times are strange in my life at the moment, as it seems ive developed some psychological issues. what i wrote back on... april 28... yeah that still applies. except it is worse these days. and it makes me sick in the head. i was driving home yesterday afternoon alone listening to music, the same route i always take and came up on this big highway intersection... like always... and the whole scene brought on one of those damn things and i got so sick i almost vomited... right there driving down the road. strange eh?

last night was athletic awards night at the school, or, at peace. mens soccer was near the beginning, being a fall sport and all, and coach mess did a good job speaking, etc and i stood up and all and that was all very cool. jones pissed me off when she gave her little speech about how swimming did this stuff in states and track qualified someone for states, and the basketball and volleyball and all this crazy shit and finally how women's soccer was still in the state tournament and was the first team ever (charter i guess) to make it out the first round game and all that bullshit. well thats wonderful, i have lots of friends on that team but in reality, the mens team - the one i started on - the one that finished the year with 1 loss in 11 games and a 9 game winning streak - was never even registered for states. and our jerseys are old. its bullshit - we havent even gotten registered for a damn tournament since freshman year. and we were so good this year... we would have been the first charter school to make it out of a first round game, i dare say we would have won it all... for the 1A/2A tourney anyway. not terrible for a school of 500 kids.

i was fine. all was alright mostly. during the women's basketball thing i looked at the stage... and the people... and the entire room as a whole for the first time. as a room... and people... and a stage and it was so overwhelming and terrible and brought on such an emotional draw that i almost blacked out. i dont want it to sound so bad but im sure the two were related. my brain got tight, pressure built up in my head, my vision turned red and slowly went black, all i could hear was a loud ringing. its frightening when you are in a very public place, right in the middle of all kinds of people, and you cant hear or see anything. i told myself very strongly to 'pull through' or just 'stay awake' but thinking back it was all just a voice in my head. eventually, sweating, i could feel again, i shook the vision back, and when there was a pause, i stepped into the bathroom for a minute, then got some water, then took a circuit around the courtyard at peace before catching the last minute of the crew thing. im not so sad i missed that. but i am getting sick of these issues in my head. i really just want to talk to someone. some professional. about all the things i cant post here.

but today is a different day and very strange at that. there is a certain finality about it, not just because its a friday (and the last friday of the school year, of my high school everness) but just because things are so different. i dont think it was because i was driving my mothers car or because it was raining but on the way to school, even though i was driving the same route i always have, everything seemed new to me. everything felt like i was seeing it for the first time or like i was just noticing it all. it was insane and crazy and i had to think about how to get where i was going. at school everyone was signing yearbooks and it was 'senior skip day' so everyone was sort of coming and going. apathy at its best. all the yearbooks though, im not ready for this. signing them is such a hassle, i want to think too much. everything takes too much effort. ive had this incredible mental energy all day and i cant tell whether its a leftover of all this mental instability ive been dealing with lately or stress or because i havent had anything to eat all day except a boost at 8:15 this morning and water. this crazy mental energy that has kept me alive and to tell the truth, i feel fine. i dont even want to eat, though i might in a while because im bored. everything just seems different and i cant put my finger on why. so as i sit here sipping on my mother's tea i found on the deck, wishing i was with my family somewhere, this afternoon is just weird. i walked outside instead of having a snack. sat with the cat on the lawn. got gas in my mothers jeep. sat on the front steps while my dad drove up. stood in the doorway to watch them all leave again and stepped behind a transparent drapery to blow them a kiss.

maybe its all the stress lately, school ending, exams, knowing how much i hate everything changing but still looking forward to everything to come, the picnic, graduation, and whoever shows up at that... i just cant deal with that. at all. not at all. i havent eaten all day and i love this energy. im just... jittery. i want to learn piano. i want to be able to sing. play slide guitar. blues, everything. i want to be able to buy my own car.

i think i would be ok if i was still in love.

sometimes it seems... like it would be worthwhile to give up on love. it hasnt gotten me anywhere good in years. as for now its a silly little high school attraction with no real upside to me. an avenue to lonliness i suppose. but still, there are nights like tonight when im driving through the city while the sun is dying out, windows down, blasting bass-driven britpoprock like i had never heard it before (and i hadnt)... chasing some girl in a red jetta through the outskirts of downtown. i dont know who she was. all i know is that she was a young girl with dark hair that was put up in a red jetta, the drivers side window halfway down. im not sure if i was trying to impress her or hope that she might somehow... recognize the music and wave at me. doubtful, that. but i enjoyed it immensly just riding there, almost fast, but not, watching her drive and imagining she could hear me. its invaluable in times like that to have a recorder on you somewhere to catch all those little inbetween thoughts that occur at so many frames per second, like streaming emotive audio for the man reading the monologue in my head. i remember that i pulled up alongside her and just ahead so that our windows werent looking through to each other cause that would be akward but enough so that she could hear... whatever it was playing. she would pull ahead and i would pull in behind her in the lane, wait at a light, go a ways, follow in the left lane again... you know. its just normal. she pulled back into the center lane and it made me wonder why. maybe she didnt want to hear me anymore? turned out she just needed to be there to exit onto the beltline in another mile. i passed her out in the blossoming-tree-shaded drive through the old black neighborhood and saw, in my rear view mirror that her right headlight was out. what does that mean? does she take care of her car at all? should that matter? the parking lights on either side still worked but still... as we emptied out past the stoplight and the dogfood plant that smells like fried chicken, into the sort of delta that the road opens into without actually opening, becoming a highway, i was still in the left lane and she in the far right. i slowed to watch her exit and caught a decent look at her face. pretty.

as we go back in time we find me proud to have parallel parked and not ticketed by the science museum and back farther, in there listening/watching the strings orchestra perform their last concert of the year. i knew at least five of the performers, being seniors, and it was all-in-all quite wonderful. the more memorable part of this, to me anyway, was who i was sitting with. when i walked in, i followed an older man and woman, a couple... parents... of some kid. followed them in, thanked the guy for holding the first door for me and then made sure to catch the second door quickly so a second thank you wouldnt be necessary. walked to the back, said hallo to a buddy of mine handing out programs (got wrangled into it i presume, got there early and someone handed him the job) and eventually into the little hall. i usually sit near the door on the right-hand side in the back but this time a seat was taken back there. i scanned real quick cause i was supposed to tell a girl there to hold seats for people but she had plenty. this freshman girl, a former goalie on my sisters soccer team, was sitting back there. i was surprised to see her... i mean i know who she is and played it off like i did even though i couldnt remember her name for the life of me (i eventually asked her and she told me, i swore i knew it all along, she poked me in the leg) so i high fived her and sat down two seats down. i held that spot for maybe five seconds before i decided to move down to the single seat between her and the right wall, i liked that spot better. and anyway, it was closer to her, we were supposed to - by now - at least associate, and she is very pretty in a strange, badkid, foreign kind of way. big brown eyes, that one. and throughout the show, there was some kind of tension. we never really talked all year but recently she has been saying hello in the hallways, or getting fives in front of her friends. i thought it was cool and kind of imagined she was because she was getting attention from a senior, i never even glanced at her friends. maybe thats just me building myself up. i always worried about how i was sitting. i didnt want to seem too stand off-ish or too lazy or uptight or open to her in any inappropriate way you know. i overthink things like that. i would lean over and rest my arms on my knees, read the program, lean back and fold my arms, look over and survey the crowd. when i did that i could feel out of the corner of my eye her looking at me like i was going to look at her. i just scanned back over forward and paid attention some more. im not sure why these things happen to me. a couple times she would rest her arms on the aptly named armrests and a finger would touch my leg. slowly, like it was intentional almost. i could feel the cold through my jeans once. strange. lots of rings and bracelets and earrings and big brown eyes. thats how most of it went. i would try and make a comment every now and then, just to say something. just to make it look like i was enjoying sitting there, a senior with a freshman he had hardly never spoken to before. the comments were never very good. somehow i didnt expect them to be, not with her. when it was over i asked her how she got there. apparently her mom had driven her but she still had to find a way home. i still regret not asking her where she lived, maybe i could have helped her out. i wish i had asked.

then of course i wouldnt have seen the girl in the red jetta with the one headlight, listened to the loud britpoprock music like i did with the windows down, taken that glance to the exit, or have been quite relaxed on the way home. then again, love isnt at all about being relaxed, is it?

silly little television love poem

theres always more to say but i havent been in the mood to say it all yet. school is killing me, always shit to do and performances and etc. people are killing me, and yet... i want a break but i dont want it to end. i sketched this poem around the edges of my ap student guide book. like all the others, the words popped into my head and once i made sure they rhymed in all the right places, went down on the page. same as all the rest, ah well, at least i had the best intentions in mind.

the most painful thing in the world is laughing when you just want to cry. thats not part of the poem. the rest is.

if ive been good
like you know i should,
would you be the wood
for me to rest my head on?

ill be so poor
that a walk on the shore
with the ocean's roar
is all i need

its clear the path ive lead
has gone to my head
but if the line i tread
would diverge into two

then in a well worn cliche
we'd grow old and grey
long's my footprints stay
close to yours

cheers