October 1st, 2002 - 11.44 pm
Can you believe it's OCTOBER already? I can't. Wow. Time flys.
I'm sitting in my room right now, a cat curled up on my lap, wrapped in a blanet, soft piano music on very low, listening to the rain and just . . .breathing. I've got an exam tomorrow that I spent all evening studying for, I've got an exam on Friday, I have papers and projects and meetings to plan and yet, I'm sitting in my room, in the dark, breathing. I'm taking this meditation class and we're really focusing on slowing down enjoying the moments as they come. And so I'm just. . .feeling every breath come in and leave my body. I'm feeling very quiet right about now, and even the clattering of my keyboard which is usually comforting to me feels intrusive.
I want to drive to Kansas next month to see RENT. I'm a junior in college and I don't have any drunken nights, or crazy experiences, and I kind of want them. The experiences anyway, not necessarily the drunkeness. I've always been fairly mature about things that matter, and I'm feeling like maybe that's catching up with me and I want to do something TOTALLY ridiculous, I want to have stories to tell.
I have stories of beautiful, glorious nights with the best friends anyone could ever ask for, wrapped up in knitted blankets and laughter and tears and sometimes just silence. I have stories of dinners with those friends where we laughed so hard, things came out of peoples noses.
I have stories of driving to Nebraska with my family and discovering history. My history.
I have stories of times spent studying so hard I lost complete track of time, of hours in the dark room only to emerge with wrinkled, fishy smelling hands, and one perfect print, hours on stage, only to emerge exahusted and drained, after doing a scene until I lost myself in someone else. I have stories of holding long blond hair back, as a tissue paper thin body bent over a toilet expelling an ungodly amount of alcohol and sadness, I have stories of hours on the phone, wishing for all the world I could reach through the phone lines to hold a hand, stroke a strand of stray hair, brush my lips against a forehead.
I have stories. But tonight, I feel like I deserve a wild roadtrip, I feel like I can miss two days of school and drive with some of my best friends, to go see a show that makes me feel . . . ALIVE. Tinglingly alive. But it's not about the show. It's about the drive, the music, the talking the silence, it's about the stopping for gas in Podunksville. It's about battling through fog at 3 am.
I'm going.
