Communication Breakdown

I feel like I should have more to say. Perhaps I do, but I've acquired a kind of laziness of expression. I'm taking brevity to its ridiculous extremes, where clarity and conciseness are threatening to walk out. I suppose that's where Nieztsche wrote, particularly Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with all his aphorisms. But to go farther is not wise, though that's where my laziness threatens to go. It amazes me how many words people can generate on one particular thing. I found it astonishing to be surrounded by billions of words while trying to extract a mere 1500 from my brain while working in the thesis tower. It's also amazing how little people can have to say to each other, even living in the same house.

I seem to have gotten worse at explaining myself since starting college. Sometimes it just seems so useless, when I have nothing new to say about something, to just rehash other ideas to say "I agree." The bitch about the pace of Reed is that I often feel like I don't have the time to come up with new ideas, as ironic as that may be in a community where the life of the mind is everything; it's like always need to be working, producing, doing. But these things are impossible to accomplish with empty mental reserves. This is one of the things I forgot last semester.

Soon I need to sit down and put all of those once-forgotten but now remembered things in one place, so that I can look back at them to make sure they are not forgotten again.

I also need to figure out what comes next. I'm ready to carry on, but I need to know where I'm going, aside from back to Reed in a month and a half or so. How do I fill up the time between then and now? A less pressing question is what do I want to do after Reed? At this point, I don't know.

I Am A Happy Girl

I love this song to little shiny pieces, to borrow an expression from Sunil. Actually, there are quite a few songs on Morning View that are worthy of being loved to little shiny pieces. "Aqueous Transmission" is trippy in the way that my one and only hallucinogenic experiment was trippy; it takes me back to the same way I felt then and for the two days following - calm, peaceful, mellow. (Plus it has frog song!) As a result, I slept really, really well this morning, especially for the small amount of it that I got.

I managed to get up before noon, and subsequently got to see my niece, and one of my aunts and a cousin that I haven't seen in a while. (The same aunt who told me "don't be a stranger" and then neglected to tell me or my parents about this same cousin's birthday party.) They both acted slightly distant toward me, despite my having greeted them brightly and with a smile. But, whatever. I can't make them be civil. I can't help but idly wonder, though, if my old maid aunts talk about me, and if they do what they say. They seem to have a knack for saying unflattering things. One of them was talking today about how the other "hasn't been working enough" lately. This from the mouth of a woman who hasn't worked in years, and carries around an oxygen tank. Well, it's not a tank, because it's a lot more portable than that. I don't know what the hell it is, exactly, but she's hooked up to it so that she can breathe. She's been collecting disability for much of the time I can remember. This disqualifies her for criticizing other people about working or not, in my mind, so I can't take that complaint seriously.

But speaking of working, I was offered a babysitting job today. I would be helping someone take care of four-month-old twins. I don't know if I want to take it. Yes, a job is good, but I generally think of myself and babysitting as mutually exclusive concepts. I don't know how to deal with kids. I'm also rather enjoying my time off. But I also need to do something, to get moving again. Or keep moving. One of those.

For now, however, music. I'd like to loose myself in it.