an aqueous solution

this is luter dorm waking up. theres a bunch of us hanging out in luter lounge. its 6:50 am. thing is, johnson is flooded. around 5, a pipe burst on third floor, pouring hot water and steam everywhere and setting the fire alarm off. tell you the truth, i was confused. didnt really get what was going on. but i jumped out of bed {not breaking anything} and got my priorities in order. i grabbed my camera, my hat, and my keys and got out.

meh, hold on. they're letting us back in.

ok, its 7:10 and my stuff is dropped and ive seen the third floor and taken pics so i will try and finish the story.

i got my camera and keys and got out. walking down the hall, realizing this probably wasnt immdiate danger {wasnt last time} so as we were about to go down the stairs i realized it was going to be really cold outside and all i was wearing was soccer shorts and so i handed my camera to brett and ran back to get a jacket. so now i am jacketed with soccer shorts and we push out into the cold. just like last time, everyone huddles around outside for a minute until the RAs push us away cause the firetrucks are coming. we all pile into tribble because, believe me, its cold. standing outside in soccer shorts just doesnt cut it.

we hung around in tribble, sitting in the halls, basically huddling. pissed off mostly. i had my camera but didnt want to bust it out because i was afraid of getting comments like "fuck you, i dont have any makeup on" or "get that shit out of my face"... you know how people are. after a while our RA walked in and told us that johnson second floor could come back for a minute or two to grab important stuff and cover up things. this is actually scary. walking back we noticed bostwick, across the way, being evacuated too. figures, being the sister bulding, the exact same damn thing happened to them, only thirty minutes later.

we wandered up the soaking we stairs into our parlor and down the hall. our hall is fine, so far. i go in and dress as fast as i can. jeans, tshirt, jacket, socks, shoes, hat. you know. hibernated the laptop and shoved it in the bookbag. took my camera and the ogb nikon {with the memory card out of the reader, foresight} and stuff like my wallet, phone, keys, etc. cross necklace. the important stuff.

i wandered out and around outside tribble before going back in front of johnson where i saw

holy shit. the motherfucking fire alarm just went off again. tense? really?

some people i knew. decided to walk over to luter and wake up some girls to let us in. luckily, critter had just gotten there and let us in himself. the couple of us hung out in their lounge before i decided to break out the ogb camera and take some pics. after i covered our guys, a couple of us went back out to johnson, firetrucks and all. people hanging around. sad faces. we talked to our RA for a minute and decided to go to reynolda, the green room specifically. i took a pic of brett sleeping against a lamppost in case i wrote a feature for a syndicated journal about the effects of stress on basketball players. there were a couple of our guys in the green room so i got them. brett, dan, and i walkd out to the quad. the chapel was gorgeous and i took a couple pics of it because i never have a camera when i want it. then i made them stop talking. it was deadly quiet out there. its rare that i get to be out there, beautiful as always, and its quiet. it was amazing. we all just stood there for a while and enjoyed it.

meh, walked back to green and back to luter and hung out a while. nothing much really happened. jordan woke up and greeted us then went off to take a shower. i decided we should make a johnson hall motto or slogan or something. i thought something like "no sex or alcohol but more water than we know what to do with" or "johnson: taking one for the team". "dry to wet in one morning" was suggested. about when i started writing this, word came that we could actually go home. albeit two hours late. this is good news, as we werent expecting to get out for another couple hours at least. after exploring a bit longer im sitting in our lounge trying to write. this isnt going to last long.

im going to breakfast. i got to see the sun come up. always some unexpected benefit to being awake so early. we heard some of the guys in our hall might have to move out. we decided then that they could rotate use of our rooms and it would be ok. johnson hall bands together. its like a movie. all in all, though it may not be over, its been good. and, although i still havent had a shower and i have a french test in two and a half hours that i havent studied for, im ok with that...

no title

so im just sitting in the parlor with the laptop in its namesake location, been studying biology and playing a bit of online poker (tilt night) and before i had a contrary thought, i had navigated myself here without the slightest notion of what to say. guess i always figured i would know when i got here. i am listening to the happiest music on earth. may be an overstatement, i dont care. george clinton followed by widespread panic. you cannot tell me you dont smile listening to 'coconuts'. jesus lord, its wonderful. ah, jesus. i watched 'dogma' last night. has to be one of my favorite movies. since im not catholic, its plain entertaining as opposed to offensive - none of my catholic friends enjoyed it very much. meh. not my problem.

oh shit. good song. i have to look up a tab.

ah good. now that that's covered. i really dont have much to say. i have a bio test tomorrow at noon that i absolutely must do well on. well, not absolutely must but... i really should. theres a french test friday i have paid exactly no attention to that i absolutely must do well on. but theres a bio exam first and 'exam' sounds worse than 'test' so im putting it off.

so...

im gonna follow my nose to where the coconut grows, nobody knows like i knows my nose knows :)

what a motherfucking morning

i woke up at 9:10 for a 9:00 chemistry exam.

it feels like things like that just need to be said, stated up front for a more dramatic effect. did i mention this is my first exam in college? last night, instead of studying, i sorted through soccer pics for the ogb and watched airplane! in luter. this isnt really because i was being stupid, just that i was per well comfortable with the material and it wasnt bothering me. true, when i got back in my room at 1:30 this morning, i looked over my notes. and i figured i was fine. what i didnt figure on was being fifteen minutes late for a fifty minute exam.

i was confused. really i was. the first thing i do whenever i wake up is look across the room to check the clock on the front of the microwave. its usually either four minutes fast or on time. i set it yesterday so i think it was right today. well it takes a second for information like "9:10" to seep through the fog into your brain. when you have been awake for 5 seconds anway. i dont even think i got an adrenal rush right there, actually the first thing i wondered was if my alarm went off or not. well i looked down at the foot of my bed and the alarm was set... did i set alarm 2 (for 9:20) or alarm 1 (for 8:20)? i checked and it was indeed the correct alarm. what the fuck? it was about this time that i heard the hissing.

its funny how things so minor as little background noises can be blocked out when bigger things are at hand. come to think of it, i really should have been getting dressed by now but i wasnt really in the right state of mind to make such decisions. investigate now, take the exam later. that hissing sound was white noise. the alarm function on my clock has two little slide tabs for two different alarms. for each, there are three positions: off, radio, and beep. i have been using beep all year, just sliding it all the way down. well aparently last night i picked the wrong alarm but, in my haste to sleep, i popped it into 'radio' and since i havent even listened to the radio since i got here - and happened to hit the tuner last night anyway - it wasnt set on a radio station. so, at 8:20 this morning, my alarm came on... to a pleasant background white noise. i think it helps most people sleep. it worked for me.

turns out the exam wasnt so bad. its just that im so bad at this college thing. i got through most of the exam in the time i got and i think that if i got everything right - and i might have - i would get something like an 89. which is good. course we got out five minutes late cause he let us work a little so i realized i had five minutes to walk across campus to french. wonderful. i really wasnt in the mood. in french, however, we got picked into groups to do some work. this isnt out of the ordinary. our teacher likes to mix things up a little every now and then. by the time she got to our corner of the room, she asked this pretty sorority girl which of us two guys on the front row she would like to partner with. i was pretty disappointed with this because, as you may well know, i hadnt showered or brushed my teeth or even tried to look decent. she, however, remembered my name and not the other kid's. so i got to work with her. {ugh, brooks, dont make this sound like the cheerleader and the chess dork, this isnt at all like that} well i had never met her but during the work we got to talking and it turns out the lived in my same dorm and floor last year. she was friends with my ra too... and she was making cookies today for her sorority friend's 20th birthday. said she would drop by and give us some too. that makes me happy.

so these things happen all the time. stressful and wonderful and relaxing {i came back to the dorm and took a nice shower and now im sitting here writing} and everything else it could be. im going to unc tonight to visit some friends. there is an ugly car out on the mag quad people are paying to hit with sledgehammers. homecoming is tomorrow. i may not be that good at this college thing but at least i am enjoying most of it.

the bug

i stepped on a moth.

i was standing on the sidelines of the women's soccer game taking pictures and it kept landing on my leg and climbing around. really bothered me. finally i saw it land on the grass and, since i had the feeling people were watching the game instead of me, i ambled over and stepped on it. if it had just died, i dont think i would be having this problem. instead, i lifted my sandal and it was there struggling flying itself into the ground, in circles, just a little broken bug. and i couldnt bear to watch it... so i stepped on it again. dont make this sound like i am such a bastard. i hated that it was still alive. i just wanted it to die so i could forget about it. i lifted my foot again and it was still alive, still struggling and squirming and it hurt my heart to watch it. so i stepped on it again and held it there for at least a minute. and i hated it.

i hated that i had stepped on it to begin with, without even thinking of anything except people seeing me do it. i am such a bastard. what gives me the right to play god like that? i hope it didnt feel any pain. i dont know how i can just step on things without thinking of why or if maybe i could do something different. so it flew around my leg. it doesnt know any better. i could have just reached down and swatted it off like the times before.

i looked over the field and realized they were everywhere. every square meter had its resident moth, flying around erratically and without a direction, bumping into things and searching for the light. like killing that one would keep any more from landing on me. basically, i accomplished nothing but a little bloodshed. and i hate myself for it.

finally, it died. i lifted my sandal and it wasnt moving. i was a little relieved, if just that i didnt have to see it like that anymore. so i apologized. i decided that, if anything, i should at least take something away from it. i should learn a lesson. so i thought about playing god and killing things for no good reason and the pain and struggle of a moth with two broken wings who doesnt understand why he was just stomped on. and i wouldnt do it anymore. one flew into my leg and fell off into the grass. i stepped over and tapped near it with my shoe so it flew really hard, getting nowhere, and finally up into the air and away. i felt better about that one.

i only hope i can figure myself out without having to kill anything or anyone else.

sitting

this is pretty good. im sitting in my dorm room in the dark - which i dont usually do - watching 'the price is right' and eating some hot and hour soup that i just added some hot water to with some pepsi. they're doing the first showcase showdown. i think i would be good at that show. maybe win a car or something. im usually pretty good at the showcases too...

at least its not so cold. we usually sleep in here when its something like 65 degrees. whenever i sit down at my desk i turn the a/c off. so its really pretty nice. the whiteboard on our door is half filled up with some bible verse and half full of messages for my roommate. last night i wrote on the bottom left corner, "hey brooks!! people love you too! ~ yourself" but somebody erased it to write something else. meh, doesnt really bother me. when i finish here i will go back into the parlor and read the paper. its a beautiful day. just wish i had time for a real lunch and didnt have to go to bio lab after seminar. it always takes too long.

im going to focus on my soup before it gets cold.

trying to relax

turns out she didnt even know where the doughnuts came from. go figure.

theres a middle eastern guy sitting in my lounge listening to loud music so im in here writing and listening to something decent. i should be working but i figure its futile. i might get on it when i finish up here. {bob barker is on mute behind me. how he can act happy for so long while dealing with so many people is beyond me. even if he is getting paid huge sums of money for playing games all day... for jesus' sake bob, if you go postal and beat up some empty squeaky teen girl for guessing a vacation to new york might cost 15k... i wouldnt blame you. but thats just me...} i could be in a better mood right now. there are, in fact, plenty of moods i would prefer. i could be just plain sad - for numerous reasons - none of which would have to do with school. instead im frustrated because i almost failed my first french test... id rather be sad and have done better. it seems futile but it shouldnt. i make stupid fucking mistakes. im one of the guys that actually pays attention in class and looks over the book and takes notes and does most of the written exercises. i went over my notes and made flashcards with the good stuff and studied those. i just make my smarts stupid when being tested. it feels better though, if i tell myself i just have to rape the next test and i might be ok. its too early to worry about gpa's... still feels like med school is watching. and i am getting a paper back in seminar that i am not all that confident about. i have an exam in chem friday and one in bio next thursday. stuff i really dont want to deal with. too bad i can't just sleep.

actually, french could have been worse. we did an excercise where we wrote phrases about our past and the class guess if they were true or false. i said that i was a swimmer when i was twelve. everyone believed it even though it was a lie. apparently i look like a swimmer... or a cross country runner. the teacher said i looked like a californian, like i would say dude a lot. don't know where that came from. did manage to pick me up a little bit though.

i can relax a little in the prescence of people. turns out complications are never quite as bad as they are, kids are mostly inherently good and innocent and that i have nothing really to worry about. in saying that i mean, of course, nothing to worry about that i personally tend to worry about, not things that the general population would likely deem particularly worryable. its just me being awake all the time. being awake tends to do something to me. i think my brain switches to retarded. my dreams are much more interesting than my inhibited thoughts. messed up function. bleh.

**edited to say that i was minorly shocked and pleasantly surprised to have gotten a 92 on my seminar paper. thats an A. even though the only source i cited was the lecture notes and i managed to declare that thomas jefferson wrote the federalist papers - what the fuck? - meh, ill take it.

that kind of night

im the kind of guy that can be excited after a football loss at nebraska and disappointed after a win against ecu. one we played good football with mistakes, the other good football for a half and shitty ball the other. i dont even want to talk about it right now.

my parents came today. just for a visit, you know, sort of neutral territory. we all know it here but its still a matter of showing them around like its a tour. its difficult because we get along so damn well. its hard to face them for a visit like this. i either want to stay here alone or go home with them. i miss my kitten. doesnt help that they both choke up when saying goodbye. just makes it so damn difficult for me because i feel the same way. im fine when im here and fine when im at home but the transitions... to die for. or from...

im a difficult kid to deal with. i know i am. i wish i knew why. naive i guess. i always feel like im searching for love, need to find it, somebody to love, someone to love me. but i cant handle it. i need love, not a girlfriend. at least thats what it seems... unless its someone that i feel the same way about. i dont know anybody here well enough to make that judgment. i miss my high school girls. the ones i knew. i tend to fall in love with my best friend. its happened two and a half times. my own series of unfortunate events. the wrong girls... or the right ones in the wrong situations... who can tell? its the kind of history you wouldnt relate to anyone you were thinking of having a relationship with because it would scare them away... unless they were involved. then its just a part of life. dealing with me. i cant believe i am one to be dealt with.

i just want to get to know you. not have to search for your name. its true that i stand in my own way. just waiting. still waiting.

badbye

how does a good night turn into a sad night? i sat for an hour talking on the phone in the parlor with my legs propped up on the table, slumped down in the chair. even the downstairs "nip it in the bud" RA didnt say anything when he was on rounds. happy. watch some guys crack a coconut and be the one that drinks the milk when no one else wanted to. happy. wander over to the library to do next weeks work because im bored. walk around for twenty minutes not finding anyone, finally settling down in a comfy chair overlooking the entire place. still pretty happy. finding everyone else on the other half, sitting in an uncomfortable chair writing a paragraph in french. yeah, still pretty happy... though listening to ben harper... :)

realizing like last time that the paragraph is about someone in particular... that its easier to describe some other lost soul as my ideal romantic partner instead of making someone up. writing it all down in what everyone calls a beautiful language... writing it all down. its not fair to write down those things that happened. doesnt do them justice. just brings it back to the forefront of my imagination. i know she isnt happy. i know im not. i know it doesnt matter because the more i talk about it, the less good it does.

i was sitting in the library twenty minutes ago feeling much like an island of noise. listening to my music. being productive. good happy music makes me want to cry every now and then. maybe it reminds me how much i want a daughter someday, maybe its a song for a friend i never speak to anymore. maybe im just so damn happy and caught up in the ebb and flow and organic rush of the notes that its too much to keep inside. i dont know. often, i dont understand where im coming from. just that i wish i were there.

sometimes...

sometimes theres nothing more to do than sit at my desk listening to pretty pop music and typing. i dont have a constant job, yet theres so manythings i want. wanting things makes me feel so shallow. i want a car, even a $500 1976 plymouth valiant that was sold to someone else. i want a guitar, even though i have three. does it help that i am planning to sell one of them? a bass too... guess that evens out. i want to learn to play the piano. i want a tiny flash mp3 player for to jog with. i want more illegal music. i dont have to always be with people, i enjoy being alone. i just cant stand being bored. i dont even know what to say about last night. this isnt what i wanted to say at all...





sometimes i feel like ive met and lost whoever it is im supposed to be with. we are assigned to write a paragraph in french describing our perfect romantic partner. i realized that it would be easier to describe someone i already knew. turns out i lost her too.




::break for dinner::

turns out jurassic 5 is playing at the chapel in early october. sounds like a party. cant say ive ever listened to them but hell, why not? well there went fifteen minutes right there. after listening to them for a bit, it sounds pretty good.

now how about this: i just picked up the field hockey game on friday to shoot for the old gold & black. the team has won back to back to back national championships and just picked up the number one ranking again. cool? i think so.

the world at large

a couple minutes ago, i was reading the paper when one of the custodial guys i talk to a lot came in to look at it. he glances through it and checked the headlines, seeing how its finally time for everyone to leave new orleans. he tells me that he has realized that life isnt forever and that when he was young, like me, he never realized that. but now that he isnt, he knows that if he has something to do, he better get it done.

he told me he saw on the news this morning something about a woman not getting served a drink at a bar and driving her car into the bar and killing the waitress. people are going crazy, he says. this is something i have definitely noticed recently. he tells me its a sign and subtly points up. people are acting insane all around the world. hes never seen anyone drive a car into a bar to kill a waitress. things like katrina have never happened before. never before had anyone used an airplane as a missile {with the exception of the kamikaze pilots of japan, although that was a war}.

these are signals, signs that perhaps we arent really living the way we are supposed to. and if he is right, we better make our amends now because when "he comes back"...

how come?

every now and then, when i lean up against something or flop over on a chair, i can feel my heart beating.

and i feel sorry for it.

it feels like a separate entity, a being in itself, slaving over keeping me alive. and i wonder...

how come you are still there? always beating, moving, never resting. how come you never take a break? i would relax for a while, we could both relax a while, stop this repetitive action and just rest. you have been doing this for over eighteen and a half years and have never complained. never taken five or a weekend off. always there, always working. how come?

im so sorry...

something happy

since the last post was so sad i thought i should say something happy.

something happy is wandering around outside looking for food at 1:30 in the morning. stopping by subway and not getting anything.

something happy is trying to play hide-and-seek in tribble but realizing that the only thing open that late at night is the buiding, not the rooms.

riding elevators.

something happy is standing out in the street in front of the dorm throwing a football, a basketball, and a lightup frisbee in the dark.

kristin smacking justin in the head with it.

something happy is going out to the basketball courts, having the lights work the first time, and playing a game at 2:3o in the morning with some good friends.

and sleeping through french class the next morning.

something happy is realizing you still love someone and that theres nothing you can do about it and that it is not necessarily a bad thing all the time.

we live in a beautiful world

i am in disbelief. the world we live in is falling apart at the seams. we have troops dying overseas in an illegitimate war, while thousands starve and die in our own country. i can sit here in my parlor looking out at the mag quad of wake forest university and see only sunshine, trees, and people walking to class. i will go to a football game tonight and watch the deacs play the commodores. had i not gotten the paper today or read the message boards, i would be in a much better place. however, you get the feeling sometimes that theres nothing anyone can do to save this place. its enough to make you deistic... believe that god created the earth and let it go - the clockwatcher theory.

this isnt even all that is happening, just what ive seen in the past hour. we live in a beautiful world...

from the Winston Salem Journal:

Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

from the Washington Post:

There are four levels of hell inside the refugee city of the Superdome, home to about 15,000 people since Sunday. On the artificial-turf field and in the lower-level seats where Montrel sat sweltering with her family, a form of civilization had taken hold -- smelly, messy, dark and dank, but with a structure. Families with cots used their beds as boundaries for personal space and kept their areas orderly, a cooler on one corner, the toys on another, almost as if they had come for fireworks and stayed too long.

The bathrooms, clogged and overflowing since Monday, announced the second level of hell, the walkway ringing the entrance level. In the men's, the urinal troughs were overflowing. In the women's, the bowls were to the brim. A slime of excrement and urine made the walkway slick. "You don't even go there anymore," said Dee Ford, 37, who was pushed in a wading pool from her flooded house to the shelter. "You just go somewhere in a corner where you can. In the dark, you are going to step in poo anyway."

Water and electricity both failed Monday, and three pumps to pressurize plumbing have been no match "when the lake just keeps pushing it back at us," said Maj. Ed Bush, the chief public affairs officer for the Louisiana National Guard.

"With no hand-washing, and all the excrement," said Sgt. Debra Williams, who was staffing the infirmary in the adjacent sports arena, "you have about four days until dysentery sets in. And it's been four days today."

Bottled water was too precious to use for washing; adults get two bottles a day. Food, mostly Meals Ready-to-Eat, is dispensed in a different line. Many refugees told of waiting in line for hours only to be told no food was left.

Within the skyboxes, on the third level of hell, life was dark 24 hours a day, a place for abandonment and coupling. Also up there was "a sort of speakeasy," said Michael Childs, who had some beer in an empty Dannon water bottle. "You got to know where to go," he said, and grinned. "And you just put your bottle under the spigot. It is disgusting in here, and I lost everything I had, and I'm glad to have found a little beer."

On the fourth level, the darkest and highest of all, the lurkers lived, scary in the shadows. The fourth level, people explained, was for the gangsters and the druggies. The rumors sprang from there: Two girls had been raped; one girl had been raped and one killed. Someone was abducting newborns. A man had jumped from there and died. A murder had occurred.

also from the WSJ:

Panicked by rumors of a suicide bomber, thousands of Shiite pilgrims broke into a stampede on a bridge during a religious procession yesterday, crushing one another or falling 30 feet into the muddy Tigris river. About 800 died, mostly women and children, officials said.

...

Reflecting the confusion, casualty figures from various government agencies varied widely. The Health Ministry said that 769 people were killed and 307 injured, but the Interior Ministry put the figure at 844 dead and 458 injured. The country's biggest Shiite party gave figures of 759 dead and 300 injured. Other reports estimated that the death toll would rise above 1,000.

"Pushing started when a ru-mor was spread by a terrorist who claimed that there was a person with an explosive belt, which caused panic," Interior Minister Bayn Jabr said. "Some fell from the bridge, others fell on the barricades" and were trampled to death.

No official offered any evidence that Sunni insurgents were directly responsible for spreading the false rumor.

Bodies covered with white sheets lay on the sidewalk outside one hospital because the morgue was full. Many of them were women in black gowns, as well as children and old men.

Relatives wandered among the dead, lifting the sheets to try to identify their kin.

so you see where im coming from. god save us all.