Frozen Fractals

Wednesday 9 April

Fell asleep writing this last night so here we are in the morning:

Today was the Third Day of Sundress Season, which means it's almost time to officially call it Second Spring, after a remarkably (and disappointingly) brief Second Winter. I'm terribly sad because I adore winter, unlike literally everyone else I know.

I began the day in the waves of glorious fuckery I refer to as "Organic Chemistry," where we learned about something involving carbonyl chemistry in chapter 22? I'm going to sit down tomorrow and actually learn how to do chemistry, which is going to be a total disaster. Whatever.

My law class was cancelled again today, so I came home and ate some food and drank some caffeine before heading out to office hours, which I missed because apparently the hours were different from the dates I had stuck in my head? I dunno. So I rode the Buff Bus around in a circle and hung out on the Quad for awhile before I met with my political science advisor. Which honestly was refreshing because she's the first person in like three years to tell me that I'm not an utter maniac for doing both chemistry and political science as majors as well as a classics minor. I only get confused looks and a barrage of questions about why I thought that was a good idea, but she was totally chill about it, which was nice. She was most shocked that I was in the orchestra and was the only girl playing bass. It happens.

Then I did some work in the library and went to writing, where I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at any chance presented to me during Shakespeare presentations.

Anyway. I walked home listening to some Frank Sinatra mixed with The Limousines, which is basically my music taste in short—oldies and weird indie shit. It's what I do.

I got home to read A Dance With Dragons and nap hard before orchestra. Orchestra itself wasn't terrible, since we mostly just hung out in back like the basses do and played through almost a full 100 measures of "Danzon No. 2" AKA "It's Totally the Oberyn Martell Song," because I'm a huge nerd.

I came home and screwed around with the Roomies before actually facing my life responsibilities for tomorrow and finishing my Nordic Literature reading A FULL 14 HOURS BEFORE IT'S DUE. What's wrong with me?

In other news, Mars this evening was hella bright—in fact, it was the brightest it's been in six years!

Six years—Jesus, it's literally almost a third of my life. Six years ago, when last Mars shone this bright, I was fourteen years old, in eighth grade, utterly insecure of who I was but with only one goal in life—to become a famous novelist to get me the hell out of Arvada. I thought Hillary Clinton was going to get the nomination for Democratic Candidate (hey that sounds familiar but now I'm more skeptical because HILLARY! but America :( nerd life is the hard life). I was a ballerina. I still played the bass, though I was pretty awful (and I'm terrible NOW, so back in the day the struggle was real). I liked a boy more than he liked me, and vice versa. The stock market hadn't crashed, so my future was secure. I hadn't been to a funeral in about three years. I still believed in happy endings.

Part of me wants to give that girl a Lannister-family-style slap across the face, and part of me wants to let her look up at the night sky and feel completely hopeful (as opposed to hopeful-with-an-undercurrent-of-the-overwhelming-futility-of-that-stupid-gesture). Looking at the life I have now and the life I had then is almost like looking at a different narrative entirely. It's a little scary, but a third of your life is a long time. Maybe not to Mars, or Earth, these eternal survivors, where our daily problems are nothing but a minor irritant. But in human terms, it's a long freakin time. A lot happens in that time. Regimes change. Truths are shattered. Hearts are broken. People leave. People die.

It's beautiful and it's terrible, looking back. You endure through so much. It may not seem like a lot, but it is. And so maybe it's a good thing that Gatsby couldn't repeat the past with Daisy—it was too much of a burden on him and on her. They weren't the same people they used to be. Of course it was doomed from the start.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Maybe it's that the past can mean things to us, and it has to (otherwise one of my ridiculous passions—history—is completely futile and call me an idiot, but I refuse to relinquish that). But modernity forces us to keep moving forward. It's forcing a progression on us. So maybe if you do find yourself in a reflective mood, stay there. Remember. Recognize the importance of a moment. Realize where you are in the present, and look how far you've come. Stop the progression for a minute and really live in the present moment. Breathe. And then keep going.

Anyway. Time for lab, so I'm going to peace out.

Thanks for reading :)