staring out the window at the rain

weeping butterflies

2003-09-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

aww, i miss my old blog already.

but the format at motime suits me. just saying hello. vanilla raindrops.

my blog is moving . . .

2003-09-24T03:12:00.000-07:00

oh dear. i think i'm going to continue to blog at a new location -- nightfireandrain.motime.com. (or the "vanilla raindrops" link to the right.) i'll be back here occasionally, perhaps.

we chase misprinted lies

2003-09-23T04:32:00.000-07:00

i like this blog because it feels like me now. i was reading it, and it's giving me back some of my self.

psalm 42:7

2003-09-23T04:19:00.000-07:00

deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

frogs & flowers

2003-09-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving --
We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.

-- The Cry of the Children, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

from my journal, august 25th, 2003:

today i thought about vienna -- remembered it -- and thought about how cool it would be to live there. big courtyard of lights and cold and grey dusk and roasted chestnuts and waffles with chocolate syrup and cold cold air in front of the castle. walking the streets full of christmas lights, passing cafes and leather stores, chic young people everywhere. that's how i remember it, from when i was eleven. the cold air charged -- full of an electric excitement. that's where i thought i'd be when i was old enough (like nineteen, like now). that big city. idealistic, youthful excitement. that's what i wanted.

Austria. everything here seems so generic in comparison. there is the real -- the countrysides, the cities, the mountains, clouds (huge), rain in august, thunder storms of summer. sights sounds smells tastes. all real there.

drinking herbal tea in a comfortable dark grey sweatshirt

2003-09-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

am i alone in here?

story on a beige starbucks napkin

2003-09-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

by spike and james and denise and me.

Two funky nuns are dancing naked under chocolate towels with Father Moopy-butt because God closed doors. Once when church exploded with Holy thespians, children sporadically poured felineS upon Starbucks floors. ONLOOKERS whooped disobeying citizens' diRTY backsides, Pondered on bicycles. I Love Pastor DiCK, he's a sexy scottish man-whore. Pastor relationships result in dramatic emotional grandmas who often abuse themselves stupidly because they forgetfully idolize Buddhist monks. I try to erase myselF! Shoot, it's impossible!!! OH wait . . . Heres surprisingly naked imps who really NEED Me. Surpisingly, really shocking, yeah, yup, mmm-hmm . . . THE CRYiNg is incredibly DARN! end? Yes, NOID. Mmm Kay. MMM KAY.

2003-09-23T02:00:00.000-07:00

it's not letting me view my blogs. sue the postman! fire the gorilla! (okay, not the gorilla. leave him alone.)

2003-09-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

Today was my dad's birthday. I drove him to the auto shop at the end of a long, dry road that led to not many other places, so he could drive the other car (which was being worked on) back home. My mom, sister, brother, spike and I went shopping for him. Spike wrote on his birthday card, "You're a cool dude." He made goofy comments as he opened all the presents.

Today I crocheted and skateboarded. I played guitar and drew a Yugio dragon for my little brother.

Every time I try to view a blog (any blog), I get an error message and this is frustrating.

I like candles. When I was in ninth grade I had a health class. The teacher was named Ms.. Hill. She had short, neat, white-blond hair and was always smiling. We made a "total health journal" in that class, and the only part of mine that lacked her written comments ("excellent!") was the spiritual health section, where I wrote about Jesus Christ. I think she was into New Age stuff.
Her classroom always smelled like berries or vanilla or cinnamon, because she always had at least one candle lit somewhere in the room. It was a very relaxed atmosphere, a refuge in the school day. She'd sit on a desk in the front of the room and talk to us like friends. But we really learned, too.
She had us watch movies like "Radio Flyer" and "Powder." I played cards with a guy named Michael, who sat next to me, and who (two years later) also sat next to me in music class and played bass rhythms on my acoustic guitar that I couldn't get out of my head. And who called me up occasionally after we graduated, and once invited spike and me to a party. He said, "You're not vegetarians, are you?" I am. He said, "Do you drink?" I don't. "Do you smoke?" I don't. "Well . . . Do you do anything?" We didn't go to the party.
Ms. Hill (the Health teacher) wrote this in my yearbook at the end of ninth grade:

Stay Focused
Stay True

By this I mean, that people who search for peace & truth are often met by opposition, but eventually you will attract others whose light shines as brightly as yours.

With love and respect,

Ms. Hill

I think I may remember that yearbook "signature" better than any other I've gotten. I was fifteen years old and proud that my teacher -- this cool, peaceful woman -- saw something in me and made the effort to let me know.

That year I was happy and young and innocent and optimistic. Life was bright and sunny and beautiful. I was making friends who actually liked me for who I was, unlike some friends I've had. I was discovering myself and what I believed, learning to love other people and myself and God.

A few moments ago, I went to get my yearbook and found it on my bookshelf, behind a bottle of bright blue Dawn liquid dish soap. Just thought you should know that odd truth.

Happy My Cool-Dude-Dad's Birthday!

Noreia@planet-save.com

pristine beauty

2003-09-23T01:02:00.000-07:00

"We're here collecting . . . lingerie . . . for needy sexy people."
-- Blanch Deveraux in a nun costume.

"The bottom line is, when you take a chance in life, sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen. But if you don't take a chance, nothing happens."
-- Dorothy Zbornac

insane rainbows

2003-09-21T01:51:00.000-07:00

today a friend i haven't talked to in a while called me and explained to me the whole plot of jane austen's pride and prejudice.

i went to spike's house, and she let me read two of her stories. she is an amazing writer. i was lost in her worlds.

she's sleeping now, in my room.

i started my story. for creative writing class. it's very shabby, but the first scene is there. it's about a fourteen-year-old girl living in santa cruz. who believes in angels.

happy giant moose hair day.

white aliens under grey skies

2003-09-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

"what are you??? you're a kiiiiitty!" -- me, ten or so minutes ago.

i sat in my room in the rose-smoke, looking through pictures of old stone castles, of grey cats in flowery gardens, of massive, peach-colored clouds. pictures of austria.

i was seventeen then. in those pictures. and more true to myself than i maybe ever have been -- before or since. i was completely happy then.

i feel old. i'm only nineteen, but i'm so different now. i feel jaded. i feel trapped. i feel stuck in one place, the future ever closing in, ever slamming me in the face.

every day i compare myself to other people my age. what is he doing? where has she gotten? why am i doing nothing?

i used to know what i was about. i believed in a love that is stronger than death . . . i still believe, but i am removed from it. by choice. by circumstance. by time.

it was so easy to be right then. i used to wonder what it was like to be on the other side, to be disconnected from what i thought i couldn't possibly live without.

now i know.

i call to you like deep calls to deep over water . . .

deep in my soul there's a craving . . .

i read some of my journal of two years ago, from right after i got back from austria. it's like a totally different person. it's hard to believe that was me. all i cared about then, what i cared about the most, was purity, love, truth.

now what do i care about? i long for those things sometimes, half-heartedly, without turning to the one who used to provide them for me.

strangers take my hands.

blind with intoxication

2003-09-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

i was outside tonight, and i found a slug. i guess he was just a garden slug. i named him dragomere, which i think is a girl's name, but i thought he was a guy. it turns out that slugs are hermaphrodites anyway, though, so the name was appropriate.

so i put my hand in front of dragomere and he tried to eat it. he really did. i felt his little mouth, his little teeth trying to chomp on me. such a weird feeling, but you have got to experience it at some point in your life. really, trust me. it's great. (he looked like he was making out with my hand, all . . . slowly and passionately. then he'd turn his little head away slooooowly, as if to say, all right, i'll go this way then. like i'd hurt his feelings or something.)

he was crawling around on the dirty cement, so eventually, i managed to pick him up and carry him over to the wet grass -- but not before spike snapped a picture of me with draggy. (i'll try to figure out some way to get it posted here, maybe as a link, when it's developed.)

draggy loves me. at least, i hope he does. he sure slimed on me a lot. have you ever tried washing slug slime off your hands? not fun. but it was worth it.

i told spike afterwards that that was something that few slugs get to experience -- being carried across the front lawn by a person. he probably went back and told all his little friends, "and i tried to eat this huge . . . thing, and then it carried me for miles -- i swear. it was crazy!" but his friends probably didn't believe him. just like people who claim to have been zipped off to space by pale, skinny, black-eyed extra-terrestrials.

would you believe me, if i said some aliens picked me up and dropped me off miles away?

noreia@planet-save.com.

2003-09-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

if there are angels here on earth, i hope they dress in ripped dickies and worn vans and grey hoodies. i hope their wings are neon pink and glowing like jewels. i hope they love the amber light of the evening sun and get lost in the aquamarine oceans in each drop of rain.

if there are angels here on earth, i hope they walk through high school hallways with invisibly beautiful loners. i hope they paint smiles on babies' faces. i hope they can taste herbal tea and smoke and vanilla pudding; i hope they can smell the asphalt under sprinklers on hot summer nights. i hope they can hear the strums of the fifty-year-old business man's guitar, audio-memories of the hope and openness of his youth -- he wanted to be a rock star.

if there are angels here on earth, i hope they hear the breathless weeping of broken humanity; i hope they seek out crushed souls cowering in dark corners and slowly spread open their huge wings, covering the dying with their feathers of glitter and light.

i hope they kiss and sing and taste the salt of tears. i hope they fall in love and swim in rivers and let their heavy eyes close and carry them into floating dreams.

i hope they dream of you.

something infinitely interesting:

2003-09-19T02:05:00.000-07:00

my madlib from this site.

Ryan and Seth headed out for an afternoon in search of cappucinos at the men's bathroom. And it was just their luck that they ran into Summer and Marissa who were miscalculating for feet. Seth commented on how hot Summer looked with her ash-grey hamsters on.

"Hello Marissa," Ryan said, "how would you and Summer like to go dripping with us?"

"I don't know," Marissa morosely replied, "Summer and I were supposed to go remembering later."

"And eew," Summer said, "I cound never do anything that involves Seth ungluing in a scarf."

"That's fine with me," Seth replied nastily, "Then we could take my nephew to Hong Kong for some exchange students."

On the trip there, Seth annihilated at Summer the entire time.

"Seth, if you don't stop doing that, I'm going to discuss you with my crazy infant," she said.

Seth smiled at Summer. It was a fun day for all of them. When the day was over, Ryan gave Marissa a bubble that he bought from the bathtub. Marissa loved it and in return gave Ryan an uncanny nose.

quiet desperation

2003-09-19T01:42:00.000-07:00

earlier today, a little before three p.m.

i'm at my teacher's house. i'm the first one here. blues music. it's cool in here. hey, someone else just arrived.

i think denise lives a life of quiet desperation. it's beautiful. mono no aware. it was so quiet that for a long time, i didn't perceive it at all.

there's so much in her that nobody sees, and i want to see it.

i miss denise.

and i don't like living with secrets.

a fellow student just fell down two stairs. i got up to help, but didn't know what to do. she was laughing. they're talking about the weather.

he was blind with --something i forgot

2003-09-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

i put the wrong email address in here, in case anyone actually tried to email me. i've fixed it, though. it's noreia@planet-save.com.

cadence

2003-09-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

i set my alarm for nine-thirty. i don't know what happened, because i woke up exactly at eleven. i don't know if i could have slept through an hour of a perfect circle blasting until it turned itself off, or if it just didn't work, or if i turned it off and went back to sleep.

which is a weird idea. and something i think i've done more than once. the thing that freaks me out is that i don't remember it at all. although i did dream about the class i have to go to today. i dreamt i was walking through a huge mansion. at first it was like a funhouse -- there was a haunted house section that i didn't enter. then i walked through these huge rooms with crystal chandeliers and glistening wooden floors, and administrators from my old high school were walking around, socializing, and i thought they would stop me and ask me what i was doing there (like they thought i wasn't supposed to be there), but they didn't.

then i found my creative writing teacher sitting on a couch, and she was upset (slightly -- more like irritated) because the rest of the class had gone to a different section of the house because they didn't want to meet where she told them to. i told her that reminded me of high school -- the kids thinking any request a teacher makes is outrageous. (like, do your homework.)

so i woke up and hurried to dress so i could clean my neighbor's house, and it turns out she's not home and forgot to leave me the key. which is good, because i don't have to clean and i have all this time here, now, since i'm all up and ready. so i can write this blog for you.

aren't you lucky.

you probably haven't read all the way through this post to the end, though, because it was pretty boring up there. well, that's just too bad for you, buddy, because something really interesting is about to happen on this post. and if you stopped reading, you're going to miss it.

are you ready? here it is:

something really interesting.

okay, just kidding, that wasn't it. that was really corny. but here it really is, now, really and truly and candidly:

spike sagt, "ich habe vier nasen auf mein fuss."

happy magical rhinoceros day.

2003-09-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

rain will fall down,
replenishing
all of our broken dreams
and this burning tree
that's withering
will bloom again; would you believe?

goodnight, world.

2003-09-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

it is now 3:17 in the morning.

has anyone actually read this yet? besides the people i've sent it to.

hey you. random person who doesn't know me. who are you? email me -- you know you want to.

noreia@planet-save.com.

noreia@planet-save.com

2003-09-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

i am using the free version of blogger, so i think that means i can't post photographs.

i was just at someone else's blog, someone with a huge number of links under "archives" and with a page of original photos that are boldly black and white and beautiful. i love reading people's words and seeing images of their lives -- through the words and the photos. what a great concept, this blogging stuff.

i wish i could do everything i want to this page. i wish i had a digital camera. or even a scanner. heck, i should start by getting some more albums for the photos sitting in envelopes in a corner of my room.

last summer (2002), i was bored because i'd just graduated and didn't know what to do. i'd wake up around nine in the morning and actually watch some TV (which was very rare for me at the time, because i hated the media/american popular culture). i'd watch music videos. then i'd take my acoustic steel-string guitar (which later got stolen when denise brought it to school) out into the garage and sit there, playing some slow, melancholy, fingerpicked tune and staring at the leaves on the tree across the court. the wind provided a low, howling background for my songs. the leaves danced like angels, fairies, spirits set free.

then sometimes i'd walk the block or so to darcy's coffee shop. one day i sat at the shiny table near the window and made smeary, bold pastel crayon pictures in my sketchbook. the bells on the door jangled as an older, black man and his wife came into the coffee shop. i'd seen them outside, before i came in -- they were crossing the street and i thought, they look interesting; i hope they're going to darcy's too.

the man ordered drinks in a loud, confident voice. a rich, velvety, southern voice. then they made their way to a table behind me.

from their conversation, i figured out that they were Christians. they talked about prayer meetings and church services and spiritual things. they sounded like those bold Christians who always want to drive out some demon or another and always give you three easy steps! to something or other. the kind of Christians who unabashedly throw around acronyms in their sermons -- like i'm going to remember the point better if its initials spell out "FAITH."

i hoped they wouldn't talk to me. but i wanted to sit there and listen to them.

soon they started talking to people. the people behind the counter (whose asian accents the man had trouble understanding). other customers. the man ended up talking to this young asian postman, telling him about God's plans for his life. the postman was already a Christian, and the black man said he'd had a feeling that he was, just by looking at him.

the postman got so excited about this preacher-man that he went outside and grabbed his friend, a woman postal worker, and brought her in too, to talk to the preacher-man.

so preacher-man asks the woman about her family and figures out she's having troubles with her teenager. it reminded me of one of those TV-psychics, the ones on talk shows -- the way he talked to her. asking her all kinds of questions and then jumping on one of her answers, leading her to reveal other information, always feeding in a "message from the Lord." the postwoman seemed polite and slightly interested, but skeptical. the postman was all gung-ho about it. i think the woman wasn't a christian, and he wanted her to be "saved."

the preacher-man also told one of the postal workers (i don't remember which one) that he/she was going to move -- should move back home to family. in texas, i think. he said that's what God was telling him. (i think it was the guy, but i'm not sure.)

i listened to all this for quite a while before i left. as i threw my empty plastic coffee cup in the trash, i couldn't help but wish, in some small part of myself, that the preacher-man would come over and say, "Child, ah know you've fallen away from the Lawd, but He wants ya ta know that He still loves ya, and He's got a plaaaan fo' ya life. And here's what it is . . ." i mean, it would have been nice to know what was supposed to happen next in my life, to know that i was still "okay" in God's eyes even though i'd chosen love of a boy over love of him.

but i might as well have been invisible, for all the attention preacher-man paid to me. which made most of me happy. still . . . in that one small way, i couldn't help thinking, "God, if you really want me back, why not send this guy over to talk to me?" and then i thought, "maybe God sent this guy in here -- maybe he knew i'd be uncomfortable actually talking to him and it was better just to have heard all this."

pondering all this, i left the coffee shop.

brushing my teeth

2003-09-18T01:57:00.000-07:00

everyone's gone to bed. pepsodent tastes like root beer.

tomorrow i have to clean my neighbor's house for twenty dollars and then go to writing class again. but i'm actually looking forward to the class, despite the drive.

seth died today. my black-goggly-eyed-goldfish-with-goggly-eyes-and-it's-black. i tried to take really good care of him. but i have two snails. one is named melissa.

someone's peeing in the bathroom.

when i went out with ian for coffee yesterday, he was talking to me about my future. he asked what the underlying issues behind my gloomy moods were, and i mentioned that i'm not doing anything and that i don't know what i'm going to do.

he said he's sure i'll do something good, he has no doubt about that. and he told me that it's really important just to get out of your parents' house, to be on your own. he said i should look into the UCs. i had guaranteed admission to a few of them when i graduated high school, because i had like the ninth highest GPA in the school, or something. (although you wouldn't see my intelligence in that sentence i just wrote . . . like, jeez . . . or something.)

and ian said i should just go to college for the first two years with my major as "undeclared," just to do the general ed.

and why not? next fall i can start all over. i could go to europe as an au pair, as i've been thinking about since senior year. or to a college. or anything -- i could do anything.

this blog is not beautiful or poetic. denise's are always beautiful and poetic. i do apologize.

love watery firefish. happy beatnick day.

email me at noreia@planet-save.com. make the subject line: comments on blog, or the like, so i'll actually read it.

2003-09-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

my sister is sixteen and she thinks better than i do. it must be interesting having her mind. i feel like i've lost so much depth. when i was a senior in high school, i had that cold-dark-beauty feeling about the world, all the time. it was lonely and sad but the sadness was tinged with beauty. beauty tinged with sadness. mono no aware.

yogurt

2003-09-17T04:37:00.000-07:00

this evening i went to target and starbucks with spike and denise. i bought blue and green christmas lights and a charcoal-colored hooded sweatshirt.

later, in my bedroom, i put up the christmas lights and made a candle by sticking a wick into a glass jar full of wax i've collected.

and i played some guitar. i'm making a tape of my songs for my friends, so i worked on that. i hadn't worked on it -- or played much at all, really -- since before the summer, before the cancer and the surgery and the treatment.

and when i was out with ian today, we went to safeway and i bought a surfer magazine. to put the pictures up on my wall. atmosphere. i think i'll put them around the blue lights, so they will glow blue like water.

ian says i dress differently when i'm depressed. i said yeah, darker and more comfortable, because bright colors and weird-fitting things are disgusting to me then. i want calm. dark. soft. big.

i like spike's room.

i wish i could surf.

in spike's room

2003-09-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

that's right. i'm in spike's room, in the hazy blue-grey darkness of cinnamon and smoke. listening to some british mellow depressed rock singer.

today i ended up curled up on my bed sobbing, somehow. alone at home, and insane. i was going to come to spike's house, but then ian called and asked me out for coffee.

ian was in my kindergarten class, but we weren't best friends until ninth grade. i always kind of saw him around before that, but we never really talked. except that time in eighth grade when he -- quiet boy with glasses -- came up to me -- melodramatic, self-proclaimed depressed witch hiding under hood of black sweatshirt -- and said, "my mom wants to know if you're still a nice girl." (his mom and my dad had gone on elementary school field trips with our class.)

i glanced up slowly and said, "No." i must have given him quite a death-glare, because he quickly disappeared from my corner of the history classroom.

but the next year, as a freshman in high school, i got into spirituality. i read about buddhism and wicca and chakras and all kinds of stuff. this brought about my new open-minded phase. right about then, Quiet Boy With Glasses decided to try to talk to Dark Wiccan Girl again, and he gave me a photo of his cat. so how could we not have ended up as best friends? i mean, how many times do guys give you pictures of their cats?

ian is now temporarily here from new york, where he's in college. (unlike some unnamed nineteen-year-olds who are still living at home.) (who, me?)

and ian loves starbucks.

so today i went out for coffee with ian. and he made me happy. i told him he should be a psychologist.

i love you, ian.

oh, p.s. i did -- obviously, if you read the subject line, end up at spike's house. she's out of the shower now, and has turned the light on, so the hazy blue-grey darkness has vanished. but that's okay.

i love spike.

happy hair-brushing day.

my mother to me in the kaiser parking lot:

2003-09-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

"Years ago, we used to go to that other Kaiser, but they didn't give birth to babies there, so we had to go to San Francisco."

who'sh talkin' ta me?

2003-09-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

email me at noreia@planet-save.com. make the subject line "comments on blog" or something similar; otherwise i won't read it.

2003-09-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

i'm reading all these blogs, and it's hard to read them without thinking, gee, mine must be really boring. but whatever. i mean, it's just a bunch of random stuff. i think it's more for the fun of seeing my words that were typed in the little box here magically appear on a webpage. ooooooh . . .

what's it like being me? i don't know, it's pretty darn crazy, george. i'm not in school. i did some school last semester -- two community college classes, and this year i'm just taking that creative writing class (non-credit).

i wonder if people really think of california as this really cool place to live. i guess it is, in a way. you've got the beautiful glittery dark city of angels, and the motley collage of people that is san francisco . . . but it gets depressing, too. i want to live in austria. it's fresh there, and green, rainy, clean.

it's been two years since i was there, and the seventeen-year-old me of then would never have believed who i've turned out to be, how my life has turned out, two years later.

(smelling the dusty incense smoke of my sister's room.)

there was this one day. it was raining. summer rain. it's so beautiful. everything is washed watercolor-clean and wet. it's like wet paint on canvas -- you almost think that if you touch a tree, it's color will smear onto your hands. i was sitting out on Omi's back porch, my feet up on the "balcony," reading.

i knew, in that moment, that it was perfect. i almost couldn't believe such a perfect, beautiful day was happening.

and somehow, maybe i saw ahead to when it would be so far out of reach. or maybe i didn't, but that's where i am now. here in dry, mechanical california.

i want to write but the words are not forming. i just want . . . to relax. for one day, not to hold twenty million ridiculous worries in my head at the same time. to forget about the future, to be able to trust that it will be okay again. but the last time i really felt that peace and security was probably two years ago in austria. that was the last time i can remember being totally, truly happy -- not fleetingly. not forcing optimism. not trying. just knowing that i existed, and i was okay. exactly as i was.

i don't even know what i believe anymore. i still believe God's there, but i don't hear him. how could the thing that was my whole life back then be pushed so far away now? and will i ever be happy apart from him?

john ritter is dead. so what does that mean? where is he? i really want to know, damn it. he's on my TV screen making janet and terry laugh or scream -- but where is he really, now?

when i was in eleventh grade, i realized i was mortal. i was walking down the hall to my bedroom, and i saw the dog outside the back door. i said to my mom (and i have no idea why this suddenly popped into my head, other than maybe God was saying it was my time to deal with it), "hey Mom! do you realize that in a hundred years, that dog won't be here?" and right away, another thought attacked me: in a hundred years, i won't be here.

i stumbled the rest of the way to my room and collapsed on the floor. i looked up at my bedpost and it seemed so far away. i felt like i was sinking, grasping at air.

for the next few months, i walked around in a daze. i tried to talk to my friends at school -- i couldn't help it; i needed to talk about it. most of the time i was walking around wanting to scream at everyone, how can you socialize? how can you do such normal things? don't you realize you're going to die???
my friends gave me strange looks and told me to lighten up. their responses were pretty much, "yeah, we're going to die. duh. deal with it. that's the way things are."

but why is that the way things are?

i don't go around obsessing about death anymore. i did get over that paralyzing "phase" -- mainly by trying to forget about death and be young and have fun -- act like a goofy teenager. but i still don't understand why things are the way they are. i know there doesn't seem to be a point in questioning things -- they just are -- but then i can't help but think, why are they?

at the first meeting of my current writing class, the teacher asked us to write about something that we are obsessed with, passionate about, or angry about. i thought my classmates would think my response was dumb and teenage (they were all over fifty), but i wrote about my occasional (or frequent) anger at everything, the world, the way things are. that sounds like some kind of wannabe-teenage-angst -- like, "i dress in black and sit in my room and mope and make sarcastic comments" -- but that's not what i mean. it's just . . .

i don't want to be an adult. i don't want to have to deal with cars and paperwork and driving and money and credit and insurance and health care and a home and a job and all that -- it's so, so, so sickening.

i want to live in a small town in austria and ride my bike on roads through wheat fields every morning and walk in the woods and chase fireflies in the evening and talk to people on the front porch -- in the rough, mountain german dialect.

i don't want to be responsible.

i think this whole responsibility-angst may be caused by my lack of connection to God. i mean, that's when it started. there's nobody bigger now. there's nobody to rest in. i'm the biggest, oldest, most cautious, most responsible.

i've taken up skateboarding in the past two weeks. i saw this girl on the disney channel who was a skateboarder. she was like twelve, and really good at it, saying it was so much fun. and i always wanted to skateboard when i was little, but my parents never let me. as a teenager, i always said, "if my parents had let me skateboard, i could have been really good by now." but seeing that girl, i thought, hey, i just had cancer -- i should do whatever i want! (yeah, i did just have thyroid cancer. but i think it's all gone now.)

so i bought a skateboard.

and i always insist, when i skate with my sister and spike, that they wear helmets. i'm always doing that to spike -- watching out for her. but i can't help it. i try to. i try not to worry and to just live and breathe. but i'm grounded; i can't seem to catch wind in my wings -- if they're even there anymore.

so anyway. all this worry. i go through these weird phases -- sometimes i'm totally optimistic, and other times everything seems so dreary and i'm just bleh about the whole world.

but Omi's coming. now that is what i look forward to.

that, and writing. i want to be a writer. (you wouldn't guess, from all this stupid rambling, eh? oh well.) so i'm supposed to have this story by october 23rd, and i can't -- i'm stuck. what to do? i tried to start -- it sounds dumb. but at least i have a vague image of a character in mind.

and when i get in these negative moods, i get so tired of all my negative thoughts, that i get even more frustrated -- at myself. it's like this crazy cycle. i start to think negatively about everything, and then i get sick of my own rambling negative voice in my head.

and then i sigh and talk to my black moor goldfish. his name is seth.

or not, i don't really talk to him, but i could. he would listen.

happy buttercup day.

oh, and p.s. my friends, who didn't "get" my fear-of-death thing? they both apologized later, and said they went through similar phases after me.

2003-09-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

so my mom grabbed the dog and i shone the flashlight on her collar. (the dog's, not my mom's.) so suzie the dog was picked up by a rather tired young woman in a pickup. exciting event in a californian night.

2003-09-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

Evin Smorgin the Special Weed

(who is ostracized by the other weeds because of his effeminate flower -- and he's not really gay!) (poor guy.) (he can't get a date.) ('cause the girls think he's gay.)

2003-09-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

my mother and i just walked to the 7-eleven for a midnight snack of sushi.

when we stepped outside the house, a lean, dark brown dog with a collar ran over to us. it seemed friendly enough. (it didn't eat us.)

it chased our black cat.

we continued on to 7-eleven, and as we walked in the store, i was afraid there was a guy holding up the register. i don't know why, i just was. actually, on the way over there, i was thinking about that and thinking, what if this deserted, green-grey nighttime scene is the last thing i see?

but there wasn't anybody holding up the register.

a big, tall black man was behind us in line. he loudly warned us not to eat the sushi, because he'd gotten some from safeway and it made him really sick. he laughed and continued to warn us as we paid for our sushi and walked out of the store.

back outside the house, the dog wanted our sushi.

but we made it inside alive.

ho-hum.

2003-09-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

Sam[3:47 PM]: heyo

Me[3:48 PM]: oy.

Sam[3:48 PM]: what's keepin you buisy?

Me[3:48 PM]: i'm blogging.

Sam [3:48 PM]: wow.

Sam [3:48 PM]: that sounds fun

Me[3:48 PM]: yup.

Sam [3:48 PM]: wanna do stuff with outdoor air?

Me [3:49 PM]: umm . . . outdoor air?

Sam[3:49 PM]: yeah.

Me[3:49 PM]: you mean like, breathe it?

Sam [3:50 PM]: that's kinda the idea

Me [3:50 PM]: i mean, what else can you do with it?

Sam [3:50 PM]: well, you can inflate balloons...

Me [3:50 PM]: okay okay

Sam [3:50 PM]: I wasn't planning to, but who know's where it goes!

Me [3:50 PM]: so basically you just asked me if i want to breathe and inflate balloons.

Sam [3:50 PM]: yup

Sam [3:50 PM]: but outside

Me [3:50 PM]: just making sure i got it.

2003-09-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

I just spent like twenty minutes getting lost in the help section of this blogger thing, but I'm figuring it out.

My face smells like sun block. This is normal.

When I was in elementary school, especially in the younger grades, I used to like to walk around the playground by myself. I'd look at the ground and make things up in my head. I'd find stickers and sometimes little toys in the gravel. Sometimes other kids would come and ask me what I was doing, and I'd shrug and say, "Just walking." Sometimes the kids would follow me.

So then I'd have this line of seven-year-olds following me around, wondering what the heck was so interesting on the ground. It was kind of irritating for me, actually. Eventually, when they figured out they probably weren't going to get anything out of this odd game of follow-the-leader, they'd drift off and go back to their games of tetherball and four square.

And I'd keep wandering.

Just something to think about.

2003-09-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog. Hello world.

I'm nineteen. I'm a girl. I'm taking a creative writing class. It's in the home of my creative writing teacher of last sememster (one of my two community college classes).

So I drove to Napa two days ago. I hate driving, but I guess it wasn't so bad. The most difficult part was finding my teacher's house -- it's on this tiny road out in the boonies off of a main road. I drove in, all tense from hoping I wouldn't get lost. (You know, I had that little narrative voice going on in my head, like, "You're okay. If you've missed your exit, you can just turn back. You'll find the place . . .")

I managed to find the house and park all right. I noticed, as I walked in the house, that the other people there were all . . . well, older. My teacher came out, grinning at me, gave me a hug, said she was so glad to see me. I walked in the house.

Huge house. Open and airy, windows everywhere. I mean whole walls of this house seem to be nothing but glass. Trying to act confident, I made my way to the sofa.

So there I was. Sitting in my black Dickies, cut off just below the knee, my red imitation Converse sneakers, and Spike's huge (most comfortable piece of clothing in the world) grey sweatshirt with the holes in the back. I'd spent like twenty minutes that morning trying to make the little trails of eyeliner at the corners of my eyes come out even. Now I looked around the room, and it turned out just as I'd told my mom: I think the next youngest person there was like fifty. (My mom had said, "Oh, you're going to come back with lots of little friends," and I'd replied, "I think they're all going to be a lot older than me." At least I was prepared.)

But you know, it was pretty great. During the meeting, I actually ended up making a few jokes that everyone (sincerely) laughed at. And I think it'll be interesting to hear their writer's voices. I mean, where else am I going to make friends two generations older than me? If I walked up to a fifty-year-old woman in a coffee shop and tried to start up a conversation . . . well, I don't know if I'd be too intimidated/lazy/unmotivated to do that in the first place, and if I did, I might just scare the woman. So whatever, I think I'm really going to like this class.

And my teacher even complimented my writing in front of all of them. She said fiction-writing comes naturally to me, because I've just read so much.

Anyway. Here's something I wrote (in an email to my teacher, actually) on August 28th.

A few weeks ago, my dad took my whole family to Santa Cruz for three days. We stayed in a motel and ate in a Thai restaurant with a giant fishtank and metallic shiny things and carved wood everywhere, and in a Mexican restaurant with fake ivy and yellow Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. We swam in the bright blue water of the motel pool that was such a perfect temperature that it felt just like liquid air, all around you. We went to the boardwalk and got all-day passes for the rides, and I went out on the beach alone after sunset -- the moon was huge and orange in the smog, glowing fuzzy and reflecting out onto the water. The screaming and laughter from the rides behind me was so loud that I had to go almost to the edge of the water, over the dunes, before I could hear the crashing of the waves.

Beaches are so great -- each of them has a unique personality, a whole mood. The beach I visit often in Benicia is so small, but beautiful in the silvery haze of twilight, or in the liquid blackness of night under a full moon. I went to Ocean Beach in San Francisco this summer, too -- actually the day that whale was there, but after the workers had buried it already. That beach is so . . . vast. It's completely grey and stretches on for what seems like an eternity in the three directions away from the graffiti-covered concrete wall that separates it from the street. There were only a few other people there, and the wind was blowing so intensely that even the laughter of the children running in the freezing spray of the waves seemed choked and small, dwarfed by the gloomy vastness of the beach. And then Santa Cruz -- I was just really lonely, the moon and the light from the rides making the sand glow so surreal and bright, the noise of all the people having fun behind me. The big, lonely moon, the black sky that seemed so sadly low to the ground. (My favorite poem is "Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold.)

Anyway, Santa Cruz really made an impression on me. I mean I loved it. I loved the freedom of being . . . away . . . from everything. Just out there in a motel room, having nothing but what I brought in my suitcase. Throughout the trip, I brought my camera with me everywhere. I must have used up four rolls of film discreetly photographing interesting people I saw all around me. And I was always thinking, I'll have to write about this later . . . I wanted to write a story, set in Santa Cruz.

On the way home, we drove along Highway 1, on the coast, stopping at various beaches along the way. I listened to weird, surreal trance music that my friend Rachel had given me and stared out the window at the fields, the fruit stands along the side of the road, and the vineyards that seemed to stretch out right to the ocean. It seemed like such a strange contrast -- vineyards and produce fields stretching out toward this vast body of salt water. The day was sunny, but the sky had a white tint to it, and occasionally, fluffy clumps of fog would roll in and encircle the hills we were driving around. We stopped at one beach where at least twenty people were "kite surfing," as my dad called it. They had these huge, colorful sails connected by long lines to their surf boards, and they picked up the lines and ran along the beach until the kites caught wind and soared, and then they scrambled with their boards toward the water and let the multi-colored wings pull them out over the waves. It looked like magic. At another place we stopped, we walked along the edges of some cliffs overlooking the beach, and as we were standing there, a young guy ran up, threw his surf board over the edge of the high cliff, and jumped off after it into the water while his friends, already riding the waves, cheered him on. (They had taken the more difficult route and climbed the stairs down to the beach.) Then we went in little wooden surf museum and saw pictures and videos of the surfers from the fifties, and displays of their huge, klunky boards.

So if I end up starting a new story, that's what I want it to be about -- or where I want it to take place. :)

(zap back to present) Kay. Well. I don't quite know what I think about this blogging stuff. Kind of scary, putting my thoughts out for the whole world. Whatever, maybe I'll keep it up.