23 III 2003 - 20:35 - trivialis56 (aut: mehercle!)

So I missed the equinox again, and it's time to make another archive page, and so this is why I'm writing (even though I can ill afford the time -- and that I'm doing this in despite of my many other obligations probably means that this online journal business now counts as a low-level addiction for me -- but we already knew that. Yes!) Also, it's the first time in a long while I've been able to update (since I've stopped being online around midnight, or at least having the impulse to add an entry around midnight, because as many of my friends on the East Coast (who must have been up at 3 AM themselves, so who's complaining?) can testify, I actually am still online, anyway, and thus have been whanged by the not-a-gold-member?-don't-update thing, but now we're back to non-peak-hour thing, and I'm not sure I said anything right there. Onwards!)

I think that when I told myself this was just going to be a harmless little equinox-update, I absolved myself of the need to make sense. Or perhaps it's a week's worth of comments resurfacing. Something like that. I had something:

[Idea: Maybe I begin to feel a little better because, for the first time since December, the weather outside matches the way I feel.

There is, of course, nothing to this idea. But this is the weather: brilliantly sunny today -- after heavy rains and winds in the early morning. Rain from Wednesday to Saturday, supposedly, but actually on Thursday, Friday, and now Sunday perhaps through Tuesday. High winds almost every night, changing to glorious weather just in time for the fine anti-war protest that passed by the symphony hall (ever try to get a cello across what seems a neverending stream of protesters? I don't envy the bassists) on Saturday.

Yep, it's that time of life again where the mood swings they are wide and unexpected. I feel as if, having been through these cycles so many time before, I should have broken out of them long ago, but I'm not being particularly reasonable to expect it, I think. Then again, since when have I been reasonable or patient where I am concerned?]

but figured that by now it was dated, as we've had quite a few more anti-war protests since then, with another slated for Monday. Traffic should be quite merrily disrupted, which is fact -- as for trickier issues regarding this form of protest, I'll say the jury's out for now, because I can see where both sides sort of have a point, although I wouldn't go as far to either side as to start yelling "Shame!" or "Traitors, the lot of you!" at people. Official policy of the school (not quite hippie, ilonina -- prides itself on being liberal, sure, and I'll send you a link to our mission statement sometime, but at least respectable, and certainly not like some of the other public schools in our region -- see Berkeley High's "die-in.") is "business as usual" and as such walking out for a protest is an unexcused absence, means seven periods of unexcused absences and a day's worth of suspension. Still, people walked out Thursday and were back the next day, so perhaps extenuating circumstances (first day of war? tricky to know the etiquette for that situation -- should one offer nationals of opposing belligerent nations one's handkerchief? I think certainly -- what does Vanderbilt say?) apply. As much as I love my school and city, sometimes I cannot wait to get out. That was a non sequitur, sure, and when I figure out how I made the leap, I'll let you know.

Presentation tomorrow: all I can come up with is a general sense of dread. What I haven't confessed is that I haven't begun my reading in any sort of detailed manner and will have somehow to fill up ten minutes. Think I can, extemporizing? We shall see... I am full of general architecture of the situation and history so at least I've framework to build around. Sometimes I feel like such a fraud but in this case I fear I may actually be one. The teacher, of course, said that our presentation was not particularly important -- thus my motivation has not been great.

Downward swing in emotion, and I'm not sure whether it is chemical or related to current (and highly disturbing, need we say) events: I find it suddenly very difficult to care about differential equations or about improving my first and visceral responses to Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth -- unfortunate, to be sure, with all my projects due, but I suppose I'm lucky that for now, the things I've always cared about (history, Latin) are reaching me. Still I am puzzled -- where did all my energy go?

Something I had meant to write, earlier: that I fear now being perpetually a little brother, running after everyone else and hoping that if I behave rightly, they won't turn their backs on me. I've spent enough time doing that, considering that I actually am a little brother (to three fine sisters who did their share of scarring me, repent now, and go about their business -- most of the time my interaction with them and their friends is increasingly civil, although there are still the potentially scarring moments, mostly coming from ways they taught me to think about myself -- their right, after all, but no less damaging.) I ran after their friends, and something that worries me is that I seem to have been doing the same thing with all the people I ever cared about. I think I still do, and if someone were to exclaim "But isn't that exhausting?" I'd probably say "Why, it is. And I'm sick of it." I have a feeling, though (like the feeling of alienation which I wrote about perhaps in the beginning of this diary, near the end of my freshman year) that this particular beast won't be so easy to shed, and now I know I've mixed my metaphors.

I think I'd find making friends a lot easier if I could just be, without worrying about rejection all the time (and taking any rejection as -- obviously! -- a reflection on all my own deep-rooted flaws. Which they may be, sometimes, but as a blanket rule?). Also, life would be more enjoyable without this crippling fear of abandonment. Ah, and now the trick is to work for all this pleasure.

(But how?)