"I think you have a problem with your brain being missing."

Amy Pohler and Seth Meyers have a segment on Weekend Update known as "The Really?!" segment. At various points the past month I have had my own version of that segment running through my head.

Here's the thing, I have an amazing memory. I know all the contradictions people make, I note them when they're happening. Each time one springs up, my very own Seth and Amy appear shouting "REALLY!?"

Yes, really Seth and Amy, it has come to this. It has come to the mental note making of things that I never thought I would need. The absurdities that have transformed throughout are curious. I wonder though if people are aware of such contractions. Are most people even somewhat self aware these days? I find that's a rare quality for a person to possess. Introspection is a beautiful thing.

"You think you know who you are...you haven't even begun."

The people on the televisionwithoutpity boards are reviewing the "no holds barred" interview with Britney Spears. The consensus seems to be that at the age of 27 she is unable to take responsibility for her actions and continues to blame others. Understandably being the family's cash cow has contributed to this issue, but I started wondering, when do people stop taking responsibility for their actions and instead are oh so willing to point the finger at anyone but themselves?

I know at times I have been quick to find someone else to blame for problems, and I will probably do it again. Lately I have been thinking of a quote my mother used to constantly repeat in my adolescence, "when you blame others, you give up the power to change." Four years safely distanced from my teenaged self I can most definitely say I agree with this, however I start wonder about people who have a fear of change. I think back to Buffy Becoming (part 1) when Whistler states, "no one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does." There are times when I can identify with this idea, because I actually look forward to finding a routine once my life has been interrupted. At the same time there have been moments when I have willingly plotted out how I wanted my life to transform and took steps towards making that leap.

But I digress; I can't help but feel that perhaps this whole fear of change leads us to blame others. Maybe we aren't really ready to see the changes in ourselves; maybe we're afraid to get to know who we really are without an identifying factor in our lives. If this is true, are we so willing to be so unaware of who we really are? Perhaps, we will never be comfortable with our weaknesses and misguided judgments and find it easier to look elsewhere. Even when we see ourselves as victims in situations, is it possible that we found something that we didn't like, and might have in fact disturbed us? Are we ever really blameless? Maybe it doesn't really matter if we are.

In the end Whistler is right, those "moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are." So who are we?

Write out loud!

My first 422 professor, said that if you know someone and you're a writer, they have to realize they're fair game. She then proceeded to ask if we told people when we wrote about them. She liked/likes to write about her mother and said she will show her the work but never says who it is about.

For the most part I don't tell people. It makes sense in most cases because randomly sending someone you never speak to a message saying "I wrote a poem about you," doesn't tend to go off well. Also, I don't think most people are ready to see how you view them, even if it is one element of them magnified to the nth degree. I think there's a good amount of people who would jump up and say "that's not how things really are." Fair enough.

But I'm curious, would you want to know if someone was writting/had written about you, even if it was an unflattering piece?

"It's 3am, I must be lonely"

I came home from a good night out with a friend. Someone I have been hesitant in calling her a friend since I don't know how much things have changed; I don't know how much people are willing to forget or how much they actually do. We all remember the barbs that are traded, but who's to say which person remembers which piece of poison we pass around?

I'm trying not to let my current mood cloud that high, diminish that realization that I am capable of forgiving people I never thought I could. I thought that I had lost that ability long ago. I was honest and told her about the twice in a life time line and I never thought I would be able to. Maybe it's all just a moment that will be gone. Maybe we will start pretending again. Maybe we will all be to willing to forget it. Maybe we really can't forgive.

I think we're gonna make it...

Returning to the scene of the crime is always the hardest part of memory mapping. It's so easy to forget how much smells, sights, even the taste of a certain drink can effect us. When we are away from everything we're safe.

Driving down the roads at home, thousands of miles away from here, there are things I would avoid. Things became unacceptable in that life,certain songs, letting people smoke in my car; I preferred coffee houses to bars, and would hide myself away in the book stores until near midnight.

But I made the choice to return, and failed to prepare for the onslaught of flashes, little moments that I had forgotten, but was then reminded of because of the details in this setting. It's so easy to become haunted by those things, to possibly become the shadow of who I was.

Changes have to be made, are being made. I do not want the same things anymore. I'm finding I long for things I never knew I wanted, or maybe I did. Maybe forgetting I wanted those was easier. But then again this longing is easier, easier than becoming possessed with want of the old things. It is easier to become real, than to remain a ghost.

How you remember things...

"If I turn back the pages of time I'd rewrite your point of view."

Are you ready?

The Difference

I keep telling a person the same story. The same incident, the moment when it changed. There are so many other moments that were worse, because then I think you knew, and continued not caring. Just acting, hurting with a purpose, maybe. But the innocent one (or maybe not so innocent), the first the one that tainted the rest of the year is what I tell. So I must ask myself why do I chose that one? I think it's less about you and more about her. She is lesser than me, I need to feel it, to know it. Even if your choice makes no sense, I want others to choose me...to have chosen me. Her one act of stupidity may outshine her accomplishments, some that even I admire. At the end of the day she and I are discarded, both children when it happened. I tell the story, to take that moment away from you...to regain control.

I worry I am becoming like you, shutting people out. They don't belong--fair enough. But I maintained the chatter for months, took time to know what I might be getting into. I communicate in other ways, still.

"I'm looking for a dare to be great situation."

I wonder if I have been ruined by 80's teen films. You know...."Say Anything", "Pretty in Pink", "Sixteen Candles", "Valley Girl", and pretty much anything starring the Brat Pack. (I'll leave my love for late 90's teen flicks out of this post). Do their happy endings, opposite side of the tracks-love stories keep me coming back for more? Have these become so engrained in me that I eventually see myself as an Andie, Samantha or Diane Court of various situations?

In Lindsey Alley's blog, she writes how a friend of her says life is an extention of high school, I wonder if this is true. Most of the time I hope it's not, and I hope Marc Blucas's character in "The Jane Austen's Book Club" was right, "high school was over a long time ago." At my last university I can say that for the most part this is true, but that was a fucking huge school. Here, I'm not so sure. Even last time during my "brief" stay, I felt the high school-ish undercurrents. One of my former flatmates was desperate to be seen as popular, even though she always said, "it didn't matter."

In a recent conversation with a friend, she said that any romantic entanglement with the boy I was into last time or his friend that I later realized I was into, would have been complicated due to the fact that we swam in different social circles. I agree with her observation more with the latter male than I do with with the former (since his social awkwardness may have balanced things out).

I have never been popular, and I learned at an early age that I was never going to be popular. I also learned that I wasn't completely ready to sell my soul and kill whatever made me, Me, in order to hangout with the football players and the cheerleaders. But this hasn't stopped me from liking "popular" boys. However, while these boys are indeed "popular," there tends to be something that suggests they don't really belong or that they wouldn't mind dating someone outside their scene. Perhaps that is why I tend to "fall" for those types, the ones who seem to have some depth. Blane fell for Andie; Jake Ryan chose Samantha, and Lloyd Dobler picked Diane Court. The girls were outsiders, the boys popular and yet they worked. The boys I chose were unwilling to cross that line.

My dear friend Dee would tell me to just "fuck it," and that I need to find someone worthy of me. She says I need to stop wondering if I'm good enough for "them". I know she is right, but I still can't stop wondering what role John Hughes has played in my way of thinking.

Twists

So I've only heard two people say this: "you always meet twice in a lifetime." For sometime I've been wondering if it was just a bullshit line. Granted the evidence with most people in my life (such as some of my best friends) would suggest that the saying is indeed true.

Three years ago I took a poetry workshop at the University I am now at. I was doing study abroad, and met a girl who was on a semester abroad. She wrote this amazing poem, that I eventually copied into my diary so I could just read it over and over again. Everytime I looked at it I'd wish that I had written it. I never got to tell her how wonderful it was. That is, until tonight. At the last minute I decide to attend a reading with some of my classmates. We were gabbing when I saw her walk in. Initially I thought it couldn't be her, but then I decided to go up and see if it was.

I went up asked if her name was G and she said it was. Turns out she did her MA here last fall, and is trying to stick around. I started talking about her poem. I told her she needed to send it out, that poem needs to be published. I was gushing like a fan girl. But, I was happy I finally got to say what I had wanted to all these years.

So maybe you do get to tell people what you need to, even when you don't think you'll get the chance.

Desperately Wanting

I sometimes wonder if we get so lazy in wanting something, that we get used to wanting that one particular thing that we hold on even when we don't want it anymore. Maybe we held onto it for years because it was easier than picking up something else, than starting something new.

I am a creature of habit, I don't like change, well no major changes that I don't choose to make (and I either have to jump into those or really think about them). I also have a hard time of letting go of things as evidenced by the boxes of stuff I have from high school in my room at home. (I need my freshman year planner, why?). I hold onto people, friends who I'm not really close to but we're so used to talking that eventually we're rerunning our convos, nothing new--everything's the same. My lost loves, did I ever let them go? Maybe, but how long did it take before I pried my hands from the hope that they would one day turn back and say "I want you too;" I've lost count. I wanted to be right about them. I don't like being wrong. In all these ways I'm stubborn.

I think about the last boy, and I wonder if maybe I stopped caring even before I left. If maybe, it was easier than admitting I wanted someone else who seemed farther out of reach than he was. There were cracks in things later that year, and the sweet moments no longer belong to him. It's not his voice I recall now, even though I heard it more than his friend's. Maybe my stubborness kept me blind.

I've always loved this quote

"Do you know when they say soulmates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. "Soul mate wanted." It doesn't mean too much now. But soulmates- think about it. When your soul- whatever that is anyway- something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape- when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to- even if you can't be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul's wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. It must be like all the weddings in the world- gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know- that's it. This is it."- Missing Angel Juan

The hero or villain of the tale

I just recently watched the film Serenity with a friend of mine. One of my favorite characters from both the film and the series, has been Jayne Cobb. I suppose one of the things I find interesting and like about the character is that despite how simple he seems, he is in fact a rather complicated man. Both Jaynestown and Ariel are the episodes I would say display his complex nature. Sure he is a selfish, crude and greedy but there are moments where he does put others before him (although not always willingly), and he is almost endearing. It's hard to completely love or hate Jayne because of these contrasting characteristics, just when you think he's really fucked things up, he comes and saves the day.

I got to thinking about how similar people are to Jayne and how because he is so many shades of gray he is rarely ever one or the other: the hero or the villain of the piece. How come when we tell stories we try to make everything clear--black and white; we are either decked out in black top hats and capes, or the cliched shining armor. Do we not allow complexities to show because it's simpler to boil it down to "fire bad, tree pretty?"

Things aren't simple, they never will be no matter how much you want them to be. I'm allowing this complication to happen, I like the shades of gray. Please stop trying to make it black or white.

Cállate la boca!

It's funny that certain topics arise from conversations with those you least expect. Over the past couple of months I've been gearing up for this subject to brought up, eventually. The last time I talked about anything similar to this was when this boy wanted me to explain how "Mexican/Spanish/Latin American" I was. Re: He wanted to know when my family crossed the border. Let's just say he was amazed when I explained that border crossed us. Having lived in the state I grew up in, he didn't question things that are generally accepted in parts of this region. But today this thing was brought up, something that White America or anyone who wants to lump us into one category might not know; not all Hispanics speak Spanish. Generally I'm not bothered when it's brought up because most of the time there's no condescending tone behind it, but today there was.

I've talked about this scenario before with my friends and family who have had similar things said to them. The common thread between us aside from not speaking our "native tongue" is that at one point someone in our family was discouraged or punished for speaking Spanish. After that no one was really encouraged to learn the language. We don't speak it at home, we never did. I know what my grandmother is saying when she switches to Spanish. I remember enough from my days of high school when my teacher liked to terrorize the students. (I also remember repeatedly going over the colors in elementary and middle school).

But here's one thing I leave you with. A lot of the time Hispanics who speak Spanish are discriminated against. However anyone else who speaks Spanish generally is praised. Why is that?

"And they've never heard of love."

One of my closest friends is in love. I can hear it in her voice when she talks about him. Her feelings for him are expressed in her notes to me,even if she just mentions him briefly. This isn't just a crush. It's not just like. She's not one of those girls who will convince themselves they really like someone in order to avoid the loneliness. However like anyone on the brink of something big and wonderful, she is slightly apprehensive.

The other night I told her to enjoy these shiny feelings, and not to let anyone take them away from her. I also told her not to tarnish them with her own doubt. I hope she doesn't. I hope she keeps them for as long as she can, because sometimes it seems like those feelings of hope and bright-eyed wonderment don't come along often. She is also lucky because this relationship hasn't been previously tainted with anything negative. In this I envy her.

The last time I really liked someone, I told one of my friends about him and she replied with something really off putting. There was no encouragement, no happiness in my hopefulness. And this was before the shit hit the fan, when things were still new, when there seemed to be some sort of chance. Her comment haunted me throughout that year. It still haunts me. I never understood why she couldn't have said something helpful. I suppose she thought she was being realistic, but to me she was just being negative and raining on my parade.

On her blog, Bella discussed how some people imply that they will support you all the way, if all the way means you'd do what they would do. I was some what relieved to see that someone else was having this problem because I've been feeling this way about various friends lately. I understand that at some point one or more of our friends is going to like/date/marry someone we don't like, but until the shit hits the fan shouldn't be we be happy for them and more importantly allow them their happiness?

I think Bella nailed it. I'm reminded of a comment another friend made to one of our mutual friends (who then told me), when the guy I liked had not been great. She said she "was glad Miss M finally saw what an asshole he was, even though we knew it all along." I was more annoyed that the mutual friend relayed the comment to me than I was about the comment. Although, I will say...I was aware, I chose to like him anyway. My friend who was there from the beginning knows this.

Anyway, in the past I have been very upfront about how I feel about a friends boyfriend, but I learned at 18 that it's something people have to figure out on their own. I also learned that you have to hope for the best outcome in the situation, because they're you're friends and they deserve to be happy.