In the mail today: a bank-thing for Norman and a letter from Yvonne in Germany.
I have all these penpals, you know... Thirty of them if you count the ones who don't write back. Ten or so if you only count the ones I really like. Maybe one or two I'd likely be close friends with if we weren't separated by so much water, land, or both... Some of them have this bizarre practice of sending me "Friendship Books," or "FB's," which I find a semi-embarrassing practice. A Friendship Book is a tiny little booklet, usually made from index cards or little scraps of paper, in which somebody writes two addresses on the front: their own, and the address of a penpal. After it's made, the Friendship Book is sent out to ANOTHER penpal, who writes their name, address, and pertinent information, in tiny little letters, and passes it on to someone else... Eventually, the booklet is filled up with names and addresses, and the last one to squeeze their own address in, gets the honor of sending the Friendship Book back to the person for whom it was made.
I find this a little embarrassing. So now I've got half a dozen of these things in my possession, and I don't know who to send them to. Imagine: I receive three or four of these things in the mail, and now I'm supposed to send them to WHOM? The guy in Maryland who's written to me about his parents, his political stances on Israel/Palestine, and his perspectives on education and liberalism? The guy in Australia who sends me these awesome philosophical rants about absolutely nothing of ANY importance? The girl in eastern Washington State who's been writing to me for almost six months, and about whom I still know almost nothing? The girl in France with the beautiful handwriting, the sweetly naïve girl who writes page after page of gutsy wishes and rants in quaint, broken, Virginia-Woolf-like English? What the hell am I supposed to DO with these Friendship Books!? Sure, fine, I can write my stupid name on them, but I'm not at ALL interested in trying to find someone else to send them to... It seems invasive...
What the hell am I going on about? I'm just upset because The Letter didn't come today...
I had this awful nightmare last night. Something about moving, and unpacking, and Brian, and "Mulholland Drive" being on TV, and this AWFUL centipede... Something about my dad, too...
I can't remember most of the specifics of the dream. just that my dad was being a real dickhead to me, and that there was this scorpian/centipede-like creature inside the television... Funny, I've never been afraid of centipedes before -- I'd rather not have them CRAWLING on me, but I've never been afraid of them. Not until I went to Seattle... Ah, but that's another story...
On my way home from the post office, I ran into a friend from my old apartment building.
Him: "So you know we're at war now..."
Me: "Yeah... Doesn't really terrify me or anything, except the stuff about anthrax in the news..."
Him: "Yeah..."
Me: "I mean, it is curable and all... You just take antibiotics, and you're fine, but the thing is that once you know you have it, you're pretty much dead, so that doesn't do a whole lot of good anyway... I don't really know about smallpox, but I don't think that's curable... I mean, there's a vaccine and all, but..."
Him: "You don't get out much, do you?"
Me: "Huh? Um... no."
Him: "You know, when I used to work all the time and I'd come home after work, my mom used to say that to me: 'you haven't talked to anybody else all day, have you?' because I'd just be totally unloading everything on her, just all these totally useless facts and thoughts..."
Me: "Uh... oh. Yeah. Sorry. No, I don't get out much."
Him: "You know what you need to do?"
Me: "Get some more friends?"
Him: "You need to put on tons of makeup and, like, a miniskirt and stuff, and you need to go out to a bar at like, nine, and come home by, like, eleven... That way, you won't get caught up with all the scumbags, and you'll meet somebody interesting..."
[I considered this for a moment, and recalled the last time I went to a bar to look for somebody interesting... Let's just say it didn't work, and I didn't feel very lucid the next morning...]
Him: "Well, then again, maybe you won't meet anybody interesting to talk to, because if you really did do that, you'd only meet people who want to sleep with you..."
[I consider this and nod sadly...]
Him: "I mean, you could come over to my house and all, but we don't really have quite enough in common, you know?"
Me: "I know."
Him: "Ohhh, and you don't even smoke weed, do you?"
[He said that last statement as if he was saying, "wow, you really ARE pretty lonely, aren't you?"]
Me: "No, not really anymore at all..."
Him: "Wow...."
And that was pretty much the end of that. He went to buy cigarettes and I went to buy honey. Oh well.
Things suck.
~Helena*