"(Youths) are quite aware of what they're going through."
~ David Bowie
I know that I am just another one.
One more screen with letters and words and manufactured ideas.
One more boiling defense and desperate excuse.
One more reason to be blind.
One more attempt at digging through the heap of discarded souls to retrieve my own. But there you are again, before I grasp it firmly. Congratulations. You found me. You tethered me back up. You pried my lips apart. You shoved the parasite back down my throat.
So I feel fine again.
"They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool. 'Till you're so fucking crazy you follow their rules."
~ John Lennon
One more iconic quote
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
This Entry Makes me Sound at Least 50
For a reason not yet evident to me, I have been thinking of you lately. Just memories, I assume. You said it doesn't feel like two years, and this is true. I still remember Mr. Swank as though he were leaning over my shoulder yesterday, telling me how to move the brush. I still remember the bond between Claire and I, one with the strength of a triple-ionic bond. I still remember Mr. Austin lurking just beside my conscious thoughts, tinting them with his wisdom and wondrous, exotic tales. I still remember Toby and her obesity and the way my feet would blacken on the dirty floors. I still remember the chaotic, selfish hustle we had, teetering confidently about with stuffed shirts and immortality.
But mostly I remember you, or who you used to be. I realize now how lucky we were. We used to be kindred spirits, off-beat and artistic, both ridiculously moody and tipping over with the weight of our outrageously exaggerated sense of love. I remember the wracking despair in my little hormonal body when I knew you liked her more. It is all laughable now, but it "destroyed my reason for existence" at the time. I was a little girl.
Perhaps all of this is presenting itself to me because, today in history class, alone and maintaining a half-awake conversation with my professor while awaiting the first bell of the day, she told me she had never seen me so talkative. I was barely speaking with her, mind you. I could scarcely fathom the concept of myself as a quiet, reclusive person with long, self-conscious curtains over my face and clad in grey. I felt like a paradox.
But mostly I remember you, or who you used to be. I realize now how lucky we were. We used to be kindred spirits, off-beat and artistic, both ridiculously moody and tipping over with the weight of our outrageously exaggerated sense of love. I remember the wracking despair in my little hormonal body when I knew you liked her more. It is all laughable now, but it "destroyed my reason for existence" at the time. I was a little girl.
Perhaps all of this is presenting itself to me because, today in history class, alone and maintaining a half-awake conversation with my professor while awaiting the first bell of the day, she told me she had never seen me so talkative. I was barely speaking with her, mind you. I could scarcely fathom the concept of myself as a quiet, reclusive person with long, self-conscious curtains over my face and clad in grey. I felt like a paradox.
Random Entries to Covey
February 7th, 2009
Someone:
Yesterday I had a procession of thoughts worth recording:
Disney brings out a very obnoxious part of me- the super feminine. I melt at the sight of Disney princesses and coo at dolls with eyelashes to their brows and polyester pink dresses. I want to make porcelain dolls in corsets with Renaissance-style faces and long, flowing locks. I have tried to stamp out the pathetic femininity in me and I have, for the most part, been successful, but it is difficult here.
Most awful of my changes in character is my new found tendency to complain. Oh, my feet, oh my back, oh my I am so cold, oh my lips are dry, oh my chin is dimpled, etc. How dare I complain. How dare I. When the Earth trembles with fear and malnourishment and I skip about the Magic Kingdom, I somehow find the insolence to complain. As if my undeserved indulgences were not undignified enough. I must be mad.
I don't think there are any people here who are not white or chinese.
Keep your head in the right direction, remember why you want to live minimally, the strength and self-awareness achieved in minimalism, the need to do great things. Love your body, take care of your body, know the selfishness in drugs and appreciate your natural state of consciousness, not the sensations of various poisons.
Abstain and grow in your love.
Elise
February 19th, 2009
Someone:
I am despicably and obnoxiously "good" these days. The sparkle in my parents' eye, the role model without friends, the boring, cubicle-creature-to-be who is academically successful only because they have nothing better to do because they have no original thought. Bred to obey, they are the ultimate citizen.
Being "good" is much more difficult that I anticipated. It is not about the poison anymore, it is the sheer lack of imagination I have to think of no righteous rebellion. The best I can think of (besides a snotty drug addicted party animal) is critical, but who am I to be critical? If the hungry world were given opportunities like mine, it would be minimalistic, immeasurably grateful, and happy. I cannot afford to lay this wisdom aside and be unhappy.
Live minimally and virtuously. Give everything spare to the oppressed. Be grateful and, most of all, be happy.
Enough of me and my petty little life. What about you?
Elise
Someone:
Yesterday I had a procession of thoughts worth recording:
Disney brings out a very obnoxious part of me- the super feminine. I melt at the sight of Disney princesses and coo at dolls with eyelashes to their brows and polyester pink dresses. I want to make porcelain dolls in corsets with Renaissance-style faces and long, flowing locks. I have tried to stamp out the pathetic femininity in me and I have, for the most part, been successful, but it is difficult here.
Most awful of my changes in character is my new found tendency to complain. Oh, my feet, oh my back, oh my I am so cold, oh my lips are dry, oh my chin is dimpled, etc. How dare I complain. How dare I. When the Earth trembles with fear and malnourishment and I skip about the Magic Kingdom, I somehow find the insolence to complain. As if my undeserved indulgences were not undignified enough. I must be mad.
I don't think there are any people here who are not white or chinese.
Keep your head in the right direction, remember why you want to live minimally, the strength and self-awareness achieved in minimalism, the need to do great things. Love your body, take care of your body, know the selfishness in drugs and appreciate your natural state of consciousness, not the sensations of various poisons.
Abstain and grow in your love.
Elise
February 19th, 2009
Someone:
I am despicably and obnoxiously "good" these days. The sparkle in my parents' eye, the role model without friends, the boring, cubicle-creature-to-be who is academically successful only because they have nothing better to do because they have no original thought. Bred to obey, they are the ultimate citizen.
Being "good" is much more difficult that I anticipated. It is not about the poison anymore, it is the sheer lack of imagination I have to think of no righteous rebellion. The best I can think of (besides a snotty drug addicted party animal) is critical, but who am I to be critical? If the hungry world were given opportunities like mine, it would be minimalistic, immeasurably grateful, and happy. I cannot afford to lay this wisdom aside and be unhappy.
Live minimally and virtuously. Give everything spare to the oppressed. Be grateful and, most of all, be happy.
Enough of me and my petty little life. What about you?
Elise
Sunday, February 1, 2009
I Will Get Better
Last night I had a dream that I was watching a girl eat and eat and eat- gorge herself until her body could not hold her and her heart was crushed by the weight of her own flesh. I woke from it at 6:00 A.M. at Madeline Bentley's house on her floor with the taste of cigarettes and pot in my mouth. It was almost an epiphany I had- that the only reasonable way to live is in protection of your own body. Without it, you do not live and, with one that is abused and mutilated, your mind will follow suit.
"I was moved by women in Africa who lived close the earth and didn't understand what it meant to not love their body."
~ Eve Ensler
I have reached a shuttering and frightening conclusion- I must change dramatically. I must give up cigarettes and pot and alcohol, which will mean giving up Madeline, Laura, Katie, Megan, ect. and any social life they would entail. Most painfully, I must give up my rebellion, become someone my parents approve of, become someone honest and deeply "uncool." I must give up that social life and do art.
Today my mother said to me that she didn't think I was spending enough time on my art. To hear this broke me. I never though I could be that person. I never though I would hear that.
I have been crying today and I know I have become selfish and despicable. To cry is to express my own weakness. I do not deserve to cry, not when so many people have it harder and keep their heads held straight. Who am I, a useless, carbon-copy, American teenage girl, to sneer in the face of real sorrow and mock righteous despair. And yet I sit here, in plain selfishness, crying.
I am going to move on and it will be agonizing to make my parents proud. It will hurt to stop lying. But it will happen because I am not happy anymore and I am not Elise. Instead of wallowing in despair, I will change.
I WILL CHANGE
Elise
"I was moved by women in Africa who lived close the earth and didn't understand what it meant to not love their body."
~ Eve Ensler
I have reached a shuttering and frightening conclusion- I must change dramatically. I must give up cigarettes and pot and alcohol, which will mean giving up Madeline, Laura, Katie, Megan, ect. and any social life they would entail. Most painfully, I must give up my rebellion, become someone my parents approve of, become someone honest and deeply "uncool." I must give up that social life and do art.
Today my mother said to me that she didn't think I was spending enough time on my art. To hear this broke me. I never though I could be that person. I never though I would hear that.
I have been crying today and I know I have become selfish and despicable. To cry is to express my own weakness. I do not deserve to cry, not when so many people have it harder and keep their heads held straight. Who am I, a useless, carbon-copy, American teenage girl, to sneer in the face of real sorrow and mock righteous despair. And yet I sit here, in plain selfishness, crying.
I am going to move on and it will be agonizing to make my parents proud. It will hurt to stop lying. But it will happen because I am not happy anymore and I am not Elise. Instead of wallowing in despair, I will change.
I WILL CHANGE
Elise
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