driving

I love driving. Riding in a car, to be more precise. I sit in the backseat and stare out the window, and don't read any of the books I brought along. Everything is enchanted when you're just passing through. We can be flying past cornfields and the cornfields are magic, or meandering down some twisty homey road and I just know that someone I almost know lives in that little house with the bonfire in the backyard, but I'll never know who they are. It makes me want to write.

Shopping for clothes is depressing.

It is. I'm not fat or anything. It's somehow inherently depressing because I'm not up on the current trends and I'm clueless, basically, upon entering a fashionable clothing store. It's like, yeah, right, you are not getting me into that, I'd look stupid. And I know I'm not going to buy any of it anyways, so what's the point?

I wasn't actually shopping today, just poking around because there was nothing better to do, avoiding the other patrons of the store. At times, yes, I'm anti-social. It doesn't matter if I'm a hermit and don't care about clothes, because I'd rather be like this than be a carbon airhead boycrazy copy of 90% of other teenage girls I know.

I'm probably talking to myself here, aren't I? My little two-post blog is a nothing in the blogosphere, a little speck of air. Somehow that's okay; just knowing that it's out there for some random stranger to read if they are so inclined is brave enough for me.

For some reason at lunchtime I was having a conversation about death, or rather, listening to someone else tell stories about death. I think about death a lot. I'm not morbid or goth or emo. I just do. I feel kind of blank on the issue of my own death, probably because I'm in denial about it happening. I read a quotation once - I forget who said it, but they were on their deathbed. Forgive me if I paraphrase a little: "All my life I've known that everyone has to die, but I have always assumed an exception would be made for me. Now what?"

Anyways, this conversation-which-was-mostly-me-listening. The person who was doing most of the talking was quite a lot older than me, and she very much believes in all this New Age woo-woo and Sylvia Browne and such. I used to like that kind of thing too, until I figured out it was all a bunch of bunk and Sylvia Browne is a fake. But anyway, I humored her and listened. She was telling stories about relatives who had been able to see people no one else could right before they died, and her point was that when we die someone always comes for us, we never go alone. She was talking about being totally unafraid of death. That's fine. Good for her. But it bothers me not to know.

I mean, I'd love to believe in all that and be all happy-happy all the time, but it's not going to happen because I have no reason to believe in it. Did you know that when someone has a near-death experience, the tunnel and the light and the feelings of well-being and all are just the products of a dying brain being deprived of oxygen? As far as I can see there is no evidence for a God, and no evidence for an afterlife, and the conjecture I would make is that we rose from a great silent darkness and will one day return to it. Understand that I don't say a great silent darkness literally, but there's nothing better I can use to describe it. It's nothing. And when the universe itself returns to the darkness - what then? (I'm no scientist. It just sounds pretty.)

My whole point being that I don't know what happens when we die, and it bothers me to not know, because I usually know most other things that I decide I want to know. (Chess being one of the rare exceptions. The most frustrating game in the world, that. Grrr.) And it's weird to see other people who believe things so deeply and then to totally not believe, yourself. I never really did believe. Back when I was into the new age stuff, I was always desperately searching for proof, some way I could know that I could really believe in it, and I never admitted to myself that I doubted because I didn't WANT to doubt, dammit.

I still don't want to doubt, but actually I see no better option. Believing for belief's sake is like putting a blindfold on yourself so you can't see what's about to eat you. That's why humans have religion, I think. We're afraid of the unknown. I couldn't say whether there is a God or not - the only evidence I have is that we exist, which has to count for something - but you won't get me to say there is unless you give me some reason to think so.

Now I am done meandering on strange subjects. Good night.

Charlotte has a blog.

Hello!

I'm Charlotte... you probably already kinda knew that from the post title. Okay.

I like writing. Something about making a journal for random strangers on the internet to read was for some reason attractive, so here I am.

If you were wondering, the title of my blog was borrowed from the title of an obscure, unreleased Kate Bush song. It seemed fitting somehow.

Today I scrapped the idea of doing Nanowrimo, which is when you write a novel in a month. (Go to www.nanowrimo.org if you're curious. It's fun.) It's officially something that takes place in November, only I'm not going to be able to do it in November, so I was going to write my novel now. Discovered I completely and utterly forgot to write prose, which is probably a side-effect of too much outlining and not enough reading and writing this year. (I haven't finished a novel in over a year, if you want to count those sorry things as novels. Boo hoo.) So now I'm going to lay off the writing and read, read, read, in an attempt to rediscover how to write. For some reason I have no trouble writing school papers and blog posts and the like.

I have a blog on a writing site for teenagers, only nobody ever really pays attention to me and I feel self-conscious there, like I'm begging for attention, and I also have a blog on Yahoo, on that Shine thingy, but that's frustrating because most of the other blogs are one-time affairs with some random person who doesn't know how to spell or capitalize asking a question about something, usually sex, and it's easy to get ignored or lost when you're trying to actually have a serious, proper blog. So. This IS a serious, proper blog and I think it is what I was looking for.

Enough rambling now. See ya later.