A few words on my night with "the bitterly angry Magnetic Fields":

For starters, this was FANCY!!!!  I'd never heard of the Merriam Theater before, probably because it's too high class for scuzzy kids like me.  It was seated; there were even ushers and an intermission - like a REAL show. What a treat!

Anyway, the performance was incredible.  Like the pathetic creature that I am, I ended up sobbing more than once.  It was just beautiful, beautiful, clear, shiny, and simple, a dagger to the heart.  Needless to say, I laughed a lot too.  There was great interaction between the band...Claudia would make some wry remarks and Stephen would use them as springboards for his own humor:

"The sound of a flock of piraña devouring an octopus is coming form stage left." - Merritt

"Interaction is a mistake." -Merritt

"I go to people's houses and hide all the toilet paper...and no one knows where it went." - Merritt

"It's written to encourage people to stop fussing around with the monitor and start having sex with dead people." - Merritt on 'Zombie Boy'

"There's an angel...up there in the balcony...lit up in a blue light. Oh, he's checking his fucking e-mail during my show." - Merritt

They played a lot of songs that I wanted to hear, including 'I Don't Believe You' (the first Magnetic Fields song I heard), 'The Book of Love', 'Take Ecstasy With Me', 'Too Drunk to Dream', and 'No One Will Ever Love You.' 'Grand Canyon' was perfect, perfect as the last song of the encore.

I was skipping around on the street in joy afterwards.  

Yesterday

I wanted to break 21 minutes at the last xc meet but i got 21:13 as my recorded time (I saw it as 21:09-21:10, so i'm not sure)...which i'm still happy about because it's my personal record by 10 seconds. two of our girls made it to states, too.

Funny/terrible: on the bus ride home (about 45-50 minutes), about 10 minutes in, i decided i had to use the bathroom.  about 20 minutes in my whole abdomen started burning and aching.  by the time we were 5 minutes from school it hurt so badly i was crying.  when we got to school, i leaped out of the back emergency exit of the school bus and sprinted into the building. of course, the first bathroom was locked. i ran upstairs to the next-closest one, which was, thankfully, open.  whew. i peed for at least a minute straight.  what an awful experience.

last night, to prevent myself from staying at home and moping at the fact that the a place to bury strangers show was 21+, i went out to a party.  why do i always think that these high school parties thrown because parents are away will be fun? they are not fun, partially due to the fact that i don't get trashed. all i ended up doing (as usual) was tending to my friend who got sick from drinking.  

today i have some stomach pains, damn womanhood...but i have a lot to do - going to the flea market to shop for my halloween costume, work from 1-6, and tonight i'm seeing the magnetic fields!! hurray!

Of interest:

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light

I remember seeing some of his videos a while back, but I just rediscovered them...he does the animations as well as the music. wonderful.

i applied for an internship for R5 Productions - gotta help out the independent music scene, right? perfect, perfect, i'll be swimming in bliss if i get it; perks include free admission to all shows, hangin backstage, etc.... and all they want the intern to do is to manage their facebook group.  is this a gift from the gods?  anyway, i shot an e-mail to sean yesterday but have yet to hear back. i guess i shouldn't get too hopeful.

the past week is fuzzy, i barely even remember it. besides a few late nights spent writing essays, it's been fine, it's been good.  i wish i had a better sense of my friends...everyone is a busy bee and it seems that i only see people in passing; i only know about their lives in fragments.

i'm missing school tomorrow for districts. i doubt that we will make it to states, so after this, i'm free!!  free from running and running and running and running!!  i'm surprised how involved i got...i guess it spawned from using running as a coping mechanism (physical pain to override emotional pain - basically an athletic alternative to slitting one's wrists) - and then pushing myself with the team.  but by now i'm glad to finally cut back on running.  and i have high ambitions for the free time i will acquire from the lack of practice - i intend to do some oil

 paintings, read more for leisure (right now I'm reading Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum), work on squitty (the t-shirt company), make a full scale stencil for a wall in an abandoned house, write letters to far-off friends, write songs, practice the drums, and get MORE SLEEP!!  i think i'll also cut back on computer time, because all of these aspirations are too exciting to pass up.

the to-do list, condensed:

productivity ftw

yesterday

took the psats....secretly, i like standardized tests.  they're fun, yeah? use your brain, color some bubbles...

went to michelle's - we adventured out through the fields behind her neighborhood to "the village," a completely broken down, decrepit cluster of houses and barns.  we were exploring inside a house when she told me she heard people, which i laughed at and kept making noise...until we both heard it.  before we knew it, a buck leapt from the bushes near the house we were in and jolted up the gravel road.  soon afterward we heard a "WHUP!"-like yell and saw a hunter holding a fucking crossbow.  we froze on the spot, afraid to move for fear that he would shoot us, thinking we were deer, if he heard us moving around.  my legs were shaking. after he passed we decided to get out of the house and talk really loudly to make it clear that we were human.  we didn't see him again.

worked 4-9, it was moderately busy, tapering off in the evening. it was fairly cold out.

skipped out on homecoming, whatever

went to the illinois show in town but everyone was drunk, tired, cranky, or just bored. the moose was empty, empty, empty, and split with a drinking room...our town needs a new venue.  even the old siren was terrible, i still have bad memories of being crushed against cd racks by sweaty bodies.  anyhow, poor crooked looks from brooklyn played to a crowd of no one, and only a few more people were watching aderbat.  both bands were alright.  when illinois finally came on it was a fun time...i think that now that they're big-time and have toured nationwide they like playing at home.  the show ended really late so i crashed when i got home.

good day, overall.

today we lost our soccer game 1-0 which hurts our standings. nobody's head was in the game.  now i'm doing homework, analyzing toni morrison's nobel prize for literature acceptance speech. it's a fantastic speech but it's sapping all of my energy.  i'm also going to write a one page essay on the up sides to the guilty pleasure of consuming massive amounts of candy.

psychocandy out

i've neglected this blog.

death has been around.

• my uncle died 10/9
• my mom's cousin died 10/15

my mom's away at her cousin's funeral right now.  on monday and tuesday i attended my uncle's wake and funeral...it was alright, but strange. he did not look like my uncle...although he was only in his forties, he looked about seventy, caked in makeup in the casket.  i suppose i didn't see him much when he was sick, so it was a little shocking.  he was ready to go, though, finished with the pain.  all 4 funerals that i've been to have been in the same funeral home, by now the employees are recognizable faces. i guess it's just been a tough time for my dad's side of the family.  i'm always amused by my uncle donny, the preacher.  he wears a robin egg blue suit and speaks loudly through mangled teeth, reading from a seemingly antediluvian bible. There was a lot of stress on Ecclesiastes and also the fact that my uncle was a "GENEALOGY GENIUS!!!"

we should not fear death.  death is neutral, complete nothingness, static.  what we should fear is not living well.  but that's obvious.

today was leagues for cross country, so i missed another full day of school.  the course is wonderful, except for a grueling slight incline in the beginning of the third mile around a corn field.  i got my personal record - 21:25, with a strong kick at the end; i must have passed three to six girls. i'm really unsure because i was hardly conscious, just flying.

i'm a vegetarian now, too.  i'm covered in walnut crumbs as i type. how refreshing!!

day off of school - picked out pumpkins, rode bikes, ate farm produce, played instruments, had conversations, worked on homework.

the wheels of life are turning and my uncle is dying with the leaves.

So there's a word for what I have been so susceptible to: limerence. But that's more of a smallish dark cloud in my mind, no longer is it an encompassing black fog penetrating my entire body. And I'm realizing - "I will never be your friend. Ever." How could I? I care too much.

On Friday Michelle flaked out on me, but I've learned to shrug my shoulders at that sort of thing, which seems to be quite a trend among my peers. We got to hang out last night instead, babysat some devils, and practiced a sloppy, overly cute version of Indian Summer by Beat Happening with our voices and guitars. I left her house with a big, goofy smile. I also went out to see Encounters at the End of the World with Justin on Friday - it was an excellent, excellent Herzog documentary about Antarctica, with philosophical ideas about the insignificance of humankind shown through nature, science, and human tendencies. At the same time it was uplifting and inspirational...sort of like standing next to the ocean and feeling very small, but not caring because you are so in awe by the power of the overwhelming sea. Justin's been a good big brother figure for me lately. He also gave me lots of vitamin C. I'm glad we're sticking together, because oftentimes i realize that in many ways we are in the same boat. Otherwise, I had a tough cross country practice, worked until my head was pounding and my legs were aching, won a soccer game. I have too much homework. Euro test tomorrow and a bunch of english assignments due.

Even though it is my favorite season, Fall is so lonely, too lonely, and forces nostalgia upon me. Goodbye, green.

"What did you talk about? Snacks, life, and the afterworld?" -Bri, as i misheard her

i am ill.

i couldn't sleep last night and i probably won't be able to tonight, either, even though i want to sleep for 100 hours.  when i'm sick i get this terrible sort of conscious 'nightmare' - i'm awake, but my brain gets trapped in some sort of unrealistic looping mindset.  i can't think of any other way to describe it, but it's terribly frustrating: i'm aware that it's happening but i can't fix my mind on normal thought.  last night i put sigur ros on for the first time in a long while and tried my best to concentrate on the music so that i could fall asleep. i think it helped a little.

21:59 in the race; it was definitely a slow course, i felt as though i got around 21:30.  wet & muddy.  the team lost by 5 points (& the guys lost by 1 point), but we were expecting to lose more severely.  coooooool, losing, yeaaaaaah.

i'm getting behind in my ap eng lang homework, but i finally took my roll of film and an annoying online math quiz.  math is meant for paper, not computers.

lo-fi spectacular musical ensemble commences friday - can't wait.  gotta get a new battery for my big muff. gotta get un-sick.