They keep passing. Sometimes I feel like I have so much going on in my head that I can't even sort it out enough to decide how I really feel. I am influenced by so many different thoughts, feelings, the troops of questions that come marching through my head on a constant basis... never to be answered, only contemplated, endlessly, frustrations that I don't know how to express or relieve. Mostly with things outside of myself that I feel I have no control over...like this world. This government. This impending war. The hypocrisy of individuals, including myself. All of the things that make me sad that I can't stop from happening like child abuse and hunger or sick people with no place to go and no one to help them. All of the things that infuriate me like anti drug commercials that focus only on marijuana while ignoring the fact that drinking alcohol is one of the biggest problems in this country among high school and college students, causing more deaths, more unsafe sex and more misery than marijuana ever could. I have yet to see a single ad aimed at young people which discourages drinking, while marijuana is portrayed as the root of all evil. But people eat it up like hotcakes. These lies. And any person who cared to become educated on the subject of the history of marijuana and the "war on drugs" would see that they ARE lies. Lies which make money.
People are angry when a high school girl refuses to salute the American Flag. They scream at her and protest her, all the while insisting that she should be glad she lives in a free country. Do these people see what they are doing? Trying to take away the freedom of others which they so valiantly defend AT THE VERY SAME TIME? Do they see their own hypocrisy? Do they see that living in a free country means that you can show your disapproval with the government, IF YOU SO CHOOSE?
The worst part is having people treat me like I am overreacting to these things or that I care too much. So emotional. So dramatic. So passionate. It's too much. No one could possibly FEEL that much. No one could possibly NEED to feel that much. It's just so unnecessary to be so excessively receptive to every single little thing going on around you. I remain unchanged.
The truth is that I'm happy. There's nothing wrong with my life. I have the same troubles and worries as any average person. No more. I have a good home, an amazing man, a great job...lots of friends and loved ones. I cook, I write, I love music. I enjoy life. I have more resources and good fortune than many women my age and with my level of formal education. I am not clinically depressed, nor do I have a medical anxiety disorder. I am just a horrified person. I can't watch the news and forget the last devastating report instantly to move onto the sports and weather. I am still thinking...
I can't ignore the blatant manipulation going on in our society. I can't pretend that things are right when they are so so wrong. Not for me. For others. I'm fine. I'm a fucking hypocritical bastard just like everyone else. Though I spend a great deal of time thinking about that and trying to fix it somehow. I hate it when other people do things that are rude or just irritating, even if I do the same thing myself the very next day. That's so fucked and I'm not proud of it, but I'm human. I don't hate people. I just don't understand why we do the things that we do. I don't understand why most people don't even have the slightest ability to view themselves. Why people are in such denial about who they are, yet so ready to judge one another.
Do you ever wonder, if your life was a movie and you were watching yourself as the main character, how you would feel about yourself? We all have things that we don't want others to do to us, but we don't even think of it that way when we do it to others. We all want those who are close to us to be faithful and loyal and true -- and we'd be so hurt and angry if they weren't -- and yet so many of us will fail to be faithful and loyal and true to others. This is why most people are not simply just bastards, but hypocrites too.
Maybe the fact that I brood over these types of things and spend such a great deal of time contemplating the consequences or the result of my words and actions (most of the time after the fact ... a belated conscience? It would be nice if it could arrive on time...) is what causes me to be so overwrought. Anyways it seems like in the past few years my conscience has grown to a weight and proportion which is almost unmanageable. I seem to manage though. I have not let myself go completely insane yet with my relentless observations, self scrutiny and the barrage of silent questions that implore me during nearly every solitary or remotely idle moment. Sometimes my memory scrambles after select tidbits of thought to save for later so that I can - for some curious reason - write it down. Unfortunately, my magic memory basket is pretty shabby at times and the hastily collected thoughts and muses bounce off into oblivion like grains of salt accidently tossed from a knocked over salt shaker during my daily, bumpy ride home on New York City's ancient tracks.
Music music music. Is there any other thing in the universe that can make a person feel the way music does? Those particular songs that bring on a flood of nostalgia and emotions...
Two songs have played in a row on my launchcast station which immediately unearth feelings that have been long forgotten or that I just don't bother to think of anymore. One was "Fascination" by David Bowie and the other is "I'd Rather Be With You" by Bootsy Collins.
Both songs remind me of being 16 years old, walking towards Garo's from high school to meet my friends. Everything around me seemed to slow down to a dream-like pace as I passed by that one house on the end of the block on the corner of East Main St. and 4th in my hometown. That house where the boys lived. Those boys that I didn't know yet, but that would become a huge part of my life in the approaching months and years. One tall, lanky, shirtless boy stood outside smoking a handrolled cigarette. His hair was nearly black, cut short and messy and his green eyes locked with mine in a way that made my legs feel like they might disassemble and give way beneath the weight of my flustering pounding heart. I tried to smile a little bit, but he just kept watching me. It felt like it took an infinite amount of time just to pass by that house on that particular day. I didn't stop, just kept walking, just kept feeling his eyes on me. The image of his face haunted me mercilessly nearly every waking hour and I listened to "Fascination" again and again, remembering his transfixed expression and perpetuating that intense feeling of excitement and curiosity.
When I saw him again he approached me. I was at the laundromat. He asked me my name and when I told him, he repeated it back to me like it was the sexiest name he had ever heard in his life. Then he told me his name. When he said it I felt like it was the sexiest name that I had ever heard in my life and the way his gaze penetrated mine was completely unique to me. My hands trembled uncontrollably every time he came near me. The sound of his voice and the color of his eyes hung like a shadow over me, even in sleep. I couldn't shake it. Couldn't dispell the grip that he had on me. He bound me up in my own infatuation and then he went on to pursue other conquests. The person he pursued and conquered was my good friend. I watched them fall in love with eachother and moved on, but in the meantime he continued to torment me. Sometimes he would hug her and he would look at me over her shoulder and lock into my eyes in the cruel way that said he knew what I was feeling and he enjoyed it.
He was the one who introduced me to that song "I'd Rather Be With You." Sometimes when we were all in the car on the way to the lake in the summertime that song would come on and every word felt like a paper cut, but I loved the song so much, despite the sadness and dejection that I felt inside whenever I heard it. I dated other guys, but whenever that song played, it was the same thing... I'd rather be with you.
It seems funny that a couple of years ago, when I was moving to New York from the west coast, I said goodbye to that black-haired, green-eyed boy - by that time I had long overcome my desire to possess him - and he seemed to have lost all of the magic that held me so captive one day when I was that young thing on my way to have coffee with my friends after school. I wonder now what it would feel like to see him today. What would we say? Would we laugh about the way things were? I think I would...
I am listening to that Stevie Nicks song, "Leather and Lace." It's putting me in a mood. This kind of dismal mood. It's a beautiful song, but makes me restless for some reason. Maybe it is just this day. This gray drizzling drag of a day. Punxsatawny Phil's shadow indicates six more weeks of winter. It still amazes me that people pay any mind to that silly groundhog. It's a whole news event and everything. "Will we or won't we have six more weeks of Winter? Well, why don't we check with this here groundhog. He looks like he knows." The world has truly gone mad. Not like I needed a groundhog to tell me that either.
It is horribly cold though, so this time I will agree with the groundhog. Winter is definately not over yet.
I'll tell you one thing that IS over though. My troubles with Laura the psychopathic roommate. It is too glorious to put into words to finally be rid of her and her nasty antics. Before she left, she made sure to cut the telephone line with a pair of scissors, rifle through my things and pilfer my mail. I had the locks changed and the phone line repaired the following morning. She's such a creep. I pulled out a thesauras and located the following synonyms for her:
Beastly
Loathsome
Vile
Reprehensible
Detestable
Foul
Offensive
Paltry
Revolting
Cursed
Abhorrent
Unscruplous
Vicious
Dog
Hahahha! Some may find these terms mean and immature, but if they could witness her behavior, there's no doubt that the descriptions are accurate - and there are so many more that I've left out! I can't really begin to speculate what would cause a person to act out the way she did during her last month at our apartment, especially being as self righteous as she is in general. You would think she would be a little more concerned with controlling her behavior and not appearing to be a complete wackjob, which is definately the way it looks now, but she didn't. She just went fullblown psycho, leaving her trail of feeble attempts at malevolence in her pitiful wake. Who knew that anyone could stoop to such desperation?