Hahaha, so, I have two papers to write and a major test to study for (and a study group with Kayak-boy, who will doubtlessly wander away to go to the J5 show at the last minute), and guess what else?

The ex knocked on my door, inebriated as usual, at 3 a.m. To apologize for ruining my life, apparently (has my life been ruined? I didn't notice) and meanwhile, via sad-puppy apologetics, he tried to work his way into my room. I was honest with him, at least. I said I didn't hate him, I just felt sorry for him, because he didn't know how to get close to people. And I said that I was sorry that I hadn't been able to leave him better off then I found him, like I try to, but that was his own damn fault. And I told him that I might not hate him but I didn't want to see him or deal with him. And then my roommate (who is my hero forever!) rolled over and yelled, "End on a high note, buddy! No hard feelings, now go away." Which got him out of my room, after one attempt to kiss me. Ick. Ick ick ick. There's something to be said for things being over and done with.

love
alex

::deep breath::
all better.

I actually should confess, I really love sitting in this lab listening to all the people talk about their papers, sharing information rapid-fire - where'd you find that statistic? in this journal, here - tossing books and notes back and forth. I love finals season, but last fall I wasn't worried about any of my grades. This semester I am, which makes it a little less fun.

I love you all, stop reading my journal and go outside.

love
alex

Dear Universe:

Well, I got the 15-pager done and handed in. It was actually 12 pages plus 2p bibliography, but I didn't do anything sneaky to the font size and it was in with a good thirty hours to spare. Also, paper #1 for my Civil Rights class is printed and waiting to be delivered. This is good, because right now I want to crawl under a rock and look at the pretty pretty dirt until the rest of the world goes away. I got through that big paper with a sort of forced exhilaration, well, now it feels more like an asthma attack. And my family chose the perfect time to strike. I was depending on having a solid week between here and there to just be somewhere. But no. My mother is sending me strongly-worded emails demanding to know the earliest time I can leave so that they can whisk me back home in time for our family reunion. I am solidly pissed off.

Yesterday I painted a mural of a tree that looked like Bob Marley. The fact that I want to kick something now does not mean that life isn't good.

love!.
alex!.
(dammit)

Blessings! Church today! I brought my friend Jess, and two other girls from my dorm showed up, out of the blue. A guest minister who sang all the old UU songs that I grew up with, come, come, whoever you are - wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving - ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again come. In the springtime and the blooming! Beautiful, all!

Don't worry! I'm up to page 10 of the paper! I love and will make it through.

love
alex

Ahaha. So I just figured out that I've subconciously been slipping a week into my mental calender between [now] and [any given due date]. Actually, it's all due Monday. Monday. So if you hear from me in the meantime, it means I'm slacking and procrastinating and will DIE DIE DIE and flunk out of school.

The trees are budding and it's beautiful out there! Love to you all
alex

This is going to be discombobulated, as I had one of those days yesterday that feels like a year. Broken up into bullet points for easier reading.

So, yesterday, I:

- had lunch with a new person from the kayaker's group, who was very nice.

- Ran into someone from anti-FTAA in the middle of my student union.

- Randomly hugged the dorm Acid Jesus / Sex God in the hallway, because he was standing by a bunch of other hugging people looking awkward.

- Went to an incredible three-hour peice of performance art on Male Identity that has totally transcended all my ideas about everything.

- Came back to the dorm and randomly hugged a guy in the hallway, just for being a guy.

- Was called by the housing director and told I needed to go lock my door and sit with my suitemate. Apparently the dorm nutcase had walked through my (unlocked) room to find the suitemate and tell her she needed to help him save the world. He moves out today.

- Sat with the suitemate and played door-bouncer (springing up to check every knock, unlock the door for visitors, and lock it behind them) for a few hours.

- Typed up the performance art peice so I could hang onto some of it in all the chaos

- ate half a quesidilla

- went to sleep at 2:30 am

I have extraordinary days. I really do. I don't know if this sounds important to other people, but every day! feels like a year has passed from the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep. Everything is different, and so much has gone on.

love
alex

A random person from the Miami mobilization came up to me on campus today and shook my hand. I would consider this more of an omen had she not been conference-hopping with friends who live here.

Raining, beautiful spring tulip rain. I sang chants walking barefoot on the way up the hill, with young men with guitars jamming in all the porches and the corners.

love
alex

Beautiful sunny windy day. Walked down the smoggy bypass to the health food store, where twenty bucks got me peanut butter, rice syrup, soy-based tortellini and some kale, and then back downtown to the new tienda, where three bucks got me 36 tortillas and some peppers, because my bad spanish got me a reprieve from the gringo tax. The girl who works at the tienda - the owner's daughter - is very pretty and about my age. I ask her in my stuttering Spanish if the baby on her arm is a boy or a girl. "Un nino." she replies, smiling. "Que bonito!" I answer, and mean it. He's a beautiful child. Then back up to campus, with a pause for a breather in the library, because 36 tortillas makes for a heavy backpack.

much love
alex

Everybody reading this post: COMMENT, please. Just this once. If you have nothing to say, say "comment" or "hi" or something. It will make me feel loved.

I'm sorry if I sound grouchy or vindictive lately. I'm really not, it's just it's spring and I'm trying to shift into take-no-prisoners mode for finals. Two more weeks.

I've decided I just need to avoid UU boy. Every time I have one of our frustrating non-interactions, I end up pissy and grouchy for days. And since I'm unwilling to admit that a mere male could make me feel this crappy, I blame it on everything else and start to feel pretty down on what is generally a good, drama-free life. Ah, adolescence. When will I outgrow thee?

Aside from that - the sun is shining, I have no classes today so I'm walking to the health food store for vegetables and peanut butter, and the yearbooks are here. I love yearbooks.

Things are good. Don't let me fool you.

Oh! And!
My sweet potatoes sprouted.
I didn't mean for them to, but I opened the bag stuck under my bed and there are all these tall twisty pink elfin stems, with little leaves that look like fish fins or bird or insect wings on heart-shaped stemlets. My potatoes are a forest now! I am well pleased.

love
alex

The beautiful flute-playing boy called me over to the newspaper sculpture he was sitting on. "You could build a house like this." he said. "With stacks of newspaper, and a frame, and some plaster." It is beautiful, for a moment, in his mind.

love
alex

My UU friend and I are growing apart, which means an end to my usual sunday ritual of friendly bickering all the way to church while he winces at sunlight and clutches his coffee close. I will miss the kid, but that's okay. Today I went to church alone, walking the way under the flowering trees, and I sat with a girl from the campus that I haven't talked to in a while, and the sermon was great (we borrowed Greensboro's preacher for the morning). And I sat with the youth group while the adults were discussing the Meaning of Diversity, and the guy who's stepped up to the plate as Fearless Leader said he wishes that the college kids would come talk to them more often. I went into church feeling as if I didn't have a place, and I came out feeling at home.

Still, I have a question - where is our stuff, as UU college kids? Church is not our thing yet, we're not old and we don't want to sit and listen quietly. We're still in school, we get enough of that. We came out of the sometimes intense community of the youth organization, and suddenly we're supposed to make due with gossiping with retirees at coffee hour. Now, I know some great retirees, don't get me wrong. But where are our communities? And moreover, why the hell don't UUs bend over backwards to teach their children, to welcome their adolescents, and to hold onto their young adults? Every church I've been to has the same problem, where the teenagers take care of the children while the adults go to service. Our district technically kicks kids out of the youth organization at 18, and I've been to a lot of congregations - my first one, this one - where college kids sort of sneak their way into the youth group meetings because it's that or leave the church entirely. Come on, people. We can do better.

love
alex

The wind is blowing warm through all the windows, and I walked hand-in-hand with two of my friends through the woods to the waterfall in the starry windy dark. The security lights on the much-used part of the trail make little spotlights in the dirt and we dance and kick up dirt and mulch. On the other side of the hill, nothing but the citylight in the sky reflecting in the stream as we walk.

love
alex

Heehee. My suitemate - the beautiful one who has a boy playing his flute outside her window all night in hopes of winning her regard - has had a spring acne outbreak. She's still beautiful, but it's nice to know that beautiful people also get pimply.

So the verdict - I'm not going to IMF. That's okay. I have in fact spent most of the last two days playing Creatures (though I mostly let them do the Darwin thing, so it's not like it consumes my attention). That's okay too. The bloodroot is blooming in the woods and I'm just not going to worry about any of it. It's all good.

love
alex

I am totally terrified that I'm wasting my life. Evidence: three hours spent playing Creatures today, after a weekend of sugary foods and suburbia. I'm considering not going to DC for IMF because I feel like I've already treaded on enough alien ground, risked enough & dared enough for one semester, but I'm not a kid anymore. I don't really have the right to let the world go on without me while I sleep and play video games.

I don't want any more excitement, but then, I'll have a whole summer of trying to get toddlers to eat their EasyMac and not drool on the upholstry. The major excitement will be DragonTales on PBS. And choosing to be boring is what my parents did, and I really am not too impressed with it.

If only I showed some sign of getting off my ass and getting my stuff done for finals. I think it's going to take another day at least of sleep and recovery from all that easter candy (and all that gardening) before any work is done.

sigh.

love
alex

My dorm smells of macaroni, and is suffocatingly hot after four days of 60 degrees and damp indoors. The trees on the mountain are barely greening, bright in the sunlight against the storm front blowing through. I am desperately glad to be back. My life can start again.

love
alex

The feeling of suburbia is one of blessed isolation. Aren't we lucky? I mean this. We don't have to talk to our neighbors. We don't even have to talk to each other. We don't have to wash our dishes, or cook our food. We live in fortresses, palaces. We live in a splendid solitude unrivaled by kings.

My mother uses the automated checkout every time. She says she hates it when the cashiers are rude, so she avoids them.

love
alex

That caterwauling sound you just heard? Me & my sister, resolving an argument over whether we could sing better then Against Me! on our back porch in suburbia. I've never tried to be punk rock before.

love
alex

Me: "Pink Floyd? You listen to Pink Floyd now?"

Little sister: "Yes. It's good music and you can't stop me."

love,
alex

I loves me my hippie boy. I had another lunch with the kayaker, and I tell you what, I will be smiling for the rest of the week. We're friends! Good friends! I cannot begin to tell you how happy that makes me, to have a friend who I don't even have to live with (like the kids who are in my program), who is forgiving of my flaws, who is not self-concious of his own, who has kept me company ever since the tumult last semester... I really, really, really like this kid. I'm really, really thankful he's in my life.

love
alex

The sweet potato moon on the horizon, balanced on the point of the campus bell tower / smoke stack. A thousand beautiful things raining down, raining down blessings.

love
alex

Whee! Mood swings! Thanks, Spring!

I keep trying to blame it on everything but needing to get my work done. Especially after I dropped that one class, I've been doing absolutely nothing, and I know it'll catch up with me. I am going to go make a Master List of everything I have to do. Because nothing cures springtime like a to-do list.

I just talked to the angry boy from my hometown & I'm happy. He's gone from cleaned-up to sullen back to sketchy-ass and unwashed looking, but he's still one of the beautiful young.

love
alex

I ended up with a 3-hour hole in my schedue. So I'm going to learn to play the banjo. This improves my week substantially.

The dorm is buzzing. Sometimes I feel like the same self-concious freshman that landed here at random... six months ago? A long time. The people are so good here, and I'm so afraid I'll miss my chance to know them in all my insularity.

love
alex

I dreamed two weeks ago that I died trying to save someone's life. There were plenty of people around who could have helped me - thus keeping it from being a double murder - but they were too apathetic. This was not a self-aggrendizing dream. I have walked around for the last two weeks wanting to say to people, I just realized that I COULD DIE because you won't get off your lazy ass. Thanks, bastard.

Sigh. I reserve the right to delete this post at some later point.

love
alex

Not sure if this is going to make sense, but -
realized, sitting in circle planning for DC, that my attack of burnout yesterday was really caused by me trying not to be an adult, you know, responsible for her own affairs, responsible for the world around her, with valid motivations, hesitations, responsibilities. My Miami people take me at face value, as a young woman who needs advice and guidance, yes, but also as a grown woman capable of taking on adult tasks. When I forget this, I start to shrink under the weight of all the things I'm trying to do and be.

I am capable of this. I am a woman among women among humans among adults. I do not need it fixed for me. I can do this.

love
alex

I don't want to be tall anymore, and I don't want to be in charge of saving the world. I want to go on dates. Also, giggle.

love
alex

Hunger banquet. Hopped up on a combination of bad rice (third-world group) and bad coffee (second-world group) we stormed the stage, seized the french fries and salads and cheesecake, and ran back to our refugee camp in the middle of the auditorium. I don't believe in violence. But there I was in the middle of the floor, fist in the air yelling. Are you with me? ARE YOU WITH ME?

I need the company of the boys who sneaked to the garden supply room and got us shovels to threaten the guards with. I need them. Every so often they creep out of the woodwork and remind me that I'm not alone here. And then they disappear into their usual cloud of smoke and I'm left feeling like the only person who's angry at something more important than parking tickets and bad hair days.

After the whole thing was over, as we were washing up spilled coffee and ground-in french fries, my Marx professor - a person I greatly admire - came up to me and hugged me, like he did before I left for Miami. I don't believe in violence. But there I was with my fist in the air.

love
alex