one definition of senioritis

"In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality. The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral."

- george santayana

if you ever wonder about the things i love, the things i look at, the things that catch my eye and imagination in the spare half-hours i spend between homework and nighttime, when the sky is still dark and has yet to shade into sunrise and morning - check the tumblr.

someone in buzzer club brought up a really strange point today. he said something along the lines of "while i was playing with legos, you people were all reading old books and watching TCM".

i don't even really know the person who said that, except in that hazy, wavy, "friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend" way. what he said stuck with me anyway.

who dictates what's normal? who has the right to wake up one morning and dictate what we should and should not like or be interested in or think is pretty flipping cool?

we all probably know the answer to those questions - mtv. and, wow, they've done a wonderful job of educating america's youth, haven't they? most people my age can't tell the difference between trotsky and tolstoy, use the words good and well interchangeably, and think that hallelujah is that one song they played on the o.c. and american idol a few times.

in other words: this post? it's basically a summation of all the reasons i hate people.

you know, whenever i say that out loud i never fail to receive at least one startled look from someone. and i understand that, i do, because when i say 'i hate people' i'm hyperbolizing. obviously.

but there are days, like today, where i can't help but wonder what's wrong with the rest of the world. what's wrong with the people spending an entire hour and a half in yearbook looking up prom dresses or the people who never read the (legitimately wonderful) books in english class or...everyone, really. where are the readers? the thinkers? the dreamers?

like the lady of shalott i'm half sick of shadows today. luckily, i have a stack of books waiting for me to return once i've finished this (grammatically incorrect, i'm sure, but this is the internet) post.

i think i'll just curl up with my brownies and my books and my brand new ipod and count down the days until graduation, because i'm tired of waiting for people to develop functioning brains.

before i go, though, i'll leave you with this poem. it's one of my favorites, so i might have blogged about it before. i know steffi, at least, has already seen this since one of the prerequisites of friendship with me is that you both read and like edna st. vincent millay. in other words, if you're reading this and you consider us friends, you better love this poem. or else.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. 

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost. 

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. 

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

it's called "dirge without music" and so this post will also be musicless. and yes, i am perfectly aware that musicless wasn't actually a word, but if shakespeare could conjure up words out of thin air and have them approved by the oxford english dictionary, i can create one measly portmanteau. bon soir mes amis.

writer's block is god's way of making pms last all month long

you know how some of you have depressed alter-egos? depressteffi and depresseni and my-name-is-multiple-personality-hear-me-roar, or what have you.

well, i don't.

and for a little while there i tried to think of one or pinpoint the moment depressedrachel showed up but then i realized that it was never going to happen. mostly, because depressedrachel? she's my default state. it's like there's this undercurrent of fearworryparanoia in everything i do and say. an undercurrent that's a little more prominent today.

there's no real reason for it either. nothing particularly bad happened. and i have my whinier moments, but it's not like my life is completely horrible. my brain's still on when everything else is off. and it's going: you will try and try and always fail. it's going: give up now, in the style of bitchy fortune cookies everywhere. mostly it's going: why can't you do any better? there's kids writing books and founding businesses and curing cancer right now. hurry up. 

pressure is a ticking clock, is an empty page, is the thousand and one ideas you can't articulate and the words flying through your head like birds on the wind.

i'm tired. this is unedited and i'm ignoring the little red lines that safari's putting up under my typos. i think i'm going to watch a little comedy central to cheer myself up. south park's still on.

i read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.