smile like you mean it

i give you anything, i give you anything, i gave you everything
i've got to watch myself
and love myself
and take care
so keep the light on before you hop into bed
maybe this is the last honest look that i'll ever give
maybe this is the last honest look that i'll ever give
(repeat ad infinitum)

-> look at my cat.  it's crying.  that says something.  i sound so emo.  i feel emo.

the return of saturn... assessing my life... second-guessing
i'm full of artificial sweetener
my heart's been deceitful
it's all artificial sweetener

<- 1:01 AM.  I've wanted to go to bed since 12:00 AM, but I had to help Lucia with her paper.  And now I have to fix Ilium's dialogue so I still can't go to bed.  I should have the stamina to be up later.  Maybe I should change my mood to lethargic.  There's so much I have to do.  Ironically, none of it is homework. 

reread, rewrite, redo, undo,
i'm stuck on this page

-> why do I feel depressed again?  nothing seems to be wrong right now.  maybe i need to go to boston and get out of morningside heights.  but i feel like i really just need to get out of my life.  i need to get out of everything here.  it's a slump.  it's eating me, that's what it feels like.  can't sleep.  life will eat me.  i'm trapped.  i feel so trapped.  like my rib cage is being sat on by some invisible giant.  i feel so sad.  maybe it's just today.  maybe i should go to bed... get up tomorrow.  when everything will be better.  i swear to myself.  i wonder if people can spontaneously die in their sleep, if they really don't want to wake up.  i also wonder if people can die of broken hearts.  according to some psychologist you can.  well, no time to think of that.  i have work at noon tomorrow.  i have so much to do ("you're working so hard and you're never in charge").  i have to do so much.  i get to do so little.  my life is an authoritarian dictatorship, and i don't even know who the dictator is.  god?  some part of myself? 

wake from your sleep, dry all your tears
today we escape, we escape...
pack and get dressed
(before your father hears us)
before all hell breaks loose
breathe, keep breathing, don't lose your nerve
breathe, keep breathing, i can't do this alone

<- Garbage dumps don't have the right to ask somebody to please rid them of the trash they're filled with.  That's what they're for.  1:15 AM. 

never pay the reaper with love only

wow, sorry for my really emo post yesterday.  As Lucia and I later realized, I'm PMS-ing.  Just having realized that helps a lot.  Still, I was deliriously unawake at work today and I'm glad that I was in the bathroom trying to open a bottle of Afrin by banging it on the sink instead of in the departmental office when AC walked in because a box was stuck in his mailbox and he couldn't get it out.  I would have been a wreck.  A make-up-less wreck.  And after our wonderful conversation about the difference between Western and Eastern international organizations on Wednesday morning, I would like to keep my most recent impression on him a good one. 

- my camera seemed to always turn out blurry pictures, especially without flash
+ using the "soften" function of Microsoft Picture Editor helps a lot

- I woke up thinking I was dying of a sore throat... again... as if I had recaught the cold and started it over
+ I think it's improving

I'm going to write tonight.  And it's gonna be great.  I'm so glad I let myself use hard swear words.  It feels like I'm using my actual voice now.  And I'm so glad I let myself drop out of the "high fantasy" manner of speaking, with all "it seems" and "what of your father".  Ugh.  I justified it: this is the future, not the past.  We're not sinking back into medieval times.  I don't know how they're going to talk in the future, but I don't think it'll be a relapse into the past.  And at any rate, changing that alone makes me feel a hundred times better about what I have.  Maybe eventually I'll revamp the non-dialogue writing too, but that'll have to come later.  Maybe it'll wait for the second draft.  From now on I'm going to try to revert back to the way I wrote The Peace Chronicles and Vaya Con Dios.  But I think it was the dialogue that was tripping me up the most - dialogue's my hallmark, and not having it click is awful for me.  The rest of my writing isn't all that colloquiual to begin with, so it's not as much of a change between this and previous works. 

from the playlist of Ilium: Aionos...
Sufjan Stevens' "To Be Alone With You"         

you gave your body to the lonely                       
they took your clothes
you gave up a wife and a family
you gave your ghost

Phantom of the Opera's "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" - an interesting note on this song that I didn't realize until I watched the movie is that this song is Christine's lament on her father's death.  The same goes for this song and Drom, although other layers are attached - when her father dies, Acmon has left to kill the Drakon and himself, and has been gone without contact for maybe a year (in contrast to his previous departure from Ilium, when he would secretly come back every so often).  Drom has also just given birth to Corinth recently.  Meanwhile Passalus has made himself Rex Sophos and is getting high on power and trying to recruit Castor to be his gopher-boy.  So basically Andromache wants to kill herself right around now.

little lotte thought of everything and nothing
her father promised her that he would send her the angel of music
her father promised her
her father promised her
too many years fighting back tears
why can't the past just die?!
wishing you were somehow here again
knowing we must say goodbye
try to forgive, teach me to live
give me strength to try!