flytrap

a treatise on the rest of my life, by: me, naturally

----

dionaea muscipula. she is looking healthy and red these days. thriving. we came together by chance but i feel i am rather attached to her now. we'll be repotting come austin, i think.

----

i had my grilled cheese and ate it too. i sat on the porch and watched this weird combination of a dust storm and a thunderstorm roll in. but we got no rain. not for the normal reasons this time but for no reason. because i was holding my tongue out waiting for a drop.

----

my latin has really come a long way. i recognize the words for white oak and the word for red, too. but i don't say anything. i realize later (much later) that this is because i am petrified. sometimes my memory fails me only in so much as it remembers more than i think it has: it takes a picture and i have no idea how but it keeps it close.

later as i close my eyes and name the countries in africa everything feels like a weird dream and i feel very separate from the earth. i don't feel special (i'm not), and i don't feel smarter than the average intelligent human being (i'm not), but i feel different because other people think i am these things.

i once got asked if i was ambitious and i said no. i realized later my naivete. i don't have ambitions of fame, power, money, or great success in the normal measurements of such things. i am ambitious though, in my heart. i am terrified of wasting my life and i spend the vast majority of my time making sure every moment is in service to my goal of living a full one.

i don't know whether this works or not. all i know is that other people think i have great "drive" and i don't know how to be any different. but sometimes i want to be. sometimes i want to forget everything and not remember djibouti or how to spell it. or that new yorker article from two years ago about dogfish head brewery. or my first boyfriend's cell phone number.

----

i am trying to be good, i am trying to have direction. but i want every direction and consequently am directionless by the nature of infinite direction.

the problem is, the problem is: there is no greater pleasure in my life than that of learning, of new information, of knowing the unknown. and there is nothing i can do about it. just keep going.