Surprise me.

Have you liked the dramatic posts lately?
I hope you don't think I'm serious.
I just like to play.

Don't worry; this entry'll be comfortably devoid of pretty words, images or any shreds of intelligent thought.
It's just me.
I'm not in the mood tonight.

As a rule, Mondays are blurry.

Incompetent people frustrate me.
I mean, I don't understand why it's so difficult for some people to take things into their own hands. Seriously-- it's your life. Take decisive action of your own volition!! Stop worrying about your superficial little lives and look at the big picture for once!! I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to listen to you whine. (This public service announcement brought to you by a moment in AP Stats class today, when the entire class begged to push our next test back until Friday. We finished covering the chapter LAST WEEK, and now it looks like we'll sit around and do review problems in class for two additional block days. Sick. This is an AP class, people. If you don't get the material, spend a couple hours of your own time working problems until you understand. If that's a novel concept to you, I'm sorry. Don't make the rest of us suffer.)∫∫∫∫∫

Whoa. I just learned how to make the integral sign. ∫∫∫∫∫∫∫ Alt+B (on a Mac). Who knew?!

I'll try to be more profound/less annoyed next time.
My new goal is to write SOMETHING on here every day.
We'll see how that goes.

∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫
INTEGRALS.

That's what I did at church on Sunday. I wanted to see if I remembered how to solve integrals.
Yep. I did. :)
I had no calculator, so I had to check my work geometrically.
It was more than I'd bargained for.

Victory.

Today, I spent six and one fourth hours at a bookstore.
I read one entire book, cover to cover, and various bits of smaller books.
I can't tell you how immensely, luxuriously satisfying it was to sit in a gray, squashed armchair in the back corner and lose myself in someone else's words.
I haven't done this in far too long.
I think I'll make it a Saturday tradition.

As I sat crumpled comfortably in the well-worn folds of fabric, wearing pajama pants and no makeup, I observed the dynamic constancy in my immediate field of vision.
Yes, I know that's a contradiction.
That's why it's so perfect.

I watched the measured flow of people around me purse their lips and run their fingers across shelves, hurrying away in brisk strides of victory after locating a hunted prize. Others took their time, stroking spines and peeling back front covers to read introductions saturated with the sanguine sweetness of paid endorsement. One man sat down between shelves, obscuring rows of titles with his back and making an obstacle of himself in the aisle when others came to search his section. I stepped over him once, experiencing an unmistakable flash of sameness in our motives.

I kept silence in my grey sanctuary, watching workers set up a stage in the clearing before my chair for a middle-school performance attended solely by proud parents with expensive videocameras. The awkward preteens attempted comedic improv, which fell flat and embarrassing beneath their clumsy feet, and the parents clapped and laughed as if paid to do so. It was heartbreakingly pathetic, with the unbounded enthusiasm of the performers adding mercilessly to their naive humiliation. All the same, it drew my attention from my intelligent, printed text like a grotesque freeway accident. I wanted nothing more than to turn my eyes away, but stared transfixed through the entire show, unable to resist the sick fascination.

Finishing my book--turning it over in my hands triumphantly, knowing that my eyes had caressed every tiny word, sifted their meanings through my prefrontal cortex, lifted the shroud from an author's intent-- became much more than a moral victory.
It's been a long time since I've won.
I needed it.

Exponential decay.

This is all so...evanescent.

I feel like someone has told me the day I'm going to die, and I'm just helplessly hurtling toward the center of the void.
There's nothing I can do to stop my progress; the inertia's too strong to fight, but still I scream without a sound, dragging my fingernails through the cold, blank space, hoping against hope to clutch something--anything-- to preserve myself from the slashing reality of the terrible unknown.

Lacerating my sanity, one day at a time--
Exponential decay.

Despite my confidence in the ocean, I've been sucked into a riptide. I tear at the inscrutable liquid, gasping for breath in the isolating darkness, but my lungs are filling with salt water, and my eyes are glazing over.
And there's nothing I can do about it.
I'm clutching for a handhold after falling from a cliff, and my bloody fingers scratch at passing rocks in the painful vanity of desperation.
The sick feeling inside knows it was inevitable that I step from the cliff in the first place,
that it really was my choice--
I just didn't expect it to hurt so badly.
The impending pain leaks into every cell, one by one,
metastatic cancer of the thought.

It's coming, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

The limit of a constant as x approaches infinity is zero.
How's that for irony?

Draft.

You wouldn't understand.
Or would you?
I won't go there.

I wish that I could write when I wanted to, instead of having to wait until school ended.
My train of thought is gone forever.

Identification.

I'm mortally afraid of forgetting things.
My memories are my most important asset.

I've never kept a steady journal, though, because I know enough not to leave records around where other people can find them.
My life to date is memorialized in random scraps of paper, pointedly obscure poetry, mini planners (one for each year of high school), typed pages folded into tiny squares, Phoenician substitution alphabets, and words scrawled into the second-to-last pages of notebooks.
I hope I never forget.

I can never decide what I really want to do with this blog.
You'll notice that I've been very careful with my identifying information so far.
I haven't decided whether or not to give this web address to my friends so they can make comments, or whether I'm better off keeping things like this to myself so I can have real freedom in what I say, knowing that no one can ever find out who I really am.
I'm stuck in limbo, not knowing whether to name the people I write about or continue being vague, just in case...
It'd be embarrassing to have someone innocently Google themselves and accidentally run across my soul.
I'm thinking about this because it's what I just did. I Googled a friend of mine, just for fun, and ran into a blog by a girl who graduated last year. I read the whole thing, though I've never actually known her, and felt psychologically sick because now I've eavesdropped on her deepest inner thoughts-- dissected her psyche without any semblance of permission.
I feel terrible, like I've just intruded on something secret that no one was ever supposed to see.

She never mentioned her name, but made the mistake of giving too much identifying information.
I can't decide whether or not I'll risk making the same choice.