Found yet another old journal from 2006. Turns out I was pretty lame up until gov school started. I remember it perfectly, befor then my teen years were filled with being an emo mess and before that I was just really, really mean. Gov School changed all that for some reason, and when I came back I saw the whole world and my place in it a lot differently. Then senior year all throughout I changed more. Then Egypt, even more. Then I almost let Swarthmore undo the good changes because it's the kind of place that can change you if you let it but I don't want it to change that part of me, just the part of me that procrastinates on my assignments.

Break is long and a little boring, but it's quite relaxing. I do miss folks, but I love the coming back from a long break feeling and seeing everyone again.

Today is my G-ma's birthday.

“If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up.”

got a roll of film that I used through parts of first semester and the summer. Will probably never go back to digital.

honey honey honey

BRENDAN today. Estoy muy emocionada!

Still don't have my spanish grade but WOULD LOVE IT IF I PASSED (knockonwoodthreetimes)

I must clean and shower and wash a load of clothes before FOUR which is when I have to leave and go get him from the train station although I probably won't leave until 4 20.

Ok. This post had little point but I wrote it.

Before I shower

Too often I find myself lost in the future. Whole days gone by daydreaming of things yet to come. My imagination gets the best of me cause it's so good that I forget you're not supposed to live there.

The tile on the kitchen floor isn't ideal for winter weather in a house this big this old this cold this empty. When the snow comes and the attic's breezy everyone shuts themselves into their own rooms so we go long whiles not realizing that we're not alone here. My family is odd because it's so large yet unbearably easy to feel lonely.

And who likes to feel lonely? I like the feeling of being alone, but being alone is only fun when you know that there's someone you can call or someone else who's awaiting your arrival so that they can share a warm bed with you, otherwise it feels like you're trying to trick yourself into happiness. It feels, sometimes, as if we walk by one another with millions of secrets tattooed on our limbs the same color as our skin so that the summer time seems to bleed the truth from our veins, you know?

And I forget what it feels like to settle down, sit still, make a home in a place. I've been living in a continual state of packing and unpacking, never fully achieving one or the other, and home's only in this heart of mine and the hearts of others. I haven't felt home in a place in the longest time, only with people. I don't have to have known them for long, and it's not a feeling that tends to stay with many, it comes and goes as it sees fit but for the time that it's there it's right and it's Home.

So I suppose you can take my theres but it's the thems I'll always need. With the temporary (right?) loss of my facebook, and my dislike of IMing (unless it's with Brendan as I've found that not many people know how to carry a proper conversation over IMs. I prefer words spelled out and long winded paragraphs with every depression of Enter.), I've got a yearning for just-saying-hey telephone calls and text messages. Participate. I'm sure you have my number.

I somehow locked myself out of my fuhbuh on Friday. I don't remember my password and it won't send me the reset email, so it's been a few days without (meaning one and a half, two if you factor in that it's noon but I'll admit to sleeping for some of those hours) and the results:

-went to Swarthmore yesterday, learned that I actually forgot a bunch in my hasty packing on Wednesday. It was nice, I forgot how much I adored my neighborhood, so the walk to the station did me some good.
-started The Terminal Man by M. Crichton and White Noise by Don D.
-may have convinced SO to read White Teeth. Everyone should read White Teeth. I wish my English class was reading it next semester, but I will absolutely settle for what we are reading
-kicked ass in Astro and Theatre, wrote a fantastic final paper for Film (they were due Friday), and, of course, worried about Spanish. Still worrying. Will worry until those grades are posted.

I'd like to make a movie about the details of people, there's this great quote in Memento (what I wrote the paper on) about the details: "You can just feel the details. The bits and pieces you never bothered to put into words. And you can feel these extreme moments... even if you don't want to. You put these together, and you get the feel of a person."

Oh! And this other one by Stephen King that pretty much sums up that feeling of not wanting to tell someone something, even if you know that you trust them wholly:

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear"

Last night I realized that I only like to shoot the breeze about movies and books. Any other small talk can go to hell.

I think that there's a certain power in fiction and art and things like that, music, movies, whatever. Think of all the good that Toni Morrison novels have done for the world, or Lauryn Hill's music, or Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison over those who assume the identity of an entire group of people and take liberties that they have no right to take and assume and bash and act holier-than-thou. That does nothing for me. It doesn't change my life and really only serves to piss me off, but the unreal has a certain power because the unreal can stand for anyone in any time anywhere, nothing beats that. The most powerful real things I've ever read were the life stories of people who didn't act holier-than-thou. That's why I like Malcolm X so much, actually. Because he had his share of fuck ups, he did some dumb shit in his life and he made mistakes and had ideas that were pretty bad at times but he always admitted to all of it. He was honest with us, and honesty is so incredibly hard to come by in a public figure. He was human and will remain such so long as people remember to not assume about his person and read and discover the truth for themselves.

Samuel L Jackson is such a badass. So's Muhammad Ali. If ever you doubt your awesomeness and ability to be the greatest, just listen to Ali.

I prefer a goode psychological thriller

To Do:
-Get invited to TED (bring Brendan)
-Get invited to Diddy's White Party (bring Brendan)
-Join Jay-Z's entourage (with Brendan)

Home for break today. The break looks like this:

• spending this weekend/the beginning of next week floating around philadelphia with my video camera compiling footage of the true lovers of the skateboard and the teens after school aching to be on break and of course hitting up the used bookstore loves and blowing my money on fiction which is the only real thing to blow money on
  
• family time til next weekend meaning filming (finally) the short with the brothers
  
• people had better be coming to Philadelphia the week of the new year. perhaps the weekend before it or something.
  
• want to film philadelphia for the new year
• JERSEY. mostly just central jersey. visiting.
• home again home again. editing footage, general chilling, finishing up the leisurely activity

of course, all of this depends on whether I passed my classes from first semester. knockonwood but hey, there's only so much you can do right now yes? yes, degga.

30 Days of Night is a terrible movie. The semester ended well. What an odd beginning to college. Today I admitted that I am a saboteur. It's goode to tell people these things that way they know and thus can call you out when it's happening.

I am going to watch movies until I fall asleep on the couch and wake up and watch movies until I leave for the Illadelph. The only thing that could make this moment better would be a can of cranberry sauce. I'll pick some up tomorrow. Also, Brendan got his girl. Oh! I meant to ask him how they interact in public. Damnation

For a moment there I wasn't sure how I was going to do this.

Then I figured out that really all you can do is It. Some things work well when applied to a formula, but other stuff just requires doing. Deciding and doing. I must decide, then do, a wonderfully sketched two step process for something resembling success or its fifth cousin three times removed.

Decide, then do.