Today's Rambles...
July 31/August 1, 1997
it's never good to ramble late at night, then you're rambles get all jumbled and crazy and you write things you regret but then can't take them back because they're already out there...but who cares. you know, i was thinking about it the other day- you can't own your words...and shouldn't want to. i mean, if you think something, that thought is yours. but once you say it, or write it down, you can't take it back. you can't monitor that thought every second of the day, because it's going to get altered by someone somewhere along the line... but that's the risk we take by thinking...
(when you ramble late at night you get a little silly and thoughtless, too, although you think you're being profound and brilliant...)
anyway,so i've been thinking about love again "...love is not a victory march it's a cold and broken hallelujah..." it's so bad for me. i know that someday, i will fall in love and that person will fall in love with me. but the meantime is horrendous. seriously. because that looming knowledge makes your expectations and hopes all the more hard to bear--you know that you're going to find it, but you don't know when or how or why... i talked to one of my friends today. we have a mutual friend in common, we'll call him alex. alex treats both of us pretty bad, unless he wants something. yet, we still continue to be friends with him, because there's always that hope that maybe this time, he won't be a jerk, this time, he'll be nice because of you as a person, not you as an object or a female or as someone who'll spot him ten bucks for a movie and coffee. and we always end up being disappointed.
i've found, in my limited experiance, that many females let that happen to them- they allow themselves to feel inferior, hate it, and then let it continue after they resolve to get rid of it. me, i'm kinda proud of myself, because i got rid of my disease...pretty cathartic (sp??) experiance, i burned all the pictures i had of him...and i haven't called him once. this is the first time i've really even thought about him, too. imho, people let themselves be sad becasue it's an easy feeling. i read something once, i can't remember if it was a poem or an essay, and there was a line that said "it's easier to dwell in darkness then to look for love, light and hope" or something like that. and it's true. i know it's true, becasue i've experianced it. sometimes i get in a mood, and i don't bother getting out of it, because it's just to much trouble. so i sleep it off, or cry it off, or just let it lay on me, poisoning me... mostly because it's harder to find something good to think about. especially when you have more bad memories then good memories... or even if you have a really really great recollection to every five horrible ones, you still think about the horrible ones.
i was talking this morning with one of my friends about this muscician, Jeff Buckleywho drowned in May. he was very young, around 30, and has only put out one full length album, and one EP, i think. i'm just starting to get into him, so i don't know a whole lot about him. anyway, he was REALLY talented, and we were commenting on how tragic it is that he died before leaving the world more of his gift, and about how artists like No Doubt or Hootie and the Blowfish get excessive attention and airplay because they're accessible. there is a difference between music as an art form and music as entertainment.. if i want entertainment, i'll listen to music that doesn't have a whole lot of meaning behind it...
one of my friends doesn't really listen to music, and i can't understand it. i listen to everything, from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald to Ani DiFranco and Counting Crows...and many more, and i'm rarely without music. it's just part of my world. and maybeit's the writer in me that yearns for music with meaning...but it's getting really late and i should sleep. see you soon....ramble on.
July 29, 1997
I have this friend, and he's very optimistic. he always tells me, don't worry, it's going to be better tomorrow...it'll get better. lately i'm having trouble believing him simply because a week later things haven't gotten better, they've gotten worse...i don't know how to make things better for me. i just don't know how. and sometimes, it's like, this darkness is so comfortable i don't want to do anything about it... But then again, it hurts sometimes.
i showed my parents last night my webpage, whcih was a very dangerous thing to do, cause now they can come read everything i'm thinking...that's not a good thing. they already don't trust me at all, it would give them even more reason if they realized that their daughter was completely warped in the head...You know, sometimes i think i should do something absolutely horrible and evil to make them not trust me, becasue they don't really have a reason. But if i think about it as more then a passing thought i realize that if i want to leave and get out, i've got to be on very good behaivor...like a prison or something...
see, this friend of mine, i don't know what to make of our friendship. i don't know what to make of anything anymore...least of all myself.
July 28, 1997
i spent too long on my page today. way too long. and then i went into a chat room that i frequent and got into an arguement with an ignorant peron over stupid stuff.
i'm sick of defending myself on the internet. just because i happen to be in a chat room or have my own web page or have friends over the net does not mean that i have no life. in fact, the past month, i've had too MUCH of a life, and all i've done is wish that i could just sit down and relax awhile. play on my computer. talk to someone that i don't have to act like a certain type of person with. and i'm sick of not knowing what or who i want. or how to get what i want. sh*t, i don't know anything.
i do have a life. why am i justifying this? i know i have a life, i don't have to type it up here for all to see. but i think it's just the mood i'm in, i'm justifying it to myself.
i am really confused about everything in my life, not just this whole internet business. i'm confused about who i am...god, i can't even say it. "..at the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame there must be a light of some kind..." yeah, right. some sort of light.
it doesn't help that i've been looking at colleges. i'm going to be a senior in highschool, it's very scary. i know that this coming year is going to speed by. i know that in a year, i'll know where i'm going to school, how much i'm going to be in debt for it..god, do i really want to move my life 3000 miles away? yeah, i do. but it's still scary. it terrifies and petrifies me. lately i feel so lost, like someone else is doing the eating and sleeping and breathing and basic functioning and i'm just hiding out int the corner of my mind curled underneath a blanket waiting for an alarm to sound..only it never does.
the other night, i was working the last night of this musical-i was deck crew- and the girl who runs spots says to me "i really don't feel like doing spots tonight" and i said to her, "that's okay, i really don't feel like doing life tonight". she was a little puzzled by my response, she expected sympathy and all sorts of stuff and all i wanted was to fall into a coma.
i don't know, i wish i was just wrapped up like jesus, but instead of swaddling clothesi was wrapped up in knowledge and self assurance and all of that bullshi* i never have. i don't know anything. i want to be smart and beautiful and all of that, talented and loved, but i don't even love myself, how the hell can someone else love me?
i hate it when i need to say something, but i can't say it because i know how the other person will react. or, i'm afraid to say it becasue i don't know how the other person will act.
i have to go visit my father in a little over a week, and i know it sounds terrible that i say i have to. i just don't really like to go there. he lives in Utah, and it's like a different universe. people stare at me over there, and then whisper into thier little plastic see through puff purses about the fact that my hair is braided or that i look like a freak. i HATE it. at least here in california people will just tell you what they think...instead of saying it to fifty different people and then letting you know.
not to mention the whole church thing, my dad's mormon, and well, i just don't consider myself mormon anymore. i don't consider myself anything. i am beginning to hate and despise religion, becasue so much of it is a double standard. especially in the mormon religion. i hate the hypocirisy that is religion. i mean, they say that god is everywhere and in everyone, except he's not in that murderer over there. he'snot in that gay guy across the street. he's not in that rapist, not in that child molester. he's not in that wife beater. but how the hell can he not be in them if he's everywhere? oh, they've just turned away from god. god isn't in wickedness..
hell, i don't know. nobody ever does...
July 17.1997
So the other day i was talking to this girl i work with about beauty and love. Mari (marr-i not mary) just broke up with this guy who she's been dating for about two and a half years. First of all, that has to be tough. Two and a half years of you life spent on someone who never really loved you? I mean, i obviously can attest that unrequited love can last for an awful long time. But when you don't expect the person you love to love you, the relazation that they don't isn't quite as devastating. It still hurts like hell, but it's not quite the shock. But if you've devoted yourself to someone for over two years and thought they were devoting themself to you, that's got to be crushing. it would decimate your ego. totally shatter the image you have of yourself.
Anyhow, so Mari was saying how she was on this date with this loser guy Todd, and how all night long he kept talking about her eyes and how beautiful they were. It reminded her of a conversation she'd had with her best guy friend a couple days earlier. He'd told her that she was a beautiful person, not that she had a beautiful feature. And the comment her friend made meant so much more then that of Todd's because nothing anyone could say would make her feel beautiful on the outside but on the inside she felt a little healed.
What is beauty anyway? I'll admit that I wish I was beautiful. Or at least that i felt beautiful. People, when they hear this, say to me "don't be too hard on yourself, you're not ugly." I was talking to this guy Ian, about a week ago. I've known Ian since my freshman year in highschool, his senior year. anyway, a little less then a week ago, i was feeling very frustrated about every single feeling i felt. One minute, i thought maybe i was holding onto something, next minute, i thought i was crazy, next minute, i would decide to just care about what i knew no matter how badly it hurt. Anyway, at that moment i had decided to just chuck it all, that i was going to forget about love and emotion and just live an apathetic life (i could never do that, btw, i'm too obsessed with love to do that)
so i said to ian, something about never getting married-partly because i had a bad example and now i'm ambivalent about marriage and all sorts of stuff but that's for another ramble, and two, because i would never find anyone to marry me. So ian made a comment about being a stupid girl, and i told him all about how i feel. See, guys never fall for me. Girls do. I'm not kidding. In the past three years, i've had one girl who obsessed about me and scared me so badly i thought about getting a restraining order, one girl who just kind of hung around with me and my friends and then one day tried to kill herself because i didn't love her, and another girl who just wrote me angry letters because i wouldn't fall in love with her. but that's a story for another day. i have to many stories for other days, don't I? anyway, so guys don't like me, girls apparantly do, and i always fall ofr people who fall for every body in the world but me. there's an ani difranco song called untouchable face and the lyrics go like this "think i'm gonna go for a walk now feel a little unsteady don't want no one to follow me except maybe you i could make you happy you know if you weren't already i could do a lot of things and i do tell you the truth i prefer the worst of you too bad you had to have a better half she's not really my type but i think you two are forever and i hate to say it but youre perfect together, so f**k you and your untouchable face f**k you for existing in the first place and who am i that i should be vying for your touch said who am i i bet you can't even tell me that much anyway, it applies to almost every single crush or relationship i've ever had. so ian guffaws and says "look, beth, you're not ugly, you're not a bi*ch you're fung to be aorund and you're not stupid. it's not your fault. guys are just idiots." so i thought about that for a minute, and i came to the conclusion that "not ugly' is about the same as saying to someone when you're setting them up on a blind dat that they guy is really sweet and funny. that means there are a lot of better looking people out there.
But why are we as a society so peroccupied with how we look? mari was right when she said that being told you are a beautiful person is more fullfilling than "you're beautiful" but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear someone say, "you're beautiful" or have someone think we're so ugly that they make up little nicknamesabout us, you know?
Who decides what beauty is? the"media"? The fasion designers? Magazines, agnets, MTV? We can't really blame them, because we buy into the consumer beauty image- society makes "the media" "the media" does not make society. We breed what we want. There wouldn't be a National Enquirer if inquiring minds didn't want to know, there woudln't be a 'Teen Magazine unless teens bought it, read it, and made it thier bibles. If we didn't ask to be told what to eat and how to look and how our lives should be, we would be lost. We'd have to step away from our parlors (think ray bradbury's Farenhiet 451) and actually think.
i think the worst type of people are people like me who recognize consumer beauty but still aspire to achieve it. And i never will achieve it, because there's a part of me that will always realize that i'm just trying to be like everyone else,and be angry at myself for not just accepting the fact that i couldn' control what i look like, you know? i may feel pretty sometimes, but i rarely feel beautiful. i have this image of when i will feel beautiful, though. for some reason, i'm in a kitchen, i'm wearing a giant sweater, it's freezing outside, and i certainly don't LOOK beautiful, in fact, i look terrible (always looks looks looks maybe the human race would have been better off without eyes..) but there's a great big fire in a great big living room and i'm making hot cocoa and someone comes up behind me and i feel beautiful, because it's the person i love who olves me-wierd, huh? i dreamt it about a year ago. but the reason i felt beautiful isn't how i looked, it was becasue i felt whole. anyway, that was much longer then i intended it to be...till next time..
jesus. i don't know what to do. i want what i will never ever have. ever. i always want what i can't have, but if i get it, will i still want it? this is the one time that i think i will. the one time where the grass IS greener on the other side, it doesn't just look that way because of the light. who knows? is it better to leave it to mystery, to have it stew and fester in your brain? to think about it day after day or confront the situation? i don't have a clue.
July 6th, 1997
so today my family and i went to peir 39, which is this really touristy place in san franisico for those of you who are california illiterate. anyway, it's the exact opposite of my kind of scene. i sort of deserted my family and sat on these steps in front of this hat shop and watched people. it's one of my favorite things to do.figure out where they're from, why they're here, whether or not they are enjoying themselves, stuff like that.
but there was this one guy, who was a juggler. he was a regular old street performer. and it really made me appreciate the fact that i am so lucky to have what i have. i'm not in a family that has a lot of money. and often times i put down those kind of families, where the mommy and daddy give thier little baby a car and never make them work and stuff like that. and the kid grows up with no ethics and teaches it to thier ckildren, who like thier parents' made a lot of people's lives miserable.
my point is that i appreciated beauty. this guy was just doing street performances becasue he loved it. he could be out working in some coffee shop somewhere (ahem) but instead he's doing what he wants to do, what he likes to do. i have to give people like that a lot of credit.
anyway, i had something much more deep and profound on my mind but the poignancy of the moment just went out my ears as i collapse from tiredness on the key board. goodnight....
July 5th, 1997
so i was posed with an interesting question the other day. Can one love over the internet? is it possible? i'm not sure about my answer...as many of the people i talk to know, i have a few problems with the internet. One, it gives a person the ability to create someone they aren't and pretend they are, as opposed to forcing them to acknowledge their faults and work around them. i've got to say i've got the acknowledging faults down to a science....anyhow, so back to the qualms i have. the second thing is that the internet is a precarious society, communities founded by what type of music one appreciates, or what type of dog they own. and then it's also just like a big old frat party, you wander from room to room ogling everything or maybe just observing hoping you get back to yourself alive.
so the question still remains, can one love over the internet? i think it depends on the people. i have a really good friend over the internet. i met him in a chat room, and we just started talking. and i feel like he's completely honest with me, as i am with him. but other times, i get feelings that someone is lying about their age or their hair color or breast size, or wieght, or whatever. and i realize that this "virtual" society is still based on the "real" society's stereotypes of beauty, intelligence, and popularity. unless one lies, is it possible to be "popular" on the net? yes, it is. because there are those who don't carry stereotypes with them ANYWHERE let alone into a chat room or a bulletin board.
but who knows. anyway, so i've been talking with this guy for awhile, about six or seven months. and we get a long very well. still, i sometimes really want to just be able to call him up and say hey. or go out to a movie with him, or just hang out in a bookstore with him or something, you know? or just sit on the couch a friday night before i have to work and watch millenium with him.
but there are so many more things i can do with this friend than hang out. the internet gives us the option to just talk, instead of worrying about how we look or whether an eyelash is plastered to our cheeks. we can actually have conversations. sometimes we talk about god,or life, or misery, or love or whatever, and sometimes we just are extrordanairily silly. it's a type of rare freedom...
anyway, i guess my point is that yes, you can probably love over the internet, but it's a love that is fragile and can be easily swayed...which leads to an even harder question: how does one make love stay? that's for another time, when my brain isn't so zapped and i'm feeling a little more enthusastic about feeling lonely...
July 1st, 1997
okay, so i was a real horror today. horomones suck. it's not even the horomone activity going on inside my body (you know, ovaries raging, stuff like that) it's the fact that everything is always bad. i went tonight, with my brother and his friend to see a movie. we went and saw my best friends wedding and it isn't one of those feel good movies, let me ruin it for you right now, the guy picks the girl he's in love with, not his best friend. and that sucks. and it was just horrible for me because of the fact that i've been in love with this guy for about four years now, and he treats me like crap, and he always ditches me for lovely little rich becca who hates and despises me. whole story in a nutshell: i met dan on a plane coming home from L.A. my stupid ass gave him my phone number he called, we became best friends, i fell in love with him, i told him, he fell in love with becca, he told her, they got together, i sat on the sidelines, she broke our friendship up, they broke up and we became friends again, he's still in love with her, i'm still in love with him.
and it isn't fair. one of my pet peeves is the phrase "you'll find someone". when you don't believe in yourself at all, how the hell are you going to believe someone else whenthey tell you that you will find someone? how? you won't find someone, you think, because you're uglier then betsy wetsy and she's a plastic doll designed to be cute for gods sakes.
and the worst thing of all is that i thought i was over him. well, i just pretended really well and told myself that i didn't care. why is it that girls do this? why don't they just say "screw it" you know? i mean, i always feel so f-ing sorry for myself. i know there are a ton of things i can do about it (extreme therapy??? yeah,...uh-huh..) and i just ignore it. i fall into this sea of feeling evil. and i sink into the ache because it's familiar and i know it well, i live here. i live in this teenage angst bullshit.
there's no excuses for it. just excuses for trying to make it go away...drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. it's been awhile since i smoked but i thinkabout it every day. i'm so adamant about being free, yet i'm controlled by nicotine and tar and all the four hundred and fifty thousand chemicals embedded in my system.
i don't know, i pushed down my feelings for dan for so long that they're like a jack-in-the-box popping out suddenly. well, it's hsi damn fault. he kissed me. two weeks ago TONIGHT he kissed me. and i know the reason he did it. he was lonely. i smelled like becca (she started wearing the same perfume as i do-ckbe)and i was there, and i was willingand i just wanted for one night to feel beautiful and cared about. i wanted for one night to be holding someone's hand instead of being an on-looker. i hate being unattractive. and people tell me i'm too hard on myself, but they see the outside. and june 6th, 1997
do you ever sit down and wonder if you're real? my whole life has seemed like a dream lately. speaking of dreams, mine was very odd last night. i think it was an anxiety dream, i don't really know that much about dreams. in my dream, i ran away from home. and i was barefoot. it was night. i ran through the schools of my childhood, starting with pre-school when i lived in Arizona all the way to the highschool i attend now. but the very odd thing was that the pre-school was shut down. it was defaced, and all the windows were broken. the playground looked like it had been set on fire, and the enitre time, the wind was blowing me forward as i ran. then i was in the elementry school i went to here in california, and there was this man in chains who had a very long whip who was striking all these children that were standing in line doing jumping jacks. there was one girl who goes to my school now who was dressed in all black and her hair was shaved off and she was being whipped. and i just ran by her, and she died. it was pretty scary. finally, i ran through the field at my highschool, and the football team was practicing. this one guy, max, ripped off my sweatshirt and called me a whore. but i keptrunning. and i got to this corner in some town, (this corner makes a guest appearance in a lot of my dreams) and i realized that i couldn't go inside anywhere because i didn't have any shoes. so i ran some more, and i ran up this hill. and then my feet fell off because i'd been running for so long. it was very strange.
i read a poem by gary snyder once called true night, and in it he described the dream state as a womb. i really agree with that (this week, at least) becasue if you think about it, every night you regress back into yourself. it's just your mind, your memories. it's not what someone else has seen, and even if it is, it's you rememebering the description that they gave you of what they've seen. and every morning, you are born into the light of dawn, like a baby being born into the light of day. i don't know, just rambling again..june fourth, 1997
i was sitting in burger king today and it really depressed me. this man was in the booth in front of me and he was talking about how he had to buy Lady Lee cornflakes because it's the cheapest cereal. and it got me to thinking about how when we get old, there's nobody really to take care of us. i look at my grandmother, who's losing her mind and won't admit it and won't let anybody help her, and i get damn scared. she's not that old, but she's so fragile. when i'm around her i feel like i'm shopping in one of those big department stores where a t-shirt costs 60 dollars just cause calvin klein made it and everywhere you touch you break something...
i don't know, i guess it's just that i'm scared of aging. i wish i could revert back to age 5 sometimes. i was cool when i was 5. now i'm just a drok (buhba) who hangs out on her computer all day...oh well.
i'm not condemning anyone for believing in God and Heaven and Hell. i think it's nice to believe, to have something to comfort you in times of darkness. i'm just too cynical to believe. i guess it comes from the fact that religion was never really a part of the life i can remember. sometimes peopletell me that's the reason i'm kinda wacko, because i've never had the "Guidance of God". But i think it's just cause i don't really care.....
June 3, 1997
i sat down today, this morning, it's early. i started thinking about the subject i dread the most in the world. i avoid thinking about this subject most of the time, because all it does is remind me that i think entirely too much. the subject is love.
it's not a bad subject. i just avoid it because it makes me awfully lonely. but this morning, i've been thinking- a very dangerous thing to do- and i decided that i like being single. for some silly reason i thought my happiness had to depend on someone else. in truth, my happiness depends onme. i may have my really bad days where the world seems too dreadful to dream in, and all i want to do is sleep, but i have my good days, as well, and the sun reaches some prettyfar corners.
it's good for everybody to hurt sometimes- "the things i do to people i love shouldn't be allowed" but it is good for everyone to have pain. i guess i'd rather hurt then hold onto illusionsof love and beauty and purity. i think that the hurting is better then being oblivious to pain. ignorance is not bliss, because there's no signal that tells you something is nice and delightful. if you've never witnessed heartache, you can't gauge your happiness.
pain makes you stronger. it can make you a better person. i don't know. i think there are different degrees of love. there is one person out there for you, but a lot of people get so tired of looking that they settle for someone and things go as bad as milk left on the counter overnight. or else a couple doesn't know how to work out their problems and give up. i tink you can love someone who isn't THE ONE and still feel that you love them. is there a difference between being in love, and loving someone? i think so...
someone may be completely messed up in the head, but at least the person is real, right?