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For the week of may 18, 1997
Back home in good ole suburbia, with this god awful keyboard that's going to end up killing me if i use it any more. Damn thing. nobody else has a problem with it. i think they're all crazy. i use it any my hand starts to ache and i get these shooting pains in the sides of my hands. ack.
Going back up to shool tomorrow (or the next, something of the sort) for another week. do the show thing, and then it's home for good and the school year will be officially over. crazy.
So, on the one hand, i failed the math final. pretty badly. 100 out of 200 was passing. i got an 80. that's what we call a "bad thing." i think that everything's going to work out all right. i think that i'm actually going to pass the course. As of the last time i spoke to her, my professor was fairly (not wholly, but fairly) satisfied with my performance, and she told me that she felt that another time taking the course probably wouldn't help me too much.
Let's hope she doesn't have a change of heart.
Oh, right. So why am i home? Well, there was this pre-departure orientation thing for a program theat i went on 4 years ago for students going abroad for the summer.
I was a "resource person."
basically, i was there to tell people my experiences and all that. what it was like when i went to japan, what were my fears, and all that jazz. Great fun, i love to help people, to talk to and teach people, so this was perfect for me. Spoke to the parents too. Helped to tell them to let their kids go, nothing to worry about.
They're just going to let their lives take them the way they will. Things have a way of working themselves out.
But I found, for myself, that one of the best things i've gotten out of that exchange experience to japan and all were all pretty much independent of the fact that i was actually in a foreign country. Sure, i learned a bunch of culture stuff. And a tiny bit of language.
But most of all i learned more about myself, and my life, and my world, and how i fit into the world around me. And I also met a lot of people, americans. I'd not been away from my family completely alone before that (i don't count that one summer of sleepaway camp, ugh).
I met a whole lot of people. I kept in touch with a few of them. And it was when i first discovered for myself the true diversity of the world. Lame, i know. Of course there are people around. But this was the first time i ever really met people from places that weren't my town, that weren't familiar.
Hrm. Sounds vaguely like some internet thing. People. Other places. Diversity. Wacky stuff. It all stems, i suppose, from a want, a need for me to be able to touch other people's lives, even for a minute or two.
I met some people today. I don't know if i'm ever going to meet them again. Ximena and Lori. Doubtful. But we had a fun time together, talking, seemed like we'd always been friends. I have phone numbers now. I have an email address. Will I ever write or call? Will she ever peek at my web page? Dunno.
Does it matter?
Live life for the moment. Enjoy the time that you can since you never know what the futre holds. If i see these people again in a week, a month, a year, i'll be great. If i don't, not a big problem, because i had fun today, and in some small, perhaps insignificant, perhaps very significant way, i feel that i touched some more peroples' lives today.
Well, brushed, perhaps, but it's all good.
If you live your life to its greatest potential, as you see it, then everything's been worth it. If you believe in that whole "no regrets" thing, then you're well on your way to a happy, gull life..
Speaking of which. I'm going to sleep.
So much happening lately, and i should be done with all this school stuff. Life is funny that way. So here i am, in one of the labs upstairs, trying to collect everything that i've done in the last few days into some sort of coherent ... thing.
Good luck.
Got home on monday, long drive up from ny, but i slept most of the way. Well, what do you expect? I mean, we left at 7:30 in the morning. I'm supposed to be on some sort of vacation now. Especially if i'm going to be looking for a job in the future (whatever that means).
Finally woke danny's ass up to let me back into my room since he was staying there while i was back at home. Found sam, went for a drive. Mmm, strip malls. Boy, I sure missed out on something in my youth, not having the strip malls. Or perhaps this is a good thing.
Later found jon, went for another drive. Chili's for dinner. An arcade. I remember as a kid, my mom only giving me a couple of quarters for video games. A waste of money thing, or maybe a waste of brain-cells thing. Regardless, now it's my money. Mmmm.... teenage mutant ninja turtles. We were kicking ass until we ran out of tokens. Oh well, that's bound to happen.
Spent a little more time wandering around the most boring mall in the world... and that was about it. Came back to campus, and after some twisitng of arms, went to see Chasing Amy. Would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Sums up just about everything in why i've been afraid to be in any sort of serious relationship up 'till now.
I can't work up here. Going home...
Too much blabber, too much... light, and a crappy keyboard to boot. Couldn't work up in that lab. Not that i was supposed to be in the lab anyway. Only supposed to be people working on research stuffs in that lab, though what exactly of any sort of use comes out of there is debatable. Regardless, it was a lab, and i just didn't feel like working in there. So i'm back in my room now.
Oh, right. So about those relationships. So much to deal with all the time. Worrying about doing the right thing, the wrong thing, almost the right thing, something you think may be right, but is really wrong, something that you think might be wrong, so you avoid it, only to find that it was really the right thing to do at the time.
Top that all off with the fact that i've never really been too confident of myself when it comes with interactions with other human beings, putting that much more pressure on a situation by making it part of a relationship is tough for me.
I think i'm getting over all of this now. Or at least, i'm not as afraid to make mistakes.
...
Heat's blasting again in my room. I knew that this was too good to last. Danny just fell asleep on the floor. Castelle and Sam are in the room across the hall. I figured real beds would be better for them than bumming around the cit somewhere.
Had one of the best days I can remember in a long time today. After falling asleep last night in the cit upstairs listening to the rain and the thunder and waking up at 6:15 in the morning and coming back to my room and sleeping until 11ish, danny and i found castelle and sam and, after much nothing, we drove up toward boston.
Pretty cool. Just all jumped into sam's car (after emptying all of his shit into my room) and started driving north. I'm not sure that i've ever just gotten into a car with only a vague idea of where i was going and just started driving. Blasting Ace of Base and "singing" at the top of our lungs shooting up I95 toward boston cramped into sam's tiny red two-door. mmmm... the sign. Aww, yeah.
Finally got up to boston, decided to drive on through to cambridge. got there, got out, started walking around. Visited the harvard "science center." Yeah, that's what it says, right out front.
SCIENCE CENTER
Kinda lame. Regardless, went inside. They have a nice little food thinger inside with tables and everything. We don't have anything like that here. They also have these nice "kiosks" all over the place where people can just log in and check their mail and whatnot. Have them all around campus. We're missing out there as well. That's about where the envy i had of the place ended. The building was ugly as sin, and the labs were all downstairs.
Heading downstairs we found a couple of labs. Distinction i noticed between their labs and ours was that their machines are all separated by little partitions. Everyone's in his or her own little cube, little world. Our main public clusters don't have that. Makes things much more open, and while it's nice to maitain a bit of privacy and all, it also makes it a much less friendly place. Not to mention the fact that the lighting sucks. Bleah.
After that little jaunt into enemy territory (so-to-speak), we wandered around a bit more. Arguments about DAT technology mixed in with talk of why the web is inherently evil. Went for an early dinner / late lunch thing at the Border Cafe. Mmm... enchilladas. Good food, and i don't think i'll be able to eat for another couple of days.
While we were on this little excursion there were so many things that i thought i'd be able to write about. Little things, big things. Just talk about the day, tell about the day. Writing all of this though, it seems a lot less exciting that actually being there. Probably because telling about life is more often than not, less exciting that actually experiencing it.
The sky's starting to get that "the sun's about to come up but not quite yet" look to it. The horizon is a muddy shade of yellow, blending almost into white, then to a pale blue, into middle, then deep blue, and finally up overhead, up to black.
The day was just really nice. No worries about home, school, classes, grades, work, shows. Just four friends walking around away from the everyday bullshit that we all have to deal with. I was happy the whole day. I was actually laughing most of the time. Whee.
Bough some cd's, then it was time to come home. More Ace of Base, some Def Leppard and Beastie Boys. Now I really didn't grow up with most of the stuff that we'd been listening to, but i'd heard enough in my youth (hehehe, youth) or, rather, younger days, to be able to sing along with the rest of them.
Got home, went to rehearsal, put on some blue nail polish, then realized that i was getting bored with the show, so went to go see Blue Velvet in the cit. That finished, and, after a couple of hours of mtv and nasa tv (that's right folks, you too can watch mission control doing absolutely nothing for hours on end), that brings us to the start of this entry.
And i am really tired now, and have some more stuff to deal with. Good night.
Finally, some time to myself. This whole "being social" thing is certainly hard on a person. I don't think i've been giving myself enough recovery time. Too much time with other people, not enough time for me to get over being with those people.
I suppose that's what this time is for then. Danny's asleep on the floor again, castelle and sam across the hall. Pretty sure eric's getting annoyed at all the stuff that's getting shoved into this room, but really, what am i going to do? Just leave them in the cit and tell them to deal? Not a chance. So we'll all deal. End of the semester anyway, i think we can all handle it.
Went into the theatre for a bit today. Fixed up some cable with channing. Now that was exciting. Really. Find it very theraputic, not to mention satisfying, to just sit there, fixing up cable, wiring in grounds (who exactly was it who decided that in our theatre, grounds just weren't important in the grand scheme of things? argh) and doing other cleaning up stuff. Nice to know that the work that i'm doing will actually help someone in the future using the space.
Especially since i haven't designed at all lately. And I miss that aspect of theatre. At the moment i'm feeling pretty damn lazy and don't really feel like doing too much work. But I know that given the oportunity to spend more time in the theatre, once i get in there, I'd spend the rest of my life in there.
It's just hard getting back into the swing of things.
What with all this fun and all to deal with.After doing that theatre stuffs, came back here, met up with the gang, and we decided to go driving again. This time to a mall. Kick ass. Having clearly not spent enough of my younger days in malls, i've really been getting into a mall kick these last few days.
I think that everything good, bad, and ugly about our society today can be sumed up in a trip to the mall. Good? Actually, I don't know. I suppose that Kaybee Toys is pretty damn good. As is the food court. Mmmm, taco bell right across from the Burger King next to the Arby's across from the Sbarro's.
Can't get any better than that.
But. Right in the middle of the damn food court, right where people are sitting and eating and talking over their Whoppers with cheese and their pizza slices and roast beef sandwiches. Right in the middle of all that.
A television. Big screen.
And even worse.
Kids. Twenty or thirty of them. Sitting on the floor. Of the food court. (the food court?!) Watching tv. This, I've decided, is a bad thing. Why on earth would you bring a kid to a mall, just to sit their ass down on the floor to watch tv. I mean, I suppose it's a little better than sticking them on a leash, but still. The floor of the food court? No. I don't think so.
heh, the sky's turning bright again. So cool.
Righto, so, after a successful malling, it was off to the Yo La Tengo concert downtown. It was a kick-ass (assessment) concert, but to top it all off, i was in such a tired / weird / fucked-up state that it made the whole thing even more surreal. During their last song of the main set, i basically fell asleep.
Waking up, i saw Ira Kaplan crouched down about a foot away from the ground, playing his guitar, going nuts, the patch cable from to the myriad of peddals on the floor in front of him wrapped around a beer bottle, the bottle getting pulled, tipping over, beer pouring out onto the carpet on the stage, all the while noise / music blasting out from the amps. Crazy ass stuff.
Groovy.
At this point I make a list of all the concerts i've ever been to, starting with Morphine at the beginning of last year, then Man or Astro Man, Elastica, Ministry during spring weekend we walked downtown, They Might Be Giants at the beginning of this year, Morphine again, MU330, and tonight with Yo La Tengo. I feel like I missed out on so much in the whole "concert" department of my life.
Whatever. Got back up the hill, went to the cit to watch a movie.
Showgirls.
Let me just tell you right now, I was hoping to at least be entertained. I was told that it was a bad movie, but at least something that we could laugh at. Could poke fun at. Could mock. Maybe even enjoy a bit. A comedy masquerading as an artsy skin flick. Instead I got something that made me vomit. That there were people who wrote this movie. Who acted (i use act in the loosest sense of the word here) in it. Who paid money to see it. And the fact that there are some people who actually live their lives like this.
This disturbs me to no end. And the knowledge that I wasted two hours of my life on this garbage also makes me ill.
Oh right, last but not least, new cd purchases yesterday (in boston) are, in no particular order, Orbital: In Sides, Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Tool: Aenema, and Marilyn Manson: Antichrist Superstar. Mmm, money i don't have to spend. I hate spending money.
I think i'll fall asleep now. After some email, of course.
And it is in these states that i start to think about life, and how it's constructed, and how that affects our lifes.
Lives are made up of many different moments. Captured by our senses. Stored by our brains. This collection of moments determines the person that we are. At 3:00 this morning i decided to go for a walk. Castelle and Sam were asleep on my floor (seeing as there was someone now staying across the hall from me), Danny had left earlier in the evening to go to new york, and I was getting pretty bored with things.
Went up to the main green. Everything's getting all prettied up for Commencement around here. Buildings getting cleaned. Posters coming down. And there's a dance floor on the main green. And there, in the middle of that dance floor, at 3:00 am, was a couple, my age I suppose, dancing.
It was a bit chilly out then (still is). But neither of them seemed to mind. To invisible music they danced together. Nice ballroom style stuff. The light coming off of the street lights lighting up their steps. Inaudible music playing, perhaps in their heads.
I sat down on a bench and watched them for a while. They seemed so happy. Laughing, dancing, talking. No other worries in the world, at least for the moment. This is what I saw. Regardless of what was happening in reality. That's what I saw.
I was getting cold, so I went home to get a jacket, and when I went back up the the green, they were gone. Almost like they were never really there. And in fact, who can say that they actually were. But I saw them, and that experience of seeing them dancing fits in somewhere in putting together this puzzle that will someday end up forming my life.
Until then, I'll just keep gathering moments. Piece by piece. Nat time.
So you'd think I'd learn, right?
It was called Campus Dance. Campus, implying that everyone on campus (and beyond) would be there. Dance, implying that it was a big party. It lived up to all of the expectations that I had of it.
Day begins well enough. Lunch with friends, go to the mall, get me some bleach and hair dye, fix up my hair (more purple streaks - kick ass). Come back here, organize some people together. "When are we going?" "What's going on?" "How are you getting in?"
Get a zwrite from a from a friend asking if i wanted to go over to his appartment before the dance to avoid the wrath of the $4 mixed drink. Sure. Why not? Should be fun. Knew some of the people there. So Castelle, Sam and I head over there.
Now exactly what I was thinking at that moment is beyond me. A small gathering of a bunch of people I don't know mixed in with a few that I do know. Not a good mix for me having fun.
Get there, sit around for a bit. Go to the computer to find more people to invite over. Do so. Jon'll be here in a little bit. They're still getting ready for the dance. Fine with me. Whatever. We'll be here for a bit.
I get back, and Sam's pretty drunk from whatever the hell he was drinking. Ranting about non-determinism and how computers will, and already have, taken over our lives. Destroying the humanities majors with his debate skills. A drunk cs major with a political agenda is not a pretty thing to have on your hands.
Left that to go over to the Dance and met up with some other people. Originally going to meet up with two. Then a few more latched on. Then another. Enough is enough. Ended up losing the other bunch and going with the original five. That was enough. And we get through the way we snuck in last year. Smooth sailing.
And we got caught.
*bam* lights in the eyes. "What are you doing here? Come back the way you came."
"Certainly officer."
Round 2... Fight! Try again. Righto. The other theatre entrance. Well, first. The roof of the dance studio. Good thinking. Cut my hand up pretty good diving over the concret wall. Argh. Finally, brain that i am, find another way in. Get all the way through. Home free.
Door's chained from the outside. Damn they think of damn near everything.
Find one last entrance.
Sure the bartenders looked at us kinda funny, but we finally made it inside. And boy were we inside. The entire campus, main green and lower greens, were blocked off, nicened up, tabled, covered in dance floors and about three times as many people as normally attend the school.
And that's probably about where the fun ended for me.
It was a big party.
I don't do parties very well. Especially when there really aren't too many people that I can hang out with there. And we lost one of the party somewhere in the breaking in process. And two more romped off on their own. And the last one found his friend and they went off somewhere. I went to find my theatre friends, and that was fine for a while, but I really wasn't in any sort of "mingling" or "socializing" mood. So i just walked around a bunch.
Sure, i met up with my friends here and there, but I just felt like I was in the wrong place. Definitely more of an internal thing than external, but I really didn't feel that I was fitting in with either group of friends that night. Not to say that I'm not part of either group. On the contrary, I believe that I've become part of the theatre and cs communities. Yet in belonging to both, I've become part of neither, in a sense. And what didn't help matters is that two of the people that I really would have loved to spend time with there had already left.
C'est la vie.
So after spending the night wandering among the students, alums, and parents, I endup back at home. And, after looking through After Dinner for a bit, fell asleep.
The bigger the party, the harder I fall.
Or something equally as silly. I suppose I'll probably spend today wandering around watching a whole lot of old people re-live their younger days and wondering what it's going to be like 3 years from now, after I've been gone for a year, coming back to see where everyone is and what everyone's doing.
I really wish I had some sort of direction in my life right now.
Hrm... maybe I'll go that way. Toodles.
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