Carla Loves Autumn

Written on the Yoko Ono, 10/14/08:
There was piano in the background this morning. I think it may have been coming from the Canon, but I'm not sure. The really impressive thing about it was how far it spread. All around main campus, people were cocking their heads at the sound of plinking keys. There was an actual piano. I know it, because the music was louder in some places than others. Unimportant.
What is important is that it was beautiful. No, it'd be more accurate to say that it made other things more beautiful. There is a difference, you know.
Today is one of those beautiful (a word I know I know I over-use) days one sometimes finds in September or November, but really belong to October. Just cold enough to feel awake and autumnal without being frigid. A tilting breeze caresses the trees, carrying away their leaves. As each of them falls, I imagine they are notes from the mysterious piano, gently plinking down.
The breeze swirls back around again, taking with it a whole new flurry of notes. Its melody teases my hair and explores the contours of my face. An ink-wash sky glows on my back, just for a moment, as I breathe in and take the music with me.

There. I've been meaning to transcribe that for a couple days now. The Octoberness of everything is almost making me dizzy. This is my favorite time of year. I can see the lovely, old, slightly eerie lamps that dot their light along the paths from my front window. The wind is even more talkative than usual, buzzing with the ghosts of a thousand leaves as it sweeps its way across my room. An enchanting trumpet tenders its way through my side window, the shyer of the two. I hear crunching footsteps from who-knows-where, and a series of curled, crinkly, little memories tumble against my screens during their descent.
There is a reason Halloween happens in October.
It's a good thing study-days have arrived, because Autumn is tugging at the running, beating core of me, and I really don't think I can sit still for much longer.

When I close my eyes, I am covered in tattoos. They are a mix of stylized images and tribal markings and odd symbols (some of them I know, others I do not) and it all comes together as one giant expression of me. I wish everyone was covered in tattoos, so that I could read them as they walk by. I have been on edge today and wish to calm down.
I wish I could get that damned Dr. Horrible song out of my head.
Meg did a tarot reading for me last night. It was cool. And highly positive. Apparently, I'm doing pretty well for myself. I guess that's true. It all felt true, which is kind of funny, but I guess that's why people believe in fortune-telling in the first place. It's interesting at any rate. She said something to me that meant a lot. She said, "Carla, you can't help but live a wonderful life. It would be against who your are." Actually, I don't remember if she said wonderful, or extraordinary, or what. Hm. But yeah. I wish I could remember exactly what word she used.
I think I should get out of my room.

For the moment, this blog will remain a secret. I type faster than I write, and I don't feel like saving a bunch of silly rantings to my computer.
So, in reading past journals of my life, I have gotten frustrated with myself for being fixated on boys. They are not all I write about, but I really wish that they were a smaller percentage of it.
That being said, I'm going to talk about my current fixation with a boy. It started out as the teeniest of crushes, and now, like an untended stress fracture or an unpruned blackberry bush, has gotten out of hand. It is not an issue of taking up too much pen and paper, it is an issue of taking up far too much of my though time. I could be doing homework, or getting a brilliant idea for a story, or noticing the way the light in the theater building cause cloud patterns to be reflected on the tile floor in an unusual and mesmerizing manner. But no. I have to be thinking about him. And I mean, he's nice to think of to a certain extent... he makes me smile, and then hide my face in my jacket. But there is a such thing as too much. We are getting into pining territory here! I hate pining. Also, I'm out of alcohol.
Flahargablarg!
People are being all social-like outside my room. I think I will do that tomorrow. Maybe if Emily and I see a movie we can invite Taylor and Gowri, and if we invite Taylor and Gowri, maybe we can invite him.
Bah!
A sane person would just ask him out to coffee or something. Let me rephrase. A person who actually had some balls would ask him out to coffee or something.
Why is playwriting only once a week? Why?!
On a side note, I wish playwriting was more than once a week, regardless of the fact that we know have a patter of sitting together and making faces at each other. That class is just made of awesome. Stuart Spencer is my hero.
See, and what's scary is, this is a REAL crush. Like, I had a pretty bad crush on Calder I guess, but... in retrospect, I wonder if it was only because Calder seems like the sort of person who it would make sense for me to have a crush on.
Lukas on the other hand...
He took me on an adventure! What was I supposed to do? And he likes whimsy, and oral story-telling, and macabre stuff, and gets people to act like the children they are, and writes well, and sings well and often and without shame, and has eyes that flash a really bright green when the sun hits them right. And he smells nice.
He adventures!
I... see, I think it's bewildering because I think he might have been showing interest in me. BUT I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE I'M BAD AT THAT SORT OF THING.
Man, it's two in the morning, but I'm not really tired on account of the giant nap I took.
Everywhere I go, I keep looking for him, hoping we'll run into each other. That makes me feel like a creeper.
You know what? I'm probably just extra cranky cause I haven't eaten or done my homework. I think that having done both of those will make me feel better.

All Eras End.

In searching through the odd, hodge-podge, treasure-house, wonderland of our grandparents house, Ilian and I came upon an old literary magazine. It appears to have been from a school of some sort, but it does not say where and none of our family members names are on it or in it anywhere. it has beautiful, dark illustrations, and the first poem in it was extremely striking and oddly appropriate for the whole situation. I transcribe it here, though I couldn't tell you why exactly, since I still haven't shared this with the public, but I feel compelled to do so. I transcribe as it is formatted in the book, knowing that phrases would fit differently on that page when they were more than one line than if I went by the standard of this blog, and wish to stay as close to the author's design as possible.
Without any further ado.

BE QUIET NOW AND STILL

Be quiet now and still.
Be unafraid: that hiss and garden tinkle is the rain,
that face you saw breath on the window pane
was just my startled cat with eyes of jade--cats
worry in the rain, you know, and are afraid.
That nervous laugh that creeps into your room is throated
in a phonographic voice below the floor. We hear
it once and then no more, a distant echo tumbling
in its loom. Our time is measured in another room.
We know days pass because we're told.
We lie alone disputing actions on a crazy earth.
(You whisper in my ear it has some worth.)
And I lean near to keep you from the cold.
There are so many things that must be told.
I speak of lost regimes and distant times,
and moon-eyed children smiling in the womb,
and legless beggars prophesying doom,
and afternoons of rain spun into rhyme.
(The patter of the rainfall marks our time
As does the waning moon
or muted sun.
As do the nodding gods who ride the sea.)
For even now, alone and still with me,
you (as I) sense that bonds cannot be undone;
Our pulse is in the rain and moon and sun,
we take our breaths together and are one.

GORDON KLAUBER

It feels beautiful when spoken out-loud.
I realized today that I will never see that house again.
One thing I have learned in the past year-and-a-half is that life is always hard, even when it's easy.
But I am, mostly, happy.
It is October. It is difficult to say, but October might be my favorite month of the year. Real October started last night. It was very beautiful, and very cold.