Everything is all right
I feel tremendously at ease with my life, and tremendously ill at ease with the rest of the world.
Mr. James: Wales is to the west of England, and it's about the size of Massachusetts. It's sort of undergoing the same devolution as Scotland, and has a similar relationship to England. Or at least that's how I think of it, I could be wrong but I mean to look into these things. Welsh is a language spoken by half a million, and one day me, but it's experiencing a comeback. I could talk more intelligently about their history, and hopefully will someday. I want to go to study abroad there, this spring, and want it very very badly. I want to get away from here, and I want to be there (in North Wales, where the most people speak Welsh, and where it is beautiful though marred with slate quarries.)
It's hard to describe my dissatisfaction with my school right now. My history class is so frustrating that it makes me want to cry. I do what she wants! I do the work! And yet I cannot see it, I struggle and I do not feel any better, I feel as empty and blank as before. I don't know why I'm doing this, I don't know what it matters for, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. What am I going to do? Why do I bother?
I want to be a force of good, but I'm friends with philosophers and have read books that counsel me about the dangers of unintended consequences. I want to be great, great, I want to make things better, but I don't even know where to begin. I want to be brilliant, brilliant, but I don't want to make my friends feel far away. (This is part of the trick, I think.) I want people and I want me, all the time.
(We were talking about how I will find a man or, if worst comes to worse, become a mail order bride. My friend said "You're an excellent human being and a great hausfrau! The rest of us are just excellent human beings.")
I feel so silent in my history class. We talk about silences a lot, but once you see one thing left out you see a thousand. Why are they silent about one thing and not what they ate for breakfast? Was it on purpose? I am silent here often, wouldn't my historians like to know what about! Mostly I am just silent about what I had for breakfast, though I compulsively chronicle that elsewhere. Once you spot one silence, you spot the infinite nature of what could have filled it, and I think it's a paralyzing exercise to try to think about what it is they are leaving out. Yeah yeah, there are silences, yes, let's talk about this like flaky pseudointellectuals, dear lord.
(I told my friend a story, and said "Is that not the most beautiful thing you've ever heard?" She said "No, Mozart's requiem is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard." I guffawed and snorted indignantly, and she continued, "Oh, or Gabriel Byrne's voice... that Irish twang, mmm..." My story was very beautiful!)
Is it any surprise I want out? OUT OUT OUT, I want to take it easy for a semester, Wales will be easier and beautiful and I can go for walks and learn a language and Oh.
I want to crawl through every garden path
peel the back off every house
gaze at every waking room
and memorize it inside out
There's a shortcut I take to the coed school down the lane, and it is straight and I can see all 250 yard of it to the end. It feels like a secret, even though I inevitably pass people on the path. I hate this, I wish they would be so kind as to disappear. The animals dart across the path, the cardinals make me gasp (they mean it's winter!) the sparrows make me laugh with little antics. I don't care if they're common birds, I still like seeing them. I like letting my eyes glaze over, as I trip down the slate path, and see only movement where the birds and leaves are indistinguishable.
My friends say, somewhat tongue in cheek, that if you burn twice as bright it's for half as long. I know this is an old saying, I just didn't want it applied to me. The thought of burning out scares me. I don't want to be exhausted, I don't want to be depressed.
Oh, stream of consciousness! It's so unkempt, I do not really think this is the way to go about things, but this is mine and I shall do with it as I please for now. At the same time, I don't like to do things just because it is convenient for me, and this is too convenient to matter. Tomorrow maybe I can try a coherent persuasive essay. Likely not.
2002-10-26, I want to cup the breadcrumbs from your table
before / after archives / website / hello book / diaryland