TURNING YOUR ORBIT AROUND
Hello, welcome back. I know I've been posting to this very infrequently, but that's just a manifestation of my (currently) shifting opinion on blogs and online personae in general. Also, I won't be able to handle yet another acquaintance telling me, "Hey, I got a blog. Isn't that hillarious! Blogs are so . . . I don't know . . . online therapy." Well, welcome to online therapy with me, friend. Stop making fun of bleeding-hearted "indie" "kids" who wear "sweaters," please? But aside from that, it's pretty inaccurate to say that having a blog is a dear-diary bleedfest because it simply ain't. Everybody holds back some details that they don't want to disclose, either because some things are apparently still personal or because they don't want to think about them at all. I plead the latter, if anything, although I feel pretty attached to the former as well. For one thing, it's bullshit how deferred our ways of communicating with each other have become. If I want to get an idea of how somebody's feeling without actually talking to them, I can check blogs, instant messenger messages and subprofiles, and piles of other pointless shit. (Of course, if I were ever to get a cell phone, you would just have to leave me a message because I'm not going to keep the fucker turned on, so the answering message is just another deferral, right, right.) If anything, actually, this would make blogs more like therapy, because you can make yourself sound so sane and justified when you're trying to explain yourself to a therapist who doesn't really know you but has "read a lot of books about your age group."

That in mind, here's the captain's log: I heard James Turrell (the artist whose show "Into the Light" has been at the Matress Factory for the last year or so) speak tonight, battling hundreds and hundreds (seriously) of art types to get into the very limited space. It was one of those intellectual things that was and is amazing, but not in a way that I can verbalize easily for people who weren't there. Before that, I had a pretty average day made better by the absolute sweetheart weather. I "may" or "may not" have a "date" tomorrow. Adam, Megan, and I had an insane dance party in my room around one because it was so nice and I was feeling fidgety. I did an amazing interpretive dance to "Wave of Mutilation" and frightened, absolutely frightened, with my staid sincerity.

I EAT THE CUCUMBER MY WAY
Everything has been exhausting lately, and I've felt most of the time as if I have to explain myself to everybody for everything. Schoolwork is always insane, and moreso when you add a four-day trip to a writing conference and all of the debauchery that goes along with it. I feel a little panicky in general, as if there are so many loose ends in my daily life that one day everything will just fall the fuck apart. I say this knowing, of course, that the moment anything settles down I'll be too bored to appreciate anything. So there's something not to think too hard about.

It's a good thing that writing is going well at the moment (and it is). I feel productive and excited about what I'm reading and writing. I also feel hopeful. Accordingly, I will hang onto this. I guess it's only my personal life that feels like a train station; but here's the thing: I am not going to try to explain my choices or occupations to anybody. I am sometimes really moody, and I'm not the loudest person in the group, and everybody can just shut up and fucking love me for it. I don't know why I feel so defensive while I'm writing this, but it's really interesting, isn't it? Of course, we spent the weekend in the country at my house, and now I feel a lot better about everything, pretty much. Some things remind me of what I "am" under the attitude and glittery sunglasses, the lipstick and the defiant lack of good grooming, and they're all at home. When I'm at home, I feel so good about washing my hands, drinking water, sleeping at night, and all those other normal things. Whereas in the city I feel best when I'm walking way too fast in the cold, from one place to another, at night, watching the lights' haloes jump, or getting on the bus after talking all night to get diner food, and watching the cloud machine in Panther Hollow churn out the first clouds in the sky.