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I trudged up campus on an overcast morning, lost in a whirl of conflicted thoughts about recent developments; and without warning, a cloud moved, and the sky exploded into brilliance.
Suddenly, colors were thrown into sharp focus, and I couldn’t help but grin more and more on my way up campus– a nod to a friend walking through the magnolia grove, a sunny grin received and returned to a former classmate walking past the dogwoods, smiles to acquaintances in the crossing paths across a hill, a high-five– “only two more days!” to a dormmate as I left the building I sought to run an errand in…
I woke with my mind in a muddle confusion but now, as I wait for my thrice-damned and ever-beloved camera battery to charge, and for the sun to come out once again, with salmon and avocado sushi in hand, I can only grin and love life.
Updated with pictures.
and suddenly all I want to do is drop everything I’m doing in life and be a singer. dancer. actress. all. something that will let me feel as if I’m expressing something directly instead of attempting to stuff my thoughts into words and stuff my words into a tedious, tedious bureaucratic bullshittastic college-system-formulaic way to toss my life into some semblance of order.
Then my mind clears, and I post this, and go on with my paper-writing. Ideally.
Interlude
The day before yesterday, I played tag with a spring robin.
But that’s another story.
The day before yesterday, I experienced the picture-perfect seminar, six of us in a loose semicircle around an enthusiastic professor on a comfortable green lawn by a tree on a stunning spring day; we all began cross-legged, attentive and formal, but as the three hours progressed the students began shifting, leaning back, and after a while most of us were sprawled out in one way or another, lying on our sides, stomachs, chins propped up on palms and folded hands. It was amazing. It was beautiful. Thick spring grass is more comfortable than any couch and, thanks to today’s especially marvelous weather, I’d chance to say that this time, it was more comfortable than any extra-long twin-sized college bed, no matter how richly furnished, because the beds had the disadvantages of being inside.
And with just enough of a cool breeze to counteract the ever-warming sun, I was in a state of supreme bliss.
For some reason I have no urge to fall into the depression of past days. Around Thursday or so, something in my mind simply switched on (or off?) and a seven-month cycle of evening breakdowns began drawing to a halt.
Even though there are matters pressing on my mind, academics, my future, I am less inclined toward the typical self-pity and more toward turning music up to ridiculous volumes and doing something. Now is the time to feel numb about my direction in life and confused about my summer plans, but it is also the time that I will take action. I suddenly recognize things I want to learn and do. I’ve sworn to get even more involved and hopefully join dance, get involved in more groups… that I simply don’t have time to fall into this rut again. I want to master the guitar and learn how to glowstring. And I’m unhappier when totally idle. Which is a great thing to be unhappy with, considering my to-do list.
Almost as if overcompensating for the tendency I’m beginning to let go of– that lingering in the past, wistfully remembering superficial attention– I realized that I have a slight revulsion toward those worlds I was once interested in. Anime fan? Not anymore. My skin crawls a bit. Losing interest in most Internet-based activities has made me turn to real life. Which is a great turn of events, considering my to-do list.
For some reason? Realizing all this? I feel really mentally free.
And content.
(Except for when I turn to my to-do list.)
I felt like twirling.
“I am mentally twirling,” I wrote to a new friend, “and I am not sure why.”
I really am not. But it’s past 11 PM and some little bit of me is still elated over the handful of things that have gone well in the past few utterly hellish days.
I hope this sustains me, because the next week is going to be hellish as well.
Despite it being, of all days, April 1, this post is still truthful. The thoughts began coalescing on March 31, regardless. It is my cousin’s birthday (love!) and it is, unfortunately, a normal class day, but there is no foolery.
…Time to avoid my roommate.
I digress; in the culmination of the mental return to being single (which is a welcome stability, this culmination, after two weeks of flailing to regain balance) comes the unclouded, comfortable cynicism I held so staunchly four days before the last train wreck began. I have been finding that while I will implicitly accept people for who they are, I will mercilessly scorn those in whom I perceive certain emotional weaknesses. Perhaps because I scorn seeing them in myself; perhaps because I hold people I am interested in to a high standard. Mostly, though, this applies to the revelation that I have not been able to completely respect someone who’s ever expressed an unrealistic non-platonic interest in me if I do not return said interest.
For all my empathy, I have a distinct lack of sympathy here, often to malicious and ghastly effect. The empath in me wishes I had some; aforementioned scorn often causes me to giggle inwardly, plot ways to toy around, and wish to spin around in sadistic amusement. It did earlier this evening when I observed, with cynical eye, a whimsical and utterly idealized account of something romantic, and suppressed the mental image of a gleeful deity pointing and cackling, “foolish mortals!”
