Her bare foot eased on the break, staring ahead at the flashing red lights--a necessary precaution. And with that her tightened back leaned into the blackness of the seat, white knuckled hands on 10 and 2. A part of her was keenly aware that the other drivers must feel annoyance at this moment, but to her it was a needed reprieve. An unfolding metaphor. It occurred to her then that this oncoming train was not only rushing across the tracks noisily but it was coming and at any moment was going to crash into her life. Her car and body tingled at the reverberations from the power of the train..10 and 2..10 and 2. She smiled, one of those smirks that is the body's release of tension finding its way into an unnatural shape. Odd it was, she smiled when instead what felt most natural was to cry. To get out of her car and just run behind the train screaming "Just finish it off!" bowing to her knees in the limp nature of a doll to find the pieces that mattered most in the wreckage. Fragments of her heart..her sense of being..an unwanted jealousy..pictures of laughing friends..and a ring that reminded her of life's unfairness and somewhere in the distance lay a singed photo of a little girl who idolized her father. It was at this moment she felt the cruelness of life's intangibility. Reaching for life in things that were not real. Searching for herself in objects that were temporal. Her desperate hands returned with ashes mixed with dust, and her first unabashed tear rolled off her cheek and onto the dirt to start the process of regrowth again.
I'm at a crossroads and this time I can feel it in my bones. It's the strangest sensation; i'm so exhausted with life that i'm indifferent, almost dead inside like Clegg from "The Collector" or as exasperated as Miranda. I couldn't tell you if you asked where it came from, it creeped upon me like a hailstorm. I'm reading a book that made me cry, i was embarrassed--not being in my own room and shedding a tear for someone I wanted so desperately to pull from the book and hug. It's Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" and it's the most significant piece of literature i've ever read. It does something to you--if you let it I suppose. I guess I fell victim to a guilty conscience. I feel so selfish, so focused on myself. I guess a journal is vainity in the end, like John Fowles wrote, "But it's vain, you write what you want to hear." I don't think I really believe that because I write to empty my mind, to put things on paper
"for all the time, I didn't want to write. Sometimes I wanted to. Then it seemed weak. Like accepting things. I knew as soon as I wrote it down i'd go off the boil. But now I think it needs writing down. Recording."
This sounds cliche but I don't care--reading these two books makes me feel empty on the inside, I empathize so much with Pecola and even Clegg that I start to see the world through their eyes and it just depresses me so much. This semester all of the books have focused on the loss of innocence, the cruelty of imperialism, the absence of true love, poverty, betrayal, jealousy, adultery, etc. It's so dark..so negative. Where is Pride and Prejudice and Smitten to remind me of the beauty in things? Haha I guess Jamie's parent's 25th anniversary can count towards something positive, or finally getting our wall organized and decorated, getting an A+ on my Midterm..or being able to have a long talk about loves won and loves lost. It occurred to me that when I listen to other people being downtrodden i'm instantly wanting to put them back in their rightful place, like a book awry on the shelf. But I also realized something--we try so hard to dust eachother off that we forget the right to feel sad for awhile, that there is no shame or "immaturity" in feeling disappointed or confused about someone else's actions. Pride is dangerous and I'm more aware of my own--pride from fear of looking like a fool or pride from fear of loving someone too much, completely and totally. Sometimes, I think we need to raise our white flags and admit that the world got the best of us..
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the herat of things you find sandess for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face. Accepting the sadness. Knowing that to pretend it was all gay was treachery. Treachery to everyone sad at that moment, everyone ever sad, treachery to such music, such truth. In all the fuss and anxiety and the shoddiness and the business, making a career, getting pashes, art, learning, grabbing frantically at experience, suddenly this silent silver room full of that music.
And is it treachery to have such a lonely side when I know that I have more happiness then most can wish for? Perhaps i'm victimizing myself for being fortunate. I couldn't tell you. Sometimes I think it would be interesting to go to a psychiatrist and spill my guts and have someone listen analytically instead of half willingly or half intuitively.
I would love for someone to tell me why when my father called me tonight I felt instantly jolted with shock and then discomfort, tension, and an unnerving presence of "awkward silences." I hate talking about it because I feel embarrassed and conscious of my pathetic situation and my vulnerability to it. I tear up, I busy myself with fixations to rid myself of physical discomfort. It's odd how I was thinking the other day what an unfortunate situation it is. I have been alive for 20 whole years without my father knowing more than my name, my age, and that my brother and I hated eating at the same place. I could go into how much of a loss i've suffered from reality hitting me in the face like a cold slap that my father doesn't care enough to know me--is there ever such a thing as too little too late? He suggested I come and stay with him this summer in Nevada. I retorted that I had plans to go abroad this summer; almost as if to say...I'm capable of what Troy is--you'll see. Just picturing the awkwardness of living with my dad for 3 months makes me cringe. He can't even talk to me on the phone without using filler phrases and not even really listening
How are things going?
How is school going?
Are you working?
Have you talked to Troy?
Weather?
Alright, talk to you later
All day I have been searching for recognition in other people for my A+ on my midterm, and nothing fulfilled it. Eric was less than ecstatic, instead taking it as a moment to contrast with his own stress. Then my dad was so absent from my conversation, it was the first thing I told him looking for some sense of pride..and he then asked me how school was going after I just said "I got an A+ on my second midterm"...it's amazing how people choose not to listen. Either way in the end he didn't hear me or tell me I made him proud. Luckily I have a mom that surpasses anyone and everyone else. She sent me a card today that said "Just sending you a little hug" and told me she misses me everyday and how proud she is of me. I just wanted to cry because I needed that more than anything today...i miss her so much and can't wait to go home. I'm just so over dealing with other people's shit. Even my own drama, i'm just going to roll down the window of my car and let it out, or pedal it to oblivion in spin cycling. Tomorrow i'm going to wake up and do whatever I feel like doing. I don't know if i just want to be alone for awhile or what. A part of me is knowledgable that i'm being dramatic, but that's nothing new in moments like these. An hour ago I was relishing in the fantastic comfort of being loved and in love with a guy that sends me texts all day saying he loves me but then it's squashed when a skank bag says she hooked up with him on a fb status, it's something so stupid and trivial and but it's compounded with other things and it just gets under my skin--which is unwelcome and unwanted..it makes you want to throw your hands up and say I'M DONE WITH YOU You try and shake it off..like stress or bitchy comments or a leaf in your hair even. I'm tired from bringing up things that are erroneous in etiquette..
"All the mud of their stale ideas on the shoe of me. The new shoe of me."
So i think in one exasperated comment i'll rid myself for-ev-er of bringing it up.
A quote in ode to my friends' boy drama.
The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours. I shall still have my woman-me he can never touch...
