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OBLIVION III.5||if you would mourn me
TITLE|dublin
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
And now I'm in Ireland! Dublin is beautiful. We met up with Alex' friend Ayesha when we got here yesterday - she's really fun. The hostel's cool too, lots of fun kids there. It's in a very trendy part of town, so there was lots to do last night. We saw Valentin at the Irish Film Institute. To be honest, I wasn't terribly impressed by it. It was cute and all, just not particularly well put-together. Ah well. Still a fun night.
Alex and Ayesha are checking out the Guinness Hopstore right now. Jake and I opted out, since it's like €12 just to get in and we can get Guinness at the pubs without the extra expense. After we're done here, Jake's gonna take a nap at the hostel and I'm gonna go walk around Dublin on my own for a bit.
Happy end of March!
Reading questions
(1) What is the author leaving unsaid?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 03:16 p.m.
TITLE|nocturnia
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
I continue in my inability to sleep at night. This is especially aided by all the sleep I got last night - I think I collapsed sometime around 8 PM, partly from jetlag, partly from having walked around all day, and mostly because I hadn't slept on the plane over and so it had been rather awhile since my last sleep. I woke up at 5 AM after several very, very weird dreams. Of course, neither Jake nor Alex was up yet at this point, so I had to spend a good ninety minutes forcing myself back to sleep. Jake finally woke me up for good around noon.
The dreams were really something, three of them in particular, since two of them were contained within the third in a very weird meta kind of experience. A few months back, I had a couple dreams about this jerk cop who kept bugging me for being a Democrat, and eventually I just hit him over the top of the head with my fierce gloves. I think a quick look back over winter term will reveal the reason behind that one.
Anyway, the cop finally returned in the first sub-dream, in which he was chasing me around a hybrid of La Canada and Oberlin. At one point I got in a car with my dad and my grandpa, and we were fine, and then the cop pulled us over and Grandpa, who had been healthy earlier in the dream, suddenly got sick. The cop and I argued for a little, then I woke up into another dream, which was kind of the over-dream that contained the others.
In this I was back home, definitely in real La Canada. I woke up, looked around, saw the photos of Chris, Natalie, and Piya I took over winter term, smiled, and went back to sleep.
I don't remember the second sub-dream nearly as well, just that it also contained some evil portent of my grandpa's health.
When I woke from this back into the over-dream,
I bolted out of bed, got dressed, and woke up my dad (Mom was out of town) and told him I had a really bad feeling about Grandpa and we had to go see him.
We drove out of La Canada and into some generic suburb with generic suburban houses. Then we drove past this building that was quite clearly out of London. It looked like there was a mannequin in the window, but when I looked closer it was actually a very good picture of a woman painted onto the windowpane. The eyes and mouth were blacked out. She looked grief-stricken.
Shortly thereafter we came to a convenience-store-like building that I understood to be Grandma and Grandpa's house. As at many convenience stores, there was a big rectangular window in the storefront, and upon this four more pictures of women had been painted, each different but all of them in black clothes with dark hair and blacked-out eyes and mouths. I turned to my father.
"It's an old Islamic tradition," he said.
"So the outsiders can't see them mourning..." I contributed, nodding tentatively.
"Not mourning."
"Praying?"
We ran into the fake house. There were indeed real women behind the paintings, but I did not look at them. We ran upstairs, where I knew my grandfather would be lying on his deathbed.
In my grandfather's room, much of the family and a few strangers had gathered, but the mood was like that of a hospital room where a woman has just given birth. Everyone was tired, but happy. My grandfather was lying on his bed, looking much healthier than he has in years.
I turned to my father. He smiled.
That was the end as far as I can remember. There were other dreams, several others in fact, but none worth writing about. I should go to bed.
Reading questions
(1) Why is the author writing about dreams when he probably has many accounts of actual events in London to recount?
(2) What might the dreams signify?
(3) What is the author leaving unsaid?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 03:31 a.m.
TITLE|london
Monday, March 29, 2004
Dear stalkers,
London is marvelous. Much walking has been had. More to come in the future.
From Jake's computer,
Andrew
Reading questions
(1) Why did the author write this entry in the form of a short letter?
(2) What is the author leaving unsaid?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 06:35 p.m.
TITLE|unn
Friday, March 26, 2004
Midterms. Haven't slept all night.
Jason called earlier in the week, concerned after reading this here blog o' mine. I was really touched. And it was nice to hear from someone back home. I haven't gotten a letter from Natalie since the first one, which isn't really a surpise, and none of the gang has been online much lately.
Also, Piya called earlier tonight (last night?), but I wasn't around my cell. She left a message. When I heard her voice, I erupted in the goofiest smile. It made me so happy to hear from her.
I went on a date with this guy Brian (Bryan?) on Tuesday night. Kinda boring. He goes to another school, and they're on spring break this week, so he was in his hometown, yet he couldn't come up with anything terribly interesting to do. We sat around his house for thirty minutes, then saw Taking Lives, a suspense movie with a less-than-surprising surprise ending. After that, we went back to his place, where he let me play FFX-2 on his PS2 and didn't say much at all. The movie was fun, at least.
The idea of speed-dating really appeals to me. Generally, once I'm on a date with a person, I know within fifteen minutes whether or not there's gonna be any spark there. When there's no spark, I have to spend the next hour or hours with this person I don't particularly connect with. So why waste all those hours on someone if there's no spark to begin with? Better to do a fun round-robin of potential dates where everyone can check for a spark before moving on. Fewer awkward silences that way, too.
I'm going to London. I'm going to London. I'm going to London.
It doesn't seem real. I'm gonna be seeing Jake, my closest college friend, in one of the most interesting cities in the world in a couple days. I have no idea whether or not I'm packing the right stuff.
Over the past couple weeks, the daffodils have slowly been pushing out of the ground. I can't wait to get back from spring break to find Oberlin in the early bloom of spring. Plus the snow ban will finally be over and I'll be able to park near my dorm again. So exciting!
I keep getting distracted from this entry, and now it's about time for my Japanese midterm. I'll finish this up when I get back.
Haha, I always forget that tests go better when I've slept the night before. Ah well, it wasn't too bad.
Man oh man oh man I am so wired - no sleep, coffee from Blue Sky around 4 AM, and anticipation of London are all roiling around in my belly. I can't make my brain stop! And I need to fake up a 2-3 page paper for Korean history still! And shower and shave! Ahhh!
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 02:02 a.m.
TITLE|eh
Monday, March 22, 2004
I am, in many ways, slipping. I can't get myself to care about schoolwork at all anymore, and I honestly don't think I'd care if I somehow failed out of school at this point. I'm bored with formal education. I'm really feeling stifled by Ohio, or maybe it's just Oberlin, or maybe it's just the liberal arts thing, I dunno. So many people here are the same person, and the few interesting people I find are either so submissive to me that I act really strangely around them or so different from me that I can't really talk with them about anything. And the only solid, good, smart, interesting friends I finally made here are in London and eastern Europe.
All week long I've been slipping in and out of the world. Emily hit on something key recently - I'm not really an insomniac, I'm just nocturnal by nature. I can't fall asleep until 5 or 6 AM, but then I'm out practically until sundown unless I really drag myself out of bed for classes. I have much more energy at night than during the day, even when I'm on a traditional sleep schedule. Of course, this does very little to help my academic career. I spent many of my waking hours this week feeling either sick or not there. My dreams have been seeming more real to me than my actual life, possibly because I so often dream of being back home or having the gang around. I think a lot of my weirdness this term has come about from the severe homesickness I keep pretending not to suffer from. I need a Matt or a Kira to keep me on my toes, a Kyle or a Ham to make me laugh, a Piya or a Natalie to make me feel loved, a Chris or a Marc to keep me thinking, a Jennella or a Steph to make me feel like family... I need an ocean, I need a mountain range, I need a desert, I need a city... I need the sunshine and the dancing winds and the warm rain and the thousand marvelous forms of night... I need a crowd to lose myself in and a hidden place where nobody can find me... I need to get out of Ohio, and I need my dear Los Angeles. I am, quite literally, going crazy without it.
For Pi Day last Sunday, I made five pies with Emily and Caitlin and Katie. We took them to the Twin Peaks ExCo, where they were promptly devoured. Later I went to Ale's room with the last remaining bit and we sat around and talked and listened to music and talked with Di online. That was good.
I spent the week in a kind of haze, drifting between sickness and dreaminess.
Friday night was one of the strangest I've ever had. Caitlin wanted to go to this rave with a friend of hers from home. Intrigued, I decided to go along. However, I had been under the impression that there would be alcohol in this for me, and instead I had to deal, sober, with herds of douchebags in stupid clothing dancing badly to stupid music. For hours. Not to mention that it wasn't nearly as big as I'd hoped it would be, so I couldn't get myself lost in a crowd or just fuck around.
We left early, around 2:00 or so. We planned on going to a diner, but when we were getting close to Oberlin, I was feeling way too sleepy to keep driving for long, so I parked at the gym lot and we started walking southwards.
Well, halfway home, who should I run into but Drew and her friend Rowan, both quite drunk? Drew, of course, wanted to go to a diner, so I made her buy me two sodas so I could be awake enough to drive, and we were off. Caitlin and her friend didn't come along. The diner trip was fun and tasty.
I got back to my room around 4:45 and saw there was a missed call and a message on my cell phone. It was Sara, Nathan's ex, in tears and asking me to call her. I did and eventually found out that she had swallowed a whole bunch of sleeping pills to try to end her life. And she was drunk. So we had a particularly intense conversation that ended with her saying she'd go to bed. I was relieved, a few minutes later, to see her on AIM and not asleep, but she wasn't on for all that long and she said she was going to sleep and hoped she would just die. I freaked out and called emergency services, which wasn't fruitful because I don't know her home phone number or address. I tried Nathan, since I figured he of all people would know, but he was unreachable. Not knowing who else to call, I tried my parents and explained the situation to my mom, who tried to find Sara's parents' number.
After a good score of minutes and a great deal of freaking out, I got a call from my dad with Sara's parents' number, so I called them, knowing her mom had already been to her place once to try and help her. I talked for awhile with her mom, who seemed fairly well convinced that Sara would be okay, since she had vomited and was still up more than two hours after ingesting the pills. There was nothing else I could do, so, after an hour's impotent worrying, I fell asleep around 8 AM.
I haven't been able to reach Sara since then. I have no idea if she survived the night.
This probably hasn't been a very fun entry to read. Sorry, stalkers.
Reading questions
(1) Why is the sky blue?
(2) What is two plus two?
(3) What is the capital of the Czech Republic?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 02:45 a.m.
TITLE|urchin
Saturday, March 13, 2004
With a paper and a test last week and two tests this week, I have simply been too busy to update recently. Now seems as good a time as any to keep this ol' blog alive and kickin'.
On Thursday night, I went to a diner for Drew's Twin Peaks Exco, thinking Alex and Emily would be there. It turned out, however, that I was supposed to be their ride and Drew didn't realize this until we were already at Blue Sky. I was quite upset, as the crowd was mostly obnoxious, loud hipsters with nothing interesting to say, and I wasn't able to sit next to that guy I like in the class. In fact, he sat at the corner and barely said a word all night. Myself, I grabbed a napkin and a pen and started writing. Better than talking with those fucking image-obsessed morons. The napkin turned out well, but Drew stole it. I was entertained.
I overslept yesterday, so severely that I missed Japanese and history. It was glorious, for I have been sleeping terribly all week. I felt bad about missing classes, but I made both math classes and enjoyed each one thoroughly.
I went to the Organ Pump last night. Tim is adorable. I fear I may be falling for his charms.
Also last night, I got dinner at Lord Saunders, and it was one of the most delicious things I'd eaten all year. Really good pasta, baked sweet potatoes, cornbread, and ice cream add up to one delicious meal.
Anyway, after the Organ Pump, I went to the Sco, where I stayed longer than I wanted to, then I went to the room of Caitlin and Jamie, two first-years in my building whose company I quite enjoy. There was a drinking game. I got tipsy.
Everyone left around 3:00, so I went for a walk with Caitlin, my favourite member of this new freshman crowd. We went to Tappan Square and discovered a couple swings that were accompanied by writing that was too small for our drunken brains to read. After that, we went downtown, where I spotted a fire-ladder. At first I just grabbed onto a rung, decided it was too dangerous, and got off. Then, after walking around a bit, I realized I was just being a coward, so I worked my way up onto the ladder, then climbed onto the rooftops, where I clambered around and had a whole lot of fun. Caitlin cheered me on from the ground. I love exploring.
Eventually I got down and we went to a nearby swing that I occasionally like to swing on. There we swung and talked of friends from home. After that we came home. I realized that one of the spikes from my glove had come off. I'm sure it's up in the rooftops somewhere. I'll have to replace it.
There were more of our friends still up and about, so we went to the kosher co-op to steal food. It turned out to be quite tasty. Then almost everyone went to bed.
I came back to my room and realized that, in addition to my spike, I was also missing my wallet. I decided to wait until it was lighter outside and spoke with Jake online for a bit.
I found my wallet near the second swing about half an hour ago. I'm sleepy but still faintly tipsy. This is what comes of having insomnia.
I had an incredibly good time clmabering around the rooftops. I miss Natalie, who would doubtless have found a way to clamber with me.
Reading questions
(1) Why does the author enjoy exploring so much?
(2) What is the author leaving unsaid?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 07:28 a.m.
TITLE|march
Thursday, March 4, 2004
I love March.
I realized, while archiving the last chapter, that I have not been linking to previous chapters this book, so I decided to fix that. The links are on the right now.
Breakfast
He looks at me with a pinkish blush
and crumbs on his lips;
closes his eyes, opens them, and smiles.
I nibble like a mouse at my scone
and smile back,
almost ignoring the effort it takes.
I'm not there, but I'm getting close.
These mornings
when he looks at me and smiles,
I can almost speak the truth.
And he never understood
why my first words were a farewell.
I'm not thrilled by it, but it's as close to the original version as I can remember. Maybe this time Pitas won't swallow it.
Reading questions
(1) Analyze the poem. How does it compare with others the author has written over the years?
(2) What is the author leaving unsaid?
Answer thoughtfully and thoroughly. Answers will not be collected, but remember, this will be on the test.
Number Six on the Lunatic Fringe, signing out - 11:07 p.m.
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who||andrew
what||college student with delusions of grandeur
when||nineteen years ago
where||london!
why||purity.adventure.romance
monarchs
chrysalides
"if you would comfort me
sing me a lullaby
if you would win my heart
sing me a love song
if you would mourn me
and bring me to god
sing me a requiem
sing me to heaven"
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