i like to look at you--yes, you--in the rearview window of my car and ask myself what you're sayin' about me, what you're thinkin'

There is a 10 gallon fish tank in my father's office that is perpetually empty, yet never gets dirty. On the other hand, for some reason my black tea is cloudy--no, I did not put milk in you--no, I am not going to put milk in you. No.

On the way back from my friend's house to my mother's workplace today I not only drove all the way down N. Greensboro St. until it turned into Hillsborough Rd. but also until it turned into Old NC-86 and hit Homestead Rd. Once at my mother's workplace, I then proceeded to drive half-way over a median (3 feet wide, 1 foot tall) before realizing "oh shit".

I am distracted.

My camera is broken. Likely culprit? Rechargeable batteries do not come fully charged.

My family is bad at Christmas. My sister opened her Nintendo DS yesterday (after begging and pleading for 2 weeks) and my mother opened some fancy running-device. Yes--they knew what they were opening. I am not so innocent, myself. I am discovering portable music--with wifi!

My sister and I listened to WCPE ("The Classical Station") as I drove her back from piano lessons last night. Around 9PM a joke was made: "And today we celebrate the birthday of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, without whom WWI would not have been possible." I got to explain the joke to my sister (with heavy emphasis on "this was not the only reason WWI started"), and she laughed, at the end. I wonder how much different my life would have been had I had parents able to explain these cultural references to me, to correct my pronunciation. I have found myself, for many years now, explaining to them, correcting them. I think I have learnt things, though, and not because I am the one in the authority position--I am not. I have learnt things about other countries, and other worldviews, and destruction, and oppression. These are pretty valuable lessons.
All the same, in all likelihood I won't be giving up being able to explain cultural references, and correct pronunciation to my potential children by moving across the globe.

i hope you don't think i'm crazy

I'm slowly rediscovering things that were obvious to me in childhood.
So far:

1) The hot/cold sides of the bed dynamic. If you stay too long at one side of the bed, you get too hot. If you shift too often, the bed doesn't get warm until well after you've woken up. Solution? Moderate shifting throughout the night, timed so that you're at a perfect temperature always.

2) Shapes. The AC/Heat unit in the room was very loud last night and as I was trying to go to sleep caused shifting images behind my eyes. I remember being fascinated with these when I was around 5 or 6, at some point I just started to ignore it--I'm not exactly sure why. They appear different depending on what's going on, and are more intense with my eyes closed or lack of visual input (i.e. dark room). I can focus on them / see them best at night, when I'm trying to shut down, but even now they're sort of present. It appears to be a constantly shifting separated tessellation. Each piece is what I want to call fractal-y. I wish there was some way of taking a picture of this for better understanding. I'm not quite sure if they have color. They do, but it is more like the rainbow in a spot of oil on a sunny day type of color than a very solid visual.

3) Girls all hate each other.

4) The richer and heavier the better. Lately I've taken to ordering Breves instead of Lattes when I want a milk-espresso fix. Steamed half-and-half with espresso, yes.

three squared days since the last post

I have synesthesia.

I realized this around a week ago at a really grand percussion ensemble concert on campus. Always before when I listened to music live I was very focused in on the music and the sound, too focused maybe to even realize that what I felt as "crunchy" and "wave-like" were not universal feelings about what was going on in the music but a first-level abstraction of what was going on before my eyes.

I see shape-like things.

For a while now I have been discussing with everyone my ideas for a "better" music visualizer (think windows media player, only, you know, better). They ask me: "what do you mean by better? voice recognition?" "No, no," I say, frustrated, "tone, theme, crunchiness, smoothness, how much the music is like a bubble!" And they nod hesitantly, maybe willing to let me and my crazy ideas alone, maybe afraid to admit that they don't know much about music, probably not completely comprehending.

It is not about the music. Or rather, it is. I have a history of being irritated when the music visualizers do not "align" or "fit" to the music, and only now do I realize that it's because the shapes and textures on the screen do not fit with what I feel are the shapes and textures of the music.

So, my "better" music visualizer? Maybe it won't be better for anyone but me. Maybe, there is hope, though. I am not entirely certain that synesthesia is a personal thing, that there is not some universal base case for what is associated with what among people who associate the same this with the same that.

I am going to explore pathways into this, I'm looking into CSound and player-dependent music (there are no mistakes, if you make a "mistake" just go with it, each next part of the music relies on what has already happened, credit a friend I have, I am not certain what my ideas about intellectual property are yet, so if you want to play around with this, talk to me first and I'll pass on the name of this guy so that you can talk to him and potentially credit/acknowledge him).

Wish me luck. In any case, it is really fucking cool, this shape-thing. I have been delighted with it all week.

three months into college

I am three months into college and not yet settled in.
My dorm is far away from main campus, home to 800 students who vary wildly. What we have in common? A hatred for where we live. If you walk fast (very, very fast) and the traffic lights are in your favor you can get to class in 12 minutes. And this is the South, kids, so no one gets to class quicker than 15 or 17 minutes. Sure, you can bike (or even longboard), but many people don't and those who don't hate those who do. That takes anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes, depending on the lights, how dense the sea of people is, and how many people you're willing to mow over.

The view though. I would almost say living all this way away is worth this magnificent view. I'm only on the 4th floor of this 10 floor building, but this is what I see every morning when I wake up and leave my suite.

I have lots of friends and very few good friends. I have lots of invitations to go party and get "crunk with my crew" (this exact wording was used yesterday) but more often than not I end up celebrating someone's birthday with Apples to Apples or going contradancing or enjoying myself quietly in someone's room and honestly, it would be very silly to leave something I'm enjoying to go do something else for the sake of doing it.

Contradancing. I went contradancing for the first time this past Friday night, despite the fact that nearly all my groups of friends are heavily into it and that many people from my high school went regularly. So, I went, finally. It wasn't so bad. It took me a while to get in the hang of things and I wonder if I shouldn't have asked for the guy who asked me to waltz's number. He was nice and I am perpetually looking for new people to hang out with.

College has made me more reliable, I think. I used to have a huge problem with saying I was going to do something with people and then backing out on it at the last minute. It is not that there is more obligation now, but maybe more fear now. Fear that if I back out too many times I won't have any more friends and damn, man. College is lonely.

I think this has been my biggest realization about college so far, which is not very conducive to feeling settled in. From an email address hastily written on the back of an index card declaring "first" in both English and probably Farsi (or maybe Arabic) to cell phones out always and promises and declarations of "hanging out sometime soon" and "coffee or lunch?" and "see you around S building" college is lonely and full of plans and not very much doing.

There is always doing to be had, of course, but more often than not it involves a week of Facebook messages (or for the more ballsy, wall posts) or back-and-forth cell phone calls and a quick run to the ATM for cash, and I just miss spontaneity, you know?

So I find that where I can and spend time with myself a lot. I do the lunch and coffee and the "hanging out sometime soon" and the scribbled email addresses and the cellphone thing, too. I don't kid myself, I'm just as lonely as everyone else, but I'm trying for more here, I am. And I think I'm finally willing to loosen the plans and eat a few meals by myself in exchange for potentially having some unplanned fun.

We'll see.

some things:
-i have never written anything good in 3rd person.
-i have really bad mid-distance-in-time memory

forcing myself to think one thought at a time

I put on new sheets today. It's a lot fucking easier to put them on when you're not on the top bunk. You can sort of rest your bodyweight on the bed frame and pick the mattress up, squishing comfort into a blue guardian: sort of like a water balloon, only less painful in the long run. Because someone always gets hurt when a water balloon occurs, only sometimes, it's the balloon itself.

We ate dragon fruit tonight. I hadn't eaten it since the summer after 6th grade when I went to China for the first and only time. I get sort of irritated when people say "back to China" when referring to my trip. There's no back for me, you see. I was made in Canada. Born there, too. If I'm going back anywhere it's to that land directly above Montana and not that different, except with the Northern Lights and a bit more windchill during the winter. I haven't been back there, either. Left when I was squalling and one years old for a place slightly further north with a bit more Northern Lights and a lot more windchill. I don't remember it either, we moved for what seemed like forever back then to Ottawa when I was three. I went to twelve daycares and 4 elementary schools, skipped a grade, poured chocolate milk on my 4th grade crush. I never graduated from elementary school, something that bothered me until 8th grade when my middle school graduation in a politely clean and rudely enforcing suburb in the South of the United States gave me 8 accolades. The band director, who announced my awards, because I was Musical and Worldly and played the bassoon, had to tell the audience (consisting of family. no friends, it was middle school.) to cease applauding twice before he finished telling them all.

I think my desire for glory was appeased then, because I haven't done much conventionally since then, since my middle school graduation, since I labeled people into cliques with names that all shortened into three letter acronyms (pop, prp., gek, frk, ...), since then.

My name is Maggie. My best friend spells my name maggie! sometimes. I used to, but not anymore. I am 17 and he and I are a pair of Mersenne primes in our ages, something that will never happen again. I am going to be a freshman at a reputable state school this fall and I am looking for a lot to happen. I am looking to start over, to learn how to be nice to more than people I don't know and my best friend, to not be sketched out by drugs that are not marijuana, to drink decaffeinated coffee, and to run for 30 minutes without stopping. I am at 25 right now.
I want new friends but to also keep my old friends. I want to learn Chinese, my heritage language, the language of my family, of my food and of more of myself than I want to believe. I want to become better at French to prove to my 2nd grade French teacher that I did not fucking deserve that C.

I have a lot to say. I have a lot to prove. I want to find that I am not just talking to myself, that I am not just proving things to myself.

I am on a journey to find people who care.