No Reason to be this Happy

this happy

I want to put things up everywhere all around camp all night.

Being in the Dining Hall Kitchen

I'm sitting here right now in the big armchair thinking about last night in the kitchen. There were fluorescent lights and everything was white and clean and shining. Later, walking back in the dark we couldn't see anything. Advanced Darkness. We raided the fridge and the walk-in freezer in the back and the freezer in the corner of the kitchen by dry goods but couldn't find the frozen cookie dough that had been around last year. We put googly eyes on the coffee machine and an orange cooler. You put a metric ton of chocolate syrup in the tupperware cylinders that the cool counselors would drink sweet tea out of last year. We sat on the metal bar where the trays are laid out and picked up during meals. We ate reheated baked oatmeal and berry compote. I made mint tea. One of the sinks that is difficult to turn off was leaking water ever-so-slightly. Orangutan or Orangutang. We exchanged feedback. I felt good because for a while I've wanted someone to go off and talk with and you're pretty cute, eyebrow hairs and all. The freezers were too cold to stand in for very long. I wasn't tired in that moment. I was really engaged in what was happening and you drew mountains on the back of my neck and it gave me the shivers. This is all kinda sentimental and personal and intimate and I'm not really a fan of writing it out and posting it because it always used to frustrate me in high school when girls with blogs would write stuff like this and I had no idea who they were talking about and would get upset that they wouldn't just come right out and say it and what was the point of saying all that stuff anyway when you could be writing stories about people melting or robots fighting or fantastical journeys but maybe if I'm learning anything recently it's to get more in touch with my inner high school girl and stop being so oblivious and tunnel-vision-y and notice people and what they're doing and what I'm doing and how it's making me feel or how they're feeling and that's why I tried to point out that you were biting your lower lip. Which is not something I ever notice about people except the kids I work with because reading body language and tells is important to know if a kid is anxious or going to blow up or something. Anyway, I really enjoyed talking to Kaia in the kitchen last night so, that's a bone I throw for high school me, little punk who started this blog.

Life's Pretty Great

I'm sitting on the edge of my bed. It's noon. I'm about to go to work. I'm wearing bracelets that I'm going to have to take off before work. I just farted. It's cloudy out. I'm looking out the window and I see campers being pushed on the tire swing. Otis's collar is jangling in the background. I'm right here right now. Everything is okay. I need to do stretches and exercises for my foot because it's been bothering me. I'm watching the people outside the window. I wish I was outside and didn't have to go to work. But I'm also thankful for my job and being here and this moment right now.

Who am I Now

Right now Otis's head is against my knee. My knee is bent in such a way that my ankle is underneath the hamstring of my other leg. The other leg is extended so that my foot is resting on the coffee table next to Maddie's computer. My leg is extended because the foot that I hurt in May is still injured and I'm having a burst of working hard to try to make it better. It may slightly improve and then I'll slack off on doing recovery things and then it will probably get worse again. I bought a sock off Amazon that's supposed to help it. There's a red string tied around the ankle of my hurt foot. Otis has moved his head off my knee. I'm taking a deep breath. The lamp is on behind me and the hallway light is on. The hallway light at the entrance of the cabin is kinda like a big exposed lightbulb. The bananas in the fruit bowl are starting to collect tiny brown spots. There are googly eyes on the coffee table that I collected from the ground today. I haven't been running or drawing all that much lately which was kind of the two things that defined me and I put a lot of energy into. Lately I've been spending all my time at work or at camp and these 10 minute exercises are my creative outlet. I like all the interaction though and I like that my job is making me a better person. I take personal fulfillment in finishing a day of work because I feel like I'm developing skills that will make me more useful outside of work. So that's nice. I also get cursed at a lot and was accidentally slapped in the face the other day. And I received an Andy Warhol watermelon painting. Everything evens out to everything. I don't tend to think very much about the fact that other people may be silently processing and mulling over stuff in their brain that they aren't telling anyone about and it could be shaping their interactions and actions in a way that I am oblivious to. I tend to not do this because of the stuff I am silently processing and mulling over that shapes my interactions and actions. I rubbed my face and I've felt kind of itchy lately. Especially in the shower. Bugs are making noises outside. I have 45 seconds left. I'm noticing how many horizontal lines are in this living room. What do horizontal lines tell us? Should we have more or less of them? How long? Does it even make a difference? Surely it must make some kind of difference if we can say that there are things such as horizontal lines and talk about them. And what about all the stuff that makes a difference that we can't talk about?

Today Wasn't

A great day at work but it was the kind of day where maybe I'll look back on it and think 'Yeah, that was a day.' I'm in the Annex right now with my ankles crossed sitting upright on the futon with my feet on the coffee table. On the coffee table is a peach, two bananas, a fork, MTG cards, an orange box of some kind of snack food and a plastic bag with a takeout box in it. The annex looks pretty clean because counselors had to clean it earlier today before they started their roughly 36 hours off. I was sad earlier that campers were leaving. And that I had to go into work immediately after and didn't get to sit in on the debriefing session. I think camp feels more like a family because, on the whole, things tend to run a whole lot smoother. I'm staring into space a whole lot right now and the keys are sticky because I started to eat a grapefruit but then decided to write instead. My foot really really hurt today and it was spiking on my drive back home. I'm icing it with an ice pack on the floor. There's an empty cardboard box on the floor by the fridge. I'm exhausted. I think right now I'm in a safe spot. This room is safe and this camp is safe and good things happen when I'm here. This camp makes me happy. Like, really happy. I was thinking earlier today about how I don't tend to sit with emotions or own them. I'm usually 'okay' or 'doing good' which really just means pleasantly neutral to mildly anxious or frustrated. But earlier I felt really sad that it was closing day at camp and I tried to just sit with the feeling and be sad. And have that emotion be more at the forefront of my mind. Being more emotionally aware and thinking about how you act differently or perceive things or think differently based on that feeling. Naming feelings and recognizing that you have them. I must work at a therapeutic school.

Alan Watts Would Say Something Like

The whole universe is sitting in this couch with me. It's something the whole universe is doing. Sitting in this couch next to Otis. With my ankles crossed on the coffee table in Cabin 11. The leaves are moving up and down gently. The sun has come out after a cloudy morning. I just showered and my skin has a clean feeling. I'm tilted slightly to my right side because I'm sitting between two couch cushions. Also pillows are propping up my left arm. When I was watching people walking yesterday there were a surprising amount of people with slight limps or favoring one side. It reminded me of how symmetry is appealing because it indicates genetic health or something. Good fidelity in them symmetric genes. It's really still right now. The aloe plant needs water. It doesn't look as vibrant and vigorous as it does when it gets a dose of Vitamin Dub. I misspelled 'vitamin' a whole bunch just now. Otis just sighed. Saying out loud or in your brain what you are doing in a specific moment is a good practice. I was thinking about that on my run. There are strips, or like narrow rectangles of sunlight coming in through the east windows and illuminating small sections of the living room. The arm chair across from me is being sliced by the sun. That beam extends up the wall towards the window. I'm breathing in through my nose and taking shallow breaths. Sometimes at home my mom used to catch me taking rapid shallow breaths for no apparent reason. It would confuse me because I wasn't aware of it. There's a good part of my day where I have absolutely no idea what my breath is doing. I guess that's okay except when it's not. There are bananas I bought yesterday in a fruit bowl next to a single tomato that has been sitting in the bowl for a while. I'd like to eat the tomato but I think it's Maddie's but maybe when she reads this she'll let me have it. In the shelves we have against the wall across from me are three monstrous creations made from cardboard. Amorphous, tentacle laden blobs that seem upset at their very existence. There's also a prayer pony. The prayer pony has its head bowed down and its beady glass eyes stare out into nothingness. I forget what its name is. Charity or Faith or Providence or Patience or something like that.

10 minutes the day after 7/4

I'm in the Annex on the far couch by the wall of windows. There are three counselors in here with me. They're talking about their campers and their quirks and weirdness. It's quiet. I was asked to stop taking up all the bandwidth because I was streaming Night Moves by Bob Seger. A camper grabbed a spoon from a counselor in a semi-aggressive way today. Carson just left. I think someone else might be in the backrooms. The way the Annex--a counselor just burped and excused himself---the way the Annex is set up is like the L-Tetris block. There's a common space at the entrance and then a hallway extends off from there with three bedrooms and a bathroom at the end of the hallway. The annex is actually shaped like a rectangle but I don't consider the bedrooms part of it, I guess. Today was my day off and I kept running into people I knew or places with mildly significant encounters. We were taking the older campers on a trip and went to an art park where this woman named Lauren Hooker was leading an African style drum circle and making us hoot and trill loudly. She wrote a song called Hate Has No Home Here. We sang it. A newsman showed up with a camera and recorded us. I started hula-ing with a hula hoop as I sang the No-Hate song. None of this was planned. Then we went to this student lounge arcade thing with pool and foosball and DDR and pinball and all of it was free. Pretty dope. We ate at a Wendy's that was the first bathroom I used in Charlottesville when I went to interview for my after school job. I walked out of Despicable Me 3 and sat on a chair on the downtown mall and people-watched for about an hour. It was a good time. Despicable Me 3 was overstimulating in a way that made me feel like I wasn't fully in my head. Kinda like a dizziness or vertigo that was vaguely discomforting in a way I can't completely describe. I saw a lot of homeless people and people having power lunches as they talked business and walked laps around the downtown mall area. Last night Maddie and I found a mouse nest in the drawer under our oven. The mouse nest looked like it was made of a Santa beard and there was poop and green pee all over the baking trays and tins. I'm not really describing what's happening right now but there's not too much going on right now. Will just walked in. Another Will is making...hot pockets? I'm not sure. He took something out of the freezer and said, "There's only two in here?" and now he's trying to use the microwave. Something about describing what people are doing in writing as they are doing it reminds me of Harriet the Spy. The movie version with Rosie O'Donnell. Back when Rosie was cool.

Eydie Gorme The Look of Love has Fallen

I'm sitting upright on the couch in the cabin with my ankles crossed. It's 7:50 AM. I'm waking up early so I can be part of camp in the morning before I go in to work and get back at 11. I have tomorrow off. I'm tired. I'm wearing my watch on my right wrist and two bracelets from school on my left wrist. I'm wearing a piece of red string on my right ankle. A kid at work yesterday noticed the red string and asked if I was in AA. I'm still not sure what the connection was there. I can only breathe out of one nostril right now. I'm looking forward to my day off. Maybe one day off is better than multiple days off because you have enough time to rest and get perspective on how things are going but it's not so much time that you feel rusty coming back. Or you don't get used to not being at work and then it's that much more of a struggle to get back into it. Regardless, this is my life now. The title of this post is a reference to an album cover that fell off the wall overnight and is now sitting beside me. The picture is of a woman with a helmet for hair staring intently/intensely/immensely into the camera. Her knuckles are posed lightly on her cheek. She's dressed in all black. The words of her name and title are resting like a crown on her dome of hair that descends and then swoops out slightly the way a child would draw generic female hair. Sitting on the coffee table in front of me is a cow clip. I call them cow clips because Homestar Runner did once. Those paper clips that you squeeze at the wide end to open up the narrow end. And then it goes 'Moo' when you open it. It's gray out and quiet. I'm going to drink coffee soon. I hope that I don't feel this tired joining camp. I feel hungry. I didn't get that many hours of sleep but I didn't feel like I needed to. The ceiling fan is running slowly and I can see the shadows spinning on the wall. The shadows spin like the shadows of a ceiling fan would spin. In the corner by the door, one of the straps dangling from my backpack is swinging because the vent is directly below the backpack and the strap is weak and bends to any and all pressure. Never once does the strap move of its own accord or refuse any influence.

12:30 in Annex at 7/2

I'm sitting in the Annex with the counselors here at camp so I probably won't write very much. I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the cabinets. My ankles are crossed. Kim is about to make a nutella sandwich. There's a candle on the coffee table. It's a lot cleaner in here than the last post because counselors on their day off were bored and cleaned the Annex. There are blankets folded up underneath the coffee table. People are talking about swearing in sign language and whether or not they curse in front of their families. I don't feel extremely comfortable. A sandwich bag is being rustled. A jar of nutella is being opened. "Oh no, I'm running out!" James loves Sour Patch Kids. There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine people in the room including me. A bag of sour patch kids was thrown across the room. A gross video is being watched. It's a video of a pimple or cyst being popped. One time I watched a video of earwax being professionally cleaned. People are horrified but they can't look away. Kim is eating a nutella sandwich to music. It's relaxing, white-people soul 80s grocery store music. Lady in Red. Intense eye contact is being thrown around the room. There are lots of intense moments being traded. We're sharing a group experience right now. Never before has sandwich eating been elevated to a musical performance. Kim is wearing a tye-dye shirt, red basketball shorts, and Mardi Gras beads that he received in exchange for flashing. Careless Whisper is being played. Careless Whisper was the favorite song of a camper I had last year. Maddie is furiously nose laughing. We're singing the chorus as a group. The sour patch kids are hurting Maddie's teeth. I was just asked what I'm doing and lied about it. My butt is falling asleep. I turned off the timer so as not to attract attention to my creepy writing self. Meh.