what you really need to hear

i'm in a very strange sort of mood.

i went to the dead poet's slam, which was wonderful, as always. it made me want to write poems, and to recognize that i don't know nearly enough to write poems. it made me want to do romantic things and ostentatious things and a lot of things i really am too practical for. i'm no romantic, though in the secret coves of my heart i like to pretend sometimes.

i should be freaking out over my conference tomorrow but i am strangely zen. (initially wrote sex instead of zen. don't know why. i am strangely sex.)

i spent most of the day in a somewhat-tizzy over going abroad. two months and one week from now i will be in a country i've never visited, staying with a family i've never met, meeting all new people, speaking a language i don't understand. none of that is metaphor, either.

i want to believe it will be wonderful. because it will.

"how can something 'was, was not, forever is?' i'd like to was, was not, forever is myself." - marie howe, on a line of a poem we read

told you it was a strange mood.

i don't know what proposals will take place in my life (so far none have), but i want one of them to happen in the rain. i love rain.

i want to go home, to eat good food, to feel comfort and the prospect of adventure. "you get a phone call: come home. soon." (another line from a poem, this one at the dead poets slam.)

i want to go home. i want to have a home that is mine and not someone else's. i haven't really created a life for myself, not yet.

i want the next two years to come out okay. i want to close my eyes at this, the start of the roller coaster ride, as the days rush faster and faster and where they land i don't know. i want to close my eyes and open them and be somewhere safe, and in love.

i hate my government

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4440664.stm


this grieves my heart.

the U.S. used white phosphorus in the attack on fallujah. i saw that headline on the BBC front page and thought, oh shit, that can't be good, and decided to find out what it was. (of course, we lied about it afterwards.)

white phosphorus starts burning on contact with oxygen, and doesn't stop until A) deprived of oxygen or B) until it burns itself out. as some military guy is quoted in the article, "it'll burn down to the bone."

the horror of this is . . . i want to say incomprehensible, but i know it isn't. i know too much about DU, about agent orange, about the flattening of vietnam, about the army essentially giving my grandfather hodgkin's, about gulf war syndrome, about john crawford, to even pretend to believe my government wouldn't do this because oh yes, it would.

it is bad enough to know my government, with money from me and my parents and my grandparents, is lobbing bullets and "traditional" bombs (by traditional, in this case, i mean bunker busters - bombs that weigh more than i want to think about and create craters wherever they land, including houses we "mistakenly" pick out as targets) at the Iraqi people. we are literally raining fire down upon the people of Iraq.

it's a chemical weapon when launched at civilians. (why it doesn't count as a chem weapon when launched at "combatants" - as if we're even pretending there's a line in iraq - is beyond me. i am lucky: most of war is beyond me.) of course the army fucks are claiming we didn't lob it at civilians, but there is much evidence that those guys are NOT to be believed, isn't there?

no one deserves to have a chunk of this shit burning through their bodies; terrorist, father, brother, cleric, or otherwise. i am sure - sure as i know anything - that this DID hit civilians, and that means grandmothers and babies, with clothes burned through, screaming about a fire they did not know how to stop, fleeing into the streets in the hopes they'd be shot - anything to stop the burning.

the beauty part is the U.S. is not a signatory to the section of a treaty that would make this bombing illegal. (don't even get me started on our lack of "fair play" on treaties and the international scene.)

i hate my government.

i want to believe this shit will stop, but . . . i know too much.

in the new world, first it was the indians, and then it was the africans. it took us a long, long time to fuck up three whole continents' worth of people. (anywhere from two to four, actually: north america and africa, definitely, and south america too, and europe if you believe those on top are hurt as much by the actions against those on the bottom.) but once we were done with that, we turned outward: the phillipines, the conquering of Hawaii, the way we treated immigrants, vietnam, cambodia, the list of misdeeds in central america is longer than i can recount. we have sponsored death squads in dozens and dozens of countries. there's always another set of people to hate, whether it's the commies in vietnam, the jihadists in afghanistan (remember afghanistan?), or the saddam-sympathizers in iraq. this will not stop on its own.

this has been a long time comin

dear C, ex-TWIL -

it sucks that our relationship has vanished, and i don't really blame myself.

i am not cool enough or activist enough or whatever enough to take up space in your life, to fit into your busy schedule. thank you.

if i could've made it better, if i could've improved it, i would've liked to know. and you, for all your professed honesty, didn't offer me anything. and if you didn't respect me - which is the vibe i got - you should've said it. when my friends do things i don't respect, i call them on their shit. similarly, if i'm *not* doing something and you can't respect THAT, then tell me. don't just spend a year confiding all of this shit in me and then . . . just stop. that's not fair. i really wanted to keep you around.

maybe i'm *not* cool or activist or whatever enough. maybe i am sitting on my ass in college. maybe i'm becoming more apathetic, not less. maybe i do feel a bit like my life is stuck in the mud and i can't wait for it to begin and MAN do i hope this feeling doesn't last beyond this semester, but if you recognize that, again, BRING IT UP. just don't leave me flailing about for an explanation. argh.

and it reinforced a notion i didn't need reinforced, namely that i can walk out of people's lives, and they won't care. that's a shitty idea that i have, and i've been trying to let it go, trying not to test my friends and the strength of my friendships but actually accept people, and then there you go and fuck up. grr.

also, it confirms a sneaky suspicion i had: that you talked to me just because i was there, just because i was around, and that you had 50 other friends who could've filled the exact same niche. i really, really didn't want to believe that, but now i kind of do. so much for the uniqueness of our friendship. but then, part of me is confused - it seemed like we were close, like in some ways i was different than the other 50. maybe that was a lie, maybe some other shinyshiny prospect has come along and you just forgot about me, or (i suspect this is it) your life took a turn or two that i didn't make with you, and you don't know how i could possibly fit in now.

i don't know, maybe my stupidity and ignorance became too much for you. for the record, i was not planning on using you to work out my shit: i'm a grown-up. you could've told me to shut my trap and that it was not your job to educate me or whatever if you felt it necessary. i feel like, through action or inaction, i offended you in some way, and i was never informed or given the opportunity to rectify that.

this sucks.

sarah

hermit

i feel like i'm failing college. and i love this place academically, and as an institution, and i love my teachers, and i even like my shitty student jobs. but . . . the people not so much. it's the same thing everyone says about sarah lawrence. alums talk about the faculty here, not the kids. there aren't any people here i'm really close to, and the ones i could get close to, i don't know how to approach. i don't know how much of that is the SLC atmosphere and how much is me, but it sucks. and it makes me very, very nervous for the rest of my life. i have awesome friends now, but i would like to grow at some point. i feel like i'm unhealthily pulled to santa, to people related to santa, to all things new mexican . . . it's beautiful here, but i see a picture of the southwest sky and man i just want to be HOME. and i don't like feeling like i'm not completely committed to my life here. it's one of my least favorite qualities about myself. this sucks. i don't want to live in the future and the past, but i keep forgetting that. i suck.

in keeping with my theme, i am very excited to be in chicago in less than three weeks. i'm also looking forward to this semester being over . . . and so scared for my interpersonal skills while abroad. what's wrong with me? i can't make connections with human beings! WTF? i feel seriously socially inept. and i feel like anyone i talk to will just make me feel worse and/or give me crappy advice, or remind me that i have non-slc friends. i am a failure. (i'm also my mother. she kept in touch casually with two people from college, besides my father. less, really.)

i don't want to be in school anymore, and i hate that feeling because i know i'm a fucking broken record. i wish i could take time off, but i can't, due to family financial constraints. (i mean, i could, but then if i wanted to finish college i'd have to go to UNM, which is not a compromise i'm willing to make.)

fuck.