Gray Weather

Kudos to my little brother for the music recommendation =)

There's something extremely peaceful about a quiet, rainy morning. I've never been someone who absolutely loves the rain every time—I'd prefer to stay inside as often as not. But there's something surreal and peaceful about being in school on a dark, gray day like this. It's as if time stretches onward oddly so that everything moves just a little bit slower. It's easier to think, even if those thoughts aren't entirely cohesive. I like having a blog—I miss being able to think out loud like this.

I biked to school this morning despite the rain, and now I'm kind of chilly, but I suppose that's my own fault xD It's nice to know I didn't turn purple or transform into an icicle. I think that means it's actually warm-ish out!

I'm probably going to fail my Japanese test next hour—I've failed or nearly failed all of them so far this year. I'm glad I don't have to take Japanese next year. It's getting too hard for me to keep up. Actually, scratch that, it is too hard to keep up. College level foreign languages are beyond me. It's alright though, at least I can say I tried. I don't think anyone will begrudge me for that. I have a friend who completely dropped the class when fourth quarter started.

I'm sitting in astronomy currently, and wondering if I should work on Ci Pier/Midand Fair (I'm not sure what to call it yet) a little bit, or if I should wait and write it longhand. I'm leaning towards waiting, simply because I don't think I have the brain power for writing right now. It happens.


What is your favorite or least favorite kind of weather?

New Music

I took this picture on my phone a while back ^^”

Today has been extremely peaceful. I woke up around two o'clock after sleeping straight through a cold/fever bug. I talked to Hally and Madison for a while, and then Emily came over around 2:45 after school, and she helped me make tuna pasta, which was yummy :D. After she left on a bus to go home, I watched V, House, and Criminal Minds. Which I'm still watching, actually xD

I also down loaded a bunch of music:

• All of Billie Holiday's Decca recordings

• We Are Not Alone by Breaking Benjamin

• “Seeds of Memory” by Terry Reid

• “Don't Worry, I'm Yours (Jason Mraz/Bob Marley Mash-up)” by DJ Dain

• “Boadicea” by Enya

I absolutely adore getting my hands on new music, and I'm in the process of sorting through a bunch of recommendations that Madison gave me, but I'm always open for more. I'm thinking specifically of you, Ms. Becca! But anyone is welcome.

What are some bands, albums, or songs you'd recommend for my perusal?

Sickness! And some writing

Ci Pier: the old, weathered, broken boards that extend inexplicably out over the edge of the cliff, the thing your mother has told you time and again to stay away from since you were old enough to leave the back yard of your whitewashed little house, the one with the green trim and the peeling paint and the smell of salt on the long dry grass. You asked her about it once. You were small, and she simply snapped that it was something you didn't need to know about and sent you out of her kitchen. You accepted it, because that's just what you did when Mother told you things. After all, you were young.

The first time you dug up enough guts and went down to the Pier, you were eight. Billy Caruthers double-dog-dared you to go out to it and step on the second board; to see if it was really there, or if it was, as he said, a "mirrorage." He ignored you when you tried to tell him it was mirage, but that was okay; he ignored pretty much everybody anyway. You were scared walking through the long grass to the weathered, salt-encrusted planks. They didn’t have any supports keeping them from plunging into the ocean, yet they never did, no matter how strong the winds or how hard the rains. Just as you were about to cave in to his taunts and take the first step, your mother emerged from the weathered green door that matched the shutters and began shouting, waving her apron at you, which she had just taken off. Her face was as red as her hands, the big pink fists that were scrubbed raw from too much cleaning. The rest of the children scattered as she marched over and dragged you by your ear back into the house, lecturing about the dangers of the cliffs and the strength of the wind and ohyoucouldhavedied and howmanytimeshaveIsaidthis?

So, this is an except from my latest writing project. You can find the entire first part here if you'd like to read it.

Other than that, not a lot is going on. I was home sick today, but my best friend Emily came over and made some pasta with me, and now I'm watching the episode of V that I missed. I feel much better.

What's something that makes you feel better when you're sick?

Chemical Equations

(Image via Blank Page's 365)


I think the one thing to be said about friendships is that they are shaky.

Whenever you take two people and join them in some way—romantically or otherwise—you are combining two volatile substances and hoping that they do not explode. Unfortunately, more often than not, they do. This is usually not the fault of one or the other, but rather an inevitable conclusion to the emotional reaction between both parties—like a reaction in chemistry, it cannot last forever.

I hate that I have lost so many friends. I hate that I seem to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time and destroy friendships, and I despise the way I'm always the one who mourns the lost the hardest. I wish there was some way for me to see those danger-zones and step around them, but I always end up planting an explosive right at the most vulnerable points.

Somehow I feel like it would be futile on my part to plead with you to see that I am no more flawless than you are. That I make mistakes and say things wrong and am sometimes not okay, just like you. Something in me says that maybe I've said the wrong thing one too many times, and you're tired of it. And if that is the truth, I'm sorry.

And maybe this was a mistake.

I sort of forgot how intensely people take things when I write about them in a blog.

Maybe I should just give it a miss. It doesn't really do me any good, anyway.

You're My Favorite

(Image via here)

Today, I got to spend time with three of the most important people in my life. These lovely souls have been my favorites for a while now, and I'd like to pretend I don't play favorites, I know that's a lie. Joe, Nathan, and Emily: I could live the rest of my life seeing no one but them (please, if you're reading this, don't take it the wrong way) and I would be happy. Despite the instability. Despite the pain. Despite the struggles and fights... or maybe because of them. Because they have been such an instrumental part in my life—in who I am and who I've become.

All of us are screwed up. Three of us are addicts of some sort. And of the three, I honestly believe that none of us would be where we are without EVERYONE I saw today.

Emily, Joe, and Nathan—I love you all so damn much. Never, ever forget that.

I have a feeling that this summer belongs to us. ♥

Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be generated by the strangest things... snatches of a song you can only just remember. Old photos you forgot you took. Things you loved a few years back that can still make you laugh.

It's good to be back in the blogging world. ♥

(Image credit: The 5th Avocado by Sound-o-Vision)

(Image credit: NASA image of the day)

Recently, I've rediscovered a love for space and astronomy. Part of that is stumbling upon fytheuniverse and fynebulas on Tumblr, and part of it is because I started taking Astronomy in school about two weeks ago.

I've always been fascinated by astronomy, but never really had the chance to follow up on it. When I was little, I would walk around singing the names of the planets under my breath. My dad used to teach me the constellations at night when I would sit still long enough to listen, and learning about the constellations was also my favorite part of Girl Scout camp the year I did the Night Owl program for a week. I remember us borrowing our neighbors' big-ish telescope to see eclipses and—twice, I think—the Northern Lights. One of the things I miss most about cable television are the space programs on Discovery; if NOVA (a PBS program) ever has anything about space, I want to see it.

I'm not sure if this is at all important, only that I've rediscovered the love for it recently, and I hope to learn much more about it. Who knows? Maybe I have a future in it.

A Hectic Week//Starting Blogger

Now seems like a strange time to start new blog, but strange is not always bad. I realized recently that I miss the cohesiveness and coherency that I forced myself to have (most of the time) when I used my LiveJournal. I think I understand what Emily, one of my best friends, has been saying regarding Tumblr for months: it's relatively depressing.

Yes, there are the occasional posts that are uplifting, and yes, I understand that not everyone has happy lives. But the sheer amount of empty, pointless, unoriginality was starting to get to me. I'll probably keep my Tumblr for following purposes, and use it for my collaborative writing projects, because it;s easier. But I'm hoping that the majority of my creative thoughts will end up here instead, where I don't feel the need to abbreviate them for the purposes of a Dashboard.

Anyway. I suppose this particular entry is also a kind of decompression. The past week has been so hectic and insane that part of me is still have trouble accepting that all of it truly happened. I don't want to bore anyone, but I think I need to lay it out.

On Monday, I was feeling frizzed for no good reason, and I ended up having a total breakdown at lunch, and skipped fourth hour English with Emily and Shiloh. Even with 80+ minutes to try and calm down and think things over, I couldn't find a rational reason for falling apart. Looking back on it now, I can only say that maybe thew Universe gave me my instability preemptively, so that I could deal with the rest of the week in relative composure.

Tuesday was 4/20, and I don't think I will ever be able to hear those numbers without flinching. I have way too many friends who treat it like a holiday, and use it as an excuse to practically worship the chemical it supposedly “honors.” The difference this year as opposed to last year, though, is that I happen to be dating someone who smokes (or, rather, smoked) pot. This is something I never thought I would say, but I've changed a lot in the past year or so, and while I can't say the drug use isn't a problem, I can say that we're working through it. That being said, my boyfriend decided a while ago that he wanted to start quitting at the beginning of this month. After a couple relapses, he was feeling shaky, and I tried my best to assure him that he was trong enough and could get through the day without smoking. Unfortunately, my assurances weren't strong enough, and he skipped fourth hour to go smoke with his friends... and then completely bailed on the plans we'd made earlier in the week. All of that combined with the fact that he didn't call me like he said he was going to made for an extremely tough night.

Wednesday came along, and it started with a half-rant to Nathan (the aforementioned boyfriend), which didn't feel like it got us anywhere, and a Japanese quiz that I hadn't studied for. The first half of third hour was a ball of nervous stress, because Nathan and I sit next to each other, and I was still on edge and keeping my distance. We reconciled partway through, but things were still awkward and kind of shaky when Wednesday was over.

He was home sick on Thursday, and I had a partner English project due fourth hour that was a graduation standard—if you don't pass a grad standard, you earn a No Credit for the class. So I spent most of my day working on it, wasting my research time in Astronomy (we're making sundials. Also a grad standard), my entire Graphics class (which was alright because I was done with my project), and all of lunch to finish. I did finish, but I did so with minimal help from my partner three minutes before class started. Because I had to work through lunch and had Driver's Ed from 3 to 6 (like I did on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as well) I didn't get to eat anything until I got home on my bike around 6:30. Things got a bit better once I ate, and Nathan and I talked some things out.

Yesterday is... possibly indescribable. I can only think in bullet points. I can't remember much of the school day, except that the odd stitch in my side that I've had since Tuesday moved yet again and centered on my left ribs, so that I had breathing trouble all day...

Then, during lunch, a friend of mine came over with a panicked look on her face, and asked if she could talk to me. I said yes. She told me that a close friend of mine, Joe, had mentioned to her that he was going to sell some sort of illicit substance to someone, and she and a friend of hers had turned him in. Please understand, the fact that Joe was selling something was not at all unexpected. He's been doing so for several years now. However, the fact that these two girls had turned him in struck me hard. Joe, you see, has also just gone sober, and I was afraid primarily that being turned in and punished however he happened to be punished would force him into insobriety once again. I was shaken when I heard later that Joe has been pulled mysteriously from his third hour class and hadn't been seen since.

I didn't have much time to dwell on it after that—I had English, and then Emily came home on the bus with me because my brother's band, Canis Major, had a show last night. We talked about some serious shit and some random shit, had raspberry ice cream, and rocked out like crazy at The Garage for half an hour. XD While we were hanging out at The Garage, before Canis Major played their set, we texted Joe, sending him love and hoping that he was alright. He called us just as we were leaving...

• Arrested and charged with a third-degree felony, selling a prescription narcotic.

• He's expelled for the rest of this school year

• He's on probation until he's 21

• He spent five hours in jail

He also... apologized. He apologized for it being disappointing that he'd been selling/involved with the drugs in the first place. He told me I was right, and his luck would finally catch up to him; and it had.

Emily and I spent the rest of the night running around in the rain, singing songs that reminded us of him, because we are so happy.

I found out later that night that three of Nathan's good friends got caught smoking weed. None of them had ever been caught, and he would have been with them if he hadn't decided to go sober officially after Tuesday's fiasco.

I'm glad all of this is finally over.