collegiate diversion

 I play my electric~88 and dust collects at my fingertips. What does that say for my motivation?

There are these flies that buzz outside my window. I know winter is apparently here in Ithaca but sometimes the fresh air helps me wake up in the mornings. And then these giant buzzing and awfully disturbing insects find a way into my room.

It was early in the morning, and I was of course, late for class. So I pulled on my boots and ignored the conundrum: a buzzing intruder and no hole in my screen.

I came back to my one~room home at 11 in the evening, one day of interview chasing, caffeine dropping rushing and pumping grossness. I hit the mattress harder than usual for it just being myself.

Buzzzz, bizzzz, bzzzzzz.

The paper lantern hanging room my ceiling, I like looking at it when I’m like this ~ exhausted and mesmerized by the orange glowing hue. Candlelight from this hanging contraption I made to block out the fluorescence. You think for an intellectual institution they’d know these inane lights suck the life through my eye sockets.

Sorry, bitter. More than usual I guess.

Then there was this flicking, like tiny and harsh and utterly repugnant wings bumping into paper. Son of a bitch. That fly was still doing it. I rolled the day’s newspaper into an authentic fly swatter and sought to end this bug’s life.

Sorry, bitter. Is it karma that will get me for this?

Swat, swat. I chased it around my room. Then, like a Homo Sapien Neanderthal searching out it’s pray, I learned from my foolish mistakes and got smart. Turn off all the lights, except for one, the bright bed lamp above my pillows. Now, I had cornered my intruder.

Swat, swat, whack. You were dead my fiendish friend.

Sorry, creepy? It’s just an average house fly, or is it horse fly? Regardless, they frighten me! I read in second grade, imagine me, cute innocent girl in pink floral dress picked for~her~by~her mother, this: everytime a fly land’s, it vomits it’s last meal and eats again.

EWWWWW! I mean, my god. Who could go to a picnic after that? I tell you, I still can’t.

But it was dead. Gone. I knew it had brothers but I’d learn, cunning Homo Sapien. I forget what it’s called hen you grow like that from experience but I had. I will never open my window again.

Because I’ve seen them, all hundreds of flying despicable entities who do the thing I so wish to do: just fly! Every morning I had looked out the thirteenth floor, where there should be no bugs, and seen them, gathering. Around the rottenness. Four or five every day. Where are they coming from? Why are they coming here?

My piano is collecting dust, I thought I played it so often that it just cleaned itself. We are symbiotic like that, piano and me. And this banana on my desk had rotted so much, it stuck to my notes from History.

Am I so clueless as my own entity, my only living partner, that I attract the flies in my rot?

Bzzzz, buzzzz, zzzzzz.

And oh my God, the thing had come back to life. I had swatted, I had hunted, I had killed, and I had watchedit’s lifeless body fall limp behind my bed frame. Twenty minutes of quite contemplation it had regenerated and resurrected itself.

What?! How did that happen? How can a tiny bug do that, even with the force of my hand, and my crafty newspaper?!

I freaked out. I’ll admit it. And I killed it and until it’s black smear stained my bed. Right, like that’s better.

I thought of the person who swallowed that fly. I tell you, I’m not going to swallow this. I couldn’t stomach it.

Guess I’ll have to do a wash. 

I tried pastige - ing Allen Ginsberg’s style. This is entitled “Brain Soup.” 

Her brain turned to soup,

Can I judge her for that?

Her back went stiff,

Can’t you help her with that?

Her heightened sense of smell,

and no Motrin,

Left a room of hell masked by burnt dreams and rotten groceries.

Someone take the trash out!

Sore sores in her left eye

Judgement of a democracy too quick to be accurate-

So it’s an honest lie.

Why won’t you help her with that?

Opened eyes and a drunken rant,

Closed for a drunk spirit that whining doesn’t suit.

I heard your footsteps in the ceiling

And romanticized a truth.

All you left behind in your body was a reminder

And some aching youth.

Tired and exhaustive.

A pain in her face that boils like something’s about to pop,

A merry cherry fell from the tree.

But you didn’t call me

- back so my back bunched up.

A leap of faith and we’re bungee jumping again

Off of a bridge too far

into a gap and then back up.

I wonder where you are

Apart, wide and across.

The New York Times said 20 down would solve it,

But nothing was fixed so

the news was a bore,

your story I abhorred,

and my brain felt sore.

It’s soupy from the smudged print,

over some expertly chosen word.

Someone please help her with that!

I say if I could have,

You know I would have.

But we’re a dying breed,

the honest ones,

And they retreated to Houston half a century ago,

or so,

for jazz or sex or soup.

What is was like to return home last year : (some diary entry I dug up) 

You come back home feeling like a writer, like you could articulate everything that happened because you’re trapped in such existential thought. On the forty minute drive home, you blare you music and sift through the night, like clumped pieces of flour, straining everything so that it may provide some truth. But no truth. You realize you just spent one entire evening “back home” spinning the truth so that your friends would think you’re successful.

Suddenly, that glob in the bottom of your throat, the one that feels of pride, fades away into dryness. You need a drink but you’re driving. You’re driving to a place where you can’t get a drink. What a laugh, you think even though you want to cry.

You feel embarrassment in where that pride used to be. You thought you could sit down with all your old friends and be the one with the ten guys and the fifty experiences back in Ithaca. You think your musical projects will impress them, because you’re best friend said “Look everybody! Look at what she is doing!” But what are you doing?

Are you so much better than them because you don’t have a television where you live and you were hit on by your ethics professor? Maybe not. The long drive home tells you that. But for a second, you thought they were impressed.

Home isn’t home when everything has changed, when the people smell differently and when the circumstances play out in a foreign way. You feel your love for the people you did, though it’s strained; you feel lust for the people you never considered in high school, even though they’re engaged. Where did this come from? When did it all change?

……….

I wonder if it will be different.  Obviously, I’m not a freshman anymore so that whole new feeling to feeling differently about home, that’s all changed. But what will it feel like coming back now? It just feels like things change every time I leave and come back. And maybe that’s just a part of growing up.

I am always amazed by people who repeat phrases over and over, as if the person they are trying so ardently to communicate with did it get the first, second, or third time. I can remember my Mother scolding my brother when we were much younger:“Put the bike away.” A girl in the adjoining dormitory is breaking up with her boyfriend for the third time this weekend. “I want you to fix it! I want you to fix it! I want you to fix it! ” she says. My best friend improvised some lyrical harmonies in a recording this summer, she said it was based on her dear friend in NYC who got high off pot and then got low off sadness. “Love me, love me, love me,” she had screamed. It’s beautiful I find, the recurring inflection these people apply to the repeating of each phrase. It’s the same, so there is this rhythmic quality, a song made out of something so desperate. “I WANT YOU TO FIX IT, I WANT YOU TO FIX IT, I WANT YOU TO FIX IT.HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?I CAN’T CHOOSE, I CAN’T CHOOSE.” It’s such agony to hear this woman now divorcing herself from her estranged lover. I brought her over tea earlier, I thought the fighting was done. But I feel like a 6-yr old daughter crying as her parents argue over money, hiding in the closet. My neighbor said “bad break-up.” But it’s just torturous on her. I’m sure the tea is gone and her throat is dry again, her voice is shrill. My soothing tea probably did little. But I understand, I’ve been here before too. “BECAUSE YOU HATE ME AND YOU DON’T LOVE ME. (metallic tinny voice of his over the phone argues), NO, I KNOW IT’S TRUE.” “YOU DON’T. YOU DON’T. YOU DON’T. YOU DON’T.” His metallic voice through the phone is making a strange song too:“JUST COME HOME. JUST COME HOME. JUST COME HOME.” Oh god, I promise myself, we won’t ever go through that again. One year ago today my last boyfriend broke up with me. Dear Henry. We were so perfect. And the song sounds just the same. Promise me we won’t do this again.

Taunt me and tease me.

Make fun of me for my indecisions.

And my decisions.

Grab my arm on my way out.

“Fuck off Sean.”

“No Samantha, wait.”

Sharp teeth, bitter hands, sweet arms.

Troubled mind.

You, me and the carpet.

You and your roommates.

You and the ex that wrecked your life.

I’m not her, but I feel like you channel the emotion.

You, me and our emotions.

“Do you ever wish we could be like the normal college kids making all the wrong decisions?”

No, you and I overanalyze.

Tease and taunt, sarcastic and funny.

“You made me uncomfortable…why did you do that?”

Bite my neck and tell me I’m crazy.

“I’m involved deeply with someone 500 miles away.”

You don’t care, it feels good now so why not?

You understand.

You have stuffed animals, a sword and a story about Barcelona.

I have my boots and that earring I left somewhere.

“Where’s your purse?”

You want me to go.

I am going.

No kiss goodbye, you ask me again –

“No Sean, I had a great time.”I missed my friend from home the whole time, thought of him

and how wrong you are

and how unfair it is for you to call me insecure.

Especially after my “you’re fabulous Sam” affirmations.

I don’t want men anymore,

I want my abstract concept across the ATLANTIC

For two years.

For two years of chastity and email and concentration.

And I don’t want to discuss with him the fidelity, I frankly don’t care.

I know that for me, I need to feel something,

Even if the rest of the people are cold. 

How easily my perception is altered.

I remember being seven, and my parents giving me the much anticipated ‘Samantha’ doll from the American Girl collection. I remember that, holding my two-foot high doll on Christmas morning, and I remember loving her name, loving my name, loving myself. Here was a girl with dimples and dark curly hair and a vintage-appeal for the Victiorian era. At 7, she was just what I wanted to be.

And she had baby fat, I remember thinking how we both shared that fullness to our faces and thighs. I loved Samantha.

But you remember how little girls are, or maybe now you know. Next I wanted the Ariel Doll and that little fairy from Fern Gully. These were heroines I admired so my parents were happy to oblige, as long as I deserved a reward for my finished five pages of Hooked-On-Phonics. They kept me ambitious.

But then, the dreaded Barbie Doll. It was what I wanted.

“Mom, please!”

My parents were intelligent, and aware of a little girl’s thoughts. They named me Samantha just in case I became some high-powered CEO that needed to fool the market into thinking Sam Allen was just another guy in a suit. They were great.

“But Mom, everyone else has one!”

The cost of conformity was so high.

I remember the doll, and I remember loving her as much as Samantha. But then Samantha started to disappear from my mind, and I wanted to be just like thin, happy, smiling, loved-by-Ken, Barbie. I slept with her, and our affair cost me my purity or at least my freeness of thought.

Soon I was conscious of my clothing, what made my chest look like Barbie’s, what made my face glow, just like Barbie’s.

Samantha was lost.

And as I grew up, women walked by and of course I judged their bodies based on mine and picked myself apart meticulously.

“I want her face, I want her teeth, I want her calves,” I would think.

Ew, gross.

If this were some sick Palahniuk novel, I would have gone to stripping these girls bare of all there best parts and created some Frankenstein-ish thing.

Instead there was just me. My monster of thought trudging through my head and judging myself and my body against the harshest critic.

When it’s your mind, there’s no fair judge on the board.

I didn’t start out this facebook note wanting to talk about body image, such a cliché source for angst. I wanted to talk about perception.

I find that my exposure to new things greatly alters the way I view the world – that’s nothing new.

But today in my introductory painting class, as I marveled at a delicateand still dark piece by Carot, I saw how he saw the world. Amazing! It’s not items and objects and scenery and light.

Well, sometimes light. It’s shape and texture and geometric objects that are most apparent.

It’s like when Colin Firth bends over Scarlet Johansson in that movie about the pearl earring, this beautiful rugged circa 1740s painter says to sexy Scarlet, “What color are the clouds?”

I’d say white. So does she.

“Look at the shadowing,” he says, “What are the colors?”

Oh my god, so many blues and yellows and violets and reds in these clouds of perceived white!

It’s such a metric system of thought, when we give someone an instrument or a palette and say “Here, do something. Create.”

Dork that I was in high school, it is the true SAT of my life. The standard test for all creative creation.

It’s a detour of the brain, a mind road map.

So after detouring my brain, and Carot’s, and then walking back to my building after a numbing two-and-a-half-hour class, there are so many colors, and shapes, and shadows.

It’s like the first time I edited film, and then watched a movie with my mother later than night, something stupid and corny like  “Where the Heart Is.” She’s always been a sucker for those cheesy chic-flicks. Well, so have I.

But the entire time. Although the film was not artful, there were so many cuts and nuances and camera placement to it. Who would spend so much time doing this?!

I can’t imagine when I read and paint or view paint or listen to music or make my own music, how much art and detail there is to it.

It’s beautiful.

And it’s stunning, isn’t it?! That people are so dedicated to a craft.

************

My crying jags have become all the more arbitrary and I find I can’t cry at things that are sad. I cry at what is beautiful.

The prof Jeremy was telling me what a beautiful selection I had made to copy. How Carot intentionally finds notes and keys in a landscape and places them intentionally in the still, certain dark shapes that contrast with light shapes and create a collage or mosaic of movement throughout the canvas.

“And he’s always certain to add just one subtle point of bright red.”

One point to the red and I was gone, my mind shut down. I was amazed. But I suppose I am so vain that I link my tragic spout for beauty back to myself.

Can I ever dedicate myself as much to a piece or craft? Will I ever get to be THAT skillful and artsy that people won’t be able to dissect all the genius in one piece? Do I rush my art? What am I leaving out? (Oh Sarah Jessica Horse Parker, how you have altered my writing style so much and changed my perception of the useless rhetorical question).

I thought about what I may have left out when a soul-searching friend on the road called me to tell me what it was like to keep heading down through the country so South that he’d have to fly back to get back to Boston.

He started talking, almost randomly, I don’t remember how our conversation led up to this pinnacle part of the dialogue.

“I’m finding that I can’t discuss myself with any type of specificity,” he said.

He surrounds himself with people I guess, he doesn’t consider himself too often.

How lame is it that I had to cry just then? This admiration thing is kind of getting in my way.

But I didn’t want to be embarrassed, I told him I needed a second to quickly sob and get over it, and then just listen, stunned, to the rest of his findings.

I guess I cried because I found how I could relate it back to me.

Is it vain to think everything is relatable to my own existence?

I wonder if he appreciated my moment of breakage, and the ways I wanted to build myself back up in the splendid thought of what he is doing, that you can search yourself and find the things that flaw your character, and then discren want to change.

Perception of life, perception of self.

That’s what I loved about my friend who was traveling, and who I miss still so much, that he was searching and finding a place to change his soul.

And I thought, maybe I could do that.  I could paint, or I could edit film, or I could travel the East Coast and search out my life.

The beautiful things that affect what I am perceiving in that instant can also alter my perception forever too. What a beautiful concept.

Couldn’t sleep last night. So that’s obvious to you and me. You know, you’ve shared a bed once or twice with me. Ancient history now.

I could always meditate on your face. Or someone else’s, but when there was an “us,” it was always you and me. You. Me. In my head, sounding and acting the way we always knew best. 

But it wasn’t always the sex. It was the idea of your breath and your lungs, moving leagues below your skin and resulting on my back as we slept. My god, we slept soundly when we were happy. 

But I could always rest on that. Pray, meditate, whatever. It was always just us.

But last night, I think I came to realize how you damage, and the damage, before is done. I can always rejuvenate myself, freshen and walk along on a sidewalk like I know where the sidewalk goes. To the arms of another lover. What, no? My body in its pre-slumber state tells me that.

I seek out a face in my eyelids. Yours, his, that one’s, him maybe. But their faces, the ones of men I have loved and can love, flip past, effervescently in my head, like rejected numbers on a rolodex.

Don’t know how I like that simile but for a second in my head it delineated last night’s trauma correctly.

I could masticate your face, rip it apart momentarily and mentally, piece back together what I loved. One past memory. Your face, one faint memory. A picture in a scrapbook, documenting my failures. 

There’s him in his assembled scrapbook. Online. In this monstrosity we call Facebook we like to think keeps us happy. On the contrary, we are miserable as we make celebrities out of average people. 

But Mario, the man I refused sex from a so long ago, is not average. He is a celebrity, the way I idolized him before I went to bed. I flipped through all of his 220 pictures, shamefully but then shamelessly. 

What is this? Filming a commercial in Spain? There’s the man who sucked my neck, shooting through what looks to be a very expensive piece of equipment. And what, photographing a beautiful model? Who are you Mario C.? Why did I refuse you so ardently? You’re so hot and you’re famous?! What? I wish I spoke Spanish. Then maybe I would understand your friends comments on these photos. Maybe they’re saying “Mario, you loser, you never did any of this shit! You just make it up.” 

I wish I spoke Spanish. Then maybe I would understand your friends comments on these photos. Maybe they’re saying “ Mariano you loser, you never did any of this shit! You just make it up.”

Maybe she says “Baby, why did you leave me? I thought we were going to make love in the morning…”

I guess I like to think he’s a womanizer. He’s 18 years old! What makes him think I would so easily give in to sex with him?

The thing is, I could never have sex with someone who had thought he had won. I know that’s what they would do. So, I deny myself the obvious pleasure and sensation because I don’t trust them. And I’m proud. Too proud to let them think they got to me and abandoned me and I feel like I need them. They’d feel empowered, shameless Ithaca College boys who study the fine arts. Independence. And hormones. 

I’d be the best candidate for “one-night stand-ship” if I didn’t take their arrogance personally.

What is it that allows me to not focus on a man’s face when I want to sleep and daydream? Or nightdream?

I have trust issues. Thus, I have intimacy issues.

 Oh god, have I become cliché?

When I was a kid, and watching all these beautiful trendy, angry, feminist, vintage girls blare their indie-music, I wanted to be a cliché…? Have I become what I always wanted then but, but have now in my maturity come to fear but still desire sub-consciously.

It’s so cliché to claim something is cliché.

Oxymoron. I am such a moron.

I’ve been waiting for this moment since I moved in. It’s quite a jarring feeling and it always challenges the circuitry in my head. I remember waking up to it last year on the 13th floor and feeling like I was on a ship, deep in a foggy morning. The truth was, I was lost, I didn’t know where I was, and I wasn’t sure if I would ever make it back. A total disconnect from self.

Some mornings in Ithaca, the fog centers around the towers and engulfs the campus in this hazy white cloud. It’s really not a big deal, no major phenomenon. But I remember witnessing the whiteness as a freshman, on this same floor, and literally freaking out when I woke up to it. I was screaming just like my roommate had and wondering “where did the world just go?”

But it was different this morning. I already feel such a disconnect, the whiteness, the nothingness, the loss of what I know to always be outside my window (bustling campus, rushing students, large East Tower in sight). But it was really already gone.

I forgot to turn my alarm off for 8:45 this morning, and recently that means no hope, I’m up for the day and will surely crash earlier that night, but this morning, as I cursed my goddamn alarm for going off, I caught the outside.

And I was in such a disconnect with this disconnected view that I made some sort of connection. At least, one that inspired lethargy. So I’m proud to say I caught up on my sleep this morning and fell asleep gladly to the thought of nothing, and what I couldn’t see outside my window.

It almost took the pressure off. Or. Does that make sense?

The haze is still here now, but I can make out some things on the ground – cars, buildings, trees. Voice are drifting up to my room, that bounce off the balcony above me and create a sort of sound studio where I can hear every conversation clearly.

“Come on, Tom (laugh laugh har), We’re going to be late!”

Presumably Tom: “Aaahhhh, you go too fast!”

It’s kind of nice I guess – the ability to observe from my perch, unbeknownst to Tom and Fast Girl.

But I am still removed, even as all the objects of reality drift back. I can feel my heart the same way I can feel the tips of my hair growing in their split-endedness glory. And I guess that means I feel fried.

I feel removed. I haven’t felt the way I normally do, so respondent to my emotions and my sadness and giddiness and my hyper-ness and my plain excitement for just being alive.

I wonder if anyone’s noticed. I hope they don’t think I’m a freak, or weird, or un-sensitive. God knows, I am. I just have been really apathetic. Almost to the point where I don’t mind that my friends didn’t call Saturday night or that a lost friend ignores my presence in the hall or that I am for the most part neglected by friends from home and familial phone calls.

I almost don’t mind. Apathy. An empty room. Disconnection, you know?

I sort of got the feeling to write about disconnectedness when a random encounter with a stranger I met at, of all places, a socialist’s discussion over at the other hill, yielded a rather lovely and unexpected email. He was talking about writing online, and hey, I write online too.

But he said when his work was lost by the happenings of one very unfortunate digital journal, all his personal writings, it’s almost like he didn’t mind the glitch. There had been a disconnect between the person he was then and the person he is now. So why should the loss matter?

I completely understood him although I think he thought he wasn’t being clear. Then, I wondered how much I minded the disconnect in my soul too. The one that divides who I was from the undefined “then” to the present “now.”

When I came to college, I thought about re-inventing myself. I remember those questions:

• Should I lose 30 pounds first? Consider myself skinny?
• Maybe dye my hair for the first time? Give in to the temptation and be a beautiful red-head?
• Should I become so narcissistic that I associate only with Cornell boys and girls who are intelligent enough to appreciate Tolstoy?

Maybe then everyone will love me. Hmmmmmm.

I thought about trying to play the different role, like I remember my English teacher confessing to in high school. In my sophomore year she told our class about her regret but then justified it with a “well, everyone changes themselves before college.”

I guess I thought I would have to too. But then I realized, that whole transformation so many of my friends were counting on didn’t suit me. Why waste the collegiate years creating a new person when I worked so hard for 18 years on the one I am today?

The today is way gone. Today, a year has gone by, and just last night I wondered if maybe that logic had failed me. Maybe I was supposed to undergo some sort of change, some sort of metamorphosis. I could wake up one morning and be the Kafka-esque cockroach, or I could wake up in the bed of someone I wouldn’t expect to ever talk to, par example the classic jock (!), or I could wake up like I did this morning, feeling disconnected and reveling in the loss of space, in the void that surrounded me.

It’s such a loosely applied term of apparent denial – a void. But here I am on my bed typing, and there is the blank outside for everyone to see.

Can people see my blankness? Do they feel the disconnect? Somewhere between a North Andover actress/friend/high-school-sweetheart and college journalist/possible socialist/potential musician have I just become that disconnected loser who doesn’t know who she is?

The clouds are parting even more now, Ithaca is back. Hello IC. I just wish I had become something other than who I am today. But why do I feel this? I’m so confused. But, then again, is there ever a way to not feel confused? Maybe my entire life will be spent wondering when I have succeeded as the philosophical entity.

Or, maybe I’ll always wake up to the white void.

There was this really great quality to today - like there’s so much out there, so much that extends beyond the nearsighted focus on one’s problems. “One” being me, or you, or anyone we know. Collectively. Doesn’t that sound nice? This pronoun ensures such security, like we weren’t alone today, right? WE were in it -

TOGETHER.

Consider the antecedent: it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And each morning is a struggle. But for the most part, everyday of our lives we are succeeding. We wake up, don’t we? We get out of bed and fix our hair? Now, I may not brush it or even wash it, but hell, we are trying in spite of the apparent.

Was today so great? What was so great about today? What was so great about the day was this presence of triumph. We lived. We tried. And okay, yeah, we did it. Kind of.

Look, I’m not saying today was easy. Really, I commend you. A pat on the back. But pat back the childish action and I’ll really tell you, it was only by the grace of such powerful and compelling arguments in my subconscious that I convinced myself to even move from mattress to floor to class.

You know that kind of argument. The kind that screams at your being when another restless night ends with one agonizingly loud and screaming alarm.

I’ll share my wake -

ENTER SCREAMING ALARM.

Me - “ugh.”

Subconscious - Argument 1: You have to go to French class, no matter how much you hate it. You need to pass this class for your GPA, for your future, so you can grow up and flower and flourish into a worthwhile existence. Think career.

Me - “grrrrrrr.”

Subconscious - Argument 2: You need to look nice for school, you’ll see some people today who you need to convince of your greatness.

Me - “ahhhhhh, five more minutes, please!”

Subconscious - Argument 3: You have to be present and presentable, because today you’re going to handout your music demo with confidence and grace.

Me - “yeah, okay, I guess, I’ll get up, just shut up, will you?”

Eight minutes later, okay, fine, I’m up already! But then the day was so much more fruitful then thught, then I had expected - how surprising! Thank you professor, thanks friend, thanks some for a beautiful day in Ithaca.

I say that with some cynicism, because we often are cynical. But looking beyond the grime, there was some clarity to the day.

……………………..

……….

I reflected on the day during my politics class. I turned some pages over in my notebook and began to etch into the paper my realization.

I thought the sound I heard was the scratching of my pen, under the booming voice of my prof. But only when it stopped, did I realize how empty I felt without that other sound: this student’s sharpie moving fast over the outside of her notebook. Some sort of all-black goth decor this feminist-with-a-bull’s-rin

g-through-her-nostrils three seats over had figured out. Hmm.

But what a sound! I was just so amazed that I had found such comfort in the white EH EH EH noise. And how amazing, how deafening the lack of background noise when she stopped! I mean, wow, weird that I was so zoned in on her.

Now I know how that old-couple from Niagra Falls felt when they moved to quiet San Antonio. They had to move back to NY, not enough whishy-washy FSSSSHHHHHH in the background from the furious waters.

……………………..

……….

Something else today, something maybe you can help me figure out. I did my work in the library and was on my way to the dining hall for something to eat. I opened the door, and surprisingly acknowledged the beautiful autumn day. I typically resort to my melancholy-self of hating beautiful weather when I’m in a strange funk, but my pattern allowed this sort of taken-aback “Oh god, how great,” rush. thing.

Do I sound lame?

Then I noticed this girl noticing this turning tree in the courtyard…I wondered what she was doing, what she was holding her hands.

For the record, I don’t think this girl is lame.

Almost in a trance, I just marched right up to that tree to see what was going on. Upon arrival, I saw these tens of crisp white notes buried in the red and green foliage, tied to the tree. It was so stunning and even prettier then I can describe. Just random and fascinating.

Each one of these notes had a typed message to bear, and each note was different, so I methodically walked around the tree, intrigued by each word.

• “I love the you in you.”
• “Let’s go to any place you want to go, as long as it’s deep inside.”
• “Make love with me.”
• “I want to know you, you’re so worth knowing.”

It didn’t seem sexual in it’s intent at all, although it may come across that way in this note, it was more so poignant. Embracing, Empowering. Something…I’m not sure. I wished I had thought up something that precious in sentimental value.

But I suppose that’s my goal in each day, to find a new idea. But for the most part, I just listen and observe and then write about what I saw with a slant in my ow tongue. Is that weird? Or unoriginal? I’ve been accused of it before. Oh, to be clever.

Regardless, I lived it today. In spite of everything that WE hated about it…

****BONUS BLOG****

And then there’s always the pool of knowledge that came from the day, lectures and speeches I often take for granted for the sake of that great ol’ GPA. But strangely, their words were applicable to something outside the classroom.

SELECT EXCERPTS FROM THE DAY:

( Prof. of Art critiquing my painting on canvas, so much that I had to re-paint an entire portion to re-adjust. And me being discouraged.)

“Just because it’s changed it doesn’t mean it’s lost. That’s what’s so powerful about painting, you control your own canvas. You get comfortable placing the paints, shaping and shadowing your image. But it’s about power, it’s about self-esteem. When you’re in control, you have to accept that your domain won’t be perfect. But you have the opportunity and the power to change it.”

(A personal conversation between a Prof. of Communication. Us being concerned for the other. And discussing some existential supreme lifestyle.)

Him - “I always thought that was the point, that there was no point. Looking for the answer your whole life, and then you never do find it.”

Me - “But I want to know is when I will know that point! When do I find it? An hour before my death?”

Him - “I don’t think you ever find it. I think the looking is what the humans call ‘living.’”

(And then a further discussion about objectivity.)

“There is always something so seductive about bias, this drug to put out your opinion, and that’s where I worry in my teaching. How do I show this point? How do I eleborate without interjecting my own feeling? It torments me.

(And then some moving advice.)

Him - “You need to find a way to enjoy just being with you. You know how lucky you are to have only yourself? So many people have to wait in line but you have you, 24.7. Go grab a sweater, go to the pond at dusk, just in twilight because that’s the most beautiful time of day, and appreciate the beauty. Cry for it. Feel something so you’re not always stressing about work and your personal anxieties. Just feel that beauty.”

Me - “That sounds amazing. Do you do that?”

Him - “Sure, sometimes.”

Dear YOU.

I can’t believe YOU have jumped continent, the thought just doesn’t sound right to me. 

I’ve been trying to think about what I should write to YOU, now that YOU are gone. I’m at an odd place when I don’t know what to write. What to say is often the place of confusion for me, but writing should be second nature by now. 

College has taught me that.

I guess these last couple of days for me have really revolved around Philosophy and Politics, so of course I thought of YOU. Most of our conversations always seemed to float into one of those two categories.

Between our last meeting before your departure and now, I attended a International Socialists’ meeting (ISO) and made a new friend. Our conversations have hinted at what New Friend calls “the search for truth.”

I don’t know about that.  I’m still so shy about my political opinions and theories.

But I was reading this thing the other day that was based on Marxist theory, some sort of assignment excerpt from a book expertly entitled “Money.” One of the author’s key points of puzzlement was America’s fetish for shopping and why most of us on my continent don’t think we have enough. Something like five in seven Americans don’t feel they are living the life they want.

What a continent and concept of misery.  And they all thought more money would get them the things they needed in life. That money would make them happier.

I want a yacht. I want a hot tub. I want a career with a company car. I want a ticket for Europe. I suppose there’s a lot anxieties in any American’s life that are for the most part, perturbed by their economic situation. 

I guess I’d like to take this political/economic – theory/puzzlement and apply it to a philosophical notion, and maybe even everyday life. 

You know, something I’m slightly more comfortable with.

I randomly started talking to this freshman last night about this great band TV on the Radio while he made me a pumpkin ice cream milkshake (the best!) in an Ithaca College Dining Hall. He was shocked that I had met the band but even more shocked that I didn’t have their new album. So he invited himself up later, which I didn’t mind, and burned me a copy. 

It was very sweet. And then we had a nice conversation while we swapped some great albums and talked about indie-rock and why mainstream is really not so bad after all. 

But this poor boy had a girl-problem, and don’t all freshmen boys? His 

ex-girl from back home had broke his heart.  He professed his love to her after one month of dating. Naturally, she freaked out and left him. 

It’s sad to think that I understand how she feels. 

A lot of people don’t want what they can have. In the beginning of the film 

“Annie Hall”, Woody Allen does this brief monologue in front of the camera - it’s absolutely amazing, you have to see it - he says that the key joke to his adult life is this: “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. “

Ha.

ha.

Huh. So Americans want to shop, and they want the latest version of the iPhone, and they want a freshly-cut lawn in front of their perfectly-chosen suburban homes?

What is going on here? Is this how free market works? 

Here I go on one of my many stretched tangents, but I swear it’s related. We were talking about it in my journalism class today.

During a five minute break, which I considered to be ridiculous in a class that I am paying for, although it is an extraordinarily dense recap of mass media history that needs room for breathing – no anxiety attacks, please! - I turned around and started a conversation with my friends about the 

market crash over the last couple of days. 

How exciting it must be to watch all of this as an outsider in a different country YOU! I thought of that the other day, you’re going to have to look-up who wins the presidential election! It must put so much into perspective. Wow…hmmm.

Well, anyways, getting back to my point, we were all talking about 

the failed-logic in something this woman (forget her name) said on CNN. Some reporter asked her if she thought Americans should be buying stock now. And she said “Oh God, NOOOO! Don’t buy.” 

And I know nothing about stocks and shareholders and value really, but I 

thought that free-market worked like this: buy low, sell high. 

So all of us in class were just sort of guessing at would happen if no one bought right now. Our conclusion: nothing would fluxuate, we’d be stagnant and we’d slip into another Grand Depression! 

So back to my original observation, perhaps it’s important to want what you 

can’t have. That way, things move on, or flow, or re-adjust something. Just like in the market. Maybe in our lifestyles, maybe in romance?

Wanting what we can’t have. 

On that note, I want you and I can’t have you. Because of an ocean and the cost of travel. 

Signed,

Me.