backyard crowing
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shyness, careers, and dreams
written in cafe medici sometime in mid june:
Maybe our personalities pre-determine our careers.
Maybe shy people gravitate toward writing and other solitary pursuits simply because they fear the opposite.
And I think when you're a child, shyness is not only expected, but even encouraged. Kids in my schools were forever reprimanded for "running their mouths." When you phrase it THAT way, it sounds like a machine. A machine I can never turn on correctly.
The "good" children were the quiet ones, and not only that, they were the smartest, too, or mistaken as such.
And now, for a Plato quote:
"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
Maybe I'm just trying to blame someone else for my shyness.
This cafe has turned into a Barnes and Noble-esque madhouse. It won't last. This was the place we went on our first date, Marcus and I.
I want to call it not love soon. No, now. What Marcus and I had was not love. It wasn't even passion. It was lust. L-U-S-T. And lust it shall remain: an empty, loveless, careless lust. I am saddened in this place. I thought I'd be happy that Metro and Einstein's Gamery closed, because it would mean that the place we started had ended, just like us...or rather, the us that never was. But I am back at the scene of the start, and it, like me, has transformed: classical music where there was once sexy jazz, white walls formerly covered with beauteous, bursting graffitti, and modernized chairs where there was once couch upon couch lining the walls. This isn't right, isn't me, isn't us Wasn't us.
We never were.
Good Lord, am I never over him?
And what changes a heart so fast?
And why? Why does it hurt so much?
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We want gentlemen, but there's also something to be said for being a gentle woman. Sometimes I think I've lost her.
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My dream last night...well, I had two very vivid ones:
Dream 1
I was at school (college), and I was taking a test. It was the last day of school. For some reason, K and L were there taking the test too, they're my twin best friends from my childhood. I decided to take the creative writing portion of the test first, it seemed like the most fun. I took too much time on that part and didn't allow for enough time on the other parts.
Then a teacher walked in and told me that I was failing all my classes, and that my parents told her that they'd be transferring me to an "art design" major at a community college, you know, like the ones you see on television. Of course I was enraged, because as I found out last semester, you can in fact fail all your classes and still be at that school. I was angry because they were choosing my major and putting me somewhere I didn't want to be, without even so much as ASKING me. I had nothing against "art design," I even thought it was a cool major, but not as amazing as say English, or anything in which *I* picked for myself. Your parents can't pick your major, that kind of shit leads to suicide.
Anyway, I thought it was nice that K and L were there, but at the same time, horrible, because they are perfect students, sisters, daughters, citizens, and anything else you can think of.
I remember being desperate to find out which of my parents had the heavier hand in this. I was going to have a yelling match one or both of them, depending on who it was. I was pretty convinced this was Mom's idea, and I knew exactly what I would do: refuse it, and start working, and move far, far away from my parents.
Dream 2
I was getting my braces off, and for some reason, so was Aunt Sherry. Only she wanted to do it "the lesbian way," which in the dream meant quick and dirty, with a lot of pain involved, and it included ripping the wires out from your front two teeth in one quick motion. She kept saying how she thought it would be easier and less painful, but I'd had braces taken off before, and the process is awful no matter how you go about it. I was sitting at a round table with her and a few other people, and I remember asking them why getting the braces off madly was called the lesbian way. I guess because lesbians are tough.
Anyway, then we got called from the roundtable into the orthodontist's office, but just into the waiting room for more waiting. Aunt Sherry went in first, and she came back out grinning proudly, sans braces, and sans blood, amazingly. She showed us all her pearly whites and I thought they looked like Mom's. Mom was there, and I asked her if she thought I should get them ripped out "the lesbian way," and she said hell no, it was more painful. She too was shocked at my aunt's decision.
Then we got into the room where they mess with your teeth and the wall that faces you while you're being prodded is made of glass--in fact, water covers part of it because it's partly underground and there's a lake outside. So it's basically an indoor aquarium in addition to an orthodontist, only they don't have to feed the sea creatures. Then I noticed that in the room there were only two chairs for patients to be examined in, and I wondered why they didn't do me and my aunt at the same time. I wanted to escape, to jump over the glass wall, which was open at the top. I decided maybe I could swim downstream or upstream, and then get off on land somewhere. What would my new identity be? And then, out of nowhere, mom kept asking me what the word "alias" meant...but I wasn't sure if she meant the word, the TV show, or what alias I was thinking about taking on after my escape (the last of which I hadn't figured out yet.) I then thought about how I'd have to swim deep down in order to be out of sight, and THEN decide whether to head upstream or downstream, and then do so, and THEN go up for air. Then I thought of the creatures of the lake, and I started looking at them to see if they might "get" me. After all that, I woke up.
Possible references:
-I was looking at cruise pics last night, some of them had my aunt in them
-I watched There's Something About Mary last night, which includes some scenes where Ben Stiller wears braces
-of course I did fail 3 classes last semester, and I did blow off a couple of finals due to depression
-my mom has suggested switching colleges, which I think is the worst idea of all, and I'd rather work than do that
- sunday, June 08, 2008
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