i wish i was drunk right now so i had some good excuse to vomit forth a rambling hysterical rant about minor emotional breakdowns and how the world would be so much better if i could decide who got to be where when. i'm so fucking tired of packing and leaving and being left and i want to play music loud enough to hurt me or hurt someone else and scream until it's gone. fucking mood fucking swings when i just want out of my own damn head.
napalm is starting to sound like a more and more appealing packing solution.
I started packing in earnest today. Five boxes of books and a few large items moved to storage... and so much left to go. It's very satisfying, I've found, to completely strip a room of its character -- painting over the green in Leslie's room, for example, took away the sadness of her room being empty and made it into just another room to pile stuff in before moving it out. The same for taking all the framed pictures off my walls today: My Room, and then not-my-room, which now consists of empty space where my table used to be, just a mattress on the floor, and assorted unpacked things.
That's all stuff is now -- "packed" or "unpacked."
So regarding the anticipated emotional wreckage, I'm beginning to think it's not showing up because there's really nothing to be upset about. I had one minor breakdown yesterday, but that was more about being tired and stressed about packing than anything else... Everyone just has new adventures ahead of them -- and even though most are different, individual adventures, that just means more stories to tell.
Too cheesy? Sorry... my excuse is that I'd much rather be asleep right now, but I have to wait for the laundry to finish cause the washer and dryer are being picked up tomorrow morning... and there's a june bug at the screen of my open window that I really really want to squirt with Raid. I have visions of gassing up this entire house with combustible insecticide and then tossing in a match. It would be truly spectacular, and then we could roast marshmallows over the smoldering remains... Kill the pig! Spill its blood!
Saturday I volunteered to be a videographer for the Ultimate Players Association at the 2003 College Ultimate Championships, held down at the IM fields. I headed out there with my cute little Canon ZR40 having never shot sports before or, for that matter, seen a game of ultimate frisbee. What I encountered was an impossibly high concentration of gorgeously athletic people, much like the Daily Show's master race springing forth from Olympian loins, except with shaggy hair and enough Nalgenes to drown a small nation.
The game itself is actually a lot of fun to watch, with all the usual hauling it back and forth across a field punctuated by dramatic leaps and dives. One thing I didn't know is that, for the most part, the game is self-officiated. Players call fouls and play violations and then resolve disputes themselves, with officials -- termed "observers" -- only brought in on contested calls. It makes for a much more civilized -- and in many ways friendly and lighthearted -- game when a routine part of play involves calmly acknowledging your screw-ups to the other side.
The women's games were fun to watch -- I filmed the quarter and semi finals -- but the open (essentially men's -- I didn't see any female players) semifinal between Carleton and Oregon was a thing of beauty. Spectacular throws (is that the correct term? "launches" seems more appropriate) and catches, dives and jumps -- I don't know much about the sport, but I could tell that was how it's supposed to look.
So my eight hours of volunteer work netted me a t-shirt, a frisbee, a new appreciation for ultimate, and a righteously patchy sunburn. Oh, and I got to see a random assortment of UT people -- Rolin, I bet you can guess who I saw, friar haircut and all -- and dorm people will remember Chuck, Scott, Cody, and -- still one of my favorites -- Tally. Plus it made me want to be outside playing soccer... Matt, are you getting a team together again in the fall? I doubt we'd be able to find enough women for a coed team, but I'm totally up for men's again. It makes me feel like a jock ; )
oh and...
Leslie left for Dallas yesterday, which also meant leaving Austin for good. I was pissed that I had to show up at the fields at 11:30, when she was still loading stuff for the move (the piano transport was particularly entertaining), but I was also glad to have an excuse to not be at the house. That way, I said goodbye to Leslie as everyone was leaving to take the piano to Danny's and then immediately had to go to the games, where I was surrounded by pleasantly anonymous crowds and had a task to perform. I don't think I could have handled saying goodbye to Leslie at the house and then closing the door and being alone in all of those empty rooms, every footstep echoing and everything left just something else that needs to be boxed up and hauled away. So while I'm sorry I couldn't be more useful, I managed to avoid or delay some emotional wreckage.
I'm still not sure which it is -- avoiding or delaying -- for all of this. Amy's moved into her new apartment, where the slight hotel flavor is refreshing rather than lonely, Leslie has weeks and years of new plans before her, all of which are different and exciting, and I've got a thesis project that, if I get my ass in gear, could turn out really well.
I don't think there's another shoe to drop, and even if there is I think that I can make it disappear by refusing to acknowledge its presence. Yes, I'm lonely, but I'm beginning to find that if I ignore that fact it tends to fade away some and become less of a fact and more of a choice.
When did this turn into a pep talk? Sorry, guys.
Alright, today has to be the start of massive packing now that I no longer have the excuse of Leslie's stuff in the house to delay with... How on earth did I accumulate this much crap? I mean, the religious paraphernalia is totally necessary, but do I really need to still have four years of class notes? Recycling! Trash! Goodwill! Everything be gone!!
Now that's an odd feeling... people need to spend less time leaving and more time staying. We'll all just sit on pillows in a sunny breezy room with the windows open and talk and sleep and have our meals brought to us and when there's nothing to say we'll just watch each other until someone says something again. All the people in my life seated together in a circle, happy.
Alright, so my reading public (i.e. Matt) demands a post or two.
This morning's bike ride was cloudless sky beautiful, but the kind you can tell is going to become oppressively hot later in the day. Which is why being out and about at 9am is still such a pleasant novelty -- the air is cool, the grackles are hunting for bugs in the wildflowers, and the angle of the sunlight makes solitude hopeful, with none of nighttime's loneliness or fear. No bug swallowing that I was aware of, though I'm sure Kathryn would tell me differently.
I rented two very good movies this week, both of which had lines that stuck with me. The first was 25th Hour by Spike Lee: Edward Norton is a drug dealer in post-9/11 NYC about to be sent to prison for eight years. I think the movie was labeled an ode to New York and that kind of stuff when it came out, and it certainly does have lots of images relating to 9/11 -- the titles are over a montage of the blue towers of light that were up for a while, one character's apartment overlooks the WTC site, and we see a few street shrines of flowers and notes. The part that stayed with me, however, was a monologue that Norton's character gives, saying "fuck you" to everyone in the city, going through every ethnic group, every class, and ranting stereotypes. It's his image in the mirror talking to himself, so in the end he's able to tell himself to go to hell, but I think it was a very effective release of tensions that are there in all of us.
The one line I've been repeating since watching it came at the end -- I won't describe the context so as not to spoil anything -- and essentially sums up the thoughtful sadness of the whole movie: "This life came so close to never happening." It conveyed all the sadness of forgotten possibilities, all the lives we have to let go of -- all the futures we must shoot in the head.
Adaptation, by Spike Jonze, is every bit as schizophrenic as the reviews said (I didn't catch the exact point at which it shifted into that last act, but wtf?) but still manages to be very very satisfying. Plus it had a very nice summing up of a major theme in the line "You are what you love, not what loves you." I don't know if that was original or lifted from some terrible self-help book, but -- at the risk of sounding incredibly trite -- it really speaks to me, in all sorts of ways that I'm far too sober to try to describe at the moment.
Are there really this many lonely people in the world, or is it that we all carry so much loneliness with us?
I forgot about a story from yesterday's bike ride, which was, amazingly enough, duplicated today -- albeit in a slightly abridged fashion.
The bike ride, not the story.
Right.
I swallowed a bug! A gnat, I think. I was riding along Town Lake, minding my own business while trying not to hit pedestrians, mouth open in an attempt to increase my oxygen intake, and out of nowhere I see the little fucker careen into my mouth and then feel him hit the back of my throat. Not wanting to make a scene trying to retch him back out, I swallowed. Then swallowed again -- those bastards don't go down easily.
What was the children's book where the old guy teases the main character about joining the "I swallowed a bug" club? I want to say it was Fudge, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, I'm now a proud member of its ranks.
As part of my unofficial campaign to get more exercise/feel less like a worthless piece of shit, I set my alarm for 8am this morning and got up to go bike around Town Lake. 9am (the time I finally got out of the house) is a surprisingly nice time of day to be outside, especially on a cloudy day like today. I passed all sorts of very athletic people for whom exercise was obviously much less of a novelty -- even the Camelback I had on (a hand-me-down from Drew's Microsoft days, complete with Windows 98 logo -- no, Drew, you can't have it back, I drooled on it and therefore it is mine) wouldn't have been enough to fool anyone who saw me huffing it up that last hill under Mopac.
So I just toodled along and enjoyed the morning. It was one of those times when everything is clearer, cleaner, and there's a silent beauty in all the details around you -- these times usually happen on a morning highway with the windows down or at sunset when the world is orange and sad -- and the wildflowers in the uncut grass or the clear green water in a Town Lake inlet is placed on a pedestal and declared living art.
That and it was nice to be able to think while feeling my body do something other than rot on the couch. Damn you, digital cable, damn you to hell.
I went to the vet Monday afternoon with a friend whose cat had feline leukemia. The cat had stopped eating and was getting sicker and sicker, so she brought her to the vet to be cared for, though she knew this trip was to make the decision to put the cat down. It's terrible to see an animal so confused and in pain -- she kept swinging her head slowly back and forth while her pupils dilated in and out. The vet gave her the shot in a back leg and she faded out with my friend stroking her head, telling her how loved she was. My friend was crying, the nurse assisting the vet was crying, and I just tried to take in the passing of one small life, one decision to end pain and suffer loss.
Even writing about it now, the back of my throat is tight with emotion. I hadn't spent much time with her cat -- it's more the sadness of how temporary everything is, from fuzzy little animals to all the people we know, whose love is much more complicated. Things are changing, people are leaving, and I'm scared of the impermanence of it all, afraid of reaching out to hold on and finding that it all slips away in the end.
At the Plan II graduation this morning, I was prepared for a long, probably boring but fairly innocuous ceremony during which I'd watch friends, acquaintances, and oh-yeah-so-that's-who-that-is's trot out to receive their fake diplomas rolled up to look like real diplomas.
Then the mariachi band started playing, and everything hit a whole new level of surreal. It was like all of a sudden we'd found ourselves in a Coen brothers movie, except without the bowling or, sadly, the white russians. So people gave speeches and everyone's multitude of honors was read as they marched across the stage in everything from birkenstocks to black leather boots. And then we sang the Eyes of Texas, or at least held up the hook 'em hand sign and mouthed along, and the mariachi band started up again as everyone processed out. It gave the whole thing a pleasantly absurd air.
Just saw The Matrix: Reloaded, and it was awful purty to look at. Kinda like what the new Star Wars movies would be if somebody locked George Lucas in a closet, where he belongs. The dialogue was kinda dumb, and I found myself wishing they'd quit talking and fly around kicking people some more.
Amy moved out today. We've got a distinct lack of a dining room table now, but nothing compared to the empty shell of a house I'll be in once Leslie moves out and takes all the furniture and cooking utensils... Everyone can come over and pitch tents downstairs.
Today I went to the Plan II office and printed out an absurd amount of preliminary research on this supposed thesis... a video documentary on Pilgrim's Pride chicken in all its vertically-integrated glory. Then I bought a big blue D-ring binder, just to show that I'm serious about doing this. The next step would be to email some RTF profs to find an advisor and start actually planning... pondering approaches, narrowing focus, making calls, scheduling interviews and shoots -- all those things that are so easy to think about but for some reason so difficult to make myself physically sit down and do. So instead I punched holes in my printouts, put them in my big blue D-ring binder, and have started high-lighting important information.
