12 VI 2002 - 14:54 - quotidianus19

Ig. I seem to be next on the review list, a state which gives me the jitters. I feel an urge to do something crazy, like go back and change all my entries and pad them with interesting material from my life. To do so, however, would be dishonest. Also, I don't really have the time for it; I have (as usual) homework and practicing to be done. So we'll make this a 'short one.' (I'm waiting for the laughter. Go on, I won't be offended.)

I began to write a postcard to my youngest sister today during class and I was shocked at how clipped the sentences I wrote were. I don't think a single sentence of mine lasted for more than about six words. Short declarative sentences are well and good in moderation, but this was excessive. She'll probably get it and think I was depressed or something. Am I? I can never tell.

Short sequences: the short declarative sentences of the early morning have been replaced with what would be a short, choppy, and probably nonsensical narrative if I were telling a story. I got a ride back to the city from Berkeley today from another student who needed to drive around for two hours so that her mechanic could test her engine's thermometer. One of the good things about this was that I got to know her a little better and I found out that someone else is irritated by the same things I am.

I should write it fifty times: I will not slap my classmates in frustration. I haven't yet, but I soon may, and it's not even as if I'm particularly good at German. It's just that, fine, all of us lapse into German. But not all of us babble and not all of us complain about how unfair a language is when we're confronted with a new grammatical concept. Yes. The language is unfair. This will quickly become full of vitriol if I continue, so I will move on.

This morning, I was sort of out of it, going into the BART station to catch the train which would take me into Berkeley, and I had to repress the impulse to tell every attractive man I met that he was beautiful. Most men don't take kindly to being told so by a male high school student, or at least that's what I'm told. I stayed up last night, making a tape of Indigo Girls songs for the BART ride (as long as I'm going to lose my hearing to either music or the shriek of the train as it passes through the tunnel, I might as well lose it to music) and watching England and Nigeria, live, on Telefutura, channel 66. England drew, 0-0, and so got a spot in the second round. I'm happier than I sound, really.

BART got me there early and so the classroom was deserted when I arrived. I managed to have a decent conversation with two of my classmates before class -- basically discussing what I want to do with myself, which seems to be the topic of the moment. Certainly an easy answer for the short term would be that I want to accumulate languages. (But what will I do with them?)

It is odd: I am told that the fact that I am a teenager who cares whether there is a God, who thinks about what the nature of such a God might be, makes me strange. Perhaps strange isn't the word for it, and yet I balk at using 'special.' I still wonder how one could not seek to explain, to give a source to, the wonder in the world. It doesn't have to be with God, but --

is it really that strange to wonder?

Then again, the same person who told me that also asked me if I derived a certain masochistic pleasure from getting up early in the morning to take BART in to Berkeley. (No, no more than I do during the regular school year; in fact, I don't have to get up as early as I do for school.)

Reading a sentence I wrote just a month ago ('[if i were called upon to do so, i could not speak it, could not draw it; and yet i know the play of green and brown and red in his hair]'), school seems so distant and yet the longing is the same. My senses, my memory, they have not changed; my place alone is not constant.

It is still entirely too easy to close my eyes and imagine how he might feel against me.