I'm Back In the New York Groove

I forget to get in touch with nature sometimes.

I get so focused on living inside, making sure I stay up-to-date, making sure I am constantly connected to what is going on in the world, that I forget there are individual blades of grass to be examined, leaves to be touched, wind to be enjoyed.

Tonight, I stood outside in a red-watch storm and remembered that I forget how powerful nature and God are. I'm such a tactile person that I have to soak my feet and freeze myself before I can establish in my head that there are giant forces swirling around me, controlling me. Or maybe not concerned with me at all. One of those.

It seems like I have become hypersensitive to anything around me. I want to touch everything, memorize textures and smells and colors. I'm leaving childhood behind me faster than a train, yet I still feel the need to stand outside and soak myself to make sure I'm getting a least a little bit of the message I'm supposed to.

Sometime later, maybe, I'll feel silly about it.

But right now, I'm just feeling relaxed.

Maybe I won't feel silly.

I like being childish. No one ever tells me to grow up though. I think it's because I'm childish in a subtle way. When I see the movie >Amelie, I am reminded of myself, but more like how I would like to be. Life should be as technicolor as I want it to be.

I get scared that I'm not living as much as I should be. Kate Winslet says in Eternal Sunshine, that she is terrified that she's not living enough and I connect with her completely. I guess I'm at a weird age where I'm terrified of growing older, where I want to stay where I am forever. I obsess about how I'm going to be when I'm older. Everytime I jump up and down, I think about how I'm going to be arthritic one day and am I enjoying this as much as I can?

It's morbid, but it helps me to realize that I really should slow down, really shouldn't spend as much time as I do on the computer, lie outside a little more often.

Think about how many reasons there are to smile -- babies, jello, awkward family photos, joke books, mud pies, Yankee candles, sloths!

The world is so depressing no one wants to think about any of these things. No one thinks for themselves, even if they say they do, including myself. Everything is here to guide us, to make our lives easier, and I'm not so sure they do.

I'm tired of complex and futuristic. It's such a big deal.

I want simplicity. Not a silk wrap-around, a cotton sundress, please.




On another note, watched A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints tonight. Shia Lebeaouf surpises me everytime I see him. And I really adored Robert Downey Jr. It was an intensely raw movie, very disjointed, about growing up NYC in the 80's and hating it. Shia plays young Dito, who keeps getting mixed up with the wrong gangs and getting in trouble when all he wants to do is be peaceful. He wants to go to California, but it would kill his father, who is completely opposed to it. Eventually, after his friend gets shot right beside him, he just goes and lives in L.A for twenty years before he has to come back and make peace.

I do this plot no justice. The acting made me plug into this completely.

Made me a little more scared of NYC though. I'm already frightened, but I have to continually give myself reality checks and repeat "You're eighteen years old, do you really want to do this?"

I got accepted to the School of Visual Arts in Manhatten, and also to the Chicago Arts Institute.

Congrats, me.

I got really sad when I read the letters, actually. No one in my house got excited about it. In movies, when you get accepted to colleges, people scream, there are parties. Here, everyone just goes to sleep and I just want to sleep, too. I feel like if I get happy, I'm betraying someone.

Silly.

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