Unleashing the crazy

Hey!  You!  Read this and give me some life advice to ignore!
On with it.
I'm not really sure what I'm doing with my life, like at all.  If you've been reading for a while, you will have noticed that this is a trend.  It's a major trend, I would say.
Welp.  I am a world-class worrier.
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Plaid.

It's a big deal around here.  And stripes.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
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Fiction Friday!

Hey!  If you're here from Mr. Stonebender's blog, welcome.  If you're not here from Mr. Stonebender's blog, welcome!  Remember this?  It's revised!  It's been all prettied up, and this! Is! It!  Yay!  Other fiction by me is all right here, if you'd like to check that out as well.  Enjoy!

Legs in a Tangle

These words are best read out loud, starting slowly and quietly and gradually getting faster and louder and a little scary. A lot scary. The kind of scary that most of us keep buried, deep down where no one can see us ever and we can all act normal on the outside. Smile for the picture, honey. Smile and look pretty.
We've known each other for a long time, haven't we? Was it you who I met years ago, on that night turned morning, don't you remember that? I think I remember it. I thought it happened, but maybe it was all in my head. A lot of stuff was all in my head, back then. But you said that I could conquer it all.
A lot of stuff is all in my head now.
We are holding hands and then I walk away because it's cold rainy I want to go inside inside inside, but you're here and I want to stay with you. You make it okay, you make me stronger. You should come inside, why not stay a while, but you have to go someplace else, someplace important, someplace without me.
I go inside anyway, go home, open the door and close it, sit with my back against it, legs in a tangle of smooth black on the floor, shoes have disappeared somehow and I can't look anyone in the eye, not that there's anyone to look at but you know what I mean? I stare at me and I worry about what's going to happen and I worry about what's already happened and I worry about the things that are happening right this very instant and bam! There's no getting out now, we're in this for the long run, we're in it together. You are stuck, my friend.
That's a lie. I'm all alone. It's okay. I keep telling myself that - I'm okay with it, I'm alone and I like it that way, I'm alone and I don't have to care what anyone else thinks because I am me, and I am good with that, right? Everything about me says something else, everything about me says no it hurts you, doesn't it? It has to hurt you too!
It doesn't.
(I tell myself that lie too.)
I grab onto my hip bone, I love having bones that stick out like that, protrude, and I tug and tug at it, until I can pull it out. I hear a crack at the back, and it's a little bloody, but I don't mind, I've seen blood before, enough to stop caring.
I can't stand up now, but who has to know, I throw my bones across the room, and look back down, down at me. I can conquer it all, I can conquer the world. I want to go away, I want to melt right now. You see, it's not that I want to die, it's that I just want to stop existing. I want to not be awake. Can we make that happen, you and me, together? Just stop being?
Oh wait. It's just me, now.
I pull my tights down a little bit, then trace the scars, up and down my other hip, graceful, beautiful curves, stretching to touch my ribcage and down to my thigh. I did them one by one, each marks a different occasion of hatred pain regret. Ribcage. I need to tear that apart too. Fingernails to sternum, tear at it until it cracks in half and pull it apart too, now there's lungs squishy and exposed and still, somehow, doing their thing.
I stopped doing my thing a long time ago. It must've been something, right? Right? I did something, I was someone. I must've been.
I remember numbers though, before, numbers that I took to heart, numbers that I used build a body for me to live in. Who wants to be a person when you can be data? When we went off into your world, my binary body felt just like home. I want to be row after row of zeros and ones, take the feelings right out of it.
I hate feelings. They're messy and bloody and I wanted to be bone rather than flesh. I don't need to be that human.
Palm to forehead, I claw an eye or two out, and now I can't see, but what was there to see, what was there in the first place? Nothing worth the effort, I think. Nothing worth getting out of bed in the morning. I'm going to sleep now, there's no more reason to be awake. I'm going to dead now, there's no more reason to be alive.
I stand up. We can't be so pathetic now, can we? We keep on going, because we are strong, just as strong as we can pretend to be. It's harder to pretend on your own. I picked up my pieces and put them back where they belong, stretching the skin to fit over them and sewing it back into place.

 Conquering it all, just like you said.

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I just wanted to show you

My four favourite A Softer World comics of all time.
In chronological* order.
Here They Are, Love.
I might've just posted this on my blog so that I could close out of the tabs on Chrome and not feel like I was losing something.  Maybe.
Let's forever remember December 22, 2011 as the day Door Sixteen, who I love and adore, tweeted me.  Let's also remember it as the day I looked like an idiot in front of her.  NBD.
Also, big things are happening in the future involving fiction.  And it'll probably be very exciting very soon.  I'm pumped for it, pretty much.
Christmas is the day after tomorrow.  That's odd, isn't it?  I mean, I'm sitting three feet away from my Christmas tree, but it doesn't feel like Christmas yet.  Is it the astonishing lack of snow?  Is it the fact that I haven't sung any carols this year?  Who knows.  Huh.
*I spelled "chronological" right on the first try.  Like a boss.

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Up at night

In the part of yesterday morning before the sun rose, so I can consider it the night before last.  Or last night.  Or whatever.
I was trying to go to sleep, it was past five, I wasn't tired enough to sleep, i had too much going on in my head.  Like always.

So.  Yeah.  I made a list of all the stuff I wanted to write a blog post about, all the stuff that I needed to get rid of, and now I'm turning that list into a blog post!  Yay!
Fear: I'm not quite sure why fear was on the list.  But, um, fear.  It controls people sometimes, and that's a problem.  Or maybe it's a good thing.  Maybe it's all that's keeping us safe, sometimes.
Don't know how to live:  Do you ever get that feeling where you wonder if you're doing everything (or anything) right?  This is your time/youth and you're wasting it doing *insert thing that I'm doing* when you should be doing something better/worthwhile/productive.  I get that feeling a lot.  I generally learn to cope with it, in whatever crippled way I can manage.  Eh.
Other people and being social:  It used to happen, like a lot, that I'd be sitting at home, being bored, doing nothing and wishing that my friends were free.  Right now, when we're on break, it seems like everyone else is feeling the same way.  In theory, this results in more social activity, and so far, it has.  This is positive.  I like doing things with people.
The next thing on the list is Tavi/my general feelings about fashion and feminism and a lot of stuff.  That's going to take a while to talk about, I'm putting it at the end of this post.  Instead, let's talk about the Beerhorsts.  They live really close to my friend and they are a family of crazy artist hippies in the best way possible and I kind of want to be like them.  And this kid?  I think we should be best friends.  No joke.
It seems like it's all about being happy, and I like that.
The next bullet is Makena/BYU/Mormons/Religion- I'm not quite sure what I had to say about that conglomerate of topics, except that Makena was trying to convince me to come to BYU for school.  Um...I think it is not going to happen.  But it was worth a shot.  And, I mean, Brett Helquist went there, and we all know the passion with which I love him.  And Ken Jennings, QuizBowl rockstar.
Living in the present:  It's good!  It feels alive!  I should do it all the time!
What if I drop out of college and make some bad choices to write a book about later:  To be honest, dropping out of college is forever on the radar of my life.  That's probably not going to change until I'm done with college, when it will no longer be an option, because it's looking like grad school is seriously not on the radar of my life.  MFAs are a little useless.  A lot useless, unless you want to teach, and I don't want to teach art.  I can maybe see myself teaching writing.  I just wonder if I'm getting what I want out of school and such.  And I kind of wonder if I would like the average college experience.  Judging by what my friends have said, it involves a lot of alcohol.  However, the idea of making bad choices solely to write about later is kind of entertaining.  I've always kind of wished that I could quit college and write.
The next bullet point is "Lesbian Sherlock Holmes?  Yay for Sherlock!"  Which...I can't explain.  At all.  Except that...SHERLOCK IS COMING BACK IN JANUARY AHHHHH!  AND I SAW SHERLOCK HOLMES 2 AND IT WAS STELLAR!!!!!  I'm not sure about the lesbian part of that.  But, um, yeah.
I've been staying up far too late and waking up far too late as of late.  This will have to change tomorrow/today, as I'm going to have to leave the house at one in the afternoon.  I'm debating about whether I should stay up all day/night or just try to sleep a bit and wake up at ten or so.  Agh.  I want to be a little more normal in this regard.
The final point is this, except incredibly misspelled - "I want all the people I like to be in the same place all the time" so that we can hang out all the time and they can grow very irritated with me.  Obviously.
That point from earlier that I didn't talk about earlier just because it would've taken forever:  If you haven't seen it already, watch this video.  If you have seen it already, watch it again for good measure.  I'll wait.




My mother never told me that I had to be pretty.  I had to be clean.  I had to be clothed.  I was told I was pretty, but pretty, surely, was not what mattered.  Smart mattered.  Creativity mattered.  Pretty was never that important.  Just like boys, it was nice to have around, sometimes, but surely not all that I should care about.  I am thankful for that.  But as a result of all that, I'm not a person who thinks about their clothes very much.  I wear things that I prettymuch am okay with, but I'm getting to the point where I want a little more than prettymuch okay with how I dress.  This is probably because of The Sartorialist (who I'm not linking to because he's a jerk who doesn't like TAVI, who is a genius rockstar who I adore) and the pretty art school kids.  They all dress really well, even the ones who don't shower very often.  I want to care more about how I dress and what I look like, but I'm not quite sure what I want to dress like.  There are a lot of times when I want to wear a uniform, essentially, the same thing every day.  Like a white shirt and jeans, adding a sweater and scarf when it's cold.  Then, there are other times when I want to look pretty and feminine and wear dresses with ballet flats, and there are other times when I want to layer a bunch of crazy mismatched things that somehow go together just perfectly.
I know I don't have to choose just one, but I would really like to settle on one thing to be happy with one style.  Is that too much to ask for?  I just want to have a personal style without thinking about it too much.
And if I ever get grey hair, I'm going to cut it short and dye it crazy colours and I won't care what anyone thinks about it.

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A sense of place

This place is interchangeable with every other suburb in the upper midwest, or the rest of the country, for that matter.  There's no soul.  There's nothing.
I was trying to think of something to do here.  What do people do for fun, anyway?  They go shopping?  They go smoke weed in the woods?  What else is there to do?  This is how I got started doing creative stuff, I think.  I didn't love it so much as I was thankful for something to do.
Being back here makes me feel like I'm in high school, in the worst way possible.  It's all the terrible stuff (being bored, hating everything) without any of the good stuff (seeing your friends every day at school, quizbowl).  It's odd, isn't it?  I'm not saying that I love Grand Rapids, as a place, because deep down, I don't.  It's a stepping stone, a stop on the way to someplace big.
It's motivating, at the very least.  A few days here and you're willing to try as hard as you can to get out.

It's alright though, I have all the commas I need.  I'm going to watch The Virgin Suicides sometime soon and write this damn novel.  And find some people to hang out with.

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Odd Fiction Saturday. It's a thing. I promise.

These words are best read out loud, starting slowly and quietly and gradually getting faster and louder and a little scary. A lot scary.
We are holding hands and then I walk away because it's cold rainy I want to go inside inside inside, but you're here and I want to stay with you. I go inside anyway, go home, open the door and close it, sit with my back against it with my legs in a tangle of black on the floor, shoes have disappeared somehow and I can't look anyone in the eye, not that there's anyone to look at but you know what I mean? I stare at me and I worry about what's going to happen and I worry about what's already happened and I worry about the things that are happening right this very instant and bam! Now we're down the rabbit hole. There's no getting out now, we're in this for the long run, and we're in this together.
That's a lie. I'm all alone. It's okay. I'm okay with that. I keep telling myself that, I'm okay with it, I'm alone and I like it that way, I'm alone and I don't have to care what anyone else thinks because I am me, and I am good with that, right? Everything about me says something else, everything about me says no it hurts you, doesn't it?
It doesn't.
I tell myself that lie too.
I grab onto my hip bone, I love having bones that stick out like that, protrude, and I tug and tug at it, until I can pull it out. It's a little bloody, but I don't mind, I've seen blood before, enough to stop caring. I can't stand up now, but who cares, I throw my bones across the room, and look back down, down at me. I want to go away, I want to melt right now. You see, it's not that I want to die, it's that I just want to stop existing. I want to not be awake. Can we make that happen, you and me, together? Oh wait. You're not here anymore. Asshole. It's just me, now. Dammit.
I pull my tights down a little bit, then trace the little scars, up and down my other hip, graceful, beautiful curves, stretching to touch my ribcage and falling like feathers onto my thighs. Ribcage. I need to tear that apart too. Fingernails to sternum, crack it half and pull it apart too, now there's lungs squishy and exposed and still, somehow, doing their thing.
I stopped doing my thing a long time ago. I can't even remember what it was now.
I remember numbers though. There were a lot of numbers, before, numbers that I took to heart, numbers that I used to make myself into a person, a person I never could be. Who wants to be a person when you can be data? I want to be binary, I want to be row after row of zeros and ones, take the feelings right out of it.
Palm to forehead, I claw an eye or two out, and now I can't see, but what was there to see, what was there in the first place? Nothing worth the effort, I think. Nothing worth getting out of bed in the morning. I'm going to sleep now, there's no more reason to be awake.

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Semester in review?

Is it weird to do a semester in review mere weeks before you write your year in review post?  Should they just be lumped together?  Are they fully seperate, or is it a more integrated, holistic thing?  Did I accidentally schedule three quote of the months for the same day?
Does anyone really care?
I'm going to lump them together.  I'm lazy.
This year:  OH MY GOSH, SO MUCH FREAKING DYING.  Hi guys, let's all set a goal for 2012 and call it "STAY ALIVE, FOOL"  We're not going to die next year.  Three people from my family, three people from school.  That's enough, kthnx.
This semester: I learned a lot.  I felt like a failure a lot.  I probably did the best in Written Rhetoric, which I'm slightly worried about.  Does this mean that I should reconsider my whole life and all my choices ever?  YEP.  Does it mean that I'm going to change anything?  NOPE.  Is this all for the best?  Probably.
I hated 2D with the firey passion of a thousand suns, but I passed it.  I was okay in Intro to Furniture, and I generally liked Design Drawing.  Apparently DD is supposed to be really difficult and everyone hates it.  I guess I am an anomaly?  I figured that out a while ago.  Also, ART HISTORY.  It was wonderful.  Like, awesome.  Sigh.  Art history.
What else do I have to say?  Some sweeping statement about how I've grown and changed and become the person who I am today through perserverence and DAMNIT, I QUIT NANOWRIMO AND SOMETIMES I HATE MYSELF FOR IT.

Yeah.  I'm feeling a little erratic right now.  I'm going to go write.  Or sleep, for that matter, since I've been up for a while.  Maybe a Fiction Friday?  Maybe a Fiction Saturday?  Who knows!  The possibilities, they're endless!

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Quote of the Month

"Fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true."
John Green


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Quote of the Month

"Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time."
Kurt Vonnegut


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Quote of the Month

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art—write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can; and I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. ”
Neil Gaiman

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A jumbled up bunch of stuff.

Today it feels like my face is puffy and misshapen, but we're going to write that off to the fact that it is winter and my nose is dripping and I only have class seven more times this semester. Yay! Well...a little bit "Yay!", and a little bit "Fuck!"

I'm not quite ready to do a semester in review yet, but I will be.  It'll happen at some point, and when it does, I hope that it'll be deeply interesting.  Deeply interesting to people who, you know, care.
I'm writing a book next weekend, you know.  It's gonna be awesome.   The same kind of awesome that you feel when you are doing something incredibly hard but incredibly fulfilling, where it sucks in the moment, but looking back, everything was right and you were so alive, right then.
I want to feel alive.  I want that part of me to wake up again.

Sometimes (a lot of the time, all the fucking time) I wonder if i should pursue just writing and ditch design.  I worry that I might like writing more than design, and that if I do, what am I doing with my life.  Then I remember identifying every visible car when I was fourteen, I remember discovering Apartment Therapy and midcentury modern and being able to put a name and a face to the styles I loved, and realizing that the kitchen table when I was little?  That was a Saarinen.  Both are right for me, I think, and I'll probably ping-pong between the two for the rest of my life, with a little outdoorsyness thrown in, for good measure.

It's good to get squares together.  I have four squares left.  I'm going to conquer the beast.  Also, I tweeted my thousandth tweet today.  How's that for some alliteration up in hurr?

My APUSH teacher referred to the test as conquering the beast.  Like, "On May 7th, you will go into room 160, and you will conquer the beast."
I think it sucks that I was born during AP's, and in a time that first communions frequently fall on, especially given the Catholicism of my dad's side of the family, and the Protestantism of my own family.  I went to first communion parties on my birthday, more than once.
We're getting off topic now.  I need to study so that I don't fail Art History and die sad and alone.  That's what happens to you if you fail Art History.

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Plan

I have a plan.  I'm going to be a beast in the rest of this class, then I'm going to leave school, go to Lowe's, get the stuff I need for my table project situation, go home, sleep forever, then wake up.  If I wake up early enough, I'll work on the table model for a while.  If I don't, then I'll just go to work.  After work, I'll go and study my butt off for art history for a few hours, then come home and do some squares.  Then art history.  Then more squares, and I have to rewrite a paper at some point.

Fun weekend, eh?  I'll have time next weekend to do fun stuff, like write the awesome novel of awesomeness that will be so awesome, and...probably just do that.  I'll go home at some point too.  I mean , I have to.  I have a legal obligation to be home for Christmas and make an appearance at the New Year's Day party.  

I'm thinking a lot about social interaction and the anatomy of friendships and such lately.  Moral of the story: I think the only reason it feels like I'm barely doing anything social at all is that I spent all summer constantly surrounded by people.  And I need to make more friends in GR.

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