Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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When people start asking you if you’re growing your hair out again, then it is time to get a haircut.

Working in the Admissions Office has strange perks sometimes, and one of them is that the head of the music program has to come in every so often to chat with my boss. I made sure to take advantage of every tiny break in the conversation to further my own nefarious goals. In a couple of short minutes i had found out why access to the recording studio is currently so restricted, made an appointment to talk about doing a directed study recording project (for credit! real academic credit!), and secured a spot in a songwriting class that’s going to be taught by a Grammy Winning songwriter.

Rock’n’Roll ;)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8688259/

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Sleep has the marvelous ability to make everything make sense that i wish life would learn how to use. Sleep wrapped itself around me last night in an unrelenting grip, and i don’t even remember getting up five times to turn off my alarm, although they all obviously happened. What i do remember is a dream where the green skin of my guitar was slowly unraveling, and where i found myself in Texas drinking a bottle of blue Gatorade i found in Alison‘s house.


The subconscious is obsessed with having everything in its right place, which has to make you wonder. If all of our dreams can make so much sense, despite the incredibly disparate elements therein, then why can’t our lives do the same? Obviously we are the ones in the way, because our brains (if left to their own devices) would happily resolve all of our problems into a neat narrative that would only seem unreasonable upon examination. The trouble is that we are professional examiners of life… we specialize in nitpicking and tearing apart every moment we encounter until it is just a shredded up set of possibilities lying in a mess on the floor.

Coincidence and Deja-Vu belong to dreams; they are not feelings so much as they are plot devices, meant to steer us in the fateful direction we are somehow intended to travel.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8681246/

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Six college students sitting around on a Sunday afternoon after a late brunch. You might imagine us taking part in an enlightened conversation, going outside to get some exercise, or even making plans to see a movie or go shopping.


You would be wrong. Try again. Whoops, wrong again. Here, let me just tell you what we did.

The six of use opened up a collection of Millers, WineCoolers, and CiderJacks, and whipped out the Sorry! board. Now, being an only child with a significantly less-than-average amount of friends, i apparently didn’t get to experience the entire broad horizon of board games. However, i think i can safely say that Sorry! is the meanest game i could ever inflict upon a child. It’s similar to Parcheesi in that your two main purposes are to get your piece “home,” and to fuck over everyone else. And, trust me, four slightly buzzed college students with a cheering faction of two is pretty good at fucking.


We played Sorry for two hours, during which i might have been threatened with physical removal from the game area if i didn’t “shut up and sit the hell down.” Yes, this means i won the first game and that everyone was pissed — can i help it if i am a blood-thirsty player and not a sore loser? (Apparently pointing that out directly after doing one’s victory dance is considered bragging. Did i mention that we were drinking?) After my stunning come-from-behind victory (two pieces landed home in two turns) we invented a drinking game and a turbo version.


I knew that higher education was good for something…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8660256/

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Here’s where i’m scheduled to say something profound.

This week was already shaping up as a busy one on Monday night, and so i made myself a neat little list of things to blog about. That way i’d have at least one thing to write about every night, and i could compose in my head over the course of the day. The list for the days that have passed read: Journalism Essay, Under My Skin, Bloggies. Electronically penciled in for Friday was one word: “Selina.”

A year ago today was the first night of that fateful week where i saw her every night, and we counted it as the start of our relationship. I didn’t even hint at it on here until a few days later, and uncharacteristically didn’t mention it outrightly for over a week. Tonight i’m in a similar place… i spent my allotted AM blog-time last night just staring into a white box, and then grudgingly heading off to sleep. I had something to say, but no way to say it. This morning evoked a similar reaction.

At the beginning, everything was magical and perfect… there i was with this beautiful girl who was smart and talented, and actually seemed to find me attractive. But, from the start there were tiny nibbling doubts that i ignored, just assuming that they were the natural followup to the initial butterflies in my stomach. Too many things have muddied my hindsight in the year that has intervened for me to objectively say what went right and wrong, but i do know that we both served as an important piece of each other’s lives. And that it wasn’t really meant to be.


I always say that i never regret anything… that i’d never take anything back. It remains true here; just because Selina and i ended on a bad note doesn’t mean i would take back the entire experience. What’s sad is that my life has been relatively empty of tangible romantic entanglements since then, and so i couldn’t help but become all the more embittered about the entire situation — especially when hardly anyone i know seems to be very fond of my ex. Suddenly, this week, i find myself having funny little conversations with her, and wicked jokes under the din of a cappella rehearsals. Despite all the emotional and lyrical fists that i have balled up and thrown since then, i finally seem to be able to see through it back to the person who intrigued me so much to begin with.


So, maybe we’ll wind up friends in the end… at least a little bit. All of my life a year always seemed to be such a large quantity of time… it always seemed to make such a big difference in how life worked. Some things don’t change; I might not ever miss Selina. I miss butterflies, though, and she is forever inexorably connected to them because she taught me how to get past them to something a little more real.

Happy Anniversary.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8619575/