What fear does to home

I was walking quickly through the Salt Lake City airport to get from one flight to the other on Saturday, completely blank-minded, when I saw the cover of U.S. News in a store. "I AM GOD," it said, and I stopped in my tracks. And I just started crying in the middle of the airport hallway. I thought, "You are not God or Satan unless we make you such." And we have. Our new villain. Our new fear. Our new object of hatred, home-bred. How dare this person take that power, and how dare we let him or her?

When I got home and was driving through the town, everything excited me. Good memories, particularly from this past summer, flooded over me as I drove through late-night Columbia. It's easy to imagine nothing has changed in the dark.

I was fooling myself, though. I was prepared to be uncomfortable with how I had changed with regards to my surroundings; I was not ready to see how much we had changed here. People and places are humbled. Little things--every little thing--were affected. I said I was going to a diner; I was told not to stand around outside of it. Several people have said in fairly jovial tones to me not to go get gas. When people hear about a shooting far away, they run and get gas, because hey, that means he's not here.

Last night there was another shooting. I-95 (the highway that runs behind my house, for you silly West Coasters) was shut down. My father told me to go get gas now.

The streets are quieter. People don't go out as much. I haven't seen this kind of attitude in people since the September 11th frantic fear for the safety of our military/government parents and other family members. Both are similar, I think, in that they hit us on two levels: one simply shock at the inhumanity of it, and one close-to-home feeling. People look anxiously about for their loved ones with a worry just a few steps removed from the panicked phone calls last September.

It hurts to see this much fear, and to know that it's justified. There are plenty of people who go on with their lives--because what else can we do?--and some of them get shot. It feels like we're all standing in our own little fields just before a lightning storm. There's such a little chance, but...........

Miw.

-Jenn-

MRIs are my kind of test.

MRIs are my kind of test. Why? Because I was allowed to keep my socks on. In fact explicitly told to take off everything *but* my socks (and underwear) before changing into the hospital gown.

The actual procedure was weird. It felt very surreal, because I was unmoving in this little tube with really loud noises all around me. The noises were odd and I want to read up more about MRIs so I can figure out what was going on. They took something like ten pictures, three while I had a needle in my arm, putting that stuff into my veins that shows up as white on the image. It made me feel reeeeeally odd having my arms crossed with a needle I couldn't see in my left elbow, stuck in this tube, unable to move. I'm not claustrophobic, and I'm not afraid of needles, but the combination was a little much for me.

I basically slept through most of it, though. At least, I dreamed. Not particularly bad dreams. Just vivid ones. Kept thinking I was back on campus, but no, I was still in the tube. It was just strange. And when it was over, he just took the needle out and showed me where the door was. I don't know, it was just strange to come right out of the machine and go out on the streets again.

I would not do well with isolation tanks, I think. It wouldn't be bad, just... I'd feel different afterwards.

Just in case you don't know, I was having an MRI because I was referred to yet another doctor who doesn't know what's wrong with me for my dizzy spells. Yayfor.

Now I really need to study for midterms (Russian and physic tomorrow, heh) but I don't want to. I want it to be fall break. Now. While everyone's still in MD. Miwf.

-Jenn-

Shorn

Today I buzzed my green hair to one-half inch long. It's good, though I've never looked so butch in my life.

It felt like a good way to take out my strange energy, my desire to redefine the world. Shallow though it may be, it got my mind off life and back onto myself in a positive way, which I think was needed.

-Jenn-

declaration

the senate joins the house in authorizing bush to declare war on iraq. the world feels very unsteady. very unsafe. everything going on right now makes me want to just erase us all and start us over again. i'm writing a paper on justice. hesiod says the gods will destroy those who promote injustice, start over with a new race of beings. i just want to erase this. i just want to say that we have failed. we have failed in this.

and the part that makes me sick is that this is just one of a number of stair-step atrocities which have made me lose my injured faith over and over again.

my paper seems very inane right now. my studies--all useless. but every time i think the world is ending, it comes back to its feet, a little worse than before, or maybe a lot worse, but still standing. america in its glory and its freedom and its bullshit stays standing. i never saw us as much of a monster until recently. i love america, i do, but we are ruining ourselves. we will wear ourselves away in our preoccupations with the inane and our fundamental misunderstanding of the point.

and this bubble, funded by america, will continue to function along with countless other bubbles across the nation until they are physically unable. that is what we are good at. keeping our priorities constant, even if they aren't the right ones to have. i love my bubble. i don't want it destroyed. i don't want anyone else's destroyed maliciously, either. what frightens me is the prospect that maybe that's the only way we'll learn. though maybe it doesn't matter. maybe we're on an irrevocable path. maybe this is the way things are going to be, consistently worse and worse. maybe it will be another time like world war two--not in the war sense, but in the sense of having such little hope against so great an evil. and then maybe one day we will vanquish it. or be vanquished. are we the evil?

i don't even believe in evil. or i didn't. it hurts to begin to. and it really hurts to begin to believe that maybe i am a part of that evil i never wanted to believe existed. that maybe, in the end, i'm just an instrument of hate. that maybe i will be a fundamental part of the downfall of a life so promising.

but this is not my tragedy. yet.

-jenn-

Safeway glory

Today we bought 100 packages of ramen. Oh, and some pathetic excuse of a protective mask in case of tear gas at the protest tomorrow, to be used in conjunction with a wet handkerchief. It was glorious. Something about buying protest gear and a Safeway cart full of top ramen... well... it just makes me feel like a college student.

And now I'm taking a break from my hum paper (it's going well--I've got four pages of six to seven done, and I have a good two pages worth of material left to write, plus an intro and a conclusion) to record this. I'm not actually stopping long enough to take off my headphones (I'm listening to loud Air and Apocalyptica, but I can't find my Crystal Method CD, so so sad--what will keep me awake when I'm editing this at midnight, one AM, five AM?) or get anything to eat. Just long enough to record the glory of today's Safeway run. Yes, it was bad procrastination, but it was oh so good.

Hugs.

-Jenn-

A good day

Today was glorious. I got up and left the room within ten minutes at eight-thirty and still had time for a decent breakfast before hum lecture. The lecturer was Jay Dickson, whom I love. Then I went to physics lecture, and I felt like I actually learned something for once. In hum conference I contributed to the conversation and just generally enjoyed myself. In Russian I got homework back with few mistakes and felt like I really understood the material.

After Russian I went to lunch and checked my mail. In the mail was a package from my mother (yayfor!) with a pitchpipe, two rolls of quarters, and my leatherman. My meds also came from the mail-order place. And it was good. And we ate lunch with Laurel, which is always good. Laurel is silly and just generally rocks my world. After that I read Shayna's journal and found out she was happy and was just generally yayyayyay.

After lunch we went to Hawthorne to go shopping. I drooled over skirts and, finally, bought (with Jay) a reeeeeally ugly shirt which I shall someday take a picture of myself in. Basically, it's a bright blue mesh shirt with a mesh hood, some pieces of orange reflector tape, and a pathetic little yin-yang on the back. It's beautiful. At the Red Light I also bought these sparkly rainbow docs which are in very good condition and in my size. They look like rainbowy disco balls. I am very very happy with this purchase.

After we met up with Peter at Powell's, we came back to campus to get our tickets for The Color of August, a play in the black box theatre here that was this guy's directing thesis. It turned out to be really, really cool with no goodguy-badguy setup. It's a two-woman show, and the two women who were acting reminded me of Lisa and Margot, which just confused me. It was... intense. It's hard to describe, and I'm still processing it. So yeah.

After that we came back home to drop off stuff, and I decided I was too tired to go back out again as we'd planned, to meet one of Jay's friends downtown who gets off work at eleven. So I'm still here, and listening to the Crystal Method playing outside my window. Sounds like someone downstairs is writing a paper.... It makes me happy.

Anyway, good night all. I hope everyone else had good Fridays, too. I love you all so much.

-Jenn-

Sniper

Five people in Montgomery County were shot and killed randomly in the past two days. Someone just went for a drive and killed five people who had never wronged them. Someone just terminated five lives. Five families, five communities are permanently torn now.

I haven't felt such a loss of faith in humanity since it sunk in that America is set on revenge.

I used to cry every time I read the newspaper. Reports of deaths, even in accidents but mostly by the calculations of others, made me cry no matter what. Then, eventually, I hardened myself. I guess seeing it near my own hometown just made it hit me again, and it hit me hard after this many years of steeling myself to it.

What can I do to help anything? I feel so useless. Like all of our efforts are futile, because they can be wiped out by one bored psycho with a gun.

I know that's not the way to look at it. But it just exhausts me. I cried for hours today. Eventually I shut myself down to do work. And then I remembered and I felt so sick.

I just don't know what's happening.

-Jenn-