Obiewolf's blog

99

8/28/08

There's a permanent taste of cloves in my mouth, spicy and sweet and variable.

I wonder if I should stop this blog at 100, so it can be something kitchy, a romanticized 100 Days of Summer affair. 

I lie in bed restlessly considering the possibilities of a sociology major, a politicsfinancebusinesssomething major.  I feel considerably uneasy about my future.  There was a time I wouldn't put precedent on the 'glamour' factor of a job, but the more I think about it, the more I want to be a flare and not an ember.  Still, I realize that I am infinitely lazy and sink back into comfort when faced with aversion.  Story of my life.

98

My mouth was in so much pain, I could not sleep.  I bit on a wad of gauze the whole night to prevent myself from biting my cheek, which is swollen to epic nasty proportions.  I'm off to the doctor's this afternoon.  My health has been very poor this year...

97

8/26

I did nothing today and it felt glorious.  There are people I need to see and people I didn't get to see and are already gone.  I need to see people.  But I'm having a hard time getting myself to get out of bed, can't even imagine trying to get myself out of the house.  I need to repaint my nails.  Dark blue dark blue.

90-96

This blog is slowing deteriorating into block posts.  I'm sure you can find some sort of deep syntaxical meaning to it, something about end of summer and confinement and a compacted winding down sensation, a deliberate choice by the author in order to convey the rushed and choppy transitions that will lead into the next month.

I've just been lazy.

But sitting here now, after lying awake in bed for almost two hours, I feel like I've reached the bottom of the bottom of the pit of laziness.  So now, I will attempt to reconstruct the past week.  It will be wonderfully fragmented and make no sense to me later.

8/19

I think there was dim sum today.  And cuddles.  And more than cuddles.  And more food.  Last three sentences apply to everyday.

Either today or tomorrow, there is suit shopping and sexy pinstripes, bunny shirts, big jeans, and skinny ties.

8/20

There may have been a biggest, most delicious 32 oz steak I have ever had today.  There also may have been a lot of fat regret afterwards.  But it was so good. So. Good.  Walks in the dark, cockroach feet, a quiet vast stillness of Texas summer.

8/21

Steak recovery.  Smoothies?  Chipotle.  Texas is really really big, like really really really big, like whoa there parking lot.   Heaps of Chinese food for dinner.  I've messed up my timeline.  Sometime in the past three days, there was also Pho trip #1.  And Dark Knight, which was even better the second time.

Me + stick shift = incompatible.

8/22

I don't remember what we ate today.  I remember a chihuahua though, and beer pong, and cup flipping and sub sinking, and the best minty tasting liquid candycane ever.  Actually this was probably yesterday.

What happened -today- was too much in the alveoli, blinking between dreams and reality, falling falling falling, an uncomfortable out of body experience I don't really want to repeat, and I could change the volume of the music with my mind.  It was tingly.

8/23

Woke up to cookies.  And Pho #2?  Which might have been yesterday.  Swimming? And another monstrous dinner.  Oh there was a magic show yesterday I believe. I saw coins ( or I guess, didn't see them), and hat rabbits,  and some amazing sleights of hands and card tricks.  Pree spiffy.  Oh, and REALLY GOOD TAIWAN-QUALITY SHAVED ICE.

8/24

TexMex.  Ice skating! A friggin gigantic mall.  Delicious bulgogi.  It's my last day, tomorrow I'm home.

8/25

Pack pack rush rush and I'm gone.

89

8/18/08

I met an endless blur of people today.  I saw what my high school life should have been like.  I felt a familiar bitterness creeping up as I observed a roomful of youthful faces, all recognizing and calling out to each other, laughing about the years they had shared together and nothing in particular, shooting pool, playing table tennis, hugging, greeting, loving.  I was surrounded by more people than I probably knew my entire four years at RM, and I was introduced to each of them, smiled at each of them, stood at the side as quick and enthusiastic conversation took place between old friends, promises to do this and do that, challenges to ping pong and billiards.  It's a weird feeling, this ambivalent mixture of happiness and wistfulness.  I'm always like this, I peer into other peoples' worlds and I feel like my life has experienced a lack.  I see others and I see me and I see the difference.  I was surrounded by an uplifting atmosphere of carefree summer and nonchalance.  I met very interesting people and was drawn into this foreign world.  Writing this, truthfully, I feel stupid and whiny.  I love the friends I had in high school of course.  Even so, I had always wished that I had an outer circle of warmth and support.  It's partly my own fault, I know - my personality isn't conducive to keeping many friends.  And of course I know, that quality is better than quantity.  But what about both? Simultaneously?  Hahahaha, I can't help laughing at myself.  I can't change anything that's happened and I don't regret anything that's happened.  Just this night, the rain falling softly outside, a lively and loving hubbub of bodies and conversation inside.  It was different, otherworldly, beautiful.

88

8/17/08

I was stranded in Dallas.  I was stranded and calling people who weren't picking up their phones.  I was a million miles from home, a million more miles from where I was supposed to be.  There aren't anymore flights to Houston today, the lady behind the counter told me.  We're sorry for this inconvenience.  Um, damn straight you should be sorry.  And I'm also cursing Texas for being such a fucking big state and planes for being such fucking complicated pieces of machinery.

I was waiting in the line to figure out what I needed to do, calling arbitrary 1800 numbers, speaking to representatives and hanging up and calling home for help.  I was frustrated, fighting back a stinging in my eyes and feeling very frazzled, surrounded by a planeful of people suddenly planeless and bickering in the crowded waiting room.

I stood there, commiserating with a kindly Indian couple behind me, minutes crawled by as I waited for a ringtone, an announcement, some sign.  A million miles away, my parents were freaking the fuck out but I didn't want to call them again because I had nothing to tell them.

In the end, everything turned out okay.  I didn't have to sleep on gate lounge chairs, relive some warped The Terminal experience.  I got to Houston 8 hours later than I had planned but at least I got there, albeit without my luggage which was on some plane somewhere else.  I'm sure there are still people stuck in Dallas, luggageless, bickering and commiserating and waiting for a sign.

87

8/16/08

So for one ecliptical moment, three girls simultaneously occupied the little town of Gaithersburg, a momentary frozen breath, before they were whisked apart again.  Naturally, there was delicious food and long strolls with long shadows.  There was raucous laughter and ohmygods and haveyouheards and we love ourselves too much.  There was ice cream, melted and dripping and running down the pavement; languid summer nights with flashing fountains and the smell of youth. 

I'm blogging this in retrospect and I suppose my later posts will elaborate on this train of thought, but this feeling, this being surrounded (or not even surrounded, just enough to have one on each side) by people you are so comfortable and attached to...this feeling is unrivaled.  And I wish it were more common, more prevalent in my life.  But perhaps if it was, I wouldn't feel so astounded and awed and elated when I'm around the people I love most.  These are the people I miss, and continue to miss - the people who have shared long nights, lewd comments, loud laughter.  The people who have seen me at my most candid.  These moments don't seem like anything special in a lifetime, but they're the moments that capture the very essence of...of...this whirlwind that is my girly teenage life.

86

8/15/08

Today kind of failed.  There was going to be something like paddle boating but instead there was a day of scattered thunderstorms and not much else.

85

I'll never be able to explain why stuffed grape leaves make me so so happy.  Granted, the ones at Cava were not very good but it was enough to satisfy my inexplicable craving.  The hummus, tzatziki, and pita bread helped a lot too. There was also chocolate ice cream. Delicious.

----

It was a damp and cool post-summerstorm evening.  An orange moon, a sliver from full, watched as three girls with one coffee tin, a box of matches, a sheaf of newspapers, a cardboard box of something, a flashlight, and a camera hopped onto the wet lawn.  The tin was placed in the middle of the fenced patch of grass, a few crumpled sheets of newspaper thrown in.  Tentatively, a match was lit (after already snapping one accidentally) and a plume of orange flames sprung from the metallic interior. There were oohs and aahs and shrieks of delight and apprehension.  We're like hobos! Embers flecked the air with lingering flashes of incandescence and died, melting back into the inky blackness.  Items were removed one by one from the cardboard box - first, letters in envelopes, snippets read out loud and then tossed purposefully into the waiting flames.  The edges curled and blackened, swirls of orange lacing across the tiny words.  The papers shrunk into the canister, grey and brittle, scattering into the air.  Then there were photos that bubbled in the heat, tshirts ripped apart and held to the fire until the flames licked up the seams.  With each item the fire grew and waned, glowing patterns etched across the burning objects.  We sat on the damp grass, moths tickling our knees, breathing in bugspray and smoke, watching the grey clouds drift up towards the moon.  The fire was hypnotic and warm.  It consumed with erratic efficiency, beautiful and unpredictable.  We sat silently as the last blazing flecks disappeared into a sunken lump of ash.  Leaving the can, we gathered up everything else and walked peacefully back into the house.  And then we gathered onto the front porch and enjoyed the satisfying sound of a mug being thrown into the cement.  Twice.  And it was over.

84

8/13

Watching little girls do gymnastics makes me chew my nails off in OHMYGODDONTFALL anxiety.  Especially when said girls look like they're 8 years old.

I love Great Seneca Highway.  I hope it stays empty and undeveloped and vast and green forever.