x13thehate

impending post about:

the bees
the boat
Vladimir

just to remind myself!

and I'm trying to write down my dreams, but something keeps interrupting me. I'm sorry!

there is so much to do.

To Anna,


I know you're not angsty (not angsty, and that's not a typo, because you're not) even though things suck and that I don't know anything about it and that school is not a fun place for you. I don't know if it's the teachers or the schoolwork or the kids or the lunch aids or the bathrooms or the food, or the way we are always funneled and directed to rooms we don't want to be in and away from people we need to see to stay sane. But I want you to come anyway, you know, I want you to graduate from high school (even though your parents won't let you go where you want) and I want you to get the remaining credits that you can and I want you to fight for them, a stitch in time saves fucking nine. I want you to be able to go whereever you want and to learn Swahili in Africa. That's why I gave you the time and dates and cost of the environmental science class. I don't want you to worry about it--I just want you to do it. If it fits. Mostly I just want you to never have to take 12th grade health except for this quarter with me second block room 712. Because attendance sucks without you there, the silence after "Snyder?" reminding me that my friend is not coming to school. And if that silence stops happening it will be enough to make me happy. And I don't think that you know that, even though I told you by phone on the first day of the new quarter, because that was three days ago. I don't think it worked. So I am using livejournal because yo, it's dkessel, and you added meh. (This is what you get.)


The kid you almost hooked up with under the stars last May,
Dann

(jk)

I think between now and the end of the school year, I want to compose lists of Thank You's and I'm Sorry's. I have a small start.


I'm sorry to Melissa, for not writing her a letter last Friday (the snow day) when I wrote 4 other ones and she was the only one who asked for one in the first place.

Thank you to Greg, from my precalc class in winter 2006, who was the one who showed me where the computer lab is at RVCC when I was walking in the wrong direction even though I pretended I didn't care at the time, like I was just going to find a computer no matter which direction I went. It was an effortless thing but having access to the lab at the college ended up making a big difference for me, in small, understated ways.

Since I don't consider two days to be a week, this week and next week are done for me. All that's left of third quarter will be March, 5 weeks of March, plus a little surplus after that in April, but nothing big. I'm not exactly on the 4th quarter bus yet, but I don't deny that it will be nice--well, hopefully (the wintry mix is throwing rocks at my window).

Sometimes, I despise the symbolism.

I tried to think of things you have in common. I haven't signed up for the SATs yet. I fear wordiness but not selfishness and I haven't gone to Wal Mart yet but I have tons of books and papers by my computer desk and I have to go through them soon, fill things out, whatever, finish summer work, see some people, I feel like I will start this year with intense inertia, that maybe I won't sleep the night before--there isn't time now but later. I haven't read the anthology yet. I haven't written anything deliberately poetic since the end of gschool. I have a few lines scribbled on an envelope I had nearby at the time. I write things on my hands all the time that I forget about and later when I wash my hands I wash the words off and I hate that. One day, two and some weeks ago, on four-holed notebook paper, I wrote a list of reasons I hated someone. Then last Monday (everyone saying goodbye) I was given a magazine I don't feel like reading but it was a nice gesture and it is all about music that supposedly I would like. I'm sure I'd like some but that's not the issue (pun), I just don't feel like it, my bed is so comfortable, I can't stand it, I talked on the phone last night until around 2 and was so tired and so comfortable. Now my jetlag is basically gone. When I decide to get up I have to either read or think about everything, I will probably end up overapplying to colleges, hyperapplying, I do almost everything I do in excess. ("Don't ever do drugs.") I've never loved anyone with blue eyes. Or light hair. Or anyone who was short or tall. That's what I came up with for common factors. And falling asleep next to me. My alarm is sometimes set for a time from an earlier day inappropriate to the current day and it goes off and I wake up at an inappropriate time, even though it was appropriate the day before. I hate when people say it's ok to not know what you are going to do with your life because you are still young as well as when people say you should know by now, but that's not one of the reasons I wrote down two weeks ago. I wrote down the bad things and the good things, the typical things and felt typical, want to watch Vanilla Sky again but it hasn't been long enough since when I last watched it, I want nothing. Really, nothing appeals to me right now but standstill, and maybe common denominators. No food or drinks or gum or music. Not this writing voice. Or tone? Mood? I never understood the difference between "tone" and "mood." And I think you can't help but be forever impaired by the things you never understood. Or missing people! Hey, it's only Thursday. That's not too bad. I foresee a shift in tone, and mood.

Baba O´Riley. I will be happy to have my music back. But it doesn´t matter for now. I packed all my things because even though I still have 6 days left here, that is nothing, especially when I will be gone for most of them. I mean, I really only have 2 days left, and so much to do! I don´t need to be forgiven. I am excited for this year. I don´t know what will happen, but I feel a little fresh, like I´ve been renewed, like I´ve come to terms with shit. I think it´s such a cliche and a lame one, at that, to go away and learn things about yourself--fuck that. I am kind of guilty of it though. You can´t help it but also I think you can´t help it no matter where you are. I miss warheads, although if offered one I´d probably refuse. (That´s how I feel.) I love Munich and cities in general. I don´t know, it´s not like I´m any better off now than I ever have been and I don´t want it to sound like that. Really though I just don´t care anymore. I hate ever talking about The State that I Am in. It never works. Comfortably Numb now, haha, I fucking love this radio station. When I get home I really want to watch The Wall. Someone, watch it with me. (You are only coming through in waves...your lips move, but I can´t hear what you say.) I am fluent on this different keyboard now. Which makes me kind of sad, but proud, I don´t know. I don´t know what I think. I still want the Dvorak keyboard. I´ll buy one, maybe off of ebay. I have only ever bought two things off of it. After I finished packing--it was just to make sure everything still fit and that I could carry it across Europe without too much trouble; everything did fit and I can manage to carry the bags all alone (I practiced, lol), so it´s all good--I selectively unpacked all the things I´d need for the remaining time. I have to clean my apartment too, but that will be Friday. I am just constantly ambivalent. But not even that, that´s not the right fucking word. Nor is apathetic or happy or sad or fine or ready or indifferent or lonely or nostalgic or comfortably numb or anything. I think it´s just everything and to me it´s even funny, not silent and grim funny or laugh out loud funny, but chuckle funny--chuckle audibly, yet not so loud that the whole fucking cafe is going to hear it. I don´t deny that I am crazy but I don´t support it either, because I think either one is lame. Next Tuesday I have a 20 hour day of travel, and all in one day I will be in Munich, Frankfurt, London, New York, and then Whitehouse! And it will be 10:30 to them (you) but 4:30 to me. I will sleep in my cold blue room and miss Germany but also be happy to be home. Not quite ambivalent but both, everything, all at once. My favourite phrase is `I don´t know.´ I just fear that now that I´ve stated that, I won´t be able to use it as often.

Now that I think about it, it's actually pretty absurd that at 7:30 AM I was sleeping in a random patch of grass, on a hill, in a development, for two hours. But, it bought us about 3 extra hours and it was worth it.

Now Germany until August 31st--it should be good. If any of you would like, send me something this week and it will get to me. Second week of August, most likely. After that, nothing.


Dann Kessel
IUCM Summer Program
Luwig-Maximilians-Universität München
c/o International Affairs
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80593 München
Deutschland/Germany


!!!! have good summers.

( This is called I Am Still Wearing My Meal Band. )

I had a good junior year. This year should have been miserable, but it wasn't. Why I always have so much fun is beyond me.

Next year will be better. I will be so much more free. I don't like how much I grasp onto everything in my life and I have to stop it before I make myself go insane. For prom weekend I haven't written anything in my log, and I think instead of the normal pages of unemotional transcripts of transpirations I will write in big letters (size 24 font) PROM WEEKEND. Then I'll close the book.

And next year I will try not to save as much. Maybe it was reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being that made me want to be so light; or maybe this is just a reaction to everything that's happened and I can't do it anymore. But maybe none of these are right, and in general I tend to scorn most introspection for its futility. You can't look at yourself and say that this is why you do that, and usually you just end up frustrated. I guess that is part of my need to escape from myself too. It's not that I want to be stupid (happy = stupid, no?), but I think weighing yourself down with unnecessary burden is just another form of stupidity.

I don't want to be excessively light or excessively heavy. Next year I will find something in between.

And as for the summer, I suppose I will be doing interesting things and meeting tons of interesting people. And this is, after all, what I wanted. I get to see Broken Social Scene and Belle and Sebastian (and Morrissey and Nada Surf and Cursive and more) in Salzburg, 90 minutes from my dorm in Munich. I bought the tickets, which were expensive, and the hotel room for those two nights with my own money. What was left of it, anyway.

So I guess this is my end of the year entry and my hopeful look towards the future. We learned a word for that in German (oh the words we learn): Jenseitshoffnung. "Hope for over there." Over there...

On a closing note, I have never been to New York by myself but I think it is bound to happen. Then I'll go with everyone else I know; it will be fun. And we'll laugh...


[RUH bec UH x 27 (12:38:41 PM): why were there just gangsters in your yard

lol.]

feligrity.

It was the craziest thing ever and I couldn't stop staring but you didn't smile once the entire time. Not once. Didn't you notice? You couldn't keep your fingers out of your mouth.

I no longer wanted to want to be your friend and I couldn't stop staring or caring and I don't want to care any more. If I care any longer I don't know what I'm going to do.


You don't get to tell me what to do ever again.



So, that's the way. That's the way it's gotta be.

It's like this, Cat.

I hope your heart is not brittle.

Lights in my driveway. Dew on my deck, Dolores on the dotted line. 4 AM the highway is empty. Everyone I have ever known is sitting around a Furby. Watch him talk. Spanish, my only friend. Old CDs, is that your handwriting? No. (I compared.) Old, old, old. One year for every old. Then, add a month. The world smells like pot. Lights in my neighbour's. No weight on my bed, no warmth. A joke everyone gets but me.

"Oh, Dan. There was something else I wanted to say but I thought it might make you mad."

"Well, then you better not say it," you said abruptly.

I emitted a slight chuckle. A chuckle of shock, a chuckle of adoration.

Kill them with kindness.

My advice to you is to keep your chin up, your eyes forward. Never search the undersides of rocks where life could never prosper. Remember that it is ok to be important to yourself and never, ever be fooled by the present tense.

I hope your heart is not brittle.

In other news, I decided that people only learn things the hard way, which sucks for the learner, but the hard truth is that tutelage is cruel, cruel, cruel.