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“Where the Sidewalk Ends,” a poem by Shel Silverstein
I absolutely love this poem, and for no real concrete reason. Maybe it’s just the way it flows, or maybe it’s the images it puts into my head… I don’t know, but Shel Silverstein is literally my favorite poet of all time, and this is my favorite work of his. It’s just about the only one I’ve got memorized, that’s for sure.
“Random Shoes,” an episode of British TV show Torchwood
The episode this comes from is told from the perspective of a young man who “wakes up” to find himself dead, unable to be seen or heard by anyone, but trying his hardest to help Torchwood members figure out the mystery behind his murder. In the end, he ends up just appreciating how wonderful life was (because that’s what you do in this kind of situation, cliche or no). And I don’t know, when I heard it, I was tearing up for real. LIVE YOUR LIFE, AND LIVE IT NOW. Such an awesome quote.
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Those of you that know anything about me know that I’m one of those mood-based music people… my favorite song changes with my mood and by what’s new into my iTunes and a million other things.
With that being said, here are my current favorites.
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Don’t need my health, got my name and got my wealth
I stare at the sun just for kicks all by myself
I lose track of time so I might be past my prime
But I’m feeling oh so good… yeah!
Hey, I didn’t say it was a deep song… but seriously, give it a listen. It is the most addictingly catchy (yet not annoying!) song ever. I could eat OneRepublic’s entire new CD like it was candy, but this is the song I like to blast in my car every morning to put me in a fantastic mood!
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Break away from everybody
Break away from everything
If you can’t stand the way this place is
Take yourself to higher places
Lately I’ve been really into this style of music (along with, like, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, and the like) and this is the one song that I get caught in my head a lot. It’s got a great meaning to it; if you’re not happy with how your life is going… do something or go somewhere to make it better. Makes me want to get up and do something, you know?
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This is the collective addiction of oh so many people at work!
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I recently found a story I started maybe a year or two ago. After re-reading it… I realize it has a lot of potential. I think, if I have any spare time, I’ll work on it. Or I may make it my NaNo project, since there’s not much started on it.
Anyhow, it’s called Alternate, and the basic premise of the story is that a girl named Elsie Jordan wakes up one morning to find herself in an alternate dimension, where everyone 20 years old and younger has been born the opposite way. Her best friend Bethany is a boy, the guy that follows her around drooling is a girl, and so forth.
The thing I like the best about it is that Elsie has such a unique voice; much different than other characters I’ve worked with. The story is in first-person, a point of view I don’t usually work with, and she tends to ramble.
I have come to the conclusion that I live in a very backwards town. It’s not the fact that we have no mall, no theater, no Wal-Mart, or no McDonald’s. It’s not the fact that, though the town’s population is fairly large, they update it by hand every Friday afternoon, on every sign leading into town. It’s not even the fact that, instead of a normal school district, we have all twelve grades using an old college campus downtown that sprawls for blocks.
No, the backwardness of Everglade was given away by a smaller detail that not even the name (Everglade is in Pennsylvania, not Florida, believe it or not) could convey: the ice cream trucks.
Winter in Pennsylvania is no laughing matter – at least in Everglade. It generally involves a few feet of snow, some ice, more snow, a weekend of melting, and then a grand finale of three-foot-deep frozen slush.
But through wind and rain, snow and sleet, blizzards and stock market crashes, the ice cream trucks are there. Everglade has a legion of yellow and white ice cream trucks, very much on schedule and very much all year round.
The truck that comes through my neighborhood does so between six and six-thirty a.m., without fail. At a quarter after six, the truck passes in front of my house, thus waking me up in time for school.
Who needs alarm clocks? Nobody in Everglade.
And my truck, just like every other truck in the ice cream regime, has a very distinctive (read: obnoxious) tune. It starts off sounding quite a bit like the “little Indians” song from preschool. But right before it gets to the tenth little Indian, it hiccups and blurts, “Pop! goes the weasel.”
After seventeen years, though, you get used to Indians popping weasels in the head. It becomes an ignored fact of life.
At six-fifteen on Monday morning, the fifth of October, the tenth Indian and his weasel woke me up, just in time to get ready for school… just like every morning.
This is, by the way, the very beginning of the story. It comes in five parts, Monday through Friday. I can’t wait to get really moving on this. You know, in all my spare time.
Nos • tal • gia – noun – a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.
I was really really bored last night while waiting around on Yahoo, and so I was passing the time looking for something in one of my old email accounts. Old email accounts, by the way, are the best time capsules ever. In the process, I started reading some old emails and taking a quick trip down memory lane. It was like reliving the past… something I tend to be overly good at.
After that I pulled up my old Xanga (now that’s a riot and a half…) and was looking through some old entries… and then, just before I got off for the sake of needing just a little bit of sleep before I had to go to work, I found myself over at the Internet Archive looking at the entries for Transitionalstate. That, by the way, was James’ idea. I forgot about the IA.
I miss T-state. I really, really do! I honestly haven’t found a forum with that level of close-knit community since then. I mean… people have met on this forum and gotten married (Sonny and Jessie, Grant and Adrienne), and I’ve met quite a few of the friends that I’ve had for… well, since T-state. I really, really miss it.
I’ve been thinking a bit about community. T-state had it. Why? What was it about that particular group of people in that time and in that place that seemed to click? Seriously, it really was the most drama-free forum ever. I can remember one member getting disciplined and… well, he shouldn’t have been on there in the first place.
Why can’t communities in real life work this way? Perhaps it’s because we don’t see each other face-to-face. Perhaps, in real life, it’s not just friends and more friends… it’s friends, family, and more ties and loyalties than I care to think about. This is, once again, delightfully vague. I’ve just been in a bit of a funk the last day or so, for many many more reasons than just this.
Some days I wish that we could bring back certain elements of the past… and some days I’m thankful that I’ll never have to live through those particular trials again.
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This guy came in to Braum’s today… big guy, came to get ice cream. He’s wearing one of those t-shirts with a catchy saying on it. Everyone’s seen them. This one absolutely made me laugh. This is EXACTLY what it said:
Stupidity is not a crime.
Your free to go.
Please, please, tell me that I’m not the only nerd whose first thought was… TYPO! Yes, I’m calling you stupid with the TYPO on MY shirt.
Classic.
Anyhow. I had a fun weekend! I know, I don’t get out much. James was up and we also went and chilled out in Lawton with Chelsy. I mean, we didn’t do anything particularly thrilling (except to note that the Prestige is a crazy good movie, and that “I will survive” is NOT a good song to listen to when you’re weird, tired, and apparently coffee-deprived), but it was nice to just hang out with friends. I miss that a lot.
I won’t go into details, but I’ve been thinking a lot in the past, oh, twenty-four hours or so about a lot of stuff in my life I’ve got to fix. Fears, issues, lack of trust, and all that jazz. Anyhow, about halfway through work today, I remembered a song on my Superchick CD (their first one is still their best, thank you) that I haven’t listen to in ages and ages. Lemme give you the lyrics.
Some people bring you gifts
Some bring you bricks to weight you down
So they can swim a little higher while you drown
Some people mean so well
Their way was the best way that they found
But any other way you choose is a brick that weights you down
So tell me what do I do with this backpack full of bricks
And sticks and stones and words that stuck to me like ticks[CHORUS]
Let it go, let it be
Brick by brick we can be free of all the words we saved
Till we were our own enemies
Let it go, let it be
Brick by brick we can believe in the person God intended us to be
Let it beSome people give themselves a brick
I know most people do
When we compare we fall short somewhere
It’s always true
If all we see is where we fall we’ve bricked a prison wall
Instead of trying to learn to fly
We’ve taught ourselves to crawlWe could believe in ourselves
More we could try for unique
Instead of trying to conform
We could defy what they tell us
Don’t buy the lies they sell us
If we’re brave we can believe in what we are
I think that’s pretty much self-explanatory. It better be, ’cause that’s all you’re getting! The point of that is… it’s true.