In Secret

A Facebook friend posted this today.

Erring on the side of caution, should the technologies of the internet deem the photo unfit to display, it says the following: "A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." -Franz Kafka

I've been feeling very off lately. And it should be no shock to me that the majority of this feeling stems from the fact I haven't sat down and jotting something casually for the sake of merely jotting in a long time. Last night I desperately wanted to write in a journal, but I knew the task would cut more out of my sleep schedule than I was able to allow.

But I miss it. I miss this. And it's occurring to me that though I set out for this blog to be everything but a "here's how my life's going yolo" kind of media, it can still have aspects of that.

Theatre school has made me stop watching movies to watch movies, and I mean that in the sense that the things I've learned have effected my view, not that my professors have some sort of iron fist over my personal entertainment options. I watch movies and pay attention to the costumes, watching for inconsistencies or themes. I look for metaphor in basic on screen conversations, taking apart the dialogue as though it were a play on the page before me and I'm equipped with a series of colored pencils. I watch character choice and subtleties that speak to an internal monologue or objective.

I watched a Tom Felton movie the other night because, as Boy Aaron said, girls are prone to obsess over celebrities. His portrayal of the character was so compelling, even though he played a sickly, naive, exuberant 1800's chap. I couldn't get over the performance. So I watched it again. To be honest, in both sittings we never quite finished the movie, but the second time around, aware of where the stroyline would take us, I caught blow after blow of metaphor and foreshadowing that were so subtle I honestly hadn't caught them the night before. I started taking note of which characters referenced water the most, how often death became a casually passing topic, and it was amazing.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm in need of one of those therapeutic writing sessions so this is what you get, internet and Sydney.

I just like the idea of people being intellectual in their creativity, of there being more behind the beauty besides a natural gift at depicting it. I like knowing I can take a spade and push the topsoil away, and that there will be soil beneath rather than overturned, hollow crates.

Eye for an I...do

It was one of those moments when the world around you stops. The air suddenly becomes thick, as though the particles of time are laboring to remain stagnant, giving you the sensation that if you turned your head in either direction it would be like spinning your finger through jello: the fragments of space would rip off in contorted chunks and re-stick haphazardly to neighboring fragments. I've seen it depicted in cinema as having a harsh light suddenly fall on the person experiencing the sensation, the remainder of the room fading out or even going black, and perhaps there is even a sharp focus and swift zoom on the person's face. It was one of those moments, and as it happened my heart was caught up in the camera close-up and jello-filled air and it drifted into my throat. I swallowed it down and ignored the moment.

Nothing had happened. There was no change in the consistency of the atmosphere; he didn't just look at me like that.

But he had.

The trouble with being a perceptive theatre/English major is that moments of anomaly do not go unnoticed. Each instant of my life is fodder for a character--whether one I stand proxy for on stage or one I create on the page. I had a phase in the fall in which I took detailed internal notes on every wound I received, on the off chance I would need to describe such a wound in a short story or novel someday. It is therefore impossible for me to ignore that when he looked at me the air was wrought with such a change. Nor can I shun the fact that it happened more than once.

But I am known, at least of myself, to be a hapless optimist when it comes to the realm of love and the opposite sex. I have learned from experience that the look may very well imply attraction, but there are many false motives that underlie it. Thus far, out of 5 such fellows who have heftily dished out such looks, I have only properly interpreted one and a half of them as actually romantically inclined. The half is because I'm not quite sure if he was really interested and just very shy about going for it, or if he was just the kind of guy that looks at all of his good friends that way. Therefore who am I to assume any different of this recent man?

Granted, the last to have given this look was in fact quite interested, but as he was more moody and touchy than a cat in a bathtub, I didn't eagerly dive into that relationship.

I was intending to be more vague with this but, alas... It is hard enough for me to look at him when he speaks without feeling my blood vessels are rearranging under the flesh of my face to spell visibly in cursive the words "I am utterly positive I love you. And I would be genuinely content to bear your children." Add in the factor that nine out of ten times he looks at me with that searing look that should only be accompanied with the overwhelming desire to run away with the person the look is given to, and you can see why I'm a complete wreck. How could I ever ignore how I feel when I'm constantly reminded in the way he looks at me?

I am determined not to let my optimistic self grab this notion and run with it, playing out ways he could corral me into a relationship.

Easier said than done. You try admiring a fellow in the fifth grade, see him randomly as a senior in high school, and now finding yourself with a severely logical excuse to see him for 2-4 hours a week at very close proximity and not be twitterpaited to some degree.

Just try.