A Trivial Comedy for serious people archives

Not particularly brief

I'm wrinkled today. I fell back in bed after taking a bath, and my hair dried wrinkly. I'm wearing my holy sweater, (ten holes!) and wrinkly jeans. Wrinkly. My brain's wrinkly too - if I weren't conscious right now I'd swear I was comatose. Sleepy, lazy, hazy. The craziest thing would have to be my hair (and I'm telling you this because there's nothing quite as interesting as my hair). It's out of this world crazy. It needs to be ironed or something.

I keep fading in and out here. I'll be writing and all of a sudden I'll become fascinated with winamp or the shadows on the wall or nothing at all. Hazy. This isn't so bad while I'm writing a journal entry, but it's terrible when it happens during conversation. It's slightly disconcerting.

Speaking of things disconcerting: I got email from the girl named laura who owns unfiltered.net (as opposed to the laura I mentioned in my last entry). I'm beginning to wonder if I'd be better off if I said less sometimes. The more I say, the more there is for you to find fault with. The more I say, the more doors I open and the more avenues for disagreement and argument arise.

Anyway, she wrote an email asking me to explain what I had said about her journal - which was that it always got me very upset. In response to her brief email, I launched into a god awful long email pouring out disjointed emotions. I probably told her so much that she thinks I'm kind of out of my head, and more than she maybe was expecting. I started writing, and went "God, I can't leave that email like this, I have to talk about this angle and that angle." It became this gangling, rambling, monstrous and embarrassingly bad email. I've always been fond of essays or arguments that explored every angle thoughtfully and carefully, and came to a reasonable and moderate conclusion. I wish, though, that I didn't always feel the need to be so loquacious.

Extreme brevity would be wonderful. In physics we were talking about the desire for a simple, beautiful, self contained explanation of the cosmos. (I'm probably going to mess this up horribly because I know nothing about physics, really.) The current particle theories are like patch work arguments - adding particles and stuff (I warned you) as the need arose, and they're sort of hobbling about trying to patch the gaps and the holes of the theory. It's grown like a tumor. Kind of. There's a search for an all encompassing and beautifully simple that explains everything in fascinating brevity.

I wish I could explain myself with fewer words. The more words I write down, the more I have to patch things with qualifiers and apologies and lengthy explanations. (and I always end up saying something I regret deeply.)

Anyway, Laura praised my writing, which was odd. Actually, the sad thing is that I sent her such a crappy email. I kept inserting "psycho" after every sentence, cause, well, it was all kind of psycho. She'll probably regret praising my writing, because I showed her exactly how bad it can get. (When writing email, I let everything slide. When I put stuff online, I spell check, I reread and make sure everything's at least coherent. Email is something I just dash off right and left, and usually don't even read over before I send. Probably not terribly wise, but, you know...)

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I'm really scared about exams. I am.

Now, that being said, I'm not as anxious as I should be. My grades are going to be terrible this semester, I've hardly touched the common app supplements, I have a huge paper to write. (what'm I doing? writing journal entries, of course.) I feel like I've been fooled into not worrying, and if I don't worry I do no work. This is terrible. Terrible that I feel that way, and terrible that I'm not doing any work.

I'm trying to trick my family into thinking I'm mad. I didn't eat anything last night, except nibbling at a sweet potato. My mother came up to me and said "Aren't you going to eat anything?" I just stared at her for a second and walked away.

I went to bed without dinner, and slept and read all night (in intervals, terrible sleep, forgot to take my valium). I shunned their company at breakfast, which just made her angry, not concerned. Every time someone brings up college, school, exams, anything, I stalk off mumbling to myself.

I like people. I do. And it isn't that I love my own company so much - I just need to be alone now more than usual. I'm being a real misanthrope though, and it's driving my mother crazy. She keeps giving me looks, and I won't say a thing.

I'm reluctant to compare myself to Hamlet, but I'm beginning to wonder where Madwoman Margaret ends and the real me begins. (Ouch, margaret oversimplifies again, but has neither the time, energy, nor knowledge to go into a diatribe about madness, really. See, every time I try to be brief, I do so terribly...)

The question of the day thing probably will be harder to reply to than yesterdays, and I don't expect many responses. It kept me thinking though. All day, I kept going "What's the question gonna be - you gotta think of something." I wasn't thinking about the things I should've thought about (school, exams, etc) but at least I wasn't vegetating.

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Other thing on my mind: my hair again. I've been taking baths as a calming thing - whenever I get too tense or upset. I've been going through shampoo like crazy, and my hair is driving me mad. (winter doesn't help either.) I'm thinking of pouring olive oil on it. Well, not pouring oil. I wonder why the roman's used it as soap though. It must do something for hair.

My feet are cold! I got a new patti smtih album!

(the more I tell you, the less you think of me.)

Out in the desert I saw that old cat skinned
I saw it floating in the river
I saw and no one seemed to mind
They sat there they sat there watching the sun
I saw it float away and I watched the buildings crumble
-patti smith

2000-01-16, A not very brief entry.

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