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.