Okay, so to change up the news...

Am not dropping out this semester. Turns out that colleges don't like that. So am taking 20 hours worth of classes... woo! 2 classes on MWF, and 6 on TR. Yay! I have classes from 9am until 9:30. I am awesome! Yeah, right.

Then will maybe transfer to UGA for next fall? We shall see.

Tear drop 11:11 PM of Sarah

One would think that college would give one a bigger drive to do well.... No. Not so.

Tonight, we watched Land Before Time. Yeah. We all have at least two papers to write, tests to study for, and instead of doing that, we watched Land Before Time. Woo! We also watched Oliver and Company, and got a turtle that we named Crawl the Warrior King. Audra and I are going to get a mouse and name him Tinkle King. 10 bonus points to the person who can identify what movie those names are from. Yeah dude.

Besides, don't like waiting for people to call when they say they will, and then having them not. Dependency is soooo wrong.

Tear drop 11:09 PM of Sarah

So it has come down to this:

I am transfering to Georgia State, because the mom doesn't think that Valdosta has enough prestige. Whateva. I will be getting an apartment in the city at some point before the Fall 2004 semester starts, so all are welcome to visit and live in, if wish. Any decorations, etc. would be appreciated.

Audra and I are going to the registrar's office tomorrow to drop our Biology courses, because a) I always sleep through them, b) the class is too fucking hard and we don't need to have it for our majors, and c) Georgia State will accept my 3 on my AP Bio test for credit, so it's pointless to take another biology course. Woo.

I finally found a place to download music! Hot damn! I am so excited! But instead of downloading stuff I'd normally download, I've dled 13 rap songs, 1 country, and 1 Jason Mraz song. This place is changing me. It's making me crazy.

We are on quite possibly the safest campus on Earth, we have 3300 acres of land, and yet we are not allowed to camp on them. This is just the icing on the cake of bullshit they serve us day in and day out. I know that seems stupid to bitch about, it IS stupid to bitch about, but here, there's nothing to do, nowhere to go, we'd like to be able to spend time OUTSIDE OUR DORM ROOMS, and in addition to all of the other shit they pull on us, it's too much to handle. This place is not a college, it's a fucking finishing school. Jesus christ. Like I said to the director of residence life last night, I came to college to be treated like an adult, not like a five year old. I don't need a babysitter. My parents don't pay 28 grand a year for you to hold my hand and pen me in a 10 by 15. Thanks.

So over half of my hall is transferring out at the semester mark, and the others will transfer next year, because they can't get their money back. This place is also making me sick as a dog. This is the fourth time I've had to miss class because I've been too sick to move with the flu, strep, exhaustion, etc. etc. We all have massive colds and this morning I woke up and literally couldn't move without wanting to scream from pain. It was great.

Parents Weekend was actually pretty okay. I did have like, four screaming fights with my mom, but Sunday was totally fun, and we watched Bend It Like Beckham before she left. My dad had to leave early because we got a call in the middle of WalMart saying my grandma was not likely to last the night. And then while my mom was driving my dad 3 hours to Raleigh Durham airport, we were on the phone, and due to static and miscommunication, I thought that she had died. So I went through the whole grieving process, only to find out at 10:30 that night that my grandma was, in fact, alive. Great. She's in a lot of pain, which makes me really unhappy.

The good news is that Paul is going to come down this weekend and bring friends. Being 21 he's bringing something else, but whateva. There's a Dell Party that night, and we're all going to party all night. Sounds like a good time.

I should really go study for the Italian exam that I have in oh, 9 hours, but... I'm not going to. I haven't studied yet. I just don't give a fuck anymore. What's the point?

Read two really, really, really good books today due to my bedrest: All Loves Excelling, by Josiah Bunting III, and Nine Stories, by Salinger. All Loves Excelling is a female Catcher in the Rye and Separate Peace placed in the now. It's incredible, and the ending really affected me. Movie-wise, think female Dead Poet's Society. Yah. And Nine Stories was awesome. I've been in a big Salinger mood. Next on the book list: Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk. Woo!

Tear drop 2:22 AM of Sarah

I want to know why the health center does not offer counseling on Wednesdays and Thursdays. What, people don't have problems on those days? But that's beside the point.

Last night we played football in the mud and in the rain and absolutely tore up the field. Last night I got dirty, just like I did as a child, and I loved it. And hen I came back in and cleaned myself up and read, "Such, Such Are the Joys" by Orwell for my essay class, and became overwhelmed by my emotions.

I found out yesterday that my grandmother almost OD'd on painkillers. The grandma I actually like. She was such an incredible lady - she told me all sorts of stories and kept me out of trouble and was the sweetest, strongest kind of family matriarch.

And last night, after reading Orwell's essay (which reminded me of A Separate Peace) the emotions and the realizations and the pain that I have been trying not to deal with for the past few weeks finalyl caught up with me and slammed into me like a brick wall.

I slept fitfully and not at all well, missed Biology for the fourth time, and have been living in a haze all day.

On the way to work I walked through the torn up field where we played football last night, where we forgot every problem and focues on the snap, the play, and sliding in the mud. On my way through the field, I got a smudge of mud o my toe, and felt incredibly lost, waiting for the red clay to suck me back into my childhood, suck me back into the good.

But I kept walking and the mud dried; leaving a large red streak on my existence, exactly as my childhood has done. The red clay and the sweet tea of the South have become a part of me, just as sipping on Coronas during a UGA game and words like "y'all" have made their way inside me.

Warm southern blood flows through my veins, tying me to my childhood and my memories of my grandmother. She will never be the same. I am coming home to find her in a nursing home, her knowledge of who I am wiped from her drug-addled mind completely.

Tear drop 4:40 PM of Sarah

I have decided that I am a man. I enjoy football, screaming at football, and playing football during a rainstorm. I burp, I spit, yeah... I'm a man. Any other thoughts?

Tear drop 10:11 PM of Sarah

Vagabonds Abscond with Booty

The above title is a quote from the man himself. Yes, that's right, the man who made me want to be a writer. Salman Rushdie. I first read Haroun and the Sea of Stories when I was in sixth grade and still wanted to be a doctor. I had been invited to this Governor's School for the Arts in SC, so I went, took an art class, a theater class, and a creative writing class. And my creative writing teacher read part of that book to us every day. I was so much younger emotionally and intellectually than I am now that I could not grasp most of the adult humor and allusions in't, I simply enjoyed it because it was a beautiful fantasy tale. And now that I have "grown up" per se, I read it and realize that he was making a social commentary on so many things.

He came to my school today, I got to spend an hour with him in a Q&A with other students and teachers, and then he gave a lecture tonight. And after the lecture he was doing book signings, and I had my copy of Step Across This Line (excellent essays, by the way, Daniel and Nick, you would LOVE THEM,) and Haroun, and so I went up there, waited my turn in line, and instead of telling him what I thought of him, my friend Fallon and I got a picture with him, and I said, "thank-you" as I walked away. We were halfway back to the dorm when Fallon realized that she wanted more cheese (who moved my cheese?) from refreshments, and it was on the way back that I realized that if I didn't tell Salman exactly what I thought of him and exactly what he'd done to me, I would regret it for the rest of my life. I mean, how often does the chance to meet one of your favorite authors, your inspiration, come about?

So we went back, and I nearly had a panic attack upon getting up enough courage to approach him after everyone had left, but I went up to him and introduced myself, and he shook my hand, and we talked some about Haroun, and I told him about how he was my inspiration, and I would just like to say that the man is incredible. In his writing he seems like such a dynamic man, and you feel like he should be a giant, vivacious, towering over everyone with his dark Indian glare. But he's not - he's my height, very soft, still a powerful speaker, but amusing, not politically potent like you would assume him to be. I am still in awe, riding my cloud nine, and so I will leave you with an explanation of the above quote, and some others I found to be amusing.

He was talking about Midnight's Children, and his use of language in that, and explaining how English has really detached itself from English, beginning with the Americanization of the language and so on and so forth. And in writing his book, he wanted to take a break from normal english, so he said some things in terms of Bombay english. He was amusing us, giving us various anecdotes, and one of them was home Bombay people say "robbers get away with the loot" and it comes out "vagabonds abscond with booty." And that's the headline of the papers. He also had a very interesting perspective on the idea of "character is destiny" for all you Friedmanites. He said that in today's technological and war-riddled world, our character can no longer be our destiny, because our character does not determine if we are in the wrong place at the wrong time, a la the World Trade Center or the four planes which crashed. So think on that for a while.

So anyways, some quotes:

"The pull of home and the dream of leaving..."
"If danger is out there looking for you, there's only a certain amount of time you can remain in your hut..."
"For God's sake, open up the universe a little more!"

So it goes.

Tear drop 12:33 AM of Sarah

Is a Dream a Lie If It Don't Come True, or Is It Something Worse?

Everything that I am and have been is slipping away from me, some of it screaming out into the dark rills of the mountains and into the non-city of Lynchburg, and the rest of it is slip-sliding silently away like a whisper into the bone-chilling air.
I’m always so cold when I go outside now, because I left my jacket at home, Nick’s jacket, khaki, Gap, fleece-lined and containing smells of lost boys, cigarettes, and winters passed. When I go outside and remember that I left the jacket at home, I wonder if that is the only thing I left behind.
My father lost his job. This is the third time he’s lost a job in the past two years. I keep hoping that someday soon, he will be able to hold onto a job, find something he loves that doesn’t keep him in New Jersey for 5 of the 7 days of the week. I keep hoping that there won’t be anymore financial troubles, there won’t be anymore troubles with my mother, with my friends, with distance and living here in the next-to-nothing they call a college. And it seems that I what I left behind was the life that I had known. I left it behind so long ago it’s almost impossible to trace the exact moment at which it passed, at which point the reality that I craved became cut off and unavailable, only to be remembered in my life of regret.
I keep thinking, if only he’d stayed with Waldenbooks, if only we’d moved to Michigan, instead of South Carolina, there would be no job hunting, because he worked in the home office. There would be no money problems, because people in home offices are big shots. My life would have been different because I would not have met Stacy, I would not have met Meagan, and therefore, I would not be who I am. I would not be here, in this tiny college in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people who think that the world exists to serve them, and that every other person on the planet is inconsequential. Perhaps my relationship with my mother would be different, somewhat better. Perhaps when I try to talk to her about the problems we have been having since I was three years old, she would listen, and respond, and understand.
I tried to find David last night. I read a letter that he had written me a few years ago, during a good point in our crazy on-again, off-again relationship. The last time I spoke with him he invited me to his wedding, and I refused to go. I don’t know if he got married, I don’t know if he has children now. All I know is that he is about to turn 23, and every year around October I become filled with this longing for the relationship that was so perfect in the fact that it was not. October 22. The first time we talked – he has become so tied into my autumns. I read over the letters, I smell the cologne he used to wear, the CD he sprayed with it, the ring that we fought over so many times. I remember how we used to talk about getting married, about how it was perfect.
It wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is. And now, I can almost not go to college. I cannot afford to stay here next semester, UGA doesn’t take transfers like me, and my mother is against me going to VSU and ruining my life. I have to go home. I have to get a job. I have to pay for a car and pay for rent and remember what it’s like to have adult responsibilities, the responsibilities of tenth grade and near-bankruptcy and utility bills and groceries. I used to know how to balance money once. And now I’ve overdrawn my account, yet again, and have 8 dollars left in my credit account. I won’t get paid until the 10th of October. My mother’s birthday.
Yesterday seems so long ago; the waking up at the alarm and crying because I didn’t want to leave, the begging to just stay in bed and be warm for hours, days more. I didn’t want to have to get out of bed and go back into the cold, and take responsibility for a life that doesn’t want me. I cried for leaving, I cried for the lights of my city that pull me in and enchant me, even at 3 in the morning. I cried for my hate for my mother, and my love for my father, and the loss that will come. I cried last night for Audra’s parents getting a divorce, and Fallon having to drop out of school for similar reasons. I cried because when I was a child, I had imagined this idyllic existence in which I went to Harvard and made my mother proud, and got straight A’s and became a doctor and was genuinely happy. And now that image is shattered, broken.
I reread things tonight, slept for hours, chain-smoked, and eventually came back upstairs and studied for my Education midterm, the last midterm I will ever have to take in this place called Sweet Briar College. The startling finality and reality of the world is ruining me, ruining this existence. And I know that my mother says I’m being melodramatic, and I know that the majority of you do, too. But this is the way I see it, and this is the way I feel it, and all I can feel is the world crashing down around me, and there is no way to stop the pain.


Tear drop 11:42 PM of Sarah