Crazed Machinations of the Failed Female

I'm beginning to think I'll never grow up.

I wrote a poem for Creative Writing, and it was kind of dribble but I also liked it... and I had to read it for the class, and I hadn't read anything of my own in front of people in a long time...And I've gotten so good at not being shy of things like that, of speaking up and expressing myself and speaking in front of others, but sometimes I revert back to how I was before the change.

A shyness that's painful and paralyzing, a nervousness that makes my whole body tremble, an agony of self-conciousness that tightens my chest and throat and causes dark spots into bloom in my eyes and once made me so sick and scared that I not until I literally woke up a few minutes later did I realize what had happened...

And I didn't revert all the way back, of course, but my hands were shaking, and I read the poem and oh god I just wanted them to like it and I sat in the silence afterward with a heart so loud only I could hear it.

This is the poem:

Did ever I not love you?
Was I--when born from my cocoon,
still damp with just-life,
yet without wings--
deaf and dumb to the song of it?
Was I--when young and small,
still merely a peanut,
or the button of a coat--
in the shadow of that looming mountain
and yet blind to it?
Was I--when not quite a woman,
still the unripened pear
amidst the sea of sweetened peaches--
suffocating with the heaviness,
not knowing yet to breathe it?
Was I--when grown all that one can up,
left only to grow all one can old,
a cornstalk in late August--
surrounded on all sides, all places
by a loud and savage attack,
but still unaware of it?
I ask because I have no answers.
It is a riddle in the newspaper
one leaves in the sun
until faded and forgotten.
I am afraid the memory of my life before you
has melted--
and like liquid
slipped between my fingers.

I don't care what the president of Harvard says...

In the past few days I've been told no less that twenty times what (supposedly) he was trying to assert. Everyone keeps telling me, because I'm so passionately pro-science and also female, and I tend to fly off the handle in a rage sometimes about certain things (get me started on human exploration of the solar system and you'll get an earful), but really, I didn't care when I first heard it and I don't care now. Even if he did mean it in an anti-feminist way (which he didn't), why should it matter to me? He isn't the one who determines how good I am in science and mathematics, and rightly so, I'm the only one who determines that. A person can assert the earth is flat but it doesn't make it true. And besides, I'm wasn't planning on Harvard anyway.

Mysterious Worlds, and Titan too

So the Huygens probe was a success. So very awesome. It amazes me. It's staggering to realize the full extent of the undertaking, absolutely staggering.

Comet Machholz is in view

Yo, Comet Machholz is out and about; tonight it is close to the Pleiades (it moved up past Orion and through Taurus and it continuing along it's merry way), and it's just a little smudge of a thing but it's still pretty neat. In dark places it's naked eye, but I had to use binoculars (still a very small pair of binoculars) because I live too close to town... But anyway, it's not hard to pick out, really...right now it's a few degrees northwest of the Pleiades.

Love is a tired symphony you hum when you're awake

The Iron and Wine song Lion's Mane makes me feel like I'm bleeding from the inside out. Something so eternally lonely about it, something so eternally lonely about myself...

Well eternally is probably a strong word for it...a very emo fourteen year old in black eyeliner thing to say...but be it true or not it still feels real. An indeterminate amount of time ago I thought I had found it, I really did...and then the flowers died without fruition and I still reel from it, and I begin to believe that I will never find it again...I am trying to hold on to hope, but when the night is thick with darkness and the heavy silence hangs on my shoulders with the looming presence of a great phantasmic vulture, and I have no choice but to find the emptiness between my sheets and close my eyes and wait for the sun to rise, then I become frightened. I have never made it a point to actively seek for love, because it's not one of my priorities, and I feel like I could be happy without a serious relationship or marriage or anything of the sort, and also I think that if it's going to happen, well...then it's going to happen, right? And if it doesn't, well that's how the cards fell. I've been involved in the past without anything happening on my side, and I've hurt some people because of it and I don't want to do that anymore...so now I just guess I'm going to be patient, and hope that in the path my life will take there is someone who I find interesting who will find me so in turn, and we will enjoy each other's company and camaradrie, and be happy with that.

I am Pierre, I come from Paris. I have come to have sex with your family...

"Oh come in! Help yourself, because of the debt of honor to General Lafayette."

So I bought....three Eddie Izzard DVDs over break. I couldn't help it, all his old ones have come out! All I need now is Circle...

If you haven't a clue who Eddie Izzard is, or why the title quote is so hilarious, than you seriously need to educate yourself. You have to get used to the make-up though. Executive/action transvestite and all.

Waking up

He winks at me, his eyes laughing beneath heavy lids. Oh, why can't he smile outright? Why must it always be a hint or a ghost of a smile instead? I know it's to tease me; to make me squirm... And I must admit, I make him squirm just as much as he does me. His hands are warm. His lips are soft and beyond my reach. His eyes--oh, stormy sea--his eyes are dark and inviting, and haunting... I close mine to blot out his but they persist, and his lips find my eyelids. He laughs and whispers against them; his breath smells of vanilla and smoke. I tilt my head to capture him but he leans away, out of my reach. I am suddenly frightened and lonely and trapped, and I feel the tears stinging in my eyes. The ghost smile disappears from the corners of his eyes; his forehead wrinkles and he leans in. He melts against me, his arms around my waist, his face pressed against my neck. He speaks in terms I don't understand. I spread my fingers along his back, the first tactile sensation of him--the warmth and play of muscle beneath the cotton of his shirt; the ripple of vertebrae and planes of shoulder blades. I can smell him all around me--the musky scent of his aftershave and the softer smell left by his shampoo and...the whole inside of me twinges. He mumbles more; the words I don't know, but in that nonsense comes the single sentence I can pick out--"You make me happy." And even before I wake up, I know it is a dream.

Look I'm not dead.

Not that anyone reads this. And not that I blame them. And not that I have any excuse.

Not much to recap either. I am extremely dull. I shuttle between school and work and that is all. Actually that's a little inaccurate; I really shuttle between school/work (since they are in the same place, same building even) and home. And the bank. And Media Play. But I swear that's all. Also the theatre when Nathan's in town. And various bookstores. And St Gerards. But really that's all. *shifty eyes*

School, as far as school goes I made three A's (calc 3, astronomy, and american lit) and one B (anthropology)...and I'm going to have fun next semester with chemistry, linear algebra, creative writing, world lit and first aid. First Aid? FIRST AID? What is wrong with this school?! No matter, I will be leaving it in due course, laden with my Associates and off to the wide world of whiney rich kids and student loan debt of Berry. Yay.

For Christmas I recieved a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude...and...oh man. I think Love in the Time of Cholera was maybe a more....augh I'm a science major, I don't know how to talk about books...it was maybe a more significant book, felt more of a classic story about people and a place and a time. But Hundred Years is...amazing. Intensely readable. Unbelievable. It's so very very good.

Fifteen days to Titan! Really incredible, can't wait to see what it's like there.

Yet again I am surprised.

I knew Dr. El-najjar was pretty cool, but man, he is awesome.

I went to his office today to ask him a simple question and I stayed for forty minutes.

"Your brothers sat right there" he said, when I came in and sat down.

"You will never regret being a teacher."

Thanks Dr. El-najjar. How on earth you know exactly what to say all the time just astounds me.

It's time for everyone to learn that the answer is 42

In case there are any hitchhiker's guide fans around here....

You want to see this

Oh, I didn't realize I didn't title that one...

Eight hours of sleep after an extended period of very little sleep is quite possibly the best feeling ever.

They'll find me blue and bloated with my elbow wedged behind my ear...

Seems that Fall has finally decided to...well..fall. I really like autumn, it's probably my favorite of the seasons...it's the most pleasant, and the skies are the clearest, and the Taurids and Leonids make for some cool night sky action. I like wearing light jackets and driving around with the windows down and brushing leaves off my car...but most of all I like hoodies. I love hoodies. I think they are awesome. And I've bought a few new ones for this season so I can wander about campus in my lovely hooded sweatshirt with my hands in the big pocket on the front. But I do have one problem with it...I have never managed to figure out how to gracefully take off a hoodie. There I am sitting in class and I'll start to feel a little warm, so I decided to slip it off--I grab the bottom and pause...wait, i think, my shirt underneath will ride up, exposing the length of my (in my opinion, unflattering) tummy so I'll stop there...I think that if I take the sleeves off first then I can work it up with my arms on the inside and slip it off my head in one go...and a few seconds into this plan I discover my hand is still stuck in the sleeve (cursed limited range of movement!) and the neck is catching on my round head (I should have made sure the ties were loose! blast these ears!) and there's all sorts of unpleasantly cool air on my sides and stomach and when I finally wrench it off my head, gasping for breath, my hair has decided it didn't like this, oh no, static electricity, no no no, no thank you...and I'm sure one of these days in this desperate attempt to appear like I know what I'm doing rather than just pulling the damn thing off I'm going to end up strangling myself to death in a most improbable fashion...

Greeters are you

If you're all not the same person then the synchronicity is mind-boggling.

Post election day thoughts

Funnily enough, the first thing that occured to me today once I heard about the outcome of things was "Oh god, now they'll never shut up..."

Red vs. Blue

Ha ha ha I made a videogame/election politics joke tie-in! I am the awesome.

I don't know if it's my desire for unity and balance or the serious OCD tendencies coming out, but when I see that map on the various news channels with all the states lighted either blue or red, I just fucking want to balance the color! It drives me insane; it makes my fingers tense and my teeth itch. I mean, I don't even care who wins, I just want there to be equal blue and red spaces! Or purple! Purple is nice as well. When I run for president my color is going to be purple. I'll totally upset the two party system. Yeah. Right after I win the Nobel prize, end world hunger, and marry Richard Feynman. Shut up! I have itchy teeth, dangit!

Today I played hooky from work...well I like to pretend I play hooky, even though I let people know a week in advance...but I played hooky from work (oh like you're such a badass) so that I could drive down to Berry and let the nice admissions people (which consist of like...two people) show me about campus...and I saw a total of maybe...seven students? Okay, that's a bit of a hyperbole there...I saw four people. But anyway, yeah, campus is very calm and nice, I really enjoyed it, and I think I've fallen in love, much to the chagrin of my pocket book...because the Georgia University System kind of takes a stance of "Fuck All" to transfer students...we all say "er, ah, can I have some money?" and they go "NOO! I'd rather give our money to freshman who will lose it after their first semester! It's a much better investment!" and I'll end up taking classes out of a boot...ah well...Stafford loan for me...

Sorry for the overuse of profanity here, but I've just watched Eddie Izzard's Dressed to Kill special again...and...I love him. Why didn't the BBC pick him for the new Doctor?? They are so moronic! STOP ARGUING WITH TOM BAKER. HE KNOWS ALL.