Who we are

The things we do when we're alone make us who we are. There are the readers and the sleepers, and sometimes a mixture of the two. There are the inventors and the musicians and the learners and the eaters and the dancers and the watchers. There's always the watchers, and they're the most important. They're the most important because without them, everyone would be truly alone.

Colbie Collait's a Bitch

So besides for TOHS's wikipedia page making my entire life, decorating Joe's Christmas tree, and the 2.5 tests I have to prepare for, I'm bored.
I'm not so sure that sentence even made any grammatical sense.

Anyhow.
I'm not really bored at the moment, just, always, kinda. It seems to me as if interesting things happen to all those around me, and everyone's forming new bonds or strengthening older ones and I'm stuck watching.
Really guys? Really? AM I REALLY THAT UNINTERESTING!?
Maybe it's just the world's way of preparing me for a lifetime of TV watching, because apparently spectating and commenting is all I'll ever be doinggg. Where's my Jim Halpert and Alice and Jack and Sawyer and Ron Weasely and Hermoine Granger and Tila Tequila and Jeff Connaway and House and J.D. and Elliot and Carla and GOD I NEED A DR. COX. Fuck polysyndenton.

I have a new theory as to why I love to write fiction so much. It's because I am a book. Not like an open book cause you can read all my emotions on my face, because I'm actually pretty sure I have two facial expressions tops, but rather I am a book in the sense that I dramatize the majority of everything and am always thinking things out further than they need to be thought out, plotting, if you will.
Examples? Well. During a conversation with Casey I mentally decided her future, romantic and career-wise, in a total of maybe 20 seconds. A couple of hours ago I received a phone call almost clarifying some suspicions I am having, and then proceeded to imagine the entire scenario which I truly believe to be unfolding beneath me, including everyone's feelings who I presume to be involved. Also, I firmly believe that no matter if I open my math book or not, I will fail tomorrow, my father will cry real tears, and I'll be disowned from his family for going to Moorpark.
So, in simpler words, I'm just a book.

Nonsense. None of the above categorizes me as a book. No, I categorize myself as a book, so there.

I just want to write and read and music and talk, no not talk, listen. I just want to listen.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I just want a Dr. Cox so I could listen.

Super.

I should be doing Bio. But I feel like writing. But I don't have time to write, so instead I was reading some stuff I've meekly begun kinda/not really so recently. So if anyone is in the mood for some unedited, almost plot-less, not even half finished stories, this is the place.

I only heard it happen because I couldn’t fall asleep.

I heard their voices rise to various unnerving octaves, though they were evidently trying their hardest to be as hushed as possible. Their attempts quickly proved that silence was not something they could conquer just then. In my head I gave each level of their voices a color. Breathy yet strong, mom achieved a dark orange and a head-splitting yellow, if colors could split heads that is. On the other hand, dad received a dark, deep blue, his fight to achieve calmness also granting him a foaming green. Drumming my fingers on my bed stand, I listened intently to the zippers zipping, the hangers being hastily dropped to the floor, and all the while I imagined them whipping into different shapes on their descent towards the hardwood. I saw white stars and hearts sifting through the air in slow motion, only to bend and break when they clattered noisily on the ground. Covers pulled up to my chin, I gathered that mom was the one leaving, for she was sobbing incoherently and didn’t open my door to take one last look at me, which was the deciding factor, of course. Had dad been the one on the run he would have taken fifteen seconds to gaze upon his only son.

So it was right then, at a mere eleven years of age, that I decided I was better off without her.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of pots banging and the scent of cheese omelet, and I walked into the kitchen to my father cooking a meaty breakfast, and the table set for three. Quickly I assessed, mom had left, so did that mean the reason for her departure was here? Was everything dad’s mistake, was there another woman? Then I heard soft tapping coming down the hallway, I smelled a scent of lilac and daisies, and I knew before she came into view that my mother was walking into the kitchen, and apparently back into my life, not that anyone was aware that I was aware she had left it, even if it had been such a short amount of time.

For the five and a half years ensuing, I simply ignored her. She was a ghost to me, though I could see her, smell her, sense her even, she was transparent, I forced myself to believe that I was only imagining her, that the smell was wafting through the open windows, that the presence I felt was either my father or I was just being paranoid. Hearing her, however, was another story. It took me years to finally block out the sing-song of her voice entirely, to stop cringing whenever she called my name or actually be tempted to pass her the butter.

I can’t hear her. I can’t hear her because she’s not here. And she’s not here because she left.

My mother had always been inspired by self-help books and billionaires like Donald Trump. There were always highlighted articles and notes scattered around the house, always pads of paper with quotes such as “to love what one does” and “get back on the horse” to be found laying around. After she left I’d find piles of her old scribbles, and later I found more and more, and all they ever said was “I love you” and “I’m always here.” It was like she was trying to talk to me or something.

I had many methods of forgetting her presence, mostly internal, but other times when the pain was too much, when she attempted to embrace me before I dodged her and her hand managed to grasp my arm, or when she cooked me my favorite dinner and I had to pretend like it wasn’t getting cold right in front of my eyes, or that it wasn’t right in front of me in the first place, I did other things. I’d calmly walk into my room and rock myself to sleep, or I’d find a single parent chat room online and find other people with one parent like me, or sometimes I’d stop eating for a few days.

After dad stopped taking me to therapists and realized I wasn’t going to take any of the drugs they prescribed me without vigorous protest, and that was four full years after mom left us, he stopped trying to get me to see her. None of the doctors could really prescribe me much, because I was completely normal and healthy, except that I refused to see my so called-mother even while she was supposedly standing right in front of me. And then around my 16^th birthday, I literally stopped seeing her all together. I wasn’t dis-imagining her, either. I could hear her, but it was as if my eyes had adapted to what my brain kept telling it, and she was officially invisible to me. That night I went into my room and cried. I imagined myself hanging upside-down by the knees from monkey bars, my tears falling the wrong way, up and over my eyelids and the creases by my temples, falling into my hairline. My frown, etched deep into my face, was a wide, gaping smile then, and even my stifled sobs seemed to sound more like chuckles, with the air getting caught in my throat and all.

____________________

I think of interviewing random people I want to befriend about trivial things, just to get to know them, to give them a sense of trust in me, to give myself the hope of a flame igniting and a friendship blossoming. I’d tell them all it’s for something important, for a magazine or an internet feature, so they’d trust me and so I could witness their eyes sparkle and their faces light up as they take pride in the fact that someone thought they had something significant to share with the rest of the world, flattered that they’d been picked out of who knows how many to give their account of something. Really I’d just keep all the answers to myself and invent personalities behind them, learn and learn more about people, until there’s no one left unknown to me.

____________________

Some people say love is black and white. For me, everything is black and white. The sky is always shades of gray, the ocean is always coal and vanilla with every crash of a wave, and my mother’s eyes are always the purest shade of night. She tells me mine are a bright green, the hue of the grass after a morning rain. I imagine the color of grass in my eyes, but that just seems faded and dull to me. I imagine fire in my hair, like my mother insists it looks like, but all I get from that is sinewy strands of ash and slivers of onyx flowing from my scalp. I’ve seen men give women lustful black roses, running children with the darkest cheeks, colorless and blended sunsets, all in shades of gray and white. My whole life is a no man’s land, seamless, a full-fledged gray area. Although, there was one time in my whole life of twenty-seven years that I did see color, except it wasn’t one of those colors with a name. I couldn’t put a name to it if I tried, and I have tried, for the past ten years I’ve been trying.

_________________________

Personally, I think that superheroes would be amongst the most depressed category of people to ever exist in this world, if in fact, superheroes did exist. I find it very naïve of people to only think of the good a superhero would feel after saving a litter of kittens from a fateful fall down a waterfall or a bus load of children from cruising onto a bridge lacking the middle. What of the poor superhero’s faith in humanity? Isn’t it logical to assume that the modern day Spiderman thinks of the trouble some poor soul went through to piece together a raft, find an array of gorgeous and rare kittens, place them all in a single cardboard box and send them on their way down a waterway ending in, ironically enough, fish food? Honestly, how is it the public can’t ever see the downside to being an inch and a half away from death, disaster, and destruction at all times? If I were a superhero, if such things were ever to even exist, I’d be devastated. Unlike so many people who wish and pray for extra human qualities and abilities to save the world, I shy away from such responsibility and pain and even guilt. Being super is simply just not for me.

Fully Furnished&Colorless

I asked myself a question the other day, one that isn't always so easy to answer. Though it's a fairly simple question, I was still very pleased with myself when I answered it, and all without a hint of hesitance.
I asked myself what I am most confident about in my life, and my response was my writing.
Not the blog type of writing though, or the school induced writing either, but rather my fiction, the stories I've been coming up with and working on for some time now. I find myself attuned to simple things that I feel could be extraordinary if worded that right way, like the blandness or dislike of white walls, which led me to "I’ll walk into a fully furnished room and the walls will be white, not even off-white, just plain, old, infuriating white, and I’ll have this overtaking urge to take a thick black expo-marker and squeak words all over the surface. I want everyone to see how the walls are screaming." Or the way coat hangers can be shaped so eaisly, "the hangers being hastily dropped to the floor, and all the while I imagined them whipping into different shapes on their descent towards the hardwood. I saw white stars and hearts sifting through the air in slow motion, only to bend and break when they clattered noisily on the ground." Or the absence of color, "I’ve seen men give women lustful black roses, running children with the darkest cheeks, colorless and blended sunsets, all in shades of gray and white. My whole life is a no man’s land, seamless, a full-fledged gray area. "
And all of these things I see, the sounds I hear, even the abstract I can only feel, I find that I retain it all and find some way to transfer it into words, forming sentences, paragraphs, pages and pages of story.
I love it.
So when I say I am most confident about my writing, more confident of my writing than I am of my intelligence or humor or passion, I don't say so because I think it's the best, but rather because it's how I incorporate everything I know about life, and even some things I don't know, into something tangible. So when something happens, anything at all, good or bad or trivial or anything, I am sure that I can find some way to portray it with my words. And that's confidence for me. Knowing that no matter what I'll will always, always have this, always have writing to display everything and anything I couldn't have said or just explained myself.

Crash and Soda and Crying and Gas

Since I've had a cell phone, which has only been around 2 years mind you, I've been writing little things that inspire me and anecdotes I come up with that usually end up turning into some interesting short story in my notepad. I looked at all of them today, and I have decided to share some of them. Here we go. (Remember, these are unedited, and mostly straight from my imagination.)

"When I was eight, my mom got in a car accident. All she was wearing was a blue flannel t-shirt. She still got out of the car to yell at the other lady, cellulite, bouncing boobs and all. "

"Soda fountains are amazing. They unite everyone, but some people won’t go up to get their drink while someone is up there. The way I see it, soda fountains are the key to world peace. Just imagine it, one united soda fountain with every drink ever stretched all the way around, so there’d be enough for everyone and people would be standing side by side constantly, black and white and tan and pale and root beer and diet Pepsi and Strawberry Fanta and Baja Blast and everything. No one could discriminate, as long as they’re standing together at a world sized soda fountain."

"I wonder if people really think that adorning every surface they can get their hands on with the three letters “RIP” will actually affect someone that’s already gone. Do they really think that it will grant their loved ones rest and peace? What if resting in peace isn’t what that person had in mind? What if they had been resting all their natural lives and wanted something different where they were, something unobtainable while living the only life we know while we’re here? I think that if I’m dead, if whatever comes after death isn’t just an extended period of feeling yourself die, or crouching on a cloud and watching the Earth below, or even singing old rock and roll songs with Elvis or reading short stories with Edgar Allan Poe, I’ll be swallowing fire and riding hippos completely immersed in water. I’m going to want to build an entire life-size house of cards to live in and drive a golf cart at NASCAR speeds around whatever paved road they may or may not have in the so-called afterlife. I’ll bungee jump into red Jello and breed pink and purple cheetahs. Life will be dangerous, and it won’t even be life."

"I cry in random bookstores. Whenever I feel the need, the pull at my eyelids, the weight of the tears struggling to break from their hold, I get in my car and drive to a bookstore I haven’t been in quite yet, and every time I reach one, whether I had to drive 35 minutes on the freeway or just down the block, I find a new section of books I haven’t cried in yet. Last week it was science fiction."


"He was filling up the gas tank. He left the pump in the spout to fill and walked into the Mobil mart to buy a drink or something. I slid across the middle console and took the driver’s seat. Then I started the car, and drove. The pump resisted, I looked over my shoulder to see the numbers racing towards sixty, I accelerated harder and with a huge clang the pump released and lashed back hitting the stand, swinging back and forth with the oil flowing like black sewage. As I pulled out towards the curb, about to turn onto the street, I glanced and saw him standing in front of the station, motionless, holding a Pepsi in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. I didn’t stay long enough to catch the look on his face. "