To speak a truth:  that is what I would like to be able to do each time I come back here.  Not just to speak the truth, but to speak a Truth.  But then, I often think the ultimate Truth is that nothing is that Truth cannot be known.     I'm not really sure what I'm talking about there, but sometimes thoughts come when writing or typing that havn't been in my conciousness yet.   The thing is that I realize it's been forever since I've written and I know you have no reason to believe me when I say that I won't wait so long again, but this time it really is true.  I realized how much I miss this when I had no choice at all.  I went to Japan for 5 weeks (oh yes, aren't you jealous now? *grins*) and the situation was such that I couldn't really get on the internet.  So now that I appreciate the option, I think I'll be using it much more.  I suppose I can't really think to speak a truth every time I come, but maybe a bit about my life will be enough, if it's weekly or more.
     Asfor today, well, there are some truths I realized, or found greatly enforced, over the past amazing weeks.  First, it's all about the people.  I don't know what else there is to say about that.  It's just, it doesn't so much matter where you are, what kind of trees you can see from your bedroom window, what you get to eat for breakfast.  It matters the people that are there, seeing the same trees, eating the same breakfast, becoming your best friends in the world.  It's all about the people.  So don't just throw away your address sheet.  Use it.  Because it's all about the people.
     Next, I know I've said it, or something like it before, but the beauty is in the deatails.  Look around you and if you can't find beauty or wonder, just zoom in.  Go far enough and in the right places, and I garuntee that you'll find it.  Just try. And don't let the little things cease to amaze you.
     Finally, I just want to point out, as an illustration of just how much of a consumer society we are, that when I was at Chicago Midway Airport, wandering around during my three-hour layover, I noticed that the breaks between moving sidewalks weren't at the gates, but between them, at the stores.  Every single time.  Think about that one for a while.
     And I will be back soon.  (though I can't blame you for any skepticism)

~bye

     Prom is going to be friday at my school.  This is the junior-senior prom as we're not big enough to fill a hall with only one grade.  I'm not going, but this is all besides the point.  Prom brings with it, of course, the anti-drinking campaign that is so much less effective than so many hope or believe.  Included in this is the SADD put-on-a-t-shirt-with-someone-killed-by-a-drunk-driver-on-it-and-don't-talk-for-the-rest-of-the-day thing.  The thing is, looking at these pictures you would think that no ugly people, not even any average-looking people were ever killed by drunk drivers.  That's right, every single picture on those shirts was of someone young and beautiful or really young and adorable.  We're used to this in every-day advertising, but in public-service-announcement type advertising, you think they could do a little more to make the cast resemble the public they're supposed to be servicing.  I think it's sad that something so good-intentioned as SADD and the other groups involved in this campaign are helping to spread the beautiful-is-worthwile-and-other-is-not myth.  But then again, it is advertising, and this is something they know would work.  Basically, this situation reveals two things:

1) The beautiful-is-best mindset has permeated so very much of our life, even the best-intentioned messages,  and

2) This campaign really is advertising, and nothing more.  They are trying to sell us the product of a alchohol-free prom, and the idea that we should not be drinking, especially not if we're driving.  If it sounds like I'm degrading the message, I'm not.  I wholly agree with it.  But the thing is, in order to get the message accross, they have to advertise, and use the techniques used in other advertising, because we're such a consumer society. 

~bye

      I feel so happy that I finally have time to do what I want.  Obligations are horrid things, truely they are.  And so since I have time, I'm back yet again, and ready to empty my mind onto this screen, except that I get started and then I just don't know what to say.  Again, I had a wonderful idea at some point but it has since lost me.  I really must write these things down when they come to me.  I do have a little notebook for that purpose, but I'm always just doing so much that I don't want to take the time.
     There is, after all, so much that I love to do.  People ask what you're interested in, and they expect one or two or maybe three things to be your answer, but I could go on for ages.  There is just so much in this world to be interested in, and I want to learn about it all.   There are so many things that hold wonder or joy or unexpected discovery that I don't know how anyone could be content with just one or two or three.  Perhaps this is why I cannot understand obsessions.  I want to expereince and learn as many different things as I can, and therefore to become too caught up in one thing just doesn't make sense to me.  It obviously does to some people, as there are those, there are many, with obsessioins, and I am not saying that they are bad or stupid or anything like that, but just that I don't understand it.  And I can't help but feel like they might be missing out on something.
      But of course, they might say the same of me.

     On another note, for anyone who writes I must recomend a book that I found on the shelf of my house, among a small collection of writing books that my dad apparently used a long time ago: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. It is twenty years old, but I think it should still be read.  For example, the author writes that she tells her students "to share their work with other people.  Don't let it just pile up in notebooks.  Let it out.  Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist.  We suffer anyway as human beings.  Don't make it any harder on yourself."  I'm not reviewing it because I read a little of it a while ago, and a little yesterday, and will probly read a little at various points in the future, but I felt that I should do my best to let anyone who writes know about it.
     And that being all, I shall go now.  

~bye

     Yah, "maybe" is all I'm going to go for here.  It's been so long, I didn't expect to find my hit counter up, but apparently people have still been visiting.  THANKS!  I really do appreciate it, though I'm not sure I understand why you bother.  Then again I've kept trying to visit sites where I've recieved a "this site no longer exists"-type message.  Aren't we humans strange?
       Anyway, the thing is that I am now finally done with double AP exam weekend, and everything else I did before that such as preparing and going to Russia and then doing all the schoolwork I missed - blah!  But now that's over, and we are watching movies in three classes and so I have Time.  Time is a very good thing to have, because I can spend it here, sharing strange, mundane, curious, sometimes, I hope, insightful thoughts with you!  And if you choose to reply and if you have your own blog, then I can read yours.  And it will be wonderful
       As for right now, however, I don't have much to say.  Only, isn't it wierd when it's almost exactly the same temperature inside as out so you don't even feel a difference when you leave a building?  It was like that when I left school to me, and it just occurred to me.  It's like there's no difference between inside and out, which is really strange because I always love outside so much more.  It's rather depressing when something you love is nothing more than something you don't.  Or seems to be.
      Well, as for anything else, despite my lack of things to do, my brain has no other ideas.  I thought of something in I don't know, A.P.U.S. History maybe, but it escapes me now.  Let me just say before I go that if you have never seen October Sky, you need to go to the video store/library Right Now.  We just watched it in physics, and I'd seen it before, but I forgot how much I love that move.  OK, go now, video store.    

~bye

     I love the Olympics.  For two weeks, the television shows sports that are not foot-basket-base ball.  And it is the entire world, so I can cheer for other countries when I'm fed up with the US.  But mostly I love the spirit, the coming together, and while it is a competition, it is most of all a celebration of sports.  And it doesn't hurt that underdogs keep winning.  I will be sad Sunday when we have to see them go.   And then the next day, I return to those halls of "learning" which exhaust me by their sheer power to numb my mind:

lights on the chalkboard
pull down over screen
marks appearing
dissapear
sound in the could air
classroom stuffy box
words are passing
soon forgotten
I have no interest
no care in what is said
I have no knowledge
of the happenings
it's all been said and done before


ten minutes to bell
"notebooks out"
maybe we'll learn
something now
no, we're just
going over the homework


There is a typical math class for you.  And the sad part is, I like math.  Quite a lot, acutually.  I'm thinking about teaching myself calculus.  It would be a welcome change.

~aria

     I knew it had been a long time since I posted, but I did not realize that long time was OCTOBER.  So here I am, back after four months, and no one's probably reading this anymore, but that's ok, because I still feel like writing.  And maybe I can bring some people back, or get some new ones, although I can certaintly understand why many may not believe me when I say that I really will try from now on to post more often.  If I were making excuses, I'd say that I was too busy with swimming, and now that its over almost, I'll have more time.  But I don't believe in excuses, only explanations, and I'm not even sure that that is the only reason I havn't been around.
     The truth is, I've been relatively happy.  I've been living in the moment, keeping a journal-blog for my friends (don't try and find it, I have no links between these two places) and all in all I don't know, maybe some people are growing up, or maybe I'm giving up.  Maybe I'm giving up and joining them, and making it that much harder for me to examine and write with distraught fascination thier twistedly logical ways.  There is only so much I can write about boring classes and the passage of time, and without people, these are my two main topics.  Perhaps I need to expand.  Perhaps I just need to slow down and take a moment out of all the things that are eating at my time, and let myself just think.  Perhaps...
     I don't have a book blog entry now, but I plan to write one or two today or tomorrow, and they should be up soon.  This is all I have for now, but I will gather some other things, and likewise, they should be up soon.  I hope as much as you do that this is true.  It is an awful thing to not be able to do what you want because your duties demand too much of your time.  Yes, it is an awful thing.