No Matter Where You Go You Stay Where You Are

As some of my older readers know, when I am not in the mood to generate a current post, I reach into the past. For today, I'll go back to an old English mindbender, written on September 11th, 2008.

The Mindbender is: No matter how far you go, you stay where you are.

A Summary:

People are boring, and constant, and never ever change, and I think that whole concept is obnoxious. My introduction is only two sentences long because I am lazy. Also, I'm using the first person, because I'm cool like that.

The Palace Thief is a book. It involves a big Roman history competition and togas, but all anybody cares about is that Patrick Dempsey is in the movie. I suppose that I can let Cammie keep her weird George Clooney thing if I can have Dempsey. Anyways, the cheating boy in the competition grows up to be a cheating, good for nothing grown up. He stays where he is. Isn't that a great example?

I think the cheating boy is a dickwad. I'm going to try to pretend that he's an isolated dickwad.

Oh, darn, Sarah Bareilles says that people don't change either. Since it's set to music, she must be right. Wait- Sarah's actually talking about moving around in the literal sense. But it's a song, so we'll pretend that it's figurative.

People are always trying to change, so the mindbender is wrong. I know that it's actually right, but I am going to be an optimistic for as long as I possibly can.

The End

Interestingly, even though the mindbender was written on September 11th, I make no mention of September 11th, despite the fact that it is a somewhat important date. To see if I even thought about the historical significance (twin towers! ahhh!), I went through my old journals to find something. Below is my September 11th entry:

Still Crampy. Still bleeding profusely from my vagina. It is muy disgusto.

Mom's going to the hospital tomorrow to have her uterus scraped out. She has to be anesthesized and shit. It's kinda annoying, but standard procedure. Intellectually, I'm sure she'll be fine, but I can't shake this odd foreboding feeling.

Though that could be more related to my audition tomorrow. Turns out there'll probably be only one piano, so that guaranteed spot- basically unattainable. Not that I won't try, but I'm somewhat lacking, confidence wise.

But it's alright. Worst case, I'll apologize to the set painters for my illness and join up. I'll go once or twice a week and paint out my sorrows, then try not to cry when everyone walks out and they're having fun and Ryan is being sexy and wahhhh!!!!

Well, that did not help.

I need to go to sleep I'll try to dream of D (I think?) from music theory, and hope that Mario turns out to be wonderful (and takes the train).

See, better already.

As I'm sure you noticed, this, too, contains no mention of terrorists. My aversion to discussion of world disasters seems to have been present for at least a year.

Interestingly, the mindbender is saved as 5.doc, but is titled mindbender 4.

How very peculiar.

Days for Dreaming

Last night was the second in a row that was full of oddly vivid dreams. I'm still trying to figure out what, if anything, they mean.

Dream 1:

I walked into Spanish class, late, per usual. Gretchen was already there. There were laptops from the cows on all of the desks, and Tom sat behind me in Rae's desk, which I find strange, since I'd never noticed that he was in our class. I shrugged it off and logged into facebook on my laptop (which should have tipped me off that this was a dream, but, alas, it did not). I went to Tom's page, because I couldn't figure out why he had spontaneously showed up in my Spanish class. I started flipping through his profile pictures, and for some reason, I had the ability to change which photo was his profile picture, so I did. Then Gretchen started coughing violently and gesturing towards Tom, who could see over my shoulder at my screen and had turned bright red. I turned around to apologize, and his eyes got all huge and he looked the way he did in fifth grade that time he told my my braces looked nice, which is really the only old memory I have of him. The bell rang and Gretchen and I left class. I was still flipping out about what Tom thought of me.

I went up to physics on the third floor. The only faces I can remember are those of Tybalt, Genevieve (British, not in my physics class or any A.P. English) and Leda (in my gov class, used to be going to counties with Sergio but now has a boyfriend). Right before class ended, Tybalt kissed Leda and then confessed to having a massive crush on Genevieve.

We left class, and Tybalt, Gretchen and I were suddenly walking out of the cafeteria into the music wing. We all realized that we were going to miss our buses. Tybalt and Gretchen took off, speed demons that they are, and I tried to keep up, but these large crowds of Players and Orphenians, fully costumed, kept getting in my way. By the time I reached the orchestra room, Tybalt was long gone, and Gretchen had emerged out of the farther door and taken off running. By the time I reached the front entrance, I was the only one there, and the buses were gone.

End Dream 1.

Dream 2 is weirder. Much, much weirder. I promise you, it is nowhere near as inappropriate as the beginning makes it sound.

Dream 2:

Harry and I were both doing pit orchestra for Little Shop of Horrors, and for some reason still unknown to me, this entailed him staying in my room. I woke up in the morning and he was in the other bed and I started flipping out because I thought that I'd forgotten and gone to sleep naked for some reason. I stood up out of bed, panicked, but discovered that I was wearing cute green pj pants and a blue tank. However, the tank was kind of see through, so I decided I needed a different one. A newer, brighter blue tank top with conveniently built in bra was located on the foot of my bed, where I had presumably dumped it at some earlier time. After I took off the first tank top to swap, I looked into the TV on wheels like they had at the middle school that had been set up where my keyboard usually lives. I could say Harry reflected in it, standing behind me, frozen in place and staring at my reflection in the TV. He had slept in the same clothes that he always wears, a white t-shirt and somewhat too-short cargo pants. He decided that if I was changing, he should to, and by the time I had my arms lined up in the second tank, he'd swapped from a plain white t-shirt to one with these blueish glowing peacock feathers on it.

As I was putting on the second tank top, it turned into a dress and I got stuck, the entire skirt of the dress facing upside down around my head like a pathetically limp dog cone. I attempted to maneuver myself into it, but was unsuccessful. "Harry? Could you, uh, help?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure," he said, and pulled the tank down over my arms and torso. He didn't let go of my wrists. I looked up at him, confused, and his eyes had gone all brownish greenish, and they were swirling in a weirdly hypnotic manner. He said something unintelligible, containing the phrases "can't let go," "God," "Jesus," and something about loving arm muscles, which is absurd, because I hardly even have arm muscles. He started to back away, still clinging to me, and I followed him, entranced. He stopped after a step and leaned forward, closer and closer. When we were about two inches apart, I leaned forward and kissed him, a sloppy sort of first kiss in which all that happens are squished noses and lips pressed together, and for some reason I could feel the imprint of my braces on the inside of my lips, which is absurd, since I haven't had braces in years. I pulled back after an instant, and his eyes had turned pale blue and he looked like he was about to pass out. "Was that nice?" he asked.

"I don't know yet," I answered, and the entire dream shifted. Harry was gone, but I was still standing in my room, and I knew, somehow, that he would be back, and that I just had to kiss him again and we'd get further than that stupid clashing of metal on teeth. I opened the door and walked down the hall to the basement. There was a window that doesn't actually exist, and through it I could see Corbin Bleu's hair as he walked through the jungle that had sprung up behind my house. I had an abrupt fear that the Harry here had turned into Zac Efron, and I was very worried. I decided that I'd have to wait and see and I walked down the stairs. Sparky (Aqua's dog) and Rufus came running up the stairs as I descended. Purdy (she advised Becky to temporarily break up with her boyfriend to show him what was important) was down there. I asked her what I should do about Harry, she said she'd get back to me later, since she had an appointment.

Elaine (Julie's friend who is fond of lolita dresses) came down with a girl who was about ten years old; I assumed the girl was her daughter. The daughter and I tried to play chess, but none of the pieces were actual pieces, so I decided to transfigure them and pulled out my wand to do so. I tapped each in turn, but the bishops stubbornly refused to do anything, and the pawns remained little pieces of trash.

I woke up in a cold sweat, the only thought in my head that I had to find Harry.

A Payson Develops a Sense of Loss

The show is finally over. Guys and Dolls is kaput. All the free time on my hands may send me into shock. I played the guitar for the first time in two months today. Of course, I could only play for about two minutes, cause my calluses had disappeared and my fingers were tired and it just plain hurt. I also played piano for about an hour, but not Guys and Dolls stuff. Just Debussey sight-reading. It was glorious.

The final show went fabulously. The only snag was that one of the sax's light went out, but it was between numbers, and I passed him a bulb to replace it, because the bulbs are under the grand, but the fixture was too hot, so I just passed him an entirely new light set-up, and he managed to get the whole thing up and running by the time Havana started. Which is good, because the band teacher plays cowbells instead of her sax during that song, so he's doing double duty. He actually used to play maracas, but the band teacher took them away because she thought he was being overenthusiastic. This is coming from the woman who badly bangs the cowbells for the entire song while her facial expression resembles that of a child who has just discovered Christmas. Or Hanukka, if you want to roll that way.

When we got to the pit party, and it was just the two random saxes and Joanne and Cammie and I, we overcame the general awkwardness by dissolving into hysterics over the cowbells. When Ida showed up to the party at her house, she was incredibly confused by how much we were laughing.

We spent a good amount of time gossiping. (Why is Harry so grumpy? Nobody knows, but Morgan thinks his looks would be much improved if we attacked his hair with a weed-wacker. Why the hell is Emily still all over Spencer? He's out and proud, but they still hook up, even though she has a boyfriend. What fabulous flutist has a bit of a thing for a different fabulous flutist? The world may never know.) Anita and Richard tickled each other extensively. Cammie and I interrupted each other constantly. I begin to understand why Vicky thinks she talks a lot.

Also, there are photocopies of Eccentrius's face on the floor of the band room. I, for one, am simply thankful that he didn't go the traditional route and photocopy his ass. Or arse, as Joanne and her mum would say.

A final conversation with Harry:

Tea: I put your music with your bag.

Harry: Huh?

Tea: You left it in the pit.

Harry: Yeah

Tea: By the way good job on the second act

Harry: Yeah

Grumpy Bastard

Harry sits in the band room, glaring angrily at absolutely nothing, as the pit orchestra returns from playing the second act.

Tea sits down and looks at him, concerned. "Did you move that entire time?"

"Yeah. I played for a while." He nods towards the old upright with no high C and a permanently out of tune low F.

"Oh." Tea pauses, giving him a chance to continue, which Harry, being Harry, doesn't take. "It's just, it seems like every time I see you you're staring moodily into the distance."

"Yeah." He pauses. "I do that a lot."

Another pause.

"A hobby," says Tea.

"What?"

"It's like a hobby."

"Yeah."

Survived Opening Night

I then tried to buy decongestant from CVS, but apparently that's illegal now. I saw Mario and Marsh at CVS from a distance. I'm not sure if I want to know what they were buying.

Illness

I have a low grade fever and will be staying home from school tomorrow. Hopefully the dress rehearsal will manage without me.

Late Nights

I just got home, and I've barely even started my homework. So much for knocking out 5.1 during rehearsal.

That was, I think, the longest rehearsal of my life. Havana is my new worst enemy. And the entire thing just felt futile, since Harry and I are really only the backup pianos anyways. I won't even have to stay for the second act tomorrow.

Speaking of Harry, for some reason, he looks really, really cute in the light of those little music-reader thingies we use. I think it's because it highlights bone structure while rendering his greasy hair virtually invisible.

At least I've been getting on well with the clarinets behind me, Eccentrius and whats-his-name. Unfortunately, I probably won't get to sit with them again. Instead, the electric is front, center, right near the drum set, and not really good for conversation. Damn.

Late Nights

I haven't posted for the past two days because I didn't get home until after midnight, at which point I figured there really wasn't much point, since it was actually tomorrow.

As far as Friday goes, Harry and I had a lovely conversation about celeste cues during rehearsal. I think he's finally gotten the hang of standard speech. Now, I just have to work up enough guts to have a serious discussion about his excessive pedaling, which I really probably shouldn't, it's just that it doesn't sound good! The Fugue for Tin Horns is supposed to be bouncy! After all, it's a fugue, not a dirge.

Dirge was, by the way, an SAT word that I learned over the summer that was actually on the PSAT. It made me extremely happy.

Then, yesterday was Halloween. I went to Nyx's house and participated in delightful activities like "Soda Pong," which is, really, quite quaint. Then we went trick-or-treating, because, really, you can never be too old for that. At one point, Kathrya and Cammie were singing "He Had It Coming," or whatever it's called, from Caberet, as we approached a group of skankily dressed teens. Then, right when they finished, Chelsea and Selena attacked them with silly string and the entire group bolted.

Ginny, Lysander and I had been lagging, but we did our best to keep up. I went sprinting after Samurai Nyx, who was in front of me. The group we'd attacked made a good chase.

"Who are you? Wanna fight?" they called.

"Sure," I yelled over my shoulder. "We have one sword. What've you got."

They were silent for a moment before someone yelled, "Nothing. Nice pants, though!"

"Thanks!"

Could use some volt right about now

I'm so busy practicing for Guys and Dolls at the moment that I really don't have time to write a coherent post. So, I'll leave you with a paragraph I wrote freshman year about just how loverly piano playing is.

There is also power in the music I create myself. I play the piano constantly. I am currently learning Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor. It starts with three low fff triple octaves, then changes to ppp chords, each one with six notes, played by two hands with overlapping thumbs. The song stays quiet, switching between overlaps and octaves. It then shifts into a stream of triplets, twelve per measure. It is extraordinarily difficult, but even with my limited ability, I can still feel the melancholy tone as I play. Sharps, double sharps, and minor chords create a sadness that is reversed with a measure in D major before descending back into minor notes. No matter how jumpy I feel at its start, the song calms me as it plods along. I like the way the piece sounds, but I mostly enjoy the feeling it inspires within me.

That's the prelude I stopped playing last year after Harry got into orchestra for playing it. After that, I just felt inferior every time I practiced, and it was causing issues, so I moved onto brighter pastures, like Beethoven.

Sighting

Now that OFM is over, I am going to have to continuously struggle to prevent myself from simply using this blog as a medium to record Mario sightings and the various short, pointless conversations that ensue.

In fabulous news, I made pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls! I'm so excited. I'm sharing the piano part with Harry (I'd apparently nicknamed him already. Who knew?). I'll have to talk with him to decide who gets to play what. Getting him to talk should be interesting to say the least. He isn't exactly gregarious. The whole "I'm now going to have to talk to this guy I don't know" situation reminds me of last year, when I first started taking the train with Mario and was regularly freaking out over how awkward it was.

Also, I've begun studying SAT words. My word for today is disparage, which means belittle. For instance, after hearing that Rachel was going to the dance with Mario, I made many disparaging comments about her, trying to make her seem less important.

My funny story is actually from a few days ago. Actually, I lied, it was only yesterday. I was walking with Avon and someone else (I think it was Red, but that doesn't really make sense, since she isn't in Spanish, so it may have actually been someone else, but I really think that it wasn't Julie or Gretchen, and I'm not sure who else I would have been walking with, since it was definitely a girl) after Spanish. We were headed towards the bridge. I had my weird Mario-is-nearby sensor go off a little bit, but I assumed it was a false positive (considering the fact that it hasn't been wrong yet, I should probably stop doing that). Then I realized that I had a physics test next period and was walking in the wrong direction. I did a 180 and headed back towards the stairs and lo and behold, Mario was actually behind me. We both said hi, I passed him, and then about a millisecond later, I ran head on into a senior girl who gave me a very dirty look.

Busy Me

I've been writing my butt off for the U.S. portfolio, so I don't really have a full post in me. Instead, you can have a few messed up quotes from last year's theater homework. First is my writing about Beauty and the Beast, which I only viewed from the pit orchestra, where I was playing. However, I was still required to write a lengthy analysis of the production.

The first question, required a summary. I wrote most of it, then added "At that point, the show segues into 40 pages of constant music. I was unable to see much else until right at the end, when Belle tells the beast she loves him, and the spell is broken, reverting him and the others to their natural forms."

• "In my corner, I could only really hear strings, the drum set, and the louder brass notes. However, I could tell that we improved greatly during the rehearsal process, and complemented the actors by the end of it. However, we could have been quieter." (this is a reference to the brass section in particular, who enjoyed blowing my eardrums when I sat over there)
  
• "The spotlights on the speaking characters on the wraparound that caused sun spots on my eyes if I happened to look up were undoubtably bright enough to draw the audiences attention."
  
• "The pit orchestra was often unconcentrated" (we had too much pulp, apparently)
  
• In response to a question asking who I admired in the production. "As a member of the pit, I saw very little of the actors or the technicians. However, I did admire some my fellow pit people. The one I was able to see the most was Harry, the keyboard II, who sat directly in front of me. I admired how focused he was. He talked very little, instead concentrating on his music. When my keyboard was unplugged by an overzealous cellist, and I accidently flipped off his trying to turn it back on, he managed to continue playing and not get lost, unlike me, who missed the entirety of Be Our Guest trying to catch up."
  
• "My least favorite moment in the play was in the Gaston reprise. I had to play octave As with my right hand extremely quietly, while staying on tempo. Unfortunately, my amp was far about 6 feet away from me, and I couldn’t hear myself. This made it immensely difficult to stay on the same tempo as the bases, who were right next to me, and I ended up not playing the As at all."
  
• "The fog during the transformation smelled bad."
  

From Romeo and Juliet, which I wrote a second paper on, later in the year, I leave you with one quote

"Forming styrofoam bricks using a cheese grater is surprisingly time consuming."

Dracula

is officially the most boring book ever.

Today, I had my A.P. music theory exam, which went better than I expected, but I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Afterwards, Avon, Nyx and I (I has good grammar, see!) went to the diner and got lunch. We stayed there for about an hour, bought next to nothing, and then spent ten minutes sitting at the table waiting for them to come take out money because we forgot that you're supposed to go up there to pay. It was rather comical, actually.

Then, I had about an hour at home before I had to go back to school for a gala rehearsal. However, it turned out that there weren't enough people, so the conductor canceled the entire number and I got to leave early. Unfortunately, there was still an hour and fifteen minutes to go before my parents could come to pick me up. So, I wandered the school for a while before settling down in the lobby of the auditorium, where it was nice and quiet. The only activity for about half an hour was Josh repeatedly walking out one door of the auditorium, past me without noticing I was there, then back into a different one.

After I had read about two chapters, activity increased. First, Ryan walked by, apparently giving a tour ("Are there separate wings for each grade?""Um, kind of. Well, no, actually."). Then, Adrian and Jun walked by, talking about some complicated math problem. I assumed engineering team had just gotten out, and thought nothing of it. Then, to my surprise, Mario, Irving, Theo, and a junior whose name I don't know came walking down the hall, discussing another, equally complicated sounding math problem.

I tried to read for a while more, but I could still hear them distantly talking, and really, eavesdropping is far more interesting than Dracula, and I still had 45 minutes to kill, so I picked up my book and strolled nonchalantly down the hallway. As I got closer, I could hear Theo talking to our science research teacher, Dr. Breese ("I have all sixes," he frequently reminds her). I talked to her for a minute before walking around Mario, Irving, and the unknown junior and settling down on a bench to listen in. Unfortunately, their conversation was entirely boring and related to replaying some problem from their A.P. test, and when Mario finally realized I was there and talked to me for about a minute and a half, that conversation was also boring. Really, the only entertaining thing was that after Mario left, an unknown freshman asked the unknown junior something about Mario, and they came to the conclusion that Mario is "like, a genius or something."

Beyond that, my day was uneventful.

I leave you with another essay.

One man can have a great effect on society. However, apparently one woman can't, seeing as I don't reference any females at all in this essay. As a form of protesting my own lack of gender neutral pronouns, I will not post this essay, and will instead leave you with this, a study that I really, really don't want to believe.

What is strange, uncomfortable, and really long?

This is another story courtesy of Nyx and Tamir, her lab partner.

Setting: Chem class. Both are seated at desks, with Tamir's legs reaching across to the horizontal supports of Nyx's.

Nyx, looking down: Jeez! Your feet a huge!

Tamir: That's not the only thing that's huge.

Nyx shoots him an incredulous look.

Tamir: 10 inches, baby!

When Nyx told me this at lunch, I laughed for a very long while. I also remarked on how ridiculous it is that her lab partner has freakishly huge feet (probably because he is tall enough to make me look like a dwarf) when my lab partner, who is at least 6', has feet that are smaller than mine. How can his feet be smaller than mine? How can he run multiple miles everyday and still stay upright rather than falling due to lack of support? It's entirely unfair. If my feet were even a half size smaller, it would be so much easier to find shoes!

I also realized that it is utterly absurd that my lab partner and I managed to have an entire conversation about shoe size without making any inappropriate jokes. I will attribute this to the fact that I don't generally make dirty jokes, and he probably wouldn't want to make any jokes about his being "small."

I also figured that Nyx would want to know that I now have a picture of Ryan (the cute cellist in pit, as opposed to the creepy cellist who wrote Tierra a symphony) on my phone, because Tawny took a picture of him using my cellphone and set it as my background (although I got her to change it back). He was making a very serious cello-playing face, which I thought was rather funny, but I only just now discovered that Tawny actually went back into my phone and deleted the picture, so, um, I lied. Sorry.

And the answer to the question in the title is a court case.

Description courtesy of Opmin.

ZZZzzz

I am tired as shit. Basically since I got home I've been doing homework and procrastinating my homework. I really need to work on that... tomorrow I'll truly try to finish by eight.

In other news, vanadium batteries sound pretty cool. There was an article in Discover about them. Basically, they have V(+2-5) on different sides of a membrane and they're allowed to oxidize. I learned the basic scientific principles in chemistry but I don't really get how it works.

Pit orchestra tryout on friday. I'm playing Dr. Gradus from Debussey's Children's Corner on the piano, and sight-reading something. We'll see how it goes, but if I don't get in, I'll probably cry, seeing as it's practically the only thing I do outside of school.

This is a pathetique blog. Unless I'm doing issues, I shouldn't bother. tooth brushing and journal, here I come!