January 20, 2002

Final project for my Writing Workshop class is due Tuesday. Here goes everything...

from the corner.
i.

so pink it makes your ass hurt.
but you’re not gay!
they don’t know that.

he wants to be
pink.
pink?
pink.

flaming pastel
pink
to make his dad
yell
pretty
pretty
pink.

strawberry blonde
no more –
you know, his curls
will match perfectly.

sally hansen – thursday,
then?
thursday.

it won’t last long,
you know.
i don’t care
nothing ever does.

oh, to be fifteen
with hair.

ii.

it doesn’t hurt so much if you can laugh about it.

fucking white people.
he sits, surrounded
by those he sees as
beige.

god damned
fucking white people.
we join in
fucking white people.

i know the pain inside
the clang of metal
as hate
and fear
and locker
collide.

fucking white people.
because that’s all
we can say.

iii.

don’t listen to her.
she’s stupid.
besides, she has a big butt.

she’s back
the stares follow her
by the few
who know

she smiles, laughs.
is it real?

maybe
if the dark
of the halls
is better than bright white
of hospital sheets

and the folded piece of paper
casually tossed to her side
curlicues and loops
handwriting of the innumerable
hers

dagger to her heart
they don’t understand.

try not to cry
try not to cry
try not to cry

try not to do it
no matter what.

iv.

la vita e bella.

i see it.
i see it
all.

beauty
never looked so good.

Yeah, well. It's Sunday Morning. It's just a restless feeling... And I'm too sunriseey to sleep and too lazy to work so here I am.

Today is my best boy "P"'s 21'st, so we were up 'till way past midnight (his birthday) with a function going on over at his house with at leat 57 other peers. And P's girlfriend Hellcat had another in-depth conversation with me like we only have when we are both in the zone.

Hellcat: "Why do you smoke so much pot?"

Me: You know how people waste X amount of hours a day watching TV, playing video games, wacking off? Me, I likes to smoke. By the way, how much have you had to drink? How old are you?

Hellcat: I see your point. But, think about you and the ladies. Does the lucky lady that you really want smoke pot every day?

At this point some random person from high school walks in. Cross-country or soccer or tennis or some team walks in....

Later I tell Hellcat: "You know, I think about that shit that you were telling me at LEAST once a week. But you know, drugs do something for conversation. I've talked with red and yellow, black and white, since I began smoking; and you never talk to me unless you're under the influence, so what's so wrong with the whole shit?

She passes out soon thereafter, and I am witness to several cock blocks (on both sides of the equation). I am soon wisked away to some people's house...I make it home... I come to computer lab after getting smokes.

I can't complain.

Again, today I saw the sunrise. It was wicked awesome.

So, this is my last day of freedom before classes start. Hopefully I will use it wisely, relax as much as I can, browse around on E2 and maybe pop in a movie or two.

In some ways I'm excited about classes to start since they'll give me something to do, but then again, that means too much work and stress which I hate dealing with.
So I guess I'll like it for a week or two at the most, which i'm sure is normal anyway.

Last night was fun, we went sledding down Libe Slope. For those of you who don't know Cornell, Libe Slope is the huge hill that separates central campus from west campus. I live on northcampus with all the rest of the fresham, so we just walked to the hill. At some points it is not too steep but for the most part it's awesome, especially close to Uris Library.

So we went for about an hour, and I have bruises and a small cut on my chin to prove I was there. So definately had tons of fun, espcecially trying to climb up the hill once we got down. There isn't actually that much snow here on the ground. Suprising since it snowed most of the day yesterday.
I guess I have to get used to this Ithaca weather. I left last thursday to come up here and in Washington DC, the weather felt like it was about to be spring. So yeah, it's pretty darn cold here.

So I'm all settled in finally, it took me a while to unpack since I had brought so much crap back with me. I guess that'll teach me for later semesters.

So, I guess that's enough rambling and random thoughts for today. I really hope I maintain my sanity this semseter. I actually didn't do all that badly (I passed chemistry!!!!). Everything should be proud, I think.

Never in my sick yet idyllic adolescence did I ever think that my mother and I would have a spat ringing with my own hormonal rage and rebellion, that I previously thought dormant within myself. Unfortunately for my pride, an unbalanced pituitary gland got the better of me, and the past week has been one of estrangement and belated coming-of-age for myself and my dysfunctional family.

The relationship between my mother and I has, ever since Le Divorce, been turbulent at best, although one would never guess it from the cool, calm exterior that both of us worked so hard at to show the world and delude ourselves. Frankly, we resented (resent?) each other for shallow reasons- I for her choice of a man that would feel at home riding the bull in a lower Arkansas strip joint, and she for my sullen intellectual superiority over the rest of the family, and my slight yet stinging barbs that she could never prove were more than innocuous. The details of our fight are really over a simple misunderstanding- I had failed to call her over a party that I was planning on going to. Like all feelings, I can recall the rage that swept over me at the time; but it is like the memory of an injury, you can not remembery why you had cried out in the throes of the pain. I finally good on my life-long threat to "go live with my father", packed up a few things, and left.

All of my runnings-away are the same, even the ones where I would pack up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bike to my girl friend's houses when I didn't feel like cleaning my room. It's cliche really- you want an escape, realize it, and then appreciate what you had at home. My father is a good man really, and I love him with all of my heart, but he does not understand the nature of women, and he thinks of me as a rebellious brat who is looking for a cocaine rush and sex with faceless men. (Okay, the "rebellious brat" part might ring true, but all of the rest is merely his projecting fears of his own adolescence onto myself). Staying with him was peaceful; a hippie at heart, I reaqquainted myself with Joni Mitchell and John Denver, as both of us sat together in front of a hazy sunset over a rocky shore to try and pick up the fragmented pieces of our lives. Alcoholism had ruined any hope both of us had for a "normal" family, and while we can talk about anything from hair to Heinlein like a normal father and daughter, there is a sort of undercurrent of resentment and passive-aggressiveness that is characteristic of almost everyone in my family. But I think my retreat has changed me, I no longer resent what is inevitable. To risk sounding banal, I am learning to count my blessings and enjoy our strange relationship- his warped sense of protection and my "know it all" attitude that it provokes.

As for my mother and I, I am learning to appreciate the path she chose vs. mine. In her days women didn't pursue the careers of thought and theory. You were practical and went to college to pick up an MRS degree... god forbid you actually went there because you had any sort of intellectual curiousity about anything. Middle age has aroused her latent intelligence, and she is coming around, to the point where her advice now extends beyond my finding "a good man". My mother once told me to find a rich man. I replied, "Honey, I AM going to be the rich man."

I wish I could think of myself as being above and beyond teenage angst. Fortunately for me, I can now see how fun it really is, and remember the self-centered ness of my high school world in years to come with both joy and regret; adolescence is my playing ground for idealism, before I must inevitably turn my attention to more practical matters.

I know she doesn't want to, I know she thinks there's no point, I know she thinks I could never say anything to sway her. But I need Brenda to talk to me. To call me. To hear me out. I really, really need to. I understand things now that she never thought I could. I am sure if I could just get her to hear me out, I could make her understand once and for all and change her heart. I wish she'd just talk to me. Please, Brenda, please just talk to me.

Sunday...windy, boisterous, and cold.

I love Sundays.

I love Sundays because I see my Button on them.

Button is an adorable little girl who loves me.

No matter what sort of darkness and evil is going on in the real world, there's nothing like being glomped by a tiny blonde child to drive it all away for a few small moments of beauty.

In other news, I'm working on my robot monster again. Well, all right, so all it really does is carry stuff. But it moves, and that in and of itself is progress.

Back to work.

This Sunday was just my typical Sunday, mostly spent playing Diablo II and evenings spent at a weekly gathering of business owners discussing marketing strategies for our companies. This particular Sunday had a few exceptions.

First of all, when I stepped on the bathroom scale, I saw that my weight dropped below 200 pounds. This was good news since I've been on a diet for two months, and reaching 200 pounds was my first goal.

I wanted to go out for the afternoon, but my sister decided to make a visit, so I could not go anywhere. I was at my computer playing a couple Super Nintendo games on an emulator when I was interrupted to go fetch a couple things my sister wanted to take home with her. Word of advice: DO NOT interrupt me while I'm playing Tetris. Later in the day, I did get over the feeling of negativity towards my sister for interrupting my Tetris game.

Since I haven't spoken with my sister since last week, I asked her about her college classes. She is taking a class titled Web Design Technologies. When I asked what was being covered in that class, my sister told me that the purpose of the class is to learn Microsoft Front Page. If I were teaching that class, I would be teaching the students HTML, some JavaScript, and CSS. I had to keep in mind that the typical student at the college where the class is being offered has the intelligence level of a retarded baboon. This is due to the fact that most of the students there are majoring in Nursing. The computer program there is also a joke. Sometimes the students taking the classes know more about the subject than the instructors.

I must now go to sleep, as I need to wake up to go to work and do a meeting after working hours.

I blame e2 for this. I went over to the Compound last night for some shindig. It was a going-away party for nocodeforparanoia, if my addled brain remembers right. I smoked alot of herb, had a real cool time, but my downfall was that I drank the tequila. I got home around 2:00, and had to be up at 8:30 for my first day throwing freight in a warehouse.

This job has already been a source of some irritation, as I had to stop smoking the herbus for nine whole days, 'cause the rat bastards test you when they hire you. Somehow, on only nine days, I managed to pass, and got called in for an eight-hour shift this morning.

My stomach was not happy when I woke up. To make matters worse, I had a glass of pineapple juice, then brushed my teeth, and both tastes kept coming back at me all day. Since it was my first day, I got partnered with a kid about my age who showed me the ropes. Fortunately, he was cool with me having to constantly run to the bathroom, and the water fountain. I really thought I would walk out after the first two hours and quit. I made it through the day, though now my feet hurt and my head hurts and my back hurts, and I don't really want to go back ever again, but I'm going back tomorrow for more of the same.

At least this time I won't have a stomach full of noder tequila. Sometimes it sucks, what we have to do for money.