Bartholomew and Charlie!

Here is Charlie, Bartholomew doesn't trust me enough to pose yet.

I just realized that I am on the right track to becoming a crazy cat lady...

The Perks of Being a Hermit

1. The house is in shambles, but no one complains. I haven't done dishes in at least a week.
2. I can play whatever music at whatever volume that I desire. Whenever.
3. The isolation stimulates my urges to write, read, paint and play music.
4. Being naked around the house.
5. Singing badly and feeling no shame.

There are drawbacks of course, but overall it's a good deal.
After much deliberation, I am postponing my escape from the Tri-Cities until March.
It's only September.
March is so very far away.
But it provides me much time to accrue finances and employment.
Currently I have no idea how to live on my own and file tax returns.
I guess I had better learn. I won't be receiving a scholarship. Haha.

Today I nearly chopped off all of my hair.
Don't know why.
I started on my bangs and progressed to the split ends. Then I held the scissors poised to snip off my orangey-blonde-red locks. To my chin.
I think it's madness as opposed to an attempt to be trendy. Sometimes I look at a day and become horrified that it is exactly like all of the others. Sometimes I feel like my reflection should change, should reflect something behind the mask of skin, teeth, hair.
It never really does.
So I, driven by boredom, attack my hair with scissors or bottles of dye.
Maybe I'm just trying to change myself.
Maybe it's like the guy in Silence of the Lambs who is sewing a woman suit. He thinks he is a transsexual, but really he just hates himself so intensely that any change seems preferable. But even if he managed to become a woman, he would still loathe the person inside of packaging.
What a useless struggle.
How many hours are wasted away longing for a better body, a different color of eyes, a more sultry voice?
When the things we can actually change (maybe) are just solidifying with every passing year.
Until our faults and hatreds are embedded so deeply into our personalities that it is nearly a lost cause.
That said,
I'm really resisting the urge to cut off my hair still.
If I just keep typing and prattling on...I'll keep the demon at bay.
But I'm running out of material.
I finished Perks of Being a Wallflower again today.
I love that book so fucking much.

Shrunken Heads and Depression

http://mortuussoul.deviantart.com/

Well, here's to another Thursday.
I have to finish my college application today, send my transcript.
Lately I haven't been feeling too bad about my physical appearance. No, I didn't grow self esteem, I just have a class with a little head man in it.
It breaks my heart to look at him; I can't imagine living with such an obvious deformity. People look at freaks more than beautiful specimens. So lately I've thought things like, "Jesus, I am really getting obese..." or "Fuck, look at the tumor growing on my face..." but these thoughts are followed with the simple image of this grown man with a tiny head.
Then the biology nerd inside me asks things like, how is this mutation carried on? Would his fore bearers have been able to reproduce with any willing member of the opposite sex? Did they just form a colony of little head people? I wish that were the case, but they seem really rare. So I concluded that it was a birth defect not caused by lingering genetic material...an accident.
Okay, I've spent way too much time on him in today's blog, but I feel his influence in my life now.
Back to the main point, college.
I am not what anyone would call a social butterfly. Not even a social moth...I'm more like a spider.
Hiding in little corners and only meeting people when they catch me between places. Normally resulting in my spider legs disconnectedly twitching and my body a pulp of brownish juices.
So I find the concept of moving to a new community with new people more than intimidating.
Apparently some people do not have this challenge.
And apparently moving on to new faces is just a part of life's great scheme.
Excuse me for forgetting my lines.
I don't want new people. I liked the old ones just fine.
And even after they are gone, hours away, being cool and making buddies, I refuse to relinquish the hold that they had on me.

So I'm caught up in this confusing pile of emotion.
Leave, stay, leave, stay, leave...?
Stay and compost?
Leave and be lonely?
I can't decide.
I can't keep up my cardboard smiles much longer either, I'm sad.
Just driving down the road, the places in between the songs on the CD, the stifling quiet of nighttime, trying to sleep, thinking about old phone calls, listening to the crazy parts of my head that I used to try to ignore,my unfinished painting, so many small things I can't explain.
I'm bordering on the ridiculous. But that's just me.

Caverns and Craters

Someone has really got it out for me up there. I know I told God to "Smite me" the other day, but I didn't mean for him to take such a long time at it. Bad luck doesn't come in threes. Or twos. It comes pouring out in torrents, shitting all over the semblance of peace I managed to create since the last hurricane.
Dramatic? Well, yes.
I know it can get worse.
It began with Alec's departure. It was something I had been dreading for months. I never expected myself to feel quite this way about it though.
As a rule, I don't miss people very much.
He's been away in my dream town for about three days.
The Tri-Cities feels so empty.
I looked at all the things I love to do, my painting, my book, my guitar, my camera...I couldn't bring myself to even touch them. I laid in bed for two days.
I suppose that is the definition of depression. Not wanting to do the things you love, feeling like getting out of bed is a great and awful chore, not bothering to eat, letting the dishes in the sink mold again (I poured some bleach on them for the smell), crying about nothing.
I can't bring myself to think about Haley's impending departure.

I don't want to remember my Great Grandmother gasping for breath while drunken fuck jobs cried about gypsies.

I feel like an outsider to the whole world. Like I'm running in circles while everyone else goes marching ahead.

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on

The Weepies

Now I'm sitting on my bed in Jack's smoking robe. Trying to play my guitar. And I've listened to this song "World Spins Madly On" about ninety times now.
I hate CBC.
I hate Statistics.

I wish I had a job. A purpose. Or maybe even just a healthy dose of serotonin.
I'm so unhappy, I feel like my plants may wither and die from being forced to endure my toxic aura.
Well that's all folks.

Calling and Coming

And the Laws of Physics were suspended

Gravity hill.
Myth or legend? Or fact?
Though I have been there twice in less than twenty four hours, I am by no means an expert.
In layman's terms, it works like this:
1. Find the thing. (You are on an unmarked road surrounded by lots of corn and no people.)
2. Pull your car/truck/minivan up to the convenient graffiti that proclaims, "Start!"
3. Put car in neutral
4. Your vehicle rolls UPHILL.

Last night Nick, Brett and I (who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?) went to Gravity Hill. I was doped up on "Nite time" (the generic NyQuil) and slept through most of it. Brett saw mice, Nick saw deer and I peed in a handy plastic cup. Nick tried to urinate as well, but he heard "creepy noises" and decided to hold it.

We rolled up the hill twice, but Nick and Brett were not impressed. I went back to sleep.
The next day I set out to Gravity Hill again with Alec in tow. He funded the journey because I'm a loser with no job or money. (Sorry Alec)
The winding country roads, the golden corn, the blue sky dotted with wispy white clouds and the curious smell of overripe grapes; it was glorious.
We listened to Sondre Lerche and I drove too fast.
And gravity hill worked again!
My brakes went out as we coasted down the road, I was alternating between slamming down my e-brake and the regular fucked up ones. I managed to stop the car, which had been going fifty, and began a cautious descent just as a redneck in a truck came flying up the road at sixty.
Near death experiences are fantastic.
After we left that enchanted countryside, we explored Prosser, WA.
I was impressed. We found a record store, Jazz cafe/bars, cute houses and a vine covered high school.
Tired and sweaty, we drove home like zombies.
All in all, a great day.
I love leaving the city limits.

When I grow up

Chagall

My world is chalk full of nonbelievers.
"What are you going to do?" asks a concerned relation or friend of relation.
"I'm going to write." I reply.
"But what are you going to do?" the asshole inquires.
I woke up early and watched Girl, Interrupted. I loved the book (by Susanna Kaysen.) The movie was good also, I especially enjoyed Winona Ryder. Anyways, Susanna is asked the same inane question about her career.
"I'm going to write."
"But what are you going to do?"
Apparently this conspiracy against the arts has been going on for a long time.
Are people really so attached to their jobs slaughtering cows and skinning carcasses?
Are people really so proud of filing paperwork for hours on end, while their brains are liquefying inside their skulls?
I don't know.
But it seems like no one has believed in me.
I don't even believe in me.
Art, literature, fantasy...the best reasons I can find to keep on breathing. Without music and art we would be just like the animals.
Breed, breathe, eat, sleep, kill each other for our resources.
The very best attributes of mankind are found outside that. In art.
But "smart" people don't pursue art as a career. They'd rather work the nine to five and invest their money in good stocks. They'd rather have security than freedom. They'd rather take a giant shit on my face than dream something of their own.
Maybe I'll die poor, but at least I tried.

My Will and Testament

If I am to perish from my swiftly worsening disease, I thought it might be prudent to compose a list of beneficiaries in the event of my death.
I write to you all wearing my rabbit fur coat and shivering desperately. I do not know how many hours, or minutes I have left on the firm soil. My first request is to be cremated, to go out in the smoke of flame and glory. Preferably viking style, you know flaming arrows launched at my raft full of kindling? And I would go sailing down the Columbia river, oh what a sight to behold!
Haley,
You were a wonderful friend and sister; I know I borrowed beverages and cigarettes too often. So I am leaving you about fifteen camel no. 9's (100's) and the five dollars and forty seven cents in my checking/savings account. Please get yourself a venti pumpkin spice latte and enjoy every last ounce.
Nick,
Please dear most-of-the-time lover, know that I loved you dearly. I leave you the recording equipment and the clown painting. I know how much you love it. (Hah.) Also, you can have my laptop. Since you did give it to me originally. Make sure to delete or at least hide any racy photos you find. That would be most appreciated.
Alec,
Please take the remainder of all of my paintings. Unless you are going to keep them in another goddamn closet, in which case, don't bother. You also inherit all of my stories and my much loved black leather notebook filled with Isabelle Sands.
Gary,
You get my nylon string guitar. And my Dreamcast.
Dad,
Use my college money to go somewhere fantastic. You deserve it.

At my funeral please play, "Asleep."
And don't cry dear friends and relations. I'll be in a better place.
Or if Christianity is correct...Hell's fiery inferno.

Trials and Tribulations of Ms. Collins on a Tuesday morning.

Photo is me, dressed like a freak, taken by Darien Revel http://silvergrey.deviantart.com/

So I have a scale that, honest to god, adds ten pounds to whatever a person may happen to weigh. And on top of that, each time one steps on it the weight changes radically.
For example: At 10:38 a.m I weighed 135 pounds. (Disgusting, I know)
Then at 10:39 a.m. I weighed 140!!! pounds. (AAAAAHHHHHH)
So I choose to believe that the scale is intrinsically flawed.

This really interferes with my plans to make my blog like Bridgette Jone's Diary and record my weight/fags/and other interesting fact (to replace alcohol units since I rarely drink so much as a spoonful of cough syrup.)

I made coffee with my BRAND new coffee pot. (Hand me down from Dad, but it's still new to me.)
Sadly, yesterday's coffee was so strong that I made it much too weak this morning. Ah well. I'm sure I'll get it right by this afternoon.

I even applied for a job already today! But Nick informed me that it was in fact a dirty and vulgar scam. That if I was involved I would attend training I didn't get paid for to sell knives to people.
Does anyone even want a bunch of crappy Vector Market-ed knives? That kind of put a damper on my spirits. Making me feel not only like an idiot but also that the world was full to the brim with knife-wielding scoundrels.

Sad times. And still I am lounging in my pajamas trying to reinvigorate my lost tolerance to job hunting.

Ooooh.

I just decided to fuck job hunting for a while!
Instead I will be taking the ANATOMIST pictures!!!

Expect some visual treats today!

Pumpkin Season

I was smoking in front of Nick's log cabin when I witnessed the first leaves floating down. I stared in quiet disbelief; it was 95 degrees a day ago. The temperatures have plummeted, the wind is back with vengeance, and I wore a flannel all day today.
But here is the clincher, the real reason that summer is on its deathbed gasping for air, Starbucks brought back the pumpkin spice latte.

And in the spirit of the season, I got my hair dyed pumpkin orange to match!
Okay, not actually intentionally, but I am growing quite fond of this hair color.

Nothing else really happened today. I wished Nick a hearty "Bon Voyage" when he set off to see Modest Mouse in Spokane. He then will attend a riotous and drunken birthday party in what used to be the #1 party college in America. Pullman's own WSU.
If we remember correctly the partying didn't go so hot last time. (Beluga whale sex and all) But I say, "Go ahead, I wish you would, Go Ahead!" Okay, maybe Rilo Kiley's lead singer Jenny Lewis says that.

It's funny how I think that I am somehow immune to the passage of time. Fall really caught me off guard. I have three weeks to apply for college. Again. CBC starts in two weeks. And Alec is leaving in about fifteen days.
That is a really stiff blow to my intestines.
Then Haley is moving to Spokane.
We are best friend-sisters and the separation will be awful.
At least she'll have internet again and I can read her blogs.

It just keeps hitting me. I'm turning purple and black from all these blows. So many things grinding to a halt. An endless number of days, weeks, months, years that I've wasted. I'm turning twenty next April.
Time really freaks me out.

Suicide Blonde

http://renrox.deviantart.com

Oh, hair dye! What an awful and appealing product. You see, I was born with this glorious red hair. Old ladies tried to touch it, random Baptist women dyed theirs to match, my mother took me to her hair appointments: "Make mine look like hers", boys noticed and adored it...etc.
What did I do?
I dyed it Malaysian Cherry.
"At least it's temporary," I consoled myself.
A couple weeks went by. It wouldn't wash out quickly enough.
So I scrounged up the paltry sum of $ 10.45 and purchased "Born Blonde"
I am an idiot.
First my roots turned yellow. Then my hair turned a god awful Malaysian Orange.
I have multi-colored hair.
I look like a neon glowing rainbow.
Now I know why it is called, "suicide blonde."