This... this. Psychological continuity and persistence of memory and all that. Things are different but things are the same. Where does the past go?

the thawing out

the winter came just when we knew it would,
when the trees had been barren
for so long that they began to fade
into the endless skeletal grey that was everything
and it took the first shimmering frost
to remind us that they were still there and still growing
long after the fiery hues of autumn had cooled,
but now that winter is here
one begins to feel apathy toward the blues and whites as well

  every room is heated until the inside glows red
but this is not the red of the autumn leaves I longed for
and then forgot
but something entirely new,
artificial, one could say

  after the first snowfall the salt trucks made rounds,
their only remedy to lower the freezing point
of something already frozen
I still slip every time I walk home

  "this is a better winter than most," 
people tell me,
but the cold still hurts
the summer will come soon enough,
I remember,
and then I will miss the ability to sit quietly inside

  winter pushes us all into close quarters,
but I have nothing to say to these people who have nothing to think
and everything to believe
we’re a well matched pair, her and I,
each of us will always have the light on while the other is trying to sleep

  the chill has been dragging on for months
and at this point,
the pavement is white and it isn’t even from snow

but now
after five long sleepless nights 
I open my eyes and realize
the winter is finally thawing out

if I burn out today, I won't burn out tomorrow- right? right? is it possible to save all your breakdowns for the weekend?

On the day laid waste

I no longer require three large spoonfuls of sugar in my tea, and that is how I know I am growing up.

I had a rather bad day not too long ago. I had been rushing down a corridor on the eighth floor of a building, exhausted to the point where Reality bent, when it occurred to me that had only the plate-glass windows that lined the halls had latches, I could so easily jump and let that be that and perhaps it would be proper. The little ghosties in my head would not let me have my thoughts to myself so I shut them in with me and did not leave my room again for about another eight hours, at which point I realized that I had neither eaten nor spoken all day. It's quite simple to just let time pass, to curl up in your bedsheets and feel it ravage your mind. I have decided to take better care of myself, though. I will not let other people's voices become ghosties in my head, I will do what is best for myself without contemplating their disapproval.

I have realized that it is better to expend the physical energy to leave a draining situation than to exhaust half of my mental energy to sit paralysed and shut everything out. This experiment in loyalty must have those bounds at least.

Good night.

"If you haven't done anything wrong, you wouldn't be afraid of the cops and you wouldn't run/fight/resist."

Alright then. Think back to elementary school. You are sitting in your red plastic chair, reading your SSR book when the principal walks in. "(Your name), follow me to my office," he says in a booming, authoritative voice. Your head spins. You always do your homework, you never copy anyone else's answers, you sit still and listen, and you don't take other people's things. "I didn't do anything wrong!" you think, but then you second guess yourself. Maybe you forgot one of the rules. Maybe there was a new rule that no one told you about. Maybe the principal could read your mind and knew that you said naughty words in there! The entire class stares silently as you walk out. You are now convinced that you've committed a million different infractions and scared out of your mind.

The principal stops in the middle of the hallway to chat with a teacher. He is turned away from you for a full thirty seconds. If you were to run, you would be out the door in ten or fewer. You are eight years old and terrified. What would you do? 

If you were a more level-headed child, as I doubt many of us were, you might have realized that the principal might be pulling you out because you've done something good.

Police rarely stop anyone to point out how well-behaved they are.

You are fifteen, walking to a convenience store after dark because your parents aren't home yet and you really want some Fritos. All your lawnmowing money is in one pocket of your black hoodie, and you're walking fast because there have been muggings recently and you're a bit on edge. You aren't paying much attention to your surroundings. Suddenly, a police officer hustles around a corner and directly into your path. You are startled. You try to move past him, but he orders you to stop. Your head spins again. Your father told you once that the police were useless in your town. They didn't care who was guilty or innocent, everyone was a criminal in their eyes. He said that the best thing to do was to stay out of trouble and never give them a reason to notice you. Whether or not that's true, you are afraid. You don't use drugs, shoplift, get into fights, or drive unlicensed. You wonder if the cop could have somehow found out about the beer you sneaked at your friend's house last weekend. Or maybe he knew that you knew your older brother smoked pot on Friday nights and didn't turn him in. But you are a bit more rational now, and you realize the cop has no reason to hold you- but he could find one if you stick around. While running through potential reasons, you have missed the officer's instructions. When you take off, the only thing in your head is pure fear. However, while running through possibilities in your head you have missed the officer's instructions, and he now has reason to hold you.

Fear is a basic human reaction, and it occurs even when there is no rational reason to be afraid- more so when one has been taught to be afraid, whether or not that fear is warranted in reality. When people are afraid, they distort and misjudge situations and even surrender to the fight-or-flight instinct. This is a basic fact of human nature. Instinct works first, conscience works later. Reasoning and higher order thinking are severely compromised when a person is afraid.

Furthermore, if it is reasonable for a highly trained and experienced cop like Darren Wilson to become so irrational under fear that he sent six bullets into an unarmed man, then how can we expect the average citizen of a protesting community, raised to distrust and fear the police and entirely unaccustomed to high-risk situations, to hold on to their rationality when approached by police? Resisting arrest is a crime, but is in no way a sign of an unclean conscience.

(tumblr repost)

I wonder...

https://seventhvoice.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/the-gas-lighting-of-women-and-girls-on-the-autism-spectrum/

Writer's block.

After an exciting evening of bright lights and loud applause, I sought to relax the only way I know anymore - the TV blaring, every light on, holding four conversations at once. Turn everything on and shut it out.

Mindless, totally mindless. I open a window and close it again. I will not change tabs until something is written.

Make sense of the static. We treat increasingly more stimulating things as background noise for our indolence. How, then, are we to learn to turn our minds off?

Here in the silence, every idea that had formed melts away like frost on a sunny day.

You cannot pull poetry out of a void, it comes from the world and into you. Every image and analogy already exists somewhere in the aether. Your job is only to channel and transcribe it.

I think there might be some ideas somewhere, pushing against the boulders I haven't figured out how to move yet. I can see their spindly black legs poking out from the cracks. They haven't the room to fly. Perhaps if I seek to begin something else they will find their way out.

Things have ends.

Let them end.

symptom check: 9 for 9

just a little bit relatable

Check your privilege?

You are lucky if you can study for psychology without being triggered by a clinical description in your textbook.

If you don't see parts of yourself in every diagnosis.

If you can memorize the diagnostic criteria for depression any other way than by checking off the symptom list.

If you have the luxury of having to speculate what it might be like to be suicidal.

If you are able to say, "Maybe they should just get over themselves."

You are immensely lucky if you can sing along to twenty one pilots without feeling as if your soul is fracturing because of their honesty.

If you have never saved a song or a quote or a text from someone special, thinking, "This might save my life next time."

If you have never run off alone into the night, hearing the steps of all the ghosts chasing you that you still aren't and never will be rid of.

If you have never had to hide letter openers and X-Acto blades.

If you are able to live for the now and not worry about where you might be the next time things go wrong.

If you aren't afraid of cycles.

If you aren't afraid of yourself.

You are so unbelievably lucky if you have never been afraid of what might happen in the hours you aren't quite there.

Take care of yourself. You will turn out just fine.

not much worse than being alone with the world while it trembles and vacillates

right now it feels as though
every cell
in my body is crying out under the pressure
of unsaid words

in my place
screaming,
"just say it already"

well, it's not that simple

a weekend passed
then another
enough time to find that "perfect moment"
or maybe not
accumulated words crumble under pressure
metamorphose into leaden silence

at first I could see them
hovering
written out in empty space clear enough
to read from
like a script

now I know I'll never say them

all the right moments passed

the words kept weaving in and out
of each other
filling up the space
until it became a curtain of ink
unreadable
and unmeaningful

but every time I swear I'll say them

each word plucked from the mass
cutting through
the white fog between the world and me
revealing the cracks
and holes
and anything through which I may escape

perhaps this would be less painful
if only
the words spoke for themselves
without the need for
my mouth the interpreter

or if these were words you would ever
ask to hear

the faster something burns the more it resonates

I haven't properly socialized for an entire day and now I feel like I'll never want to again.

Well, fuck.

Depression sucks.

Wasted nights, nights so pointless they may as well not exist. Empty nights, devoid of anything but a persistent compressing feeling, compressing the silent hours into a single point that hums in the way compressed silence does. Endless nights, time compressing into nothing, still everything, existing outside itself even when it should have been destroyed. What would happen if in these moments, time were not to exist? Would the rest of time expand to fill in the empty space, or would there be a discontinuity? Would the empty space pull all the rest of time in like a black hole? Would the future still exist in the vacuum? I want this pointless night to not exist... 

(long story short, I want to leave my room and get some food but social anxiety sucks and for some reason there are still people out at 2 am)

People I know in real life have found me here.

Dare I remain?

My newest theme song, I think.

Orientation week.

So much mindless socialization, I'm screaming inside. I made friends with a few other introverts and we've been bonding over our shared dislike for name games. We rarely have any time to ourselves before 10 PM and each hour seem to be placed in larger and larger groups. Tonight was Playfair, an icebreaker involving all 1,000+ members of the freshman class. Rowdy crowds, applause, confined spaces, static playing over the speakers, all sorts of things I don't do well with... I somehow avoided overload by focusing on a red light in the distance and trying to project my consciousness into it, but I can barely remember what happened around me from that point on. Crossing my fingers tomorrow won't be so chaotic.

Dear Auntie...

"My girlfriend and I (m) have been dating for over a year. She's great in every way, but there's one thing that's making me really frustrated.

We've been sleeping together for about a year. And she's great in bed, but I feel really unfulfilled sometimes. Whenever one of us wants to try something we'll talk about it, but there is one thing she won't try. See, I really want her to blow me, but she's uncomfortable with the idea. We haven't really discussed it even though we have great communication on everything else. The times I've asked why she doesn't want to blow me, she's given a vague answer about being uncomfortable with it or mentions a "mental wall."

And I don't want to be a dick and force her to do something, but this is a problem and it's affecting our relationship. I just don't feel excited about having sex with her. And if she weren't so reluctant about blowing me, that might change. I absolutely understand that she might be uncomfortable with the idea, but I just feel like there's something missing from our sex life. We've tried other exciting things and those are great, but I really want her to blow me. And every time I've asked her why she won't just do it she gives the same vague answers about mental walls and being uncomfortable and won't give a better explanation. What should I do? Do I just drop the subject and hope she feels more comfortable with this later on, or is there anything else I could do?"

------------------------------------------------------

In the interests of not creating a straw man argument, I'm not going to write a response to this hypothetical letter. But if I were going to, what should I say? Should I encourage the writer to wait and respect his girlfriend's boundaries regardless of when they might change, or should I propose an "anything else"? Would I be promoting rape culture if I suggested the latter? What would you think of someone who writes a letter like this in the first place? Are his girlfriend's boundaries and explanations reasonable? Does she owe him more? What does her "no" mean?

Now, what do you think about this?

http://community.sparknotes.com/2014/07/29/auntie-sparknotes-my-boyfriend-wont-do-certain-sexy-things

Has your opinion of the writer and the response changed in any way? Why?

Should it?

Reach for that light, we were told.

They gave us wings so we could. Then you went your way and I went mine.

My light was a small one, ten feet above the ground. It radiated heat all the way to where we had first emerged. It didn't take long for me to approach it, but I am not any closer than I was then. I have never been able to traverse the invisible barrier between me and that light. Every day its radiance grows brighter and every day I take in more. I can only beat my wings against the wall for so long. One day, I will break through and reach the light. This is all I live for.

I cannot see you anymore. You went after another light, a mysterious one impossibly far from where we were. It glowed so brightly at first and you were compelled. Every night after that it faded a bit more, became smaller and farther away... You never lost your obsession. Even when the light went out, you kept flying toward it. I could see you until that night. Now the light grows brighter, and I wonder where you are. Have you come any closer? Or has your light grown brighter because you haven't? I worry about you, about how far you'll have to fly only to hit a wall like I have. But that light is all you live for. Perhaps when you reach it it will envelop you like mine cannot.

Does anyone ever reach the light?



(background: my twisted mind is fascinated with those insects that throw themselves against the porch light til they drop dead. I once heard that moths are so attracted to light that they will keep flying toward the moon until they die, forgoing reproduction and every other purpose of their lives, and true or not this seems to have stuck with me for ten years)

I don't even know... Some things, I really don't understand... I couldn't even tell you what's confusing me so right now. Some intersection of Time and Change and Personality and Oblivion...

On summer.

I love the nights when the inside and the outside feel the same. Tonight, the outside could be nothing more than an extension of the inside; rather than different worlds, the outside and inside are only different rooms. Stars and recess lights are the same things, after all, and I could touch the indigo ceiling if I wanted to. The walls are still there, I am safe, no matter how infinite this house's borders may be...

How fair is vanity... (or, I should really be doing other things)

My head is swimming with rhetorical questions... I'd write some down, but they're in flashes and bits of sound rather than words. I can make out two: "I wonder..."

 

Well.. this one is actually mine. 

Deja vu (a transcription)

It's moments like this I remember how stuck I am. I sit on the porch swing, fabric weathered and grey, and wait for the breeze. My grandfather cracks open the breeze door, a scratched plastic bowl full of the same snack he offered me last time in his hand.

"Try this," he says, "you'll like it."

I rarely do.

But this is not the same moment as the other four hundred, the swing is on the other side of the patio and the bowl is green, not red. And I am not the same as the other four hundred times. This is what lets me know that I am not as stuck as I fear, I am never the same.

I always react the same way. I might as well be.

So many other writers (am I that really?) have spoken of those little comforts, of being home in all those places where things are always the same no matter who they've become.

Those other writers aren't me.

They don't have my mind.

So this time I've found a pen, and a bit of paper, and I'm writing myself unstuck. I'm writing myself out of time and away from the creaking of the porch swing. This is not a loop, I have changed. This is not a loop, though I keep coming back.

This is a new story, despite all those characters who act the same.

This one will be a fairy-tale, because I will write it as such.

I wonder what keeps me here when I lack reasons to be.

unending
all ending

in cycles is there any meaning?

pointless to continue
pointless to stop

perhaps i could go on
(but still)
pointless to go on
pointless to not

a smile or a good story are enough to mean something, they say
this is still perfect blankness
no pleasure and no memory
pure compulsion

insanity: try again, maybe you're wrong

how many times will this keep repeating?

sometimes the greyness just comes
(it doesn't call ahead)
it might be good and it might be bad, though grey is the opposite of both
and it devours

but everything is still here
it's just a new filter
greyscale

it looks like the outside but i know it's me because everyone else is still deluded

and now

something is off
something is very off
it's been crooked since the morning
and i know it's me because no one else feels (?) it

how do you know what's true when you believe one thing by day and another by night?

pointless to let the words out
pointless to keep them in

after all, i don't speak of what you might think

they're never enough to say it
(contrived by nature)
(i no longer write for me)
so i just keep adding more
(please let me be found someday)

but it's late
there is nothing left to do
and the blades of the fan creak out a persistent heartbeat

I really ought to create a glossary of metaphors. I suppose I will another night.

On friendship and the need to sleep before midnight for once.

The worst feeling in the world is wanting to talk to someone who's far away, but having nothing to say.

No, scratch that. The worst feeling in the world is wanting to talk to someone who's far away, having nothing to say, and knowing that without something to say that person will have no idea you are thinking of them.

There are friendships in which neither person needs to say anything of importance in order to renew the connection. Blame social anxiety for this, perhaps, but on a good day I would consider myself to have one of these at the most. And there are friendships in which neither person ever says anything of importance, and the bond is never renewed. Why are these so hard to break out of?

I hate to admit that even I, the shadow-dweller, am starved for companionship sometimes. I hate to admit it, but eventually I must, because the alternative is breaking in other ways. And so the cycle begins. I return, find myself disillusioned, fade, and return. I am too inconsistent to break out. Why give in? Because it's only fair to be the first to fade after all this trouble...


I do not know who, if anyone, reads this blog anymore, but I apologize if I have offended anyone. Perhaps I should leave those minutes following midnight for rest rather than writing.

I'm too lazy to write my own post, so here's a link to someone else's.

What is love?

Reactions to the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate.

Every religion has its own form of creation. Ken Ham is unaware of any other book that speaks of the origin of life and society, though the Torah and Quran do just that. Perhaps I have been watching with an eye out for Ham's errors, but he seems quite narrow-minded and rather ignorant of the world outside his own corner of ultra-conservative midwestern America. He seems to believe that even within the millions of practicing Christians on this earth, the majority of humankind is condemned to a fiery eternal life simply for not having the same rigid perspective as him. I believe the issue with the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, is not that it is irreconcilable with modern life, but that it is both mistranslated and taken literally far too often, as Ham so perfectly displayed.

I believe in the union of everything. Religion is not all-or-nothing; one can believe in a God, and I certainly do, but not believe in the literal version of a parable from one of the countless spiritual texts that all seem to converge and contradict at the same time. If you cannot question your beliefs, how will you ever find truth? If you cannot question your beliefs, how afraid must you be that they are not it?

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” (Carl Sagan)

Many of the greatest scientists the world has known considered their work the extension of God's holy vision. Some have even been creationists. The most important trait for a scientist to have, though, is not any specific belief system or lack thereof, it is the ability to be wrong. Nothing was ever proven by someone who mindlessly repeated, "I know I'm right, therefore I'm right".

How do you know what parts of the Bible to take literally, and which are pure poetry? Is this simply a matter of convenience, as much of the Christian world seems to consider?

"One of the biggest facts you have to face, Vicky, is that if there is a God he's infinite, and we're finite, and therefore we can't ever understand him. The minute anybody starts telling you what God thinks, or exactly why he does such and such, beware. People should never try to make God in man's image, and that's what they're constantly doing." (The Moon By Night)

That is all.

Since I cannot draw reality, I aim for perfection.

“I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention and one day I decided I had better things to do."


Well, they're paper flowers, of course. Nurtured delusions. There you go.

We're the lost dreamers, the last dreamers. We're the ones whose hearts still beat out of love, not fear. We live under the stars, these concrete boxes are not for us. We remain alone in every massive crowd, and when the electricity flows through us all only we can feel it.

I know there are more of us.

Why can't we find each other?

I'm here. I keep waiting. Come find me.

If only I could

step outside

 

evading the lights, of course

and find a place far away from those wanderers

to sit and watch the world turn

 

A little SL-induced rant.

Sweeping generalizations have no place in discussion of a specific situation.

You cannot make an overarching statement such as, "Attractive people always get promoted first," and expect to apply it blindly to every situation you come across. Sometimes, you and the rule will be wrong.

Now, if you were to throw out the name of a black man and the name of a white man and tell me they both lived in Birmingham in the 1960s and then ask me whose life was better, I wouldn't be able to answer. And then you'd look at me and say, "But that's such an easy question." And I'd look back at you and say,

"Okay. No one can deny that the black man hasn't had an easy life, what with him being paid a whole dollar less per hour at the auto factory where he works, and not even being able to take breaks in the same room as his white coworkers. And even now, he's still scarred from the stories his grandma told him as a child, the ones about watching her childhood best friend's father be lynched in his backyard. But at least he's inherited the family house, small though it may be, and his wife brings in some money too with her sewing. They're raising their daughter alright.

Now, the white man may have a house three times bigger in a gated neighborhood, but he's about to lose that just like he lost his job, and his wife, and his kids. Because white picket fences couldn't keep the flu out, and now he's afraid he has it too. There's nothing more tragic than a man left all alone to confront his own mortality, especially when he's afraid he'd done injury to God in his younger, carefree days.

Which one has it better? In this case, I think that's an easy question."

Now, if you had spoken of the general population of blacks and the general population of whites, that would certainly have been an easy question. No one doubts that segregation affected blacks much more adversely than whites. Yet attaching names that tie to individual people can reverse the conclusion, because while an institution deals with masses, each individual in that mass has his or own set of circumstances that are shifted at the forefront when the situation changes to center upon them.

And regardless of what the trend may be, you don't know shit about an individual case unless you know about the specific situation. It could well be a white man who had it worse during a time of segregation, it could be a thin girl whose self-esteem takes the greater hit from modern beauty ideals. Even when "better" and "worse" are measurable, for example in economic terms (just don't get me started on how you cannot determine how much emotional pain a person does or should experience), it is impossible to know exactly which scenario is the most problematic when all you're given is an identity and a generalized rule. Yes, maybe one side is favoured institutionally or has privilege, but that doesn't mean individual variances are now nonexistent and every member of a class suffers the same amount, in the same way. There are always exceptions to the trend.

Let's stop passing judgment on whose issues are worse, better, or more deserving of redress. Suffering is not a competition.

Did you ever walk up
to the edge of a cliff,
stare into the abyss
as your mind wonders if

you should take one more step
further into that night?
Well your mind says you won't,
but then, this all is your life,

your life,
your life.
This all is your life.


Damn it, TSO...

Such clarity.

Someone help me not get caught in the pit of this-has-no-meaning again.

I should really be not so awake

Random freewrite from English class.

... for everything that rises must converge...
[Pierre Teilhard de Chardin]

Isn't that a falsehood of physics though, as everything moves toward chaos, moves toward disorder? The second law of thermodynamics, that the universe's default tendency is toward randomness? So how can the ascending few converge against the nature of their own physical existences when even the most minute particles cannot? How can they ever be united? For at the top, one is always alone, drifting, unable to attach, unable to do anything but look down at the masses remaining below in pure envy for those who did not dream, did not seek something better that never came? How can one aspire when this is the result?

But nothing ever changes.

NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

Undine - Arthur Rackham

"Damn Victorians," my Fairy Tales professor would say.

Your obligatory incoherent rant.

I. Do you ever get the feeling that everything is so contradictory
I mean, how can something or someone appear one way but be so another?
are they all just lying to me? Or is it something more...
and I mean, we're all the same, but how is it that they're the same as me?
and really there is no truth at all
(besides that I'm a solipsist worse than Descartes, but really that's all I know)
but I mean, how many can one person hold?
and why am I worrying about the nature of humanity, I have much more pressing concerns like my physics grade and tomorrow night's plans

II. and I come to write, but the concreteness of words dissolve the iron resistance of that feeling

III. If you've been here for long enough, you may notice that certain posts are conspicuously missing from the sidebar, don't try to find them because they're done with
and it's too bad you still won't forget

IV. and when things are over
they're over
and it's kind of sad

unless it's not

V. but it could just take me, right now
I really don't understand why it hasn't yet

source

My life keeps turning into Tegan and Sara songs.

Bluebeard is a FedEx truck driver.

Isn't insomnia great?

Damn you fucked up circadian rhythms, it's 5 am, shouldn't I be tired? Even Emilie Autumn only mentioned being up at 4...

Wh- what is this feeling? I haven't felt it in months...
I don't know...
It's peace of mind.

The first bird began to sing at 4:24 am.

Want to hear some life-changing music? Listen to MCR:

Because metal can't be beautiful.

 

no, symphonic is not cheating

I suppose it says something that I'm completely unafraid to go out and wander unfamiliar streets in an unfamiliar city past dusk, after all the shops have closed and the streetlights have turned on, alone.

(Or that I'll publicly challenge a conspiracy theorist standing on the street handing out anti-CIA propaganda.)

Just call me the Ladye of Shalott.

Insomnia.

who needs sleep

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8473389@N03/5191948277

when you're here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13382424@N00/4946934291

but there are so many people outside

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8749778@N06/2353500128

that I'm stuck here again

but I really just want to wander


http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/6577429683

I don't like spending this much time inside.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/45651718@N08/4699775305

Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed, but still I am the same.

You can't run and you can't hide from the demons eating you from the inside.

Anyway, I'm sitting on the step of Wigglesworth H at Harvard and typing while listening to noise off the street. No, I'm not locked out, I'm just sick of being locked in. Thank you for your concern.

I love it here. Everything is so much more human, and it's impossible to feel like you're not. I really am learning here. I've become that person who sits in classes they're not even assigned to just because they're interesting.

You know, the best things about knowledge and imagination are that they keep you company when you're virtually confined in a box. Boxes include, but are not limited to, dorm rooms, lecture halls, classrooms, houses, any place with four walls and a ceiling.

Why do I need an escape from my escape?

Here it becomes circular. I'd like to talk with my philosophy professor about the nature of escapism. I think it would be an interesting discussion.

This is why I can't become attached to anyone or anything here (sorry). I don't want to make it harder to leave when it's time to. I don't want an anchor anymore.

Day by day, I fight the fever alone.

all the bright lights in the world
cannot illumine what's burnt out in me

... And here we are.


 
Funny thing is, I actually used to be able to do that.

Oftentimes a person who posts inspirational cliches is just trying to convince themself.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

I laugh at my past because if I didn't, I might cry.

"Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!"

I've learned that it's not usually worth sharing your feelings because of how fast they can change.

Why can't I have been born free.

My internal monologues are poetry, the kind that disappears when I open my mouth. Now all I have is a handful of useless metaphors, would you like to hear them anyway?

We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.

Anyone?

"Music is the only academic subject that combines and reinforces all the other academic subjects. Why are we cutting it in schools?"

#CUT4BIEBER?! What the fuck is wrong with people?! Really, the concept that young girls with loving families and less than two decades of life experience behind them will compromise themselves physically and psychologically as a "sacrifice" to offer their beloved idol? This is something that happens in primitive, extinct societies. Not 21st century America. I can't blame the music itself, but the sensationalism surrounding teen stars like Bieber eats at the souls of naive young girls. I blame our fixation on our perfectly airbrushed stars. And my goodness, being into this is considered normal?!

Rock out and stay sane. I say this with pride. \m/

When Dreams Come True- Leonid Afremov

Dear society,

It's appalling how many people don't know shit about mental illnesses but think their "treatment plans" are more valid than a psychiatrist's.

Merry Christmas. If those words don't mean anything to you, just enjoy another day being alive.

It's Monday. You know what that means? It means between 7 15 am and 9 pm today, you should VOTE for Upper Merion by going to choir.b101radio.com/vote.

Anti-#YOLO #SWAGGG

Pictures I've collected over the past few weeks that show exactly why #YOLO is #BULLSHIT and only used to justify the most #dumbass things and the reason I have no faith left in our generation
#foreveryoung(andstupid)

 #notlikely

Check out this site for the best #YOLO parodies I have ever seen.

Expect more pictures, later.

cont'd

But Facebook doesn't. So instead of posting that compilation of dumb pictures for your facepalming pleasure, enjoy this. It is one of my favorite songs.

Blogger works from school today!

A somewhat angry social commentary, because I haven't written one in a while.

I get sick of seeing people constantly on their cell phones.
I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Whenever I mention my annoyance to other people, they look at me and nod their heads. And then they tilt their heads back down and continue texting.
So I might not be the only one, but I may be the only one who's not a hypocrite.

Now I understand that if you have a secret boyfriend you can't meet in person, texting and Facebook messaging might be the only contact you have over a weekend, but is it really too much to stop it for ten minutes during dinner?
Or to not have headphones in during a single 5-minute car ride to the pizza place?
Or to not be snapping and uploading pictures of yourself during a family gathering, while watching a video of your cousin (me) performing, that you specifically asked to see?

And don't get me started on the people on phones during a show itself. I understand that you might be more interested in videotaping a concert than watching it yourself, but seriously, the light from the screen is screwing up everyone else's vision and your giant iPhone is blocking my line of sight.
And I understand that you might not be interested in watching a symphony orchestra and that you might just be there because your best friend is performing, but do you really need to tweet about how bored you are during a performance of Bruch's Violin Concerto in A minor that took four months to learn?
I've even seen people (my orchestra stand partner, to specify) texting during rehearsals. Every time the conductor cuts us off to correct something, she will pick up her phone- which is on the stand, usually vibrating and shaking the music- and quickly tap out a text to either her boyfriend or one of 5+ exes.
I just don't understand it.

And what about those people who text friends while hanging out with other friends? I mean, if you say, "We have to hang out soon, because we haven't seen each other in so long!" I expect that you're actually interested in talking to me, not texting "i luhh youuu and we need to hanggg" to a kid you saw half an hour ago, while complaining to me about how much they annoy you. I don't think it is as much as you annoy me right now.

I'm not saying I'd like to confiscate the entire world's phones and burn them to black ash in a raging inferno (maybe just my stand partner's...), but can we all agree to take a rest during social situations? How many conversations can you really hold at once? Skilled multitaskers of the world may disagree (oh wait, they don't exist), but I can only have one. And really, if you're so bored during the one exchange, then maybe you should find some new friends who don't leave you wanting an escape every time you talk.

Your thumbs will thank you.

František Kupka - Katedrála

Found on the interwebz

My neighbor refuses to drag his trash can up the driveway, he pulls it with his hand sticking out the car window as he drives.

Dear readers,

I hope you all know that today is Suicide Prevention Day. If you didn't, I hope I just made you care. If you don't, go reevaluate your life purpose.

I've never known a suicide completer, but I know people who have been depressed to the point of planning or even attempting to take their own life. I've never been there myself, but I can understand that feeling of not being good enough, of not feeling important, of trying your hardest to connect with someone but feeling alone regardless. And I can tell you, it gets better. It's not even a cliche, it's a truth.

Everyone faces their own challenges and everyone has their own set of circumstances. You might be right when you say no one understand what you're going through. But that doesn't mean they can't understand how you feel about what you go through. If you ever feel down, just try talking to someone. It can make a world of difference.

Back-to-School Blues. (Draft 9.1.12)

I suppose I've been living in some sort of a bubble this summer, some sort of selectively permeable barrier that only my geeky old friends, my geekier new friends, and all their geeky influences can cross. (And clearly it's affecting me. I just said "selectively permeable".) And now that school is impending, I've been trying to figure out what everyone else has been up to. I don't want to be completely left in the dark come the first day. I expected the usual- long weekends at the beach, basking in death sun rays, lots of swimming and internet surfing... But it's taken one awful school football game and about two hours of Facebook stalking to figure out what everyone else has really been up to.

So now you want to know why I've been in my own little bubble rather than with everyone else at the mall or the pool? Because I don't share their interests in

• dancing around stripper poles
• discovering what a rush 4LOKO gives
• grinding on each other
• drinking, a lot, and then possibly driving
• taking pictures of my own ass
• saying "luhhh youuu" to each other
• fishing for compliments from horny and hormonal teenage boys
• hooking up with mediocre football players, and then showing up to games with their name painted on their stomach

(For the record, not everyone did this. My friends and I spent the summer either at marching band or doing our homework. The only parties we went to involved lightsaber duels and takeout Chinese food.)

My mom tells me I march in my sleep.

Aim to please, shoot to kill.

 

Sigmund Freud, right?

Within the past two or three months, I have heard his name mispronounced as both "Freed" and "Fred". 

What the fuck?!

Back from DMA!

I spent the beginning of this week at Drum Major Academy learning how to lead and perform in a marching band color guard. Obviously, I learned a lot of leadership tips, routines, and cool moves, but my favorite part of being there was probably my new friends and the crazy things they said.

So adding "and shit" at the end of any sentence makes it sound thug, right? Not really.

"I went to the bathroom and shit."
"I was in the pool and shit."
"I smell cookies and shit."
"I stepped in a puddle and shit."

And as my new friend Brooke said, "Make sure when you're twirling your flag to toss it and shit." I told her, "Raise your mace and shit!"


Stupidity never ends. That night, we were walking back to our dorms in a thunderstorm after evening sessions, and I heard a girl behind me say - wait for it-
"Good thing we're under a tree!"

*epic facepalm*

Stupidity is also not taking rehearsal seriously when you have a show to put together in 4 days. This is what stupidity looks like on the field.

Steel City.

These murals are supposedly all over Pittsburgh.  Too bad I didn't know about it when I went, or I would have looked for them all.

I know my essay is supposed to be black Times New Roman on a white background... but this makes it so much easier to look at.

Never go to class without having something to kill time with.

I should have learned.

I do believe I've been here.