A political rant:

VOTE!!!!! And don't just vote down a party line, learn who the candidates are; ALL THE CANDIDATES in your area, and then make your decision! Play around on www.congress.org and gauge candidates' issues by seeing if they've participated in the survey on www.vote-smart.org or check out the information compiled by the League of Women Voters!

As for me, I'm voting in Carlisle, PA.
I'm still doing *my* homework on the candidates, and my vote'll probably be split between Dems and Greens for different offices.
(For state offices, btw, I'm for Ben Price and Jim Eisenhower... was for Marakay Rogers, but today I had an Eisenhower epiphany. Still have no clue what either Teese or Casey is all about. And go Hoeffel!)

I need to rant... one of the taglines for this page is "A threatening silence surrounding me" which I lifted from the Wolfsheim song "Once In a Lifetime" but I feel like this semester especially I've been insanely silent. Granted that I've spent a long time being insanely silent, wasting way too much energy on searching for "why I'm so miserable" and in turn just making myself more miserable. I want to be one of those people (oy, this sounds like the same old tirade I go on, but whatev) who just has drive and energy to Do Things and Make Shit Happen, and be a stupendous human being. But the mere fact that I *want* to be that and *aren't already* that sorta says something. You shouldn't have to strive to be naturally cool. It should be natural. So maybe I'll bring to the surface from now on a slight shade of anger to my life, to counteract the years of being pretty blind to the world. And maybe that'll just Fit.

Whoaaaa, people on my xanga account have been VERY neglected. MY APOLOGIES, PEEPS!

Yadda yadda yadda my g-ma had a heart attack and we spent 3 glorious weeks in Boston watching her recover, and other people drop dead. Family is chill, while others are ill. Thank God for Mediwhatev, for picking up the bill.

We dids not go to Japan, we dids not even have a fan. (I'mma stop rhyming at this point, because *I'm* starting to piss me off)

But it was all good, really... I think we all valued being in Boston during that time way more than up and leaving in the middle of it.

Um, so that's it, really. Back at school in this fucked up combo of hella stress and mega relaxx time. Itching to Do Something, whatever that may be.

How's everyone else doing?

Paz.

arrrgh, I need to study for the High Holidays, relearn a year's worth of Chinese, and try to infuse the Arabic alphabet into my head before going to Japan........

FUUUUUUUCK.

On South, and the Fantasticness of the Phipps Estate:

Today I went jogging for over an hour in the woods at South. It was great; I'd forgotten how amazing it was to be in a place where you're surrounded by trees, and the jog was exactly what I needed. Moreover, I saw for the zillionth time how expansive the land is, and I wondered for the first time what it must've been like for the Phipps' to have lived there, with 3 lakes, woods, fields, and hills around their manor. Was that just one of a number of equal-sized estates, making it just "the Phipps' place down the road" or was it truly always a markedly grander thing, even in the Great Neck sense of grand?

I've now been to all 3 of the lakes (is there a fourth that I'm forgetting/not seeing somewhere, maybe?) and they just make me wonder continuously at what they could have been/still be used for. Are any of them swimmable? Perhaps the one behind the track might be; the wildlife there seems more diverse and evolved than the swampy ones beside the woods. I visited the former last year with Gail, when we upset a bird with a strange name. Today I trespassed to find the latter, though I'm not sure if the siren that rang out when I reached a certain part by One Hollow was a coincidence or not.

It felt good today, in every sense, even despite being wedged between a major highway and a corporate building -- in fact, I think those actually helped. Our area is suburban sprawl; having that space of greenery and solitude feels refreshing, but being buffered by the normalcy of the place I'm most familiar with only enhanced my time today.
Sad, eh? Maybe a little, in the idealistic sense. But it gave me a great sense of peace and escape.