january 28, 1999
i wish i could just remember everything that happens, cause for the past while, it has all been so very good. i keep a paper journal as well, but here it's hard to find time to sit and write page after page the way i used to do. i have always loved summer because its heat brings extra time for writing. i have a rocking chair i sit in to write..it's right near my stereo so i can listen through headphones to that night's soundtrack. and i sit back in the chair with my knees drawn up to my chest and let my pen walk around the page until my hand grows too tired to hold it. but as for now, there's this blue page, and the pictures that stay in my mind. hopefully i can save them until there's time to open up my book once again.

january 23, 1999
it's time to study chopin. we have to make study sheets on romantic and 20th century composers..we just drew names out of a hat to decide who got what, and i was soo lucky cause i drew the most beautiful composer the piano has ever seen. (well, one of them. anyway..) my grandmother studied piano at the peabody conservatory, and she's taught piano in the corner of her living room for a long while. when i was a kid and was too young to stay at home by myself when my parents went to work, i'd go there. she taught me how to play the piano, too, but the best part about going there wasn't when i was playing. between her lessons she would sometimes play chopin's preludes, and i would sit out of sight on the stairs and listen. most of those songs were only two lines long, i found out later, but those lines are home to every emotion you could ever feel..every feeling that could color your eyes. i squeezed my eyes shut and saw notes streaming from the black keys and the white keys and coming together to make art that is seen best without looking. and after the last note was played, it was hard to get up and leave, and my eyes didn't want to open for fear of having to leave the place they had found. they had been shown the place held sacred in the composer's mind, because music is a language even little people can understand. and today it is the same..the notes take me away and bring me back as water welling up in the space under my eyes.

january 18, 1999
everything is all white and pretty outside! i thought they were kidding when they said it sometimes snowed in north carolina, but now something tells me they weren't.

january 17, 2000
today i feel like doing something great, and i actually think i have started doing that something already. soon there will be a place for all of us to go, if my efforts today come through. waiting for a phone call...and my eyes are wide at the prospect of it being one of those good phone calls, the ones you love to get. the ones where you find out that you do have a place to put all those bingo cards you've saved, and that there are walls itching to hear the sounds you will make. i am anxious to watch as the blueroom gets bluer..
i was thinking of all the things i want to do. like having a punk rock prom and helping out a little kid who doesn't have anyone really. all of them are things to reach for, i think. i'll just stretch my arms and my mind until all of these things happen. i hope, though, that i can look back when i am 80-some years old and say, yeah, i did most everything i wanted to do. i've got a lot of time, it seems. there is so much time and so many things i want to fill that time up with. i also wonder, that when i am 80-some years old and i have done everything, if i will just stop or if i'll keep having the annual punk rock prom. as of now, i think i would keep having it. well why not? for one thing, i could keep taking advantage of my old-person's white hair...when your hair turns white, you don't need to bleach it to make it take light colors. light blue colors, specifically. and i'm sure i would be bored out of my mind sitting in front of the tv and taking naps all day, like very old ladies are "supposed" to do.
4:18 p.m. and i'm still waiting for that call. i have been reading a book that someone got me called "the secret of the ages." it was published in 1926..back when the jazz people and the people with tank stories were kids. the author seems to have a lot to say, so much that i am surprised i didn't start reading the book earlier. maybe i didn't start it though cause i have all these lovely textbooks to read...yay. but he said there is something inside everyone, a "life force" that drives you toward what you want to do. it's like, you have an inner superhuman who is capable of everything your mind wants to do. you just have to learn how to work with that superhuman..your "life force." can't wait for chapter two. -ring!- and i have just learned that we are on our way.

january 14, 2000
i just realized i've been writing "1999" for all these dates. oh no! i'm regressing back to last year! anyway...here goes.
there are two ropes tied around my waist and held by three sets of hands. for months or more i have been trying to achieve a balance between these two forces and myself, some sort of equilibrium. but every fragile peace achieved is always just a cover for the intensifying tumult beneath the surface. like a lid over a pot of boiling water, this situation, i am afraid, will soon bubble out into the open and burn every hand within its reach. and with this injury, the pathway to my dreams might be lost as steam in cold air.

january 13, 2000
all eyes are bright cause the weekend is in sight.

january 11, 2000
i like being at school. even though i know that all kinds of stress is barrelling towards me, i'm still happy to be here. it's good to be in my little white room again..surprisingly the holidays didn't do too much damage to my sound. so it was an all-around good couple of weeks. i got to relax, and now it's time to learn things...about beautiful sounds and air pollution and little kids. it's amazing how much stuff you can hold in your head..

january 8, 2000
ugh i have a cold, and every muscle groans with each movement i make. the cold had been lurking around quietly until its grand entrance today..i went to sleep at four o'clock in the afternoon cause all my energy was spent on its fanfare. and my muscles are tired from their quick trip from one end of the spectrum to the other. extremes...days sitting and driving in a car followed by running three miles and boxing with the air for over an hour. i have broken down. hopefully this can be fixed by a night's rest and a tall glass of o.j.~just like in florida, the place with all those cute little orange trees. it was hot there, like the back of my eyes are right now. and if i am right, a few hours with my pillow will be enough to smother that dull flame.

january 7, 2000
it is still kinda weird writing that date..i go to type a "19" and realize that i don't need those numbers anymore for the first time in my life. i also realized that i don't have any resolutions this year. usually i can think of something that i need to do better or something that i want to change in my life, but right now, i don't see anything in my life that is in need of a change. for once, everything is going the way i want it to go. lately it seems like the world is opening up and inviting me in--there are so many things i can do that before i either didn't know about or thought would never happen. but now it's all happening and i can't really explain how i feel...i guess that job is best left to the smile on my face.
i just got back here today around noon..we had been in florida playing a couple of shows (which by the way were *awesome*!) going down there i was so scared about if they would like us or not. i kept imagining us playing and everybody going outside or something. but that was so far from what happened, and it was so amazing to have people we didn't even know coming up and telling us they liked what we were doing. i remember when we were pretty bad, too, and it was like, we have come a long way from when we started. there's no other feeling like it in the world, you know? like you have worked at something and all of a sudden it is good. it's like broussard says about being an "overnight success"...you sit in your little white room playing exercises for 6 hours every day and you sound terrible. and then one day you play and it's beautiful. but anyway, the best part of going to florida was the people we met..all the kids and the bands we played with were so nice you wouldn't believe it. everyone there treated us like old friends or something, even though they had known us for only a couple of hours. i even got to see kellin..we met over email a long time ago, and we first saw each other in person two days ago. that is also something i was wondering about on the way to that show..what my friend was really like. the picture i got over email was even brighter in real life...like..the one on the other side of the phone lines was even better in person. it is a strange feeling to meet someone you know but don't know at the same time. you want to sit on the curb and talk to them until your voice is long gone. i feel like writing letters to people. like i used to have lots of pen pals in middle school and high school, and then we all went to college and it didn't happen anymore. i never met any of the people whose letters are under my bed, either, even though i would have liked to. i have wandered away from my topic again. oh well..that is what writing is for, unless you are in english class.