Happy Thanksgiving!
That is a command Carolyn. BE happy.
Have been doubting this Israel thing a bit this week. Shhh, don't tell anyone. Hopefully I will get over it.
LOVE,
Carolyn
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Fifteenth Century Iran is deadly boring
No, this article about 15th Century Iran is deadly boring.
The best I can do is skim for names. Am keeping a list of them
But
What the story is
How these names link together,
What they are even names of really... I cannot say.
Good job for reading comprehension.
My list doesn't even get into the Shah blah blah blah who overthrew his brother and then blah blah blah.
Tomorrow I have class with the Professor who accused me of equating Islam with irrationality while I was trying to describe the Iranian Revolution. He was right, I had said something like the revolution started out as a rational revolt against the Shah but then when Islam became mixed up in it, it became something less rational... Oops. Though truth is I had meant to say religion and not Islam specifically, and I hadn't even wanted to say irrationality. I had wanted to say something like emotions... heart over head, but those are not very specific terms and so I said irrationality, and that, when put with Islam, doesn't sound good. But are any religions rational, damnit? He acted like I was being such a prejudiced westerner.
It does not feel like fall here until the sun goes down at some shockingly early hour and the air becomes colder and I start craving hot chocolate.
New resolution, to start cooking warm food for myself.
Am tired. It is good I am in classes now. It gives me something to think about.
Though I still have trouble focusing, as is quite obvious from this blog.
Am learning Arabic. The writing is beautiful, it is really why I decided to stay in the class. It is like the kind of doodling I wish I could do. Something artistic. (I know it is terrible that I said doodling.)
"Mom, this is important, mom you need to listen."
I'm listening to a song in which a boy is trying to come out to his mom over the phone.
It is from a Broadway musical.
I have gone crazy. All this musical stuff. I have discovered that it is impossible to do work while listening to music from musicals because the songs get me so riled up that I can't do anything but listen to the song. And then I start imagining things, or picturing the situation, wishing I were like the actors on Broadway...
"That you were the question and you were the answer. That the world would make sense again if I held your hand."
I am not the only one obsessed with Matt Doyle, I keep reading things about Spring Awakening that make special note of him though he is not one of the leads.
Did you know it's going off Broadway? I was going to send an email to all my friends telling them to go see it before it closed, but once I started writing the email I realized that I sounded... crazy, obsessed, so I never sent it.
I really need to go to bed but I stay up thinking something will come out of me...
You know when you can feel how tired you are in the skin right below your lower eye lids? I guess it's the skin above the lower part of your eye socket. I feel my skin going numb there. haha.
Wow, it's really bad for me to listen to this music. It makes me feel dissatisfied. Dissatisfied sitting in my room, going to class, dissatisfied with anything I'm doing. Wish I were living a life where emotions were clearer, where emotions were the only thing and where we could always be screaming from a mixture of anger and energy and pain and understanding. Yuck Carolyn what are you saying.
The best I can do is skim for names. Am keeping a list of them
But
What the story is
How these names link together,
What they are even names of really... I cannot say.
Good job for reading comprehension.
My list doesn't even get into the Shah blah blah blah who overthrew his brother and then blah blah blah.
Tomorrow I have class with the Professor who accused me of equating Islam with irrationality while I was trying to describe the Iranian Revolution. He was right, I had said something like the revolution started out as a rational revolt against the Shah but then when Islam became mixed up in it, it became something less rational... Oops. Though truth is I had meant to say religion and not Islam specifically, and I hadn't even wanted to say irrationality. I had wanted to say something like emotions... heart over head, but those are not very specific terms and so I said irrationality, and that, when put with Islam, doesn't sound good. But are any religions rational, damnit? He acted like I was being such a prejudiced westerner.
It does not feel like fall here until the sun goes down at some shockingly early hour and the air becomes colder and I start craving hot chocolate.
New resolution, to start cooking warm food for myself.
Am tired. It is good I am in classes now. It gives me something to think about.
Though I still have trouble focusing, as is quite obvious from this blog.
Am learning Arabic. The writing is beautiful, it is really why I decided to stay in the class. It is like the kind of doodling I wish I could do. Something artistic. (I know it is terrible that I said doodling.)
"Mom, this is important, mom you need to listen."
I'm listening to a song in which a boy is trying to come out to his mom over the phone.
It is from a Broadway musical.
I have gone crazy. All this musical stuff. I have discovered that it is impossible to do work while listening to music from musicals because the songs get me so riled up that I can't do anything but listen to the song. And then I start imagining things, or picturing the situation, wishing I were like the actors on Broadway...
"That you were the question and you were the answer. That the world would make sense again if I held your hand."
I am not the only one obsessed with Matt Doyle, I keep reading things about Spring Awakening that make special note of him though he is not one of the leads.
Did you know it's going off Broadway? I was going to send an email to all my friends telling them to go see it before it closed, but once I started writing the email I realized that I sounded... crazy, obsessed, so I never sent it.
I really need to go to bed but I stay up thinking something will come out of me...
You know when you can feel how tired you are in the skin right below your lower eye lids? I guess it's the skin above the lower part of your eye socket. I feel my skin going numb there. haha.
Wow, it's really bad for me to listen to this music. It makes me feel dissatisfied. Dissatisfied sitting in my room, going to class, dissatisfied with anything I'm doing. Wish I were living a life where emotions were clearer, where emotions were the only thing and where we could always be screaming from a mixture of anger and energy and pain and understanding. Yuck Carolyn what are you saying.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
End of the week
I just read over some of my posts and am too lazy to fix the typos and bad grammar.
Like the Great... post in which I decided only to put quotation marks around about a third of the things that were quotes. I even had trouble reading that one and I was one the one who wrote it!
Whatever.
The less sleep I have the worse my skin becomes. I never used to have this problem but it seems to have become an almost instantaneous thing.
Boy in program, I wrote about him on this blog before and then took most of it off, is stressing. Says he's anxious, never been so anxious, but I just think he is depressed. And I understand what it's like to be in that position, or atleast I've seen others be the way he is, so I've been spending a lot of time with him lately, sitting next to him in class, walking places with him, talking to him about his anxiety, but I have to admit it's starting to piss me off. He calls me these days and asks if I want to hang out etc. etc. but this is a boy I hooked up with middle of the summer who then quickly stopped paying attention to me. He apologized later, and I don't think he's a jerk as in a guy who doesn't give a crap about girls' feelings, but I do think he is incredibly self absorbed.
I'm spending all this time with him, but for what and why. Why? because I can see that he is hurting so much. But I went through a couple stressful weeks during ulpan and he was busy flirting with three other girls at that point and had seemingly forgotten that we had been friends. Granted I didn't reach out to him then, but he had become impossible to reach, as in always busy, but also emotionally distant. Whereas I would never do that. I noticed immediately that he was off when he came back to Be'er Sheva and we're talking again like we used to, but damn Why am I so nice?
Like the Great... post in which I decided only to put quotation marks around about a third of the things that were quotes. I even had trouble reading that one and I was one the one who wrote it!
Whatever.
The less sleep I have the worse my skin becomes. I never used to have this problem but it seems to have become an almost instantaneous thing.
Boy in program, I wrote about him on this blog before and then took most of it off, is stressing. Says he's anxious, never been so anxious, but I just think he is depressed. And I understand what it's like to be in that position, or atleast I've seen others be the way he is, so I've been spending a lot of time with him lately, sitting next to him in class, walking places with him, talking to him about his anxiety, but I have to admit it's starting to piss me off. He calls me these days and asks if I want to hang out etc. etc. but this is a boy I hooked up with middle of the summer who then quickly stopped paying attention to me. He apologized later, and I don't think he's a jerk as in a guy who doesn't give a crap about girls' feelings, but I do think he is incredibly self absorbed.
I'm spending all this time with him, but for what and why. Why? because I can see that he is hurting so much. But I went through a couple stressful weeks during ulpan and he was busy flirting with three other girls at that point and had seemingly forgotten that we had been friends. Granted I didn't reach out to him then, but he had become impossible to reach, as in always busy, but also emotionally distant. Whereas I would never do that. I noticed immediately that he was off when he came back to Be'er Sheva and we're talking again like we used to, but damn Why am I so nice?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Procrastination Again
I think living with my roommate who both intimidates me and bosses me around as if I were three years younger than she rather than just two months will actually be good for me in the long run.
All summer she would call me into the kitchen to point out specific crumbs or even a ring of water from a glass I had forgotten to wipe off the counter top (the ants will come Carolyn!), or to complain that I had left the kitchen smelling of onions (I didn't know there was a way not to leave the smell after cooking with them, but apparently there is) and I was starting to feel..... scared, intimidated, and eventually pissed off because though I did occasionally leave crumbs on the counters I always washed my dishes, kept my stuff neat in the cupboard, and never left anything lying around the kitchen, which gosh so many people do. By most standards I was being very clean, and still it wasn't good enough.
But anyway, now I am actually grateful that she was so tough on me for certain things, it was like being in a training program. Domestic bootcamp.
But, besides the training in cleaning (and cooking) she has a take no shit attitude with boys that will be good for me to be around. And she tells me when she thinks I'm acting stupidly and in exactly those terms. I've realized that in contrast I am never so direct when giving advice, even when I think friends are making mistakes, because if I see they want to do something or want to believe something I am afraid to hurt them by telling them otherwise.
Girl asks, "Is this guy ignoring me? Should I call him?"
I say,"Well, he might be ignoring you but he might not. It kind of seems like he's ignoring you, but you never know he might just be busy." I should just say, "yes, I think he's ignoring you. Even if he is busy you shouldn't be strung out on a guy who isn't making time for you."
With Do Not Call, she got me to delete him from my phone way ahead of schedule, which I think might have shortened my period of obsessing. But when she told me to do it, right after I told her about his text, I thought she was crazy. Really? Why do I need to do that already? Couldn't we still be friends?
But she was right. How could we have been friends? What kind of friends would have been? To leave him on the phone would have just allowed me to live in denial for a while until I finally, and painfully, decided to suck it up and give him up. It felt as if she was telling me to cut this guy out of my life who I liked (that part was obvious) but also who liked me, at least enough to still be friends. I mean a week before we had been flirting. But if I had kept him in my phone, and kept thinking of him as a friend, in the back of my mind I would have kept hoping for something more; And would have kept hoping until I compromised myself in some way. Then finally I would have broken the whole thing off but it would have taken more heartache. This is probably very clear to everyone else, but I think I needed to spell things out for myself.
For instance, tonight I got a text from Pavel, Do Not Call's best friend who I hung out with as much as Do Not Call, asking if I wanted to go out to a bar with the two of them. Pavel must have gotten my number from Do Not Call at some point. Forgetting the strangeness of his friend not seeming to have any idea what was going on, my first thought was yes, going out with them would be a lot of fun. If I just went out with a group of my friends and then met them there, it wouldn't be weird right? Because I did always have fun with them. And, truth is I wanted to see Do Not Call. But no, no, no.
She wasn't telling me to give up a guy who I didn't have to give up on, she was telling me to give up on a guy who had already given up on me. She was forcing me to face the truth without a period of denial which I usually insert between relationship (if you can call these things that) and moving on.
I don't like to admit it, the denial part makes the end more painful. I say this partly with people in mind who I have seen do it even worse than I and who don't realize they are actually torturing themselves. Self Denial is an instrument of self torture. It makes us happier in the short run, but in the long run it weakens us, and makes the process of fixing ourselves later really difficult. I don't think this makes sense. God, this is enough crap rambling.
ANYWAY
Something else that happened to me tonight: I was inspired to read the Queen Mab speech from Shakespeare after hearing a clip of it in, (I'm pathetic), a song from a musical sung by Matt Doyle. I googled it just on a whim, just skimming at first, but then I started really reading, and the speech became interesting -- not just something to be deciphered, but something, meaningful... touching sort of, not the right word. And then I was inspired to read more of Romeo and Juliet and then even some of Macbeth. And I didn't even read the parts I thought I was going to, I read parts that hadn't interested me before.
Apparently I can read Shakespeare if I'm procrastinating something else. And then I got tired so I stopped.
Also today I read some things about Edward Said and Orientalism. Anything I get my mind to do that is not watching complete trash on youtube or flipping mindlessly through well, facebook, is really good. Last night I drew out maps of the middle east by hand after studying them on the internet, trying to teach myself the geography because I am studying this region and well, the map that I had in my head was not exactly correct. For instance, I thought that Iran was north of... no, I won't even say it, it's too damning.
I was supposed to read 60 pages about the Formation of Islam tonight. Instead my mind has been in other places. I did read almost 20 pages though....
Oh my god, it's 2:30 in the morning. Shit.
All summer she would call me into the kitchen to point out specific crumbs or even a ring of water from a glass I had forgotten to wipe off the counter top (the ants will come Carolyn!), or to complain that I had left the kitchen smelling of onions (I didn't know there was a way not to leave the smell after cooking with them, but apparently there is) and I was starting to feel..... scared, intimidated, and eventually pissed off because though I did occasionally leave crumbs on the counters I always washed my dishes, kept my stuff neat in the cupboard, and never left anything lying around the kitchen, which gosh so many people do. By most standards I was being very clean, and still it wasn't good enough.
But anyway, now I am actually grateful that she was so tough on me for certain things, it was like being in a training program. Domestic bootcamp.
But, besides the training in cleaning (and cooking) she has a take no shit attitude with boys that will be good for me to be around. And she tells me when she thinks I'm acting stupidly and in exactly those terms. I've realized that in contrast I am never so direct when giving advice, even when I think friends are making mistakes, because if I see they want to do something or want to believe something I am afraid to hurt them by telling them otherwise.
Girl asks, "Is this guy ignoring me? Should I call him?"
I say,"Well, he might be ignoring you but he might not. It kind of seems like he's ignoring you, but you never know he might just be busy." I should just say, "yes, I think he's ignoring you. Even if he is busy you shouldn't be strung out on a guy who isn't making time for you."
With Do Not Call, she got me to delete him from my phone way ahead of schedule, which I think might have shortened my period of obsessing. But when she told me to do it, right after I told her about his text, I thought she was crazy. Really? Why do I need to do that already? Couldn't we still be friends?
But she was right. How could we have been friends? What kind of friends would have been? To leave him on the phone would have just allowed me to live in denial for a while until I finally, and painfully, decided to suck it up and give him up. It felt as if she was telling me to cut this guy out of my life who I liked (that part was obvious) but also who liked me, at least enough to still be friends. I mean a week before we had been flirting. But if I had kept him in my phone, and kept thinking of him as a friend, in the back of my mind I would have kept hoping for something more; And would have kept hoping until I compromised myself in some way. Then finally I would have broken the whole thing off but it would have taken more heartache. This is probably very clear to everyone else, but I think I needed to spell things out for myself.
For instance, tonight I got a text from Pavel, Do Not Call's best friend who I hung out with as much as Do Not Call, asking if I wanted to go out to a bar with the two of them. Pavel must have gotten my number from Do Not Call at some point. Forgetting the strangeness of his friend not seeming to have any idea what was going on, my first thought was yes, going out with them would be a lot of fun. If I just went out with a group of my friends and then met them there, it wouldn't be weird right? Because I did always have fun with them. And, truth is I wanted to see Do Not Call. But no, no, no.
She wasn't telling me to give up a guy who I didn't have to give up on, she was telling me to give up on a guy who had already given up on me. She was forcing me to face the truth without a period of denial which I usually insert between relationship (if you can call these things that) and moving on.
I don't like to admit it, the denial part makes the end more painful. I say this partly with people in mind who I have seen do it even worse than I and who don't realize they are actually torturing themselves. Self Denial is an instrument of self torture. It makes us happier in the short run, but in the long run it weakens us, and makes the process of fixing ourselves later really difficult. I don't think this makes sense. God, this is enough crap rambling.
ANYWAY
Something else that happened to me tonight: I was inspired to read the Queen Mab speech from Shakespeare after hearing a clip of it in, (I'm pathetic), a song from a musical sung by Matt Doyle. I googled it just on a whim, just skimming at first, but then I started really reading, and the speech became interesting -- not just something to be deciphered, but something, meaningful... touching sort of, not the right word. And then I was inspired to read more of Romeo and Juliet and then even some of Macbeth. And I didn't even read the parts I thought I was going to, I read parts that hadn't interested me before.
Apparently I can read Shakespeare if I'm procrastinating something else. And then I got tired so I stopped.
Also today I read some things about Edward Said and Orientalism. Anything I get my mind to do that is not watching complete trash on youtube or flipping mindlessly through well, facebook, is really good. Last night I drew out maps of the middle east by hand after studying them on the internet, trying to teach myself the geography because I am studying this region and well, the map that I had in my head was not exactly correct. For instance, I thought that Iran was north of... no, I won't even say it, it's too damning.
I was supposed to read 60 pages about the Formation of Islam tonight. Instead my mind has been in other places. I did read almost 20 pages though....
Oh my god, it's 2:30 in the morning. Shit.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Great.....
Do you ever lie down so tired but cannot stop your heart from beating and the more you think about it the faster and the harder the beating becomes? I've tried taking long breaths, counting on the inhales and exhales but nothing seems to work, except forgetting about it and then ten minutes later realizing your heart has slowed.
Ok, On a COMPLETELY different note.
Just got a text from Do Not Call. Actually, it was two texts, but before you get excited as I did when I saw them in my inbox,
I will say (as my roommate put it), I was just dumped with a text message. (Well, two. I'll give him that, he wrote a lot so he put it in two messages.)
I read it and started to text him back as my two roommates talked in hebrew around me, writing things like, "Oh, I see. Ok, cool. Well, call me when you're in the dorms and and I'll give you your blanket back. "(I have a blanket of his, long story.)
But once I got into the blanket stuff I realized it was starting to sound strange so I decided not to send it and instead to tell my roommates. I made it a big joke.
"Haha, I just got a text from Shai" I say. (Now you see his name.)
"What did he say?" they ask after figuring out which of the guys I have mentioned he is.
"I know we haven't talked in a while" (Or was it I'm sorry we haven't talked in a while, I can't remember) (this is me reading a loud) "it is because I talked to my ex girlfriend and we decided to give it another try and I didn't have the time to tell you."
Wah, wah, wah.
And you were going to text him back!? Yval (girl's name) cries incredulously. You don't need to send anything back!
And I say, of course I was going to say.... ok, thanks for telling me... you know.
She looks at me horrified. "You just got broken up with on a text message! You don't owe him anything. What, are you going to say Ok as if you're his mother and you're giving him permission to go back with his ex girlfriend?"
"But what about his blanket?" I ask. I can't just keep it. I feel bad with it in my room.
Stop feeling guilty! You don't owe him anything. If he wants his blanket he will call you.
Why do you feel so guilty? You shouldn't say anything back. You should delete his number right now.
I say, oh come on, just one OK.
No, she says. You're too nice. You need someone to teach you how to act.
(I don't argue with her here because I agree. I know that I do all the wrong things in these situations. Always falling too hard and then being too nice later and hiding how much I am actually hurting.)
So I decide to put myself in her hands.
"Give me your phone" she says. I hand it over. She deletes his number and then deletes all my messages (because his were about a third of my inbox), and then all the sent messages (a higher percentage here) and even goes through my missed calls and deletes the entries that she thinks are him.
Phewf, ok. And then I go for a walk with an American friend here, and as I relate the whole thing to her I begin to wish that I had just texted "ok" before the rampage of deletions began. What must he think of me? I wonder. I was just talking to him a couple days ago, and now I'm not even going to answer a text? What about the being nice, being friends etc?
But right now, back in my room, I'm glad that I let my roommate do it. He might be wondering why I didn't text back, but no one cares about the other person (or obsesses I should say) as much as I do, so even if it has crossed his mind, it has probably not left a big impression. I mean, it wasn't a big deal he and I. I say this from the detached perspective, not my own. And he's back with his girl friend. He's probably just glad that he finally texted me, thereby cutting himself free from me and relieving himself of his obligations. Really Carolyn, he doesn't want anything back from you. He just wants to be done. He doesn't even want to deal with getting his blanket back from you.
OHHHH k.
Weird though. This ex- girlfriend business. I can honestly say this is the first time this has happened to me, I mean someone going back to their ex girl friend after going out with me, and it does feel weird. I have a friend who this happened to a couple months ago - she was with a guy here but she told him she wanted to take a break (it's complicated, but it was sort of self preservation on her part) and in the break he got back with his ex girl friend. Wow, it really sucks being the other girl. Like, "wow, you can forget me like that?" Because getting back with an ex, it's like erasing the person in between entirely. As if you never happened.
And for me, well, our fling was so little that he could have erased it even without getting back with his ex, so I shouldn't be making such a big deal out of it. Actually, the fact that he ended it for a real reason and not just because he lost interest and just stopped calling kind of legitimizes the thing in a way, while at the same time de-legitimizing it...
Well, I'm losing my train of thought.
But I will say it did, I don't know if the word is hurt, but it did shake me a little. What did I do that made him want to go back with his ex? Seriously!
No, not seriously Carolyn. It was probably completely unrelated to you.
Ok, cool. It's done. (But I have to put this in cause I'm so pathetic.... It probably would never have been a relationship but he was really really cute!)
Alright, back to Matt Doyle etc. on youtube. I need to get some more tv shows on my computer to distract myself with.
Probably will write more about this later though this post should be the end of the subject. Ok, cool. Good Bye for now,
Carolyn
Ok, On a COMPLETELY different note.
Just got a text from Do Not Call. Actually, it was two texts, but before you get excited as I did when I saw them in my inbox,
I will say (as my roommate put it), I was just dumped with a text message. (Well, two. I'll give him that, he wrote a lot so he put it in two messages.)
I read it and started to text him back as my two roommates talked in hebrew around me, writing things like, "Oh, I see. Ok, cool. Well, call me when you're in the dorms and and I'll give you your blanket back. "(I have a blanket of his, long story.)
But once I got into the blanket stuff I realized it was starting to sound strange so I decided not to send it and instead to tell my roommates. I made it a big joke.
"Haha, I just got a text from Shai" I say. (Now you see his name.)
"What did he say?" they ask after figuring out which of the guys I have mentioned he is.
"I know we haven't talked in a while" (Or was it I'm sorry we haven't talked in a while, I can't remember) (this is me reading a loud) "it is because I talked to my ex girlfriend and we decided to give it another try and I didn't have the time to tell you."
Wah, wah, wah.
And you were going to text him back!? Yval (girl's name) cries incredulously. You don't need to send anything back!
And I say, of course I was going to say.... ok, thanks for telling me... you know.
She looks at me horrified. "You just got broken up with on a text message! You don't owe him anything. What, are you going to say Ok as if you're his mother and you're giving him permission to go back with his ex girlfriend?"
"But what about his blanket?" I ask. I can't just keep it. I feel bad with it in my room.
Stop feeling guilty! You don't owe him anything. If he wants his blanket he will call you.
Why do you feel so guilty? You shouldn't say anything back. You should delete his number right now.
I say, oh come on, just one OK.
No, she says. You're too nice. You need someone to teach you how to act.
(I don't argue with her here because I agree. I know that I do all the wrong things in these situations. Always falling too hard and then being too nice later and hiding how much I am actually hurting.)
So I decide to put myself in her hands.
"Give me your phone" she says. I hand it over. She deletes his number and then deletes all my messages (because his were about a third of my inbox), and then all the sent messages (a higher percentage here) and even goes through my missed calls and deletes the entries that she thinks are him.
Phewf, ok. And then I go for a walk with an American friend here, and as I relate the whole thing to her I begin to wish that I had just texted "ok" before the rampage of deletions began. What must he think of me? I wonder. I was just talking to him a couple days ago, and now I'm not even going to answer a text? What about the being nice, being friends etc?
But right now, back in my room, I'm glad that I let my roommate do it. He might be wondering why I didn't text back, but no one cares about the other person (or obsesses I should say) as much as I do, so even if it has crossed his mind, it has probably not left a big impression. I mean, it wasn't a big deal he and I. I say this from the detached perspective, not my own. And he's back with his girl friend. He's probably just glad that he finally texted me, thereby cutting himself free from me and relieving himself of his obligations. Really Carolyn, he doesn't want anything back from you. He just wants to be done. He doesn't even want to deal with getting his blanket back from you.
OHHHH k.
Weird though. This ex- girlfriend business. I can honestly say this is the first time this has happened to me, I mean someone going back to their ex girl friend after going out with me, and it does feel weird. I have a friend who this happened to a couple months ago - she was with a guy here but she told him she wanted to take a break (it's complicated, but it was sort of self preservation on her part) and in the break he got back with his ex girl friend. Wow, it really sucks being the other girl. Like, "wow, you can forget me like that?" Because getting back with an ex, it's like erasing the person in between entirely. As if you never happened.
And for me, well, our fling was so little that he could have erased it even without getting back with his ex, so I shouldn't be making such a big deal out of it. Actually, the fact that he ended it for a real reason and not just because he lost interest and just stopped calling kind of legitimizes the thing in a way, while at the same time de-legitimizing it...
Well, I'm losing my train of thought.
But I will say it did, I don't know if the word is hurt, but it did shake me a little. What did I do that made him want to go back with his ex? Seriously!
No, not seriously Carolyn. It was probably completely unrelated to you.
Ok, cool. It's done. (But I have to put this in cause I'm so pathetic.... It probably would never have been a relationship but he was really really cute!)
Alright, back to Matt Doyle etc. on youtube. I need to get some more tv shows on my computer to distract myself with.
Probably will write more about this later though this post should be the end of the subject. Ok, cool. Good Bye for now,
Carolyn
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Random
Scaled back on the posts this last week. I felt I was getting a bit out of control.
And now that I'm trying to limit myself or something I feel my head is a big blank. Don't know what to say.
Am in a weird spot. Well, am starting school tomorrow and my body is freaking out even if my head doesn't know it yet. I can tell already that I have too much energy to sleep much tonight.
These nerves are pathetic though; this is nothing compared to the night before preseason last year when I knew I would have to get up the next morning and do things I had not prepared for. Seriously, getting through that week of preseason should make everything else easy. I was so out of shape, so physically and mentally unprepared, and with sports you can't sit back and watch. It's all about you, performing. At least in class all I have to do really is watch.
Ok, may have succeeded in calming myself down a bit.
Sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and create.
There was a girl. Who stayed in her room all the time. And liked to surround herself in really soft things. She was always imagining things while hoping that one day she would stop imagining and start living.
That one day something would change and her life would start.
But the world doesn't work like that.
You can go to the other side of the world and not feel adventure. You can take pictures of the most remarkable things, and the pictures can have no meaning. I've done it. Sometimes a picture is just a picture if all you're doing is standing in the front of it, posing to show that you have been to wherever you are at the time. Something in you has to change for there to be meaning in anything. And traveling to exotic places doesn't preclude change.
And now that I'm trying to limit myself or something I feel my head is a big blank. Don't know what to say.
Am in a weird spot. Well, am starting school tomorrow and my body is freaking out even if my head doesn't know it yet. I can tell already that I have too much energy to sleep much tonight.
These nerves are pathetic though; this is nothing compared to the night before preseason last year when I knew I would have to get up the next morning and do things I had not prepared for. Seriously, getting through that week of preseason should make everything else easy. I was so out of shape, so physically and mentally unprepared, and with sports you can't sit back and watch. It's all about you, performing. At least in class all I have to do really is watch.
Ok, may have succeeded in calming myself down a bit.
Sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and create.
There was a girl. Who stayed in her room all the time. And liked to surround herself in really soft things. She was always imagining things while hoping that one day she would stop imagining and start living.
That one day something would change and her life would start.
But the world doesn't work like that.
You can go to the other side of the world and not feel adventure. You can take pictures of the most remarkable things, and the pictures can have no meaning. I've done it. Sometimes a picture is just a picture if all you're doing is standing in the front of it, posing to show that you have been to wherever you are at the time. Something in you has to change for there to be meaning in anything. And traveling to exotic places doesn't preclude change.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Orientation Day
Just made it through most of my day of orientation.
Ugghh, what have I gotten myself into? Sorry, that is my first reaction. I don't want people telling me what to do again, unless they're telling me to... I don't know, dig a ditch or something. That sounds crazy I know.
I shouldn't be complaining, as far as orientations go this one wasn't bad at all. But still I couldn't get over the feeling, at least in the first half of the day, of being trapped, as if I had signed away my ability to be independent. When I did stuff with the Overseas Student Program (the study abroad office at Ben Gurion University) this summer I always felt I could do whatever I wanted because I wasn't really in their program. I was only a sort of visitor for a couple weeks. But now, this is my program, these are my people, and it should feel really good, but instead I start feeling stuck.
I calmed down a bit this afternoon. I went into my room and did jumping jacks during our lunch break (not kidding) and it got out some of my internal freak out. But it is starting to come back.
Maybe I'll go run around the block before our reception in forty five minutes. Ahh, no, not enough time.
That said, I don't think I was the only one starting to freak out a bit. I was sitting next to a guy this morning, who just spent two years working for the border control on the US Mexican border. He would do 10 hour shifts in the desert sometimes from midnight to 10 in the morning. I could just tell he was starting to question his desire to be in a classroom this year after our third speaker or so. I have no excuse, I was just in college, I should be used to this. I've only had a couple months to change my habits, and become... well, used to my own routine, but part of my problem might be that it has only been a couple months.
Well, it is just orientation. I'll have to let myself do this program and these classes my way and not the way I feel I should or the way everyone else is doing them. And I have to keep thinking of myself first rather than my commitment to this group and this program, because when I start thinking only of my group obligations I feel miserable.
----------------
Continuing because I still have some time before I'm supposed to change and go meet professors. Ran into Do Not Call today. He's back in Beer Sheva. Obviously he didn't call me first, but that is understandable, he is in the middle of moving in. AND Carolyn, he is just your friend. I mean seriously, what did we ever talk about anyway? The deepest we got was what music we liked. And I didn't have very much to say even then.
Damn, he still made me feel like a bit of an ass today though. So I saw him talking on his cell phone while on his bike in the front of the dorms. He was in profile and so didn't see me as I was walking towards him. I was debating whether to say hi while he was on the phone when he turned and saw me and I waved, and then immediately curved off and headed away from him. WEird no? Am not sure why I did that. I think I was trying to be cool. Start talking to American boy who happened to be sitting in the area, can see Do Not Call out of the corner of my eye. He gets off the phone and wheels himself over to me and says hi. It's a little awkward, I'm eating an apple, and he gives me his hand as if to shake hands, but I have an apple in that hand, and plus Israelis never do that. They always kiss hello.
He tells me he's moving his stuff from his friend's place to his.
"Oh so you found a place to live" I say, "good!" because two weeks ago he hadn't.
"No, I'm living in the dorms" he says, embarrassed. I guess it's not cool to be living on your own and then have to move back in to the dorms.
I laugh.
He's not living in my dorms though... better, I guess.
A bit of a pause, and then he starts to tell me how much of a rush he's in .
"But I have to go. I have very little time right now. I have so much to do."
Ok, dude go, I'm not keeping you. And why do you always get to decide?
I had a place to go too, was already late actually, but was stuck waiting for this other girl so he gets to be the one who leaves first.
Anyway, he left and that was it. Oh, he said, "I will call you" as wheeled away, "I will be calling you" in Israeli speak.
That's it. No big deal. Still agitated me a bit. I realized as I was walking behind our nun like tour guide in the library right after that that my heart was pumping a little harder than the tour warranted.
But really, he's too young. And it's damn stupid. And I deserve better. I might be a little psycho, but I still care about things, and am pretty good at some things, and have some interesting things to say, and can run faster than a lot of people who aren't runners. I shouldn't be slobbering over some stupid 19 (?) year old.
BAH
Ok, am late now.
Ugghh, what have I gotten myself into? Sorry, that is my first reaction. I don't want people telling me what to do again, unless they're telling me to... I don't know, dig a ditch or something. That sounds crazy I know.
I shouldn't be complaining, as far as orientations go this one wasn't bad at all. But still I couldn't get over the feeling, at least in the first half of the day, of being trapped, as if I had signed away my ability to be independent. When I did stuff with the Overseas Student Program (the study abroad office at Ben Gurion University) this summer I always felt I could do whatever I wanted because I wasn't really in their program. I was only a sort of visitor for a couple weeks. But now, this is my program, these are my people, and it should feel really good, but instead I start feeling stuck.
I calmed down a bit this afternoon. I went into my room and did jumping jacks during our lunch break (not kidding) and it got out some of my internal freak out. But it is starting to come back.
Maybe I'll go run around the block before our reception in forty five minutes. Ahh, no, not enough time.
That said, I don't think I was the only one starting to freak out a bit. I was sitting next to a guy this morning, who just spent two years working for the border control on the US Mexican border. He would do 10 hour shifts in the desert sometimes from midnight to 10 in the morning. I could just tell he was starting to question his desire to be in a classroom this year after our third speaker or so. I have no excuse, I was just in college, I should be used to this. I've only had a couple months to change my habits, and become... well, used to my own routine, but part of my problem might be that it has only been a couple months.
Well, it is just orientation. I'll have to let myself do this program and these classes my way and not the way I feel I should or the way everyone else is doing them. And I have to keep thinking of myself first rather than my commitment to this group and this program, because when I start thinking only of my group obligations I feel miserable.
----------------
Continuing because I still have some time before I'm supposed to change and go meet professors. Ran into Do Not Call today. He's back in Beer Sheva. Obviously he didn't call me first, but that is understandable, he is in the middle of moving in. AND Carolyn, he is just your friend. I mean seriously, what did we ever talk about anyway? The deepest we got was what music we liked. And I didn't have very much to say even then.
Damn, he still made me feel like a bit of an ass today though. So I saw him talking on his cell phone while on his bike in the front of the dorms. He was in profile and so didn't see me as I was walking towards him. I was debating whether to say hi while he was on the phone when he turned and saw me and I waved, and then immediately curved off and headed away from him. WEird no? Am not sure why I did that. I think I was trying to be cool. Start talking to American boy who happened to be sitting in the area, can see Do Not Call out of the corner of my eye. He gets off the phone and wheels himself over to me and says hi. It's a little awkward, I'm eating an apple, and he gives me his hand as if to shake hands, but I have an apple in that hand, and plus Israelis never do that. They always kiss hello.
He tells me he's moving his stuff from his friend's place to his.
"Oh so you found a place to live" I say, "good!" because two weeks ago he hadn't.
"No, I'm living in the dorms" he says, embarrassed. I guess it's not cool to be living on your own and then have to move back in to the dorms.
I laugh.
He's not living in my dorms though... better, I guess.
A bit of a pause, and then he starts to tell me how much of a rush he's in .
"But I have to go. I have very little time right now. I have so much to do."
Ok, dude go, I'm not keeping you. And why do you always get to decide?
I had a place to go too, was already late actually, but was stuck waiting for this other girl so he gets to be the one who leaves first.
Anyway, he left and that was it. Oh, he said, "I will call you" as wheeled away, "I will be calling you" in Israeli speak.
That's it. No big deal. Still agitated me a bit. I realized as I was walking behind our nun like tour guide in the library right after that that my heart was pumping a little harder than the tour warranted.
But really, he's too young. And it's damn stupid. And I deserve better. I might be a little psycho, but I still care about things, and am pretty good at some things, and have some interesting things to say, and can run faster than a lot of people who aren't runners. I shouldn't be slobbering over some stupid 19 (?) year old.
BAH
Ok, am late now.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Too much time on Youtube
I've spent the last hour watching Obama speeches on You tube. I'm embarrassed by what I wrote after his election. I voted for him (I was going to say obviously but maybe that wasn't so obvious) but I'm only now becoming emotionally involved in this election, now that it's over. I'm glad other people did before me so that he got elected.
Sometimes (or all the time) I just can't seem to see in front of my own nose.
I've read things that other people have written about Obama, I mean people my own age (I'll be specific, I read something that Dan Cluchey wrote and I thought it was perfect) and I see in them (especially him!) foresight. I'm so caught up in the present or the past, (or maybe in my day dreams), that the future -- any kind of rational vision of the future, rarely makes it in.
Ok, what else? I'm a little embarrassed that this is my blog. I just read some others, and they were so much less frivolous than mine. People were writing about things they were doing, and they were doing some impressive things. I, on the other hand, don't seem to be doing anything. Nor do I speak about very much other than myself.
Writing is sometimes the only way I can get myself to think, so I have this obsessive need to keep doing it. My whole life I've never thought I was good or smart enough to show what I wrote, I just kept a journal for my own sanity. When I was in highschool it was the thing I went to... I don't know, it was a source of private pride. This was me. This was where I could do whatever I wanted, because no one would ever see it. It wouldn't be held up to the measuring stick of everyone else. I always had a sort of, damn them attitude when I wrote. As if to say, "they" might not think it's any good, but I don't give a fuck, this is for me.
Because I kept the journal private, I could say that, and it was so liberating.
Yet, at the same time, even when I was just seven or eight, I wrote with the question, hope, fantasy in the back of my mind of, "what if someone were to find this and read it? What would they think?" It was a game I always played. Game isn't the right word. I wrote with the hope of having a reader at some point. So recently I was thinking, well, maybe I'll write and make it so that people can actually read it. Hope becoming reality.
What do I gain out of this blog? I don't know. Except that when I wasted half a day writing in my journal, I never had anything to show for it because I never showed my journal to anyone. But now, I do have something that will be shown, or, is shown is more like it. (I guess you could say that I'm showing it, but in my mind it's more passive than that.) And so, at least I feel like I'm doing something rather than wasting hours.
Another reason for this blog is that last year, I started to open two word documents when I began to write papers. One document was supposed to be the paper, the other was what came out of my brain instead. I have pages and pages on my computer saved under titles like, "I'm supposed to be writing my paper right now". They are usually raving and rambling things, and sometimes I sound almost high, but at least they are me expressing thoughts that I wanted to express rather than the documents that I handed which had me writing about things I never felt comfortable writing about, usually because my mind was always on something other than what I needed to learn to write the papers. Plus the papers I handed in were always going to have a critic on the other end and the knowledge of that turned me into the harshest critic, and I spent more time deleting myself than writing.
Anyway, I got so frustrated by the end of school because the thoughts that I respected were the thoughts on the second document, the one no one ever saw. I wrote about Amherst. I wrote what I thought after Jenny Kim died. Once I wrote what I would say if I were to publish an oped in the Student, "four years at amherst". haha. And another time I wrote a tirade I wanted to say to the lacrosse/ psi u boys after three years of reffing their teams at the Educate Dodgeball tournament.
A lot of people know that I.... was a little bitter by the end of college. There are a lot of words I could use there. How to put it succinctly? What I felt in school was not what you imagine when you look at those radiant pictures of students and fall leaves and beautiful brick buildings. Not because of my sister, which is how I often phrased it, but maybe in the same way my sister has not had a normal college experience. However hers is her own story and is much more of a story than mine (out of the two of us she should be the one with the blog because she was always and still is the better writer, and also because she feels things even more powerfully than I) and so I won't go into it too much. But anyway, I had a lot to say that I kept in at Amherst and I probably shouldn't have kept so much in. If I had let it out I might have found that things were not exactly what I thought they were.
This damn computer won't charge so I'm going to stop. And go for a run I think.
Ok, and also, after and in between watching Obama I was watching my new favorite crush on youtube, Matt Doyle. Haha, you should look him up. I really am pathetic. (The videos from Bare, pop opera, are really good, or at least they are if you're already a fan like me.)
Sometimes (or all the time) I just can't seem to see in front of my own nose.
I've read things that other people have written about Obama, I mean people my own age (I'll be specific, I read something that Dan Cluchey wrote and I thought it was perfect) and I see in them (especially him!) foresight. I'm so caught up in the present or the past, (or maybe in my day dreams), that the future -- any kind of rational vision of the future, rarely makes it in.
Ok, what else? I'm a little embarrassed that this is my blog. I just read some others, and they were so much less frivolous than mine. People were writing about things they were doing, and they were doing some impressive things. I, on the other hand, don't seem to be doing anything. Nor do I speak about very much other than myself.
Writing is sometimes the only way I can get myself to think, so I have this obsessive need to keep doing it. My whole life I've never thought I was good or smart enough to show what I wrote, I just kept a journal for my own sanity. When I was in highschool it was the thing I went to... I don't know, it was a source of private pride. This was me. This was where I could do whatever I wanted, because no one would ever see it. It wouldn't be held up to the measuring stick of everyone else. I always had a sort of, damn them attitude when I wrote. As if to say, "they" might not think it's any good, but I don't give a fuck, this is for me.
Because I kept the journal private, I could say that, and it was so liberating.
Yet, at the same time, even when I was just seven or eight, I wrote with the question, hope, fantasy in the back of my mind of, "what if someone were to find this and read it? What would they think?" It was a game I always played. Game isn't the right word. I wrote with the hope of having a reader at some point. So recently I was thinking, well, maybe I'll write and make it so that people can actually read it. Hope becoming reality.
What do I gain out of this blog? I don't know. Except that when I wasted half a day writing in my journal, I never had anything to show for it because I never showed my journal to anyone. But now, I do have something that will be shown, or, is shown is more like it. (I guess you could say that I'm showing it, but in my mind it's more passive than that.) And so, at least I feel like I'm doing something rather than wasting hours.
Another reason for this blog is that last year, I started to open two word documents when I began to write papers. One document was supposed to be the paper, the other was what came out of my brain instead. I have pages and pages on my computer saved under titles like, "I'm supposed to be writing my paper right now". They are usually raving and rambling things, and sometimes I sound almost high, but at least they are me expressing thoughts that I wanted to express rather than the documents that I handed which had me writing about things I never felt comfortable writing about, usually because my mind was always on something other than what I needed to learn to write the papers. Plus the papers I handed in were always going to have a critic on the other end and the knowledge of that turned me into the harshest critic, and I spent more time deleting myself than writing.
Anyway, I got so frustrated by the end of school because the thoughts that I respected were the thoughts on the second document, the one no one ever saw. I wrote about Amherst. I wrote what I thought after Jenny Kim died. Once I wrote what I would say if I were to publish an oped in the Student, "four years at amherst". haha. And another time I wrote a tirade I wanted to say to the lacrosse/ psi u boys after three years of reffing their teams at the Educate Dodgeball tournament.
A lot of people know that I.... was a little bitter by the end of college. There are a lot of words I could use there. How to put it succinctly? What I felt in school was not what you imagine when you look at those radiant pictures of students and fall leaves and beautiful brick buildings. Not because of my sister, which is how I often phrased it, but maybe in the same way my sister has not had a normal college experience. However hers is her own story and is much more of a story than mine (out of the two of us she should be the one with the blog because she was always and still is the better writer, and also because she feels things even more powerfully than I) and so I won't go into it too much. But anyway, I had a lot to say that I kept in at Amherst and I probably shouldn't have kept so much in. If I had let it out I might have found that things were not exactly what I thought they were.
This damn computer won't charge so I'm going to stop. And go for a run I think.
Ok, and also, after and in between watching Obama I was watching my new favorite crush on youtube, Matt Doyle. Haha, you should look him up. I really am pathetic. (The videos from Bare, pop opera, are really good, or at least they are if you're already a fan like me.)
Haha
I've deleted some things. My first instinct is to share too much and so though I don't like deleting, probably better to edit myself a little. I'm also one of those people who will spend hours writing an email and then decide not to send it because I'm worried about the reception it will get.
I should probably still keep that private journal in addition to this one or I might end up like Harriet the Spy with everyone hating me because I've been writing about them. (But that was her private journal they all ended up reading in the end, wasn't it? bad analogy.)
I should probably still keep that private journal in addition to this one or I might end up like Harriet the Spy with everyone hating me because I've been writing about them. (But that was her private journal they all ended up reading in the end, wasn't it? bad analogy.)
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Roadside Bedouins
Last night I celebrated my birthday in a Bedouin tent made road side attraction. I've been in Bedouin tents made for tourists before, but never one set up on the side of the road, and with three different colors of christmas lights draped over it and a tattered Israeli flag flying from it's central post.
It was on the side of the road on the outskirts of a eilat. Kind of in the position/ place of a roadside diner. Only this is a tent with one side open, filled with couches and real Bedouin rugs on which people (mostly lethargic looking) sit and smoke hooka and drink bedouin tea. We were served beer and then later a hooka (which I now never bother to try) and food by a young Bedouin man with braces, who later asked how many camels one of my friends was worth. I, unfortunately, had already gone home by this point.
I wish I could describe this place better but my powers of analogy/ description/ comparison are failing me. It was such a strange mixture of seediness and authenticity. The men who ran it were actually Bedouins. The food they served us they made on a grill next to the tent and was handed to us by a man with one of those scarf things wrapped around his head... oh god, words carolyn. He then took our pictures... I'm pretty sure that a bunch of the clan were sitting in a circle, drinking tea on one of the big rugs inside the tent when I finally left at 1 am. And wow, the pitas they gave us, were warm and doughey and I was drunk so some of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.
A Bedouin tent, set up as a roadside diner/ pub? Strange. If I were an anthropologist I'd want to say something about the economy of selling one's culture... but I have to admit. It was nice.
We just walked a couple yards off the street and we were treated to Bedouin hospitality. Well, sort of, Bedouin hospitality for paying patrons. Still though... it was not the same as a night at a bar.
What else?
We climbed mountains that looked like large piles of dirt today. We turned off the highway and immediately started climbing, what appeared to be the most random hills. It felt like we were hiking at a rest stop -- one of those middle of no where places with trash in the spokes in the fence and in the ditches, places everyone drives by and never stops at. But no place is like that in Israel I guess. The country's so small they don't ignore any of it. So we started going, and though it was a bit ugly at first, once we got up high we could see Egypt and Jordan, and the red mountains reflected in the Red Sea. So everything's nice if you give it a chance.
I'm too tired to be writing this.
It was on the side of the road on the outskirts of a eilat. Kind of in the position/ place of a roadside diner. Only this is a tent with one side open, filled with couches and real Bedouin rugs on which people (mostly lethargic looking) sit and smoke hooka and drink bedouin tea. We were served beer and then later a hooka (which I now never bother to try) and food by a young Bedouin man with braces, who later asked how many camels one of my friends was worth. I, unfortunately, had already gone home by this point.
I wish I could describe this place better but my powers of analogy/ description/ comparison are failing me. It was such a strange mixture of seediness and authenticity. The men who ran it were actually Bedouins. The food they served us they made on a grill next to the tent and was handed to us by a man with one of those scarf things wrapped around his head... oh god, words carolyn. He then took our pictures... I'm pretty sure that a bunch of the clan were sitting in a circle, drinking tea on one of the big rugs inside the tent when I finally left at 1 am. And wow, the pitas they gave us, were warm and doughey and I was drunk so some of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.
A Bedouin tent, set up as a roadside diner/ pub? Strange. If I were an anthropologist I'd want to say something about the economy of selling one's culture... but I have to admit. It was nice.
We just walked a couple yards off the street and we were treated to Bedouin hospitality. Well, sort of, Bedouin hospitality for paying patrons. Still though... it was not the same as a night at a bar.
What else?
We climbed mountains that looked like large piles of dirt today. We turned off the highway and immediately started climbing, what appeared to be the most random hills. It felt like we were hiking at a rest stop -- one of those middle of no where places with trash in the spokes in the fence and in the ditches, places everyone drives by and never stops at. But no place is like that in Israel I guess. The country's so small they don't ignore any of it. So we started going, and though it was a bit ugly at first, once we got up high we could see Egypt and Jordan, and the red mountains reflected in the Red Sea. So everything's nice if you give it a chance.
I'm too tired to be writing this.
New Year's Resolutions
I am 23 today.
In seven minutes it will no longer be my birthday so I should hurry up.
I need to start taking myself seriously.... I'm not sure what I mean by that. And maybe my problem is that I actually take myself too seriously. No, but, seriously Carolyn, you need to start thinking about what you want to do in the future, as a job, as a life.
I need to find something I can see myself doing. I need to find some way of combining the things that make me happy with the things that make money.
I need to figure out what things make me happy. Oh, that's a good one.
I need to stop daydreaming so much. Boo. Because I've found that whenever I dream up a scenario I would like to happen in my head, and play it out over and over again, that scenario never happens. If I have pictured it in my head then I can be certain it won't happen outside of my head. Maybe I should rectify this situation... ie, stop living in fantasy land.
Hmmmm... what else?
Ok, short term:
Buy food so I can stop stealing my roommate's milk and can eat something other than cornflakes and petit beure cookies.
Go to the doctor because my skin looks worse at 23 than it did at 13. (Too much information here I think).
And go for a run because running makes me happy.
Long Term:
Try to picture myself in the future on a regular basis. It will take me a long time to do this one.
Try to avoid crises. If I see myself doing things I shouldn't, I will make myself stop doing those things or talk to someone about it and get THEM to make me stop.
Relax.
Be creative.
I will get the things I need to get done, done, regardless of my weaknesses. If my work is not great, or not even as good as I could do, it's ok. It's more important that I just DO things.
I should read more.
Ok, enough of this.
In seven minutes it will no longer be my birthday so I should hurry up.
I need to start taking myself seriously.... I'm not sure what I mean by that. And maybe my problem is that I actually take myself too seriously. No, but, seriously Carolyn, you need to start thinking about what you want to do in the future, as a job, as a life.
I need to find something I can see myself doing. I need to find some way of combining the things that make me happy with the things that make money.
I need to figure out what things make me happy. Oh, that's a good one.
I need to stop daydreaming so much. Boo. Because I've found that whenever I dream up a scenario I would like to happen in my head, and play it out over and over again, that scenario never happens. If I have pictured it in my head then I can be certain it won't happen outside of my head. Maybe I should rectify this situation... ie, stop living in fantasy land.
Hmmmm... what else?
Ok, short term:
Buy food so I can stop stealing my roommate's milk and can eat something other than cornflakes and petit beure cookies.
Go to the doctor because my skin looks worse at 23 than it did at 13. (Too much information here I think).
And go for a run because running makes me happy.
Long Term:
Try to picture myself in the future on a regular basis. It will take me a long time to do this one.
Try to avoid crises. If I see myself doing things I shouldn't, I will make myself stop doing those things or talk to someone about it and get THEM to make me stop.
Relax.
Be creative.
I will get the things I need to get done, done, regardless of my weaknesses. If my work is not great, or not even as good as I could do, it's ok. It's more important that I just DO things.
I should read more.
Ok, enough of this.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
New thoughts about the Election
I think I need to fix some of the things I said yesterday.
First of all I said I'm never that interested in American politics in general, I think that's the phrase I used. That doesn't give the right impression. I get interested in certain subjects, like the Iraq war and our country's decision to get into that war. In highschool I took a contemporary history class and we spent a good portion of the year discussing Iraq (it was fall 2003 and spring 2004 so the first year of our involvement there) and I did a presentation in front of the school on what could happen in the future there. It really interested me.
What I was referring to was maybe politicians. I never seem to get behind politicians the way I should. I was too young to vote when Gore ran and Kerry just didn't do it for me. I just never really threw my lot in with his like a lot of kids at my school.
One problem I had with him was that when I heard him speak, or when I read some editorials of his in the newspaper, I recognized faults in his writing and expression -- things that were unclear, vague, or just not strongly put. It was like reading my own writing. I knew that he was smart, but seeing these faults, well, I don't know it made it hard to really fall for him. These problems with clarity, with syntax, and grammar, with expression in general and writing specifically, are things I know very well. And we are most critical of others for having the faults we recognize as our own.
Today I received this email from my mom. I think she sent it yesterday:
Hi Sweeties,
I was sitting here in tears last night as the election results became clear and Barack Obama was elected President. This is a momentous event in the history of this country and, hopefully, the beginning of a sea change in how things will be in the country. You have lived through the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor with the accompanying and continuing terrorist threat to the country, and more recently the worst economic melt down since the Great Depression. Moreover, the climate and the planet are changing because of man made global warning. Not much of a legacy of my generation - the baby boomers. But now you will have a president of color - the first ever - who will be the leader at the beginning of your adult lives. Maybe this will be the first of many firsts that you will experience, such that his election will seem mundane in a few years. I have found him to be an inspirational figure - something that I have not experienced since my college years (maybe when inspiration was easier to come by). I see this election as passing of the torch to the next generation and see it as beginning for your generation. Ironically, I was the only one to be excited by Obama's candidacy - you all were more cynical or questioning. Anyway, I hope that you are excited about his election and the possibilities it presents.
I certainly hope that this country will be a better place for you all.
Love, Mom
It made me feel guilty. Then I thought of a reason for this detachment of mine from the political process which my mother doesn't seem to have. I was a kid when Clinton was president. It was during the stage in my development when parents were still gods: faultless. I didn't doubt adults as I do now. And Clinton fit with this world view perfectly. As a president he seemed faultless. Well, I have to eat my words. There was Monica Lewinsky. She did a lot of damage to his sheen. But that was toward the end of his presidency, and he still seemed unassailably smart and capable as President (to me). He was THE american president for me. I capitalize the because, well, he was the only one I had known therefore THE, and because the person and the job had melded together create this God like- figure/ office, thing! The president of the United States of America was not only a person in the most powerful office in the world, but a man worthy of that office, almost better than a man. (well, sort of. maybe I'm not giving the Lewinsky scandal enough weight.)
But then Bush was elected. I was in highschool and one of the first things I can remember of his presidency is watching him speak on television with my parents in the room and making fun of him. I was making fun of him, my parents were not. And my parents chastised me. I have a specific memory of making fun of how he said something during his state of the union address after 9- 11, (the "axis of evil" speech), and my mom yelling at me to be quiet. (Ok, so it was a sober moment, but still.) What I learned from that time was to keep my mouth shut when watching our leader, and to accept that I, someone who I do not believe is very smart compared to a lot of people, could create better sentences than the man who was president of our country. I mean, he had to be taught which words to put emphasis on in sentences. I know he was coached on this because I have noticed a vast improvement in his ability to say sentences and to link them together in the last couple years.
And it is partly because I have seen an improvement in Bush's speeches since he first came to office, and think that he at least SOUNDS more coherent than he did 8 years ago, that I get angry when other people trash him sooo easily these days. All of a sudden it's become cool to trash Bush. Well, I'm sorry he was a bigger idiot when he got into office, but because he was THE american president and because we had been attacked, we were just supposed to ignore it. And everyone did.
My point is, I learned to accept that my president wasn't that smart and to shut up about it. More importantly, to lower my expectations. THIS is my point. I was taught to lower my expectations about the president. To partly turn off my brain and my mechanism of criticism when I was listening to him and to all politicians (because as I said, Kerry never sounded so great either) and this caused me to detach. My mom called my brother sister and I more cynical than she. Maybe, (it's just coming to me now), maybe this cynicism comes from watching her generation follow Bush as if he were as smart as Clinton. From watching them listen to his speeches as if they weren't filled with incongruous sayings and awkward pauses, (speeches that sounded as if they were said by a person for whom english was not a native language). From watching them quietly follow a man who was our president as if he knew better than we did, when it was hard to believe that. I don't know whether I eventually convinced myself that he knew better than he sounded or if I just came to believe it wasn't correct to criticize a president anymore. I think that's it. I learned not to express my opinions about politics because it was disrespectful and anti- patriotic. It made me a smart ass. It's not just my parents here I am responding to, or the community I grew up in, I think it was the adult world as a whole, the newspapers especially.
So I learned to shut up, to disengage, and now my mom is saying I am cynical. Damn right I am.
I meant this to be an apologetic thing. To say I should be more like my mother, more aware of this great change in politics. And instead I have become angry and defensive. But I think I realized something as I was writing this, that my disengagement has been an adapted response to the state of politics and of politicians during the time I came of age.
Booyah. I wonder if this makes sense.
First of all I said I'm never that interested in American politics in general, I think that's the phrase I used. That doesn't give the right impression. I get interested in certain subjects, like the Iraq war and our country's decision to get into that war. In highschool I took a contemporary history class and we spent a good portion of the year discussing Iraq (it was fall 2003 and spring 2004 so the first year of our involvement there) and I did a presentation in front of the school on what could happen in the future there. It really interested me.
What I was referring to was maybe politicians. I never seem to get behind politicians the way I should. I was too young to vote when Gore ran and Kerry just didn't do it for me. I just never really threw my lot in with his like a lot of kids at my school.
One problem I had with him was that when I heard him speak, or when I read some editorials of his in the newspaper, I recognized faults in his writing and expression -- things that were unclear, vague, or just not strongly put. It was like reading my own writing. I knew that he was smart, but seeing these faults, well, I don't know it made it hard to really fall for him. These problems with clarity, with syntax, and grammar, with expression in general and writing specifically, are things I know very well. And we are most critical of others for having the faults we recognize as our own.
Today I received this email from my mom. I think she sent it yesterday:
Hi Sweeties,
I was sitting here in tears last night as the election results became clear and Barack Obama was elected President. This is a momentous event in the history of this country and, hopefully, the beginning of a sea change in how things will be in the country. You have lived through the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor with the accompanying and continuing terrorist threat to the country, and more recently the worst economic melt down since the Great Depression. Moreover, the climate and the planet are changing because of man made global warning. Not much of a legacy of my generation - the baby boomers. But now you will have a president of color - the first ever - who will be the leader at the beginning of your adult lives. Maybe this will be the first of many firsts that you will experience, such that his election will seem mundane in a few years. I have found him to be an inspirational figure - something that I have not experienced since my college years (maybe when inspiration was easier to come by). I see this election as passing of the torch to the next generation and see it as beginning for your generation. Ironically, I was the only one to be excited by Obama's candidacy - you all were more cynical or questioning. Anyway, I hope that you are excited about his election and the possibilities it presents.
I certainly hope that this country will be a better place for you all.
Love, Mom
It made me feel guilty. Then I thought of a reason for this detachment of mine from the political process which my mother doesn't seem to have. I was a kid when Clinton was president. It was during the stage in my development when parents were still gods: faultless. I didn't doubt adults as I do now. And Clinton fit with this world view perfectly. As a president he seemed faultless. Well, I have to eat my words. There was Monica Lewinsky. She did a lot of damage to his sheen. But that was toward the end of his presidency, and he still seemed unassailably smart and capable as President (to me). He was THE american president for me. I capitalize the because, well, he was the only one I had known therefore THE, and because the person and the job had melded together create this God like- figure/ office, thing! The president of the United States of America was not only a person in the most powerful office in the world, but a man worthy of that office, almost better than a man. (well, sort of. maybe I'm not giving the Lewinsky scandal enough weight.)
But then Bush was elected. I was in highschool and one of the first things I can remember of his presidency is watching him speak on television with my parents in the room and making fun of him. I was making fun of him, my parents were not. And my parents chastised me. I have a specific memory of making fun of how he said something during his state of the union address after 9- 11, (the "axis of evil" speech), and my mom yelling at me to be quiet. (Ok, so it was a sober moment, but still.) What I learned from that time was to keep my mouth shut when watching our leader, and to accept that I, someone who I do not believe is very smart compared to a lot of people, could create better sentences than the man who was president of our country. I mean, he had to be taught which words to put emphasis on in sentences. I know he was coached on this because I have noticed a vast improvement in his ability to say sentences and to link them together in the last couple years.
And it is partly because I have seen an improvement in Bush's speeches since he first came to office, and think that he at least SOUNDS more coherent than he did 8 years ago, that I get angry when other people trash him sooo easily these days. All of a sudden it's become cool to trash Bush. Well, I'm sorry he was a bigger idiot when he got into office, but because he was THE american president and because we had been attacked, we were just supposed to ignore it. And everyone did.
My point is, I learned to accept that my president wasn't that smart and to shut up about it. More importantly, to lower my expectations. THIS is my point. I was taught to lower my expectations about the president. To partly turn off my brain and my mechanism of criticism when I was listening to him and to all politicians (because as I said, Kerry never sounded so great either) and this caused me to detach. My mom called my brother sister and I more cynical than she. Maybe, (it's just coming to me now), maybe this cynicism comes from watching her generation follow Bush as if he were as smart as Clinton. From watching them listen to his speeches as if they weren't filled with incongruous sayings and awkward pauses, (speeches that sounded as if they were said by a person for whom english was not a native language). From watching them quietly follow a man who was our president as if he knew better than we did, when it was hard to believe that. I don't know whether I eventually convinced myself that he knew better than he sounded or if I just came to believe it wasn't correct to criticize a president anymore. I think that's it. I learned not to express my opinions about politics because it was disrespectful and anti- patriotic. It made me a smart ass. It's not just my parents here I am responding to, or the community I grew up in, I think it was the adult world as a whole, the newspapers especially.
So I learned to shut up, to disengage, and now my mom is saying I am cynical. Damn right I am.
I meant this to be an apologetic thing. To say I should be more like my mother, more aware of this great change in politics. And instead I have become angry and defensive. But I think I realized something as I was writing this, that my disengagement has been an adapted response to the state of politics and of politicians during the time I came of age.
Booyah. I wonder if this makes sense.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Election
So Obama won. Duh, everyone knows that already. I want to write about this, but if I'm honest this election never became my thing. I feel a little bit hypocritical talking about american politics in general, because I never seem to care as much as I should or as much as other people do. I do care, but it's pathetic how quickly I forget about it all. One week I'm at home watching all the debates and the SNL skits, AND the Daily Show, AND the Colbert Report with my mom and debating the candidates with my relatives, and the next minute I'm on my own in Israel and I haven't checked a newspaper or looked anything up online in days. Last night my dad woke me at four in the morning Israeli time, or maybe it was three, to tell me they had called Ohio for Obama and so it was almost impossible for McCain to win.
"You're not awake watching this historic election!?" he cried.
Good point, I should have been participating, if just emotionally, in this historic moment. (I did vote! That's not what I mean.)
Like, "where were you when x happened?" people will ask.
I was sleeping.....
I do care more than it sounds like. I do, I do. I just have to read something first that gets me into it or something. I need some... what's the word... catalyst to get me going and then I'll be into it. I swear.
Oh well. At heart I am not a very... intellectual person.
But really. I'm so glad Obama won. Now that he won I realize how disappointed I would have been if he hadn't. But I resisted him in the beginning, hating the sense that he was the cool candidate to support among young people. That was last spring when I was at school. I knew very little about him and so felt suspicious that people were already acting like he was the savior. It was my fault for not reading about him, but well, there were other things going on in my mind. Now however I like that he's the cool candidate. He makes politics interesting. Anyway, I won't keep writing about this. At the moment it doesn't seem authentically me. It is something I feel I should write about and so it is probably incredibly boring to read. Not that anyone's reading Carolyn! And do I want anyone to read?
"You're not awake watching this historic election!?" he cried.
Good point, I should have been participating, if just emotionally, in this historic moment. (I did vote! That's not what I mean.)
Like, "where were you when x happened?" people will ask.
I was sleeping.....
I do care more than it sounds like. I do, I do. I just have to read something first that gets me into it or something. I need some... what's the word... catalyst to get me going and then I'll be into it. I swear.
Oh well. At heart I am not a very... intellectual person.
But really. I'm so glad Obama won. Now that he won I realize how disappointed I would have been if he hadn't. But I resisted him in the beginning, hating the sense that he was the cool candidate to support among young people. That was last spring when I was at school. I knew very little about him and so felt suspicious that people were already acting like he was the savior. It was my fault for not reading about him, but well, there were other things going on in my mind. Now however I like that he's the cool candidate. He makes politics interesting. Anyway, I won't keep writing about this. At the moment it doesn't seem authentically me. It is something I feel I should write about and so it is probably incredibly boring to read. Not that anyone's reading Carolyn! And do I want anyone to read?
Monday, November 3, 2008
Moleskin Journals
This is strange, two posts in one day. You're probably not supposed to do that.
Oh well, I'm not doing so much and it seems I can always think of something to say once I start.
Why did I major in English and take only social science classes in college and am going to grad school for middle eastern studies when I can't get my self to sit down and read a book? Even when I'm "reading" I'm constantly fidgeting, fiddling with my hair, and changing my position, it's such an effort to get myself to focus. And a good part of the time I'm just day dreaming. I shouldn't even call it day dreaming, because it's more subtle than that usually. My mind just clicks somewhere else when I'm not paying attention to it, becoming like a split screen tv, half with the page and half somewhere else, and unfortunately the somewhere else half always does better I think. And there are also the times when I'm completely gone, when I'm not even looking at the book, maybe staring at my hand or something like that, and at those times I'm nowhere close to the book.
God, I do best when I'm doing something that forces me to engage in... well, words, or whatever, things that are not so easy to engage in. It's embarrassing but recently I have become a little bit obsessed with the musical Spring Awakening and specifically with one of the actors in it -- Matt Doyle. I think I liked him when I saw the show 1) because I thought he was cute and thought he looked a little like the guy I like here in Israel, and 2) because in this one scene he has seducing another guy, he was captivating. I don't like that word, too cheesy, but he just was so strongly his part, and he made the scene electric. But anyway, after the show I looked him up online because I wasn't doing anything and saw that he had a blog and there were some videos of him on youtube. So I've been watching the videos and reading his blog (though there hasn't been any new material on either since I started) and basically he's becoming more and more attractive to me.
Uhhh, when he sings he sings with such passion. I don't know, what's the word, it's as if he's not keeping anything to himself. And his blog, though sometimes a bit wordy (like my writing ) and too formal at times, makes me like him, but maybe more importantly want to be like him.
I need to be more clear. I feel already as if I am a bit like him (I know, come on Carolyn, you're over identifying) but well, some of the things he says and the way he describes his life, it's like what I would be if I had the guts to be it. And so it's not that I want to change my self to be like him, I want to change my behavior and my circumstances so that I can be myself the way he is himself.
Maybe I'm starting to wonder if I ever could have acted.
Obviously I can't be a broadway performer like he is. But God, watching that stuff makes me wish I had at least tried it in highschool. Well, to be honest we didn't really have that option in my highschool. We didn't have musical theater like most highschools and I probably wouldn't have done it even if we had. I was never a performer, always quiet, shy. And I always thought acting was for those people who are really good at impersonations and stuff like that. But anyway, I've always had this feeling of wanting to get whatever is inside of me out. More and more I feel like I could express myself in ways that I never do. I think that's why I write.
But God, I wish I had the guts to do something that just really, I don't know, did it for me. And the idea of throwing myself into a moment, something in a script, just seems so nice. Like a what's the word....expunging? No that's not it.
(The people who tested me for ADD said I didn't seem to have trouble remembering words when I spoke. They were fucking wrong about that as they were about almost everything else.)
But anyway, last year first semester my Renaissance Drama class had actors from a Shakespearian company come to our class and take us through acting exercises. We were reading Macbeth. I was really bad in the first exercise in which we had to stage this witches scene from the start of the play. We had to make all the decisions ourselves and I don't know, there wasn't much to go on. But then later, I guess it was another class, we read through some of this one scene right after Macbeth kills the king. Two people in the class would get up and read some and the actors would give them directions and then they'd do it again and then two new people would do it. I didn't raise my hand for a while, but then towards the end of the class they chose me to be Macbeth's wife, and I felt better doing that in front of the class than I ever had in any class in college before.
I was really bad in some ways, like the first time I read the lines I usually had very little idea what the words meant and I kept making mistakes as we were reading, but I guess I was one of the few people who did it with feeling and so the actors liked me. And, once the actors stopped me and we figured out what was being said in each line, I could do it. I just had to know what I was reading, but once I figured it out, I could picture myself in a similar situation and then I would just remember how I said things then, how I had felt then. All of a sudden the play reminded me of things, made me feel things, I could see all this potential in the words. They kept me up there till the end of class (which, granted, was not so long) but I left feeling so good, like finally I had done something that I could do, and had shown people that I could do something.
I remember realizing that when Macbeth starts ranting to his wife and his words become sort of nonsensical that it was a sort of defense mechanism. That he was intentionally separating himself from her by not explaining himself, probably because he didn't think she would get it. Maybe he was angry at her because he was the one who had done the thing and was now in the bad position. Or maybe the rant was just the only way he could express his guilt and shock and disbelief for what he had just done. It reminded me of being on the phone with my sister when she was really unhappy and how she would just keep talking and talking and would completely stop listening to me. I would try to snap her out of it, sometimes shouting at her, but it usually never worked. But that is what Macbeth's wife was trying to do in that moment, trying to get Macbeth to snap out of his fog. She knows what he's doing. Well, so in one of her lines I just knew how to say it. Or, more specifically, I said it as if I had been saying it to my sister. And I know it worked.
Guess what? Do Not Call just called. We talked for just a second though, he called just to tell me that he may or may not be in Eilat when I go there this friday. Apparently he and his friend have to decide whether to stay another week or not. I hope he stays....
I just read over some of this post. It is too jumbled. Half the time I don't say what I want to say or what I do say is not clear. And when I change some of it it still doesn't work. Fuck, it's turning into my impossible to write school work. I think I'll just leave it a mess.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was going to stop but I don't want to. If it were my journal and not a blog I would keep going because it wouldn't matter, it would all just be for me, but I feel I should exhibit some editorial control on these posts. I don't have a journal right now though. And I've already gotten going on this.
Ok, so mentioning keeping a journal reminded me of this summer when at rough times I wrote in my planner, scribbling over the months I had not used in the beginning of the year. Typing that reminded me that on his blog Matt Doyle mentioned how he liked moleskin journals; my planner from this summer was a moleskin. Sigh.
Now you see how my brain works.
Love,
Carolyn
Oh well, I'm not doing so much and it seems I can always think of something to say once I start.
Why did I major in English and take only social science classes in college and am going to grad school for middle eastern studies when I can't get my self to sit down and read a book? Even when I'm "reading" I'm constantly fidgeting, fiddling with my hair, and changing my position, it's such an effort to get myself to focus. And a good part of the time I'm just day dreaming. I shouldn't even call it day dreaming, because it's more subtle than that usually. My mind just clicks somewhere else when I'm not paying attention to it, becoming like a split screen tv, half with the page and half somewhere else, and unfortunately the somewhere else half always does better I think. And there are also the times when I'm completely gone, when I'm not even looking at the book, maybe staring at my hand or something like that, and at those times I'm nowhere close to the book.
God, I do best when I'm doing something that forces me to engage in... well, words, or whatever, things that are not so easy to engage in. It's embarrassing but recently I have become a little bit obsessed with the musical Spring Awakening and specifically with one of the actors in it -- Matt Doyle. I think I liked him when I saw the show 1) because I thought he was cute and thought he looked a little like the guy I like here in Israel, and 2) because in this one scene he has seducing another guy, he was captivating. I don't like that word, too cheesy, but he just was so strongly his part, and he made the scene electric. But anyway, after the show I looked him up online because I wasn't doing anything and saw that he had a blog and there were some videos of him on youtube. So I've been watching the videos and reading his blog (though there hasn't been any new material on either since I started) and basically he's becoming more and more attractive to me.
Uhhh, when he sings he sings with such passion. I don't know, what's the word, it's as if he's not keeping anything to himself. And his blog, though sometimes a bit wordy (like my writing ) and too formal at times, makes me like him, but maybe more importantly want to be like him.
I need to be more clear. I feel already as if I am a bit like him (I know, come on Carolyn, you're over identifying) but well, some of the things he says and the way he describes his life, it's like what I would be if I had the guts to be it. And so it's not that I want to change my self to be like him, I want to change my behavior and my circumstances so that I can be myself the way he is himself.
Maybe I'm starting to wonder if I ever could have acted.
Obviously I can't be a broadway performer like he is. But God, watching that stuff makes me wish I had at least tried it in highschool. Well, to be honest we didn't really have that option in my highschool. We didn't have musical theater like most highschools and I probably wouldn't have done it even if we had. I was never a performer, always quiet, shy. And I always thought acting was for those people who are really good at impersonations and stuff like that. But anyway, I've always had this feeling of wanting to get whatever is inside of me out. More and more I feel like I could express myself in ways that I never do. I think that's why I write.
But God, I wish I had the guts to do something that just really, I don't know, did it for me. And the idea of throwing myself into a moment, something in a script, just seems so nice. Like a what's the word....expunging? No that's not it.
(The people who tested me for ADD said I didn't seem to have trouble remembering words when I spoke. They were fucking wrong about that as they were about almost everything else.)
But anyway, last year first semester my Renaissance Drama class had actors from a Shakespearian company come to our class and take us through acting exercises. We were reading Macbeth. I was really bad in the first exercise in which we had to stage this witches scene from the start of the play. We had to make all the decisions ourselves and I don't know, there wasn't much to go on. But then later, I guess it was another class, we read through some of this one scene right after Macbeth kills the king. Two people in the class would get up and read some and the actors would give them directions and then they'd do it again and then two new people would do it. I didn't raise my hand for a while, but then towards the end of the class they chose me to be Macbeth's wife, and I felt better doing that in front of the class than I ever had in any class in college before.
I was really bad in some ways, like the first time I read the lines I usually had very little idea what the words meant and I kept making mistakes as we were reading, but I guess I was one of the few people who did it with feeling and so the actors liked me. And, once the actors stopped me and we figured out what was being said in each line, I could do it. I just had to know what I was reading, but once I figured it out, I could picture myself in a similar situation and then I would just remember how I said things then, how I had felt then. All of a sudden the play reminded me of things, made me feel things, I could see all this potential in the words. They kept me up there till the end of class (which, granted, was not so long) but I left feeling so good, like finally I had done something that I could do, and had shown people that I could do something.
I remember realizing that when Macbeth starts ranting to his wife and his words become sort of nonsensical that it was a sort of defense mechanism. That he was intentionally separating himself from her by not explaining himself, probably because he didn't think she would get it. Maybe he was angry at her because he was the one who had done the thing and was now in the bad position. Or maybe the rant was just the only way he could express his guilt and shock and disbelief for what he had just done. It reminded me of being on the phone with my sister when she was really unhappy and how she would just keep talking and talking and would completely stop listening to me. I would try to snap her out of it, sometimes shouting at her, but it usually never worked. But that is what Macbeth's wife was trying to do in that moment, trying to get Macbeth to snap out of his fog. She knows what he's doing. Well, so in one of her lines I just knew how to say it. Or, more specifically, I said it as if I had been saying it to my sister. And I know it worked.
Guess what? Do Not Call just called. We talked for just a second though, he called just to tell me that he may or may not be in Eilat when I go there this friday. Apparently he and his friend have to decide whether to stay another week or not. I hope he stays....
I just read over some of this post. It is too jumbled. Half the time I don't say what I want to say or what I do say is not clear. And when I change some of it it still doesn't work. Fuck, it's turning into my impossible to write school work. I think I'll just leave it a mess.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was going to stop but I don't want to. If it were my journal and not a blog I would keep going because it wouldn't matter, it would all just be for me, but I feel I should exhibit some editorial control on these posts. I don't have a journal right now though. And I've already gotten going on this.
Ok, so mentioning keeping a journal reminded me of this summer when at rough times I wrote in my planner, scribbling over the months I had not used in the beginning of the year. Typing that reminded me that on his blog Matt Doyle mentioned how he liked moleskin journals; my planner from this summer was a moleskin. Sigh.
Now you see how my brain works.
Love,
Carolyn
Try Number 2
So I already started a blog but then deleted it. I also wrote something on Planworld and considered doing that instead of a blog but I like the idea of having my own thing even if no one ever reads it.
But now I have a URL I like and so maybe I'll stick with this one.
I think I will give this address to all my friends but I will probably write things on it that I wouldn't say to them otherwise. I try to control all my insecure musings in my emails so as not to sound too crazy or narcissistic or just annoying but really, inside, I am crazy.
I am also really good at not doing things. Well, a lot of people are. But really, I fall so easily into complete slothfulness, and it is only being around people who I want to make a good impression on that keeps me from wearing my pjs all day or letting the dishes pile up. Right now I am in my pjs and am wearing my glasses which make my eyes look like insect eyes and am hoping my roommate won't be back soon.
Last night I went to bed on edge because I hadn't heard from a boy that I like in a while. Well, a while means a couple days. I had texted him and he hadn't texted me back, and I was feeling stupid. "GOD, Carolyn, why do you always have to be soo uncool? Always giving yourself away as liking the other person too much." Was just feeling really.... insecure I guess. Always feel as if when I like someone I'm building a house of cards and if I so much as flinch it will all fall. Figuring out how to act "cool enough" so they won't go running away as fast as they can is torturous. How much I would like someone who I wouldn't mind being weird with. Who would make me feel ok for being the way I am and not as if I have something to hide.
I'm giving you the wrong idea. I'm not that weird. I look normal on the outside, but I have my inconsistencies. Like my sometimes complete in ability to sit still, especially when I am close to someone else. Complete in ability to sleep with someone else in the same bed as I am, unless if maybe said person is sister. Hmmmm.... My need to go running or do other strange things to get myself to focus, or to take my mind off the fact that I am not focusing.
My desire to cry a lot of the time.
But anyway, then in the middle of the night I was woken by a noise which turned out to be my phone ringing. Was so confused, lurched toward desk to the phone, feeling as if I had forgotten to do something. My eyes were so dry I couldn't read who was calling, and then I saw "Do Not Call" on the screen. Ah yes, the name I had given the boy I like to remind myself not to, well, call him. For a second I stared in doubt, don't know if I had any clear cognitions at that point... for some reason I didn't want to answer. Well, it WAS 2:59 am. And then I pressed something and said hello but just as I said it the name went gray meaning the call had ended. Weird, I thought, he hung up just as I decided to answer.
I fell back in bed and couldn't sleep for another hour, this time because I was anticipating the next time I would see him. (Oy, I'm pathetic). He called me, and though it was a little thing, and though I wasn't even thinking. "wow I'm glad he called", it changed the feeling in my chest. Suddenly I was comfortable again.
I saw this morning that in fact I had hung up on him, must have pressed the ignore button instead of answer. And I haven't called him back yet. Don't know if I will. I wonder if this is making him insecure.
But now I have a URL I like and so maybe I'll stick with this one.
I think I will give this address to all my friends but I will probably write things on it that I wouldn't say to them otherwise. I try to control all my insecure musings in my emails so as not to sound too crazy or narcissistic or just annoying but really, inside, I am crazy.
I am also really good at not doing things. Well, a lot of people are. But really, I fall so easily into complete slothfulness, and it is only being around people who I want to make a good impression on that keeps me from wearing my pjs all day or letting the dishes pile up. Right now I am in my pjs and am wearing my glasses which make my eyes look like insect eyes and am hoping my roommate won't be back soon.
Last night I went to bed on edge because I hadn't heard from a boy that I like in a while. Well, a while means a couple days. I had texted him and he hadn't texted me back, and I was feeling stupid. "GOD, Carolyn, why do you always have to be soo uncool? Always giving yourself away as liking the other person too much." Was just feeling really.... insecure I guess. Always feel as if when I like someone I'm building a house of cards and if I so much as flinch it will all fall. Figuring out how to act "cool enough" so they won't go running away as fast as they can is torturous. How much I would like someone who I wouldn't mind being weird with. Who would make me feel ok for being the way I am and not as if I have something to hide.
I'm giving you the wrong idea. I'm not that weird. I look normal on the outside, but I have my inconsistencies. Like my sometimes complete in ability to sit still, especially when I am close to someone else. Complete in ability to sleep with someone else in the same bed as I am, unless if maybe said person is sister. Hmmmm.... My need to go running or do other strange things to get myself to focus, or to take my mind off the fact that I am not focusing.
My desire to cry a lot of the time.
But anyway, then in the middle of the night I was woken by a noise which turned out to be my phone ringing. Was so confused, lurched toward desk to the phone, feeling as if I had forgotten to do something. My eyes were so dry I couldn't read who was calling, and then I saw "Do Not Call" on the screen. Ah yes, the name I had given the boy I like to remind myself not to, well, call him. For a second I stared in doubt, don't know if I had any clear cognitions at that point... for some reason I didn't want to answer. Well, it WAS 2:59 am. And then I pressed something and said hello but just as I said it the name went gray meaning the call had ended. Weird, I thought, he hung up just as I decided to answer.
I fell back in bed and couldn't sleep for another hour, this time because I was anticipating the next time I would see him. (Oy, I'm pathetic). He called me, and though it was a little thing, and though I wasn't even thinking. "wow I'm glad he called", it changed the feeling in my chest. Suddenly I was comfortable again.
I saw this morning that in fact I had hung up on him, must have pressed the ignore button instead of answer. And I haven't called him back yet. Don't know if I will. I wonder if this is making him insecure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)