Adventures in Limbo: Gatsby Movie, Clubbing, And Canoes!

Sunday 19 May

I haven't had much to say. This deep thought Thursday thing is turning out to be a disaster, because in all reality, my life happens on the weekend, which is pretty sad to be honest.

Quite frankly, I didn't really leave my house all week. AND IT'S KILLING ME. I have watched 115 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, eaten virtually all of the food in my house (including some slightly expired cheese, but fuck it YOLO), gone on precisely one eight mile hike, unpacked everything I brought home, set up my summer job, saw Josh on Monday (and I missed that kid so much and catching up with him was absolutely wonderful) and even helped some younguns study for the APUSH exam on Wednesday. And you know what? IT'S NOT LEGENDARY. Basically the best thing about it was that I didn't put on pants for like four days straight.

This is why I hate Arvada. Nothing ever happens here. Basically the most exciting thing that happened here occurred over 100 years ago, when in 1904, we were declared the Celery Capital of the WORLD. Yeah. CELERY. What now, New York City?

On Friday night, I decided to stop living like a fucking hermit and I called up my best friend Crissie and told her we were seeing The Great Gatsby. And so, she got off work, picked me up, and off we went into the night. We grabbed pizza beforehand and it was pretty awesome because we missed it. She talked about her job and how most of the time, it's awful, but there are some moments that make it worth it, and I guess that's true of a lot of things anymore. Actually, it basically describes my damn life. She sounded a bit like me when I get stressed as well, which was pretty sad sounding and I just wanted to give her a hug. It's sad anymore.

But anyway then we went to Gatsby and HOLY BALLS IT WAS SO WELL DONE AND I COULDN'T HAVE ASKED FOR MORE. Carey Mulligan was fabulous as Daisy (at least, heaps better than Mia Farrow, who I wanted to punch in the throat in the 70's version), Tobey Maguire made a surprisingly awesome Nick, and Leo DiCaprio was absolutely perfect as Gatsby. The sets were lavish and over the top and blew my goddamn mind (I WILL own a Gatsby house someday, mark my words—look up Oheka Castle if you want a taste of that kind of luxury, because HOLY POOP IT'S AWESOME).

The soundtrack provided precisely the wonderful juxtaposition Baz Luhrmann is famous for and I've downloaded SO many tracks and it's beautiful. I like to cruise in the Batmobile (my dad's Mazda) and blast "Bang Bang" and "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody"and pretend I'm a badass. And I kind of hate Lana del Ray with a passion reserved for seagulls and series calculus, but "Young and Beautiful" isn't half bad. "Kill and Run" is awesome, as is "Over the Love," and "Crazy in Love" was really well done. Anyway. Gatsby Soundtrack. Download it now.

Long story short, SEE GATSBY AND THEN HOST A FREAKING RAGER IN HIS HONOR AND INVITE ME. BECAUSE AMERICAN DREAM FUCK YEAH.

Yeah. So that was fun and I needed it. A lot.

Then I came home and slept, and the next morning I woke up late and hopped in the car to head off to the first event of the annual Free-Food-and-Drink-A-Thon, AKA Graduation Parties. I saw a lot of graduates and a few kids from my own class. Everyone seemed really well and full of hope for the future, and that was refreshing to see. I caught up with my friend Alyssa and she seems well doing Geological Engineering at Mines.

And yet, she brought up the point that coming back kind of negates the whole college experience. You're both here and there, caught in the middle. She had a point—we're in the limbo between a lot of things, between terms and identities and grade levels and majors and basically everything. It's hard to relate to anyone other than the people in limbo with you and even then it's hard. You're not quite an adult anymore (because let's be real, I'd probably shock most adults in my life if I was completely honest about the college experience), but you aren't even really a teenager grounded in this place (because let's be real, I'd probably shock most high schoolers in my life if I was completely honest about the college experience). You're both within and without, as Nick Carraway so aptly puts it in the film. I still don't know how this begins to work. It's both a blessing and a curse having the reputation I did back here in Arvada any longer. And I don't know how to fit who I am right now into the image of who I used to be, which is basically what everyone seems like they want me to—my friends, my parents, my former peers, my former teachers. And that terrifies me.

Anyway. After THAT existential crisis, I ate dinner, fucked around on the internet, and then got ready to go clubbing with a couple of friends from high school. I got lost on the way to Tayler's house, rallied with the group, and hopped in the car to Beta Nightclub in Downtown Denver.

If I'm going to be entirely honest, clubbing is Not My Scene. Like, definitively. I enjoy house music in small, concentrated doses, like if we're listening to it on the way to a trailhead, or on the way to a party. Not like all night. For a former ballerina, I am an atrocious dancer in the club. I also got hit on a lot, which at first was flattering and then it turned creepy.

Attention men of the world, just because I catch your eye or politely answer and ask a few questions does NOT mean I want to fuck. I'm getting a theoretical minor in "Being Awkward in Public Spaces," so please don't take anything I do and/or say as suggestive. Cool Beans. As fun as getting hit on by random blokes in the club is, I'll probably be meeting a future significant other and/or spouse in the university library, thank you very much.

Honestly, the only thing that prevented the entire experience from being a total bust was that I was there with people I had a wonderful time catching up with and hanging out with. I also convinced them to go to Denny's. And I reiterate: shitty breakfast food at two in the morning is the greatest bonding experience of any lifetime. Score one for Maggie.

When we went outside to cool off from the incubator that is a club, Tayler said that "people mate in such strange ways anymore." And that's also really true. They get drunk, flirt with strangers in a neutral place that encourages bad behavior, and ultimately end up looking for something true and pure in a place that really doesn't inspire that. I don't understand it anymore. I really don't. Maybe that's part of this modern malaise—we really have no idea how to be a human being anymore. We don't know what we're looking for or how to go about finding it.

Yeah. And today I wasn't planning on leaving my house but ended up invited to bowling, which really ended in getting Starbucks with Dani and Davis as their irregular canoe and then watching Star Trek on Flock's couch with Kevin and Caroline joining us, just like and yet fundamentally different from old times. So yeah. That may have been a little awkward, but I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance on my part or if I'm actually, literally batshit insane. It could be both.

So yeah. This is me, now. Caught up in limbo, trying to figure it all out. Like usual. This summer should be really interesting to say the very least.

I promise these will get better once I start reading quality literature and socializing more.

So thanks for reading for now :)

Deep Thought Thursdays: Featuring Maybe Dead Cats and Gatsby Again.

Thursday-Friday 9-10 May

Someone told me I should continue blogging, and I agreed with them because I miss it and it's bloody cathartic.

I was planning on making "Deep Thought Thursdays" an actual thing, but yeah. I don't know anymore if that's going to happen considering it's actually early Friday morning. But whatever. Like really.

This is going to sound blasphemous, but before this week, I'd never watched the show How I Met Your Mother. I discovered it on Saturday when I was supposed to be studying for my physics final, because my friends are a wee bit obsessed with it.

And since then, it's practically been the fucking Fibonacci sequence of HIMYM. Like Saturday it was one episode, Sunday two, Monday three, Tuesday five, (Wednesday I decided I needed to sleep—hence missing the eight) and Thursday I watched thirteen episodes. In a row. I'm all the way through the first season.

I love it. I can understand the obsession. Rightly justified, my friends.

I disagree nothing good happens after two AM, though. I mean, I myself have had great adventures after two AM. Like philosophical talks about the nature of the universe. And meteor showers. And Denny's (multiple times). And Starbucks on the most illustrious all-nighter I've ever pulled. Let's be real, people. Two AM to dawn is IDEAL adventuring time.

But yeah. A year ago on this day, I was taking the AP English Lit exam, and it rather sucked because I was burnt out and I was tired and I was just beginning this grand existential journey I've been traveling for the last year. Oh joy. For future reference, adventures usually aren't the shit you sign up for. I'm a totally different person than I was when I was in Arvada last year. And I don't know how I feel about that. I'll probably be grappling with that whole shindig all summer, so yaaay. Just what I need. An identity crisis on top of the existential one.

Lord help me.

Well HIMYM has made me start thinking about my life again, as all good TV shows probably should, and I've just been thinking maybe some decisions have just been a few in a series of bad timings. Anachronisms. I've been thinking of all the things I could have done to make things end differently with different people, and part of me recognizes the expansive futility of these endeavors, because sometimes Schrödinger's cat is always dead when you open the box. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to make it live. Radiation kills cats. If it's not the radiation, then leaving the box closed for too long certainly kills the cat. I mean really.

Quantum physics is the shit if you ever get the chance to read up on it.

And then I started to think that maybe I really am Jay Gatsby.

Yeah, I’m usually Nick. I observe. I learn. I make social commentaries (hi, internets).

But there is some part of me that is always going to be that alienated soul staring out over the water at a green light, at a dream that’s already dead, at that “orgiastic future which year by year recedes before us.” There’s always going to be a part of me that throws these grand parties, that puts on grand charades hoping for something that may or may not happen, because there’s a part of me that is that fucking idealist that keeps hoping, that keeps dreaming, that keeps thinking. There's always a part of me that's going to hope that the cat is alive, because I want a second chance, because I want to try again. Because I want to keep going. Because I hold onto the good moments. Because sometimes, that's the only thing that’s left to do.

Okay. I'm going to sleep now. Finally. For two hours. Whatever. I'm out, homies.

Sidebar: Gatsby soundtrack is fucking amazing. Also, look forward to the MS MR album drop on Tuesday. It's gonna be legendary. Yeah. I went there.

Look forward to "Deep Thought Thursdays." Next week, it'll ACTUALLY be on Thursday (maybe—I make no promises), and maybe more coherent.

Thanks for reading (again). :)