Hello out there. Schizophrenic though it may be, I'm about to negate that last post with a much-needed List of Grievances, just because I am running low on smokes and maybe this will help. In short, let's call it Why I Am So Done With This Right Now.
The Internship has gone from making me feel altruistic and righteous to making me want to slam some small skulls in with a baseball bat, and it's the same kind of frustration that arises after any job. I know I felt pretty murderous when I was a waitress, but there were ways to vent that steam, and besides, I left every night with a wad of cash in my apron, so it was suffering for something. This, now, is just annoying - kids don't listen to me, kids make fun of my German and then don't listen to me, and today, I just left early after prowling around the off-limits, third-floor attic (think where Bastian reads The Neverending Story), after being informed in one class that I was simply "unneeded" (which was fine), but then the next class just wasn't there, and I was waiting around when I thought fuck it, I don't care, I'm going. And what am I doing this for - I don't regret it, not yet, but goddamn, I could do without it so much. 7 a.m. wake-up for 3 hours of nothingness and 1 hour of being yelled at by Austrian kids.
The rooming situation is still silent and awkward and just exhausting; and I realize I was so happy this weekend because I had the room to myself. It's silly and shallow but stressful, because where the hell am I supposed to go? And if I hear one more shitty chick-rock song--last night, Grandaddy's "Hewlett's Daughter" came on, and when she changed it 30 seconds in I fought the urge to shout "NEIN LASS ES."
Broke. I am broke. I am always broke. I am always hungry and always broke, and being hungry makes me exhausted, but having to withdraw from my bank account for the third time in as many days is stressful, because money, when I am ever going to have money, if I keep going the way I'm going the answer is probably never, and I wonder with a laugh whether I'd be much cheaper to support if I was dead and then I wonder how serious I am about that, so I just keep being hungry and think this is stupid, and when I eat it's disgusting and I'm sure this foretells of some deep psychological troublement between Rachel and Food but right now it's just making me 'edgy,' as my mother is so fond of saying.
EVERYONE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET SEEMS TO HAVE FALLEN OFF THE GLOBE. Or they are crazy, like my mother, who is counting down the days until we can go to a casino together and I'm really not too hot to do that. And there are few things worse than waiting for a response, especially when it's something as meager as a "hello how is your life," and it's wearing me down. Like all my clothes are worn down. And I have no money to replace them. Oh, and I can't do laundry, aside from washing it in the sink or dragging it across Vienna to someone else's dorm.
Lastly and largestly, the Motherfucking Goddamn SonofaBitch PieceofShit PainintheAss Euro Soccer Tournament. You want to go lie in the big, rose-filled park by the Hofburg palace, and read? Oh, sorry, we've closed it, because 50,000 drunken Europeans are amassed around the giant megascreen TV broadcasting the soccer game that's blocking off the entire street, and we've closed all the museums, too, because why would you want to go in a museum when there is FOOOTBALLL!?!? Also, don't try sleeping, because whoever won the day's game will invariably be drunkenly celebrating in the street until dawn. I'm tempted to buy my own flag, wear it as a cape, and go screaming through the streets shouting "CHINA!!!! GO CHINA!!! EURO SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP CHAMPIONS!!!" Or just start carrying a gun.
And sure, I have no right to complain, but I never did honestly. But again, like the Internship, I step back and think, "Why am I here, what am I doing here, what does this matter?" And it doesn't, at all, which somehow is not liberating anymore but just a waste, of money and time and energy. I know what I want to do and I haven't been doing it, because I can't. And this is all whine but lordy, lordy, lordy, does the Going Home sound sweeter by the second.
In the meantime, did you know you can watch the ENTIRETY of the original Twilight Zone for free online? My latest fantasy - Rod Serling shows up in my room, telling an unseen audience how "Rachel Richardson, 21 years of age, recently published and combating anxiety and ennui in Vienna, was about to realize the preciousness of her precociousness as she briefly ventured into...THE TWILIGHT ZONE." And then I'd be all "FUCK ROD SERLING I CAN HEAR YOU AHHHHH" and then some freaky shit would probably go down. By which I mean because I'd be in the Twilight Zone. Not because Rod Serling was in my room. Doo-doo-doo-do-doo-doo-doo-do.
10 June 2008
08 June 2008
thens, nows, and laters.
In a probably futile attempt to organize these jumbled things I pass off as blog posts (see also: every paper I've ever written), we're going high-concept tonight, so brace yourself, this might get hairy.
I am good with the Now right now. Now being me, in my dorm room on Boltzmangasse, far from all the idiotic hubbub of the Euro Soccer championship that has basically assaulted Vienna and made everyone into drunken noisy idiots with flags painted on their faces (and we all know how much I like facepaint), after a rainy-sunny day of unwarranted stress and an excursion down the Danube, a movie with my friends in my room because Le Roomie is out for the weekend. Now is good. And it's harder than it should be for me to say that with conviction, but it always has been - as my writing colleagues always tell me, Rachel Cannot Tell A Straight Story. Linearity is not my forte, and I keep journals and read through them too much and am usually jumping between the Past and the Future, neglecting the Now, and not always by accident. Now, though, right now, is pretty grand, and made grander by the Later (because tomorrow is Sunday and I can wake up whenever) and the Then of what was today, and what was last week, and last year, and all those everlasting other 'last's.
Because we had us some times. I don't know who you are out there reading this right now, but regardless, we have had us some times, you and I. Maybe in 12, at the Toga Party of my 20th birthday, or just watching Planet Earth stoned on a Sunday night or climbing on top of the refrigerator to graffiti the ceiling, or maybe it was my freshman year and we were on the roof of Babbitt passing out on each other and falling out of common room windows to get on to Minor Field, or maybe it was a Super Pie in the Keehn FacApt and then dancing all over the furniture.
Or maybe it was in Oklahoma, maybe we were mini-golfing and having fine dinners to judge our servers by our own standards of waitressing, maybe we were driving around doing nothing but listening to music and wondering what we should do with ourselves. Maybe we were on a porch, smoking each other's cigarettes, or we were in a pool with the dogs running laps around the perimeter, or riding on a scooter. Maybe we were in my backyard in dresses, or in coats, and the fire was lit and Penny was under our feet falling asleep. Maybe it was in a courtyard at lunchtime when we weren't yet licensed drivers. Maybe we were in New York City eating Indian food.
Regardless, there were some times, and we should be glad of them.
And today was all hills and rivers, wineries and coffeeshops, spending the day out in the countryside of Vienna, seeing Benedictine monks perform their midday prayer in a Baroque sanctuary, and it was glorious but it wasn't; because it looked so nice, so unreal and yet so ordinary, but really, I was much happier when we came back, when we acted like college students and crammed as many people onto a dorm room bed as possible to watch a movie on my laptop.
The week was rough, doing all the work I haven't done all semester while Vienna went wintry again, confusing my obligations with my responsibilities and drinking too much coffee and not sleeping well (for the record, I've decided Hell is someone listening to The Carpenter's "Close to You" on repeat for the better part of two hours while you are trying to sleep and can hear Karen Carpenter's anorexic croon from all the way across the street - seriously I was on the brink of screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP OR AT LEAST CHANGE THE SONG" but I don't know what it is in German). And the weekend was off-kilter, drinking and eating and spending too much and then today's reaffirmation that this group of students in Vienna is absurd, myself and friends included - no sitcom writer could come up with these characters, ask me about it sometime - but it's all right now. It's all right now. All of it is right now, and it's all right, now.
And the future, flying cars be damned - I'm going to drive across the country in July. I'm going to graduate college. We're going to have a new President. And the ever-so-important Petting of Penny and Drinking With Family is only three weeks away. Three weeks after all this - doesn't seem real.
So that's my Nows and Thens and Laters, my Soons. They don't make much sense, I'm sure, and I'm sorry, but there they are - and what are yours?
I am good with the Now right now. Now being me, in my dorm room on Boltzmangasse, far from all the idiotic hubbub of the Euro Soccer championship that has basically assaulted Vienna and made everyone into drunken noisy idiots with flags painted on their faces (and we all know how much I like facepaint), after a rainy-sunny day of unwarranted stress and an excursion down the Danube, a movie with my friends in my room because Le Roomie is out for the weekend. Now is good. And it's harder than it should be for me to say that with conviction, but it always has been - as my writing colleagues always tell me, Rachel Cannot Tell A Straight Story. Linearity is not my forte, and I keep journals and read through them too much and am usually jumping between the Past and the Future, neglecting the Now, and not always by accident. Now, though, right now, is pretty grand, and made grander by the Later (because tomorrow is Sunday and I can wake up whenever) and the Then of what was today, and what was last week, and last year, and all those everlasting other 'last's.
Because we had us some times. I don't know who you are out there reading this right now, but regardless, we have had us some times, you and I. Maybe in 12, at the Toga Party of my 20th birthday, or just watching Planet Earth stoned on a Sunday night or climbing on top of the refrigerator to graffiti the ceiling, or maybe it was my freshman year and we were on the roof of Babbitt passing out on each other and falling out of common room windows to get on to Minor Field, or maybe it was a Super Pie in the Keehn FacApt and then dancing all over the furniture.
Or maybe it was in Oklahoma, maybe we were mini-golfing and having fine dinners to judge our servers by our own standards of waitressing, maybe we were driving around doing nothing but listening to music and wondering what we should do with ourselves. Maybe we were on a porch, smoking each other's cigarettes, or we were in a pool with the dogs running laps around the perimeter, or riding on a scooter. Maybe we were in my backyard in dresses, or in coats, and the fire was lit and Penny was under our feet falling asleep. Maybe it was in a courtyard at lunchtime when we weren't yet licensed drivers. Maybe we were in New York City eating Indian food.
Regardless, there were some times, and we should be glad of them.
And today was all hills and rivers, wineries and coffeeshops, spending the day out in the countryside of Vienna, seeing Benedictine monks perform their midday prayer in a Baroque sanctuary, and it was glorious but it wasn't; because it looked so nice, so unreal and yet so ordinary, but really, I was much happier when we came back, when we acted like college students and crammed as many people onto a dorm room bed as possible to watch a movie on my laptop.
The week was rough, doing all the work I haven't done all semester while Vienna went wintry again, confusing my obligations with my responsibilities and drinking too much coffee and not sleeping well (for the record, I've decided Hell is someone listening to The Carpenter's "Close to You" on repeat for the better part of two hours while you are trying to sleep and can hear Karen Carpenter's anorexic croon from all the way across the street - seriously I was on the brink of screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP OR AT LEAST CHANGE THE SONG" but I don't know what it is in German). And the weekend was off-kilter, drinking and eating and spending too much and then today's reaffirmation that this group of students in Vienna is absurd, myself and friends included - no sitcom writer could come up with these characters, ask me about it sometime - but it's all right now. It's all right now. All of it is right now, and it's all right, now.
And the future, flying cars be damned - I'm going to drive across the country in July. I'm going to graduate college. We're going to have a new President. And the ever-so-important Petting of Penny and Drinking With Family is only three weeks away. Three weeks after all this - doesn't seem real.
So that's my Nows and Thens and Laters, my Soons. They don't make much sense, I'm sure, and I'm sorry, but there they are - and what are yours?
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