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My 37 things.

Tomorrow and Today

procrastinate |prəˈkrastəˌnāt; prō-|
verb [ intrans. ]
delay or postpone action; put off doing something : it won't be this price for long, so don't procrastinate.

ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin procrastinat- ‘deferred until tomorrow,’ from the verb procrastinare, from pro- ‘forward’ + crastinus ‘belonging to tomorrow’ (from cras ‘tomorrow’ ).

My exhibition belongs to tomorrow. My excessive useless worrying belongs to today.

Mediocre Writing

Anticipation. Looking up at the screen. When is it going to happen? How long will it be? I am frozen, tightening my scarf around my neck. I am burning in a heated metro station. So many people everywhere, people selling Obama gear, everyone living in anticipation. I am on an Amtrak train toward D.C. I riding Amtrak toward Miami.
Obama’s hand is held high in the air. He is facing a crowd of thousands in Charlotte, in Columbia, in D.C. Bam. He is president.
Long before you notice it.
It’s over.
The moment is gone. Today might as well be tomorrow. Tomorrow might as well be yesterday. Birth might as well be death.
Just yesterday or was it this morning or was it last year? I was crammed into a metro station, hoping to get on the escalator, to escape the sea of heads bobbing. I was eating mediocre tofu in Chinatown, watching towed cars go by.
Just tomorrow I was hoping, wishing that America would listen to me. Or has that already happened? Today it is over. Yesterday it was done.
Do you see? We can never live in the present. By the time we have noticed, the present is the past. Each little action, little thought that I have has already happened. The future is the present. The present is the past. That anticipation is gone. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. The world changes every minute, yet it stays the same. The inevitable remains inevitable. The insignificant remains insignificant. You can’t win. I can’t win. Try to change anything. It doesn’t matter anyway. Does it matter anyway? Does anything matter anyway? Try to find something that matters. Go. Look.
As I write this, my life ends a minute at a time. I can’t stop it. Can you stop it? Can you slow it down? Woosh. There it goes. Good luck to you, my friend.

Poetry ha ha ha

I am not a poet.
And I know it.


amtrak trains
are planes
skidding
a c r o s s
theground
they have turbulence
and fold down tables
even safety cards.
amtrak trains
are angels with flawed wings
fumbling
sling-shotted across the land.

2008

Goodbye & Good Riddance.

The Line Between Us and the Universe

Library - 4641
Originally uploaded by greenlawnchairs

Lines are infinite by definition.

Humans, by definition, never cross lines.

The boundaries of language, I quietly cursed.

And all the different names for the same thing.

I feel like my life is one of those cds that gets stuck in the cd player.  The same note plays over and over until someone pushes skip or stop.  I have had the opportunity to experience so much, yet that is almost a disadvantage.  I do not look forward to life as much as those who have less experience. 

I have noticed that no matter where I go, people are unhappy.  It's a frustrating experience.  I guess it sort of crushed my hope for anything.  I know that if I become famous I will be just as unhappy as I am right now.  I know that if I am accepted to Harvard (ha, likely, not) I will be just as unhappy as I am right now.

I do not know what I want.  I don't think I want anything?  I'm indifferent I suppose.

But it is unhealthy to be indifferent to life.  I have to find something that will drive it.

Maybe it is love?  I don't know.  I see so many unhappy couples.  Maybe love is just a distraction until you die.  All things are distractions.  We just muddle around until we die?

I don't know.  I see people who are poor or sick, and they are no more miserable than some of the rich people I meet.  Helping the world seems useless.  People are always telling me that I need to make a difference.  I don't think I can.  I don't think anyone can.  I mean circumstances will change, but who really wants a peaceful world filled with equality?  How boring.  People would be just as unhappy.

Back to the beginning.  The unhappiness I find repeats.  Each time it becomes more complex.  As a kindergartener, it was that disconnect I felt between the other giggling kids and myself.  They never wanted me to play tag.

Now it is more complicated, yet still just as insignificant.  Now I am haunted by the laws of the universe, human instinct, you know, the usual.  Like all of the other 6 billion people in the world, I sit up late at night and ponder my existence.  Like 16% of the population, I cannot find distraction in religion.  I feel like covering up these thoughts is denying that they are there.  I feel like religion was designed to just distract you.

I feel like every few months, I go through the same thing.  I stop caring.  I stop pursuing that ivy league dream.  I stop working for that perfect gpa.  Instead I turn to insomnia.  But I am not a good insomniac.  I can't survive on 4 hours of sleep.  So I sleep as late as I can.  Or I go to class and don't pay attention, saying to myself "oh I'll learn the Spanish subjunctive from a website later."  I read dark books and listen to dark music, feeling sorry for myself because of all of the pressures I have chosen to put on myself.  It's ridiculous.  It doesn't do any good, and it leaves me feeling detached from everyone, like I've learned some big secret about life that no one else knows.  Only I know that life is meaningless and that God deserves to be punched in the face.  Such an esoteric group.  Not.

Why are we so selfish?  Why do we wallow so much?  I know I am insignificant.  I know that my feelings do not matter.  I know that the best thing would be to just to get over myself and keep truckin'.  Yet I keep the cycle going.  I keep the options open.  I resort to rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.  Masochism almost.  I load myself so full of feces that I can barely keep myself from falling over.  I test myself, stretch myself as far as I can go, just to see if I will be able to bounce back.    I am Stretch Armstrong.  Metaphorical children pull my limbs, trying to break them.  They jump over them like jump rope.  They tie them up into bows, into figure eights.  Until finally they left my limbs go and if I am lucky, they bounce back into place for the next group of kids.  

Why do I do this?  Why do I live between two extremes.  If I found some balance, maybe I could stop the cycle.  There would be consistency, nothing to repeat.  I could take on a moderate amount of work, enough to keep my head from rambling like this blog post.  I could make a moderate living and live a moderate life.  I could be just as unhappy as everyone else but with a moderate house and living conditions.  It would be the life I suppose, the American Dream. 

Maybe I am sick of having my dreams defined by others.  Maybe I am sick of the expectations and limitations that have been placed on me.  Maybe I want to be a homeless woman, wandering the streets unpredictably.  Maybe I feel like I am read too easily.  Maybe I envy the mysterious.  No one can get in the head of a schizophrenic.  Maybe I am dissatisfied with nonfiction and its definition.  Maybe I want the crazy surreal dreams that keep my head wandering at night to come true.  Maybe what I want so much is the unpredictable.

Maybe I want the rules of the world and gravity and morals and conduct to just

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