It’s either my best attribute or my worst flaw . . . this constant desire to reevaluate who I am and where I stand and where I’m coming from and where I’m going. Perhaps one day I’ll curb this ever present need to step back and look at my life and decide what I’m going to fix. It’s too often what I want to change is simply impossible to “repair.” I’ll have to teach myself to stop. Eventually. Stop trying to correct things that have already happened. Stop trying to determine who I am and will be and just let things happen naturally. Of course, I can define what I put out into the world . . . decide how I will contribute and what sort of contributor I will be . . . but I cannot control what will happen each day and how my life will change moment to moment.

she feels: calm
she hears: Louis Armstrong-What A Wonderful World

I think I want to take up yoga. Although I will admit to not being able to really fathom how it can make one so perfectly buff.

she feels: contemplative
she hears: Beyonce-Me, Myself & I

I only feel slightly bad in admitting this.

Yay, hooray, sisboombah protesting and all.

I really hate it.

Not because I don't think people should/need to say what they have to say, but because the protests are going on all the time here. Discluding random acts of "I hate the government, I hate everything" and the general mass of crazy people who call Washington their home. For instance, this weekend there is a big Women's Rights protest, which means there's a counter protest going down, and then the IMF-World Bank protest.

And everyone gets in the way.

Tourists are hard to deal with on a normal day. Now there are thousands more and they're all screaming at the same time. And at the end of the day when they're done, they still can't get on the bus properly so we can move.

I don't want the protests to happen at all. Really.

Edit: . . . actually, nevermind. I don't want to add a thing. except I still don't want the march to happen tomorrow. now for more reasons than just I don't like there being more people around than usual.

she feels: anxious le sigh.

le plus que je connais les hommes . . . le plus j'aime mon chien.

she feels: um. les eye-rolls.

Student Government, School Year 2004-05

President: Rachel Douglas [I.E. me]
Vice President: Michelle O.
Recording Secretary: Alexa K.
Corresponding Secretary: Alicia B.
Treasurer: Brandon C.
Sargent-At-Arms: David G.
General Liason: Kelsey M.

she feels: accomplished

God, help me, I just had the perfect idea for a movie. Or, at least, it's better than any other idea I've ever had.

I think not doing French work for today in order to better the world by inserting more art into it is a good excuse.

she feels: !!!
she hears: Jet-Are You Gonna Be My Girl . . . (again)

What is there to say when you've woken up thirty minutes ago and have to leave in twenty?

Good morning, perhaps.

Today, I must . . .

(!) Find at least four camps in the Washington Metropolitan Area to which I can apply as a Counselor.
(!) Contact all the colleges on my list to schedule the rest of my visits:
Yale U.
Columbia U.
Barnard College
University of Southern California
Princeton U.
Howard U.
Davidson U.
Dickinson U.
(!) Plan out the rest of my time between now and the beginning of the Summer Vacation.
(!) Finish planning someone's birthday present. *leering, if you could see*
(!) Rewrite my AP English essay.
(!) Take clothes, leotard, jazz pants and all other asundry items out of my locker and home for washing and storage. Return leotard and tights and pants to school.
(!) Begin to decorate my locker, mayhap? Even if it is simply for May?
(!) Clean locker. There. Fairly simple.
(!) Lunchtime: watch and critique Dea/Jerome scene. Hold Student Gov't./Student Council Meeting (Fisher). See Ms. Chandler.
(!) . . . Get home and do dishes. Even though it's not my responsibility. Take lots of drugs.
(!!!) Find/Beg someone for an "I'm happy" icon.

she feels: bright and "bubbly"
she hears: Jet-Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Unannounced sabbatical. Makes me sound almost important.

Insecurity returns. And worse yet, instead of being that quiet constant in the corner of my room like it usually is, it’s up front screaming and shouting and blocking everything else out until the only thing I can hear is its terrible screeching.

All I do is waste my time.

I have this great fear of being passed over that eats away at me day in and day out. I don’t like it. I don’t hate it because it makes me work harder. But I don’t like it because it weighs me down.

How does one block out their own repetitious thoughts of “You’re not good enough?” There are so many “if”s in life. Preparation and circumstance have to meet for success to emerge, and why shall I – not necessarily the luckiest person around – have them come together when the time is right for me? So many things are in my way. I don’t look the part. I’m not the sort of person they want for it. I don’t have enough experience. I’m not where I need to be. I don’t have “the right stuff”. Just – flat out no.

Are you there, God? It’s me, Rachel. Don’t let me go, okay? I can’t go down without doing it.

I need a sign. A word, a . . . I dunno, a bolt of lightning, a rainbow in the middle of the night, a smile from a stranger, a dream tonight, affirmation from a friend . . . that I've not convinced myself that something so impossible can possibly happen to me. A sign that I might be right and I will fight for what I want and it'll happen for me. That I won't be alone in some apartment in New York ten, twenty years from now crying and starving and ready to let go of life because somewhere along the line I told myself a lie and believed it.

she feels: afraid
she hears: Norah Jones-Don't Know Why

Dear Dad,

I'm having quite a bit of trouble right now, and I don't really want to say any of this to you on the phone. I apologize for my attitude straight up, but I sincerely haven't felt much like speaking to you or Keith in the past few days. I just wanted to give you my thoughts and feelings and speak for no one but myself, and perhaps make a plea that you can ignore completely or listen to. I don't know what you'll decide. I can only say what's been on my mind.

Your decision to keep Keith in Connecticut with you hasn't helped the situation one bit. It's only aggravated it more than it needed to be aggravated. Believe me, whatever he says regardless, there is no school up there that he's happy at, and the school he attended up there is worse than Janney here. He won't improve in school because you've suddenly switched academic environments in the middle of the year. And he won't improve just because he's with you and not down here.

If the problem was that you were tired of being away from us, I think you needed to take the initiative and move, regardless of what's going on with you and mommy. If you were satisfied with weekend visits ever so often, then keeping Keithy and sending Olivia and I back was a mistake. Another "regardless of what Keith says", you've confused him, and now Olivia is getting mixed messages.

I don't like the three of us being split up. I didn't like living one place and the four of you living in another. I don't really like you in CT and us here. But I really hate and am beginning to resent you for keeping Keith there with you. It's unfair, it's a bad decision, and it's only bringing out the worst in people. So whilst Keith plays and is putzing around in a classroom far worse than the one he was in here, everyone is getting angrier.

I don't know what made you think that you could make a decision with regard to the three of us -- Olivia, Keith, and me -- without mom. You two can't be on seperate pages like that, no matter how much in shambles your relationship is. Believe me, I've stopped caring about that. I only care about having my brother here with me.

So all I ask is that you talk to mommy and bring Keithy here. I don't care what else you do, I don't care what else mommy does. There are times when I don't like either of you. But what you chose to do . . . it just doesn't make any sense to me. And beyond being hurt, it just infuriates me.

Thanks and love,
Rachel.

she feels: struggling

Have you told your friend how much you love her today?

My week has been crazy. Yesterday I went to hell and back. I don’t want to talk about any of it, but it seems as though I should make note of it, just in order to pay respect to what happened as I go into denial and try to block it out of my mind.

In the computer lab. Lunch is only another thirty two minutes and I haven’t eaten. Instead looking up more books to add to the endless list of literature to buy. These three, however, are much more pressing.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.

The Struggle for Black Equality by Harvard Sitkoff

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society by Manning Marable

Interestingly enough, I never have gone through one of those "angry" phases in which I delve into as much material as I can possibly find about the black struggle and Western Imperialism and all that mess. Perhaps I'm starting now.

Little known fact about me: My grandparents, in the sixties and early seventies when they were raising my mother and her siblings, were very Ungowa Black Powa, as was the "thing" for black lower and middle class intellectuals. They played with the children of many of the authors we [don't] read in school.

Ah well. Twenty-seven minutes left. Off to have lunch.

she feels: calm

I think being a romantic is to be cursed. Nothing ever seems to live up to expectation.

Care to share a dream? a hope? a wish? a desire?

she feels: pensive

For weeks I haven’t had anything to say. I think I found my voice again.

At the moment I suppose I feel a little lost at the moment. Not lost as in some seriously warped emotional state – I’m more together now than I’ve been in months – but rather because I’m not quite sure what to do with myself at the moment. Maybe it’s this “vacation.”

I think I’ve become so secure in where I’m going I’m not sure what to do with myself now. Or maybe it’s because I’ve had so much trouble coming up with something to say here . . . anxious to post because I don’t want to repeat what everyone knows and what’s the point if no one is paying attention? Repeating it for my personal gratification?

Facts:

I will be an actress.
I will write.
I will be a filmmaker.
People will know my name and whether they love or hate what I do, they’ll have to respect me because I affect them and make them think and push and push and throw whatever I have to say at them until they can’t help but listen.

It’s hard to imagine the magnitude of what it is I want to do.

Theatre, the entire notion of a performer and an audience, which has existed since the beginning of human existence but has appeared under the title “drama” or “theatre” beginning in Ancient Greece as part of ritualistic ceremonies honoring the god Dionysus. What I want to do used to be a religious practice . . . . There was no “not being part of the practice of theatre.” As time went on, it went from being a religious experience to some entertaining spectacle, and then drifted out of existence for centuries until priests revived the practice as a way to draw people back to the Catholic Church. And yet, despite that, the actor has gone from someone of moderate importance in the community to the shit people walk on. There came a time when the actor was so ostracized by society they weren’t allowed to be buried after death . . . and were thought to be “touched by God”. Read: incurably insane.

And yet, those people through the ages – through the harassment and eventual disownment from society, the inhuman treatment and blind accusations – continued to call themselves “actors” were people who believed in and revered the power of their craft, their gift, so much so they would accept the treatment they knew would come their way.

Time goes on and we move through the rise of Western “modern” theatre and so we eventually come to the contemporary actor. Or at least the semi-contemporary actor and actress.

I dunno. I don’t feel like going through the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I can skip all that. Skip to today. Everyone can figure out what happens between Shakespeare putting Tempest up in the Globe Theatre and August Wilson hitting Broadway with the first production of Piano Lesson.

Point is, I dare attempt what so many others have tried and failed at. I have the gall to align myself with people who have sacrificed and suffered for their art long, long, long before my mother was a fraction of a thought.

Worse yet, I dare try declare prematurely that I will do what I want to do?

I suppose I do. With or without everyone else’s faith, I do. With the support of those around me is best. Without it . . . I’d force myself to live.

I wonder if a time will come when I’ll have very few friends. I laugh when I think about the people I go to school with . . . people in the theatre department, anyway. There are some people I love there, very true, and I hope those same people love me in return. But these blind cries of “I love you, girl!” are unnecessary, simply because they aren’t true. What everyone avoids admitting is that they’re all competing with each other. They hope for everyone else’s failure so they’ll succeed. We’re a group of people fighting for the same one or two open chairs. The film/acting business/industry is a fucking hard one to get into. And to them, your success could mean my failure.

Then there are the people who just don’t want to believe. They may smile to your face and say “go get ‘em” but are insincere. People like that exist . . . and destroy and have their little way so they can inwardly say “I told you so.”

There are people in my life who are like that. I know, even if they don’t think I realize it. I’ve picked them out.

So maybe for a period of time Rachel will be alone and lose her friends.

She won’t cry. She’ll keep fighting because she knows what she’s got to win.

she feels: driven. ambitious. set.
she hears: Maroon 5-Sunday Morning

because yesterday I woke up at the crack of dawn for a dentist appointment and endured an hour's worth of poking and scratching and bleeding

because now I wake up to go to the doctor's office.

she feels: pissed off

“I am tough, ambitious and know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”

Madonna said that.

I don’t want to be Madonna.

But I don’t really need to say anything else, do I?

she feels: creative