sketchy

i wasnt really bored in my bill of rights seminar but our teacher - sanders, as you may have read below - takes these long pauses, im talking thirty seconds, to figure out where he is in his lecture. twice i actually did sketch something and im just the kind of guy to take the time and effort to upload them to the web. so if you laugh in pity at my drawings... well, at least you laughed.

#1 - the second amendment. or, as he explained it, "the right to keep and arm bears"

#2 - cotton mather. some puritan who helped found harvard and burned witches. he later apologized.


the end

set the night on fire

i think i better get this out of my head before i forget it.

setting the scene, it is 1:15 AM, and there are eleven of us stuffed into critter's dorm room in the corner of the third floor, johnson dorm. four of us on a mattress on the floor leaning against the a/c, two in chairs, on on the bottom bunk, one on the mattressless top bunk, three on the floor. well damn, that actually adds up too. we have been watching braveheart for hours, eating goldfish and stretching intermittently.

as karma dictates, when you have been watching a movie for nigh on three hours, if something will happen to prevent its conclusion, it will happen in the last fifteen minutes. such is the case. with a couple minutes remaining, before the film really concludes, the fire alarm goes off. in fact, it took a second for me to catch on. we were watching on vhs so for a second i thought the screeching sound we were all hearing was a glitch on the film. but, after a second, the familiar sound sinks in and it becomes apparent that it can only be an alarm of some sort. aw damn.

we all sortof get up, collect our senses, and amble out into the hall way. as critter would later remark, we have all been so desensitized to fire drills that if the real thing actually occurred, we might just be in trouble. in fact, he had the forsight to stop the movie and turn off the tv. come to think of it, it wasnt really a surprise. if theres going to be a fire drill, it would most certainly happen in the first week of school. figures.

well, we all wander down the hallway to the door to the stairwell and make our way down past my floor and down the three flights of stairs to where there is a large mass of people gathered outside. none appear to be freaking out or under much stress. i make my way with my group about thirty feet away from the building when i notice we are hearing a new sound, one that doesnt fit in with the chattering of my dormmates and the fire alarm bleating in the background. its a whooshing, like a waterfall, aqueous. so i turn and look and to my left, between johnson and bostwick dorms, smoke is pouring from the ground. it occurs to me that this may not be a drill after all. a minor annoyance turns to concern that all the things in my room might be in jeopardy {included among these: my phone, wallet, camera, keys, guitar, amp, mp3 player, clothes, laptop, printer... well you get the point}. there are people standing near it so i wander over and check it out. theres nothing more happening than all this vapor pouring out of the ground so i amble on back to my group. theres general confusion, no real order to the mess, just everyone in the two dorms standing around speculating and frustrating as a group. sean comes up and tells me that it is, in fact, steam. and why? because he stuck his hand in it. genious.

around that time, the annoying RA from the ground floor starts yelling at people to move away from the buildings and cross the street toward the mag quad. the group shifts in that direction but its slow; none of us really like to listen to him. by this time, the cops had started showing up and at least three cars, replete with the blues flashing, were parked on this little one-way street outside. i walked across the street with some others in time to see a firetruck pull up, making as much noise and light as ever. it stops at the walkway to our dorm and some firemen get out. they dont look like they are in a terrible rush, though. i make my way back across the street to where a couple of my friends and my hall's RA, nick, are. nick is cool about all this and we ask him whats going on. apparently, there was a meltdown in the tunnel between johnson and bostwick and, as we thought, steam was pouring from the ground. great.

i asked if my laptop was covered for this kind of stuff. he seemed to think so. also, none of the sprinklers would go off since there was no "fire". good, cause i wasnt looking forward to hundreds of gallons of water splashing all over my exposed electronics. we just wouldnt be let back in for two hours. wonderful.

we are sitting on the curb by a police car when someone {probably me} mentions food. critter and patrick get up and i hold my hand up to be helped up by kristen but she doesnt notice and patrick helps me. well the group of us walks up the mag quad toward reynolda, passing the drunks coming back from random frat parties {this is the first real friday night of school, after all}. most want to know whats going on... you know, why are there firetrucks and cops outside two of the central south campus dorms? i give them the nutshell and as i do i realize how much of an inconvenience this must be. lots of drunk kids wandering back to their dorms at 1:45 in the morning to find who but the popo waiting outside. heh. its not a time where the truth is too imperative, though, and critter tells the next group simply that the guy in the yellow pulled the alarm. i look behind me and dont see anyone and it takes a second to get that he is talking about me. playing along, i run on up the stairs.

we all walk around the west side of reynolda and up onto the main quad toward subway. as we might have expected, subway was packed so we go back. someone mentions {probably me again} that the library is open late and they have snack machines in there. critter is taking a call {{i originally typed postcard instead of call... i dont know why. its late.}} so patrick and i and some others go around front and inside to one of the library study rooms. there are already evicted kids camping out in there so we go on through to the machines. i figure out my deacon card has no money on the vending strip and have to beg a dollar from seth {i paid him back too} to get a cherry coke. when we get back outside, critter is there without kristen - we forgot she went with us - who, as it turns out, had gone back to her dorm, luter. so we all walk on down to luter.

when we get there, i follow a girl inside {my keycard wont work for any but my own empty dorm after midnight}, thinking everyone might want to hang out in their parlor instead of by the bike racks but only adam and jamie follow me in. after a minute of hanging out in their lobby, we all go back outside and sit with the group. drunk girls wander past and kristen and caroline meet back up with us. we all kind of sit on the wall by the bike racks or near it and talk. caroline mentions having seen part of 'a view to kill' in collins at a party so we talk about bond. some guy who didnt want to go into his dorm and try to get past his RA drunk starts talking about pierce brosnan and how old he is, when he started making bond movies, etc. i kindof argue with him but his math is weak so he just goes back inside. i wonder whatever happened to him...

when nothing at all happens and we are bored of that spot, we go back out to the street between tribble and johnson and sit down in the grass out there. there are still cops. there are still firemen. we still cant go inside. critter goes off alone to see if the green room in reynolda is open. this is a good plan because we have been getting attacked by skeeters for a couple hours and it isnt really pleasant. he doesnt come back so i go up myself - no one feels like following me - and find him sitting with a group of people i dont know on one side of the room. he waves and introduces me so i join them. in fact, theres a girl from my seminar {a whole nother story, see below} there too. i sit on the couch between critter and a tired looking girl, stephanie, from basement johnson. we all kindof talk about nothing until another RA, clearly gay but everyone's friend, walks in with a group of his kids. he took them to some party and got them all drunk, like any good RA. he himself didnt drink, i dont think he does as a general rule, but the rest of them were pretty wasted. one kid was carrying two large glass mugs in one hand. he acted like they were just there and were supposed to be and really wasnt too careful about it. once he got excited, laughed at a joke, and clanged them together, oblivious to the fact that a chunk of glass flew up and landed behind him. when the girl from my seminar tried to explain this to him, he cant seem to wrap his mind around the fact that there is glass missing from one of his mugs. he wandered off to talk to other people and i walked around to pick up the glass and threw it away.

a second later, a girl walks up and introduces herself as sarah. sarah has been drinking and isnt shy about it. she goes around asking names and is generally conversational. when she finds out most of us are from johnson {the substance-free dorm} she praises us as being far more intelligent than her. her night was good until she started drinking, and as she told us, she was wasted and wasnt enjoying it very much. someone yelled at her and she wandered back off.

critter had taken my pillow and moved to the floor so i had stretched out on half the couch with basement stephanie on the other. someone asked the RA if there were still cops and firemen out there and he didnt see any. with a big sigh of relief, the group got up and got out. critter and i went off to the right and walked back down to the dorm. they were finally letting people inside. i think he went off to the right somewhere and i went back up my second floor.

i dont remember what else happened, just that i climbed in bed around 3:15 and slept until 1:30 this afternoon. the perks of college life i guess. as for now, it is nearing 3 and i have church in the morning so... goodnight.

trial by fire

im sitting in my parlor because my desk is in a black hole in my room. i cant possibly relate all the stories of college life that have unfolded (unfeld? haha) in the past week - this really has given me something to write about! - but this is one that i have told scores of people and it seems to have gone over pretty well.

anyway, enough with the building up... the story might just let you down.

its the first day of classes. i have had a bitch of a time getting registered because i had an early time the first day - got my two plus a lab in fine and dandy - but a late time the second day. basically this meant that i was registered for eight hours and could get a single damn class to get the required twelve to be a full-time student. every damn thing i tried got me waitlisted. so all that was left to do was show up come classtime and beg the teachers for a POI number so i could bypass the system. i need these hours... if i dont get twelve they will kick me out of my dorm etc.

i leave my dorm ten minutes to noon and head over to tribble - notorious for being split level x 2 and having three inaptly named wings... - and find the room, A209, studies in british literature. so i wander in and am about to sit down when a buddy of mine from high school, alex, waves at me. turns out theres a chair at the head of the table smack between him and patrick, a new friend from my hallway. this is cool. i havent had a class where i knew anybody so im getting excited.

anyway, i introduce them and get to know alex's new friend, sitting on his other side, and we sort of chat and then the room goes silent. when he mentions something, i tell him that charles - another kid from my hall - told me that his mother told him when theres a silence like that its because an angel is passing over... but thats all a big sidetrack anyway and doesnt add much to the true tale.

after another couple minutes the professor wanders in looking all the world like a lame colonel sanders {and i know thats a cliche but bear with me} with yellow hair and looking sincerely angry at the entire class because he himself was late. he goes to the front of the large table we are all sitting around and says in a loud, gruff voice, "i'm professor king..." and looks at a girl sitting in the front, "who are YOU?" she doesnt respond, kind of recoils back in her seat. im sure most of us would have done the same thing. getting no response, sanders stands up a little straighter and says, "im supposed to have fifteen people in this class." of course, everyone starts counting to themselves and we all kind of come to the realization that there are, in fact, sixteen people around the table but nobody says anything about it.

sensing my opportunity, i raise my hand and get his attention saying something along the lines of, "hi... umm my names brooks morgan and i am on your wait list and i have come to sort of beg my way into your class and i really love these people and was hoping to join in." well, having done my best in pulling out all shreds of charisma, he wanders over to me and hands me a sticker with the POI and course info so i can register. i thank him profusely and sit down.

good. i got brit lit.

well he starts talking about papers and such and after about ten minutes says... and i quote him here... "now, as we all know, the focus of this class will be the Bill of Rights..."

wait a second...

i turn to alex and whisper "the Bill of Rights?!?" and he's like... yeah... "this isnt british literature?!?"... umm, no...

shit.

i hang my head for a second and raise my hand, interrupting sanders while he is speaking. my part of the conversation went something like this:

"umm... did you say this class was on the Bill of Rights?"

"so this isnt british literature?"

"isnt this tribble A209?"

...

"i must be mistaken then somehow because i wrote down tribble A209"

he directs me to the english department in another wing and, with all the class i can muster, i get up and excuse myself from this class {after begging to get into it} and wander out into the hallway... i drop by the english dept. and theres nobody there so i run back down to my dorm to check my scheduling to find the right room and flip open my laptop and its frozen. ah damn. so i run next door and kick another buddy of mine, justin, off his laptop, log on, check the class, get the course number, steal his course book, look it up, and find its actually tribble A209... thats what i had. i get justin to check it and he comes to the same conclusion. well...

i run back up to tribble, back up to the english dept. and find someone there. i explain my whole rotten story, trying to sound innocent and eager, and she tells me the class is actually in tribble A201. ah. so i run upstairs and realize i was on the third floor and run back down the split level and find second floor, a couple rooms down from where i was, and stop outside the door.

i knock and slowly open the door. the professor, a youngish looking guy, is looking at me so i ask him if this was, in fact, studies in british literature. he said that it was. i then introduced myself not as someone in his class but someone on his wait list that had come to beg for admittance and admitted that no, it wasnt cool that i showed up late to do so but i ended up in the wrong room and it was a big hairy deal and all. he replies that he has, in fact, already had to turn away a couple waitlisted kids today but that one was sitting in on the class so i could too just in case. so i thank him profusely and look around. there arent any seats at the big table so i go to the back and take a seat by the wall. after the class, me and this other girl both walk up to talk to him. i apologize for interrupting his class and she starts brown nosing her assss off, telling him that she was fascinated by this shakespeare stuff and loved that he taught this one guy and had been trying to get into his class for three semesters and that she was, in fact, #1 on the wait list.

being kind, he takes both our names and emails down and said he would do his best to get her in but he really didnt want to break the cap on the class. noticing i was #6 on the list, i thanked him for taking me email but asked him if i should really be looking for something else to do. he agreed. well...

NOW, i dont have brit lit but do have a means of bypassing the system and registering in a course i dont want to take because i inadvertantly conned an old angry man into thinking i was on his wait list - i hope i didnt knock anyone else off. after some deliberation i register for this Bill of Rights seminar with my buddies, cant buy all the books, borrow one, and have read tonights homework. i have that class again in the morning. i just can't wait to see the look on his face when i wander back in and tell him i will be seeing him, and the rest of my new classmates, for the rest of the semester.

thank you.

theres much more {late night ufo ultimate frisbee games on the quad mainly} but i need to sleep because i have been writing for precisely one hour and i have class at nine this morning. i will get back to this when i have a chance.

thanks again loves, goodnight.

college

my apologies that i havent been writing. i moved in to Wake Forest University last thursday and have been so thouroughly roller-coasted since then that i havent had it in me to write it all down. and theres a lot... i will get back on track eventually, but as for now i have my first college class (chemistry, in fact) at 9 this morning and must sleep.

much love to everyone. i would love to see some comments popping up again.

used to be you were the only one that could make me cry.

then we broke up and it took a while but i could say i was ok.

yesterday we could have gone a week {and we have} without speaking and i would have been ok with it. it wouldnt have been unusual.

now you are coming. you will be here later today and i am moving in four days and the world is too much.

you say you are worried that something is wrong and you leave.

i do situps until i feel sick.

lift weights until i cannot type.

it doesnt help. nothing helps when you are here.

eating peanuts

after a typical redeye {straight this time} caffeine-induced high had me still planning to be an art minor while planning my future in the coffee shop, my father and i got lunch and walked around for a while before driving the backroads of west beaufort and getting in the way of all the citizens trying to go about their business. there are just so many empty airstrips, unpaved roads, and rotting boats to see while not looking at the road. they probably didnt appreciate the speed - round ten below - he was driving either.

oh well

back at the condo we walked out to the beach and, after setting up the umbrella and chairs, relaxed a great deal while reading books and getting tan. actually, only i was getting tan. after a while, my sister and a friend of hers, melissa {<-- not her real name}, from soccer and who happens to live a mile and a half down the island, walked up and got in the water. after a minute, we joined them. we have a strange nickelodeon throwing thing that is orange and a really odd consistency and well... thats not important. we stand out in the waves and try and throw it. it is easy to see, in situations like this, how the family dynamic changes a little. my sister, usually grumpy, was a little brighter and talkative because she was basically the link between the two of us and mel. we tried to stand in a wobbly square but once she drifted over to retrieve the orange thing and then a wave came. as we all jumped over it, our group appeared to me as a giant L where my family was the long, tall part, and mel was the little lip. there was an indelible separation there.

melissa is a good girl. that is the easiest way to describe her. she isnt obviously beautiful or very skinny or even an open extrovert but rather soft, sweet, polite, pretty, and really quite pleasant. i mean, she is wonderful and enjoyable to be around. i am not saying that i have a crush on her at all but of all my sisters soccer friends, she is the one that annoys me the least. it occured to me, walking back to the condo, that she has probably never smoked or gotten drunk or had sex or anything. sounds more than a bit like me. the sheer fact that she is utterly good and polite, in the context of the united states of america, ought to count for something. however, in the context of the world, our bleeding world, she isnt doing a damn thing.

in a completely unrelated incident, as we were walking up the steps from the beach, a man and a woman passed us and i heard the man say, "im kind of ok with it, i just cant... eat peanuts anymore." i can only imagine what the rest of that conversation was like...

fat

i think im getting fat. this is all relative, of course. im not really sure you can package 6'3/4" (optimistic), 140 and call it fat. i think it is that in the past two weeks, i have spend 75% of my time at the beach and the last 25% suffering in some capacity due to the extraction of 1/8 my teeth. theres a big lack of exercising there. i mean i usually try and lift weights or do situps or... something creative. well i havent and it seems that my new policy of eating a bowl of icecream every night hasnt helped. oh well. at least i have a wicked tan.

dave letterman's doing the monologue. the background to the set is a mural(?) or picture or mockup of nyc. i have never been to nyc. the closest i have ever come to that - dammit, what is it? its mystical... its so heavy. the city carries so much weight. media builds it up, people visit and tell me about it, citizens of the world have an opinion of it. its that important. but its still just a city. doesnt seem fair though... - city was on the way to massachusettes this past spring break to snowboard. we drove past newark and saw the city from no more than a couple miles and i was amazed because until then it had been just an idea and the thought that it was actually real, actually there was shocking. i know conan uses a similar backdrop, the city. someday i want to live there. i figure once i graduate from wake with my psychology major (subject to change... of course) i will go live up there and find a roommate to study with and go to nyu's med school. just to live there. just once. that's something... i think.

a friend recently found fault with my plan to be a psyche major because, as she put it, "how can you expect to help other people when you often cant help yourself?" well thats a good question. far as i can tell, its mostly resolved though, seeing as the problem was under her nose {wow, i just wrote 'knose'}. and i dont mean to sound mean or anything, thats just how it came out. we both agreed that it would be weird but... i have this strange notion to be an art minor. probably art history seeing as i cant really do art, far as i can tell anyway. still... i have taken one art class since elementary school and that was for a semester in eighth grade. basically only because i didnt want to take spanish. i mean, i did really well but apparently im just not the kind of guy to be an art minor. my dad seems to think that there will be a lot of women in the classes. art major women... and if any of them are redheads named clare, i think i will die.

of course, how reliable can this all be? i came up with it yesterday morning sitting in a coffee shop with my dad, going over the whole academic planning packet, utterly high on a 20oz. 'redeye' {some mix of coffee and espresso with a too big shot of 'frosted mint'}. understand, after i get a 20oz. redeye in me, i am very productive. once it cooled off enough to drink like a soda, i would take a gulp and just wait it out, make faces, shake a little, make noises... its terrible. we were planning my classes and looking for exemptions and talking majors and i was all up IN that shit. no really, very productive. and not a tiny bit scary.

last, a more somber subject. there comes a time in most kids {i hate the word teen} lives when they go to college. {jesus, this is reading like a sex talk} shit, some are dating people and most will not go to school together. and some, like my good buddies angela and david, have to break up beforehand because things just wouldnt work out. i hate this. they were {are... scuse me} friends of mine, two good people. two good people who made a good couple. and im not writing this just because angela wrote about it and i commented and she commented... nooooo im writing this because it bothers me. both because i want to have what they have/had and because everything has worked out so fucking badly so far. i want that misery again, the kind that love lost brings. with any luck they will become friends and get through it fine. its still a damn hard process. and i have nobody to give up. of the three girls i could find myself falling for {or already have}, all three are moving away from me. or i am moving away from them... either way, after we all go off to school, i will be at least 100 more miles farther away from every single one of them. this shouldnt be terribly distressing as theres only two of them i speak to: one very rarely, and the other whom i dont really get along with. {the only one i ever see {rarely, anyway} is the one i never speak to. the only one i get along with, i have never met. this really is my life...} so maybe nothing will change. but i want to have to deal with that because that pain is so real to me. its assurance that you are alive and have something to believe in. and when its as much trouble for them as it is for me {which really hasnt happened before...} im sure that is redeeming in a way. i have lost my train of thought. i want what they have, or had, and i hate that they have to break up because they are wonderful people and that is all i have to say about that for now.

this isnt about me though

beach pics

i posted some pics of the first couple days of my week at the beach. links at the right. heres a little sneak preview...

::edit:: well clearly that didnt work. i will post more pics later. i am taking too many. and if i have the energy, a lot of words on faith and reality too. should be a party...

safe

it is not safe

to drive around at night with the windows down and the sunroof open and examine the stars above an empty patch of road. but it is frightening and real how the trees intrude on the sides, the grey trees like unedited video slice across the sides and obscure the constellations. the telephone lines cross the road in a slanted line.

it is not safe

to aim at a lightpole at the end of the street and cut all the lights in the car off so you become invisible, a wraith, just a noise on the road. engine noise, tire noise, nothing from the stereo, no dash lights to glare, no parking lights for to be seen, no headlights for to see.

it is not safe

to close your eyes and count to five while driving down an eight-lane road between towns. to close your eyes and try to time when you will pass the street sign. to see how long you can play chicken with the rest of the world. it isn't safe, but i didnt do that tonight.

i have said it before and i will say it again. the city is beautiful at night. i feel blessed to be there, blessed to be able to drive its quieting streets. other cars feel like comrades, there is less of a normalcy about it. we arent all just out there because it is part of our daily routine. for some, it may be but for me it isnt. the lights from the buildings and the town decorations glow on the trees that line the roadside. the long, straight, hilly city street. as i came around from the north side of town, i ducked in and drove around my old high school. it was asleep. it hasn't changed. i am reminded that all will continue there as if i had never graduated, never left. people will fill shoes left to fill and new children will discover it just like i did four years ago. i drove around the teachers parking lot and figured on what i would say if someone stopped me to see what i was up to. some lights were on in the hallways but it must have been the janitors or some security. nobody would really be doing anything there at 9:01 on a friday night. i wanted to stop by starbucks to see if they were still open but i didnt have a reason to. nobody called back. so i drive the streets, music low, watching the people that walk slow and the cops that drive fast.

wellwellwell

well that last post was a little sad wasnt it? i apologize even though its all true. my relationships have an edge similar to 'a series of unfortunate events'. i feel as if i am looking at the world from the bottom of a well.

in other news, i returned from a short stay at the beach today. lots of being asked by my grandparents what i wanted to do and lots of doing what i wanted to do, nothing. reading articles in carcraft about rust-free project cars i wont own anytime soon because im not allowed to sell the volvo i have. oh well. i was driving back from dinner last night down some road i dont know the name of, the one that runs the length of what i think is bogue island. it had been raining/storming all day long but had stopped. we were driving east along the island and the sun was low in the sky behind us. it hadnt set but was close to it, you know?

{sidetrack: i feel sorry for my computer. my poor outdated family computer. i will soon be done with it anyway... i abuse the poor thing. right now i am listening to music, downloading an album via torrent, ordering another off amazon, converting a concert from flac to mp3 to burn a live album (you can tell where my priorities lie), i have aim open and am writing... the poor little bastard is maxed out. its a miracle that these words are being written}

so yeah, setting the scene. sun behind us. almost setting but not quite. right. well since it had been precipitating {interesting word. gives me the impression that if a hot girl is about to be murdered by a stalker in a horror movie and she doesnt know it yet but its just about to happen... the murder would be precipitating} sorry, another sidetrack, thats not cool. anyway, it had been precipitating {hehe} all day long and so there were millions of clouds in front of us. big ones and small ones. it was the fisherman's platter of clouds. what i am trying to express, though, is the effect all this had on the total scene. the clouds in the back, the farthest back, were large and white. they were the kings... of the clouds. the backdrop, more or less, of where im going. now, slid in front of those are less tall long clouds that are very dark. very dark clouds in front of white clouds and imagine it as a panoramic shot, they are ahead but also wrap around the field of vision to the right, over the sea. ribbonish in their wrapping of the vision. this is the background.

the important thing is the contrast with the foreground. the houses, thanks to the sun behind us {the back-background}, are bright and basking in an unusually golden-red glow. it is absolutely tremendous. all the houses, the cars, the road, it is all being spotlighted by some unseen source while we are all driving into this black-on-white cloud bank on the horizon. what is so strange is that all the land things are glowing while all the sky isnt. like a matte finish sky with a shiny metallic land. get it? i wish i had my camera with me {not that that would really have helped dammit} but i didnt. like john mayer, no more 3x5's...

in other news, i got locked out of my house tonight because everyone went to bed before 10:30 and i was downstairs with a coke, a coozie, a baseball and glove, and friends on the tv. and a cat that i played with. she chased a beetle. i love that cat. i had to sneak around outside, find a key in the dark, get up the stairs to the deck in the dark, and unlock the handle and the bolt on the door with a key in the dark. dammit. well obviously it turned out ok. i just thought it needed saying, thats all.

cheers