time of your life

2003-01-11 - 11:57 a.m.

i love it when people randomly jolt me out of melancholy with questions such as, 'do you want pancakes?' not, 'i'm making pancakes, would you like some?' not, 'what would you like for breakfast?' no, it's my mom, turning to me as i cloister myself into the writing room, asking, 'do you want pancakes?' do we even have pancake stuff? i don't know, and i don't ask. i simply say, 'yes. pancakes would be great.' because moms are magical like that. moms can make pancakes appear out of a seemingly empty cupboard.

the world just seems sublimely shitty right now. my mom's best friend is almost certainly getting shipped off to war. even though my dad was in the army and fought in vietnam, i still can't fathom the concept of just giving random people weapons, pointing out other people whom they've never met in their lives, and saying, 'go. kill them.' that's fucked up.

mom has been depressed. she asked her daughters to stay with her last night. 'i just don't want to be alone tonight.' and i don't know what to say or do. sometimes i wonder if i'm truly comforting in my core desires, or if i'm simply struggling to find the right thing to say, to pacify others, to smooth things over on the surface. i don't know how much of me struggles to act like a good person and how much of me is inherently good. how much of one or the other makes a person ‘good?’

i figured out a little secret in my life the other night. i realized that all my life i've tried to be many things, but almost always i'm struggling to be good, and to be loved. those two among all others appear over and over again. and while i take the full burden of being good upon myself, i find that i leave being loved up to others. i still feel like a failure on both counts. i wonder where these desires come from?

my dreams have been vibrant, colourful, and troubling of late. the night before last i dreamt that someone stole my car while i was standing a few feet away from it, talking on my cell phone. i had left it running to warm up. it was xmas eve. i turned around and she was gone. amazingly enough i was standing right outside of my father's office, which also just happened to contain the 911 unit. so i ran in and started gushing about how my car had been stolen right outside. i was sobbing and upset. they were very calm. too calm. i needed immediate action, and they were calmly sitting there, getting details, barely moving. i was certain that they were letting the car thief escape. i waited in the station in hopes of getting a ride home, it being xmas eve and all.

that's the second dream i've had in a month or two in which my car was stolen. it freaks the shit out of me. as soon as i woke up i walked over to the window just to double check that cinnamon was still there. and yes, she was indeed.

last night's dream involved being in this sunny valley on a blue-sky day, having a picnic. there was a huge gathering of people sitting up near the top of the valley, on a green grassy slope, having a picnic as well. i walked up to them to say hi. they turned out to be vampires, and they wanted head. i didn't want to do it, but i knew that they'd kill me as well as the people i was with if we didn't give them head.

flash forward to me being on 'the real world.' i was the quiet one, and media and the like had given me the nickname, 'the mossy one,' because i was so quite and refused to take part in any of the activities. we were all on this huge steamboat, taking a dance cruise down a river. we were all dressed up like a different singer, and when our song came on, we were supposed to get up and lip-synch and dance to our song, then get in line. i was dressed as some old soul singer from the 70's in bell-bottoms and an afro wig. my song came on and i just sat there. it was too embarrassing, and i hated the other people. they all started yelling at me, 'hey, get up there, it's your song!' in mean voices, but i just sat there. they moved on with the songs, and a girl who looked rather like angelina from wilson came over to me and said, 'do you just not know the words?' i nodded yes, even though i knew enough of the words to do the lip-synch. so the girl showed me the dance. 'okay, step left, swing, swing...' i told her that i'd already missed my song, and she said that i could do it at the end while everyone else is doing the finale. so i danced and felt like an idiot, but it appeased the others. there were two guys on the trip, and they were both huge jerks. the brunette basically just followed his friend's lead, but the blonde was really terrible and mean to me. we were all sitting along the side of the boat in a line with our feet dangling over the side, the brunette, the blonde, and me. the blonde just kept talking about how i was so going to be the one whom he voted off, and his friend kept laughing and agreeing with him. i told them both to fuck off as i stared down at the dark twilight water feeling really miserable.

see, i've been having all these strange quasi-nightmare dreams lately. the night before the car dream i dreamt that i was in an old silent horror movie, only it wasn't a movie, it was real life. i was trapped in this dark haunted mansion with all these other people from old silent movies, such as lon chaney as the phantom of the opera. while that one wasn't too scary, it was really creepy.

what’s with these dreams? what’s with being good and being loved? what’s with life being sublimely shitty? and how can mom make pancakes out of light and air?

last night we were going to see 'chicago,' but there was no parking available at the art theatre so we just went over to the nearest cinema and saw 'two towers' for the third time. the first time i was really critical, just because that's how my mind works. the second time i was blown away, getting chills before big battles, totally engrossed in the world before me. by the third time it became slightly more complicated. we know how evil and wrong it is to talk during a film, believe you me. but now that we've seen the movie so much, it's really difficult to not whisper during the boring parts. true, there aren't many. but just about anytime faramir or theoden were onscreen, moo and i had trouble sitting still. every time theoden had one of his weepy-ass monologues we'd make jerk off motions towards the screen, and every time faramir was being dick (like he pretty much always is) we'd give him the finger. nothing huge, it was just subtle gestures for our own amusement.

as you may or may not recall, i was rather harsh on treebeard the first time around. now i've realized that treebeard is actually very well done. in truth, i only had one qualm with him in the first place, and that's that he shows fear. it's only in one line, at one place in the film. but in the book he's fearless, completely, utterly fearless. when he and the ents take action, they take motherfucking action, no hesitation, no dramatic words, no thoughts of being overcome or defeated at all. and i just missed that, in that one brief sentence, that one line. otherwise he's great.

theoden and faramir still suck, though.

i'll never forget how after i watched the film for the second time i had to go to work, and no one could touch me for the rest of the day. i was dreamy and distant, still polite and efficient, but just not there. i was still in middle earth, and no one could take me out of that place.

i wish that i could be there every day that i go to work.

lane wrote me back, said that yes, she's coming to visit, as is rikki. she will rescue me, if only for three days. she said that she understands having a sucky job, and that that's all the more reason to move to earth city, or better yet, mass with her in the spring. i don't want to move to earth city, i've pretty much figured that out. i like it well enough, but i don't want to live there. i know this, so why waste time moving there if i don't want to stay? of course, i feel like that about just about everywhere, which is why i'm stagnant and immobile where i am. maybe mass could be cool. even if i just get another shitty job up there, at least i'd be somewhere else, doing something new. but i know that i don't want to live in mass. or do i? i keep feeling the pull to go west, but what the fuck? what will i do once i'm out there? and west covers a lot of area. where am i supposed to go?

perhaps i'll set myself a little deadline. if i can't find anything better, i'll move to mass with lane in the spring. hey, at least then we'd be able to really work on our band. too many options, too many dreams, not enough focus, not enough realization.

fuck all if i have any answers. i'm doing good just to keep my head above water.