College

I've been frantically shopping. Shopping for bedding and a lamp and a rug and all sorts of things I never realized I'd actually need. Like a water filter. And bed lifts. But even with a long and growing to-do list, my impending college attendance wasn't really solidified in my mind until today, when The Castillian finallyyyy gave me my roommates. It's almost like I was buying all of these dorm room essentials for someone else and now that they're bought, I'm realizing they're actually for me.

On the one hand, I'm so ready to be gone. I feel like I've done everything there is to do in Plano and now that I have this huge new plan just a week a way, every second I have to drive the same streets to the same houses and pass the same places just adds to the anxious pit in my stomach. Even guarding, which I've never denied is the easiest job in the world and even semi enjoyable, is killing me. It's like how I used to feel walking into synagogue, as bad and sacrilegious as that sounds. It's like all of my energy is just sucked out, and the loud whistles and screams and splashes that never really bothered me are amplified by my irrational and sudden hatred of work.

But on the other hand, I loved Plano. It was a nice place to grow up. Calm and steady, even though those are weird words to describe a city. Nothing changes, nothing rocks the boat. Relatively, the Plano Bubble was a good place to live. I love my friends. I'll miss them. But even that doesn't outweigh the fact that as great as this place was, it's time to leave.

Everyone has to strike out sometime. I guess eventually I'll figure out how to balance the part of me roaring to leave and the part of me grasping to everything I know.

I've been working on living more coherently, if that makes sense. Hey Lindsey, was this a good start?

kelly

"Don't

...be a stranger" is an odd phrase. It's meant to remind someone to stay close, to stay relevant. But it seems to me that being a stranger is next to impossible.

There's something to take from every single person you meet. From your neighbor and best friend at age 7, you learn you hate chicken and dumplings. From the bitchy girl in seventh grade you learn not to waste your time trying to be someone you aren't, because there are plenty of other people waiting for you to be someone you already are. From the boy you missed your chance with, you realize how important it is to be a little vulnerable, and from the boy you didn't miss your chance with, you begin to understand just how many fish there are in the sea- and eventually you figure out which ones are worth the catch. And those are just the people you know now, the ones you've already met. There are six billion people on the earth. There are six billion chances to find happiness, or love, or even just a smile.

In my life, I can't think of a lot of people that haven't made some sort of mark. Sure, there are kids I've passed in the halls and completely ignored, or the kids that I've passed in the halls that completely ignore me. But even they aren't strangers. A stranger to me is unattached, living in a completely separate sphere from your life, and while you're existing somewhere, anywhere, a stranger is existing somewhere else, unrelated and unknowing if your life. Everyone you meet shares your present. You can't fix the past, and you can't see the future, but for the one second where you brush shoulders with the boy in the letter jacket, or make awkward eye contact with the student teacher of your French class, your present is shared with someone else. Every single second. And yeah, they may not be meaningful, you may not be cognizant of any connections, but they're there. It's physics.


So to everyone leaving for school, to everyone I just defriended on Facebook, and to everyone who stumbled upon this blog while looking for something interesting (sorry to disappoint,) don't be a stranger. Because you can't. You've made your mark, intentionally or not, and when I'm old and crumbly and losing my mind, it'll still be there, tucked away in a corner of my brain somewhere. I'm sure of that.

kfine

I'm

...a writer, but I should have been a scientist. Not because I have an aptitude or even an interest in anything even remotely scientific, but because of the way I'm wired. Artists think with their hearts, and record, in whatever medium they do, what it says. Scientists think purely with their heads, and with the intuition that comes from the knowledge of the table
Of elements or the life cycle or whatever the hell else I immidiately forgot in science classes. But they're logical. They compare based on evidence and statistics and outweighing pros to cons. 

I'm like that. I hate the illogical. I hate when things aren't black and white but a hundred thousand shades of grey. If I didn't analyze everything from every possible angle, I'd consider myself almost childlike in my way of classifying thing. Black and white. Wrong and right. It's when left is right and right is wrong that everything gets confusing and complicated. Too much. 

That's one thing I couldn't deal with as a scientist. Something goes wrong and I shut down. That's not very professional. Writers are allowed to go three days without talking. It's a part of the creative process or some nonsense like that and maybe my future publishers will think my anxiety and nervous habits make me unique and not just weird.

Someone told me tonight that for someone that takes everything so personally, someone that uses 98% of their heart, I sure ignore it a lot. I wish that was something I wanted to work on. If the government could recreate my defense mechanisms, there'd be no terrorism. 

Kelly

I

...always said I would be jetting across the country for college. I said I'd have no connections back to Plano, that I'd start anew in some cold, non-Texan city and adjust to making new friends and the freezing weather with grace and poise. That I'd be the charming southerner without ever having to actually come back to the South.

But the truth is, as much as I loved the Northeastern schools that fit into my life plan, I changed this year. "My Give a Damn's Busted." It's harder for me to make friends than it used to be, and whether that's due to the thousands of little stresses I finally let get to me or just my utter inability to try, the fact of the matter is, UT is the best place for me now. I'll be close to home in case something happens, but I can make Austin as far as I want it to be. I'll know enough people that I wont be completely overwhelmed, but I'll have 50,000 new friends to change me even more. College is about growth. Who's to say I wouldn't run to the Northeast and become the exact same person I am now, with warmer clothes?

And then there's the whole My Two Best Friends I've Ever Had Are Going To UT Also thing. I tried so hard not to let that affect my decision, but it did. And I'm relieved. Kimberly and Allison and I have been best friends for literally longer than my memory can go back. Facing not just one change but the ten million that come with college and growing up and striking out would be impossible. And when I invariably do something stupid, they'll always be the ones to let me know how stupid it was and then remind me how much better I am than that. And when I do it again, they'll laugh and make it a nickname. And there's really nothing I'm going to need more than that next year.

"so that's that."

pieces.
kelly

Have

...you ever actually thought about a hug? Like the act of hugging another person? It's so weird. It's simultaneously the most primitive and complex way of expressing emotion without any words or sounds messing it up. Hugs probably existed before languages. When cavemen communicated with grunts and hand motions, hugs had long been accepted as a way to express love. Or even just like. Hugs are good at ambiguities like that.



Consider it. Strip away the clothes and the makeup and the general facade of everyday life and all we have left is our body. Our body that houses our brain for thinking and our heart for feeling, if you're the romantic type, and everything else for processing and moving and ensuring that we get where we want to go, when we want to get there, with no delay. Completely involuntary. Hugs have no need for medecations or remedies, they're more simple than that. One can even consider a hug a remedy in itself, atleast for abstract things like lonliness or anxiety.



It's basic. Humans want to share things, it's the way we're trained since birth. And, running the risk of sounding like a birds-and-bees talk, when you get right down to it all we can really share, all we really and truely own, is our body. Is a hug. And sometimes they're awkward, and sometimes they're unexpected, but do you ever walk away from a hug really regretting it? Of course you don't. Because at the least, a hug is a hello, a goodbye. But at the most? A hug is a declaration. I miss you, I love you, or maybe just 'I can love you'. At the most it's a promise. And when we're old and decrepit and words fail, hugs won't. Parting might, but hugs will never fail.

One Minute

Write about a way you need to catch up in your life.




I could write about how much work I have to catch up on, because I do. Not that I have a desk job with quotas, just the usual teenage English papers and science tests. But instead, I'm going to write about ketchup. I hate ketchup so much. I actually compiled a short list of foods I hate and it really spans a lot. Like...ranch. Just the smell makes me want to die. And bologna. I already distrust that food because of its sneaky spelling, but it is really just disgusting. And couscous. That one I’m not sure how to spell, but it's all we ate on the mountain and therefore I cannot stand it. Maybe I associate a lack of oxygen and ten hour hikes with tuna couscous and that's why I hate it? Whatever, it's gross. Also on the list is blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, fish of any kind, duck because that shouldn’t be eaten at all, pork "because it isn’t kosher"....that's all I can remember. This is one minute. This is all I’m writing. I'm devoid of inspiration.

Uncanny

JAIME finally let me borrow her motion city CD and now im obsessed with this. so im posting it. so I dont actually have to write anything. brilliant.

Too Close

If I stand too close
I might fall in
But if I'm too far gone
I'll never win
And if you believe in me
I might just wanna spend some time with you again


I'm afraid I tend to disappear
Into an anxious state
When you draw near
There is no reasoning
It's quite a silly thing
But it's the way I've been for years


So I will understand if you don't stay
They say I'm great at first
But then the magic fades
Into an awful hue of dismal views
And a pessimistic attitude


All this distance
Years of sweet resistance
Swirling overhead like angry clouds of discontent


I have apologized a billion times
When I've gone off the wall
Like Buster Rhymes
And pulled a stupid stunt
That left you thinking
There was something wrong with me
You've thrown a few choice phrases at my way
And I've ignored them all
As best I could
Except that tiny bit
How I just can't commit
There was some truth in what you say


All this distance
Years of sweet resistance
Swirling overhead like angry clouds of discontent


If I stand too close
I might fall in
But if I'm too far gone
I'll never win
And if you believe in me
I might just wanna spend some time with you again
I'll spend time with you again


If I stand too close
I might fall in
But if I'm too far gone
I'll never win
If you believe in me
I might just wanna spend some time with you again