princeackleykid's Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
princeackleykid's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 | | 1:04 am |
A few new pictures
My friend Lear-la came down to visit from San Francisco, so I called in sick and we drove out to Julian and then the desert. I took a few pictures along the way. | | Monday, May 21st, 2007 | | 10:44 pm |
Tijuana pics
Here are a few pictures I shot Saturday in Tijuana. Enjoy!
| | Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | | 12:11 pm |
As of today, I am officially double-majoring in political science and english. The pathetic thing is that I have completed all the requirements for political science except for foreign language, and it took me this long to get the piece of paper signed off to actually change my major. Up until now, my major has been listed as pre-journalism, and I haven't taken a single journalism class for over two years. If english doesn't work out, I only really need two foreign language classes to graduate just with a BA in political science. For a minor in English, I only need to take two more classes. For the major in English, I have to take eight more English classes, five classes a semester, 34 units total. It's going to be really expensive, really stressful, and I can't stand school anymore, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I won't be able to graduate in less than two semesters anyway, and I don't think that I'm going to look back at earning two BAs with any regret. I still haven't decided on graduate school, hopefully I'll have a better idea of what the English department has to offer after taking 24 more units, and if all goes well, I should be able to raise my GPA and make graduate school a more attainable goal, if I decide that's what I want to pursue. I've spent most of the day so far looking at my transcripts, comparing them to the catalog and the requirements for each major and minor, and I feel a lot better knowing that I have actually accomplished a lot so far, if I wanted to I could graduate with only two classes, and if I decide to take ten more classes, it's my own choice, not solely because I've fucked everything up these last few years. Looking back at the last three years especially, I feel I've earned the right to fuck up a lot more than I have. On a slightly related note, I've been seeing informative posters in all the restrooms about syphilis. Apparently, there is some kind of minor epidemic in San Diego, and there have already been a few cases on campus. This warms my heart even more than my newfound optimism about school. Finally these college bastards get what's coming to them. | | Friday, April 6th, 2007 | | 11:15 am |
I keep on getting what I feel like are signs that are telling me I'm wasting too much time in my life and I need to start doing something real now. Last night in my war literature class we were discussing this amazing book Dispatches by Michael Herr, which is this amazing nonfiction account of Vietnam. It's written in a style very similar to Joan Didion, and sitting there in that class, I almost started crying, because it's the sort of thing that you read and think "I should have written this." It's beautiful writing, and the subject matter is very moving and powerful, but what really got to me was the fact that this guy voluntarily went to live in Saigon and follow a bunch of marines around and watch it all happen first hand, and I'm thinking, when will I ever get a chance to do something like that? How am I going to produce anything of value if all my time is taken up with meaningless work and school that don't give you the freedom to actually experience anything. It just isn't possible to write anything meaningful if your only experience of the world is what you see through the car window on the way to work, or what you can watch on tv or find on the internet. You can't do it long distance. It made me really angry with myself for getting in this situation in the first place. I have been really wanting to write, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. And school, the thing that's supposed to inspire and motivate me, is one of the main things standing in my way. I talked to Charles on my lunch break about how frustrated I am with my creative writing class. I had such high hopes for that class, and I feel so disappointed. We've written three poems and one short story, and we spend the rest of the class time critiquing everyone else's horrible work. My creative writing class is just one more thing taking away time I could be using for writing. A couple of weeks ago in my American literature class, we were discussing an essay by Annie Dillard, which, of course, I didn't even get a chance to read until class. There is a great part where she's talking to her creative writing class. She asks them which of them will give up their lives to be writers, "I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: you can't be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax... They had no idea what I was saying. (I have two hands, don't I? And all this energy, for as long as I can remember. I'll do it in the evenings, after skiing, or on the way home from the bank, or after the children are asleep...)" I read that part in class, and again, I almost started crying. I'm not over it yet. I just have to face that the whole dream of doing writing parttime, because that way I don't have to take the big risk of putting everything I have into it, just won't work. It's not something I can just do on the weekends or evenings. The hours just aren't there, it just doesn't add up. I'm so ready to go out and do something about it, and I'm just sick about the fact that I have two more semesters left of this kind of life. I just feel so much lately like it can't wait. It's life or death right now, and if I don't change something now, I won't get the chance again. One other sidenote to this rambling nonsense, something that made me feel a little bit encouraged: I was reading an interview with Joan Didion just a few minutes before I started writing this pointless entry. Her writing basically sums up what I want to accomplish as a writer, especially in her essays. Before I read her, I didn't know how I was going to be a journalist and still be able to express myself the way I need to. It was such a revelation reading her, because if she was published, so could I. I found my genre when I read her. Anyway, in this interview she talks a little about her writing process. She will "spend most of the day working on a piece not actually putting anything on paper, just sitting there, trying to form a coherent idea, and then I'll work for a couple of hours and get three or four sentences, maybe a paragraph." Reading that made me so happy. It's encouraging to know that the people you look up to have the same kind of problems as you do. When I try to make myself write something, I'll spend most of the day just trying to work it out in my head. I cannot write anything down until I have a clear idea of what I'm going to say, it can be a real problem sometimes when I have a paper due. I'll set aside an entire day, and get nothing but blank paper, then at the last minute, when it's really too late, I'll have some revelation about what I need to write when I'm in the bath or something. All I've ever heard up to this point is that successful writers need to write every day from 9-5, and just get over writer's block through sheer force of will, and it just doesn't work that way for me. It's good to find out that it's possible to be successful anyway. | | Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 | | 6:34 pm |
My first short story!
I know this isn't fabulous, but I'm proud of it anyway, just because I finally wrote some fiction.
A fresh crop of spring weeds had grown up around the bottom of the barn door, and it was only after three hard pushes that came dangerously close to cracking the wood that the door swung free. Off to the right, she heard the frantic flapping of wings, a bird frightened from her nest in the empty silo by the crash of the freed door banging open. Once glance inside and Susan could saw that more than one season had passed since anyone had crossed this threshold. A light mist of cobwebs floated out to her, and inside sun beams shining through holes in the ceiling illuminated bright bars of light in the dusty air. Stepping inside and surveying the large cluttered room, Susan was suddenly struck with realization of how much time had passed since anyone had been in here. The last traces of snow were just melting off of the trees behind the house, and Bill had just taken Teddy’s old tricycle into the barn to paint it a fresh shade of red. He never finished it, he never finished anything, Susan thought bitterly, but Susan left the barn alone from the moment he left. He would come back and finish the bike, she told herself, and the car, and the snow mobile. All the projects he had left unfinished would be here waiting for him, and Susan wouldn’t set one foot in that barn until he came back for them. But it was spring again, a season for tricycles, and she couldn’t stand to deprive her sweet little Teddy any longer. She took one long breath of the fresh morning air and stepped inside. The ancient floorboards creaked wearily under her weight as they always did, the separate pieces bending in different directions under her feet. Through the soles of her shoes, she could feel the gaps between the boards widening, and her first few steps were as cautious and slow as if she were testing the thickness of a frozen lake. The air was a mixture of the dry, earthy smell of a wood fire, and the musky, organic smell of mildew. The only light was seeping through cracks in the ceiling, just bright enough to safely navigate the room, but not enough to get a sense of color, but Susan imagined the dry and creaking floorboards to be a dirty, dry light brown, and the walls around the floor to be a mossy green fed by springs of melted snow and the wet soil outside. It was a smell full of old memories, not unpleasant, but lonely. Susan’s family owned the farm, but they hadn‘t raised crops on it for years. They used to have a few acres planted in corn, and Susan used to love playing hide and seek in the tall rows when she was young. When she met Bill, she took him home on a long summer afternoon, and they laid next to each other on the ground, feeling very hidden and safe, just watching the sky as a thunderhead grew to its bursting point and a gentle breeze rustled the long leaves calmly, like a dream. Now her parents rented most of their land to local farmers, and the barn had become a storage shed for old cars and home improvement projects collected first by her father, then by Bill. Her parents had grown tired of the mosquitoes and ticks of summer, of the dusty barn cluttered with so much unfinished business, of the acres of empty country they no longer depended on, and they moved across the St. Croix to Stillwater, an adorable city of brick right across the river. Susan was tired, too, but when Teddy came along, she and Bill decided to stay. Bill seemed to change so much after Teddy was born. Susan had hoped, of course, that fatherhood would change him, force him to get a little more serious about his responsibilities, but she would never have guessed how drastic and disastrous the change would be. Bill was always so good with his hands. If he only saw a project out to its completion, he could fix anything. Susan encouraged him to take night classes at the local junior college, maybe earn a certificate in mechanics that would help him find a job he could keep, for once. But Bill thought he needed something a little more drastic. “How can I take our money and spend it on some stupid classes that might not even get me anywhere?” Bill reasoned to Susan. “I got a wife and kid now, I got you.” “Don’t you ever tell me it’s for me. Don’t you tell me that,” Susan replied. Bill had decided to join the Marines, and there was nothing Susan could do to change his mind. He would get paid to learn, he told her, he would find a job when he got out. He would be able to take care of them. “You might get a lot more than that,” Susan hissed at him. “Don’t you remember my cousin, Brian? You’ll get a lot more than that, just ask him.” Brian had only been home for about a month at the time. He was Army, but it was all the same, really, he said. They just put a gun in your hands and you watch people die, and you can’t save any of them. It’s all the same. Brian wasn’t the same. He had been a mischievous and lighthearted young man, always ready for a good time. Now he sat in front of the television all day and rarely went out, unless it was to the bar down the road from his house. Susan’s mother and aunt came to stay with her when they heard the news. They were there to help around the house and with poor little Teddy, who seemed so confused by what happened. They tried in their way to comfort Susan. “Such a brave man,” was the mantra they repeated over and over to her that week. Susan would give one of her feeble smiles and nod, but as soon as they turned their backs, and as soon as she was tucked, sleepless, into her big empty bed at night, she would mutter, angrily, “nothing but a damned fool, that’s all.” The dust startled to settle in the barn, and Susan realized she had been standing in the same spot for a few minutes with her hand rested on something metal and cool. She looked down, and found that in her distracted wandering through the maze of clutter she had stumbled upon the tricycle she had been searching for. Next to its flat front wheel, she found a can of red paint. Crouching down on the dusty floor, Susan pried the crusty lid off with her house keys and saw that it was still half full. Picking up a paintbrush from the floor, also brittle with dried red paint, she sat down next to the bike and got to work. | | 6:04 pm |
I had yeasterday and today off, and it's been so nice to have nowhere I have to be. Yesterday I went shopping for clothes and I found some awesome sweaters at buffolo exchange and some cute shirts with polka dots at Mervyns. I realized that part of the reason I have been hating my new job so far is that I don't have any good professional looking clothes to wear. I've been feeling very stuffy and dull, and it adds to my depression when I'm there. I spent too much money, but I'm really happy. Today my morning got out early at 8:30, so I took the trolley home, took a nice, long nap, tidied up and waited for Shaun to get home. I had a chance to talk to Hiba and Charles, which was nice, and hopefully when spring break starts I'll have to chance to hang out with those bitches.
Shaun and I just got back from going on a walk to Henry's to buy chocolate-mint rice ice cream bars. On the way we stopped in the antique mall and I bought an awesome jar in the shape of an onion with a crying face on it, and two awesome buttons for $1 each. One is an old US Mail and the other is the Autobot logo. I'll have to post pictures.
When we went into the store, it was nice and sunny, but when we went out there was a dark thunder cloud sitting on the eastern horizon. The sun was getting low in the sky, and everything in front of the clouds, all the houses and trees and telephone wires, was lit up ro brightly against the dark background. It only lasted a few minutes, then clouds moved over the sun. We bought our ice cream bars and sat on the curb outside of Henry's. We started seeing lightning, and the thunder came seconds after so we knew it was close. It started raining, and as soon as we found a awning to stand under it started pouring, and the lightning was all around us, streaking across the sky, and the thunder was so loud and immediate that we knew we were right under the center of the storm. We watched the lightning for about ten more minutes, then the rain started to let up, so we went home. I feel so lucky that we had such perfect weather on my day off.
I have a bunch of pictures I need to post from a couple weekends ago. I drove out on Highway 94, then 80, until it joined back up with the 8 in Jacumba. I brought my D80, of course. It's the first time I really had a chance to take it out and see what it could do. I took it to Julian on Valentine's day, and got some okay pictures, but that just isn't what I'm very interested in shooting, I wasn't that excited about it. I got some great pictures this time. I found a lot of abandoned houses, an old train junk yard at the old station in Jacumba, an abandoned gas station out on Highway 80 in Ocatillo, and an old amusement park off 80 in Lakeside. They're some of my favorite pictures so far. I'll try to post some early next week. | | Sunday, March 4th, 2007 | | 10:42 pm |
| | 10:30 pm |
Creative writing poems
These are the poems I had to write for my creative writing class. The first one I wrote tonight and I have to turn it in tomorrow. I was really scared when I started the class and found out we had to do poetry. I've never written poetry before this class, and it's been really challenging to step outside of my comfort zone. But, even though I still feel like I express myself more effectively in prose writing, I think this is a style I could enjoy every now and again. Next we have to write short stories, also unfamiliar terrain. It's just good to find out what my limits are. I've been avoiding writing fiction/poetry because I'm terrified to fail at it. It's just been easier not to try at all. But it's no way to go about living, so I'm glad this class has been forcing me out of that habit.
Summer Rain
Early morning,
the water broke free
past the barrier of scorched summer sky.
The smell of clean crept through the window
And we ran outside in pajamas,
Holding hands like children
To dance in heaven’s purifying tears. We wove in and out.
Murky brown puddles,
rivers topped with thick yellow froth
blocked our path.
And the clear falling beads
Bounced back into the air,
Now stained a dark, drab amber. Weeks under the furnace of the sun
Baked this dirt deep beneath our streets.
No breeze or shower to disturb,
The dust and decay of our little town
Hid itself in forgiving black asphalt,
Invisible under our feet. The smell of burnt tar and earth
Rose up to my nostrils.
We watched as the flood painted a muddy smear
In flowing arteries rushing down our street.
The rain stopped too soon.
God
I whispered under my breath,
Why won’t you help us clean
Our dirty little world?
Border Angels
Do the stars still shine in my daughter’s eyes tonight?
Or has the sun already drank of those deep, dark pools? I have heard the wind tear through the ocotillo plants at night,
The wailing of a thousand lost souls filling the moonlit expanse. Who will offer water to the traveler out of the desert?
Who will anoint the feet of this sun-scarred pilgrim? Hope stays alive.
But in dreams I see mounds lined across the wasteland.
Another weary wanderer tucked in
to sleep in the earth’s bosom. Anonymous.
But, no olvidada,
I will not forget.
Riding Downtown
With the dirt of the city between my toes,
I stepped on the trolley and headed home.
I tried to be a tourist in my town today
to care about bright tall buildings
and sun shining on the water,
diamonds sparkling in each ripple.
But there’s this way the dirt gets under your skin The man across the aisle had empty eyes.
Mixed with the warm summer air, I breathed him in.
The sweet smell of sweat and mold,
a living body rotting like a corpse,
is still on my tongue. And this dirt is too deep under my skin
To pretend I can’t remember.
| | Friday, December 15th, 2006 | | 7:56 pm |
My tentative school schedule for next semester: I am really excited about school, and figuring out my schedule makes me feel so much better about my life. It didn't seem real that I was going back until now, but a couple weeks ago I paid for most of tuition, and now I can get a realistic sense of what my life's going to be like a month from now. I wasn't sure whether I could still work at Ritz without stepping down or losing full time. Not that I'm crazy about my job, but at least I get benefits for the first time in my life, and once Christmas is over, things should get a little easier. This schedule should work, even with three other employees with very difficult school and personal schedules. Nothing else new, just trying to survive until after Christmas. I took a partial sick day yesterday because I was dying of exhaustion and some kind of cold. I came back today and apparently the store exploded without me. After Christmas I'm going to try to take a few days off and try to see snow in Julian. | | Sunday, October 15th, 2006 | | 11:58 pm |
| | Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 | | 12:26 am |
I'm working on going through some recent journal (paper) entries and turning them into essays. This is very much a rough draft, and I have stuff to add later, but it's a start. I have millions of scraps of paper in all my purses and all over surfaces in my apartment that have possibly important stuff written on them. I need to organize before it's all lost. At least I have a project for when I have writer's block. Anyway, forgive the roughness of this, all you nobodies who are reading this.
Coming to the conclusion of this seemingly endless summer, it seems like every conversation I’ve been having lately centers around the unbearable heat. It’s not so much boredom, or idle chit chat for people who don’t have much else to say. It’s more that the heat trails you. Even in climate controlled buildings, it’s just outside, waiting.
I got in the discussion with a coworker, who grew up in Arizona. That day was one of the worst; I think it was over 100 degrees. Every time someone walked in we could feel the heat rush inside eagerly. As soon as you stepped outside, the air pressed against you, heavy and draining. My coworker explained about how things are in the desert.
The desert is a beautiful place, a spiritual place, but it’s also a place to go to die, and not much else. The sky weighs down on you in a place like that, bends your back and shoulders down to dust, towards the grave. Your orientation is earth, not heaven. Dreams die, plans fail, ambitions are forgotten. But there is something profoundly spiritual about the desert. It hums with energy, with life. At night you can feel it come to you from across the broad expanse of empty horizon; you can hear the machinations of the universe at work under your feet.
In a place such as this, you are pushed up against yourself. People go there seeking themselves, but there isn’t much of a choice. You don’t find yourself, it finds you, and in this land of nothing, you have no other option but to see. Your true self comes at you like an attack, because out there reality is just you and survival. Those who aren’t able to face what they discover themselves to be destroy themselves instead, and there is no other option.
The threat here comes not so much from real physical danger, although there is plenty of that. Wild javelinas roam the night, Gila monsters and poisonous snakes sneak into houses. Elderly residents without air conditioning die in their houses in the hundred plus degree summers, and the ruined corpses of hikers are found days after their departure, their body’s moisture sucked from their eyes.
Despite these dangers, the real threat is psychological. It’s in the oppressive air that weighs you down, bringing you closer each and every day to your end. It’s in living in such close proximity to death at all times; survival becomes an intensely personal and intimate matter. It all comes down to you in a place like that. Pushed up against death, a person is ultimately alone, and there’s nowhere you can hide from yourself. Like the hiker who dies alone, you make a decision to keep on treading on, alone, or you die.
This summer we have broken all heat records in Southern California. I don’t think any skeptics can continue to cling to the hope that global warming is a myth. Summers continue to get hotter, winters continue to get more severe, and there’s no end in sight.
At 110 degrees in San Diego, only the dust moves. The air is still, silent. The air is heavy, the sun inescapable and scalding, even with eyes wide shut, it bores through the skull. Even on a short walk, the compulsion is just to stop, to go no further into this bleached out, harsh empty world.
Southern Californians cling to the belief that we can ultimately shut out any part of the natural world that inconveniences us. Central air seals us off in our own private worlds. We steal all the water we can find to transform the land into a new Eden, and tell ourselves that this is truly the Promised Land.
What if nature continues along its current course? What if this land becomes once again the desert it has always been? Our precious tropical landscaping, our illusion of paradise would wilt and die. The world outside our windows would become yellow and brown with death and decay. Once again, humanity would be ejected from Eden, this time of our own making. A punishment for the original sin of the west, the denial of nature.
Looking out their windows at the new colorless world, how will this glitz and glamour obsessed culture cope with such blandness? And could we cope with being forced to face ourselves? This is a world motivated primarily by the appearance of success, devoted to the cult of youth and beauty, willing as a norm to go under the knife to remove all the markings of age that fanatical exercise and diets leave behind.
Our goal has been to push away our true selves as much as possible, to hide the marks of time, to erase the stories of years gone by written in the lines upon our faces. Looking in the mirror, with nothing to read in our faces, we can pretend that our lives never happened. We can be new, fresh and innocent under the surgeon’s knife. But that isn’t the way of the desert. The desert seeks you out, throws you up against yourself.
On the white hot, bleached out days of August, even over the noise of air conditioning, everywhere you can feel a sub-audible hum. The ears can’t hear, but in your bones, in your stomach, it’s there. The air tingles with the heat, it’s charged with a different energy that sets your nerves on edge. It penetrates you and lays bare everything that you are.
Where could we run when our illusions are scattered by the humming August air? Where else can we go to hide from ourselves, since California has always been the last place, the edge of the continent, the edge of the world, the last place to run to escape from your self.
If the deep desert moves in on us we’ll have no more country to run to. We might as well jump into the sea, which will take our sins and drown them forever in a brackish flood of forgetfulness.
| | Monday, September 18th, 2006 | | 10:16 pm |
The other night Larry's mom and another Buddhist came over. I made them delicious lentils and stir fry. After dinner they chanted with us and told us all the wonderful things that happen when you chant. I don't know how much faith I can put in chanting to a piece of paper, but it is nice to know that there are people who do want good things to happen to Shaun and I. It was a nice night. Last Saturday there was a convention they wanted me to go to, but I woke up that morning feeling really sad and missing my mom, so instead I went to Grossmont Center on the and Shaun bought me a muffin to cheer me up. I had his car, so I drove over to the mission and took some pictures then hung out with Erin for a little while. We went up to the O.C. yesterday and hung out with Kellen for a little while. He's been acting a little bratty lately, not like himself. It worries me, but we had an okay time. I feel really guilty that I can't see him more often, but Shaun and I have been completely broke lately and haven't had the money for gas. But we're getting caught up, so we should be able to get up there on a more regular basis. Here's one of the pictures from the Mission. This is from Serra's bedroom. Pretty swanky digs he had.
| | Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 | | 9:46 pm |
Shaun and I are hanging out at Cosmos, this awesome, mostly unpretentious little coffee shop on La Mesa Blvd that has free wireless. I love having a laptop sometimes. There's some kind of open mic night going on, and little indie kids are hanging out all along the block in clusters practising their heartfelt ballads of teenage angst, lost summer loves, and non conformist anthems that pretty much all sound the same. There was a group of about five of them, laughing and yelling for show, to prove how wild and crazy and weird they are, aren't we all jealous of them, and the quiet one looking over her shoulder every now and then to be comforted by the fact that people were taking notice, that everyone knew they were that kind of group. Shaun and I would feel like fogies, but there's an old couple having a very quiet, very adult conversation, and their presense is cheering us up. I really miss my mom a lot sometimes, but I feel pretty much alright most of the time. I'm really relieved to get on with life. For so long things were just so focused on death, then all of a sudden I had a life again, and it's scary, but also great. I don't know what to do with myself, but I know I'll do something, and I can make choices and not feel so guilty and selfish for trying to take some control over things. We're going to the gym next, and we'll go tomorrow. When we get back, Shaun's going to work on some songs, and I'm going to try my hardest to write something, or else I'll fix up some pictures that I took last week in Old Town. We're starting our paper soon, and it's going to be awesome, and it'll force me to do wome work that I care about. Shaun and I are both going to save up and get D80s after Christmas, and I think that'll pretty much change my whole life, because I'm just too limited with film, even though I'll always love my little XG-9. Next time I have an internet connection I'm going to post some new pictures, but now Shaun's going to show me hard gay, which will be amazing, I'm sure. | | Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 | | 2:58 am |
I just won an auction for a minolta xg-9 for only $18!! Happy birthday to me! It's the exact same camera I have now, except that my current camera has no hot shoe, it was broken off before I owned it. The ability to use a flash would just totally rock my photographic world, even though I've gotten really good at shooting in available light, and I don't think I would have learned as much if I hadn't had that obstacle. Shaun and I spent the evening going through photos, trying to figure out which ones to enlarge. I had a lot of pictures up in the last apartment, but I want to start fresh. A lot of them were back from as early as my photo class days, and I really think I've improved a lot since then. Can't wait to have his apartment look a little more like home. I got off birth control because I am sick of working my ass off trying to lose weight and getting nowhere. This week isn't going to be good for the gym, with a lot of cleaning and work and my birthday coming up on Friday, but last week I was able to make it five days out of seven. It's great to just ride the bus a little further to Grossmont Center, stop in to say hi to Shaun at Ritz, walk across the street to the gym, and then hop on the trolley for a 5 minute ride. Shaun's been going with me as much as he can, which hasn't been much so far, but when we get this new apartment thing squared away, he'll get on track, too. I obught a scale to keep track, and I've already lost ten pounds. My goalis to lose 40 more by October 24, which is our 2 year anniversary. With that, I'll have lost all the weight I put on with the pill. The pill is evil. I can handle condoms for a little while if it means I can look like a normal person again. | | Saturday, July 15th, 2006 | | 9:20 pm |
So we are finally moved into our adorable La Mesa apartment. There's still a lot of stuff in boxes, but it looks for the most part like n actual home, and I can tell I'm going to love this place so much more than Hillside Gardens. This Tuesday, I called Charles while I was doing maintenance at work and found out there was some kind of police raid on our complex. Apparently, some guy and his girlfriend tried to steal something from the beauty supply store down the street, a clerk confronted them, and the guy hit him. Then the two ran off, and some witnesses said he was running with a gun. They went into our back parking lot, found an open garage, and holed up there for about five hours. The whole street was closed off, a swat team was called in, and poor Charles, who just wanted to go to San Clemente to see her mom, was trapped there. When Shaun and I got there they were just about to try gassing hm out, and as we walked up the the police line, we heard what we thought were gun shots. They finally got him out with tear gas, and we got bored of the scene and went home. So there's absolutely nothing making me nostalgic for the old place, not that there would have been. It's really nice to be actually living with Shaun, in our oown place. I have a feeling that a lot of the kinks in our relationship will work themselves out more easily. Not that we'reever going to get along perfectly, but I think things will go more smoothly now. It will help to have a little more free time, too. We still have a lot to do, cleaning and unpacking and organizing, but at least the end's in sight for most of it. We might actually have some time to just spend together without having to run around in a panic. We took some time out and went downtown last night to wander around for awhile. I can't remember the last time we did that, just walked around without a purpose. It was wonderful. We spent way too much time looking at gadgets in Sharper Image, followed the Hare Krishna guys around for awhile, went to Starbucks (the ordering procedure at Bassam's is too confusing) and saw a pedicab smash into a stopped car. The driver was riding really fast trying to show off for his passengers, who were screaming in terror. He turned around to say something to them, them slammed right into this sad looking car. He just sort of crumpled, then got back up and tried to convince the driver of the car that there was no damage. I guess you probably don't need insurance to drive one of those things. They're just a menace to this fine city. Anyway, things are pretty good lately, except that I haven't talked to my mom since I went up there last Saturday, and I feel both guilty and worried. I tried calling her yesterday, but got no answer. I guess Quinn would call me if anything was wrong, but still. I don't know when I'll be able to go up there again. Between both apartments, the deposit and the couch, Shaun and I magically pulled $2500 out of our asses, but we're seriously broke, and I don't know if I can spare the $30 round-trip train fare to go to San Clemente, not that I have any time, anyway. Current Mood:  productive | | Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 | | 1:49 pm |
I am really loving the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD. It's not new, but when I bought it I forgot about it for awhile, and now I'm obsessed again. It's good at drowning out the sounds of stupid bitches in west commons. I hate west commons, I hate students and any place they congregate. But they have Starbucks and wireless and comfortable chairs. Last night I was supposed to be working on a 20 page paper that's due Thursday. But it was so nice to just sleep instead. So I've guaranteed myself that I'll get no sleep tonight. That's okay. I'm already bored by my paper, and I haven't written a single word. I had my first final today at 1 pm. I woke Shaun up at 12:15, fooled around with him until 12:40, and got to school at 12:55. I finished the test in 10 minutes. I love lower division classes, but it's giving me a false sense of confidence. I'll pull it together in the end, though. It's sort of sad that I won't be back at this school until next spring semester. It'll be weird going back to community college, but if it saves money, it's worth it. Soon Shaun and I will be moving, and I'll be able to save money to make sure I can actually graduate. In the mean time, I better get back on track with writing this insane, boring long paper. It's about the women in One Hundred Years of Solitude, relating them to women in Colombia and their role in antiwar movements and the impact that they have had on Colombian politics behind the scenes. It's very complicated, and I have no idea if I'll be able to make any sense of it at all. | | Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 | | 10:52 pm |
I talked to my mom today. She's incredibly weak, chemotherapy isn't working out very well. She said she's been in bed most of the time. It's not at all like her, she sounded close to tears. Kellen asked her last night if she was going to die. The kid's too smart, I worry about him so much. Besides that, today was a pretty good day. Quinn and Starla had me take engagement pictures for them a few weeks ago, and it was slow today so I spent most of the day scanning their rolls to CD and messing with the color. They turned out reall nice. Shaun and I have gone to the gym for the past three nights. I feel much better, much calmer. I hope we're able to keep up our momentum. Tomorrow night we're going to go also. It's really good to break a sweat, especially when you're stressed. Last night I talked to Lear-la. I had told her briefly about my mom's situation, but hadn't told her the whole story. It's exhausting having to catch someone up on stuff so traumatic, having to rewind and live all of it over again. I've been putting off talking to her for hat reason, but I'm lad I got the chance finally. She pointed out that it's a miracle that my mom has survived almost two years since she was diagnosed. At one point, the doctors predicted that she would have no more than three months. It changes the way I look at it, keeping that in mind. How can I be angry about this, when we've already been blessed to have her for this much longer? Especially Kellen. He was two years old back then. Now he's turning 5 in October, the year after that he'll be in kindergarten, he's potty trained. He's a big kid. I can't imagine how devastating this will be for him, but I have faith that he'll be okay. | | Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 | | 2:13 pm |
I can feel my mind shrinking. I got all excited by my last two classes, getting all worked up about free will and the origin of good and evil, etc, talking about Nietzsche and Brave New World. Then I have a 30 minute break and what do I do with it? I go see what's new on Myspace and here. I take all that inspiration and throw it away looking at stupid pictures and reading about peoples' pointless relationships played out over the internet. God, is it any wonder I have accomplished so little in my life? FOr all the supposed potential I possessed, look at me now, at this point ditching my last class to catch up on my internet gossip. I don't know if I'm more disgusted with myself or with society in general, that it has created so many people who would rather engage in long-distance internet realationships that build real face-to-face ones, and would rather read about everyone else's exciting lives than live their own. Right now what I should do is get off my ass, call my mom, figure out what to do about the sinking ship that is my life right now. But instead, sitting in a room with a bunch of other robots all engaged in pseudo-lives, electronic living. I think it's myself that I'm most disgusted with, really. | | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 | | 9:41 pm |
On Dateline they are showing the fourth part of an investigation of internet predators. They have people go into chatrooms pretending to be underage girls and they arrange meetings with perverts, who drive hours for the opportunity to have sex with a 13 or 14 year old girl. It's making me feel sick. There is just something seriously wrong with our society if every time they do one of these things they can bust over 20 guys, in any part of the country. One guy on now is a sixth grade teacher at a Catholic school. It's amazing how many sick people there are that can pass for normal. Even people I know. You assume someone is normal, and you find out some sick detail of their sex life or something. It really makes you wonder if there aren't really more perverts out there than normal people. I really hope this isn't representative. And hopefully I just know fucked up people. | | Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 | | 9:35 am |
I have a printer and a scanner and a nice little workspace in my bedroom that was previously blocked off with my old dead computer. I love Shaun and his surprises. He's been hiding the scanner in his closet for months. I am really getting excited about the upcoming move this summer. I realized that I have never felt completely at home in San Diego, even though I feel more at home here than anywhere else. I'm sort of stuck in between. I think I'll finally feel like home when we move. I'll be a little better prepared with stuff like furniture and dishes and crap, and I can set everything up how I like it and how it will fit us best. Right now, my bedroom isn't set up to fit two people. It feels awkward, and there's still that feeling that Shaun is a guest. I just need to feel like I have more control in my life in general, and a change in scenery will really help. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92){kind=small}
princeackleykid's journal
