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-- Wilbur Smith |
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Confusion; the homepage of Jenn Have a thought? Sign the book!
The blog of Jenn, a.k.a. poltergeist.
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Bewilderment of the day: I'm no longer updating this. No poetic farewells; I just thought that, seeing as I'm now at college, in a different country, experiencing new things, etc etc etc, I should start anew with this journal thing. So, if you're still interested, then check out poltergeist at DIARYLAND (nope, didn't go far!) instead of pitas. Adios! -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: I'm swinging back and forth like a metronome! I'll talk to one person, I'll feel one way. I'll talk to another, I'll feel completely different. I don't like being this vulnerable. Shamus was here and that was nice - it was a good farewell, good to just be held by him and hear him say, "this time a year ago, we didn't even know each other's names," because that always gives me hope, when he says that. Good to talk to Simran, yesterday, and have her say that she thinks its such a good thing that I'm going, that she's jealous in a way, and everything so competent and tidy and logical and beautifully Simran, yet I know that there was emotion layered over what she said, because I know Simran well. Good to talk to Caitlin, my final farewell, the only one I cried for, and just a short conversation on the phone. I should be asleep... But I'll go to sleep knowing that she loves me. I'm crying now. That's so silly... Salah said that she started reading my letter on the plane, and she started crying and just sat there crying for an hour, next to her Mum, thinking, "what the hell am I doing? Who do I think I am? I can't do this!" Salah doesn't cry very often. Good to know that I have people like Kiri and Maresa and Caitlin who have known me for so long, my grounding and my home to return to and my reminder that me, the whole package, all aspects and my past/present/future, are worth loving. Good to know that I have people like Dan and Helios who are younger and can bring me back to high school, people that remind me of the continuity of friendship and of life. Good, very good to know that I have all these stories that are spiralling into the future, myself just a peripheral on the edge of their sagas. I have enough roots here to hold me from a continent away. I have enough stories stored inside me to keep me standing, even if my story dies around me. But it won't. I'm going to go to sleep now, and I'm not going to lie awake worrying, and I'm going to do useful little things on the plane. Good-night. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Tomorrow morning. I leave. I talked to Salah on the phone this evening - she's in Montreal, settled in (more or less) and having a beautiful time. She's happy. She's glad she's there. She feels like she's "made the right choice." I feel two things: One, I want this feeling, too. I want to be experiencing the college life! I want to meet dozens of people and have friendliness coming out of my ears, I want to decorate my room and make tea in a kettle and look out MY window onto a view of the campus. I don't know what it's going to be like - but I want to experience "discovering myself." I think I'm discovered right now! What more can there be? My life is pretty full. I want to know what more there is. Two, I'm desperately afraid that I'm not going to feel any of this. Talking to Salah has made me feel like I'm supposed to - well, I know now that's it's possible, at least - and if I don't get it right away, I KNOW I'm going to be let down. Expectations! More expectations. Expectations and comparisons are what kill experiencing. Maybe it won't feel the same way for me! Maybe it'll come slower. But if it doesn't happen right away, if I don't have the immediate acceptance and sense of excitement and importance that she has, I'm going to be let down. Goddamn you, expectations! Goddamn myself, for still obsessively comparing everything to Salah. I'm gone tomorrow, and I think that I've just started to worry more about what I'm going to than what I'm leaving behind. My life is tilting forward. I can almost feel it physically, the vertigo. What's it going to hold? I honestly don't know. Let it turn out like Australia, but bigger. But better. But richer. Is that even possible? Surprise me, life. Prove that it can be more than I imagine. Let me swing, let me slide. Let me just be. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: So, tomorrow is my last day at home. I leave very early in the morning the day after tomorrow - by which I mean WEDNESDAY, the 27th of August. A momentuous day, I'm sure it will be remembered as a momentuous day. I'm off to college! I don't really know how I feel. When I realized, sometime this afternoon, that after tomorrow night I won't be sleeping at home for 3 months (I come home for Christmas) and in all likelihood I will never again spend the majority of my time in this house... Well, it felt a bit weird. I still haven't fully realized it - and I probably won't until I've been at Princeton for awhile. Or maybe I'll understand the enormity of me leaving home the very first night I'm alone in my dorm room (well, I have a roommate, but you know what I mean) and I'll just start crying. Or cheering! Who knows. It's new, it's exciting, it's a total change. Regardless of how happy I am right away, this is an amazing step.
I'm my own pep talk! There are so many things I'm thinking right now. My consciousness? It runs like this... Not many doubts. Numbness, a little. I carved home! I carved home, painstakingly, and now I'm leaving. I left home before, and it worked out. But always afraid of not recording enough... Impossible to tell what perspective the future will bring. Afraid of feeling alone, that overall. What, will I find love at college? A rich east-coast husband, oh but I'm a gold digger, that's all I am. What a catch! Doctor, lawyer, CEO... But I'll stay with the musicians, I can't help myself now. Music and music and music. Art. Apollo! What use is code? Don't panic, it says, but I don't need that sign because I don't panic anyhow... Is that a flaw, to not panic? Is not feeling overwhelmingly terrified a sign of not feeling anything deeply enough? Paranoia, self-doubt, this is how we live. Has confidence been permanently implanted? One can only hope. Helios, the way you look makes me want to cry one tear, and I don't know what you're thinking. We meet again, the last time and all I can do is gossip! Gossip - no, I don't gossip. Insightful personality analysis, that's my niche. Good grief. If they're all like me, I'll laugh or I'll cry. I'll cry anyhow. I cry when I have shots. They took my blood the other day - sucked it out of my unfeeling arm to test it. And I worried. A little, the paranoia again - they'll be able to tell the THC in my blood and then the doctor will call and tell my mum just like that goddamn customs officer and then she'll be so mad at me, all the way across the continent she'll be mad and she'll never trust me again. But I know it's only paranoia. Which is why I'm not panicking. Does introspection kill your emotions? I have no coherent thoughts about leaving. I think I need to stop. But I'll miss home - that I know. Not in a hurting way - I didn't before, when we went to Australia. And I won't hurt, I won't need desperately, but I'll miss it. Everyone comes back here - everyone always comes back. It'll all be waiting for me, and the parting will make it sweeter. My friends? It's not goodbye. I hate goodbye. I hate letting things end. It's like a bitter surrender. So I don't let anything end - by the time I'll admit that they've ended, it's months or years past, and then I can deal with it, or push it to the side. Ending is too painful. Maybe that's another adult skill. Is there a class for that? Learn how to end. Scissors, tears and all the rest. One good thing that's come of this: I have my own computer now. That's a big step. A bigger step than doing my own laundry (which I still don't know how to do). Au revoir, my dearest companions. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day:
The way he sat for days on the sofa and just stared out
Then he awoke one day, both from sleep and from a deeper unconsciousness
Really, you barely saw him; -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Returning to your apartment, you notice that the curtains have been pulled open, and the daylight is slowly drifting inwards. The fraying pull-cord for the curtains sways in the breeze created by the heater, though the heavy material of the curtains themselves stays motionless. You move quietly, feeling like you're intruding even though it's your home, and silently take off your shoes at the door. Don't say anything, you think. Just walk in, he'll be in the kitchen with coffee, just walk in and sit down and let him be natural, let this be natural... Your voice betrays you. "Apollo? You there?" Already you sound stilted, nervous. You're always nervous around him. "I just went out... For a few minutes, you know, well... I mean, for coffee. Not that I don't have any here. Did you find it?" You enter the little kitchen, with its explosion of spider plants and faded wallpaper. He's slumped at the table, the sad salt trail left unattended on his cheek. Cheerfully, the coffee maker burbles and splutters, and you wordlessly fill a mug for him, ignoring the drops that spill onto your counter. "Er," he says, lifting his eyes to you. "Thanks." You pour yourself some coffee as well, and sit down next to him, stirring cream into your mug. "Did - did the newspaper arrive?" you ask, unable to ask him how he is. "I didn't notice it when I came in." "Yeah, yeah, I grabbed it," he answers, and takes a long slurp of the coffee. "It's over on the counter. I'll, uh, I'll get it." Grasping the mug, he stands up and moves to the counter, but before reaching it he stops at the window. It's fogged up, a translucent barrier between the crisp cold outside and the warm apartment. He pauses, then draws a small, crooked face with his finger, its sloping eyes tilted at a miserable angle and its mouth sagging hopelessly. His shoulders curl inwards, but he retrieves the paper and brings it back to the table. Neither of you speak, and the sound of the coffee machine gradually stops. Slowly, he looks up at you. You look back, and there is nothing you recognize in his eyes; you've never felt what he's feeling. It's not sadness, not bitterness nor anger nor fear, but some kind of bottomless nameless emotion that is more instinct than intellect. Its very strangeness makes you feel closer to him, as though it were a reassurance: you can't understand the incomprehensible, that's okay. Help me anyhow. With a hand that is more steady than you had imagined it could be, you reach out and touch the line of salt on his cheek, gently rubbing it away. This isn't how I thought it would be, you think, and it seems like he's heard you, somehow. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: ..."Who's staying with you?" Petra asks, and you have to wonder if she already knows the answer. Fuck that, you think. You don't have to wonder. How could she know? Petra doesn't know anything about this. It makes you feel angry to imagine her thinking she knows, thinking she knows anything at all about Apollo. Petra lowers her eyelids and tugs her eyebrows upwards at the same time, making a picture of snide disinterest. "Anyhow, darling, just thought I'd let you know." She pulls her scarf tighter around her neck, and the wool falls in a line of perfect elegance to the table's surface. "I know you've always had a little -" Petra slides you a look "-thing with Aurora. So." With startlement, you realize she's about to leave. It only makes you angrier - you had been about to get up and walk out the door, but as always, Petra is about to outmanouever you. Beat you to the punch. "I'll see you," Petra remarks - not a farewell, just a statement. "Jorge is coming to play at the restaurant with me on friday night, and we'd love for you to be there. Aurora shouldn't be around." Gracious, as always. She rises to her feet. "Bring Apollo, why don't you?" And with that, Petra tosses the end of her scarf over her shoulder and leaves the cafe, the almost imperceptible fragrance she always wears still floating around your coffee. With disgust, you push the cup away. Petra, you think. Fucking Petra. You imagine her the first time you met her, dragging those talented pale fingers over the piano at the little restaurant, and you wish for a furious moment that you'd splashed the wine all over her fashionable slim dress instead of buying her another glass. How the hell did Petra know? -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Can't be helped.. So then, bring yourself to this point, the light in sickly shades coming through the curtains, the apartment small but looking large because of his crumpled thin form on the couch, and you watching him, just standing there. He stirs, and you look away, ashamed of witnessing the painful twist of his eyebrows and the faint salten trail down his cheek. A little sound escapes his lips, neither moan nor word, and abruptly you snatch your coat from the peg and slide out the door, suddenly feeling stifled and overheated, your heart pounding angrily. Goddamn heaters, you think, swiftly recalling every instance in which you felt overheated in this apartment. The air outside is cold, mercilessly so, and you suck it bitterly into your lungs, letting it shock you and walking quickly away from the door. It's not fair. You brood over coffee, having deliberately ignored the selection of teas because the scent reminds you of him. The coffee reminds you too, because whenever you were out together you'd order coffee, but it's somehow less. Coffee reminds you of so many things. Childhood, mostly. Which, you muse, is weird. Decidedly so. Why'd I let him in, you think. You recognize the fact that there was no way you could have done anything else, and change your query to Why did I need to let him in? It's like opening a floodgate, and the unintelligible flow of Apollo, Apollo, Apollo rushes through. All the times you said to yourself, wonderingly, I would do anything. All the times you realized, wonderingly, that it had been a month and a half since you last talked, and you hadn't even noticed. All the times that every external signal said he had forgotten you existed, but somehow your paranoid self ignored every external signal and clung instead to an inner faith that he still felt you, still knew you. Shivering uncomfortably, you stir a swirl of cream into the coffee. All the times you wondered why you bothered talking to him at all, and all the times you wondered why you ever did anything else besides talk to him. You furrow your eyebrows and blow on the coffee, feeling the steam dampen your forehead, and admit silently that "all the times" you had spent with Apollo amounted to about fifteen, tops. Yet somehow the few meetings amounted to more than anything else, anything else at all. "Hey," comes a voice. You look around, and see her... The girl from the restaurant, the snarky pianist with long white fingers and stylish cynicism to deal with every situation. With long woollen limbs and scarves that brushed the ground yet never got dirty, and sleek hair that always felt like silk. "Enh-" you make the noise in your throat, choked and surprised. She slips into the chair beside you and juts both elbows onto the small table, criss-crossing her fingers under her chin. With a sarcastic glint in her eye, she smiles flirtatiously and leans towards you. "How are you," she purrs. "I haven't seen you." Just like that, you think. 'I haven't seen you,' Not 'I haven't seen you around,' or, 'I haven't seen you for a few days,' but just 'I haven't seen you.' As you watch, she languidly inclines her head and brushes her lips across her knuckles, resting her head in this new position and regarding you silently. It's always open ended, always rife with hidden meanings. "Mm." You narrow your eyes. "Petra. I haven't been wanting to see you." You both know it's a lie, but you continue. "I've got someone staying with me right now," you say, hedging. It's not really the truth - that's not why you haven't seen her - but it's something to say. "Oh," Petra slides you one of her smiles, and then one of her hands, reaching into the cradle your fingers have made around your coffee cup. "Dear," she grins, insinuating her own fingers between yours with maddening dexterity, "I wanted to tell you, Aurora was at the restaurant last night. Crying, wouldn't you know. And I happen to know that she's broken up with Apollo." You snatch your fingers out of her grasp. "Who's staying with you?" Petra asks, and you have to wonder if she already knows the answer. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Switching the timeframe... Let's have a little retrospective, mix it UP! I didn't like Aurora. Paradoxically, I liked Apollo for his love for her... But I didn't like Aurora. She was almost like another Salah, or another Jessica; I didn't want to be tempted into being like her, into being a pale imitation of her. I would always rather be myself, flamboyantly or pathetically or quietly in the dirty gutter, instead of someone else, no matter how successfully. The way I didn't like Aurora, though, wasn't just that. It was something more, a petty annoyance with all of her mannerisms that amounted to an Everest of grievances, a smoking mound of irritation that unsettled me, because Aurora has always been a good person and I can usually see past the shortcomings of good people. It wasn't just because of Apollo, either. I disliked her for her clothing, her choice of earrings, the way they were large but not too much so - fashionable but not too much so - and everything about her, beautiful but not too much so. She was accessible in the most putrid way. She had little obvious faults that made you feel a little easier about her, but then she had a soft, distancing voice that made you feel you could never really know her. Elevated, she walked around with her friends, and you got the feeling that they were protecting her, this delicate puzzle who didn't need any protection anyhow. Pretender, I thought to myself. Even if she doesn't know it, she's pretending. To herself and to everyone else. I remembered my earliest knowings of Apollo, and I remembered always liking, in an inexplicable instinctive sort of way, his devotion to Aurora. I wondered what it meant, that they had broken up. It wasn't just a breakup, a little melodrama on the path to adulthood; this was the end of a visceral love that was always running through them both, something that coloured their personalities and was utterly impossible to ignore. In my heart, I didn't believe it was actually over. It couldn't be; not so quickly. Great loves suffer great pains. But I thought about it only fleetingly, and turned my immediate consciousness over to Apollo, still there on the couch, but beginning to stir, in the dawn light. It was thawing my apartment, coming through the olive curtains and rotting everything it touched as the iced ornaments and digital knick-knacks finally unfroze. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: What's that? The storyteller's here? I'd like you to close your eyes. Sit back in your chair, let your spine relax into the spine of the chair. Settle into that ass-groove. Now breathe in, and when you breathe, smell the sharp acrid smell of gasoline spilt on snow, of new rubber boots snapped by cold, of the St. Lawrence river quivering with traffic and trash. Then listen, and imagine you hear the soft whisper of skeletal trees, the solid sound of footsteps on stone, and the tinkle of cheap bells tied to the doorhandle of a little store. Open your heart, and imagine it fallen like a dead leaf. You're walking down the street, trying to imagine that the vibrancy of autumn is still hanging on the trees. In your core, you know that it's not the leaves of autumn you miss, nor the colours; all around you, the flood of brilliant winter coats and bright scarves make a river of colour. No, what you miss about autumn is him... All of him, everything about him, remembered from a few short meetings before he disappeared into his art. His brown hair like a bird. His parade of second-hand sweaters, and his ink-stained hands. That's what you miss about autumn. Open your heart, and imagine it leaping, as you see his face. "Apollo - Apollo!" "Huh? Oh, hi..." Imagine his face, eyes squinting slightly and lips smiling, cheeks brown from winter sun reflected off the snow, with sensitive ears set just a little too high. He's wearing the beige scarf. You remember it, remember watching that scarf while on the bus because you were too timid to look fully into his face. "How... How are you?" You ask, knowing that your words are inadequate but recognizing that you've never been truly comfortable around each other, anyhow. You understand his awkwardness, and he understands yours, and while that is not comfortable either, it is true. "Oh, alright..." You sit inside a cafe together, and both of you think about the famed cafe culture, the mysterious world of beatniks and hidden geniuses, all tucked away inside these little coffee houses. You remember dreaming of it, and you remember discovering it wasn't real, either. Or rather, that reality is never quite like the story, and nothing is truly extraordinary while you're living in it. "I..." He begins. "I. Well. We. Aurora and I broke up." And he talks, finally, talks and talks and talks and wanders clumsily but achingly earnestly through all of his emotions, sorts through his mind like a madman flinging things out of a closet at random. "It wasn't really that," he says. "There wasn't really any," he muses. "Our apartment was full of line drawings, she didn't really, well," he demurs, "she well. Didn't like seeing herself naked all over the walls, er. But..." And he trails off again. "It didn't really mean anything. The drawings. I was... I don't know what it was." Refusing to meet your eyes, he picks through the crumbs left on his napkin. He is restless. Usually he would have been walking far before this. "Let's go," you say. "Let's walk," and it's your suggestion for once. He gets up and wraps his scarf around his neck more carefully. "You know," he comments, "Aurora had this canary. You never saw it. I guess you never saw where we lived. I was usually the bird one, you know? But she, uh, just really loved this little canary." You wait for him to finish. "I think," he says, ever so quietly, "I think she's left it out in the cold." And a little tear escaped his left eye. You let him stay with you. He lies curled and small-boy sad on the couch, covered by the oddly limp knitted blanket you made once upon a time. You won't admit the way your whole self, all parts, sways and billows like shredded silk in a gale, just to know he's there. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Odd, how certain people can still make you nervous. I'm whiling away my summer watching t.v. with my brother, making jewelery I may never sell (yes, the pessimist within me is rising!) and regressing to my old anime loves. I don't feel bad about any of it - I fully expected and intended to crash into lazy intellectual depravity as soon as summer really began. And oh, I have. And oh, OH, it's beautiful! I am indulging wholeheartedly in all of my guilty pleasures - fanfic, fanart, anime, the Harry Potter online community, a dash of yaoi here and there, late nights on the computer, drinking many cups of tea and taping cheesy cartoons - I'm sure there are more... Oh, it's not really that bad. I'll try and be a little conscientous, I promise. But right now I really need to sleep. -poltergeist- . . Bewilderment of the day: Changed the layout for... summer, I guess. Seeing as I'm all done with high school. Completely and utterly. Forever. Weird. -poltergeist- . . |