'Twas then that the Hurdy-Gurdy man came, singing songs of love...

All right, this is ridiculous. I think we all have cases of severe egotism. People do read these blogs, and they do get hurt sometimes by the things we write, but is it any better to think the thing and not write it? I think that the real problem lies in the way everyone's gotten hateful all of the sudden. I think that the way everyone's become judgemental is almost presumptuous. The more I get to know people, the more I realize that nobody is what they seem to be on the surface; how can we really judge each other if we don't even know each other? I'm not really concerned about the whole blogging thing; the blogs are just freer gossip circles when stuff like this happens, and I'm sure that the people who are upset about what's been written about them are more upset by the percieved insult than by the fact that it was written up. Yes, it's a little much to put some of this stuff on the internet sometimes, but is it any better to hear it from your friends? Let's face it, Friends is a small school, and nothing stays quiet for long. Everyone will know this stuff at some point. The real problem is that we're judgemental enough to think that way, to regard people in such a negative light. Is it really necessary to have a distinct opinion of everyone?

Maybe it is. Maybe I'm insane. I don't know. I don't mean to insult anyone. I just think you guys are great people, and I don't see why we can't all put it aside and love each other.

By the way--y'all need to stop hiding. I know I have at least twenty or thirty readers from my sitemeter, and only four of the fifty people who read my last post commented. Granted, some may have read it twice (and some commented twice), but still... it's creepy to think of people withholding their identities like that. I'm honest with you guys. Be a little honest with me? Drop a comment on that post. I still want to know who actually reads this.

So... yeah. I went to the Bogo-San's country house and had a lovely weekend, although now I'm being forced at gunpoint to do homework. I've got a stupid World's Fair project to do for History, and I made the mistake of telling my parents about it, and now they're frantically buying books and google-ing stuff and generally making everything much more complicated than it needs to be. On the plus side, though, Harry's mom gave me a beautiful '88 brown leather bomber jacket, and I've been driving them crazy by wearing it in the house. It's comfy and lovely and clean and it smells like pinewood, and I don't even feel guilty about the fact that it's leather because I didn't buy it--I'm just helping Jo out by taking it off of her hands. Hee hee!

Good news on the former-writer's-block front: I've been writing like a madwoman! I think I've written ten poems in the last week. Most of them aren't any good, but overall I think the quality of my work is going up. I keep having little daytime fantasies about being a great poet of the twenty-first century and being buried in Poet's Corner, even though it's all ridiculous and I don't think they bury people there any more anyway.

And triumph of the week: a while ago I entered a piece for the Scholastic Writing Awards competition, much to my parent's chagrin (they wanted me to do homework all day instead). When I won an award, my sister proceeded to mock me for the title of the piece, and my parents gave me a clap on the back and then went about their business. These days they're pressuring me about filling out forms for summer programs I'm supposed to go to in order to buff up my resume for my college applications (because they're college nazis), and the program they're stressing most is a Creative Writing program at Columbia. In the middle of English last week I was reading everyone's blogs and decided to check my AOL mail, even though I dont' really use it that much any more. To my delight, I found an email from the Scholastic people, telling me that I was not only automatically accepted into the program because of the award--I was also eligible for a scholarship! I didn't get the scholarship, but it was cool being able to tell my parents that I'd already gotten in by my own means. I think Camille Guthrie was a bit upset when she found out I'd been checking my email in class instead of working on my essay about this, but she was nice about it and seemed happy for me, even though it meant that the nice recommendation she wrote me hadn't been necessary. (I can't wait to see what she names her baby!)

Backtracking a bit: I still have your clothes from Friday, Oona and Rachel. And I think we all know how awesome the play was. I was jumping out of my seat every second. The gangsters were hilarious, Rie was sexy, Frankie was fierce, Adam danced wonderfully and Sam never missed a beat. WonderBoy delivered every punch line perfectly, and Greg Cum-Tongue startled everyone with his clear voice and fervent acting. The costumes were glorious and the set survived intact, despite the distraction of Dennis's Chinese girlfriend and Gentry's last-minute sewing frenzy. I couldn't get enough of it. It really is a shame that it couldn't have gone on longer, and I'm still angry at my dad for making me miss the cast party. Although I still have the kick-ass sunglasses I found on Dan Hunter's roof, and somewhere within me several of LK's breathmints reside to this day.

Random: tonight is the second Bob Dylan concert I've been to. If I don't come to school on Tuesday, you can assume that my corpse is still staring in awe at the stage of the Beacon.

I just spent half an hour looking at Gentry's gorgeous friends and various other funky people that I don't know on Friendster. Does that make me a loser?

Don't answer that.

PS--go back and tell me what your coffee pot looks like! Do you think I'd make a good hedge-sparrow?

Come out, come out, wherever you are...

Thirteen weeks of archives! My lucky number. (Either that or I'm doomed...)

Temporarily out of the running, so to speak. Got a lot of work to do this weekend, and I'm going to H.'s country house. I'll probably post on Monday or Tuesday.

I love you, my sunny lovely ones! I feel much saner than when I wrote those last two posts. Many thanks for... erm... ignoring them.

I've been curious about this for a long time, so I'm going to try it:

If you've read my blog/this post, drop a comment. "Yo, it's Joe B." would be fine, or "I'm Joe Shmoe and I approve this blog;" the funnier the better. I just want to know who you are.

...and then say what kind of animal you'd like to be, what color your coffee pot is, and who your favorite superhero of all time is. Professions of undying love are cool too.

We'll Keep On Fighting 'Till The End!

OK, as soon as I finished that last post I came up with something to blog about, but I still want to know what kind of animal you'd be because I'm a nerd and I'm all nerdy like that. And yes, I managed to reference Queen and Gollum in the same line. I rock.

Anyway. I like to think that I'm a strong person but I'm really not. I'm sensitive and prone to fear and love and vulnerability and I'm easily hurt and some days I don't know who I am at all. (LK's comment here made my day, and it touches this, kind of, and I'm really just proud of the fact that I can link.) I almost threw up during Sin City and I had to leave because I thought I might faint. I'm afraid of fast-moving water because I've nearly drowned a few times, and I have a kind of fear of heights, too. I'm always afraid that I'll lose Renata and everyone else I love and I have the darkest dreams of anyone I know. I tend to like people, which also makes me vulnerable, and I hate vulnerability, and I hate being weak, which makes me even weaker because I can't deny that in the end I'm not really all that strong. (Hell, my arms still hurt from Ex Ed. What's up with that?) I don't have an image, and if I do I'm not sure what it is, and although everyone insists that I have plenty of personality I have no idea what it is. I can't even write my damn letter from the editor, and it's about something I really care about. I'm the worst vegitarian in the world because I'm not strong enough to be grounded for what I believe in.

I've been through a lot, though, and I'm still OK. Does that make me strong? Am I strong if enough people care about me that when I'm weak I have somewhere to turn? Does being "feisty" make me strong? Does having survived Middle School and beat up boys on the playground and being able to run a newspaper and ride bareback and build a Hobeycat make me strong? Does reading when virtually everyone is telling me to stop make me strong?

Please don't comfort me or try to make me feel good. I don't really feel badly right now, anyay. I'm just 'fessing up, so to speak, to my weaknesses, because I want to get them out there, even though I hate them. I'm just venting, 'cause I'm tired and supposed to be asleep and I don't ever want to hide myself.

I think being able to post this makes me strong, just a little bit.

I will be stronger. Some day.

This I swear.

Now I'm being self-indulgent and ranting. I'm just frustrated because I can't write the damned letter and I hate not being able to write.

Gah!!!!!!!!! This really IS blog abuse. I'm sorry. It's late--early. I'm too tired to think straight. I just need to write.

The damned letter is SO hard to write, though. It's kind of painful. Because of the subject matter, that is.

I want to be strong like Stella and live my life the way I want to and be totally and completely free. I want to make music and laugh like sunshine and spin like a pirimenta and be untouchable. I want to write like a demon-goddess and not care what anyone thinks of me and admit my pain and isolation and unhappiness, even, and still go on fighting.

But God I'm weary. I want to lie down and rest and drop my load.

I'll never be able to drop my load as long as I live.

That's OK, I think.

This is how I am. I'm not especially balanced, I guess, but I'm not doing too badly. I guess I have a sense of who I am, a bit, and what I'd like to do, even if I'll never do it. I like people and books and fuzzy animals and long walks on the beach and I hate helpless people. And I'll probably delete this in the morning, because I'm not really that strong anyway.

Oh, God. I need to sleep.

One-Man Band?

Ex Ed was fun. I guess. My arms hurt and I burned my nose and my left ear, but it wasn't too bad. Oona burned her face, Amanda developed dreadlocks, and Rachel got so sick that she started saying things like "Oh, man, it's, like, zero degrees below freezing right now." Amanda got busted smoking behind the shithole and Deanna told me, slyly, to write an editorial about the trip. The only guys on the trip were Andrew and Jeff Then, and the other girls were Molly, Paula and Alicia, so the fact that we all looked, smelled and felt like shit didn't really matter. We were all in the same boat, so to speak. Still, the nature was truly beautiful, and so was sleeping in a pile in the sunlight and being the last tent to wake up and staying up later than anyone else. I discovered that I hate being called "kiddo" and that Jack is a little bit like my dad. Oona made fun of me (in a loving way) for singing Joan Baez songs all the time and reading a lot, and it was funny because it was true. Sigh.

I also FINALLY finished Missing Angel Juan. I'd read all the other Weetzie Bat books, but it was the last one I got to, and Jack Robbins teased me so much about reading it (he quoted a passage in which My Secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie Bat's names came up to the entire fifth grade classroom and they all laughed) that I put it away in shame and and never finished it. All it did was make me miss Harry, but it was a wonderful book anyway. The thing about her writing is that it's so simplistic and so rich that you can't help but read your own previosly-held emotions into it. I read all five of the books in the series that week. Over those three days, actually. I still identify most with Witch Baby. I think I can appreciate them much more now that I'm a little older (five years!) and have had time to experience a lot of emotions. I know I'm riddled with complexes, but I've lived a lot and understand a lot now.

OK, I wrote that yesterday but I got cut off because my parents are college nazis. I think I was about to start making a list of life-experiences I've had, but that's pretentious so I won't.

Yeah... I'm applying for a bunch of summer programs. Four total, at three different universities. I don't think I'll get into all of them, but I think I'll get two or three, and I'll be able to stay in the city and write a bit instead of being ushered around the country so often that I forget who I am all over again. I'll get to see Harry and make friends with the box-office guys at Irving Plaza again and drink cheap coffee and write.

As soon as I got back, I took a shower and headed over to Harry's house for a sweet Italian dinner. We ended up missing Matt's party (I'm sorry!) and the next day we ambled through SoHo and split a milkshake at Johnny Rocket's in a pale mockery of the Pulp Fiction scene.

Blogger rocks. A lot of people that I know don't like blogs, and a few of them have been telling my parents how they feel, so I'm officially banned until after finals. It's obviously having no effect on me, though, because Harry showed me how to install four different screens on my computer for different programs.

I feel like I ought to blog but I have nothing to write. I'm busy trying to write my Letter from the Editor and apologize to Elena for having to hang up on her because of my parents while still appearing to do homework. Grrr.

The more my perceptions of people change, the more I find myself realizing how very little you can really tell about a person from a first impression. This leads me to the conclusion that unless we labor to clear our own names, we will all be grossly misunderstood. Although time seems to fix that a bit as we get to know each other.

Wow. This was a terrible post. I'll write a better one later to cover this up.

Random question, 'cause I'm bored and I want to know:
If I were an animal, what do you think I would be?
What would you be?

Joan was quizzical...

Lately I've been losing myself a lot, and remembering who I am a lot. (This post is going to be candid and unflowery, so brace yourselves.) I've been sitting in a lot of coffee shops, and I made some random-NYU-musician-friends last week who wave at me on the street while rolling their upright basses and and readjusting their berets. They like my taste in literature and smile and play music for me. They're kind of dorky, too, and listen to lots of jazz. My kind of people, my kinds of places.

I went back to John's Pizza with Harry on Thursday and remembered how good their pizza really is. The last time I ate there I must have been at least eight. I remember what a shock it was to my eight-year-old self to realize that the paintings on the walls were not, as I had believed, masterpieces of the modern era, but crappy lazily-painted splurges of off-colored vigor applied tastelessly by an underpaid waitress decades ago. I'm not even sure what the painting depicts. I used to think it was a magic cave with waterfalls on every side, or a fairy glen underneath a mountain, like a gollum-lair but happier. Now it just kind of looks like a grey cave. Hmmm.

And earlier on Thursday there was a jazz concert at school, and Bob got to prove once again that he's not really alone in the world, and I remembered why I love jazz. And then on Friday I walked through the Village and stood in the presence of the greats and conspired with my darling Oona about our future lairs as queens of the literary revolution, once we escape our furious parents and the tyrannical nuns. I started spouting beat-poet facts and Ron Singer said, "Where do you keep all this excess information? How do you remember all this stuff?" and I blushed a bit. That's not a good sign, I told myself, especially coming from him. Still, one can't help but love him. He's really quite brilliant.

Saturday was an affair unto itself. Matt and I decided to go see a band called ...And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, but we weren't able to get enough tickets for anyone else, and we flipped a coin and determined to sell our tickets and paint the town. We tried to go to Lucille's Bar, but the wait was too long, so we went to Starbucks for a while and then rode an eight-person circular bike through Times Square with a loserish-cool starving stand-up comedian driving. Eventually we met up with some other people and had a nice night, and I subwayed home with LK and fell asleep contentedly.

I guess what I've been getting at is that every morning I wake up feeling like a different person. I tried to explain this to a certain sweet mexicali rose, and she misunderstood what I was saying a little, mostly because I kind of tried to express it in terms of stereotypes. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised when Harry said something in this vein that was exactly what I'd been thinking. One day I'll wake up and really feel like the true-blue hippie I once was, and another day I'll just feel like wearing black and sitting in a coffee shop with a good book. Some days I'm honestly angry. Some days I just want peace. I think it has to do with the seasons changing... but all my life I've been stereotyped, and I still am, but these days I don't accept the way I'm stereotyped as much as I used to. I don't really have a particular dress style, and I don't even really like what little style I do have, and I don't really know what I want to say about myself because... I guess I just don't really know who I am. That's why I treasure these little moments of reassurance, wafting jazz music and coffee and musicians who smile and books I enjoy and things that move me. They remind me of who I am. Maybe that's what my late materialistic bent has been about. Harry and LK have both noticed that I've become a little obsessive about prom, and other similarly unimportant material things. I think I like things that I can form opinions about because the reassure me that I have opinions, that I'm a solid, real person with my own personality and taste. The other night at Whole Foods I ate sushi with Harry and discovered something I hadn't known about myself and was frightened. We ran into Tanya and I tried to hide my red eyes, but I think she saw. That night I dreamed that I was standing at the edge of a precipice and looking down and realizing that the ugly gorge was me.

I keep thinking of the scene is Slaughter-House Five where the main character hears a song and is so jolted by the wave of emotion that arises in him that he eventually passes out in the middle of his own birthday party. When he wakes up he realizes exactly how much he doesn't know about himself, sees for the first time that there is a huge ol' complex hiding beneath his cheerful exterior, that the things he thinks are irrational about him are actually all facets of a great dark all-consuming thing.


^^^I wrote that this morning. After that I took a shower and realized (again) while I belted Dusty Springfield that this, here, these people, this blog, these hands, this face is (are) my life. Then I went out with my dad and bought some clothes at a thrift shop and had lunch with Greg Sans-Tongue and went to a bunch more thrift shops and bought a bunch more useless crap. Greg played my Ovation and I reorganized my closet and got rid of a lot of stuff that I didn't need. (Anyone want some clothes? I'm serious, I have far too many! I like giving things to people, so please drop by!) It was very comfortable and cozy. We had chinese food and I put on a dress I'd just bought and picked up some ice cream and he went home. Oona called and we chatted cheerfully about our weekends, people we knew and didn't know, the Lit Mag, clothes, parties... normal high-school stuff. And somehow I ended up here again, finishing the post I wrote this morning and feeling a lot more self-knowledgeable than I did yesterday. All I have to do to remember who I am is read something I've written, I guess, or think of a conversation I've had, or something I've made or chosen myself. Anything with my opinion in it. Maybe it has to do with my never having been allowed to decorate my room the way I wanted to or leave my things lying around as a child. I couldn't choose my own clothes, either, although I learned to arrange them artfully out of sheer necessity.

Erm... I don't know how to end this now. I'm going to work on my one-act now. (Matt teased me about naming my character after Joan Baez and changing Elena to Ellen... yeah...)

Peace. I love you all. May you be saner than I am.

Got a ticket for my destination... doo doo doo...

That's the first thing I heard when I was trying to come up with a title. Whatever. I feel like posting pictures but I don't really have many. I'll do my best.




Yeah, that's Renata in her pijamas.

That's right... Boy II Mensch... from some bar mitzvah or other.

Isn't she lovely, though?




^ weird picture of me in New Mexico that I found on my computer ^





Yeah, Harry took this one. I look... zitty.

always surprised when it turns out to be you...

(Yeah, that's the Who. I took it out of context, so the meaning twisted slightly, and it'd be cheating to do that and still expect anyone to recognize it. Except maybe Lucas.)

Things I Did Over Spring Break:
Saw Harry
Embarrassed David Tay at a restuarant
Saw DBH
Took an SAT math class
Saw Elena and Avery a few times
Saw Jr. Mack with LK
Saw an awesome play with Elena and Avery and Hally
Met Kieran Culkin
Saw LK again and thoroughly embarrassed her in a dress shop
Met Will's girlfriend and a Scottish guy who later asked LK out
Filmed with Frankie and crew for a day (well, I didn't really film)
Saw Robert Plant at Irving Plaza and left before the encore, because Greg and I both almost passed out at the same time.
Went to DC to see my cousin Danny, who plays various basses and gave me a book, and to tour Georgetown, which I didn't like
Worked on the Newspaper layout
Spent a day with my sister
Wrote some stuff and drank a lot of coffee at the place around the corner
Got sick
Saw Oona
Got Oona sick, probably
Cried a lot
Got really sick
Cried more
Yelled at my parents
Lost my voice
Got my voice back
Spent a day with my mom and bought a shitload of clothes
Told a little girl to stay drug-free but not to be afraid of people who did do them
Was ignored by the little girl
Greeted Harry when he got back
Watched an anime movie with Zack and Chloe about magical raccoons
Saw Harry and got him sick
Hauled furniture around for a day in the rain without eating and lost my voice again
Finally found a prom dress, although I'm still not really satisfied (what goes with orange?)
Lost my cell phone
Got Alex sick, I think
Cut playwriting, got Chris to send me home after third period
Talked with (at) Fish for two hours and gave him my blog address because he's awesome

Without the sick bit it wasn't a bad break, I guess.

Oh, yeah. Except for the fact that EVERYONE DIED. Three people Elena knew, Oona's friend, Jaya's friend, Peter's friend and two kids who would have been seniors if they'd stayed. The Pope, Terri Schiavo.

I didn't really know any of them. In fact, I only met one of them once. I cried over him. I didn't really feel much about the others, to be honest; despite everything, I just want to console the people who were hurt by their deaths. Jacob's is the only face in my head. I really just don't know what to say to anyone any more. It's all horrible and grim and everyone's beginning to question themselves. I talked with two similarly self-questioning friends in the cafeteria about our parents for a while this morning, and I realized that mine really aren't all that bad. Although my dad and I almost never get along, and I fight with my mom quite often as well, my parents don't tell me that my friends don't like me, or that I'm nothing and will never go anywhere in life. My mom tries to run my relationships and pick my friends, yes, and she doesn't really like my poetry, and my dad thinks I'm melodramatic and saucy and not trustworthy, and yes, they both voted for Bush and don't like that I'm an atheist, but they also go to concerts with me and my mom took a day off last week to help me look for a dress, and my dad took me furniture shopping with him and I accidentally found a dress. (He also made me carry two desks in the rain without a jacket for forty-five minutes, and didn't let me eat lunch until five, and yelled at me until I lost my voice, but still... he meant well when we set out.) I also began to question myself, but in a different way. When Jacob died I felt so shaken that nothing seemed stable any more. Nobody seemed to be there for good. It struck me again how alone we all really are. Now I see all this death and depression and pain, and I feel kind of like a brat. Who am I to complain? I have an OK family, not perfect, but not too bad; my sister is the most beautiful thing in the world, and my parents are still in love with each other, and love us, and I'm in love, too, and I've got enough confidence that I don't have to prove to people why I'm cool or whatever any more. I'm no supermodel, but I'm not unattractive, and I'm smart and creative and know how to love people and how to have a good time, even if I don't really bring much to the party, so to speak.

...yeah, I just reread that. It all sounded better in my head. I need to use the words "yeah," "really," "just," "very" and "anyway" a lot less often.

Edit: I hope you'll all forgive me for this post. I read through it and it's pretty narcissistic. And uninteresting, actually. I'm sorry that I talk so much about myself. I'm not trying to brag or promote myself or anything, and I'm not trying to embarrass you, Harry. It's just that I've already written a good five or six posts this week that I didn't publish, and I feel like I ought to print something, even if it's crap. Which it is.

It really used to piss me off when my mom said things like "Your buddy Harry is sooooooo cool. You're very lucky, V." because it's as though she's saying "You got something you didn't deserve. You should consider yourself lucky, V." (Oh, yeah--my parents call me 'V.' I guess 'V.V.' was too long for them.) She said the same thing about other friends of mine that she likes, although it's my theory that she has a big ol' girly crush on Harry. (Actually, she has crushes on a lot of people, mostly young money-managers at her office. She thinks it's funny and laughs whenever I mention it.) Whenever she said that, I used to say "My buddy Harry is very lucky." Lately, though, I've noticed that she's right. It's not that I think don't deserve him, or vica-versa(sp); it's just that there really aren't very many truly happy couples at Friends, in high schools and colleges in general. And when someone feeds you, and tucks you into bed, and strokes your hair until you fall asleep, and doesn't listen to you when you tell him to go away and protect his own health, and still tells you that you look good when you can't talk and have been wearing your pijamas all morning and haven't brushed your hair or washed your face or shaved... you start to feel pretty damn lucky.

My Back Pages

After I posted yesterday, Harry came over and we made one last sordid attempt to find a prom dress for me. "Why are there no normal dresses?" Harry complained. "They all look like halloween costumes." I laughed, but of course, no sound came out. "You know what kind of dress you should look for?" he asked, as though struck with a sudden inspiration. "What?" I croaked. "You know... the stuff that lady wears... with the long cigarette, and the bun... what's her name?" "You mean Audrey Hepburn?" "Yeah, her. She had cool clothes." I grinned. "I'll try." Oh, the irony and understatement of it all.

Anyway, we went home and dried off (it was raining) and I fell asleep for a few minutes and then Harry fell asleep for a while. I used the time to sift through boxes of old papers, with the idea of trashing most of them. I made it through one box before the emotional content became too great and I had to stop.

There were all of my notebooks from last year, all of my creepy black ink drawings and all of my creative writing stories and all the notes I passed and the drawings Elena and Avery did when she visited last year and Chris thought they were Mexicans. The notes I jotted in the margins when I was intimidated by Rock & Mythology Club (can you imagine?), the sketches of clothes that I finally made last summer, ridiculous drawings of myself in my Mary Quite Contrary costume (I hated the bonnet), I LOVE MACBETH scrawled across the edges of my somewhat distracted History notes, a drawing Chloe gave me, the label of Julia's Pocari Sweat bottle pasted to the cover of my History notebook ("What is a Pocari, and why are we drinking its sweat?"), a photo Chloe gave me once of myself in full hippie garb, smiling in the sun, barefooted outside the Reading Room. Across the back of one of the songs I wrote for Fish's Songwriting class: "I really like Harry. A lot. But I'm being stupid, because he's so much older than me and so much more interesting and so... I don't know. I know I'll probably always be a little kid to him, and I still can't stop hoping." The full lyrics to Ballad of the Gypsy Girl. (There were seven stanzas! I completely forgot about the other four when I posted it here a few weeks ago.) At the beginning of the year, a printout of a conversation with Andy (Edit: McVoy, not Fish). Essays that I was proud of. Essays that I hated writing. A list I thought I'd lost of the 20 books I intended to read before the year ended. (I've read about half of them now.) Detailed lens sketches from Physics, with hastily-scrawled notes from Jeff in the margins. MEAN PEOPLE SUCK stickers from the days when I still knew people on St. Mark's Place. The full liner notes of The Gaslight Tapes (the earliest known Dylan bootleg). Even a piece of music I used to sing with Andres Andrade, my old voice instructor. It was Poisoning Pidgeons In The Park, the last piece he gave me before I accidentally stopped attending. The notes I took at Columbia last summer; the endless interviews, handouts, pasted layout plans and letters to Mr. D, the world's best journalism teacher. A year of my life that's over. And I found myself missing it terribly, wishing I could live it over again. All the friends I made, all the insecurities I shed, all the love I found and the freedom I grew to embrace, the gypsy inside of me that emerged. I think maybe I've lost sight of that a little bit. I could stand to learn from my past self. I was so very young, and so old at the same time...

I detached a few random drawings, saved all of my work for English and a few essays I thought Renata might use some day, saved the photos and my poetry/songwriting notebook, all the Creative Writing stuff, and a few other key pieces, and threw away everything else. It's my past and I'll always remember it, but I don't need to save all that junk, because I'll probably never look through it all again if I save too much. Still, it hurt to see the bottom of the box and know I'd lost them all. It struck me that this was my life; I've already lived a chunk of it, and I'll never get it back. These are the memories I'll have to look back on when I'm old, the friends I'll always remember, the person I've turned into. I shoved the remaining papers into the box and went over to wake up Harry, wondering how my freshman self would have reacted if she'd seen this boy she didn't know, this single tender kiss.

I guess I kind of like my life.

The Sound of Silence...?

I knew I was sick, but I guess I forgot when the symptoms went away. That's the problem with these medicines: they treat the symptoms but not the cause, and they make you forget to take care of yourself. I've eaten nothing but pizza, apple pie and coffee for the last three days. (I had a sandwich and hot chocolate last night, but it was too late, I guess.) I've skipped breakfast, skipped lunch on occasion, walked all day without sitting down, cried a lot, shouted a bit, slept very little, and generally worn myself out over the last three or four days. I actually don't feel too bad; I'm just a little tired and have a mild headache. It's mostly my throat that's not functioning well. It was much worse yesterday and the day before.

Last night I found myself triple-booked; I cancelled all my plans and went out to eat with Harry. We went to Forbidden Planet and I read a bit of Squee while we waited for a table; it was lovely and warm, and I ordered hot chocolate and felt cozy.

I knew I shouldn't strain my voice, but we ended up in a debate about Republicans and politics and the atom bomb and I forgot to speak quietly. I hadn't seen him for two weeks, so we both had a lot to say; I can't stay quiet in normal circumstances, let alone with Harry. (Recall that I gave up my Pledge of Silence on GSA day last year when Andy Fish asked me last period if I had any concert tickets lined up for the next month. I had six.) I was sure my voice would heal itself when the medicine kicked in. I guess I was sicker than I thought I was; soon my throat was raw and my head started hurting, and we went home and I lay down and we talked a little more. I felt like a little girl again, but without the insecurities. I won't wreck the moment by blogging too much about it, but I fell asleep and it was very tender and beautiful.

Unfortunately, I woke up at six this morning and started hacking away. Once I calmed down and swallowed some Robutussin, I read a bit and lounged around until everyone woke up. "Good morning, V!" my mom said, a smile on her face. "Do you feel a little better now?" We'd 'bonded' over vintage dresses the day before and were feeling pretty warm towards each other now. "Yeah," I started to say. "Yghmkwv" was what came out; my throat reprimanded me while I determined to try again. "I feel fine," I said; all that came out was "I fghkl--" before I started coughing violently, bending over and grabbing the wall for support. "I'm fine," I whispered. I didn't look fine. "Don't talk any more," she said.

So I've been silent all morning, mostly because nobody can hear me when I whisper anyway. My parents say things that elicit responses from me, and it's very hard not to say what I'm thinking; it's kind of interesting, though. I'm not used to observing conversations without taking part in them. It's really very different. It's much more relaxing. You should try it some time. It's a very Zen experience.

For example: when Renata woke up, my mom teased her about her t-shirt, which depicted a potbellied anthropomorphic frog floating down a river on an inner tube. "V's always wearing these fiesty t-shirts that say 'Stand Up For Choice' and 'Not In Our Name'," she said, grinning and poking my sore tummy, "but Renata just wants to relax and float on the river." I was about to point out, irked, that Renata has a few fiery t-shirts too, when I realized that I'd given them to her. And it's true; I could stand to learn a bit from her about relaxing. What she can teach me about observation is just as important as what I try to teach her about conviction and fighting for rights and justice. If I'd been able to speak, I would have interrupted and I wouldn't have seen the truth in what she was saying. I guess I really do need to 'turn off my mind, relax and float downstream' sometimes.

Still, I kind of want my voice back.