Life! The Universe! Everything!

It is weird to loathe solitude. I live in solitude, I breathe easy in it. Extroversion makes me shudder. But if there is anything I have learned over this break it's that there is a difference between self-imposed solitude and solitude you suffer because no one will see you.

I've never hoped for company before. Actually, I don't recall ever being able to recognize hope before now. But it is severely painful to disappoint hopes--and for some reason the instilling and destruction of hope is hopelessly beyond the control of the person suffering such ridiculous feelings.

Alas, I'm (rather unfortunately) human. And, other than sulking and sabotaging the world, humans always move on eventually. So, once I grow bored of sulking (which may take a while. I hold fantastic records.), I apparently have more life to look forward to! In preparation for such an event, I'm compiling a to-do list. Although I don't expect it to be completed before 2012, if that.

1. Finish an imitation of Franz Ferdinand's Can't Stop Feeling video with some friends.
2. Finish at least the first chapter of what is currently known as David Tennant's Face.
3. Prove to myself (and my home furniture) that I actually do have friends.
4. Find a job that will accept a teenager who still attends school and doesn't have a car.
5. Write something that has an end. (As opposed to leaving it somewhere in the middle.)
6. Become a vlogging Meliffany.
   

I'm sure there's more I'm missing, but I'll figure that out later.

Flying Above And Below

Because I breathe, do I live?
Is that proof enough for my existence?
Or am I an oddity among ghosts?
Does my breathing sustain life?
Or am I merely imagining?

Can I be real if no one sees me?
Is my beating heart just a mirage
Brought forth from a lack of acceptance?
Is my skin invisible,
Recognized by only me?

Can my existence not be confirmed
With human eyes?
Am I only a floating conscience?
Am I formed from the guilt of others
So that they might carry on unscathed?

Do I allot myself human actions
Just to fool myself?
Am I wholly forgotten?
Or was I never known,
Of no importance to anyone thicker than imagination?

This is what my room is beginning to resemble.

Of course, the writing is just a bonus. (A very honest one.)




I am, after all, a pretentious English snob. In the last two days I've spent nearly two hundred dollars at my local Barnes & Noble--and I spent a good three hours there each day. I may have a problem. But books make fantastic friends. Better than the people I know, at any rate.

What's more pretentious than classics? What have I now? Four Hemingway books, two Bronte sisters, H. G. Wells, leather bound omnibuses of Jane Austen and Poe. . . My room wreaks with a pretentious air. It's utterly spectacular.

And, to complete this brilliantly pointless segment of pretentious English media:

Yotsuba?

It's funny how little belief my words are credited. Alas, I suppose that's to be expected when you never lie--something about the truth frightens people.

My sister's afraid of moving on. In relationships and in general life. My brother's afraid of relationships, and sometimes just the opposite sex at all. My other sister is afraid of any change that leaves her devoid of a security blanket (the safety of home and such). These are sensible fears, common. But me? Sensible? No. I'm afraid of windows and of crowded spaces. I'm afraid of cars and of driving. I'm afraid of ridiculous things. And I'm afraid of being forgotten.

Have you ever just looked at yourself (mentally, not necessarily literally) and just been utterly disappointed? Sometimes it's hard not to realize just how stupid you are. (But then, I'm a apparently a pretentious person--are pretentious people supposed to doubt their importance?)

I'm fairly certain I can only be considered pretentious in school. At least, that's the only time of day that I'm called pretentious. It's hard to uphold such a title around family, I think. How can you think yourself so very important around people who claim to know you better than you know yourself (and constantly prove themselves wrong, mind you). How can you be assured that your presence could not be forgotten when you can cry into a couch for two hours and be thought sleeping? When you can have a migraine so brain-splitting that you can't see and just want to sleep until your body no longer knows what is and isn't sleep but are still denied the ability to go home where it's dark and quiet? And power? Oh, where is the power when if you willingly agree to edit something for a friend you are told that you have to edit something for some family member? To rewrite something so that it makes sense for this person? To read a whole bloody book and formulate and essay for that person?

Granted, I'm abusing the endless space of the Internet for my own ranting, but what teenager isn't guilty of that?

Alas, what selfish teenager doesn't brighten up a mundane blog at its close? (Now that would be truly thoughtless.) Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to formulate any of my own writing very well lately, so my weak verse I cannot use here. I have, however, been reading lately. Quite a bit, actually: Chekhov, Keats, Browning, Shakespeare, Whitman, Kafka, Adams, Bronte (Emily), Bizenghast, Yotsuba, Doctor Who fiction. . . The whole list is a bit pointless, don't you think? But, I must say (as a person who doesn't often read graphic novels (although Alan Moore is always an exception), Bizenghast and Yotsuba are absolutely fantastic.

If you're wondering, recommending books is how I brighten up the world. Am I a pathetic nerd? Yes, I really am. And I'm very proud of that. And, in case I wasn't clear, anyone who finds anything humorous in life should at least attempt reading Yotsuba.

That's nicely conspicuous, right?

What else? I'll be back to ramble another day.

Hipster Hitler

Should I fear you?
With your quizzical brow
And gaze as hard as steel?
Should I run from your shadow
And never once look back?

But for my tongue to be true,
Terror is more than I allow
Even fumbling at your heel.
To the dustings of cowardice, I ask "how?"
How could you expect I take so shameful a track?

With madness in my soul, I will always stand
Whether I win or lose, this was once my land

Yesterday my Lit. teacher started individual meetings with everyone in the class to let us know how we're doing and such. Mine was typical in the sense that he asked me to describe my participation (which he wanted us each to relay to him as an introduction, for some reason). He then proceeded to call me a pretentious, arrogant person who doesn't speak to others. I laughed.

Apparently, laughing hurt his feelings, but I couldn't stop. Also, I have a default look that he interprets as utter disgust for him and his teachings. I clearly feel myself superior and without need of school.

This made me insanely happy.

Gah, who gets excited over being called arrogant? (I may very well be crazy.)

Morality

I find I have a very different morality and thought process from the legions of people in my school. It is not a day in my public speaking class that I don't bring forth both expressions of shock and horror. However, I cannot believe this is bad. Indeed, it is so easy to alarm them.

Perhaps I should choose my topics more wisely, for fear of gaining enemies, but that simply wouldn't be fun. After all, what is more enjoyable than delivering a speech about a pet peeve of the degradation of the English language? To a class full of hoodlums that probably don't understand the meaning of "degradation" (or a sentence without the alleged contraction "ain't", for that matter).

Today, however, the topic was not of my control. Today was an impromptu--a note card that had merely "relationships" scribbled on it. Clearly, this was a broad subject. But, no worries, how could a person possibly alarm a roomful of hormonal teenagers with this subject?

Apparently, acknowledging that you're against relationships is not a good start if you wish to avoid shock and terror. Approaching their cyclic and inevitably painful nature will arouse dirty looks. And some get offended if you bring up that it's merely a comfort and thus homosexuals shouldn't be treated so harshly.

Oh, but where is my guilt?

I fear I enjoy far too much getting a rise out of people. All the same, it is a wonder that many of them insist upon calling me nice. I wish to rectify this mistake, but even I would not push so far on school grounds. Thus, I shall correct it here:

Kind? Do not misguide yourself so foolishly. My beliefs in your eyes would be cruel and I act in accordance to them.

Perhaps I do not support war, but not because it is war--do not group me with such an ignorant harm. No, I am against it because it is a bunch of innocents fighting other innocents, killing others as they fight someone else's battle. It is a group of politicians from various countries who fail to respect one another. And perhaps I would not stand for a war, but nor would I allow any of the cowards who fought it to live.

Oh, the twisting sense of morality. The evolution, or de-evolution. What's your morality?

The Varying Degrees of Self

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that ease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

-"Revelation", Robert Frost

Is it so? That all speech flickering from our lips is merely an act? A mirage in the question of whether or not we will be discovered? But then, at what point does it become a question of which self is truly us?

How odd is it that one person can call me the future version of Hitler, and yet another explains that I am nice, though I may pretend other wise. Another still, pays compliments daily to my smile, kindness and maturity. But which is true? I no longer can tell.

Do we pull the wool over even our own eyes? Hiding something we cannot bear to accept of ourselves, or perhaps wondering if pretending may actually change us after all. But then, who is who? How many of you can there be? And how well can you know yourself? Are you well aware of the expressions you make? Are you certain? Do you know how you appear to others? Or will you be surprised when someone you cannot place hugs you and you do not know why?