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I'm in West Virginia for my boyfriend's sister's wedding, which isn't the best thing going on in the world, but anyway, and West Virginia sure is Wild, but I'm not so sure it's Wonderful (when you enter the state, there's this huge sign saying "Wild and Wonderful West Virginia").
It's actually really beautiful. The mountains are breathtaking. The very bad, windy, barely paved roads are surprisingly fun to drive, once I got used to it. Of course, I creep along, since even the interstates are winding, but these people go 80 miles an hour. I don't know how they do it.
So last night was the rehearsal and dinner and afterwards my boyfriend and his sisters and me were going out to do something fun. It was about 9PM and there I was, driving these windy roads, praying a deer or a bear or another car wouldn't pop out of somewhere. Of course, I had my highbeams on (not sure this terminology is universal, but it's the really bright lights on the car) and another car did cross our path. I went to turn my normal lights on, and my lights went off! What did I do wrong? I try again, but with no luck! No headlights! I pull over off the road at a mechanic's, which would have been of great fortune had it not been so late that they were no longer open. I start trying everything I can think of, but no headlights! I call my mom, my car-savvy grandfather, they can't really help me. My grandfather says the switch probably went bad. Nothing can really be done right now. So, feeling embarrassed and quite like a failure, I sheepishly turn around to take the sisters back to the house, with my brights on, pissing off and blinding everyone in my path. I had to drive back to the hotel, on the interstate, with my highbeams on. This is not good.
However! before we can get off of these winding country roads, positioned beside a creek that, if you make one wrong move, you will inevitably wind up in, my boyfriend and I encounter another perilous occurrence. We pull to the train tracks, but the warning lights are blinking, saying a train is coming. I stop. But then the lights stop. So I assume the train is gone. However, my instincts are telling me something else. I turn around to my boyfriend and say, "This is weird. I don't want to go is there's still a train coming". I pause for several more seconds. No sign of a train. Nervously, I approach the tracks, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see that light on the front of trains. I'm already on the tracks. I know without thinking that if I do think, I'm dead. I press the gas as hard as I can, the car feels like it's not going to go and sort of is perhaps stuck on the tracks. But no! we're safe. And not in the creek either. Shaking, I keep driving, with my highbeams on, and very, very scared.
I come back and I'm telling my mother all of this on the phone, talking at a reasonable level. I hear a knocking, and turn around and this old woman is leaning around the barrier between our balconies and tells me that someone is sleeping in her room and she has the door open and could I please be quiet. I resist the urge, somehow, to say, "Why don't you just close your door?!" and walk back inside the room, now bugging my boyfriend who is trying to watch the news.
And to top it all off, he was having to watch Fox News because CNN is frozen to one screen, and has been for the past two days.
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| "[i]I want to fly and run until it hurts
Sleep for a while and speak no words[/i]"
-Manic Street Preachers, "Australia", [i]Everything Must Go[/i]
i was listening to one of my favorite albums on the way home. i felt so sad, and to me, that album doesn't go along with being sad. there's good memories to that one. there's good stuff on that one. and even if some of the stuff isn't necessarily happy, it's not quite sad, for the most part, either. and so i had this strange mix of emotions. the sunroof open, the widow down a bit. and with the air blowing and that music, it felt like a warm blanket had been wrapped gently around me and all the cold parts were warming up. music is so powerful. sometimes i forget it.
i feel like maybe i'm going into one of those parts of my life where music becomes my warm blanket, a security blanket, an asylum. that's when i first got into it. when it was something to escape to. when it was where i found someone, something like me in the small town i was in. after all, it's all open to interpretation pretty much anyway, and everyone's getting something different out of it. so to me, it was what i needed. and it becomes a safehaven in a time of doubt, mistrust, anger, confusion, frustration, joy, peace and other things not only in the world and those immediately around me, but in myself. forgetting everything else and just listening to a song, singing along with it to the top of my lungs all alone, protects me even from myself.
and i suppose not everyone feels this way. not everyone gets this from it. and that's alright. it doesn't matter. that's not what it's about. you probably haven't ever gotten the same thing from it all. for some people, music doesn't really even ever touch their lives, come in and leave them somewhat changed. for some people it doesn't become addictive or exciting. (i'm glad i'm not one of those people). and it doesn't leave me euphoric all the time, and it becomes background noise. but in those special moments, when i need it most, because i'm happy or sad or alone or anything, really, it comes by, sweeps in, carries me away, enhances everything. | | |
| Or "HOW I WISH EVERYTHING I BOUGHT WAS TIMELESS"
I think one of the things I have the hardest time doing is getting rid of clothes. I come up with tons of excuses, though most of the time they fall right along the lines of, "Maybe one day I'll fit back into it!" or, "It might come back in style!" Fat chance, lady. Of course, supposedly the '90's are already coming back. I know, I hardly lived through it, but isn't it premature, just like VH1's "I Love The 90's", not to mention "I Love The New Millennium." We just got into it! Not even 10 years! But I digress...
The thing about going through the closet and seeing every garment brings back a ton of memories. Good and bad. The shirt I met my boyfriend in. The shirt I gave a presentation in at school. The dress I wore on New Year's Eve last year, or was it the year before? Then there are the things that are cursed. Some shirts, pants, even shoes just seem to bring bad luck every time I wear them. They're cute, but they must go. No sense in keeping around bad luck. I realize how many things I bought and then never wore. It might have been for an event I didn't attend, or that I bought it and never had anything to wear it with. I feel really guilty about getting rid of these things. I'm sure Goodwill loves it (or laughs at me, I'm not sure which...).
As I reach the back of the closet, where my short stature barely allows me to reach, I realize that the thing about clothes is that they aren't just things we wear. They're not only what we put on to look cool, or to cover ourselves. But they define us. And the memories we have in them stay with those clothes as long as we have them. That's bigger than fashion. Or maybe, that's what fashion is all about.
And with that, I urge you, if you haven't cleaned out your closet lately, I recommend you do so. You would be surprised, as incredibly corny as it sounds, that you might clean out two closets at once. (Plus, you can actually see what you have, and you can go buy new things!) | | |
| Somehow it all changed. And for once, it changed for the better. There we were, in a foreign city, exactly two years to the day that we had met, and we fell in love all over again. Classic. I regretted and regret still all the harsh words I said to you, the ways I treated you, but I'm not letting it overtake me, because I am happy again. I am so in love again. I just want to experience this as long as I can (because as relationships will go, it always ebbs and flows, and the good times come and the good times go). When you come back here, I will hold you in my arms, and I know you'll do the same to me and we'll be happy like we haven't been in a long time. I don't know how long it will be this way, in this world of everything being so temporary, but you are all I want, you are all I need. I am happy with you, and you're happy with me. | | |
| I can't believe my first year of college is almost done! I'm so happy. Next year I'll be somewhere else, and that will be great too. Maybe I'll finally make the sort of friends I've always wanted to. That sounds shallow. I'm going to live all alone, I'm going to be working my ass off so hard that I'll probably never even sleep in my own bed or be in my own apartment, and in five years, I'll have an Interior Architecture degree, move to Sweden, work for Ikea (Boston would be a rather nice locale as well), and have the life I always wanted. Am I dreaming? No. This is not a dream. It is my plan, the plan I will carry out at all costs. The plan I will work for and the only thing that could ever hold me back is God or fate. This is what I know I am supposed to do.
PS. Photos from me seeing Radiohead!!!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myartificialsunshine/sets/72157605005876804/show/
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