Tuesday, January 6, 2009

My fan will not turn off, and the consequent breeze is turning my fingers numb. I am wearing three shirts. Socks, even. But I need my hands to type, and I have something that needs saying...

But what?

Lately I falter when at the edge of the summit of my thoughts. As soon as I am resolving, deciding, and formulating a small understanding of the muddle, it slips. Sand through murky water. Sinking unseen.

I realized today I hate school for the fluorescent lighting. The ceilings that feel at once too high and too low. The entire idea behind the architecture: to create a welcoming learning environment whilst maintaining the apathy of the sterile, governmental look to the building. Make it bearable for 8 hours, but not 10. Certainly not 12. 3 years, not 4. No, but the end of 4 you're sprinting out of the place hoping that it doesn't lash out some sort of fantastic tentacle-like appendage and drag you back to its center. Actually visually that's sort of a funny idea. I'm not making much sense.

I was also thinking about normality, especially in the closed commons during lunch. Zakk slipped into reading today before long, as I was out of words and past forcing them given present situations. I was glad to see the boy with a book anyway. I'm glad to see anyone with one. But looking around at well rounded American teenagers my mind gets inextricably more blown than it did visiting the Hirshhorn Museum last weekend (by the by, if you haven't gone, go.). I wonder what it's like inside of their heads, where school is the first ever present priority and family, friends, boys, church, everything falls in a predetermined order around them. I watched couples, I wondered what it would be like to act so zealously involved in a crowded room, imagining myself in their shoes, attempting to fit myself into their niche. What is it like to not ask the big questions? I'm not trying to generalize, but few I've ever known my own age have asked them. I've spent my entire life with the questions What else? Why not? Why? How? pounding through my head like a steel drum. The concept of not accepting anything easily is the binding on my bones and I'm entirely ignorant of what an existence sans-wondering is like. Is it boring, to live that life? Or would it only be boring for those like myself, who refuse to be content. Are they happy? Do they ask themselves if they're happy?

From the outside looking in, everything seems more simple in life looking around a high school lunch room. Until I realize those lives seem nothing like yours, and are probably nothing like they seem.

I wish I could start running and never stop.

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