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This week's Free Will Astrology horoscope for Pisces:
"It's a ripe time to revise and rework your past, Pisces. I'll trust you to make the ultimate determination about how best to do that, but here are some possibilities. 1. Revisit a memory that has haunted you, and do a ritual that resolves it and brings you peace. 2. Return to the scene of an awkward anomaly that remains unsettled, and finally do a duty you neglected. 3. Make your way back to a dream you wandered away from prematurely, and either re-commit yourself to it, or put it to rest for good. 4. Dig up and contemplate a secret that has been festering, and come to a decision about what you can do to heal it."
Secrets? Haunting memories? Awkward anomalies? Well, I'll be durned, they've been festering in my brain since Febbraio--but they're not coming out, except to my shrink and a few close friends, nope nope nope.
"My head was dizzy
but the steering wheel was square
Oh, it wouldn't take me where I wanted
wouldn't take me anywhere
And I was blind to your design"
--Sleater-Kinney, 'Maraca'
Damn I wish I had another: "write about whatever" paper to do this semester. I'd write about SK again and it would rock.
Then again--who says I can't write about music's role in my life for a creative non-fiction class? Hmm...
I can usually count on Ugly Betty to cheer me up. Today, it is not. Everything in it is making me scream and reminding me of all the silly crazy things I've done lately. Well, except the parts about Conor's stealing of money. But everything else? Yaaaaaah!
Even the commercials are torturing me. Particularly the ones for Better Off Ted, which I will not be watching.
Why?
...because I actually cleaned the dorm, the Garrett, the Den of Absurdity, today in preparation for "company." Keep in mind, I haven't gone completely Taurean, because this was "new company," ie, someone who hasn't seen my messiness before. Those who have, I do not clean for. Though maybe I should, because damn, the room looks good.
Though I forgot to put the bras in a drawer, and so they were still hanging on my hooks by the bed (it's where I put them to dry)...which might've been weird.
What did she do now?
--made everyone focus on her and her lack of luck finding a job at the career fair before the beginning of class. Some people were conversing. Others were meditating (me). And she just throws herself into everything with a giant noisy complaint. Also, not to be a bitch (actually, yes to be a bitch, that side of me has been desiring to be let out recently, Nice Gen has been getting far more action lately), but I don't think most employers want to hire abrasive, rude, mean people. They want to hire people who will be good employees, and as the rest of this will show...um, no.
--randomly asked about an entirely unrelated thing in the middle of a completely different discussion (she wanted the e-mail address of the chief editor of the school literary magazine. When we were discussion what to say in a letter to national literary magazines.)
--Made a joke that my professor had already made twice (that if any of us make it into a national literary magazine, we have to buy beer for the whole class. My professor said that a week ago. And then today in class. And ten minutes later, here she is, "promising" to do that. My professor's reaction? "I think I made that the rule for everyone.")
--Demanded special treatment. For real. (It was near the end of class, my professor wanted to read a final poem--another classmate's. She asked, "what about mine?" Obviously she doesn't get that we do not have time to critique every person's poem every week. There were several other people in that class whose poems did not get critiqued that week. Mine didn't get critiqued last week. And my professor picked my other classmate's poem because it exemplified a specific quality--one that hers did not have. He ignored her. Which was the right thing to do.)
--continually sends documents via e-mail in a format which I cannot open, and have told her I cannot open. Would this bother me so much if she didn't bother me? Probably not. But as it is, it's one more nail.
...I've been such a sympathetic marshmallow girl lately. Sympathetic marshmallow girl English major, to be precise.
God, if only Bianca* could see me now.
Maybe I only care about the people who are worth my care. Which apparently means a lot of random strangers, and a lot of friends here...but not her or Melvin*.
Such is the life of an owl.
(lyrics credit Sleater-Kinney)
I love this album. Go buy it now (or on iTunes).
I think I've said before that I wish I had gotten this album for my twentieth birthday rather than One Beat, the SK album I did get. Because last spring I wrote that paper analyzing Sleater-Kinney lyrics for one of my classes (18th-century literature, but my professor told us to go off-topic in the style of Laurence Sterne, who wrote Tristram Shandy, so that's what I did--talked about late 20th/early 21st-century rock music, not 18th-century literature). And it was wonderful. But I wish I had had the opportunity to analyze some Hot Rock songs on there. (The majority of the songs I talked about were from either Call the Doctor or One Beat...and I know I used 'Leave You Behind' from All Hands...but I can't remember if I touched on Dig Me Out or The Woods.)
Of course...whenever I think that I have to say--wait, 'The Remainder' was on One Beat, and that was The Song of spring 2008. And oh ja, 'Sympathy,' that was pretty good for that time too, wasn't it? As was the title song? Fuck.
And in the past week, it has occurred to me that while I'd love to be able to write another Sleater-Kinney song analysis paper including The Hot Rock (and their self-titled debut album), The Hot Rock is pretty much the perfect album for what I'm feeling...now. January 24th until...well, now. And probably for a while longer.
Y'see, up until January 24th, I had been feeling some confusion for about two months. A little more than that. Confusion about this. "Should I stay or should I go?" Well, I'm staying, I'm staying because I want to stay and because I don't want to go.
I wrote something a week ago that I wanted to post last Monday, but then computer issues made me unable to, and it's so catty, and back in May I said cattiness would be a Monday morning-only thing. I'll do it tomorrow. Suffice to say...oh, politics. Oh, I was a collegiate pan-leftist in a car (my car) full of post-collegiate and never-collegiate anarchists. And revolutionary anarchy is part of my 'pan,' which was why I was there. But apparently, passive-aggressively, I'm not part of their revolution. When I'm volunteering to help organize things and make fliers and taking a whole Saturday to drive them, I'm not "committed" enough, because I'm also a college student trying to graduate on time and get a job and live a semi-comfortable life and do what has always been first for me--writing. Back in November I wrote a poem all about how I spent too much time reading and not enough time doing, but my books don't take advantage of my kindness and then insult me. My books don't say my opinions are important and then spend two hours talking without letting anyone else give their opinions. My books don't stress me out. They don't give me bad directions and cause me to be hurt.
Some lines...
"It's a crafty scene/full of power and greed/You tell me not to steal,/yet you still want a thief/You write out the plans/I carry out the act/But then I lose it all if I can't bring it back."
"I'm onto you/before this night is through/I'm going to steal my heart back/and find a love that's true/hot rock to you"
Oh...the entirety of 'Burn, Don't Freeze.'
"And when the body finally starts to let go/let it all go at once/not piece by piece/but like a whole bucket of stars/dumped into the universe.
Whoooh! Watch it go!/Good-bye small hands, good-bye small heart/good-bye small head"
"Piled up for you/the notes I wrote on hollow walls/Let me come through/Pass through the things that we went through"
"Won't you tell me what are we fighting for?/Do you want me here do you know for sure?"
"It's like goin' to pieces could fix everything/At this point I'm really me/Nothing bad, nothing free/there's nothing left/for me to feel/It's like goin' to bed at a quarter to three/Finally tired, finally empty/Finally tired, finally empty"
Oh, and another song...not SK...that I've applied to other days before...but really...it was that, too.
And I feel bad about saying all this shit...and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do...because you were so nice to me, you did seem to care about me, and when, on that day, things went to shit...when I got rear-ended...well, you were being nice, at points, and you seemed to be at least trying...and maybe this is just me now getting over the attraction and questioning everything else too...but I didn't like being bad-mouthed. Directed at me or not, you're right when you say I...and other college students...don't have all the time in the world to help you. You're right when you say I have another future in mind. Okay? You got me. But if that's not the kind of shit you like in your movement? Then why did you want me there? Why did you tell me to come? Why did you ask me to drive you all over the place? Why did you use my kindness and then insult me? I don't like that. At all. And I know you didn't start it. But you didn't defend me.
Poem time...I will warn you, there are song references and weird animal imagery here...
Memory of the Things We Left*
One song--no, many poems
a month of Wednesday haikus
and various connecting thoughts,
sitting in my dorm room, at college, working,
my comfortable job
idolizing and
wanting to feel...you,
especially your hair,
in my hand--no, against my cheek,
and my neck,
I dreamed of inadvertantly kissing you
on the steps of the clinic,
a stolen moment in the midst of the insanity
my twisted attempt at romantic fantasy.
I was mean,
because you were first for awhile,
I'd do anything for a few more seconds
to talk to you alone.
I lost that--you're too connected, and
we can't relate amid other peoples' bellicose manouevering.
There'll never be that moment "on the sly."
My awkward activist,
you sat behind me as the polar bears were crushed by horses
and you tried to help,
but it was the crash that did it--
before that day I thought I wanted you with me,
in times of shit.
But I couldn't collapse onto your miniscule frame
and expect to be caught.
I wondered why I thought I could--
the day we met, I was always catching you.
And more than that, I knew...
that wasn't the story for our world.
You'll be a bystander in the long run,
a tertiary character, easy for editors to excise
if necessary.
(January 30th, 2009)
*many references in here to Sleater-Kinney's song 'One Song for You'
I'm watching the Men's US Figure Skating Championships on TV, and so far I have seen two skaters with big sparkly crosses on their outfits.
You know what that reminds me of? The beginning of Saved!, where Mary is talking about her amazing Christian boyfriend Dean and what an amazing athlete he is. And then they cut to him ice skating in a sparkly Jesus-y outfit.
I wish I could find it on YouTube, but I can't, and searching for it on YouTube has led me to finding something else which makes me angry, but it meant for UFPC, not this blog.
So, in my profile description, I say that I am a cat person, not a dog person, meaning that I often need solitude and don't like constant human interaction.
I realized today that I'm also something else--a warm person, not a cold person. Essentially: while I need solitude and don't like constant human interaction, I am nice to people. Even strangers. I smile, I try to be nice. I am open, not closed.
Cold people bug me. They're tight-lipped, they glare at people for no reason, they don't smile, they don't say hi to strangers, they treat other people like dirt. Oh, and they give a bad name to all the solitude-seeking cat people of the world. You see, dog people are generally not cold. Cat people can be--but aren't always. What does this mean, numbers-wise? Well, probably that there are a lot more warm than cold people out there. This holds up to evidence--most people are superficially nice to one another, quick to smile, say hi, laugh. Very few think they're so much better than everyone else that strangers must be vetted to deserve a hi. (Yes, I do think snobbishness plays a part in this, most cold people I know are conceited, about something. D&D knowledge, singing ability, coolness, whatever. Chicken or egg, I don't know.)
So while the average dog person sometimes gets on my nerves, I'd much rather have them around than the cold cat people of the world. Dogs, I can be friends with. Same with my fellow warm cats. I think it's impossible for cold cats to find companionship with other cat people, though--we're too shy and we don't have the time or energy to mess around with those who aren't giving us any love back.
Why am I writing this? Because I was thinking about why these two fellow English majors bug me so much. I barely know them. Why am I being so judgmental? Is it the barely-misogynistic comment the dude made in class on Friday? Is it how much of a slacker the girl sometimes was last year at work?* Oh--no. It's that neither of them has ever really smiled at me. It's that perceived I-am-too-cool-for-you factor.
And yeah, they piss me off.
So know this--we shy cats out there who like spending hours in our rooms reading? Most of us are nice people. We're not all like these folks, nor do we like these folks very much.
*memorable instance: she leaves to get a bagel. We get swamped with people, some appointments, some walk-ins. The other consultant and I are busy working with them, one by one. I'm at the desk. My throat is in pain. A girl with an appointment comes in while I'm busy with someone else. My co-worker slips in while I have my head down and am reading the other person's paper. I tell appointment-girl to wait and I'll be with her soon. My co-worker sits at the back computer, eating, with her back to us for another ten or fifteen minutes, until I finish with the one person and offer to work with appointment-girl after I send a professor an e-mail, before she says anything. That really pissed me off.
...she's the female version of this guy. Wayne*. Who would go on to do this. Things do not bode well for this girl. She needs an appropriate name. Waynette.* Yep. Waynette*.
