I thought I should give myself the opportunity to say something insightful while I'm still buzzed on Tylenol PM. Typing is a supreme effort because all the muscles in my body have turned to gumbo. The bottle said 2 caplets for adults and children over 12 but I read it at one in the morning by the light of the microwave so I may have ODed.

If I were to die then I would want my final words to be a sputtered apology. I would also want to be lying on a dance floor in a disco club wearing a sexy charcoal suit and heels with a revolver laying across my stomach, but chances are that the circumstances will be different. Nevertheless, I would want the chance to apologize for indulging in my neuroses for such a long time. I've explained away cowardice or selfishness with some kind of psychological impairment every time a complication has arisen in my life. I have not been a good friend or a considerate daughter. Now that that is off my chest I am going back to sleep. Good-night.

My schedule for this year is as follows:

1: IB English HL1
2: IB European History HL1
3: Visual Art 2
4: Pre-IB Algebra 2
5: IB French SL1
6: IB Theatre HL1
7: IB Environmental Science SL1
8: IB Theory of Knowledge (7:30am on Mondays)

And my schedule for my senior year has already been determined:

1: IB English HL2
2: IB European History HL2
3: AP Visual Art
4: IB Math Studies SL1
5: IB French SL2
6: IB Theatre HL2
7: IB Environmental Science SL2
8: IB Theory of Knowledge

So basically I am going to have exactly the same teachers next year, which is perfectly alright with me. I am so utterly satisfied with the way my schedule looks that I almost feel like something has to go terribly wrong in order to maintain balance.

I missed my first day of Theory of Knowledge because I forgot the first class was supposed to meet on the 18th, but it wasn't that big of a deal because everybody in orchestra wasn't able to make it because they had practice that morning. I haven't really had any mishaps other than that. Even the classes I was intimidated by, such as IB French, are actually turning out to be immensely enjoyable. I used to dread French mainly because of the boredom factor. It wasn't challenging, we ended up falling into a horrifically monotonous routine that didn't involve a lot of actual delving into the language, and I was one of the only people in my class who could actually speak French! Now I am in the same class as students in their second year of IB French and there is no shortage of near-fluent speakers.

Will somebody please call me some time? I feel like I haven't really gotten to talk to anybody in ages about something that wasn't school related or just stupid. I would make the calls myself but you all know how I am.

Wow, this blog is angsty. Sorry!

That's right - I am a Christian. Sometimes the significance of this statement escapes from my mind.

When I was in a state of great loss and disrepair I surrendered myself to Jesus Christ, the being who had had me in His arms from the very beginning. By doing this I acknowledged that God is the only significant thing. I knew very well that I was doing something painful and unconventional. Believe it or not, ordinary people acknowledge God as the only truth all the time. They identify the deceit that they are living in and, in a moment of clarity, call it what it really is and push it away, grasping onto the only thing that is really good. It astounds me and warms me to know that there is a great deal of people who know what this feels like.

The One Good Thing was killed on a cross, sacrificed and laden with the burden of the sins of Everyone and then he rose from death and ascended into eternal bliss. He was something that by human standards is not supposed to exist, 100 percent God and yet 100 percent man, holy and yet human, dead and then alive again.

I was baptized Into His Death. My old body and identity was drowned and I was reborn with his spirit inside me, allowing God to guide me into love and proper judgment if I will submit to his will.

To some people all of this means absolutely nothing. They have no idea.

I'm finding it difficult to live my life conventionally. I believe it's a symptom of depression to feel general meaninglessness and a heavy physical pain between the chest and stomach, and to desire to do nothing but sit in front of the computer and wait for something stimulating to happen. By some combination of reading anti-Christian literature and missing church for weeks on end due to excessive travel my inner tube of faith is feeling particularly loose lately, piling on a greater deal of misery than I feel like I am capable of handling. I have said that without my faith in God I have nothing, and I meant that sincerely. Before God I lived in a world of denial and icy sardonicism.

Now I feel like I have simply transferred myself into a world of further denial and emotional stimulation. My existence is justified by pitching feelings, sent into a frenzy by art, music, and sexual desire. This dimension is more colorful than the last but I don't know if I'm deriving any more pleasure from it than I did when I had no particular appetite for life in the beginning. Before I came to Evansville I thought about the likelihood of my dying in some accident or at the hands of a contagious disease and wondered why I hadn't yet become a statistic. Before I moved I would have welcomed it, would only have felt regret for leaving my loved ones behind to struggle with my memory. After I moved I was kept afloat and animated again by a changed environment. Now that I am becoming accustomed to everything around me again I wonder if I was just being temporarily distracted from the dark reality.

I almost made light of things yesterday afternoon. I made a mental note of everything I still have to live for. There was a little hope for a moment, a freshness and tranquility, and then I realized that what I do have is uncertain and intangible, much like my faith in God. Whatever has meaning and significance is just beyond physical grasp, always. You can embrace a person but you can't feel who they are, just their outside, their flesh, a buffer between separate instances of consciousness.

There has to be an answer. This is a very certain rule in this universe. If there is a question then there is an answer or the question would never have been raised. I must have some motive behind telling an anonymous audience about my feelings and my failings. Or maybe I am tricking myself into thinking that serenity can be acquired by spouting out as many words as possible. It's likely that people survive entirely on the wings of multiple psychological defects. Love is denial. Hope is denial. Happiness is denial. But what truth is it that we're all denying?

In the meantime I am swept away by the laws of this country that I am forced to abide by, attending school to become qualified to do something that will inadvertently keep everyone alive and secure in their multiple neuroses. No one knows why living is so important. We're just afraid of having to find out what we'll get in exchange for it when the time comes. Nevertheless, people have survival instincts telling them to remain breathing, so perhaps I am worth something. Whether I am God's creation or some sort of foreign coinage, I don't know. I'm disappointed with life but I guess we are still pals. I have so many good memories. The greatest injustice in living is that I can't experience them again at full potency. Existence is designed so that we constantly have to create new good experiences in order to keep our minds stimulated, and as a result we care for our bodies and keep them healthy in order to fully enjoy the fruits of being alive. I don't know what this could mean, except that there is a God and he is as great as people say.

I have made one observation that assures me more than anything of God's existence, and that is the utter contempt that people show for him. Nothing riles up a human being and stirs up such resentful emotions like the mention of God. Even I, a Christian, recoil at the thought of my own savior. This involuntary reaction is what makes me think that there is something people are reacting to.

I really love the whole idea of being the audience to some of the most dedicated instructors in Indiana and having every inch of my brain compared to national standards and trained to engulf the entire universe in ingenuity and success, but I'm not all that excited about returning to school and having to conform to my old routine of barely getting any sleep and putting off everything until the last minute. I'd rather start the whole career/marriage/baby thing right now, but obviously I have to wait a bit, at least until I graduate from college. As much as I'd like to curl up into a naked little ball of stress on my mogu pillow and think about what being in space feels like, I have to start focusing on my responsibilities as a student and actually plan my life in accordance with my being a minor for another 372 days.

Oh God, do I really have to?

Yes. I do.

) :

I gave Sarah a call today before my last drive with my instructor because I had missed my chance to ask how she was doing at church on Sunday. Sometimes I feel like I tell Sarah way too much about myself, likely because she is so nice and does not make any obvious indication that she thinks I am a detestable human being, which I suppose is an attribute of a good youth leader. We had a nice conversation about self mutilation and fat babies. I miss talking to her all the time. I wonder if she would consider adopting me for a year. It would be like renting a brooding teenage girl who wears dresses over jeans and goes to the bank to check out the tellers. Who doesn't want that?

Kayli is having a party on Saturday and I will be there. Hopefully I can get my hair cut before then so that I can feel a teeny bit better about myself. I bought some new clothes before I went to St. Louis so I have no shortage of cute stuff to wear. Undoubtedly the cuteness I struggle to maintain is why most of my friends like me, and also why they blatantly disrespect me and treat me like a small child. Big boo boo eyes will only get me so far, but they will at least sustain me until graduation when I can meet some good-for-nothing hipsters from Portland or something. Some girl who wears bright red lipstick and drapes an iguana over her shoulders like a boa. Her name is probably Misty. She sounds like a stripper but she's not.

You put your amygdala in,
You put your occipital lobe out;
You put your medulla in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

I couldn't think of anything interesting to say. If you're curious about what I've been doing since I got back from St. Louis just give me a call. I don't have time to be intense right now!

Today I was meant to take a trip to The Loop on Delmar, six blocks of utter indie bliss, but I couldn't get enough people together to put my mom's mind at ease about leaving me to my own devices 30 minutes from my aunt's house. The Loop is pretty much the only thing I truly miss about St. Louis besides my friends and family, so I was sorely disappointed when I had to cancel the trip. However, I did finally get a day to veg out without my parents around to make me feel guilty about remaining stationary. Season three of the office, pizza, chocolate, and vanilla coke. Rarely do these four powers combine in one evening.

No pictures! Nothing to take pictures of. Well, except me being sorely disappointed.



Bloo-hoo-hoo! I miss my bed! I can hardly wait to get back to Evansville and hug my cat.

Day five was perhaps the best day of all! I met up with almost the entire gang at the Macaroni Grill. Unfortunately Maria had a job interview and couldn't make it, but everybody else who said they would be there showed up! Good job guys!

We started out the night with mozzarella sticks that were more like wedges or crescents, and we doodled all over the tablecloth with crayons. Jami tried to draw a person in a top hat but he ended up as a pregnant shepherd with a hook for a hand who was on fire and being attacked by a pterodactyl. I drew a gnome and Michael drew a shark and they fought each other. Michael came back to the table after using the restroom and told us all that it spoke Italian and that it had taught him how to say "Gina, have I told you lately that I love you?". I was a little quizzical so I took a bathroom break myself only to discover that there was indeed a voice teaching people on the toilet how to speak Italian. I guess while you are sitting on the toilet you might as well be doing something productive like learning a language.



I had rigatoni with chicken, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and a madeira sauce. It was ridiculously delicious. Jami told interesting stories about molten jello giving little children diseases. Rose showed off her new suede boots. Michael was delightfully witty. Haley and Erin giggled to themselves about something because they were too far down the table to talk to me much. We had to shout at each other. If I had known we would only be a party of six then I would have asked for a booth so we could all face each other.



Afterwards we walked over to the mall and traipsed around Borders. Michael and I found the most interesting books and pondered aloud to each other about the people who would write such things.



Erin had a minor asthma attack while eating a cookie sandwich.



Weird signs!



Eventually our group boiled down to just me, Haley and Erin. Like night and day! I guess I was sort of late afternoon because I was wearing black and white with sunset pink shoes. Awwwrriiiiight! I hope I get to see at least some of you guys tomorrow at The Loop! I will miss you desperately but I am so homesick!



My friends are the coolest jerks around. : )

When I first arrived at Jami's house I thought no one was home. There were no cars in the garage and the lights in the house were off. So I gave her a call on her cell phone, and all of a sudden I look in the windows to see this silhouette rise up from the floor clutching a phone and looking confused. Ah, Jami.

When I walked inside she was wearing work gloves and was kneeling underneath an end table next to her computer, shouting at somebody on speaker phone. Then she got up and shouted, "Where did I put the pot?!?" and ran into the kitchen.
I was relieved to see her running back into the living room carrying a cooking pot. Then she finally explained to me that she had encountered a mouse and was attempting to catch it. Her friend Ethan, wise in the ways of mice, was giving her instructions over the phone. There are some people in this world who are just begging to be followed with a camera. Fortunately I had one on me.



Eventually she caught the cute little menace and threw it in a pot with a slice of apple.



We put the phone in there so Ethan could shout at it.



I found a caterpillar!



Jami on two phones at once, trying to get us a ride to her boyfriend Spencer's house.



The turtle she caught and deprived of a reason to live. I called him Mr. Turtle and sang to him!



Jami is a different kind of inquisitive.



Hangin' with Evan and Spencer after petting Lulu the snake. Yeah for critters!



My best friend is so beautiful when she isn't sneering at anybody!



It's crowbar time!



Purple tights purple tights purple tiiiiiiiights!



Owls are inter-esting.



Spencer crawlin' inside a bag. I thought I wouldn't like Spencer by default because he is Jami's boyfriend but he proved himself to me by carrying a bowl of hot beans across the house so Jami wouldn't scald her delicate little hands. How chivalrous! He looks a little bit like Goldilocks except he is a boy I think.

I spent the night at Jami's house and ate all her food. It was fun.

This morning I forgot to eat breakfast, which happens sometimes when I am playing Diner Dash for hours on end, so I didn't get around to eating until the afternoon. I had instant brown rice in a steamable plastic envelope and a few broccoli crowns in the fridge so I thought I'd make a wholesome and nutritious lunch to make up for breakfast. The broccoli was fine but there was something terribly wrong with the rice, and that something was that it tasted like cardboard crap.



It started out innocently enough. I picked out a good rice eatin' fork (because I eat just about everything with a fork, including ice cream), let it cool for a minute, and then I tried it. The moment it touched my tongue I felt an overwhelming urge to die.



Unfortunately the microwave would not start with the door open so I had to live through the agonizing pain of having a thin film of cardboard crap coating my taste buds until it dissipated into my saliva. I cried a little. Don't eat instant rice, ever. Nobody should hate themselves that much. I fully expect there to be an instant rice awareness program in the near future. Maybe I will be the founder of the DEADER (Don't Eat Agonizingly Disgusting Envelope Rice) organization.

Jessi's dad picked me up that night and Jessi and I met Rose at the South County Mall (yes, another mall) where I actually bought some things.



The SC mall isn't impossibly large like the Galleria so we were able to walk past just about every store in the few hours we were there, and it also wasn't nearly as impossibly expensive as the Galleria. I don't know why I opted to go to the Galleria on Monday. I just like to look at things I will never have, I suppose. It makes me feel like I could be an actual human being if I had a job and could pay for the things I like. It's nice to have choices.



We went on a brief quest to find an ATM. This quest went unfinished because we got distracted pretty quickly.



Payphones are interesting.



We ate at the place with all the noodles. Some guy behind us laughed at me for taking a picture and I very nearly sassed him! While we were eating we talked about apples and how much it hurts when they are thrown at you. Then we sat and looked at each other for a long time. It was delightful.

I spent yet another lovely morning in front of the tube surrounded by drooling furbags. There was just one problem - my aunt had forgotten to make coffee and I didn't know how to work her bean grinder in order to make my own. I endured the usual headache until my caffeine-deprived brain finally remembered that there was ibuprofen in the cabinet. It is difficult for me to be happy without coffee. It's not that I'm addicted to it, I just find it extremely hard to not drink it.

Among the shows I surveyed was Jon & Kate Plus 8, some sort of horror show that may perhaps be a reflection of my future. But to be completely honest, if I unexpectedly had six children at once, I would probably kill myself and leave my husband to take care of it. It's what that creep would deserve for ultra-impregnating me. Like I said before, I don't  necessarily hate children, I just have no idea what to do when I'm confronted with one. I'm confident that it will be easier with my own children because I can mess them up however I like and nobody can tell me not to, but when it comes to other people's kids I just try to distance myself from them out of respect for the parents. No child needs to spend more than five minutes alone with me or their brains will be melting out of their ears. I've seen it happen.

That night I had dinner with Anna at T.G.I. Friday's. We ate outside and played a mini game of musical chairs while we were waiting for our waitress because nearly every table was either wobbly or had too much sun hitting it, but I'm glad we ate outside because I have a habit of talking very loudly about cat breeding in restaurants. Somehow the subject always crops up in conversation and it is nearly always at the exact moment when the waiter or waitress decides to check up on us.

After dinner we walked over to Ronnie's to see The Dark Knight. Originally we were going to see Wall-E, but Anna expressed an interest in seeing Dark Knight so I left it up to a coin toss (how very appropriate - I didn't know it at the time) that may or may not have been fixed, since it was done over the phone. Nevertheless, it was our fate to see Christian Bale leaping abound with his pointy little ears and Heath Ledger limping around a hospital in drag. Entirely too many explosions, car crashes, knives, and guns for me to want to see this movie ever again, but I must say, it was a good experience. Close to the best action movie I have ever seen, and definitely the best execution ever. But dang am I sleepy, especially due to the absence of coffee in my blood stream, perhaps also due to the loud booms.



Here's Anna actually caring about the Twilight movie.



Here's me not particularly caring because I will only read the books once I no longer consider my life to be in danger at the hands of savage fan girls, and only to know what in the world is going on.





Anna was inspired by Batman's athleticism. She looks like some sort of happy ghost.



Here she is sucking up to that little rat dog Shelby. I think there might be a connection between her love of kids and her compassion for that ugly, ugly creature. I am just a mean girl beast who loves no one, boo hoo. Except Hugh Jackman. I think he is pretty sexy.

I spent Monday morning in the company of Carly, Shelby, and Ellie Mae, possibly the laziest organisms in existence. Carly is the newest addition to my aunt's dog trio after the passing of her most precious mutt, Butch. She is part pitbull, but except for the occasional leaping around like a crazed fool she is a perpetual puppy who likes to have her bum scratched. Shelby is an abomination of nature, part rat terrier and part chihuahua. She has an enormous black growth on one of her eyes and the other is milky white and blind. She wheezes often and her breath smells like a compost heap. I only touch her if I feel really, really sorry for her. Ellie Mae was beautiful once, but she has put on a lot of weight and is covered in warts. She is a pure bred and is already twelve years old so I don't expect her to live past this year, but she will undoubtedly be replaced by another lucky animal that will be spoiled beyond its wildest dreams and live much longer than science indicates that it should. My aunt is some sort of dog whisperer. She may or may not be magic.



I spent Monday evening with two lovelies, Haley and Jessi. We traipsed about the Galleria pointing at things and remarking on them. Somehow we all read each other's minds and showed up in subdued punk ensembles. In the midst of summer. Anyway I love these girls.



Brunettes are best!

Haley and I go way back to second grade. One day in the music room she kept trying to sit next to me and I whirled around and told her that I didn't like her. Her reply was, "Well I like you!" and I was like, Oh okay then. And then we were the best of friends. She doesn't remember this but I thought it was so hilarious that I kept it petrified in my brain forever. I met Jessi in the second quarter of the sixth grade, when I transferred from band to choir (both the worst and best mistake of my life). She and Maria decided to adopt me for some reason. Perhaps because I looked so terrified. I was ascared of Mr. Martin and his beard that did not connect to his mustache! Just kidding, I could have taken him in a fight. I just had no idea what the crap solfège was.



I was so bored that morning that I spent three hours on my hair just for two hours of aimless wandering around a mall filled with people I will never see again. But I suppose the entire essence of a mall is utter pointlessness. My efforts fit into the theme quite nicely. I wish I had taken a better shot of my outfit. I was wearing orange pants with a studded belt! I probably made children cry! It was nice to burn off some bohemian energy. I have pants of many offensive colors especially for the purpose of strutting around trendy malls where I can't afford anything.



Jessi took a moment to send Jami a mean text message. I didn't have anything to do with this, I swear! This is part of an epic battle that has been going on between the two J's before any of us even existed.



Haley is the kind of person who would be beautiful even if her face was covered in monkey sick. Her eyes are the most surreal color. If you look at a picture of them up close they look like they have been manipulated, but they really do look like the earth, with blotches of green mixed around in an incredibly rich blue. I don't think she's a real person, honestly. I think she is some sort of sexy space vampire who killed the gawky bespectacled girl I knew in the second grade and put on her skin. Unfortunately I don't have any way to prove this so I guess we will just have to stay friends.

We had such a nice reunion and will see each other later in the week!

I feel a great deal better than I did yesterday. I was a lot more productive today than I have been in a long time. I did a lot of house cleaning, managed to get in 20 minutes of aerobic exercise, and sketched out an itinerary for my trip to St. Louis. Most importantly, I slept in today, and that may have been the most beneficial thing to my mental health.

I still feel a little bit listless, but I'm coping with it by getting as much work done as possible to distract myself and trying not to overthink anything. I'm setting my mind on my trip and nothing else. I'm finally starting to feel like I am living a little bit.

I'm surprised I never got around to covering my shift at the Museum on Tuesday. It was pretty exciting - I spent five hours there instead of the usual three. For the first couple of hours I was with two other volunteers who didn't seem too keen to do any demos at all, which unfortunately is the norm, but we did become engaged with some of the kids outside by mixing up a gallon of bubble soap and blowing bubbles across the back lawn. We only managed to round up two rowdy boys and a truly adorable two-year-old girl who said "please" and "thank you" quite often. It was difficult to not kidnap her. That is rare for me because typically I want to be as far away from kids as possible. I'm proud of myself for trying to be fun and responsive when they wanted to interact with me, as opposed to frightened and disgusted.

It's not that I hate kids, because that is really not the case at all. I think they are a riot and they say the most surreal stuff ever. I was just watching this show on TLC where this three-year-old boy said that if he covered his mouth the froggies would beat him up. I would actually have to make a huge effort to come up with something like that but it's all kids think about. My problem with children lies in discipline. There is practically no situation more awkward than to witness one of the kids acting up while their parents are present and to not know whether or not you are authorized to tell the kid off.

Kids could be rushing one of the other volunteers and the parents will do nothing, quite literally looking the other way. All the other volunteers seem to feel the same way I do and they just look on in horror, but usually I get fed up with it and become the disciplinarian. Usually the kids listen to me, and when the parents see me disciplining their kids they decide to step in and help me. I know that this is just human nature - to not want to make a social blunder by offering assistance in an ambiguous situation and finding out that assistance was not needed. I read about it last night in a psychology textbook. The parents may think that I will deem them too strict if they yell at their kids when they aren't actually bothering me, and they don't decide to step forward until I clearly indicate that the situation is out of hand. If I had my own kids then this wouldn't be a problem!

We finally got around doing a demo. I insisted that we try out the van de graaf. In retrospect that was a very bad idea because it was a humid day and the static electricity was very ineffective, and also I know almost nothing about the principles behind static electricity because my training was months ago. I spent a lot of the demo saying, "I have no idea how this works but it's nice to look at. Ooh look, a spark!" Our demo was almost a disaster, but the great thing about children is that they are extremely susceptible to placebo. When I had kids come up and touch the van de graaf, I told the audience that their hair was supposed to stand on end from the static electricity, and even if the kid's hair was laying mostly flat, everyone else got all excited and exaggerated the effect by going "Look at it! It's standing up!" and pointing excitedly, until they actually convinced themselves that the kid's hair was sticking straight up. Also I think they were all decieved by how official we looked with our name badges and our special table. They must have imagined that everything was going right even though we knew that it was all a disaster because they didn't know any better. Ah, psychology.

After that embarassment, the other two volunteers left and I had the gallery to myself for the next two hours. I took a break in the supply closet, then called Sarah about dropping by her house on Wednesday to see Micah (who is teeny tiny and precious by the way). I made the mistake of telling her that I was sitting in a closet and not properly explaining that it is bigger than some of the rooms in my house. And then I trod on a roach motel in the midst of my nervous phonecall-induced pacing. I guess instant death is better than having your multiple legs steeped in glue and slowly losing consciousness.

Afterwards I got out all the supplies for my demo, set up the board in the lobby that tells what times I'll be performing, and sat around until about 3 o'clock. I walked out of the supply closet astonished to see an entire first grade class before me taking a field trip. I somehow got up the nerve to make the announcement that my demo was about to start. They not only filled up all of the benches, they actually couldn't fit some of them in there and a few had to sit on the floor. Did I mention that I was all by myself with about thirty kids and two adults? Everything went perfectly. Afterwards a few girls in the front row told me I was awesome, and a few said that I was "the magic-est ever". After I cleaned up I immediately went up to the break room trying to find a few people from the science department and give them extreme high-fives. I didn't see Gena until she wandered in during my snack break. She was not as excited about it as I was but I think she would have been if she had been there.

I really, really, really love what I do at the Museum.

I am making some progress on All of My Sisters, but the work is slow. To be perfectly honest I have been really listless lately and not too intent on finishing anything, or for that matter, doing anything other than staring into space.

This song perfectly describes how I am feeling right now, in case anyone is wondering. I don't have the patience or the courage to write an entry right now.

I am thinking about absolutely nothing right now. The reason I am making an entry is to get myself to think about something so that I am not a gibbering vegetable for the rest of the day. I have been sitting in a freezing cold office in a mildly comfy chair for the last eight hours. I have not had more than six hours of sleep every night for the last five days because I keep having to come into work with my mom and I'm incapable of falling asleep before midnight.

It's amazing how dull of a person I can become if I do not get enough sleep. I don't feel particularly happy or sad. I have just been sitting here and drinking water out of the same bottle. The only time I have gotten up all day was to refill my bottle or use the restroom, which I have done a lot.

I have been repeatedly checking my email and reading Scary-Go-Round, which sharpens my mind a little bit but not enough to make myself feel the opposite of awful. I have a psychology textbook sitting in front of me and I do not feel engaged. Something is terribly wrong. Also I think I have arthritis because my left knee has been sore for hours. I'm a little bit hungry. I had lunch around noon - a potato. This morning I had a piece of toast. But the hunger is not so unbearable that I have to eat something right now. It is just a mild gurgling in the infinite depths of my stomach.

I feel like I do after a stressful day of school. I guess the stress comes from being so bored that I am in a trance. I am praying that this independent study thing works out and that all my classes are secure for next year. If this is so then I will likely be a very happy junior. 

There is something incredibly arresting and powerful about cuteness. When I look at a picture of a baby panda puff ball I suddenly don't care about anything anymore. I only care about the panda. I only care about continuing to look at the panda no matter what. I will bite anyone who prevents me from looking at the panda.

It drinks milk from a dish. The milk is dripping from its snout. The panda snorts. Snort, baby panda, snort to your heart's content. Your genes have promoted you to a level beyond any other animal in existence, in the same fluffy bundle as golden retriever puppies and blue-eyed kittens. The panda has no soul and loves no one who is not made entirely out of bamboo. But that is okay because it is a panda. Everything is okay, forever, as long as there are pandas. If there are no pandas then everything is death and fire.

I will sell the clothes off my back, my nationality, and my very soul. All for the approval of the baby panda.

Love is a difficult thing to get a handle on, but restrain it I must. Under the wrong circumstances, and when left to its own devices, love is a fire more wrathful than hate. How much softer love feels in one's bosom when it is gentle and subdued by sorrow and reason, and how much heavier and more substantial when it is kept from realizing its full potential of passionate conveyance.

When one is sparsely covered with only the burdens of loneliness and deprivation, there is a beautiful closeness formed between man and things unseen, as if a door has been unblocked by distractions and determent from God. The light falls on one's eyes and soothes a man from the sorrows of impermanence.

And if loneliness and deprivation are beautiful things, how much lovelier in comparison is waiting, for reprieve, for opportunity, for reconciliation and healing. These things are promised and promises are never broken before they are realized. A man is hasty in receiving his dinner. He does not see that true supplement is not made more nourishing by his pleading and his dissatisfaction with God's pace.

Time hurts everyone. It severs the connections between all people on earth and forces them to make do with what they have. If not for time then there would be no self, no individual body, but one mass of people in one present, with one name and one action, a single spoken word and a single emotion, instead of a great fluctuation of peace and chaos. But without time there is no observance of beauty, no contemplation of blessings or turning of the head. And without pain there is no indication of self destruction, while people happily murder themselves, feeling no different than if they had taken a drink of water. Therefore without suffering there is no faith in a God unseen or belief in His presence in our physical world without sighting His face. The beauty of Heaven is that blessings are at all times and at all places and do not have to be distinguished from suffering.

With modernity comes a sense of entitlement that prevents people from recognizing God's hand in their lives. With death comes life, never perfectly balanced in number, but is the value of a new life not held far above a candle in its final hours of burning? If the ones you love are dead, bury them and they will be replaced by something else, but only after you have resigned your contempt for God. Do not cling to your longing for things that have passed and ignore your compensation. What may appear a feeble seed to you will grow into a tree that will feed you for an eternity with the fruit it bears. Love what the Lord gives you and do not spend your days in sorrow over your specific wishes left unfulfilled. No one knows the true destination of a lonely drop of rain except for God, who places it in the mouths of billions over the course of time.

Writing a book. Such a concept inspires both excitement and a sore feeling of inadequacy. I don't like the idea of writing fiction, but I really hate the idea of writing an autobiography. It's far too easy to fall into predictable patterns when writing a biography of any sort, because it already happened. All of my fictional stories are best conveyed visually, with only pictures and dialogue telling a story. I have a Ray-Bradbury-meets-the-English style of writing, packed with excessive imagery and pixieish tongue-in-cheekedness. When I try to simplify it I sound like a burnt out science fiction novelist with nothing but a black sweatsuit and a secluded corner for sitting in waiting for me when I get home.

Sarcastic commentary is always fun, but I don't see the point of devoting an entire book to it. That's like devoting a whole planet to Ellen DeGeneres. She doesn't need that much space to dance. It's illogical. I only need this blog to point at and ridicule reality. Just me and the blog are doing OK by ourselves. Some day I will say goodbye to the blog, perhaps when I have a husband and children, because we can just point and laugh at each other instead and you don't need a blog to do that unless your family is electronic.

Rather than trying to create something myself I have been basking in the fruits of other people's labour, namely some of my favorite musicians. It's sad to listen to them and know that I do not have the drive or the insanity to be like them. I am too concerned with trivial things like food and love to devote myself entirely to one thing. Nevertheless, in the next few years I will have to be somewhere, doing something.

Today I was thinking about what life would be like if I didn't have the accursed phone anxiety. It made me sad. I'm pretty sure this anxiety is a recent thing, maybe having emerged in the last four years or so, because I remember jabbering away with ease at my friends in my pre-teens. We would talk sometimes for half an hour. Back then accounting for most of the phone bill was actually a possibility. But as I migrated to the internet, verbal communication over a little plastic device became difficult, and gradually impossible.

I wouldn't say the internet has made me more withdrawn, but it certainly has provided an outlet for some of my more antisocial tendencies. I wish that the bulk of the communication I do wasn't through facebook, but fear is something I can't control once it has set in. I have been forced to call people hundreds of times and it doesn't get any easier. It's gotten to where I don't call anybody at all, ever, unless I really care, but even if I do that I have to spend a certain amount of time in mental preparation, trying to get up enough courage to dial, stifling the fear of whether or not my voice will sound strange or if I will stutter (something I have only begun doing this year).

It's difficult to describe a fear of something to a person who has never felt it. I'm sure all of this seems very neurotic and illogical, but there is reason behind it. The exposure I feel on a telephone is parallel to standing in the midst of traffic for someone with my wiring. I talk about it so matter-of-factly, but it really is just a psychological phenomenon that I find intruiging. Even with this level of detachment I still feel the anxiety when I have a phone in my hand. It doesn't matter if I understand what's happening to me or not - I still feel the fight or flight sensation and the crippling stomach pain no matter how much reason I inject into myself. I wonder if hypnotism works?