2005-11-28
dancing bears
I think it's important for all of us here to be honest with ourselves. Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa (they chant: �Hi, Lisa�), and I've had two pieces of cheesecake today.
This entry was spun on a spinning wheel. Wade's mom brought hers to our class in third grade, I can remember. She spun wool. It made her fingers feel greasy in a pleasant way, if you can imagine that. I remember liking the smell.
Yes, this entry was spun on a spinning wheel. But a nice one- not like the one Sleeping Beauty pricked herself on. It is threaded with various excerpts from commencement ceremony speeches that I have an affinity for. You'll notice these pieces, they are in green.
I wonder about the people on jeopardy. Not the contestants, not Alex (he's kind of boring actually)- but those who write the questions. What type of personality does it take to conjure some of that stuff, especially with the annoyingly messed up synax?
I am noticeably weary of the quality of this journal. I've just recounted that I have four major college essays to write, and a few smaller ones to boot. The good news is that they're quite brief- only about 500 words. The bad news--- how the hell do you write yourself so aptly and impressively and coherently (I spelled this word as �cohereant� for the longest time; I have no idea why.) with only 500 words?! But let's end with more good news. It's only four. And I have a month. Grades are going to suffer, but January will be used for repairing those.
You will have to bend all your will not to march to the music that all of those great "theys" out there pipe on their flutes. The music is tinny, if you listen close enough. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart. This is a symphony. All the rest are jingles.
If you always put your heart into everything you do, you really can't lose. If your heart is in it, you'll probably succeed, and if it isn't in it, you probably won't succeed. But the reason you can't lose is that whether you wind up making a lot of money or not, you will have had a wonderful time, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you.
You know what? This is how it goes. I get up in the morning- sometimes I don't want to. And I always end up right back where I started- in that bed upstairs. My head slowly drops itself onto that pillow, and I'm off again into a world of reveries swimming through my delirious mind- distorted memories of the past, details people and places of the days, random weird occurences, and trains (I used to have reoccuring dreams of missing the bus. I don't know if I've ever really told anyone that.). And as I slip into slumber, I am not completely the same. I am in the same place as where I began perhaps, but my angle's changed and my eyes possess a new, refined view. And I nudge forward. I move and grow like the minute hand of a clock, or the sun slowly and smoothly shifting across the heavens. Yup, that's me. That mattress knows it all too well.
Gravity doesn't have to weigh us down. We can lift, we can rise above and float beyond that which drags us down with an invisible weight. Whatever our gravity may be (even if it's not just Newton and his apples.. what type of apples were they? Golden delicious? I like those.), we don't have to let it get to us. Light as a feather. We can feel it in our fingers and our voice, and also in our smile. Go ahead and be a fluffy snowflake.
So, there are twelve months in a year. That leaves it open for a lot of variety, each 30-month unit with its own connotation. And we are on a brink of a new one--- arguably the best one!!! December. I want to write a poem about it! Maybe I will. And I can polish it and post it here sometime! Aw, now I set up an expectation. Guess what? Those are bad! :D
Dancing bears, Painted wings, Things I almost remember. And a song someone sings, Once upon a December.
Life is absurd and meaningless and full of nothingness. Possibly this doesn't strike you as helpful and cheerful, but I think it is, because it's honest and because it goads you on.
Maybe it was my natural optimism at work, but what I saw and warmed to in the existentialist writings was that life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; that it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.
Existentialism was supposed to be the philosophy of despair. But not to me - because it faced the cold hard stone you hit when you touch rock bottom and I saw in it a way to bound back up again.
No matter how loving or loved we are, it eventually occurs to most of us - that deep, deep down inside there, we're allalone. I'm not telling you this to depress you or to turn your eyes away from the soft flutter of blossoms on a day in spring. But I know that winter's coming and when the moment comes for you to wrestle with that cold loneliness which is every person's private monster, I want you to face the damn thing. I want you to see it for what it is and win.
leesah-likes at 7:12 p.m.