No Telling

I like Wednesdays.

every so often I get
knocked outside of my head
and I am always surprised by the view.

once in a while
reality presents itself irresistibly to my unwilling eyes
and when it does the laughter comes un-canned
shaking me out of my sitcom mentality

because sometimes
I'm watching life from outside of it.

I freeze in one spot and don't notice
til I try to move and panic because
even my eyes are stuck.
and nobody can tell me that's a good thing.

call it sleep deprivation or yesterday's mascara
but that eyes-frozen feeling
makes me rub and rub til the tears start.
it's ok 'cause tears are lubricants.
they promote motion.

you could try
eleven different ways to tell me
upside down and backwards
that I have nothing to worry about.
I wouldn't believe you.

outside of life isn't so bad
except it's not real.
which means it isn't so good.

Snippets

Junior year is going to be short. It has been short. It will continue to have been being short. I noticed as life goes on it is ever-increasingly diminutive.
I need to get a job, but I have no time for that.
My likes and dislikes have changed radically over the past two years. A lot of things have changed over the past two years.

National Novel Writer's Month is a scant week and a half away. I'll be trying my hand at the 50,000 words-in-thirty-days challenge...and I'll probably not get any homework done.

Someone gave me an umbrella today, which made up for the iron quitting on me halfway through my skirt. I released my scarves from their trunk-seclusion. I helped my roommate assemble a bookshelf and listened to her struggles in figuring out her new Amazing Coffeemaker.
I don't drink coffee. But my room will be a popular place, probably.

According to my degree plan sheets, I ought to be able to finish my double major in four years.
I watched Hamlet for the first time today (the one with Mel Gibson, Zeffirelli's production) and thought I could identify with him, to a very small extent.

The Ancient Mayans thought people with crosseyes were beautiful. They dangled pendants off of their infants' foreheads to force the trait. That's so weird-- and now we vacuum fat out of our arses and shoot it into our foreheads.
I think some of the Mayans shook their heads and said, "hey, guys, this is actually a ridiculous standard of beauty." If they did then maybe there's hope for us too.

grownups

My best friend just got engaged. I’m wondering when I became old enough for that to happen.

It’s a milestone in one’s life, I think; that first friend to go. And it was she; the last one we ever thought would be the first one. I’ve watched them fall in love for the past six months and it’s been so amazing, in an odd, living-vicariously-through-someone-else kind of way. And tonight was the night—we crowded outside the elevators, waiting for her to get back to her dorm room, and screamed so that the shafts echoed as soon as the metal doors slid apart and we saw the smile on her face and the glint on her hand. Her face was bursting—she wanted to smile so much more than was physically possible—and she couldn’t stop grabbing us in those fierce best-friend hugs that make your throat choke and your eyes mist “but I’m not crying,” I sniff, “It’s just been raining on my face.” (God bless you flight of the conchords) And then to pile into her room and talk to Ja—her fiancé—and congratulate him…I’d never done that before tonight. Even though we all knew it was coming.

Anyway, yes. The bridesmaid dresses will be pool blue ruched empire waisted halter satin ball gowns. Enough adjectives to choke a cow, but they’re so pretty, and it’s a flattering cut. We’re still looking for hers. Like I said, we knew this was coming.

I don’t know what to do with myself. I know it’s silly, but the fact that I’ll be a bridesmaid twice this May, and the proliferation of relationships around me makes me wonder—did I miss something? What is it about this year, this summer, this semester, that has given all my friends this pair-off fever? More than that, where are they coming from? Relationships are cropping up out of nowhere; Cupid has traded in his bow and arrow for a sniper rifle.

And I'd kinda like to get shot... (? pardon the awkward conclusion to that metaphor...)

If anyone deserves it, it’s these two—and I am so happy for them I can’t express it. And for them all, for I perceive looming ahead of me a great many more pool blue ruched empire waisted halter satin ball gowns, or the rough equivalent. Life is happening, those Big Moments, and I don’t remember getting the memo that these things were on their way. They pretty much just showed up and made themselves at home. Which is fine, but it does leave me a bit breathless.

This has lost its point. But somehow I am okay with that.

Reality is a funny thing.
It's fluid, flexible, changes when you look at it from a different perspective. Currently I feel caught between a handful of different ones. None of these are easily or neatly classified; I can't pigeonhole them into "academic life", "social life", "spiritual life", and I feel split between them.
I could look at life in context of the scandal that is rocking my university right now, and live depressed. I could look at it in context of the relational confusions of friends, family, colleagues and be bewildered. I could see things as my father wants me to see them, and be unsure. I could see things the way everyone else sees them, and be soulless.
Or I could see things the way God sees them, and be at peace.
That is something that, if I ever had it, I have lost.
There is a time for talk and there is a time for silence, a time to inquire and a time to be still and wait for understanding.
There is a time to make jokes and there is a time for sobriety. Levity is not listed among the virtues, culture has paid it more than its due. There is a time to be small and a time to grow, and I cannot help but feel that I am overdue for growth.
Please do not read me wrong: this is no criticism of personal immaturity, dissatisfaction with self, et cetera. This is an acknowledgment of how things are, a nod to the reality that does not change, no matter where I stand. I have seen that there are some things I cannot get around, and it is time I stopped trying.
I only know to do what is given me to do.