Man I Gotta Get Out Of This Town

When I was home for Spring Break at the beginning of the month, I went through my notebooks and folders from last semester, and found a piece of writing I’d done in my Social Psych class back in October.  I remember the exact day I wrote it; it was the day I was going home for Fall Break, and I was in the most boring class I’ve ever had, at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I couldn’t sit still for the life of me because I was so excited to go home; it had been a while since I’d seen people in Dayton.  So instead of listening to lecture, I wrote this, and then just walked out of class.

5 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

• Sunday morning, 1996, Grandma’s house, sitting down to bacon and eggs with her and Lydia and Whitney
• Home, now, lounging in the green chair, chili cooking, football on TV
• May 2008, Brooklyn Bridge, with the beer and the wind and the lights
• In bed, under covers, in soft afternoon light, Ben Lee singing in my ear
• Whenever, wherever, driving my old, wrecked Honda, windows down, music up

And then, after I found it, I stuck it in the folder I use for my Shakespeare class now and forgot about it.  Until St. Patty’s day, sitting in class listening to a boring presentation, when I took it out, reread it, and added to it:

• About 15 hours less than a year ago today, drunk off my ass with my best friends, in the room of two trashy boys
• January of my senior year, driving home from work with a song in my head and the biggest crush
• August, my sister’s, with beach hair and a book
• Springtime at OLOM, 2002 or so, outside in the early morning cool, on the bike racks waiting for the bell to ring
• 4 hours from now, taking a walk around campus with coffee and my iPod

I think this might become a thing I do.

Catch Up

It doesn’t feel like it’s been a month and a half.  I don’t understand how time is just flying by so quickly this year.  I still feel like it ought to be the middle of February, not the end of March.  I think that’s a good sign.  I’m enjoying myself.  Even though I’ve been gone for a while, and even though I know I’ve been occupied, I cannot for the life of me tell you with what.  Uhhhhh, listening to Beyonce and Ludacris on my iPod?  Yes.  Swooning after several boys?  Oh my God, yes.  Pumping the brakes as hard as I can so that this semester doesn’t ever end because I love this place that I’m in?  Yes, even though it isn’t working.  I’m just busy being happy.  Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately:

• My Morning Jacket’s “Lay Low” makes me want to long for someone.  It makes me feel like I’m falling for someone I could never have.  I don’t know why, but it just sounds like wanting.
• I found this scribbled in my little notepad I keep in my desk drawer: “Why hasn’t Keira Knightley done Shakespeare?!”  On the one hand, something about how indginant I am over KK’s lack of Shakespearean acting just makes me laugh.  On the other: for real, though.
• Also in the notepad is a note to myself: “Meredith- You will always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  Take this shot.”  You know, sometimes you just need a pep talk.  And even though that particular shot didn’t pan out the way I planned, I’m still gonna follow that advice.
• Can we talk about Lexi for a moment?  I don’t think I’ve written about her before, but Lord does she ever need to be written about… She’s my TA for my Bio 101 Lab, and honestly, the only positive thing I can say about her is that she hasn’t murdered anyone in her lifetime (to my knowledge).  She is condescending, rude, inconsistent, bitchy, immature, unprofessional, and all around unqualified to be teaching anyone anything, except maybe how to be an unapologetically heinous beast.  I mean, I feel juvenile saying I can’t wait to write a course eval for her, but it’s true.  I just want to give her the worst write-up for being a snot.  I don’t even know if that will affect her in any way, but it’s the only reourse I feel I have besides maybe being an ultra-bitch and talking to my lecture professor about her, which feels waaaaaaay too dramatic a step to take.  So instead, I’ll just bitch about the bitch here! 
• This is the worst thing I have seen in the month and a half I’ve been away from writing; my German professor showed it to us today during our discussion on art.  The second guy, the guy who lays his head on that block of… marble?  clay?  talcum? and then turns and breathes on it like the creepiest serial killer who ever walked the Earth is the artist we’re learning about in our chapter.  Once, he covered his head in goldleaf and honey and carried around a dead rabbit, talking to it and explaining pieces of art to it.  And called it an art installation.  Like, people actually came to a museum and watched it unfold.  What the fuck, Internet?  I was so fucking bershon about this in class today, I was legit rolling my eyes like a sullen teen.  I was pissed off.  Ha, and then my prof asked the class our opinions about it, and the exact people I had expected to like this pretentious, avant garde artsy bullshit were the ones saying “I think it’s wonderful because it holds such deep meaning for the artist” and “It’s very interesting and a unique way to express oneself outside of the normal artistic modes” and when my prof asked me all I could say was “Ich finde das sehr, sehr blod” because I don’t know the German for “drama-queeny”, “insane”, or “intolerable”.  I mean, what feelings could you possibly need to express through conversing with dead animals?  Isn’t that called having a personality disorder?
• It is crazy how into T.I. I am getting.
• My urge to drive, and the amount to which I miss driving around with the wondows down and my music up, has started to manifest itself in completely unnecessary walks around campus with my iPod.  Sometimes after classes, I don’t head directly back to the dorms, but instead loop all around campus, into the old section by the chapel and the administration building, then over by the graveyard and up the alley between Anderson and the BA building, and then home.  It’s exactly like the loops I used to drive after getting off work at night over the summer.  Sometimes I’m just not finished feeling the wind on my face or listening to my very favorite music.  I’m just not done being in motion.