A Private University in the Public Service

I don't believe that I am in the most traditional of universities, but it suits me extremely well. The transition has been excellent. The days are busy with orientations and a mass of loosely school sponsored events and non-school sponsored events. My not being eighteen is really annoying already, however. There are a lot of fun things that only eighteen-year-olds can go to. Tear. Ah well. To de-tangent, and to touch back on what I was saying about tradition or the lack there of, New York University seems to retain only flux as the years move on. It's kind of a pride thing, I guess.

My roommate, Eric , and I get along really well. We've spent a lot of time together not because we're scared and have no other friends, but because we seem to make a very personable, approachable pair. It's sort of fun because everyone is so desperate for friends that they'll just pop in a stranger's room with know pretense for being there. Eric and I have made really good friends with some people we met yesterday at a party and we've already gone shopping, and gone to a movie, and eaten like four meals with them. It's like an accelerator machine for friendships is turned way up. Oh, and so many smart, funny, and socially aware people to choose from. I love the admissions department and its role as a filter for people I don't like. It's been two days and I already feel like I made the perfect choice in this university. The sort of people I get along with are the only people here.

I guess the best way to describe this massive community is the words of the president or whatever of the university. He described it as a "multitude of microchasms within a greater community...a university in and of the city." I kind of like that, but he also said a lot of lame things like demanding that we freely hug and challenging us to call him (he is listed in the phone book) directly if we need anything. There are like 5,000 freshman alone, so I can only imagine how many prank calls he's brought down upon himself this evening.

The biggest difficulty in the transistion is shaking off the hateful, self-deprecating attitude I had about high school. I'm so used to going to school in a place that I felt had low standards that I'm finding it awkward to feel good about the school I'm in. A lot of people have expressed the same general concerns. I'm sure it'll pass. The school goes to a lot of effort (as I'm sure all schools do) to express just how great it is and how amazing we are for getting in. The program I'm in is even more exclusive than I thought, according to the statistics they read off to us, but, you know, that's what they want me to think (see what I meant about the cynicism?).

What is a great deal of fun for conversation-lovers like myself is that you can't just go grab something to eat without it turning into a two hour conversation. That's all I did all day -- eat and talk to people. I literally went straight from breakfast with some people we met at the Tisch party to lunch with some other people because the breakfast took too long.

I walk a lot. It's about twenty minutes from my apartment to the hub of activity and I make the trip several times a day. It's pleasant. I hope to explore the city more in the next few days, but so far my travel has been confined to a ten or fifteen block radius. Our kitchen currently contains silverware and Snapple, but that's good enough for the present.

I'm looking forward to the beginning of classes. I don't have anything I have to do until six tomorrow, but I didn't have anyting I had to do today, either -- yet there is still no chance of boredom. There is always new place to eat or a new street to go down or some activity to do (not even mentioning the innmuerable errands). The only limits in this respect that I'l face, I believe, is the limitations of my wallet. I should get a job at some point to supplement the income, but it'd be annoying if it cut into my freetime to excessively. I think I'm going to ride on the money I have for a few weeks and see how and where I can fit work into my school schedule at some later date.

To end with, I heard an ironic little bit of information today. Apparently this university was originally founded as a source of higher education for the middle class when colleges and universities only serviced the wealthy and elite. Now it is ranked number one for students complaining about the cost and lack of financial aid. Like I said, this university is all about change.

Pretty Soon I'll Blow My Nose

I'm straight up at work right now bored out of my mind. I imagine this is as close to an office job as I will ever come. I hope, anyway. I keep on finshing the stuff I'm supposed to do too fast, so I'm just waiting for the next thing to come up. Talk about under-utilized. The movie Office Space has an entirely new level of comedy for me. I'm always thinking about when Peter Gibbons, the main character, describes his day at the efficiency meeting:

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

It's just so much funnier now because, I swear, I came in this morning fifteen or so minutes late and I've been more or less spacing out since then. I can't believe I'm getting paid for this. I wish I had a cubicle. The office is nice, though. I try to break up the boredom by going on little personal errands. I'll think to myself if I can make it through the next fifteen minutes then I'll go and get a drink of water. If I make it to 11:30 I'll check my e-mail. In twenty minutes I'll go the bathroom and wash my hands. It reminds me of my amuesment park days, tricking myself into beliving that if I only had an hour to go until the last hour then it somehow meant less than two hours. Ignorance is bliss.

It's only 11:17? I have nearly six more hours in this insanity factory. Oh! I have work to do! Yay!

Willful Ignorance

It is the strangest thing. I wake up and am halfway to dialing her number before I realize. That is the greatest source of pain that I seem unable to get past. Nights when I'm ripped from my slumber, my brain still foggy from the shock, I forget what has happened and my thoughts leap to her. It feels the same everytime.

I wonder what she would be doing now. Would she still be interested in going to school for art? Would I have finally convinced her to let me go to school near her, regardless of my ambitions? Would college still be a source of stress or would it be a source of freedom and hope? Would I be looking forward to college as much as I am now if she were still alive? Would we have stayed together? Would an awkward distance have formed between us?

I got in the habit, a year ago this morning, of clenching my eyes shut, trying to drag out how long I could pretend nothing had happened, after waking up. Those moments of willful ignorane are some of the best moments of my day.

I hate writing about these things, but I am running out of people to say them to.

A Judge to Mark By

It's moderately unnecessary to mention that I'm a big fan of phtographs. Alongside other college preperations I've been trying to find a handful of photographs in my collection that sort of sum up what life was about here in Irondequoit to take with me or whatever. You know like three or four. The "V for Vendetta Day" beach picture is, certainly, a must, but beyond that I can't really figure out what else to bring. Any photographs from Florida are essentially made redundant by the first picture (nearly everyone who went on the Florida trip also skipped school to see V for Vendetta and both events had a very similar vibe for me). I've also got a picture of my siblings I'm bringing. And I guess one of my dog.

Something is missing, though. And I can't quite put my finger on it. I love when a picture, for example, shows what someone is thinking or when a picture of a building says a lot more about it than the architectural style. I just want a picture that screams "this is what I did in Irondequoit, this is what it was like, here's how it felt..." It's rather poorly timed, but I'm starting to really dig this town lately. Perhaps I am asking for too much, but I do have a lot of faith in visual mediums.

I've always liked being able to stand in the center of my room facing towards the left, front corner (oriented by the doorway) and see my childhood in a gradual pan around the walls. I "waste" a lot of time in this way. I -- obviously -- can't replicate such a thing in my new surroundings and I think that is why I want to find one picture that encompasses all the other pictures in the room. I'm fairly certain my desire to accomplish this monstrosity of photography is only amplified by the torment of deconstructing my room. I am happy to make room for the new household lifeform, but I wish it didn't involve tearing down the wall coverings. I hate photographs in boxes or albums or even online, really. I like them on walls, so I'm dreading the coversion to, probably, boxes. A lot of boxes, most likely. I've already started to take some down. The ones I particularly like, first. There are now holes where I can see the green paint, long forgotten.

However, all this said, I am so pumped for Sunday. Let's go!

A Mark To Judge By

I can't believe it has only been a year. Thinking of her is ancient thing. It has been with me for a very long time. I remember the last night we spent together -- the night before the accident. I remember a week, ages ago, in a hospital room with an audience of tubes and needles. I remember being told to "let go." I remember how foreign the notion of her death was. I remember contemplating what made a person alive. I remember denying the truth. I remember seeing her lungs rise and fall though I was repeatedly being told that she, her mind, soul, was gone. I remember waking up thousands of times and dialing her number hopelessly. I remember emptiness, numbness, abandonment. I remember speaking about hope and optimism at her funeral, feeling shame at my hypocrisy at the same time. I remember hating God, but not denying Him.

I fell in love with Elizabeth Williams in the middle of the night on a hill. Melissa and Dan were there too, but they're blurry shapes in my memory. They are made spectres by the focus of my thoughts. There is scant room for them in my recollections of the twilight. I've never gone back there. When I go to Melissa's house I avoid looking in that direction. I have not been up to her house since. I barely keep in touch with her family. It's not that I want to forget or ignore anything -- it's the nature of the effect it has on me. It's not like the pain of a burn or a shock. It's a pain that settles in to me, sinks down into my muscles, and wedges between my joints and bones. It weighs me down. Breathing becomes an intense, focus-requiring chore. It feels like my body is trying to suffocate itself. It frustrates me more than I can effectifely articulate that I'm not strong enough to think about past memories and feel happy about them. I want to think about all the past memories and be overcome with a feeling of bliss, not of anger or selfishness. Instead I focus on what is lost, what I'll never have, what used to be and can't breathe.

I don't claim to understand what happens. The more courageous of my friends have asked me what I thought about the accident, but I have no answers. I want some answers, but I have come to the slow, grinding conclusion that there are no answers, not worldy ones. It should be so easy for me to wrap up that era of my life. In her own subtle way she prepared me for a future without her:

“If we, one, don’t work out, two, we work out and I die, three, I become a complete and total…I want you to move on. Really. I need you to accept that we might not always be together. And life is just so beautiful, all the time, and I don’t want you to miss out on any of it. And I don’t want you to be alone. I want you to do everything you want to and if I’m in the way of what you want, that’s okay with me. You can leave. Everyone has a certain amount of time in their life, and maybe the time isn’t that much."

But it is simply not acceptable. I have been writing a novel, essentially, about everything, but I am not prepared to show it to anyone at this point in my life because of what it says about me, and because of what it says about her. It is getting harder to write. My memories are fading rapidly. I fear that someday I'll remember her name and little else. So much is recorded in letters and journal entries -- and there are enough objects to trigger shards of events, but someday, I fear, those words will not connect to memories, just words. And words alone are very insufficent items.

We used to eat lunch every day in the courtyard, a lot of us, on an extremely feminine-coloured Mexican blanket last year. The year before that, in the Spring when I was first starting to get to know her, we ate out in the courtyard as well. I have a lot of memories from those afternoons, some of the faces change, but they were memorable times. I remember everyone always talking about how we should date and we'd just smile and laugh and go back to whatever we were doing. Little did I know, although she told me about a year later over cheesecake, that Melissa had bet her a dollar that she couldn't get me. I still laugh when I think about that long of a relationships having its routes in a financial transaction. It didn't occur to me until the last day of school that I couldn't wait until September to see her again, so I finally did something about it.

It would be dishonest for me to say I'm not bitter about some of the things that happened, but those afternoons were happy times, some of the memories I can smile about. At least there's that.

"If it means anything to you these days…I love you right now. And that won’t change. You’ll have that little right now forever."

Early Morning Revelations

I have neither the constitution nor the fortitude to conquer this surreal farewell demon, but I am strangely optimistic and hopeful for the future. Good luck to all my brothers.

So Long, So Long

It was dumb to start a new journal so carelessly after writing in the other one for so many years. I don't want those old entries to be lost to the dredges of cyberspace, but I have to update once every three months on the old journal so it's not deleted. Something like "Update" or "I'm only typing this so you don't get deleted, Blog-city journal." I really want to preserve all the entries in a safer place, on my hard drive, for example, but the effort required is ridiculous. I wrote in it for the better part of three years and I updated a lot. Damn.

Eric left today. We were up last night, Eric, Eric's brother Nick, Kevin, and I setting off fireworks 'til four or five. We filled a cardboard box with everything we had left and covered it in gasoline. It was pretty. Eric's going to do well in Arizona because everyone needs that crazy friend that he epitomizes. I'm glad he finally got a cell phone even though it feels like a few years too late. I can't explain how many days would've been simpler if he was just slightly easier to get in touch with. He's taking my graphing calculator because what the hell do I need it for and, essentially, he stole it and will not give it back. If I had any intention of taking a math class ever I might be a little more concerned. I'm calling it a graduation gift. It feels like the end of an era. I'm very uncomfortable. It makes me want to pack, but it's way too early.

So far I've said good bye to Tony, Eric, and Milne.

"Secondly, good byes can suck me."

Firstly, the Guster concert was very good. I enjoyed the set list immensely. It was a mixture of the songs I actually like on the new albums and, literally, my top ten, fifteen songs overall. I couldn't have asked for a better selection.

Secondly, good byes can suck me.

Oh, fuck it. I'm going to miss Eric. A lot, probably. I miss Tony a ton, so I imagine it will be the same for Eric. While I resolutely refuse to indulge myself by describing the situation as indescribable, I do find my writing prowess well matched. I miss the office. I miss hanging out during lunch, teaming up on Kevin, listening to classical music, eating hummus, planning revenge on soda thiefs, and the innumerable antics this year and the many past years brought. I miss random tangents in Biology class that even Mr. Borland couldn't ignore. I miss, desperately, creative writing and mystery fiction last year.

It's going to be so goddamn foreign not seeing that kid around. Where the hell am I going to get my obscure, useless news from? Whose going to sneak onto a cruise ship and eat dessert off abandoned tables? Oh, it's so goddamn ridiculous. This is the big flaw in the plan, I guess. It always seemed like a good idea to have a small tight-knit group of friends and forsake acquaintances in exchange for more focused time with individuals, but this half of it never occured to me. It's easy to say good bye to an acquaintance, a passing relation, but I've been chilling with Eric for goddamn ever. My brain keeps telling me that he's leaving for Arizona in a couple of days, but it doesn't seem to connect. When I try to picture what next year's going to be like I just get a flash of past images instead. I remember in freakin' third grade when Eric and Dan didn't get along and I had to sneak around trying to be both their friends. I keep seeing that rusty firetruck in the playgrond.

In my yearbook Eric said, and I'm quoting this loosely because I'm ridiculously lazy when it comes to actually typing something up verbatim, that our "crazy adventure" wasn't over yet, so it seemed sort of useless to say good bye. I don't know, though, I keep on thinking of the next few years as sort of a riptide or some shit, a fast-paced river or whatever. I may see Eric in passing from time to time, but never with the consistency that I would like. We're all about to be swept away into new stages that are not nearly as connected to our past as we'd all like. That's how I feel about it. I don't want my current friends to be reduced to my childhood friends. I don't want to write about them in a memoir in forty years from now, referring to them as those people that shaped me into a young adult. I want to refer to them as the people that stuck around for fucking forever. 'Til I got sick of them. Damn it.

Blah blah blah, I'm excited for school, yea. I've been excited for everything my whole life, though. This is nothing new. I'm not excited for the sharp decrease in psuedo-criminal antics and partaking in activities just for a "good story." I've always liked experiencing things alongside Eric. It always assures interesting commentary. Hopefully I won't set off any cliche-detectors, but whatever flaws and hardships and shit -- they made for a fun time in the long run. I may have complained a lot, a lot at the time, but it always seemed worth it -- whatever we did -- eventually. Or even if it wasn't worth it there were enough jokes to make the time pass quickly.

I'll probably have to expand on this when Kevin leaves. And Dan, of course Dan. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write much of anything about Dan leaving. That'll just suck, suck so bad there won't be anything to say. That's the longest story of them all and there's not way to do it justice at all. Not with language, though I give language a lot of credit (Damn, that was a psuedo-clever way of saying "words can't describe how I feel").

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. This is so not cool. This is the least cool occurence ever. Oh, and Eric? We never snuck into the sewer outside of school. So yea.

Martial Absense

I was watching Seven Samurai the other day and I've been feeling bummed about the lack of martial arts study in my life at the moment ever since. Last fall I just sort of stopped going to class and haven't gone back. Before that I'd been pretty off and on about going, though I was at least practicing enough to make up for it. Now I don't even practice that much. I'm sure my skills have completely vanished by this point. I liked it better when I was good. School and activities of various natures just got in the way. I should've gone back this summer, but I felt awkward since I didn't even tell my instructor I was going to stop. I just stopped. It's been so long I don't know what's going on. Is the school even there anymore? Who's the assistant instructor now? How many students are there? What ranks are all my friends from there? By how far have my rivals surpassed me? Damn it. I miss my instructor. He was a defenite role model in my life. I can't believe I was selfish enough to drop it like that.

Maybe I'll take something in college. Ugh, I don't want to go back to Sifu Mark having taken another form after leaving for two years. Dilemma!

List of Names

Eliot
Malachi
Saul
Dylan
Nikolai
Leo
Constantine
Avery

Excessive Freetime Warning!

All day today Baglio, Joe, Dave Sam & I were discussing, as we often end up doing, what we would do with a ridiculous amount of money. My two plans, as vindictive as they may sound, are to steal the fire of other people's aspirations. First and foremost, if I'm super-celebrity wealthy, I want to buy every car that Baglio does just so his cars aren't unique or special. This train of thought led me to the idea of waiting until he purchases a really expensive car, which he invariablly will, a Ferrari or something, buying the same vehicle -- this is too elaborate to contain in one sentence. Then I wait for him to leave the house in a different car and park my Ferrari where he usually keeps his and push his around to the backyard or something. Then when he returns I wave and slam a baseball bat into the windshield as he lurches to a jaw-dropped stop and proceeds to lose it. Hopefully I'll be able to explain the prank to him before he, in his own words, hits me with a "buck shot." And yes, this entire plans involves me being so rich that the $250,000 price tag on the prank wouldn't bother me. The other plan, which I alluded to earlier, is to beat Kevin into space via an expensive, though possible, commerical space flight.

Much later in the day the general line of conversation was still very much present when Joe discussed the idea -- along the same vindictive lines as my ideas -- of purchasing an expensive piece of art directly from an artist and proceeding to destroy it immediately, right in front of the creator. For whatever reason this thought inspired Baglio to express his desire to destroy the Sistine Chapel by exploding off its roof. For several minutes we discussed various methods of accomplishing such a difficult undertaking, considering the extreme security of the building and Vatican City itself.

Hours later, literally, we came to the solid conclusion that the best possible method of destroying the Sistine chapel was this:

1. A small airforce of helicopters is smuggled into Paris on trucks and hidden in various warehouses throughout the city. Simultaneously several large armoured vehicles with high-powered cranes are positioned in the areas surrounding the Washington monument in D.C.

2. The GO-code is sent out and the helicopters lift off and head for the Eiffel Tower where they drop numerous chains and things of that nature to pull the tower out of its foundation and into the air.

3. Authorities are contacted and the demands are given. If the U.S. government doesn't allow the trucks located in Washington to approach the Washington monumented unmolested then the Eiffel Tower will be dropped on a heavily populated portion of Paris.

4. Assuming the demands are met the Washington trucks proceed to the monumenet and raise their cranes to cover the massive "erection" with an equally massive condom. At the same time the Eiffel Tower is transported to Vatican City under the cover of the witty distraction.

5. The helicopters maneuver the tower upsidedown, light it on fire, and drop it through the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Immortalizing all those involved forever and ever.

We realized that the helicopters would probably be shot down as soon as they reached open ground and determined it would probably be safter to drop the tower on the Louvre since it's in Paris too. We figured that was good enough and it was pretty late by then anyway. We thought, in the end, it may be easier and cheaper to purchase a stealth bomber and just drop a payload of explosives on it -- but whatever floats your boat. It's not nearly as stylish that way.

Forture Cookie Wisdom

Summer is a complicated mother fucker.

Drilling, Grinding, Scraping, Poking, Scratching

I hate the dentist. This is something I've never said before, but it's true. I don't just dislike the dentist, or feel annoyed by the dentist, or wish I didn't have to go to the dentist. I hate the dentist. Everything about the place -- from the quiet waiting room with its boring magazines, uncomfortable chairs, and menacing coat rack, to the lead vest they make you wear when you're getting x-rays -- makes me cringe with a mixture of fear and intense, intense edginess. It's like they've designed a facility that good hygeine dictates I visit biannually that is filled with all the things I'd rather not happen, most noteably the drilling and poking and prying of the teeth.

Much of my dislike of the dentist is rooted in my inability to use novacaine. No matter how much grinding, scraping, drilling, poking, poking, poking they do to me -- I still can't use novacaine. It's goddamn awful. I'm not looking forward to my wisdom teeth removal in the slightest. I've been putting it off for that exact reason. I'm hoping they'll go away on their own maybe -- I've even deluded myself into believing that that is possible. Nifty, eh?

My dentist is a nice man, though. I mean he's not the incarnate of evil you think would inhabit the job. He's got a wife, two kids, a Lexus, a summer cottage in Cape Cod -- no horns or hooves. He likes R&B too much for a white guy, but nobody's perfect. Whatareyougoingtodo? I can't hate him -- just his profession, place of work, staff, and the horrible things he does to my mouth.

I cracked a tooth -- that's the reason I was there -- and got it all fixed up today. I have to go back for a cleaning next week. I hate this. I hate the dentist.