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MiR1288
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Name: Miriam
Country: United States
State: New Jersey
Birthday: 12/3/1988
Gender: Female
Interests: reading, writing, travel, foreign languages, music, museums, acting, theatre, psychology, etc. I am also on a continuous quest to discover why you're REALLY being dishonest with me. Ha.
Expertise: double-meanings, wordplay, word contortion, obsession, persiflage, (useless) fidelity, subliminal messages, the element of surprise, bagging clowns, conspiracy, worrying, winking, irony, peripheral vision, reverie, intrigue, self-inflicted emotional misery, confidentiality, cake, paradox, unspoken emotions, enigma, "collecting information" (that would be spying), having my words completely misunderstood, "working with inclination" (that would be manipulating situations), and hunting down purple chickens.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  VersLibreVotary
Member Since:
12/13/2002
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| The sun is setting and I am sitting on a yellow school bus with Amina. There’s some sort of head count going on to make sure that everyone left the hall after dinner, but I’m probably too busy to pay attention. It’s challenging, trying to figure out how to sit on the cold bus seat so that my legs aren’t freezing, my skirt isn’t twisted and my boots are positioned for maximum comfort. I can’t remember whether I’m in the window seat, but I am looking out the window to my left either way. The bus remains parked long enough for me to make an observation. I think that there are birds involved. There are always birds, or some other flying things, involved in my epiphanies. Seeing birds fly around makes my chest hurt…though I don’t think they inspire the cliché wonder at flight and freedom. After all, seeing leaves on the ground move with the wind exerts the same effect on me—and there’s nothing free about leaves. However, both birds and fallen leaves move with no strings attached. They can glide, they can be swept away. They can work with wind, and they are not expected to do anything else. They are not expected to stay grounded, or be realistic, or plant themselves in one place and remain there despite the forces working to sway them. On that bus, I see birds flying against a dim-lit sky. And then I know. I look at Amina, who wants something so badly that she can feel it, taste it, breathe it. And I know. I know it’s going to happen for her. California. She wants—needs—California…and she’s going to get it. The universe comes together in one instant and I am positive. There’s a pretty equilibrium at work; I have to tell her. I turn to her and tell her how positive I am. California. It will happen for her. For me, it has always been the enemy, a bitter rival for attention and the assailant in a battle over distance, but for her…for her, I know that things will be right. In California.
Months later I will regret having said anything, regret having given this one piece of encouragement for a place and a relationship that were not in my best friend’s best interest. But under the influence of the fickle universe, I forsook my undying skepticism for a split second. I was so sure.
Now. This morning: I feel a tendency toward equilibrium that reminds me of that one time, the only other time I can remember feeling so connected. Suddenly, things are the way they should be. I can’t see it, can’t determine what is so balanced or correct, but it is something. I know that it is something. This time there are birds, no phantom influences, no magical sunsets juxtaposed with sputtering school buses. This time I am blind enough to see that everything is where it is supposed to be. It is not stationary, not stagnant—in fact, it is in place because it is moving. There is a shift. There is a shift and it is right. The universe is winking at my closed eyes. I don’t know about Amina, or about California, or about the expanding future and receding past that pull the present in both directions. I just know that whatever is happening is right, is fine. That I don’t have to see things to feel that they are moving. That I don’t have to move with them to change. I was wrong in the way I thought about Amina’s situation, about what was going to happen to her—about what needed to happen to her. I was looking at the birds. They may work with the wind but sometimes work against it; they have their wings to beat at the air when it is not traveling in the appropriate direction. Now, I am looking at the fallen leaves. They come up against the same force—they feel the same wind in the same direction. They see blades of grass bend in surrender; they see small scraps of garbage toss, tickled, in the street; they see birds beat wings in wild opposition. But fallen leaves, braced by gravity for only so long, simultaneously shake in terror of moving and dance with the idea of change.
Fallen leaves are still…until they have to move.
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| FACT: Apparently, hyperventilation can also occur when reading OLD messages.
I just made squealing sounds because of stale words, I'm really exhausted without much reason, my hair is a mess, I'm doing the self-inflicted torture thing right now (and can't stop), sleep deprived, man deprived, writing a story about a woman whose husband is drafted in the Vietnam War... and I feel like PUBLICLY speaking of all of this, which is never a good sign.
It wouldn't be August without some heartbreak. | | |
| Talking to my mother:
"But don't you get it? That means that I was right all along! Just what I suspected was going on...was actually going on! When he spoke to me on the phone that night like a year ago, I just knew it. I KNEW it! Aren't I smart? (laughing, laughing---laughter dies) Great. Well, I'll have my intelligence to keep me warm at night, then." | | |
| I don’t know what’s going on with this here site of mine.
I have started and stopped entries countless times. I’m not sure why it has become so difficult to write things and slap them on here, but I’ve got a few theories:
1) I am not longer interested in creating a semi-false narrative identity for myself via the Internet.
2) I am well aware that anyone I wanted to reach through writing these entries probably never even visited this site (or knew how to read).
3) I am concentrating on my fiction and other writing so much that it has become near impossible to fit everything in.
4) Vagueness no longer does it for me: in talking about events and people in my life, I am often too impatient to hide true identities. But I know that staying above nitty-gritty details is the only decent thing to do on a public forum.
5) I am not sure how I should represent my writing in a public forum.
6) The history of this ‘blog is bearing down on me: it’s been around since freshman year of high school, with hundreds of entries revealing hundreds of different Miriams.
7) I considered calling it a high school online journal, and stopping the whole thing after graduation…or creating a new one.
8) I am trying to cop out.
It’s a difficult situation. Writing on here was never really about introspection; I was always performing for some phantom online readership. After a few years, I started to view that as worthless. However, when I woke up this morning (at 10:30, like a lazy little girl), I had the urge to write an entry. I understand what that means about my subconscious, and so do my loyal, long-time readers: there is someone I am trying to reach. Now the only question is…who?
Creepy music starts playing.
Chew on that for a bit. I’ve got some story work to do before I head into the Village with the kids tonight. (A couple of hours of writing yesterday, and less than a page to show for it. This is the life.)
Love,
mir
P.S. So far, it’s good to be back. | | |
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Last night (or should I say early this morning), I woke up screaming and hyperventilating. I can’t remember that I was dreaming anything horrifying, but I was in the throes of panic anyway. I could swear that there was something on me---not a person, but a creature of some kind. I tried to tell myself to stop screaming, that I was going to wake the whole house up and make everyone fear for my life, but I couldn’t. As the seconds wore on, the hysterics increased.
The good news is that my dad can make it into my room wearing an I’LL-KILL-IT look immediately after hearing my shrill cries of alarm, and my mom follows him, no questions asked. Aaron doesn’t wake up as quickly as all that, even though he’s closer. Rodney was getting ready to go to work upstairs, but he thought the noise was coming from outside. Just as well; I wasn’t in the mood for a come-as-you-are party in my room.
It’s never happened to me before. I wake up nightly because of dreams or noises or just plain over-stimulation, but I’ve never started screaming as though I were being attacked. Granted, I thought I WAS being attacked. Ah, hallucinations.
The general consensus is that I’m over-stimulated, doing too many things, thinking of too many things, that I don’t know how to relax, that I should take up Yoga, and according to my grandmother (who was promptly consulted in my mother’s attempt to deal with her daughter’s latest signs of psychosis), I should stop being so tight-assed (my term, not hers) and holding in unhappiness. This last one surprised me, even more than the Yoga suggestion. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of my merciless temper would not exactly say that I am a person who keeps things to herself. On further consideration, though, I guess I can hold in unhappiness---in the sense that I deal with the immediate worries through sarcasm, ranting, verbal castration, the works, but don’t often address the longer standing annoyances. I am easily accustomed to the lasting undesirable situations, and to the hurts. On a daily basis, though, there’s no guarantee I won’t send the nearest object careening at your head in frustration.
Personally, I think that the phantom creature who attacked me was just a fluke. My dad keeps calling from work to check on me (I think I scared him more than I scared myself), even though there is clearly less danger when I’m conscious. My mom has offered the following: “There’s only one solution to this sort of thing. You need to sleep WITH someone. Preferably some young, strong man…”
She thinks she’s funny, that one.
In the meantime, my latest false alarm has prompted me to return. I don’t want this ‘blog to die, after all, and I suppose that undergoing terrible sensations begging cathartic recounts is one way to sustain it. Now, I’m off to edit my latest short story for the fourth or fifth time. (What is this over-stimulation you speak of?)
You Break It, You Buy It,
Miriam | | |
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