zeegoeshere

I had a dream last night that I was living in an apartment with both Livia and my cousin Stephen (who lives here in SLC). They loathed each other. I remember particularly that Livia was mad because she thought that Stephen kept ogling the comic book women on her posters (note: there are no actual posters of comic book heroines in our apartment). My subconscious is more subtle than Pete Wentz and Gerard Way combined.

I would say that fannish content will resume shortly, but I don't have any idea when it will, actually. Possibly tomorrow, possibly in August. Who can say? Right now I feel like rambling about things that no one but me cares about.

I got into the habit of taking long walks each day when I quit canvassing because my feet missed the movement and the chance to clear my head, and I've continued that here. It's creepy walking around in suburbia--almost no one else is. All of these people have the nicest lawns and big trees for shade and gardens and all of this pastoral beauty that they've created, and almost not a single person is ever actually outside to appreciate it. I get odd looks from passersby in cars. Whatever--walking is just one trend that I plan on bringing back to LDS Central, along with short hair and voting Democrat.

Walking around in my old neighborhood is just so damn strange. It's pretty here. It's dry. There's a creek by my parents' house that's fenced off, and my friends and I always climbed the fence or squeezed through the gap in the locked gate to go fuck around down there. Then the vice principal of the school (I live across the street from a middle school, and the creek is their property) gave my parents a key to the gate so that we didn't have to sneak in anymore, and it stopped being fun.

I ran away from the suburbs fast and hard, once when I was sixteen and once when I was eighteen. I'm twenty now (well, tomorrow, whatev) and the idea of living here for good still makes my shoulders tighten involuntarily. It's a little hard to accept that there can be an in-between, that I can chill here for a while and not be condemned to be a suburban housewife five years down the line (yes, *five* years down the line, this is Utah), going to PTA meetings and investing too much energy in taking care of my lawn. I can appreciate the good things about where I grew up now without feeling like I'm accepting this place for good; and I can write over old childhood memories with new ones. The next street over from my block doesn't *have* to remind me of this mormon family that my parents had dinner parties with when I was fourteen; now it can remind me of walking with The Boy from my house to his house--he's also living with his parents at the moment, and thus is about five blocks away from me, because the part of the city that we're from is fucking small. (And, um, I realize I've only talked about this in f-locked posts and I haven't really figured out this half-locked/half-public LJ thing yet, but for brevity's sake: yes, there is A Boy. I'm not sure what he is actually, but he is A Boy and you know. Thing. Um. Yes.)

There is so much fucking sunshine here. There are no clouds in the sky and when you look up it's just--blue. Completely. There aren't many skyscrapers and it's a valley so it's just this huge bowl of blue above you until it hits the outline of the mountains. (I haven't been into the mountains yet since I got back; it might be too much or something, I don't know. Just walking around a corner and having them come into view still knocks the breath out of me, so. Baby steps.) During the FOB show, Pete talked about how you could see the stars at night here, and how you couldn't in his hometown, and how that was kind of cool. I agree.

I hung out with my friend Cassie yesterday, whom I've known for six years and is probably the only person I can call an 'old friend'--all the others I've just completely lost contact with or grown away from. We ate ice cream and laid down on the grass in Sugarhouse Park, another place that has too many memories from childhood to be really comfortable for me. We talked a lot about serious stuff and random stuff and I think it was one of those significant conversations that I'll look back on years from now, that I won't ever have trouble remembering. I haven't actually talked about high school, especially those first two years when I was in high school here, for a long time.

While I was walking from sunlight to shade and staring up at the too-fucking-blue sky with my jaw hanging open, my iPod shuffled from "Sophmore Slump or Comeback of The Year" to "Ride Wit Me." As I was walking down the alley by the school that leads straight to my front door it played Neil Young's "The Needle and The Damage Done." And things were pretty sweet.