07 XI 2001 - 12:00 - ira4

Note: |texthere| indicates thought in this entry, and probably will unless it's a poem, in which case it's a breath-mark because parentheses are usually reserved for thoughts in those, and I think I've just made everything even less clear than it was.

I don't have to go to school today because of parent-teacher conferences. It's nice having the day off; today, I woke up at 11:30 (voiceover: the forces of sloth are strong in this one), which was nice, and I'm trying to forget that I have an essay to write and some other reading to do. Right now, I don't have my glasses on, as this is my way of denying that I have to be up and about and probably practicing. I'll get some practicing in later, like, maybe once I've taken a shower and gotten my glasses on and properly warmed up my arm muscles.

Oh, about the thing that fell off our roof? Turns out it was a chunk of cement that would have seriously injured anyone in its path. We're still trying to figure out what happened. The last time I was up on the roof, it didn't look as if anything was loose, so we think maybe a bird hit the roof too hard. Yeah, I know that's a lame theory, but if anyone else has better ideas... (no, there wasn't an earthquake, not that we know of. And besides, our roof came through the 5.0 that happened like four years ago just fine. And this house is pretty new, too - we rebuilt just a bit after Loma Prieta. And there is something so weird about using earthquakes as a point of reference when I don't remember most of them and I really should stop using so many "and"s (grammar people, how should I have done that?) and if anyone knows what the opposite of "terminal" is (in terms of sentence structure), I'd be happy if he'd tell me. I'm coming up with neat words like "epexigetical," but I know that's not it, and oh my god, I'm still in parentheses, aren't I? Time to get out.)

I sort of wonder if and why people read this. I know that there are at least five people who look at it every so often, but Eon's early comment about the nothing that happens to him might just as well apply to me. (Sorry to be hijacking not only your guestbook now but also your prose. Hope you don't mind; it's probably just a phase.) I mean - why am I doing this? (Short answer: it makes me feel better. But not really.) It's not as if I write clearly, for chrissakes, and since when did it become fashionable to be as obscure as possible? (Not that I mind that so much, as I with my convoluted sentence structure probably have no place in any other trend, but...) amd it's not as if I write about things that no one else has experienced. (Although I may win points yet for having an odd combination of Issues. You know, "issues" with a capital "I," the one that people use when they say something to the effect of, "Stay away from the lad, he's got Issues.") I guess the reason I'm doing this is that I want to give myself the illusion that people care and that people will read. Either that, or it's to satisfy in some terribly unclear way the complex which one of my friends has dubbed the "I'm shit, and everyone who is my age is lower than me. Pah. I spit in your face, but only if you're my age or younger or have the brain of someone my age" complex. Yesss...

I guess an easy way to summarize the last paragraph would read something like, "I need validation, someone please tell me that what I write about is vaguely interesting, and if you'd be so kind, if you'd tell me the reason it's interesting at all, I'd love you, because I find my life at times purposeless and boring?" Except, you know, that Adam sort of has, and Ian who just stumbled on me has, and Al and Raych and T. keep telling me so, and so I guess the problem is me and my big loud lack of a spine, which might allow me to continue writing even if I believed that no one read it, which might allow me to believe that maybe there is something unique about me that sets me off from everyone else on this planet and everyone who's come before to boot, and also my twisted thinking which will not allow me to believe good things which people say about me. And good god, I can't cope, because it takes too much energy, and so I just bury it but there's only so much of it I can bury and I don't know what the hell it is except that it's threatening to drown me and that drowning is somehow a bad thing. And I'm just a kid, what do I know, but I want someone else to just carry me for a bit, to take care of my mind, but lord no, I can't have that, can I? Because it doesn't seem anyone can, not even those who deserve it and so it's even less likely for me.

And the sad thing is, this is merely a continuation of the fugue that's been playing in my head for the past seven years, the one that no one else can hear because, up to the present, I've been so damned good at hiding it, too damned good, and no one seems to listen because they can't when there's nothing to listen to. Except, my god, the signs are obvious to me, and when I make friends, they know me well enough that the signs are obvious to them, too, and each time the subject of the fugue comes in it tells me I'm not worthy for anything. Because someone who wasn't even my pediatrician, just worked in the same practice, told my mother that I was precocious in terms of book-knowledge but damned retarded in the emotional world, in empathic skills, and how could she know that that would shape my life for years to come, is still shaping it even though she's long left the practice, that I still don't relate well to other people, that sometimes the content of what I say goes unheeded because people don't expect an articulate child/teenager, even if that articulate one can't speak for beans and uses far too many parenthetical phrases and subordinate clauses and conjunctions; but I don't care, see? because it's my writing, because this is all I have, this and the music which is on temporary loan to me - because I've been told I'd be a waste in music, because I've been told I can be anything I want to be, because I have to make choices now about my career, about what to focus on, that I don't feel qualified to make as a mere fifteen-year-old and there is no. way. on. earth. that I can continue to run two courses at the same time, one leading towards music and another leading towards almost everything else, diplomacy, medicine, law, pedagogy, writing:

and because I'm a ridiculous creature, having been forced to grow quickly (and perhaps beyond my years, don't know if that's safe to say or if it's merely pride, hubris, whether I shall be struck with a lightning bolt for saying that) in some areas and not at all in others. And I at the same time would not part with this for the world and yet I would have no part in it, would want a breath of normal.

Because every teenager has some sort of pain, is self-absorbed enough to believe that theirs throbs the most, and I don't want to feel or fall victim to that but I am, this entire diary is an expression of it: but does it really count as teenage self-absorbedness if one knows this feeling from as far back as fourth grade? Answer me that, wise ones.

And I mentioned something far back about emotion as color, and right now, if I look into myself, there is only prussian blue mixed with grey...

And there's a longing to be more mature, dark, intense green, to be older so that I might deal with it better, but another part of me which says that that, too, is an illusion. To be older that I might be freer in some ways while bound more tightly in others.

And in the interim, most people continue to ignore how I feel because they have to deal with their own pain, but also they ignore the signs because one of the class freaks does not matter, never has mattered, never mind what family, circumstance, cruel society of children (and also, in the end, I) have made of me -

And my parents ask me to go to them but dismiss what I say with a laugh, a shrug, dismiss my emotions, say I don't really feel what I feel |oh really and you would know - why?| and tell me that this too will pass |oh yeah? it hasn't passed for the last six years, what makes you think this is different? and how dare you tell me that i'm not gay as if that will change anything, will change what i feel, will change who i am? because this is not denial, this is not a desperate search for an identity. no, mother mine, that search is still going on, hasn't stopped, won't stop because i like men. how dare you tell me that i don't know what i'm feeling, tell me that what i feel is not real, tell me that there is no way i can know, i'm too young, when you ask me to explain ballot measures and contracts that make my head spin but which i will translate for you in halting chinglish anyway? how dare you take the few things i know are mine, my feelings, my words, and try to make them insubstantial, the ravings of a confused teenager? because i am confused about many things, and i have much to learn about many things, but how intense, how true, how bloody, my feelings are is. not. in. their. number. but you are my parents, i must defer to you and yours as long as you are older than me, and so i smile, nod, contradict gently, seething all the while inside.| and it's not just my parents, it's almost everyone I go to who will take me so seriously at some points and then dismiss me as a child - for god's sake, treat me either as a child or as a proto-adult but I'm so honestly sick of this-all.

This is a game I know I can not win, a contest of prose which I know I will lose because of its rules, but that will not stop me from trying to beat off depression (or is it angst? too vivid for the latter, is my guess), the battle I can not win because I haven't the strength or the stomach for it, but I've got to play/write/fight anyway, because that's what I do. It's all I do, really. So you're not getting rid of me. Just try to give me your understanding, and perhaps your sympathy as well.

traho, trahere, traxi, tractum (3) to trail, pull along; to drag, pull violently; to draw in, take up; to breathe [air]; to draw out, to lengthen; to draw together; to attract; to take in or on, assume, derive; to prolong, spin out [just as I'm doing with this definition, sorry about that, this is a bigger dictionary, see note below]; to ascribe, refer, interpret.
Note: definition today is from Cassell's Latin-English/English-Latin Dictionary, just because I'm too lazy to go and get my Oxford Minidictionary -

lana, lanae f. wool

Thus, the idiom: lanam trahere to spin wool