An ice cream truck just went by outside my window playing "Fur Elise". What a sad song for a thing that brings cold melty goodness and symbolizes summertime! I've always wondered what it would be like to be an ice cream truck operator. I wonder if you start walking around humming the little jingle under your breath all the time, and it gets stuck in your head and stays there playing on a loop for the rest of your life?
I need to read Tanith Lee again. She is an excellent author of fantasy-type books, which I don't read enough of. When I have access to a good library again. Which won't be long now at all: it feels impossible, but there is only about a... a week and a half left!! And then my grandparents will arrive and we'll pack all of my things in the big red Suburban and begin our long road trip back up North to Portland. My God. I've been kind of dubious about getting excited over going home again, because I know I probably won't have the privileges that I've had here ever again, and also because I'm not homesick and it bugs me when people assume that that's the case when I say that I'm transferring to college back in my hometown. But now that the time to go is approaching- it is exciting, I have to admit. Especially exciting is the drive up. I love road trips! Grama and Gramps have promised to take it slow and give ourselves time to enjoy the scenery, maybe even stop by Joshua Tree. I've never been on a drive all thru California before. It'll be cool to see the environment change as we go North. I just really regret not ever going on any camping trips in Joshua Tree or otherwise. When will I have the opportunity again? Not during college breaks- I'll be poor and w/out a car. Not after I graduate from college- I'll still be poor and w/out a car.
I've really changed since I left on this little trip to Redlands 8 or 9 months ago. I came here never having been in Cal. for more than 6 hours before, never having seen the U of R campus, not knowing anyone. I've realized that I know a lot less than I thought I did, that talent doesn't make up for studying hard, that I have no clue where I will be in four years or what I want to do with my life, and I think I've finally come to accept that I'm just simply antisocial. Since I grew out of childhood, I've always struggled with being social and making interesting small talk and feeling comfortable around people. The ability is something that I just lack, and depressing as that may sound, at least I can claim it and make do. I'm expressive through other outlets (writing, art, music, other media, and in the past, with the strange things I wore), just not the conventional way of communicating with other people.
I've come to feel that I simply don't mind being alone (just not for the rest of my life).
However, if I think about it, it's glaringly obvious that I do play a part in bringing "the Lone Ranger" thing upon myself. I have the option of picking up the phone and calling friends, of eating lunch or dinner with them. That's an easy enough thing to do, and yet. I don't know why I don't do it. I hope they don't think that I'm not staying in touch because I don't like their company, because I do. It's just all very difficult to explain. I can bet with a great deal of certainty that sometime soon down the road, I will regret not being a better friend. I'll wonder what ever happened to so and so, like I do every now and then about old friends from the past, and think about sending them a "Hey, remember me?" e-mail or something.
Like I'm wondering right now what ever happened to my friend Loni. We ate lunch together every day junior and senior year of high school. We excelled in choir, and after school in the park would practice expanding our ranges. We rejoiced in the fact that we could sing higher than anyone else in choir. When I met her, she'd just moved to the US from Peleliu, Palau, and she was homesick for like a year after she arrived here. She'd tell me all these stories- for school field trips, they'd go to places like the "jellyfish lakes", which were lakes literally filled so full of jellyfish that were you to jump in, you could not see through the water. She told me that teenagers in Palau ate cooked bananas drenched in soy sauce and unsweetened Kool-Aid powder. She had pet monkeys, which I was pretty jealous about, and she was supermodel-tall and slim.
And of course I always worry about good old Sarn. I knew him since 6th grade, but didn't really *know* him as a close friend until senior year, when he decided he was gay and began coming to school in half-drag. He loved to horrify us with his new exploits: going home with strange 30 year old men, what it was like to overdose, did I like his new sparkly red choker? He was easy to worry about, because he was so vulnerable and he hated that about himself. Every strange look or cruel word he got from somebody, he'd angrily tell us all about it, usually twice. He came to school drunk off his ass a lot, and then he didn't graduate. I admire him, though, because even so, he went to every ceremony there was, besides the actual commencement, and he was always dressed fierce and glaring at anyone who looked at him funny. I hope he followed through with the summer school and is doing ok and everything. I actually have asked after him, but everybody seems to have lost touch with him as well.
I hate it when you type a lot and then try to go back and correct some error, and it doesn't make space for your new correction- so the letters just type right over what's already there? I wonder if that's just a quirk that my computer has. My quirky computer. Wow, I think that's one of the nicest names I've ever called it. Much better than the usual "shit for brains" or old the standby, "Stupid computer!" And yes, I realize that most of the time the person using the computer is actually the cause of a computer's problems, but it's still fun yelling at something without hurting its feelings.
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