was better in this hard decision I have made, but I believe it is telling me not to regret choosing to go to nationals. Nationals was an opportunity, a possibility, and if I believe in myself and practice very hard, I have it in me, I know I do.
No time for regrets, or life is mine to miss.
I feel choked up inside about it. But I think I did the only thing I could do.
I got this letter in the mail today that I wrote for myself at Civitan. (They have us write them to our future selves, and they mail them in the middle of the winter, months after June).
These letters are always a bit weird, because around Christmas you'll read this and try to remember the wyou you were now, and you'll feel a bit split. But we are all the same person in the end.
I have been bouncing up and down a lot, but the experience was still amazing. Having Josh, Olivia, and Emily here made me feel so safe and protected.
I know there will be slipups between now and when you read this, but the sine wave is not depressed; it always comes back up again. Remember how you felt this week when everything was perfect... when you were hypomanic and hyper but confident and so authentically happy. Remember the roof. You were so real in that moment, panic attack and all.
Believe in yourself, because you have it in you. It comes out the most at Civitan. You don't have to care what other people think about you. You don't have to try to be cool. You can be yourself, and it's enough. If it's not enough for someone, they're not worth pretending for anyway.
I (you) stood in the lobby and jumped up and down and screamed to kareokie (sp?), and I was young. Nothing else mattered, really, except all of the possibilities that moment bore. Right now, your future holds the most possibilities and opportunities that it will ever hold. Every second you spend regretting, every second you spend wearing a mask, every second you spend obsessing about saying the right things is a wasted second, a crashed possibility.
You ran around with shaving cream in your contacts and your boyfriend wiping it off of you even as you smashed him in the face and hives appeared on your arm, and you were happy. The maks and the fear and the threat of failure and regrets can never give you that.
-Lindsay
Carpe diem.
NNGUNNGU
Don't forget.
I'm not sure if this letter helps me at all to decide which of my options was better in this hard decision I have made, but I believe it is telling me not to regret choosing to go to nationals. Nationals was an opportunity, a possibility, and if I believe in myself and practice very hard, I have it in me, I know I do.
No time for regrets, or life is mine to miss.
Monday, February 12, 2007
dilemma
Why is it that I get two of the things I want most in life, but I have to choose between them?
I went to the debate national qualifier tournament this last weekend. Josh came, because I knew that if he was there I would do better, but mostly because I knew that if he was there I would be okay no matter how I did (I wanted to make sure I would be okay if I didn't qualify, and I knew that only Josh's presence could easily assure that).
The first three rounds went pretty well, and I was 3-0 the first night. Then I lost my first round Saturday morning. It really threw me off. My dreams seemed to be closing like night flowers in the noon sunlight. Every round after that had a precarious, violently tense balance to it. I knew, every round, that it could be the last time I would ever do Lincoln Douglas debate, or debate period. It gave everything an unreal edge, a focused quality. That first round after the loss was so frightening. I think many instances of my life come down to this, and I know I've used this analogy before so bear with me, but I think that everything seemed to be hanging on a string, everything being a huge mass of hopes and dreams and expectations and emotions. It seemed insane that one slice of a scissorblade could sever so much stuff. "Hope dangles on a string like slow spinning redemption, winding in and winding out, the shine of which has caught me eye..."
I made it though. In my sixth round I hit Hannah Payne, red-haired girl, my nemesis, the first person I ever debated in a competition. I didn't want her to be the last. I really didn't, but yet again I was terrified, and everything seemed very far off.
Waiting to find out if I had won those last few rounds was agonizing. I hated it more than I hate hobo spiders in my bathtub. My stomach was rock hard. Josh kept hugging me, but I kept spinning in and out of the embrace, too restless to stay still.
That moment when I found out I won was quite nice.
When I went into the seventh round (the final round), I don't think I understood that it was the determining round. Greg had been telling me that there would be eight rounds, and I thought there were still eight people in, but there were only five. So I didn't understand during the round that if I won I would automatically go to nationals (because Brittany was still in, and she had had a bye, either I or the other person that won the seventh round would get the bye to nationals, and if I didn't, Brittany wouldn't debate me).
It was a fun final round. If it was the last LD round I ever debated, it was probably the most fun as well. Kory was trying to run a kritik on aff, but he didn't structure it right. He was saying there was no morality because there was no free will. I ran topicality (or rather burdens, as is preferable terminology in LD), saying he wasn't affirming the resolution, and debated his case. I felt very in the zen. I won all three ballots.
Brittany did an amazing thing for me and conceded the eigth round when I didn't get the random bye, which made me a qualifier. After that, things should have been happy, but they were all bitter-sweet, because I found out that nationals are during the Australia trip I have had planned for one year that some community member is paying for because of my dedication in orchestra.
Everything felt surreal once the tournament had ended. For Saturday night, Sunday, and today I deliberated in my mind over whether to go to Australia or to nationals. I was bouncing back and forth in my decision. Most of today I was almost decided that I was going to Australia, because it would be really, really fun, very relaxing, and my last trip with Erin and Brittany. But tonight I think I decided to go to nationals. I am not 100% sure yet, but I believe that if I work hard I have a chance, and I have sure worked hard for the chance to go in the first place.
I think there will definitely be major regrets no matter which one I choose, but I think that although Australia would definitely be more fun, I would always be angry at myself for giving up my last chance at debate, which I truly love.
I went to the debate national qualifier tournament this last weekend. Josh came, because I knew that if he was there I would do better, but mostly because I knew that if he was there I would be okay no matter how I did (I wanted to make sure I would be okay if I didn't qualify, and I knew that only Josh's presence could easily assure that).
The first three rounds went pretty well, and I was 3-0 the first night. Then I lost my first round Saturday morning. It really threw me off. My dreams seemed to be closing like night flowers in the noon sunlight. Every round after that had a precarious, violently tense balance to it. I knew, every round, that it could be the last time I would ever do Lincoln Douglas debate, or debate period. It gave everything an unreal edge, a focused quality. That first round after the loss was so frightening. I think many instances of my life come down to this, and I know I've used this analogy before so bear with me, but I think that everything seemed to be hanging on a string, everything being a huge mass of hopes and dreams and expectations and emotions. It seemed insane that one slice of a scissorblade could sever so much stuff. "Hope dangles on a string like slow spinning redemption, winding in and winding out, the shine of which has caught me eye..."
I made it though. In my sixth round I hit Hannah Payne, red-haired girl, my nemesis, the first person I ever debated in a competition. I didn't want her to be the last. I really didn't, but yet again I was terrified, and everything seemed very far off.
Waiting to find out if I had won those last few rounds was agonizing. I hated it more than I hate hobo spiders in my bathtub. My stomach was rock hard. Josh kept hugging me, but I kept spinning in and out of the embrace, too restless to stay still.
That moment when I found out I won was quite nice.
When I went into the seventh round (the final round), I don't think I understood that it was the determining round. Greg had been telling me that there would be eight rounds, and I thought there were still eight people in, but there were only five. So I didn't understand during the round that if I won I would automatically go to nationals (because Brittany was still in, and she had had a bye, either I or the other person that won the seventh round would get the bye to nationals, and if I didn't, Brittany wouldn't debate me).
It was a fun final round. If it was the last LD round I ever debated, it was probably the most fun as well. Kory was trying to run a kritik on aff, but he didn't structure it right. He was saying there was no morality because there was no free will. I ran topicality (or rather burdens, as is preferable terminology in LD), saying he wasn't affirming the resolution, and debated his case. I felt very in the zen. I won all three ballots.
Brittany did an amazing thing for me and conceded the eigth round when I didn't get the random bye, which made me a qualifier. After that, things should have been happy, but they were all bitter-sweet, because I found out that nationals are during the Australia trip I have had planned for one year that some community member is paying for because of my dedication in orchestra.
Everything felt surreal once the tournament had ended. For Saturday night, Sunday, and today I deliberated in my mind over whether to go to Australia or to nationals. I was bouncing back and forth in my decision. Most of today I was almost decided that I was going to Australia, because it would be really, really fun, very relaxing, and my last trip with Erin and Brittany. But tonight I think I decided to go to nationals. I am not 100% sure yet, but I believe that if I work hard I have a chance, and I have sure worked hard for the chance to go in the first place.
I think there will definitely be major regrets no matter which one I choose, but I think that although Australia would definitely be more fun, I would always be angry at myself for giving up my last chance at debate, which I truly love.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
where's the meaning in my life?
Is it ironic that I think all of the meaning in my life can be encapsulated in an xkcd comic about absurdity?
(although this comic is only superficially about absurdity... I think it is more about the absurdity of existentialism, which is a paradox in and of itself I could ponder about for a while until someone sprayed me in the face with a super-soaker).
Saturday, February 03, 2007
change
My parents are remodelling the house right now so they can sell it in the spring or summer, which means that before I go to college, I will be moving with them into the townhouse we own. They are selling the house so they can pay for my tuition. I really, really appreciate it, but the idea that things will change, that I will no longer be able to walk through the door of the house I have lived in since I was five, seems ridiculous to me. All of this painting and wood and tools laying around the house are threating the disillusionment inside of me. No. Things will not change. We won't move. I won't go to college across the country. I won't leave my friends behind.
It is as if my mind has decided enough is enough, and now refuses to believe any of the information I try to feed it. I can think, everything will change in a few months... your whole life will change to myself, but I don't really process it. I don't really understand it. It is a random crazy person's aphorism. It can't really be true.
They're even selling (but of course they won't really) my gorgeous piano... I love the piano almost as much as the house. It is the best piano I have ever played on. It shiny and white, a baby grand.
How can my mind cope with so many changes? Especially a mind like mine that is already predisposed to resist change. How can it be that after June or so I will never sleep in my beautiful yellow bedroom with the butterfly borders that I redid myself with my father's help ever again? How can that be real? How can I be in some city, so foreign it might as well be on Pluto, six months from now, sleeping in a room with someone else who is somewhere in the country right now, maybe sleeping or at a party? How can all of that be true, when the past thirteen years of my life have been so neatly contained in the city I live in? The sphere of my existence has really been so small... it extends only to this city really, and the parts of the state I have travelled to occasionally. How can that expand? How can it move? How can I go from a little city with an overestimate of 50,000 people to a huge city with subways and skyscrapers? How can I live there? How can I belong there?
But how can I stay here, when everything will change, when all of my friends will move away and go to their own foreign cities, and my house will be inhabited by strangers, and the perfection of all of the things that I loved will decay as the years march by?
Erin has been in Oregon the past few days for an audition to the university in Eugene. I have missed her incredibly, and she has only been gone since Thursday. How can I leave friends like her for months... perhaps a lifetime? (No, not a lifetime, these friends mean more to me than that, we will keep in touch)...
Patrick tells me that perhaps he will be going to Boston as well, to either Harvard or Boston College, and my desperate, shell-shocked mind latches onto that as an island of familiarity in a torrential river of change. I like Patrick a lot. He is a very good friend. If he is there, things might be okay. He can be a piece of my past, a constancy.
I look around at the disassembled house with a bit of shock and disbelief. I am excited by the idea of moving to the townhouse, not because I want to move (because I really, really don't), but because I believe it can't really happen, and the idea that it is only a few months away is ludicrous. I look forward to it as a challenge. I challenge the universe to really change. I challenge the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, I dare you to increase! House, I dare you to be inhabited by strangers! Boston, Chicago, or Salt Lake, I dare you to become part of my limited sphere of existence!
I challenge with confidence. Nothing can live up to the challenge. Things won't really change. My thermodynamic arrow of time in my ideal world points backwards: broken tea cups pull themselves back together and place themselves on the table, decreasing entropy. My cosmological arrow of time in my ideal world points backwards: the universe collapses slowly in on itself. Only my psychological arrow of time remains normally oriented; it thrives on the past; it cannot fathom the future.
I'm terrified. I'm so scared. And when that fear becomes too much I laugh in the face of it all, because it can't be real, nothing can really change, it can't, it can't.
It is as if my mind has decided enough is enough, and now refuses to believe any of the information I try to feed it. I can think, everything will change in a few months... your whole life will change to myself, but I don't really process it. I don't really understand it. It is a random crazy person's aphorism. It can't really be true.
They're even selling (but of course they won't really) my gorgeous piano... I love the piano almost as much as the house. It is the best piano I have ever played on. It shiny and white, a baby grand.
How can my mind cope with so many changes? Especially a mind like mine that is already predisposed to resist change. How can it be that after June or so I will never sleep in my beautiful yellow bedroom with the butterfly borders that I redid myself with my father's help ever again? How can that be real? How can I be in some city, so foreign it might as well be on Pluto, six months from now, sleeping in a room with someone else who is somewhere in the country right now, maybe sleeping or at a party? How can all of that be true, when the past thirteen years of my life have been so neatly contained in the city I live in? The sphere of my existence has really been so small... it extends only to this city really, and the parts of the state I have travelled to occasionally. How can that expand? How can it move? How can I go from a little city with an overestimate of 50,000 people to a huge city with subways and skyscrapers? How can I live there? How can I belong there?
But how can I stay here, when everything will change, when all of my friends will move away and go to their own foreign cities, and my house will be inhabited by strangers, and the perfection of all of the things that I loved will decay as the years march by?
Erin has been in Oregon the past few days for an audition to the university in Eugene. I have missed her incredibly, and she has only been gone since Thursday. How can I leave friends like her for months... perhaps a lifetime? (No, not a lifetime, these friends mean more to me than that, we will keep in touch)...
Patrick tells me that perhaps he will be going to Boston as well, to either Harvard or Boston College, and my desperate, shell-shocked mind latches onto that as an island of familiarity in a torrential river of change. I like Patrick a lot. He is a very good friend. If he is there, things might be okay. He can be a piece of my past, a constancy.
I look around at the disassembled house with a bit of shock and disbelief. I am excited by the idea of moving to the townhouse, not because I want to move (because I really, really don't), but because I believe it can't really happen, and the idea that it is only a few months away is ludicrous. I look forward to it as a challenge. I challenge the universe to really change. I challenge the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, I dare you to increase! House, I dare you to be inhabited by strangers! Boston, Chicago, or Salt Lake, I dare you to become part of my limited sphere of existence!
I challenge with confidence. Nothing can live up to the challenge. Things won't really change. My thermodynamic arrow of time in my ideal world points backwards: broken tea cups pull themselves back together and place themselves on the table, decreasing entropy. My cosmological arrow of time in my ideal world points backwards: the universe collapses slowly in on itself. Only my psychological arrow of time remains normally oriented; it thrives on the past; it cannot fathom the future.
I'm terrified. I'm so scared. And when that fear becomes too much I laugh in the face of it all, because it can't be real, nothing can really change, it can't, it can't.
Friday, February 02, 2007
global warming
From this CNN article:
PARIS, France (AP) -- Global warming caused by human activity is real and will continue for hundreds of years, a panel of some of the world's top climate scientists said Friday.
Officially releasing a 21-page report in Paris on the hows and the what of global warming -- though not telling the world what to do about it -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a bleak observation of what is happening now and an even more dire prediction for the future.
I do believe in global warming. I do believe what Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth. I also believe it because the past year or so there has been an article about it in every issue of Discover, my favorite science magazine.Josh can tell me silt or something is causing world destruction faster, but either way, the environment is being hurt by our abuse and blindness, and the precautionary principle is just a nice idea no one will apply.
We talk a lot in school about how to get the country off of fossil fuels (sign the stupid Kyoto Proticol, why don't we?!), and sometimes it seems very helpless. We all have so many excuses as to why we can't ride our bicycles or afford cleaner-fuel cars (it's freezing out, school's three miles away). I have just as many excuses. I think we could try to change things on an individual level (which is why I rode my bike all last summer), but ultimately something has to change on a corporate and governmental level so society can accomodate a world free of the devastating consequences of environmental destruction (and free of all of the benefits they contribute to our lives).
It does feel a bit hopeless sometimes. What corporation will abandon their shareholders to pursue alternative energy sources? What president will sign a bill that our capitalistic corporate-controlled society hates (even if nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has signed it)? What individual can give up the comforts of a car and ride to school in -10 degree weather with a cello on their back?
Something has to change, but I fear it won't happen until it is obvious that the world is falling apart, whether it be from global warming or silt pollution. When LA floods they'll sign the stupid bills. Or filibuster until the whole world's covered in water and dead plants and dehydrated people.
What motivates people to let go of their material comforts for a better cause?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
music
Today was a little better. There are no circumstantial reasons for that, but I didn't have as many panic attacks or suicide ideation.
I am playing Kreisler's Preludium and Allegro on violin right now. I played it for Erin this morning for advice (she played it last year). I played it technically very well, but in my effort to achieve the illusive perfect intonation, I didn't put any of my heart into it.
Tonight I didn't do any homework. I practice violin for three hours, cello for an hour, and went to a concert with my dad that I was supposed to play in but backed out of. While practicing my lovely Boccherini cello concerto I had to pay more attention to notes and stuff (as I'm just learning it), but I decided to play the Kreisler with no inhibitions, just put my heart into it completely (don't worry this is going somewhere).
Somewhere in the middle all of the tension inside of me melted away. I wasn't in the livingroom anymore. I was in the Kreisler. The notes were a universe; the cadences became my emotions. Every bit of me was concentrated into a few pages of music.
I'm not sure how to explain this unless you've had an experience like it. It's kind of like a runner's high, except a musician's high. Your body gets pumped full of these cool endorphins, and it feels like you're no longer an individual, you are a strand in a web. Any self-centered worries just kind of fade in the face of something more important. All of your energy gets poured into making that music into something that could warp the world.
Music is kind of like consciousness. All of our scientific research of neurons can't explain the consciousness a collection of them creates. All of our scientific research of sound waves can't explain all of the emotions, tied to consciousness, they carry.
Sometimes you have to be strong enough to play music. Sometimes it takes a kind of integrity, a presence of mind, a willingness to be vulnerable. It takes confidence, or it takes humility, or it takes nostalgia. And if you don't have what you need and you try to play it, it just sounds so hollow.
I finished playing my Kreisler today and it really did feel like a runner's high. Everything in me was singing. I felt so much better than before I played it. All of my fear and paranoia had somehow floated away with the complicated passages. I felt almost whole again, because I have felt very fragmented for the past few months. It was a glue that pulled me back together for one more moment, giving me strength for one more day.
If I had nothing else to live for (or if I operated under the illusion that I didn't), I could almost live just for music, just for that moment when I let go and my bow is flying across the strings or my hands are touching the keys.
Play a musical instrument. No matter how old you are. It is the very best therapy (along with hugs and kisses).
I am playing Kreisler's Preludium and Allegro on violin right now. I played it for Erin this morning for advice (she played it last year). I played it technically very well, but in my effort to achieve the illusive perfect intonation, I didn't put any of my heart into it.
Tonight I didn't do any homework. I practice violin for three hours, cello for an hour, and went to a concert with my dad that I was supposed to play in but backed out of. While practicing my lovely Boccherini cello concerto I had to pay more attention to notes and stuff (as I'm just learning it), but I decided to play the Kreisler with no inhibitions, just put my heart into it completely (don't worry this is going somewhere).
Somewhere in the middle all of the tension inside of me melted away. I wasn't in the livingroom anymore. I was in the Kreisler. The notes were a universe; the cadences became my emotions. Every bit of me was concentrated into a few pages of music.
I'm not sure how to explain this unless you've had an experience like it. It's kind of like a runner's high, except a musician's high. Your body gets pumped full of these cool endorphins, and it feels like you're no longer an individual, you are a strand in a web. Any self-centered worries just kind of fade in the face of something more important. All of your energy gets poured into making that music into something that could warp the world.
Music is kind of like consciousness. All of our scientific research of neurons can't explain the consciousness a collection of them creates. All of our scientific research of sound waves can't explain all of the emotions, tied to consciousness, they carry.
Sometimes you have to be strong enough to play music. Sometimes it takes a kind of integrity, a presence of mind, a willingness to be vulnerable. It takes confidence, or it takes humility, or it takes nostalgia. And if you don't have what you need and you try to play it, it just sounds so hollow.
I finished playing my Kreisler today and it really did feel like a runner's high. Everything in me was singing. I felt so much better than before I played it. All of my fear and paranoia had somehow floated away with the complicated passages. I felt almost whole again, because I have felt very fragmented for the past few months. It was a glue that pulled me back together for one more moment, giving me strength for one more day.
If I had nothing else to live for (or if I operated under the illusion that I didn't), I could almost live just for music, just for that moment when I let go and my bow is flying across the strings or my hands are touching the keys.
Play a musical instrument. No matter how old you are. It is the very best therapy (along with hugs and kisses).
Sunday, January 28, 2007
surreal
Everything this weekend seemed very surreal, confusing, far away, messed-up. I definitely wasn't really in the best place to go to a tournament. I just wasn't psyched, which is sad, because it was state.
Anyway, I just kind of slept all the way there. The first surreal thing was that for the first time in my debate career, I wasn't in a hotel room with my LD friends, like Brittany. I've always been with Brittany. I was with some policy friends. They're my friends at school, sure, but at debate everything is very segregated. So it was very weird.
I just didn't feel like I was debated. It felt so distant. I guess I was doing alright, because my record was my usual 4-1 (Hannah Payne... oh man, even though I put some red hair dye in my hair, she still beat me my fourth round), but it just felt weird.
I had to debate Ally in octafinals, and that made me very angry. I hate debating my friends at tournaments. I guess doing it in prelims is alright, but in octas, it's like knocking someone or being knocked out by someone you care about. So that round was pretty messed up too. I didn't really want to win, but I did want to win, because it was state, my last state tournament.
(The whole idea that it was the last state tournament I will ever go to was also very weird and incomprehensible. It felt off.)
Anyway, I was very depressed after the round. This compounded when I had to debate Amanda in quarters, who I really like as well. I just wasn't there. And I ran a new case that my coach Amanda wrote the night before because Amanda had seen my neg, and that was probably a mistake on my part to run it. But I'm not sure if anything could have fixed that round. From my first speech, I just fell apart. Things split down the middle. I thought, "I'm going to lose," and I was trying to understand how it could be state, and how I could be out. I kept looking at the judges and knowing that what we were both saying was very confusing, and Amanda had the last word. I didn't know how to fix things. No, I didn't feel like I had the power to fix things. It felt out of control, like all the dominoes had been put in place before the round and someone had flicked them over, and I was the very last domino, just waiting to be crushed by the weight of so many tournaments, crushed, finally, at state.
I debated pretty terribly. I tried to pully myself back together for my second speech. I won the argument that should have won me the debate, but I did not explain to the judges well enough everything that was going on so I really didn't win it. She won it because her last speech, which contradicted herself in many ways (not that I wasn't) was the last thing they heard.
I shook the judges hands, and I ran out of the room, and I ran to the bathroom, and I cried. Not as much about the round, although I hated myself for screwing it up. No, I don't really understand what I was crying about, but it was something big and complicated that was building up for a long time, like a long chain of dominoes. The whole world was illusory and far away, and I was sitting on the cold tile. Nothing made sense. Nothing felt right. I wanted to win, and somehow it was over, over on the cold tile.
Brittany helped me a lot. And eventually that incomprehensible sadness was swallowed into a nothingness. I felt blank, hollow, empty. Only today is the sadness beginning to seep back in a little. The rest of the day was so bizarre. We all seemed like paperdolls, being moved around by little girls clasping the popsicle sticks taped to our existences. It was so flimsy, all of my hopes about state dissolving in a round that I lost because of my own fault.
Amanda, my coach, was very angry. She came stomping in, talking about how the ballots said I lost because I had too many arguments and because I argued topicality (and of course, I should be burned at the stake for mentioning anything remotely policy-like in LD, even if I never said the word "topicality"). The ballots were really weird. I sat on the bus later and calmly ripped them up, because it seemed like the thing to do.
Now, it seems like yesterday I wasn't at state. Yesterday didn't happen. This weekend didn't happen. I'm not really worried about it. It doesn't feel real enough for worries. I just know NFL's matter, and I can do well. I don't feel angry, even though it was my fault I lost quarters. I don't feel sad, even though I had hoped a lot that I would get at least to sems. I don't feel scared. I just feel... fake. Unreal.
The boy that won is a boy I have debated four times this year, and beat every single time.
I got 6th place and Hannah Payne got 7th.
Oh man you should have seen her face.
It was priceless.
Anyway, I just kind of slept all the way there. The first surreal thing was that for the first time in my debate career, I wasn't in a hotel room with my LD friends, like Brittany. I've always been with Brittany. I was with some policy friends. They're my friends at school, sure, but at debate everything is very segregated. So it was very weird.
I just didn't feel like I was debated. It felt so distant. I guess I was doing alright, because my record was my usual 4-1 (Hannah Payne... oh man, even though I put some red hair dye in my hair, she still beat me my fourth round), but it just felt weird.
I had to debate Ally in octafinals, and that made me very angry. I hate debating my friends at tournaments. I guess doing it in prelims is alright, but in octas, it's like knocking someone or being knocked out by someone you care about. So that round was pretty messed up too. I didn't really want to win, but I did want to win, because it was state, my last state tournament.
(The whole idea that it was the last state tournament I will ever go to was also very weird and incomprehensible. It felt off.)
Anyway, I was very depressed after the round. This compounded when I had to debate Amanda in quarters, who I really like as well. I just wasn't there. And I ran a new case that my coach Amanda wrote the night before because Amanda had seen my neg, and that was probably a mistake on my part to run it. But I'm not sure if anything could have fixed that round. From my first speech, I just fell apart. Things split down the middle. I thought, "I'm going to lose," and I was trying to understand how it could be state, and how I could be out. I kept looking at the judges and knowing that what we were both saying was very confusing, and Amanda had the last word. I didn't know how to fix things. No, I didn't feel like I had the power to fix things. It felt out of control, like all the dominoes had been put in place before the round and someone had flicked them over, and I was the very last domino, just waiting to be crushed by the weight of so many tournaments, crushed, finally, at state.
I debated pretty terribly. I tried to pully myself back together for my second speech. I won the argument that should have won me the debate, but I did not explain to the judges well enough everything that was going on so I really didn't win it. She won it because her last speech, which contradicted herself in many ways (not that I wasn't) was the last thing they heard.
I shook the judges hands, and I ran out of the room, and I ran to the bathroom, and I cried. Not as much about the round, although I hated myself for screwing it up. No, I don't really understand what I was crying about, but it was something big and complicated that was building up for a long time, like a long chain of dominoes. The whole world was illusory and far away, and I was sitting on the cold tile. Nothing made sense. Nothing felt right. I wanted to win, and somehow it was over, over on the cold tile.
Brittany helped me a lot. And eventually that incomprehensible sadness was swallowed into a nothingness. I felt blank, hollow, empty. Only today is the sadness beginning to seep back in a little. The rest of the day was so bizarre. We all seemed like paperdolls, being moved around by little girls clasping the popsicle sticks taped to our existences. It was so flimsy, all of my hopes about state dissolving in a round that I lost because of my own fault.
Amanda, my coach, was very angry. She came stomping in, talking about how the ballots said I lost because I had too many arguments and because I argued topicality (and of course, I should be burned at the stake for mentioning anything remotely policy-like in LD, even if I never said the word "topicality"). The ballots were really weird. I sat on the bus later and calmly ripped them up, because it seemed like the thing to do.
Now, it seems like yesterday I wasn't at state. Yesterday didn't happen. This weekend didn't happen. I'm not really worried about it. It doesn't feel real enough for worries. I just know NFL's matter, and I can do well. I don't feel angry, even though it was my fault I lost quarters. I don't feel sad, even though I had hoped a lot that I would get at least to sems. I don't feel scared. I just feel... fake. Unreal.
The boy that won is a boy I have debated four times this year, and beat every single time.
I got 6th place and Hannah Payne got 7th.
Oh man you should have seen her face.
It was priceless.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
fear, fear, and more fear
I think that bipolar coupled with an anxiety disorder and PTSD makes for no fun. I also think I shouldn't complain because some people have it much worse. But sometimes I get stuck in my own mind, and I do believe in emotional relativity, in that people's feelings and reactions to events can be similar even if one event is way worse than the other.
Anyway, state debate is tomorrow, and I am terrified. Absolutely freaking terrified. I don't think that's a very good emotion to go into the tournament with. I need my confidence from the last tournament. It's not different than any other tournament all year, and I've done well at the rest. The fact that it's state really doesn't mean anything.
I'm so tired, too. I'm worried about my alertness tomorrow. And I'm sure my body will freak out the way it usually does under pressure, thanks to the lovely forementioned ailments.
Consciousness. Man. It really is the greatest disease.
Anyway, state debate is tomorrow, and I am terrified. Absolutely freaking terrified. I don't think that's a very good emotion to go into the tournament with. I need my confidence from the last tournament. It's not different than any other tournament all year, and I've done well at the rest. The fact that it's state really doesn't mean anything.
I'm so tired, too. I'm worried about my alertness tomorrow. And I'm sure my body will freak out the way it usually does under pressure, thanks to the lovely forementioned ailments.
Consciousness. Man. It really is the greatest disease.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Who cares about relativity?
I am apparently "one of approximately 2,600 students... out of nearly 2.8 million high school seniors" to be a candidate for the presidential scholars award. Interesting.
It used to be that I was just known as the musical kid. Now that is being eclipsed by my academic performance. I don't want people to forget, though, that music is what really matters. Music can touch everyone. Music can do what science and A+'s never can. It can pull people together with a universal language.
Today I was arguing with Siobhan about whether my clock was fast. She said hers was correct, because it was satellite time (sp?). I told her that according to the theory of relativity, time stretches and slows down near massive bodies, so mine was more accurate, as it was on earth, and time was more stretched on earth than in space (which would technically mean that my watch should be slow, but Siobhan didn't bother to think about that). Anyway, Siobhan said, "So?" And I said, "It's part of relativity!" And she said, "Nobody cares about relativity but you MIT people."
It made me very sad. Maybe sadder than it should have made me. It's true, though, I guess. Most of the world doesn't care about relativity, or quantum mechanics, or infinite or finite space stretching or expanding and yanking time along with it. How could they not care?
I love thinking about those things. Like the fact that everything in our three dimensions travels in geodesics, because three-dimensional space is warped and curved because of gravity etc., but that those geodesics are actually straight lines in four dimensions, they just looked curved because our reality is curved, the way the shadow of a jet's straight path across the sky looks curved on the curved surface of earth.
And the idea that time is measured by space. Newton believed in absolute time, so he believed that his definition of displacement over time would always work. However, Einstein (and others) came along and realized that at speeds of light, time stretches. According to the Newtonian definition of time, that would mean that light, at its speed, would actually be going faster than it's speed from our perspective, enabling it to eventually go faster than itself and escape the speed of light. But Einstein shot that down by saying that not only does time stretch at the speed of light, distances stretch, so that time relies on space, which means, according to Hawking, that there could be no time without matter.
Isn't that interesting to you? No, probably not. Most people don't care. And maybe they shouldn't. I mean, what does science do for us without love or interpersonal maturity? What are atomic bombs worth if people don't love each other enough? Our world needs far more help in humanities than it does in science. But I am so drawn to science... I am drawn to the idea that I can understand the universe or multiverse, that I can discover things about the way the huge expanses of space work. It doesn't really matter, I guess. Who cares about relativity? But it means something to me.
I care!
It used to be that I was just known as the musical kid. Now that is being eclipsed by my academic performance. I don't want people to forget, though, that music is what really matters. Music can touch everyone. Music can do what science and A+'s never can. It can pull people together with a universal language.
Today I was arguing with Siobhan about whether my clock was fast. She said hers was correct, because it was satellite time (sp?). I told her that according to the theory of relativity, time stretches and slows down near massive bodies, so mine was more accurate, as it was on earth, and time was more stretched on earth than in space (which would technically mean that my watch should be slow, but Siobhan didn't bother to think about that). Anyway, Siobhan said, "So?" And I said, "It's part of relativity!" And she said, "Nobody cares about relativity but you MIT people."
It made me very sad. Maybe sadder than it should have made me. It's true, though, I guess. Most of the world doesn't care about relativity, or quantum mechanics, or infinite or finite space stretching or expanding and yanking time along with it. How could they not care?
I love thinking about those things. Like the fact that everything in our three dimensions travels in geodesics, because three-dimensional space is warped and curved because of gravity etc., but that those geodesics are actually straight lines in four dimensions, they just looked curved because our reality is curved, the way the shadow of a jet's straight path across the sky looks curved on the curved surface of earth.
And the idea that time is measured by space. Newton believed in absolute time, so he believed that his definition of displacement over time would always work. However, Einstein (and others) came along and realized that at speeds of light, time stretches. According to the Newtonian definition of time, that would mean that light, at its speed, would actually be going faster than it's speed from our perspective, enabling it to eventually go faster than itself and escape the speed of light. But Einstein shot that down by saying that not only does time stretch at the speed of light, distances stretch, so that time relies on space, which means, according to Hawking, that there could be no time without matter.
Isn't that interesting to you? No, probably not. Most people don't care. And maybe they shouldn't. I mean, what does science do for us without love or interpersonal maturity? What are atomic bombs worth if people don't love each other enough? Our world needs far more help in humanities than it does in science. But I am so drawn to science... I am drawn to the idea that I can understand the universe or multiverse, that I can discover things about the way the huge expanses of space work. It doesn't really matter, I guess. Who cares about relativity? But it means something to me.
I care!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
fear
Science Bowl went alright. We got sixth, so should have advanced to double elimination rounds, but were knocked out because of some absurd rule I don't want to explain. I think, though, that had we gone on, we would have probably gotten third or fourth, because we hit the team that won, and we tied with them.
That's not the point though. Last night in the hotel room, Siobhan breathing next to me, with the glow of the TV cutting through the darkness and cold, I realized how completely paralyzed by terror I am. I don't know how to explain it. I don't feel like talking about it verbally. It seems like no one would understand. I am carved into my own little world by a fear so deep that it undercuts any meaning, and significance, any hope. That's what happened to me this summer, except to a worse degree. Right now it's building up again though. I have to stop it but I don't know how. I'm just so scared of life. I'm scared of moving away, of growing up, of changing, of leaving my bedroom, of going anywhere anytime.
Anyway, I don't know how to describe it. It just makes me want to curl into a little ball in my room with a lot of books and movies and never move, but it also makes me absolutely terrified of doing that. It's not very fun.
Erin's going to come over now and watch a movie with me. It sounds really nice right now. I need the distraction of friendship. And Josh is talking to me. :-)
That's not the point though. Last night in the hotel room, Siobhan breathing next to me, with the glow of the TV cutting through the darkness and cold, I realized how completely paralyzed by terror I am. I don't know how to explain it. I don't feel like talking about it verbally. It seems like no one would understand. I am carved into my own little world by a fear so deep that it undercuts any meaning, and significance, any hope. That's what happened to me this summer, except to a worse degree. Right now it's building up again though. I have to stop it but I don't know how. I'm just so scared of life. I'm scared of moving away, of growing up, of changing, of leaving my bedroom, of going anywhere anytime.
Anyway, I don't know how to describe it. It just makes me want to curl into a little ball in my room with a lot of books and movies and never move, but it also makes me absolutely terrified of doing that. It's not very fun.
Erin's going to come over now and watch a movie with me. It sounds really nice right now. I need the distraction of friendship. And Josh is talking to me. :-)
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Mr. Pogreba
So semesters are over (I got a 93, I think the highest grade in all his classes, maybe not, doesn't matter, on the physics test).
I have found out how to make myself tomato soup out of V8 juice, which is pretty much awesome because V8 juice is pretty much awesome.
Tomorrow I leave for science bowl, which is in a town four hours a way. I'm excited. Siobhan is on my team. I truly, truly love Siobhan. Emma is also on our team, who used to be our friend but really isn't anymore. But I'm excited to spend time with Siobhan, who usually lives in a cave of homework in her bedroom. She is the hardest working person I know by far.
Anyway, about Mr. Pogreba (since he has claimed the title of this post). Today was nice; I went out to lunch with Erin (and I totally OWNED the parallel parking spot outside the restaurant), went to my cello lesson, worked on my math lab and writing an essay, and then went to AP language.
At AP language we were talking about how high school English can actually degrade the writing of kids that come to high school as good writers, since it is pretty much oriented with all of the thesis-topic-sentence junk at people that aren't organized to begin with, so those that are just get burdened down with stiff mechanics.
So Mr. Pogreba said, "I mean, how many kids go out of high school and become professional writers?" And Jill, being Jill, shouted, "Lindsay will!"
Interlude: if you don't know Mr. Pogreba, he makes a living off of making fun of people. He's hilarious, but he is mostly negative. He doesn't give very many compliments.
Anyway, Mr. Pogreba said, to the whole class, "Lindsay has the potential to be an awesome professional writer." And then he said something about how smooth all my essays are while my thesis statements are mechanical, the product of high school English.
That is very uncharacteristic of him, and very nice. It made me feel very nice anyway. I wanted to thank him, but he's not the sort of person you thank for a compliment.
It made me happy.
I have found out how to make myself tomato soup out of V8 juice, which is pretty much awesome because V8 juice is pretty much awesome.
Tomorrow I leave for science bowl, which is in a town four hours a way. I'm excited. Siobhan is on my team. I truly, truly love Siobhan. Emma is also on our team, who used to be our friend but really isn't anymore. But I'm excited to spend time with Siobhan, who usually lives in a cave of homework in her bedroom. She is the hardest working person I know by far.
Anyway, about Mr. Pogreba (since he has claimed the title of this post). Today was nice; I went out to lunch with Erin (and I totally OWNED the parallel parking spot outside the restaurant), went to my cello lesson, worked on my math lab and writing an essay, and then went to AP language.
At AP language we were talking about how high school English can actually degrade the writing of kids that come to high school as good writers, since it is pretty much oriented with all of the thesis-topic-sentence junk at people that aren't organized to begin with, so those that are just get burdened down with stiff mechanics.
So Mr. Pogreba said, "I mean, how many kids go out of high school and become professional writers?" And Jill, being Jill, shouted, "Lindsay will!"
Interlude: if you don't know Mr. Pogreba, he makes a living off of making fun of people. He's hilarious, but he is mostly negative. He doesn't give very many compliments.
Anyway, Mr. Pogreba said, to the whole class, "Lindsay has the potential to be an awesome professional writer." And then he said something about how smooth all my essays are while my thesis statements are mechanical, the product of high school English.
That is very uncharacteristic of him, and very nice. It made me feel very nice anyway. I wanted to thank him, but he's not the sort of person you thank for a compliment.
It made me happy.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
semesters
Well, I was really freaked about semesters. Today I had chem 2 and AP government. The chem 2 test went well I think (I got a 98 on the first part, and I'm pretty sure I got about 90 on the second part). After the first five insanely detailed questions of the government test, I resigned myself to being saludatorian rather than valedictorian. It was a very hard test. After I finished it I guessed I'd probably get a 70%. But when I went to check my grade I got an 85%, and she gave us some extra credit on it since no one got above an 87%, which brought me up to a 96% and brought my semester grade to a 98%. Yes. Thank you God. (I prayed before that test.)
So now I only have physics. I tried to study a bit with Siobhan at Morning Light (coffee shop) tonight, but there were a lot of people I knew there, which was very distracting. Several of my other friends were there as well. Oh well. I think I just need an 80 on the physics test. But I really don't understand anything we've been doing, because I wrote the class off as a waste of my time, and our teacher doesn't explain anything.
I got a letter from Caltech tonight saying they won't give me any money unless I write them a sob letter about extenuating circumstances. So my dad is going to write the letter. This is so stressful. I only need to get $10,000 in scholarships and financial aid somehow. That's all I need. If I can't get that, I have to go to BYU, or amass student loans.
Anyway, the happy news for today is that I am probabl, 99% sure, going to be a valedictorian. Which means all of my work and obsessing has paid off. Actually, this year a lot of my work really has tangibly paid off, with the national merit scholarship, all-state orchestra, getting into my top colleges, placing at science olympiad, doing well at debate, etc.
It's kind of nice.
So now I only have physics. I tried to study a bit with Siobhan at Morning Light (coffee shop) tonight, but there were a lot of people I knew there, which was very distracting. Several of my other friends were there as well. Oh well. I think I just need an 80 on the physics test. But I really don't understand anything we've been doing, because I wrote the class off as a waste of my time, and our teacher doesn't explain anything.
I got a letter from Caltech tonight saying they won't give me any money unless I write them a sob letter about extenuating circumstances. So my dad is going to write the letter. This is so stressful. I only need to get $10,000 in scholarships and financial aid somehow. That's all I need. If I can't get that, I have to go to BYU, or amass student loans.
Anyway, the happy news for today is that I am probabl, 99% sure, going to be a valedictorian. Which means all of my work and obsessing has paid off. Actually, this year a lot of my work really has tangibly paid off, with the national merit scholarship, all-state orchestra, getting into my top colleges, placing at science olympiad, doing well at debate, etc.
It's kind of nice.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
News
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart wlil certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-- safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." (C.S. Lewis)
I think maybe the reason I don't read the news very often anymore is how much it affects me. Like I read this article today (URL). It really, really bothered me. This was a lady with three kids who just wanted to win a Nintendo Wii for her kids. How can things like that happen in the world? How can a father decapitate his four-year-old child?
I was talking to my mom today after church about war. She says our church says we should be subject to our government. I asked her why the commandment "thou shalt not kill" should be conditionalized when the other nine were pretty absolute.
Sometimes I am just so discouraged with the world. I mean, what happened to the lady who died today wasn't really anyone's fault, but it's still terrible. It makes me feel "scrunchy" inside (to steal an expression from John Updike).
I don't feel well today. I'm having the morning-after problem (morning after a tournament that is). I'm emotionally out of whack.
I think maybe the reason I don't read the news very often anymore is how much it affects me. Like I read this article today (URL). It really, really bothered me. This was a lady with three kids who just wanted to win a Nintendo Wii for her kids. How can things like that happen in the world? How can a father decapitate his four-year-old child?
I was talking to my mom today after church about war. She says our church says we should be subject to our government. I asked her why the commandment "thou shalt not kill" should be conditionalized when the other nine were pretty absolute.
Sometimes I am just so discouraged with the world. I mean, what happened to the lady who died today wasn't really anyone's fault, but it's still terrible. It makes me feel "scrunchy" inside (to steal an expression from John Updike).
I don't feel well today. I'm having the morning-after problem (morning after a tournament that is). I'm emotionally out of whack.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
perspective and the conundrum of selfishness
This will be a selfish post, I will warn you. Of course Morgan told me all blogging is selfish. I've been thinking about this. I think it's only partially true. But it has a ring of truth to it.
Before I proceed to be selfish, I wanted to tell you I'm still understanding perspective (and telling you this may just be another selfish action to justify myself). I read this tonight, and I realized the world is a lot bigger and more terrible than my own feelings of selfishness. I don't understand at all what could drive a person to do that to another person, but it did restore my sense of perspective. Really, my life is quite small. I do realize that, even if my own realization negates itself with selfishness.
First off, about my small world: I got fourth place at the debate tournament. I lost in semi-finals again. My preliminary record was 4-1. The semi-final round was interesting, but I'm done complaining or feeling angry. Life goes on, and I did quite well. (I have become better at emotionally dealing with losing.)
But now about selfishness itself and its inherent conundrum. First off, it is selfish of me to tell you I feel selfish, because it could just be attention seeking. I don't feel like I'm telling you this just to seek attention, but I could still sub-consciously be doing it for attention, which means I'm actually perpetuating selfishness by talking about it.
What if everything I do or so is really just to elicit a sympathetic response? That makes accountability into selfishness. Sure, I was selfish today, but my admittance just makes me even more selfish. It is so confusing. When I think about it my logic and rationality just chase each other in circles. There is no alternative to selfishness. And the minute I type that, I really capitulate to selfishness.
Bah. I sound like Rand.
I guess what I think isn't that people don't care about me or know me, it's that maybe I am somehow unconsciously manipulating them, so that the front I project isn't actually me, and the sympathy I get isn't deserved, and my selfishness is inadequately hidden by accountability.
I don't know.
Before I proceed to be selfish, I wanted to tell you I'm still understanding perspective (and telling you this may just be another selfish action to justify myself). I read this tonight, and I realized the world is a lot bigger and more terrible than my own feelings of selfishness. I don't understand at all what could drive a person to do that to another person, but it did restore my sense of perspective. Really, my life is quite small. I do realize that, even if my own realization negates itself with selfishness.
First off, about my small world: I got fourth place at the debate tournament. I lost in semi-finals again. My preliminary record was 4-1. The semi-final round was interesting, but I'm done complaining or feeling angry. Life goes on, and I did quite well. (I have become better at emotionally dealing with losing.)
But now about selfishness itself and its inherent conundrum. First off, it is selfish of me to tell you I feel selfish, because it could just be attention seeking. I don't feel like I'm telling you this just to seek attention, but I could still sub-consciously be doing it for attention, which means I'm actually perpetuating selfishness by talking about it.
What if everything I do or so is really just to elicit a sympathetic response? That makes accountability into selfishness. Sure, I was selfish today, but my admittance just makes me even more selfish. It is so confusing. When I think about it my logic and rationality just chase each other in circles. There is no alternative to selfishness. And the minute I type that, I really capitulate to selfishness.
Bah. I sound like Rand.
I guess what I think isn't that people don't care about me or know me, it's that maybe I am somehow unconsciously manipulating them, so that the front I project isn't actually me, and the sympathy I get isn't deserved, and my selfishness is inadequately hidden by accountability.
I don't know.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
nothingness
I feel like I'm talking to nobody, and it feels appropriate.
I have been very angry lately. I sort of know what I'm angry about, but it is also partially just a sketchy, vague, implacable anger.
I don't like it.
Sometimes it's like I just keep putting on the same mask every day. Or maybe it really is my face, but whenever I wear it something makes it become a mask. I don't really know how to explain it, but it doesn't matter.
You're nobody, this is nothingness.
I'm only sort of unhappy. There are moments of every day when everything is so startlingly... okay. There are hours that go by when I am so excited about life. Everything is just so bright and beautiful and perfect in its entropy.
But it seems like I am some sort of butterfly that fell in a mud puddle. I'm trying so hard to rise above, but right when the sky seems so huge and all of the possibilities of freedom are so infinite, the sludge pulls me down again.
Maybe blogging is a dying art.
I have been very angry lately. I sort of know what I'm angry about, but it is also partially just a sketchy, vague, implacable anger.
I don't like it.
Sometimes it's like I just keep putting on the same mask every day. Or maybe it really is my face, but whenever I wear it something makes it become a mask. I don't really know how to explain it, but it doesn't matter.
You're nobody, this is nothingness.
I'm only sort of unhappy. There are moments of every day when everything is so startlingly... okay. There are hours that go by when I am so excited about life. Everything is just so bright and beautiful and perfect in its entropy.
But it seems like I am some sort of butterfly that fell in a mud puddle. I'm trying so hard to rise above, but right when the sky seems so huge and all of the possibilities of freedom are so infinite, the sludge pulls me down again.
Maybe blogging is a dying art.
Monday, January 08, 2007
movies and math
Okay, um, Gonzaga. It was really fun? I met some interesting new people; I hiked several miles over the course of the weekend across the campus. I got to hang out with some of my favorite people (aka Amanda, Brittany, Greg, Shea, Kristin etc). I got to watch the first episode of LOST on a bus on the way home on my new ipod, which scared the crap out of me because it had some creature on it akin to a veloci raptor, which remains something I am deathly afraid of. After that I thought it would be hard to sleep (complicated with other factors like people talking etc), but I pretty much fell asleep after only a few songs of Ocean Avenue (it is an unusual phenomenon that I can only sleep with very loud music when riding in a vehicle; soft music keeps me awake).
Math started today (differential equations and linear algebra 2). I was very tired (weirdly, becuase at one point yesterday I had been asleep for the past twenty out of twenty-four hours). I was struggling to keep my brain functioning. Then it got very interesting though. Dr. Parker was explaining how animated movies work. Rather than finding a function for a whole hand, say, and multiplying every point by a matrice for all of its rotations, they fit the hand on a four-point plane and use transformation matrices or something to describe all of its rotations.
Well, it's probably not interesting to you, but it was fascinating to me, and it kept me awake.
Now I have got to get myself to do my homework and practice. And rewrite my negative case. Communism didn't go over very well. :-(
Math started today (differential equations and linear algebra 2). I was very tired (weirdly, becuase at one point yesterday I had been asleep for the past twenty out of twenty-four hours). I was struggling to keep my brain functioning. Then it got very interesting though. Dr. Parker was explaining how animated movies work. Rather than finding a function for a whole hand, say, and multiplying every point by a matrice for all of its rotations, they fit the hand on a four-point plane and use transformation matrices or something to describe all of its rotations.
Well, it's probably not interesting to you, but it was fascinating to me, and it kept me awake.
Now I have got to get myself to do my homework and practice. And rewrite my negative case. Communism didn't go over very well. :-(
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