Today's Thought Journal

A second mom of mine gave me a little notebook a month ago and I've wanted to carry it around to write thoughts in. I didn't have real desire to until a myspace pal of mine wrote a blog based off of what she wrote in her little notebook that day. I enjoyed the blog, so today I carried around my little notebook.

Thought 1. Sprinklers are like jumpropes. I time it to walk past at just the right instance, like jumping into a jumprope just right, but it somehow catches me almost every time.

Thought 2. Boys are jerks. A friend of mine met a boy a week ago. They played almost every day this week and had a lot of fun and she was really starting to like him. Then last night while 80's dancing together, he madeout with some girl. Not my friend. Boys are jerks.

Thought 3. Girls and tight pants. Either it works or it doesn't. If it does work, it works really well, like for the girl with the pretty hair I saw today. But when it doesn't work, she either looks like a man from behind, like the girl in the blue and white stripped shirt I saw today, or she looks like a clown with feet far too large for her body, like the girl in the grey jacket I saw today.

Thought 4. This morning it was raining. It was perfect rain. I was so satisfied. Then I got to physics.

Thought 5. What if I am living on this earth multiple times in the same instance? What if I'm reborn every 10 or 15 years? No one would remember the previous me, even if I did live in the same area the current me lives in. It would be too long ago. Or I'd just look like my "Aunt Sherry" or something, but really Aunt Sherry is me! What if I'm alive at the age of 3, 18, 33, 48, 63, 78, and 93?!? And all my previous me's experienced the same things as me. Maybe different people and places, but same emotions and life-changing events. I probably look different at each age. I bet my 33 year old me didn't have my glasses or hair when I was 18. But think. I lived in every decade. That would make things much easier for God- his population only being the same poeple replicated every 15 years. Still a lot of people to watch over, mind you, but a little easier. And the dead me's are my guardian angels! Even if I did run into one of me, like the 33 year old, I wouldn't recognize myself. I might find our personalities are similar, but I'd be more mature in look and personality than me so neither would recognize each other. Crazy!

Thought 6. I bet Sheryl Crow really uses loads of toilet paper.

Thought 7. I hate wasting an entire new line of paper for one or two words that wouldn't fit onto the previous line. I either erase the last 5 or so words and write them even smaller, start writing sideways along the edge of the paper, or just squish the last word so much I can't even read it.

Thought 8. I am afraid I am going to snap. I don't know what that snap will do to me, maybe just some kind of emotional breakdown or something, but I feel it's presence in my future. I feel pressure fom myself, my parents, my family, my once friend, and my school. I want to keep my scholarship, but that requires a 3.9 this semester. I don't get physics. Or Calculus sometimes. I thought I was good at math. My brain is failing me, and I'm afraid of failing. I don't want to lose my scholarship. It will put pressure on my parents. I am afraid. I don't feel very much support. I feel very unstable and vulnerable, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. But acknowledging that is a step I suppose.

Thought 9. I wish I took Creative Writing for 3 years in High School. But I took zero years. I wish I took debate my whole life. But I took zero years. I wish I took Drafting all through High School. But I took zero years. I wish I took 3 years of math in High School. But I took 2 years. I wish I took year and years of Art. But I took much less than that.

Thought 10. No regrets.

Thought 11. I've noticed that fat kids don't ride bikes around campus, neither do they skateboard. This means one of two things. 1. Skateboarding and bike riding is good exercise and keep the doers thin. or 2. Fat kids are physically unable to skateboard or bike.

Thought 12. How did college students at the University of Utah cross Wasatch Drive before the Legacy Bridge was built in 2002? Did they have to stop traffic with a crosswalk light? What a nuisance. Why did they not think of a bridge earlier? Wierdies.

Thought 13. I don't know anyone on campus, so why should I care if someone see's me pick my nose? I had at it for probably 6 seconds. It was the longest I've picked my nose in public. Then I looked up and saw a boy I know. He waved. I think he saw me. For 6 whole seconds.

Thought 14. I have come to the conclusion that navigating a skateboard through hundreds of students on a sidewalk is harder than navigating a longboard through hundreds of students on a sidewalk.

Thought 15. Riding either a skateboard or longboard over the thump-thump thump-thumps of the sidewalk would not be fun on a full bladder.

Thought 16. There seems to be some kind of a power struggle between my Calculus teacher and myself.

Thought 17. I have a rainbow colored backpack with a unicorn on it and purple glasses. I wonder how many people have thought I'm a lesbian.

Thought 18. I think my Calculus teacher might have a crush on me.

Thought 19. Today I saw an under-cover cop in a mini-van. Welcome to Utah.

Jarred Caterpillars

Today's heat smelled like caterpillars for about one minute. On my way to Sign Language, I took a really deep breath in for no reason, and a very distinct memory came to my mind. I remembered collecting bugs, particularly caterpillars, and keeping them in a class jar with grass and leaves and a few twigs. I'd poke a million holes in the lid so the caterpillar wouldn't sufficate. I don't think I realized that caterpillars probably don't use very much oxygen per inhalation. I'd often just watch the colorful hair of the caterpillar scrunch up then stretch out as the bug moved up a stick or burrowed into the grass. The smell of the hot air today was the exact smell of a jar of caterpillar. The smell-memory disappeared when I was distracted by a passing motorized bicycle.

So I closed it.

It was a testing experience, reading something written by someone I love, saying that everything I've ever believed or chosen to believe or chosen to know is not true. Either my dinner suddenly became heavy in my stomach, or as I read, the hope and belief I have that brings me happiness in this life was being contradicted in my mind. After experiencing a brief feeling of the hopelessless brought on by this different way of thinking, I decided I had the choice to continue entertaining doubt by reading on, or to rid my entire body, or so it felt, of that possessing, dampening spirit by closing the writing. So I closed it.

People Watching

When I walk to my classes, I look up and try to look at lots of people. I have always enjoyed people watching, and I've never people watched anywhere with more diversity and interesting people than here at the U. It's fun hearing seconds of a phone call when someone walks by on his/her phone, wondering if that is an ipod that boy is holding up to his ear like a cell phone, watching groups of people laugh loudly at something apparently very funny, watching the boy walk with his head down, wondering how he is managing to not bump into anything or anyone and wishing he'd just look up, seeing the girl limping funny because of the blister on her heel covered by spiderman bandaid, listening to the longboarder with the hat get mad and swear at the man in the red shirt walking on the sidewalk because the man didn't hear the longboarder coming and didn't move out of the way so the longboarder had to hit him, watching the speed and skill of the real longboarders who can manoeuver through countless kids and small gaps by barely leaning, making eye contact with everyone who looks at me and half smiling in a "Hi, I am not afraid to make eye contact with you, and it doesn't mean I think you are cute or think you are too pretty or anything, I just like smiling at people" way, wondering if the person I'm looking at with the reflective sunglasses on is looking at me and if he/she is I'd better look away quick, wanting to be reading or studying like the people in the shade on that green grass instead of rushing to class, wondering what kind of music is coming out of those headphones, wondering if she's smiling at me because she also notices that our hair is similar but different colors or if she's just being happy, wondering how that boy broke his elbow and how long he'll have to have that straight cast from his shoulder to his thumb on for, trying to see the cover of that book he's reading to see if it sounds good or if I have read it, imagining bumping into myself as I walked to class and being stunned that I have a twin but not having time to stop and talk to her, or wondering what her text says that is making her so happy. I wish I could read minds too.

Melancholy

Empty, forgotten, friendless, alone, afraid, unknown, timid, need, detached, unsure, unattended, isolated, free.

The Shape of Content

Excerpt from Ben Shann's book The Shape of Content

Attend a university if you possibly can. There is no content of knowledge that is not pertinent to the work you will want to do. But before you attend a university work at something for a while. Do anything. Get a job in a potato field; or work as a grease-monkey in an auto repair shop. But if you do work in a field do not fail to observe the look and feel of earth and of all things that you handle-- yes, even potatoes! Or, in the auto shop, the smell of oil and grease and burning rubber. Paint of course, but if you have to lay aside painting for a time, continue to draw. Listen well to all conversations and be instructed by them and take all seriousness seriously. Never look down upon anything or anyone as not worthy of notice. In college or out of college, read. And form opinions! Read Sophocles and Euripides and Dante and Proust. Read everything that you can find about art except the reviews. Read the Bible; read Hume; read Pogo. Read all kinds of poetry and know many poets and many artists. Go to an art school, or two, or three, or take art courses at night if necessary. And paint and paint and draw and draw. Know all that you can, both curricular and non-curricular-- mathmatics and physics and economics, logic, and particularly history. Know at least two languages besides your own, but anyway, know French. Look at pictures and more pictures. Look at every kind of visual symbol, every kind of emblem; do not spurn signboards or furniture drawings or this style of art of that style of art. Do not be afraid to like paintings honestly or to dislike them honestly, but if you do dislike them retain an open mind. Do not dismiss any school of art, not the Pre-Raphaelites nor the Hudson River School nor the German Genre painters. Talk and talk and sit at cafes, and listen to everything, to Brahms, to Brubeck, to the Italian hour on the radio. Listen to preachers in small town churches and in big city churches. Listen to politicians in New England town meetings and to rabble-rousers in Alabama. Even draw them. And remember that you are trying to learn to think what you want to think, that you are trying to co-ordinate mind and hand and eye. Go to all sorts of museums and galleries and to the studios of artists. Go to Paris and Madrid and Rome and Ravenna and Padua. Stand alone in Sainte Chapelle, in the Sistine Chapel, in the Church of the Carmine in Florence. Draw and draw and paint and learn to work in many media; try lithography and aquatint and silk-screen. Know all that you can about art, and by all means have opinions. Never be afraid to become embroiled in art or life or politics; neverbe afraid to learn to draw or paint better than you already do; and never be afraid to undertake any kind of art at all, however exalted or however common, but do it with distinction.