Some songs.

○ Something New - girl in red
○ Never Quite Free - The Mountain Goats
○ Good News (Ya Ya Song) - MUNA
○ Not the Same - Malinda
○ Bless the Child - Nightwish
○ Cheap Queen - King Princess
○ Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart - Against Me!
○ Caution - The Killers

Pick a song and tell me what you think.

Wordless

Written 3/17

I am tired of being talked over.

I'm a person, and as such I have a right to express myself. I have as many thoughts and feelings as you do. I recite them in my head, prune and perfect, until I have something to say. It's an important something. I raise it to my lips and wait for the moment to send it into being.

But my moment never arrives. There is no half-second of silence for me to speak in. I am too polite to cut someone off, because what if they spent the time I did creating what they had to say, and I interrupt them saying it? My words wait. They try to hide their disappointment.

Sometimes someone notices and saves me. I am grateful for those times.

But on the other hand, I want to speak without feeling like the whole world hinges on what I have to say. I don't like the stares and focus and silence after I've finally managed to get everyone else to shut up. I search for what I had to say, and the perfection slips through my fingers. What makes it into the world is a slim shadow of my ideas. I had my chance, and then it ended, and I am left wordless.

Pioneer Nights

Written 3/31/20

It's two a.m., and I can't sleep, so I'm going to talk about Welcome To Night Vale. I want to share some quotes from episode 143, Pioneer Days, which I listened to on Sunday.

"Habits are comforting; rituals are important. It’s what keeps us grounded. It’s what prevents us from shouting uncontrollably and clutching at our eyes."

And later in the episode, "But now that I think of it, we do spend a lot of our days distracting ourselves from physical reality. Maybe we really can use this time to experience life more solidly in the physical world, the way our ancestors did. Who needs modern conveniences when we have each other, right? Hold your loved ones close tonight. After all, you have nothing better to do."

I paused the episode before the end credits and proverb because there was a good bit to think about. Pioneer Days is one of my favorite episodes now, up there with Old Oak Doors, Toast, and Brought to You By Kellogg's.

Taken on their own, the lines I shared could offer some inspiration for the situation we face right now. In context, they're about an arbitrary holiday on which every citizen is forcefully immersed into pioneer life by having all of their utilities shut off. I think this episode can be fully enjoyed even if you haven't heard all the preceding episodes. I encourage you to listen to it, partly for the plot and partly for the odd nuggets of wisdom.

I Need A Minute

Written 2/8/20

Sometimes I listen to songs. Sometimes, instead, the music ensnares me until I memorize the feeling it leaves in my chest and the guitar sound and the lyrics. Sometimes when I take out one earbud, it leaves a song-shaped hole in me.

For some reason, I decided to listen to old favorite songs today. I played my favorites from when I thought everything besides Imagine Dragons was trash music (with a few exceptions), from before I discovered My Chemical Romance and my life was changed forever. As cliché as that might be, I'm not exaggerating.

Today, the song that leaves a hole in me is I Need A Minute by Imagine Dragons. I loved this song in middle school because it sounds cool. I managed to learn every word without understanding what the song meant.

Now that I understand the meaning, this song has landed right back in my list of favorites. It's a song about facing adulthood and not knowing what to do with yourself. "All the glasses in the world say come with me" because you don't know which version of yourself you want to become. It's a song about being young and needing to both change and not change at the same time.

Change is a weird thing. It's big and murky and looming, more like walking into a fog than stopping at a crossroads. I'm close enough to it now to see and anticipate it, but not close enough to step into the fog yet. I'd rather look back instead of ahead and let it take me by surprise, because that's how I am.

My expanding music taste was a good change, of course. Sometimes I wonder if the girl I used to be would recognize me as I am now.

I want to write a satisfying, determined ending to this, but I don't want to make promises while I'm still uncertain. I am here, but I am still thinking.

Heartbeat, stillness, right, left.

Written 12/25/19

I learned a few days ago what my heartbeat is supposed to feel like. When I can't feel feel it and I have to find the spot on my chest with hand instead of feeling it through the whole left side of my ribs.

I looked at my left hand just now and typed out "right side." I don't know my left from my right. I mean, I do, but in the moment whichever direction I think of first is left or right or whatever. I kid about getting it tattooed sometimes, an L or R on the corresponding hand so I'll stop confusing them. I'd make up some deep meaning for it so I wouldn't look stupid if people asked me about it. I don't know if it would help all that much.

Anyway, my heartbeat. It's just a pulse, a gentle one. I'm not supposed to be able to feel as much of my circulatory system as I can right now, I think. Maybe it's because I'm anxious and I'm trying not to move. I move my hands to type, and everything else is perfectly still, except I guess my chest to breathe. If I could be a rock, y'know? No anxiety, no left or right, no movement. Might be nice.

To my favorite liar, to my favorite scar

A short piece based on Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today by Fall Out Boy
TW: car wreck, blood, death. This is dark.

• • •

In the silence that follows, you stand up from the guard rail that you've been sitting on for two hours. Warmth and feeling returns to the back of your legs in a rush, rendering you dizzy for a second. You step over the rail to the side away from the street. The land drops away next to you, maybe fifteen feet down to gravel and sparse grass. You stop a few inches from the edge to look down.

There's a lot of blood. You can't see that as well as you can the shining red exterior of the car, though. Broken metal and glass holds two people, now nothing more than broken skin and shattered bone, blood and more blood.

You can't help feeling satisfied.

In the passenger seat, without even the idea of a windshield separating her from you, is the girl. The one you almost pity. The one you had no chance with and never will. Nothing about her has changed but her appearance, as far as you're concerned. She picked someone else over you, but you could have lived with it if the thought of her boyfriend hadn't made your stomach so sick. She gets almost-pity because she was almost-innocent.

The boy with his limp fingers still on the steering wheel meant nothing to you, never did, and he deserved it. You wished with your whole self for this to be his fate. Dreams come true, then. You don't think about his dreams, what he might have done with the rest of his abruptly ended life. You don't think about what his last thought might have been. You don't think about how young he was. You stare at his frozen, bloody face instead and feel your satisfaction.

Then you realize how stupid it is to still be staring at this mess. It's disgusting, and you see nothing that you didn't expect. The girl and the boy aren't the first to skid off this corner, victims of a guard rail that ends a little too soon. The allure comes from the fact that you witnessed it, which was a miracle. It's not every day that you sit on a guard rail at the edge of a quiet back road wishing someone would die, and then they show up and do it.

You don't think the boy even saw you.

So you turn your back to the scene and walk away. Someone else will find them, eventually, and you don't want to be a witness. You'll keep this moment to yourself, the sort of perfect satisfaction you shouldn't harbor. No one will think you had anything to do with it, because you didn't.

Everything about this was an accident.

• • •

I've been drawn to writing darker things recently. I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Quotes to fuel midterm week

I have 4 midterm tests this week. If you're in a similar boat, here are some quotes from my friends.
If these can't brighten your outlook, I don't know what can. Enjoy.

• "You can be dead. I'm gonna cry on you." 
• "Curling irons are gay."
• "Kittens are prettier than Jesus." 
• "Just your average ripped pregnant lady."
• "Shh, I'm trying to learn about killing people!"
• Walks into class "Oh good, we're summoning the devil!"
• "Not everyone needs pants all the time."
• "Can we get our drugs out after the test?"
• "He looks like a really gay McDonald's worker."
• "I may not look like a banana on the inside, but I sure do on the outside!"
• "That's not an insult! Bill Nye is gay!" 
• "The police are afraid of me." - my French teacher (you get context for that one because it's not as funny otherwise.)
• "Guys, you're both ugly. Wait, I meant they're! Please don't hate me."
• "If someone asks you to do something and you can't do it, just lay on the floor."
• "McDonald's may or may not have a vampire working for them." 
• "You murder small stuffed animals by force feeding them kale?"
• "Your mom's a bootleg Disney movie."
• "We can feed him raw fish and not be arrested."
• "I'm going to eat a homeowner."
• "No, I found him on the floor. His name is Rob."
• Whispers "I killed your husband."
• "I don't know how necromancy works under constitutional law."

Man, I really wish I could remember what some of these were from. I wrote them down without context.
Good luck on your midterms and stuff. I'm going back to studying.

(And to anyone who was expecting only poetic things from this blog, note that I said "unfiltered.")