Pitcher in the Wheat or Something

(Yes, I know what it's called.)

Last summer, I read this book-you might have heard of it?-called Catcher in the Rye. One of my best friends loved this book to pieces, and I'd heard about how it was one of those books 'you just have to read if you're an angry teenager like you are, FRAS!'. (I might have made up some of that sentence, maybe possibly. But it was implied.) So I did.

I think I hated it a lot the first time, even though I found myself relating to Holden Caulfield. I think I hated it because of the toenails. The one scene where they're clipping the toenails at the beginning of the book? Ugh. I hate it. It still gives me the disgusts.

How he just wanted someone to talk to, and he could count on exactly no one. His general angriness and the 'phonies' that make up this world- I'd thought about and hated it all, and some of his thoughts were mine.

Well, he could count on exactly no one- except for maybe his sister, Phoebe. I liked the sister. And the girl he won't talk to, even though he got so many chances, Jane Gallagher. I spent so much of my time after reading the novel wondering why didn't Holden just talk to her? He had opportunities, and she probably would have made him feel better. But I thought about it some more (I thought about this book the whole summer) and I came up with these reasons:

1. Maybe he didn't want to feel better. Maybe wallowing and hating everyone and everything was his style.

2. Maybe he didn't want to go back to those times when Jane was his friend. He was younger, and he was a different, more naive person. Pencey Prep changed him, and hardened him. Maybe talking to Jane would hurt too much, and he wouldn't be able to bear it. Maybe she was one of the few people who he genuinely liked, and he wanted to make sure that she kept the old image of him in her mind.

Granted, it's been a year since I read the book, and some parts are fuzzy, but I liked Holden Caulfield sometimes (because he was like me) and I hated him other times (because he was an unutterable jerk) (so, he was too much like me). But I think Holden is everyone- insecure, and just wanted to trust someone completely, and having to deal with the death of someone he loved (his literally), not have to deal with any fakes he didn't want to deal with. He just wanted to live. And despite everyone who hates him, I don't think that's bad.

I'm going to reread the book, knowing what I know now, and write more about it some other time.

Quote for Saturday, April 30, 2011:

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

-Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye

(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/catcher/quotes.html)

Muse for Today:

The best stories that J.D. Salinger ever wrote: Franny and Zooey, especially Zooey's, which makes more sense.

And BEDA is over, darlings! 3o posts and all!

Mildly (Very) Discontented

Today has been an awful way, in that way when small bad things chip away at you until you're completely weary of everything and you simply want to scream.

I'm sick of people thinking they're so clever, thinking they know what's best for me. I'm sick of being ordered around and expected to obey and be enthusiastic about it. I'm also sick of modest people. I'm not sure where that came from, but I complimented a friend of mine, and felt a little sick by how modest she was. Honestly. Accept my compliment! Pete's sake!

Also, today has been some kind of fashion show of people parading around, proving that they're better than me. And that's separate from the two actual shows, the fair and the talent show, both places where people proved they're bloody good. God's sake. I get it. I GET IT. Now shove off!

Not in a good mood at all.

Another low note: I have been listening to Lady Gaga's Born This Way over...and over...and over...

Why do I keep listening to this? (BABY, I WAS BORN THIS WAY! I need to stop.)

Stupid Things I Wrote

Again, I'm an idiot. This is yesterday's.

Embarrassment lies ahead.

I was cleaning my room today, which basically entails me shoving a bunch of stuff onto my floor and spending hours reading over it. I was cleaning out the side of my desk, and I found my old journal from the second grade. I thought that thing was lost. (Now that I've read it, I wish that thing was lost.)

My second grade teacher made us write a bit in a journal every single day before we started class. I fancied myself a bit of a writer back then, so I wrote long, detailed stories in my journal that would often continue over days and days.

Most of my stories were about witches who went as themselves for Halloween (I wrote about Halloween all the bloody time) and got a whole load of candy and had cats named Spiderweb and Brownie. They were always named something like that. Or I would write about me, in some Junie B. Jones-induced fantasy where I had two best friends named Lacy (like Lucille, Junie B. Jones's friend) and Gracella (Junie B. Jones's best friend) and we had horses named Brownie and Blackie and Yellowy, just like Junie B. and Grace and Lucille had in the books. And K, my little brother, often featured as some Ollie-type-irritating-baby-in-the background.

And multiple other shaming anecdotes such as those.

So I went to the deepest pits of hell and hid my badly-written (but lovable?) second-grade notebook somewhere where no one but Kronos could find it, and turned to my desk again.

But, my friend, the pain did not end there. No, I chose to inadvertently prolong my chagrin.

I opened an old red notebook of mine to a page that was...seemingly random.

But it wasn't.

It wasn't at all.

It was actually a page of my undoing.

That page.

That page had the beginning of some weird story where I was friends with Ron Weasley and Harry Potter and they were sending me Honeydukes chocolate in the mail and inviting me to the Quidditch World Cup, because we were fourth-years and best friends.

So basically, when I was eight, I wrote bad AU fanfiction, inserting my childish self into the story.

I stopped cleaning my desk after that.

Quote for Thursday, April 28, 2011:

And so shines a good deed...in a weary world.

-Craig Benzine

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewjld3_EIrU&feature=related)

Muse for Today:

Only during BEDA would I tell that to the Internet.

A Short Thought

I have got nothing to say today. BEDA can be really annoying, because you get so many posts like this rubbish one. What's the point in writing when you don't have anything to say?

Discipline, I suppose. Because if someday, you have a faint, far-off dream of living off of this writing, you need to train yourself to spew interesting as often as possible.

Huh. I've got some work to do, then. But unfortunately, I also have a physics test tomorrow.

Quote for Wednesday, April 27, 2011:

If you only do what you know you can do- you never do very much.

-Tom Krause

(http://thinkexist.com/quotations/inspiration/)

Muffins and Hatred and Participation

1. I had a muffin for breakfast today. It was really good. Hatred doesn't apply to muffins. Hatred never applies to muffins.

2. I was extremely angsty today. I am nevereverever overly angsty, but some people. SOME PEOPLE just don't know what to say when. Or they try to start an argument. Those idiots make me SO MAD. Today, my reasons for being impatient with these three people were as follows:

1) Exactly how bloody insecure do you think I am? Do I present myself as so incompetent that you think I can't do anything?

2) No, I just hate this one. This person is loud, obnoxious, and every single thing she does makes my fingers twist in knots. She has no excuse for acting the way she does...although she thinks she does, and she plays from that.

3) I generally hate her, too, because she's just plain mean, but today she was being so self-important and racist that I just wanted to hit her in the face. And no one else was saying anything. Who thinks that her opinions are okay? Who honestly condones her ignorant idiocy?

AAAH angst over. (But not really. It'll come back. Someday. *stares into distance*)

3. Actually, another thing I hate (but there's no angst here) is participation. I'm so smart when I'm saying how dumb other people are when they can't talk in class, but when it comes time for me to participate (or gods forbid, actually participate myself) I sound like a good natured idiot who puffs up her ego the rest of her life.

I hate ambush participation, too. Could you be more evil? (Yes, yes you could. But still.)

4. I hate math. I hate math a lot. Is this new for me? I can't remember. It is the enemy of my good. I'm not using that quote correctly. But I don't care. Because I hate math. That made no sense. Unless the quote is about math. Which it isn't. Yerk.

Quote for Tuesday, April 26, 2011:

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

-Harriet Braiker

Muse for Today (and possibly forever?):

http://www.yesandyes.org/2011/03/dont-be-jealous-no-really-dont.html