So What Would That Make a Library?

Books are utterly astonishing. Think about it. Set aside the love that you have for your favourite novel; all of the emotions it elicits. Forget about everything that you can learn just from moving your eyes across a few pieces of paper. Think just about the book itself: months upon months, sometimes years upon years, sometimes even numerous generations, of story, information, life, all dissolved in ink and flattened out onto pages and bound into a perfectly compact book. Pick up a book. Right now. Any book. The closest one to you. Hold it in your hands. Toss it around between your hands. Gauge its weight by bouncing it up and down a little. YOU ARE HOLDING A LIFE. Numerous lives, in fact, all snuggled in there somewhere, dormant, running on hamster wheels until somebody has the decency to exposed the pages to light, let them stretch a little, shout a little, be a little. I think that it would be so cool to have x-ray eyes, so that I could look through a book cover and see all of the words layered over top of each other, the ending of a story visible through its translucent beginning, hours of reading condensed into a split-second overload. Picking up a book, you have this whole other world, right there in your fingers; a piece of somebody else's existance has literally been captured for you to experience. It's possible to love books more than you love reading.

P.S. eBooks are Magic Destroyers

We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them. - John Waters

And Then All I Heard Was "Blah Blah Blah Ginger"

Don't talk to me when I'm talking to somebody else.

I want to hear what you have to say. I want to give you my undivided attention. If I'm trying to listen to two or three people at once, I can't give each person the attention they deserve. And then I feel overwhelmed from trying to keep up, and empty because each conversation was superficial instead of in-depth, and any extra conversational flair was destroyed, and everything that could have been said wasn't, and there was no finality to the conclusion.

I don't care if we're discussing who is driving who where, what you ate for dinner last night, your father's heart attack, or religion. I want to give you my attention. I don't want to feel like a douche for trying to flip from one person to the next, jerking my head back and forth like a defective robot. My attention is not particularily valuable, but if someone wants it for whatever reason, I want to be able to give it to them.

It seems that nobody has a desire to talk to me until, all of a sudden, a few people decide that they all need to say something right this second. And then they start, as if my current conversation doesn't even exist. They just start talking and I get the fun job of deciding who I'd rather listen to.

If you want to talk to someone who is currently talking to somebody else, all you need to do is say "Hey, can I talk to you?", and then wait a moment or two so that they can wrap up whatever they're discussing with the other person. Not acknowledging that two people were talking before you got there is rude and unfair to everybody involved.

 

Healthier than I Would Care to Admit

Normalcy is boring. No, really. Who in their right mind would want to live a normal life? I literally cannot understand a more useless way to spend one's time, than in the attempt to be...*shudder cringe vomit*...normal.

Now, you may be ready to tell me that there are "lots of ways to be normal". I refute your claim. There are not "lots of ways to be normal". What's normal to one person won't be normal to the next; for instance, my friends all think it's weird that I don't wear underwear to bed. I think that they're all crazy. So I guess, in that respect, there are lots of ways to be normal, because everyone sees their way as what's "normal". But because there is no universal Normal, it doesn't really count. Normal can only exist honestly in one individual at a time.

I don't understand why one would want to try to be "normal", because it's never the "normal" people who do the spectacular things. To be spectacular, by definition one has to be impressive. One has to make an impression. One cannot make an impression on people if they are exactly the same as those people. They would just kind of smush together in total agreement, more or less losing their individuality. Maybe it's narcissistic to want a life that isn't quite the same as anybody else's. But that narcissism only exists if that person wants that life solely for attention and/or other personal gain. On rare occasions, there have been known to be people who do things for the sake of others, for the sake of betterment, for the sake of they have to and don't know how to stop. Innovation happens because somebody thinks of things in a different way. Art moves people because it presents an idea to them that they had never seen from exactly that perspective before, or could never adequately express themselves. Even if it starts off as one person seeing things differently, that has the potential to inspire others to create beautiful, thought-provoking, unique things. Any things. Whatever things they want. Things that nobody knew could exist except for that one person. 

I make a conscious effort to be bizarre. I have a problem opposite to any teenager from any high school film created in the history of Ever. Only being weird doesn't count if it's forced. Because being honest is more important than being anything else in the world. So I guess what I'm saying is make sure to let your strange bits fall out of your ears and into plain sight. But also don't get jealous over other people's weird bits. And don't make weird bits out of paper mache and try to pretend like you just found them there, sitting in your ears, completely by accident.  

We've all got "weird" inside of us. I guess the "weird" people are just the ones who have relaxed long enough to let some of it out. Or maybe they create it in larger quantities. Or something.    

I Can't Remember My Lines

My entire life is an exercise in characterization.

Because really, who wants to risk being boring?

It makes much more sense to act like a crazy person, if that will make things more interesting.

Or to dramatize your emotions far passed their actual intensities, in order to keep up with any attributes that you have previously assigned yourself, and to ensure that people believe you to be a manic ball of spit-fire and passion at all times.

I'd rather be anything but ordinary, please. (Thank you, Avril Lavigne. My current mental state is forever indebted to you.)

Quick descriptors, with a two-word maximum (unless some bizarre simile is being employed), are the only acceptable method with which one's personality can be made known to others.

Because it's very important that others see you as exactly whom you wish them to see.

God forbid they see something in you that you didn't put there.

God forbid you ever mistakenly acquire any trait you haven't previously deemed "acceptable".

God forbid anyone ever call you normal.

I Didn't Kill Anybody, I Swear

   What is it with people (namely me) doing things that we know we'll regret later, AND YET DOING THEM ANYWAY?!?

   Say I ate this cookie. It was delicious. Then I thought, "You know what would be good? Another cookie." And so I was about to take the cookie when I thought, "You know, you should really save that cookie for another time. It would taste much better if you went through a little bit of cookie detox first." And then I thought, "But it would taste almost as good nooooow". And then I thought, "You're gross. Just take your cookie, you will power-lacking gross person." And then I don't even want the cookie anymore. And then I take the cookie anyway but don't enjoy it because I feel like the part of me that could actually be something has lost out to the part of me that eats out of boredom and uses the internet like an addict in a back alley. *I've got your megapixels, you got the cash?*

   I continue to do things I know I'll hate myself for, things that are proven to diminish my self-worth. Is it just out of habit? Have I gotten so used to feeling disappointed in myself, to knowing that I could be better if I tried, that it's become a sick sort of comfort? Have I become too accustomed to watching who I want to be from afar, never letting her make her way out of my head? Am I insane, expecting a different outcome to occur this time around when I put off my homework until midnight the day it's due? Have I spent so long lazing in my hole of bedclothes, living by the soft glow of a computer screen, that the idea of climbing out seems like far too much work? Is it some sort of mixture?

   When I daydream about being successful, and by that I mean "doing something I could actually be proud of", the visions are always of a moment cut out from a bigger situation. I'm on stage, using every ounce of power my eyes have to pierce into the audience; I'm tearing through books as though I depend on them for survival; I'm known as that girl who just seems to know all of the things. I always skip over the part where I actually have to do work. I want to know things. Important things. Things that matter. It doesn't even matter if anybody is aware of my knowing all the things, as long as I can feel all of those stories and facts and concepts chatting to each other through tin can telephones in my brain. However, to know things, one must first learn the things.

   That's where we run into a problem. *Crash*. I do things I'll regret later. But I also don't do things, knowing I'll regret that even more later. Not reading that book destroys much more self-worth than eating that cookie. But I don't read the book. I'm too "busy". I've got essays to bullshit; labs to write on topics I refuse to take the time to remember, to learn properly. And so I make my way by scraping by. I know what you want to say: "But Riley, you get 90s, you're going to university. I wouldn't call that 'scraping by'." Yeah, well it FEELS like scraping by. I know when I've put my all into something. If I haven't, I will very well consider it "scraping by", thank you very much. I want to get by on skill, not just a handful of talent that I never had to work for.

   I think that's what it is. The feeling of not doing something I know I could do if I put the effort in and exerted a little will power. The feeling of not doing something as well as I'm capable. My brain feels soft. It needs some extra stuffing. If it doesn't get it, regret will try to stuff its way in. It needs to stop. Life doesn't have time hold your regrets; its hands are already full.

Oversharing

   Are you trying to elicit pity from other people? To convince yourself that just because they accepted your friend request they desire to hear about every detail of your day?

  They don't.

  Some people do care to hear everything you have to say; to know about every thought that passes through your head and every thing that happens to you. Save it for them. By telling every single person on your friends list about your relationship woes, you are putting those people whom you truly care about, and who truly care about you, on the same level as that guy you met at a party that one time. If you desperately desire to document your every thought and action, buy a journal.

   I know that nobody is being forced to remain your Facebook friend, or your Twitter follower, or whatever else (although some people would have you believe that to "unfriend" someone is akin to kicking their puppy or spreading a rumour that they still wet the bed). But seriously, before you decide to plaster your personal information all over the internet; before you start posting vague, passive-aggressive (not to mention immature) Facebook statuses about your latest breakup; before you choose to tweet about eating a sandwich, ask yourself two things:

  1) If I reread this in a week/month/year/decade, will I be embarrassed?

  2) Do I think that anybody else will care?

  If you post less often, people will actually care when you do post. So unless you have been blessed with the ability to manipulate words until eating lunch sound like an event unto itself, keep it to yourself.