4 days 'til Commencement.

Do I care? Not particularly.

I find that I have been expecting this moment far too long for it to give me any sort of real joy--ten years of my life looking to this day, and now...nothing! It's just another day in my life--an annoying day, one filled with slightly more effort than normal, but still just another day. And when it ends, I'll still be going to another educational institute (albeit the best in the U.S.)...life just goes on. I swear, it's its own vicious cycle....

I've been reading too much lately....

Current book: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Um, yeah. I've discovered what I really hate about people.

Imagine, for instance, a man sitting up late at night...scribbling frantically away on a sheet: a new idea, one designed to perpetuate the virtues of self-immolation, that undermines the populace. He spreads the idea--it doesn't have to be deliberate--but he spreads the idea, and others latch on, seeing it as a new good. He smiles, says it's virtue, says that he believes it (of course he doesn't), and all of this has been done for his amusement. He knows that people are dipshits--

It's not this man I hate, it's the people who follow him: the idiots who latch on to any idea that seems good, who follow a trend or a counter-trend because they think it's for the best, not because they just want to.... I hate those people. They're filthy, and I despise them, because they're the ones who hate all of those suicide bombers, anyone who isn't like them: anyone who operates on the same principle as they do....

I just can't watch them. (Creative Writing: we were watching Eve Ensler lead some prison class; I swear, she's the ultimate New Age woman--she discovered yoga after 50 people wrote books about its feel-good power, and she probably burns incense that smells like soft lavender and is part of an aromatherapy plan.)

Well, whatever. Mleh.

Essentially Two Full Weeks

Thought for me to dwell upon: There are some for whom every word is permissible, and there are others for whom the first word must be filtered....

And so on.

June 1st. My last day of school. Well, high school--none of that 'teacher' stuff anymore; it's all professors from here on outward. (Who came up with that expression?) But the problem is the anticipation--I've been expecting it so long, I've known it was coming so long, that it doesn't really mean anything. And it's supposed to be such a big transition point that it's exactly like infinity--worthless because it hath no discernible meaning to the occluded vision of those who followed the Four Fathers.'

So, really, in two weeks I will not go to another day of school.

Yeah, and...?

I'm in Love

I went to the Art Institute today on--finally--a bona fide field trip, chock full of education and wandering around downtown Chicago unsupervised. We saw many things--boobs, which was okay because they were all Impressionist & Post-Impressionist abstractions (man, does the Art Institute have too much of that era)--but there is one thing that stands out in my mind even now.

The black wood is chipping, but it is still majestically sized--and at the top...oooooooooh...HALBERD! Totally ceremonial, but still.... Ooooooooooh...the blade is this huge crescent, and it's just so intricate.... And the pike was seriously 3 feet long. I love it.

And then there are the stairs. Spiral stairs--my favorite, simply because I don't remember any others--with this monster of what I call a straw figure dangling. Sexy, right? Right.

But the halberd...I could forget about rapiers and war picks just thinking about it.

I'm giving this love affair 24 hours.

Blah, Blah, Blah.

I'm dying.

I know, I know. I shouldn't whine about it, for there are so many others dying at faster rates--and then there are the poor children dying at slower rates. Ha, ha, ha.

Rereading Crime and Punishment. Awesome stuff.

Last book: Gulliver's Travels. Funny, though I couldn't identify all of the countries--the Lillputians must be Louis XIV's court, the Laputians probably are the Netherlands or something like that at the time, the Brobdingnags seemed like the Russians under...I believe...Peter the Great...and so on. Whatever. Mleh.

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico

I just liked the name. Never been there; only seen one small thumbnail of it on webshots.com.
I don't know why I bother to record some impression of me for a later me to come back and look at it, because I know it won't happen. Every time I look at my old doodles or thoughts or, well, anything, I'm so embarrassed that I can't finish whatever the thing was. Like most mortals, I try to pretend I've always been this way--try to pretend that my current state was my past state and will be my future state, but really, it isn't like that.

Someday, I will look at this and laugh at the angst of a teenager. Oh, well.

Edit, 3 minutes later.

How easily things are forgotten--I had an excellent quote in my mind at 6.00 p.m., and now it is gone. Oh well, wasn't that important. It should not be remembered, even if I were to be aware of it.

"What if your teacher one day suddenly says, 'Okay class, AP exam today'?"

...quoth the sister, in response to me cheering about never having to take an AP exam again after tomorrow. It's interesting how much finality there is in a statement like that; for a few days, these things dominate one's life--and then they're gone, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Who said that, again? Dylan Thomas? I don't rightly know.

Mother's Day is meaningless here. At the least, le corps maternel could have been gracious about all those stupid little-kid gifts through the years; now, though, it's too late.

And....

At the "Olive Garden", which is a splendid restaurant indeed....

Lady sitting across with the poufiest hair on a straight-haired woman I have ever seen. The only purpose something like that could possibly have is to conceal something more odious beneath--and the light highlights, combined with a square jaw and lips stretched too far to the sides, complete the appearance of some old lady. Little son with a third eye that's really a Band-Aid. Cute-ish waiter. Not my type, I think--wouldn't know; haven't checked. Parents convinced that sleep deprivation only occurs in adults, because obviously jobs assign hours of homework and adults spend many sleepless nights wondering about the roller coaster future they have ahead of them.

Not here. Dead, soon to be fertilizer--or, rather, will soon be at dinner with worms. In geological time, 3,000 years is a blink of a woman's eye.