girlfrieeennnds day & other quotes
So I'm having an interesting day...kind of a perpetual state of "harummph" and I guess that noise is me thinking, me trying to understand things, even though everything is making sense for me like it never has before.Take just now. I drove over to Zach's house to drop off two books, a Tintin postcard-turned-bday-card I got in Osaka, and an Andy Griffith show DVD, since it was (is) his 23rd bday today. And I completely forgot.
I've been so wrapped up in 'girlfriends' business (i.e. most every important girl/woman in my life has a Cancer or Leo bday, not just around here, but dear friends from college and beyond, that I've been thinking about and crafting, etc. for) that I completely forgot 7/11: Zachary Beste Taylor! He sounded kind of bummed on the phone when I talked to him (after I got out of my joint therapy sesh with my rents! don't worry, that's coming up) and we had plans to meet up in Maura's backyard.
But plans changed and he went home, and I knew I had to drop off something for him bc...it's his birthday?! The one day a year Zach gets to celebrate being Zach and he didn't even get to hang out like he wanted to. Plus, I had bought him the (cheapo) DVD way earlier in the morning, when I was at Walgreens (buying the place out, getting Will's camera developed so Lainey & I can send him a care package in Greece, whenever he has an address), and I grabbed the DVD since I think of Zach and Opie simulataneously, and not just bc that's the Kwilosz's (and others) nickname for him. So I'm glad I was subconsciously thinking about Zach, and it turned out to be his bday, which I think I knew anyways, but temporarily forgot. I'm thinking of trying to have people over on Saturday night to celebrate Zach's bday, Katie's arrival back home, Dacia's (semi) return home, and well, the fact that we live in the burbs and can sit out on my driveway and drink beers and play basketball if we want to. Or on the back porch and play cards, whatevs. I don't really care what we do, I kind of just want to have people over. More on that later.
I've always used being in the car to think about things, and this night was no different. But it's not quiet, drive-around, reflection time...more like incredibly loud music and me belting as loud as I can to drown out the vocals of whoevs is on the stereo. So essentially, tonight, it was me "cruising" on the way to/from Zach's house and I kept running into the same high school kids doing the same thing, but more actively displaced. Like I knew my agenda, and I knew I looked about 17. Maybe I'm just supposed to always stay 17; it is my lucky number and that golden bday was the most wild night of my life (culminating with me & Katie stealing bottles of wine, trash rags, basically anything we could get our hands on from the 7-11, and the clerks thought we were so entertaining, they let us drunkenly dance on the counters! Meanwhile, the Baking Beauty had died, but we didn't care that much and just kept wrecking the convenience store. We tried to sleep at Kwilosz's but TK kicked us out, so we slept in the parking lot of the Best Western...and that was just one nearly typical night of that summer).
I don't know...I guess being in the suburbs makes me feel happy and sad. Happy bc I loved the way I grew up, and feel affirmed in how I did, but also sad bc not everyone in the burbs gets to grow up like that. Yeah, most everyone has money and a car to drive around in (either their parents', like most of my friends and myself; or kids who get cars--either way, this seems to stop no one from driving like retards while drunk, stoned, in the process of doing either, or just plain sober and they suck at driving bc they're so f-ing fresh from Driver's Ed simulators and "road tests") but no one has anywhere to go. But I remember thinking then, this is the most fun ever! Drinking in my parents' minivan and shooting various pedestrians on the streets of downtown LG with a Super-Soaker! Chugging beers in gas station bathrooms bc we couldn't drink at anyone's house! And it was fun, but we all knew it was bad, and we were doing it bc we were sort of angsty and not sure how to be wild & still have smart fun. Not necessarily sober fun, but just partying smarter. I didn't learn this lesson until college, when I started realizing the dumb mistakes I made when I would have people over that Le Chris would never make.
Me driving back from Zach's tonight was weird bc I, 1) had an agenda, and knew where I was going; 2) still saw all the teens and tweens driving around, some of the ballsier guys in the backseats of Jettas calling "Hey!" into my car...I meanwhile, was listening to Kelly Clarkson. So they're like, who the fuck is this sophomore? And why is she wearing a pink Blondie tee with sparkles on it [the one I bought from Wal-Mart!] and blasting the latest KC song? KC sux. I like Good Charlotte, or Simple Plan. They're totally hardcore.
They didn't say that, but I imagined they were, simply bc I remember an asshole I hated named Ryan once told me, "Yeah, I saw you driving at like 1230am and you were blasting music, and like, karaoke singing!" And I thought to myself, am I supposed to feel embarrassed about that? I must have been 16 or 17. And I knew I didn't feel bad about it, but "high school" bullshit made me think I should. I think I've just been a 34 year old trapped in this body for too long, and now that I'm realizing what a naive angsty girl I was in high school, it WAS all for a reason; I just had no idea then what the reason was.
Yikes, I'm waxing wayyyy poetic. I meant to post about the fun day me & Lainey had, running errands together and spending car time listening to music and talking, but I guess I'll do that tomorrow. I can't stop thinking about other people's words. I would quote KC, on "gone" or some other angry break-up song (this album is on par, in my mind, with the last good break-up album, one that charts the progression of a relationship: "jagged little pill"-- Alanis' enraged chronicle of her imploded relationship with Dave Coulier....oh Joey, what were you thinking going down on another girl in a theater!?! I haven't listened to that since 8th grade, but I remember being obsessed with "head over feet" I think it was called) but since bloggers are good at reading between the lines, I'll leave it to KC. Or I'd even quote the Mac, but "Rumours" is like the original breakup album, except it was totally incestuous and '70s bc they were all doing each other and writing music about it--god, that must have been intense.
I will quote John Irving though, and I'm excited to read his new, characteristically lengthy book "Until I Find You"...bc hello, how could I not like another author who writes amazing modern Quixotic stories that take forever to get through? He should read my blog. Not that I'm on par with Irving, but I certainly feel like I could write 800 pages if I sat down long enough to do so.
"In those days, a tattoo was still a souvenir--a keepsake to mark a journey, the
love of your life, a heartbreak, a port of call. The body was like a photo album;
the tattoos themselves didn't have to be good photographs. Indeed, they may not
have been very artistic or aesthetically pleasing, but they weren't ugly—not
intentionally. And the old tattoos were always sentimental; you didn't mark
yourself for life if you weren't sentimental."
Then, this one I remember from Kerouac's "On the Road" but my mom made me the best scrapbook ever before I went away to Portland (I would look at it every night, convinced I'd totally made the wrong decision about college) and this was on the last page:
"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, made to be desirous of everything at
the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding
like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes, "Awwww!"
That quote kind of reminds me of Jeff, and Tommy, but in different (and similar) ways. I read this outloud to my rents tonight bc I'm sick of having to defend myself, so I'm starting to let other people I agree with do it. And in some way, I guess I feel like people are waiting for me to pop.
But I won't. I'm not just wanting to find people who are interesting and have interesting things to say; I'm needing to find people who seek out meaning in everything around them (and in them) in the same way that I do. Or at least those are the people I'd rather talk to. And that's pretty much why I'm glad I spent the day with Lainey.
posted by SES @ 1:37 AM
2 Comments:
A,
I can't wait until you can become MY psychologist....
maybe you should study psychiatry so you can prescribe us both drugs.
ha ha, j/k...kind of!
S
p.s. I always thought a single hippy was with a 'Y'? you did live near Kappa longer than I, though...
however, I lived in oregon, so there! who cares, hippies probably don't even care how their name is spelled
p.s. looked for "mother revolution" but couldn't find it--when are you going to write on it? I'll read it constantly, and comment all the time. I'm a "blog-by-volume" kind of person
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