:: Closing Time ::

:: Friday, October 04, 2002 ::

Last night I thought of something to blog about - it was really important, but I forgot. I fucking hate that, because I don't feel like my blog is at the caliber it once was. No, lied - I know my blog isn't at the caliber it once was. But at least the blogs I do write have meaning these days, and this should be no exception.

I think the reason I forgot what I wanted to blog about was that it came up when I was on the phone with Jack. Around 11:20 I'm working on a physics lab and talking to jack online and having problems with the lab, so naturally (at a school full of poli-sci and IA majors this is virtually impossible) I ask the engineer for his input. He figures out a good point but can't explain it well online, so I take advantage of my virtually free nights and weekends (I have 3500 night/weekend minutes on my cell a month) and my free long distance to call him. He gave me a good solid answer in like ten minutes. But. Make a really long story short - that phone conversation did not end until 2:20 AM (three hours later, for those of you counting).

For those of you paying VERY close attention.... you remember I called because I couldn't get a lab report done. It sure as fucking hell didn't get done while I was on the phone.

So I'm up till the asscrack of dawn getting my lab report done, and I go to bed and it's not done but I've got time today to finish it, and it's the fucking day from hell. I can't even recount all the details because they hurt, but today fucking sucked. Tonight's pledge event fucking sucked. I understand there's a point to everything, I think I even see the point, but you know what? The whole thing overall sucked. I hate these damn "events."

So ends the week of hell, because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it to my 9:30 discussion tomorrow. But that's ok, because hell weekend is just beginning. Saturday and Sunday, both up and at 'em at fucking dawn! 7:00 saturday, 8:00 sunday. auuuuuugh. More details on that later.

On to real thoughts, deep thoughts.

First of all, well done Chris. Your reaction and return to blogging leads me into my first point, a repoint: you fucking cunts need to start blogging better, and of course I mean that in the nicest way possible. No, seriously, think about it. The point is I miss you guys, and I feel like I'm losing you and not keeping in touch with you. Part of why I talked to Jack for three hours yesterday was because he doesn't blog, and we had a lot of catching up to do - but I can't do that with most people. To some extent I don't have the time (although I'll make it for ANY of you. Like, literally fucking any of you, anywhere in the country. I have free long distance.) but moreso with a lot of people it's just HARD. Like, basically Jack Alex Sasha and Natalie (actually, and often Schram) are the only people I can just talk and talk to, going from one topic to the next until we basically run out of time. And that's great - I mostly don't feel like I'm losing touch with these people, because I have talked to all of them (though some not enough!! :). But then there's the rest of you. Some of you who might even think I dontgiveafuck.blogspot.com. There's your example - I guarentee you if you polled everybody who reads this (EVEN my readers!!), no more than a handful of them would realize that I seriously want to keep in touch with Chris, want to keep up on what's going on in his life. His blog is a perfect way for me to do that. Shit, Chris has been a part of my life longer than most of you, how could I let him just dissapear after how Rice Street and swim team brought him back into my time? And yet... I doubt most of you would think of it, because as my life goes I guess you could call him a fringe player. Somehow he keeps coming up in my blog though. BUT ALL OF YOU DAMNIT. Give me a fucking IM, an email, and I'll call you. I want to know what's going on at home, what's going on at school. What's different, what's not. What you're thinking. And the reason I can call you fucking cunts is that none of you (none of you who matter anyway) are stupid enough to think I honestly mean that. It's the reason I do - because even if I don't know it, and I think I want to hear from you, if you had stopped back there and not heard me out then I really shouldn't have wanted to talk to you. You did though - so I do.

Next point - an update on my head, and what college is doing to it. First of all, the obvious - the damn sonar. Oddly enough, there are three girls showing up consistantly on the sonar who simply have no legitimate reason to be there. I mean, they do - but like, there's no actual reason for me to even be pinging cause it's like a different fucking ocean. It's the damn hunt for red october, except "one ping" isn't going to get heard 20 yards away, it's fucking 2,000 miles. Unfortunately as well, there's another ping I sent out that simply didn't get bounced.... and this time, I knew where to look, and the ping just didn't come back. Kinda insulted, kinda annoyed, kinda upset. I really thought that ping was gonna come back. Several pings that at one point seemed important are now not even on the sonar, and some pings remain fuzzy. I wish somebody here really knew me. I wish I had somebody I really could trust to understand. I don't though. I don't have anyone who I know is going to get it, and I don't think there's anyone here who could potentially fill that role that I know yet. We all think too differently. With the possible exception of my pledge brothers, most/all of whom I think will eventually become my beta brothers, I don't think I'll be friends with any of these people next year.

I still wish I could talk to you guys about pledging. It makes me fucking want to cry that I can't, because god knows I can't talk to them. Too much negativity, too much arrogance, too much fucking bullshit that hasn't been broken down yet. I hope the pledge process DOES break it down, cause it's supposed to. But there are some pledge brothers I simply can't handle right now.... it makes me want to scream. Because over the last few years there a few of you I know I could call brother and count on like a brother in a second, and now I'm supposed to call all these guys brother because the brothers I wanted to be part of selected me, and them. I didn't sign on with my pledge class, it was handed to me. I guess I have to manage, and just have faith that the brothers made the right decisions.

Heh. Oh yeah. I've started going on walkabout around Thurston - I just caught myself doing it tonight.

It's not working. Right now, I either need sleep or something else. I'm not sure which one. Sleep I'll wake up fine tomorrow morning, but something else... maybe solitude, maybe silence, maybe someone. Something else may backfire, but I might learn something.

There's no where peaceful here I can go on my own. It's not safe to walk to the Lincoln, and I don't think I could talk to Abe. I talked to Abe the other night - if we were a bit closer, I think I might be there a lot. It's the obvious place to go, although again I'd prefer the FDR. For anyone who hasn't heard yet, the FDR is without a doubt my absolute favorite memorial. I think it's absolutely brilliant, evocative, and powerful - and most of you probably know that most memorials and shit don't do a lot for me. People talk a lot about The Wall - the wall, it doesn't really do it for me. Not to be insensitive, but like... the thing is a list of the names of every person lost in vietnam, and names don't really evoke feeling for me. The feeling is sitting there, or honestly anywhere, and thinking about the men and women who died on the field, who suffered, who bled, who did things they honestly thought were wrong - all because they felt they had to. Because there was something inside them that compelled them to. I think, if they called me today, I would serve. I have a million and one ways I could get out of the draft - SSS being the obvious one, but there are dozens of ways to jump the armed forces anyhow. I wouldn't though. Because of one specific thought: whether or not I believe in what I would end up doing, whether or not I believe what I end up doing is right, whether I have to do things that haunt me for the rest of my life

If I dodge a draft, somebody else will go, die, and suffer in my place. Because I wouldn't do it.

I don't have the right to do that to anyone, and I have the moral obligation to everyone to take on my own burden.

As for the Wall? There is one specific detail I learned about it once which reall DOES hit me, which really does strike me as brilliant and deep. The wall has a guidebook - in it, all the names are listed alphabetically and it tells you what panels they're on, so you can find them, but also in it is a key to what the symbols beside the names mean. There are symbols for medal winners, there are symbols for POWs. And there is one other symbol - there's a symbol for a POW, formerly presumed dead, who has been safely returned.

To this day, that symbol has never been carved into the wall.

That it already exists, is defined, and is ready, is an absolutely incredible show of faith and respect. In that there is honor, pride, courage, and brilliance. That and that alone sends chills down my spine. Literally.

Always remember, we say, but the Wall doesn't only stand for the memory - it stands for the last bastion of faith that some still hold for the future.

Purely electric.
:: Peter 3:10 AM [+] ::
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