last evening, i went to a rave in colorado, near denver. during the rave, i wrote a letter to myself/my lover for future reference. bare with me.

hey sweetheart… sorry if things don’t come out as “normally” as they should… i am in ?denver? with you… you are dancing out there, partying and enjoying yourslef as you always do at raves… i am chilling in the tent: my favorite spot at raves these days… a group of kids came up here, asked if i was alone.. i said i was with someone but that they were welcome to chill and smoke a joint. they asked “boy or girl”… i asked if it mattered.. they said they didn’t want to disrupt me and my boyfriend.. i asked if it mattered if it was a boy? they got all embarrassed…

ok, there are seeds on that previous page.. it was from the second group of kids who came in and asked if they could smoke inside. i said no problem… they came in… i asked where they were from… they’d asked where i was from first..

columbine

my mouth dropped… they started talking details into the air, all completely fucked up on a wide variety of drugs… “5th period, staring at her ass”… holy fuck. i asked what it was like and these stoned eyes answered me “my friends died”… holy shit holy shit. they wandered out but i saw the glimpse of pain and was not sure how to handle it. imagine being in a room and suddenly two kids opened fire… imagine

jon came rushing in to tell me that he asked the girls he was dancing with where they were from and they had answered “littleton”. a group of pre-seniors from columbine… we were both a little startled, feeling like we walked into our television. many of the kids at that party were from columbine… we had fallen into a columbine party.. all these cute little 14/15/16/17 year olds, trahsed on a wide variety of drugs!!!! this isn’t even college yet!!!!! i couldn’t believe it.. so many predyked columbine kids… jon said that he would think his girlfriend dyked all the columbine girls.. i said i was too freaked out by the age of the kids which is why i hadn’t left the tent…. eek

still me.. i am back.. i am goign to do my darndest to share what i am thinking… most people here seem to want to escape. i want to talk, to think, to wander, but that is not how it works here.. i listen, i hear rave garble.. same ole feel-good-can’t-talk-about-anything-because-i-am-candy-flipping bullshit. i hear it over and over.. people looking for drugs, people selling drugs.. or souls. you see, being out here terrifies me.. absolutely terrifies me.. i can look into their eyes.. i can see the “i don’t fit in but i am desperatley trying to”… only it is not like i remember it.. it is so much harsher, so much more drugs… i think i gave up before i got to this type of party.. you see these souls.. girls looking to find a guy and be good to him.. guys looking for sex… just sex. it’s become a coolness act.. who has what drugs, sees where, does what… competitive dancning… oh god, popularity schemes…

girls are girlies.. they are perfectly gender timed… so aware of their roles in this scheme.. and now i feel myself looking on.. looking into them at tehir substitute world that makes the popularity tree go on.. it never ends does it? i realized that i have escaped the popularity dilemma that haunted my middle school years.. i don’t feel the need to impress anyone based on their rules.. i don’t rest my soul to be valued based on someone elses values… i can feel the strengths of me as a woman for the first time… i now see my real uniquenss and it saddens and terrifies me… how i want to reach out to these young girls who are just playing th egame… how i want to say it will be ok.. cause it won’t be for most of them. they’re lost if they’re here, aren’t they? they are the lost children.. this is what happens when you follow the beam crowd like you almost did long ago… my mom never would have let me. this is the lostness… i see from mother’s eyes to these young beings only 5 years younger than me… in 10 years, the survivors will be my peer group. the survivors…. these aren’t the k/m/s college ravers… these are teens, doing teen things… back to kids, a generation i thought was behind me and my vision… but i see it in these faces.

it is hard though because when you are looking for popularity, you don’t notice all of the others like you and rebel against the system… no, you aim for popular which is why i can’t reach out to these kids…

i just go to the outside, quite happily… like abroad – let people do the “who’s in”, “who’s not” thing and make it matter… gosh… to see peer pressure screaming out our own lives… who we act “cool” to.. who we try to be liked by… college life, college bullshit… i miss serious friends… this rave/people in cs… same mentally…

i don’t want to ask these kids how old they are.. i want to ask them where they are at.. what stage in their own heads…

and then i just met a mother – tweaked out raving (still raving), travelling to sell glassware to other ravers… priding themselves in that glass and their friends in the rave scene.. damn. full life, with kids, rave culture.. teenage parents bringing their toddlers to a rave.. oh goodness… making your life doing this.. creating glass to make ends meet with your BABY.. god, i cannot imagine.. and the cycle… they are the babies that continue the cycle..

honestly, it makes me wonder if i am the only one who can AFFORD (truly afford… soul, life, money..) to be here… and even i am on the edge

GODDAMNIT. boys- i am not your fucking object

the thing is.. i feel like i am the male in this enviornment.. because the women aren’t yet hardened.. we aren’t playing in fair levles.. that is the big diff between here and the raves at home… at home, we are all on even ground.. here, the girls are still playing their role and i watch as they get screwed over

the next day, i wrote a friend about attending a rave and meeting kids from columbine.. his response startled me.. i realized that i am not the only one who feels out of place at raves these days…

Ever since circa 1993, the Rave scene has become rather distressing. Originally, the epicenter for east-coast raving was Baltimore with its “peace, love, unity, and rave” leitmotif. The raves were in abandoned warehouses and were run on a nominal fee used to cover costs. Then, the police wackjobs started the anti-rave squads which garnered it some press. Soon thereafter, it became popular, the scene declined, and promoters started charging $10+ (now even in the $20s from what I see!)

The modern rave crowd is a bunch of fucked-up 14-year-olds who have moved it from fun to social status and parades of misdirected sexuality. I can’t have fun at them now, instead I am overcome with an urge to act as a parent…..

it is situations like this that make me more and more terrified to be a parent. i don’t know if i can handle this! i don’t know how to help. hell, i don’t think anyone could have helped me realize… i just needed to do it for myself. and yet, i think back to the number of my peers who didn’t make it and i wonder if anyone could have helped them.

a friend asked me an important question today – “why are you doing this cs shit? it seems ahrdly what you really want to be doing..” and for the first time ever, i have an answer to that question.

but let me backtrack for a second as you may not even know that i have questioned this question before… for the first two and one-half years at my university, majoring in computer science, i wanted to kill all computing people and give up the direction that i was headed. at times, i thought that i wanted to be a buddhist monk, wandering in tibet; i wanted to major in women’s studies… i changed my mind weekly but all i knew was that i needed out of computer science NOW. yet, i stuck with it and every semester, i returned and told myself that this time i would leave. yet, it never happened. finally, i went completely bizerk and ran off to a foreign country… this is where i was last semester. but now, i am back in the states, and for the first time ever, have a motivation to do computer science.

my motivation is not computer education, it is not 3D computer graphics.. it is not even making money in some big company.. like it ever could have been. no, my motivation is simple: people.

i still hate coding.. in fact, i don’t think i will ever like the computer science part of computing… but i am finally accepting that. what draws me in to computing is what drew me in over 7 years ago – people. and not those computer geek types.. they don’t interest me. the ability to communicate, the ability to have a community, a newfound way of expressing oneself, finding oneself, exploring reality.. that is what interests me.. connecting people to one another in a new way. see, it finally dawned on me that all of my interests could be entwined into this computing thing… there is no doubt that the one person who really pulled me into the online community was the kind transsexual who explained this to me when i was in the seventh grade through an irc connection. for the first time, i started to understand things about myself that those nearby me could not explain. finally, i realized that i was different and this was ok. no, i am not different in a way that a label can clearly explain but this is ok too. anyhow, it was that connection, so long ago, that gave me the motivation to see beauty in technology.

so, recognizing beauty and wanting to help others do what helped me.. where do i go with this? well, i am also anti-industry and anti-dealing with “the man”. thus, one simple solution – academia. i want to do research.. to be a permanent and approved thinker. i want to find ways to improve connections of people, space and time. and i want to be good enough at it that no one makes me code when i come up with an idea. but in the meantime, i will deal with the bullshit of the computer industry.

you see, humans want to explore. they want to explore time, they want to explore space.. they want to explore. we have used up way too much of our physical space… very little is left and physically possible to explore in our current physical world. there is no unknown territory on our planet.. even areas that are not really explored are vaguely explored. outter space is not really realistic.. not in today’s state. we are always working on exploring the mind but that is less of a physical place for people to wander in and out of… well, we want places to explore.. we want ways of making time/space less dramatic.. technology has the potential to offer a lot of exploration.. exploration of a new kind of space, a virtual kind. well, i want to explore this.. figure out where we are going and make certain that our direction is not problematic for us as a culture. i don’t give a rats ass about what video games exist or what the best database is or how fast the currently computer is… i am concerned about the people and how we are connecting people and what we are giving them… i want to play with such concepts.. and it is the computer that will take me there.

finally, i have a purpose.. a reason to be doing what i am doing. and now, i want to end the bullshit and figure out how to avoid my last coding class as that is the least of my interests.

iowa.. iowa.. there are definitely hills in iowa. go dar! unfortunately, dar, there are no nipples. i happen to like nipples more than hills.. but i like girls regardless. besides, iowa is outright peculiar. i mean, it is pretty and quaint and hot as hell. there is only one main route through iowa (gotta love rt. 80).

he and i are still on the road, partway ‘cross the country at this point. top’s down (although we see clouds ahead and are a bit worried). i have interested burn marks across my shoulders and my hair has lightened from the sun. we just passed a crop-duster – something i had never seen before. it is a plane that drops fertilizer on crops. very cool. plenty oh moo-cows and truckers. i made the mistake of going into a truck stop in my bikini. oops. male oogles. he said i would be terrified of the men’s bathroom. i don’t think i want to find out.

conversation is peculiar. we are both realizing various stressors on this trip. i mean, this is not a trip outta pure fun and excitement.. it is a trip with a purpose and that purpose is kinda depressing. knowing that when we get to the other side, we have to part.. it is a very surreal feeling. we are both craving colorado and the potential last fling before reality hits. very trippy.. very peculiar.

last nite, we logged in to the network via the telephone in our “motel 6” only to discover a friend online and a very passionate message in each of our mailboxes. a friend that i thought has lost his passion, who i thought had become dulled by life, suddenly showed himself once more in his simple message. ahh… i look forward to see where this goes to.

today is a happy day… douglas adam is reading “life, the universe and everything” through our cassette player. this makes any uncomfortable tension disappear.

midwestern pickup lines used on me today:

– hey baby, i can pay for that.. (taking out his bills in a wad as i searched for a good book on tape)
– i got pulled over last nite

drove through nebraska bare breasted… definitely the way to travel.

sitting, tensely in the front seat of his new phatty car. trying not to pay attention to the traffic or the people around but afraid to pay too much attention to him, crying, half-hysterical at the reality of truly leaving home. unlike the last times we have left home, we always planned to return. this is not one of those times and the reality is stinging him like a wasp. i don’t really understand what is going through his head – i don’t know if i can. i mean, in two weeks time, i will be right back to the same desk that i was at two days ago, doing the same project i was doing then as well. how can i truly understand?? fact is, i can’t.

he just wants time to think. we turn on the drum and base, only to learn that his car battery is not equipped to power both the computer and the CD player (all strung in the front seat full of wires and mishap, connectors and speciality electronics, kinda like my brother’s room). thus, i am in windows, my favorite of all platforms, writing this letter to you, my diary of thoughts.

last year, when we crossed the country, conversation was intense and intriguing, crazy and bonding. i don’t know where to take conversation this year… especially since i need to actually produce work at the end of the trip. he is a peaceful boy, not particularly passionate about anything. while this is not necessarily bad, it means that conversation takes a bit of effort on my part and i feel as though i carry conversations and discussions. hmm.. need to work on that.

he points out a good thought – “did you ever think that we know each other so well that it is difficult to carry conversations?” he is right – we can easily talk about things that happen but there is not a lot that happens without one another. talking about opinions or world-views becomes pointless because we know the response that is about to come. ?have we melted into the same person? one friend told me that his relationship with his lover only works because they only see each other half the time (the rest of the time, he is away on business and when they come back they have plenty to talk about). is it a bad thing that conversation becomes challenging?

holy shit. what a wonderful weekend! friday afternoon, i was sitting at my computer, doing what i m always doing these days, not getting very far, quite frustrated wtih the multi-platformed reality and the unkind element of c++. suddenly, out of the blue, a friend from the past telephoned to ask if she may come down for the weekend. of course! i replied. then, 8 hours later, this gorgeous women who i had stalked during my freshman year of college appeared at my doorstep, looking fresh and lively, exuberant and excited. i almost melted.

although i hadn’t slept in 2 days, i stayed up until 5AM with her, flashing through our shared history and relating our current realities to one another. time stood still for us – there was no sense of distance in time or thought as we wpilled out and reonnected with facts. i was mentally orgasmic as we discussed politics, career thoughts, relationships and theories. those terms only make the conversations seem dry but they were anything but that. emotion flowed from our selves as we explored the intimacies of our own thoughts. even such boring topics as ‘career goals’ turned into lively discussions of women’s rights to abortion, what it means to have technology in one’s life and how medicine could be made accessible to all. going to bed that nite, i glowed with joy.

saturday, after a long walk around the campus that i am currently working at, we sat at the edge of the river, toes dipped in, continuing the intense conversations. at my house, another shared friend and her current !male! lover. we headed out to a nearbye pond for some fun skinny dipping. avoiding the fishermen, we jumped into the lake and tumbled around. afterwards, we headed for yummy sushi and a chill nite back at my place. this _entire_ day was supported by my homemade brownies, which were quite strong. our friend left and the two of us continued to talk and watch the movie already started. my lover headed towards bed.

flash of magic.

she and i started kissing and caressing, sharing ourselves with one another, playfully teasing our friendship to a new level. intensity was in the air as i caressed her cunt and found pleasure in the woman i had craved for so many years, the woman i thought untouchable. what pleasure.

bedtime next, at least for me. my lover repeated what i had already done, a pleasure for him who had also been awed by her for so long.

girlie day. all three girls rejoined in the early afternoon for intense discussions and bonding that lasted 11 hours and two restaurants (and some travel). again, conversation could not be tamed and the communication was intense. it was quite appreciated. it cannot be described well but our mutual friend said it best – i talk about my male friends all the time because we go out and _do_ stuff, bizarre and meaningless; with my women friends, we do this – sit around all day and talk about intense stuff.

it had been two years since i had seen her last but it didn’t matter – our bond still existed and only flourished with real-time, real-space contact. close friends are everything.

bleh. bleh. blah.

that is how i feel today.

bleh.

i never know what to do about my blah moods. i dreamed all nite of being stuck in a cage, forced to reside there because i was a “freak of nature.” i woke up and it was past 1PM, indicating that i slept for 11 hours. no matter what i do, i cannot wake up after less than 10 hours. this is depressing because i so much want my body to be happy after 6-8 hours. but it isn’t. therefore, i will have to return to alarm clocks and the pain endured in the morning as a result.

so i got up, after dreaming of being caged, only to look out the window and observe grayness, devoid of summer happiness. although rain was happily spattering on the browned grass in the strip between the roads in front of my apartment. i flicked on cnn and learned nothing new. election shit has started and the only foreign news i can get is that which we have a monetary stake in. so that is not fun. i flicked off cnn.

i proceeded to eat 2 bowls of cereal, honey smacks, reminiscient of my times abroad where that was the only “junky” american cereal they sold in the grocers.

i walked to the postoffice only to be reminded that airborne express is a separate entity than the post office and therefore, the post office won’t accept airborn express packaged. on to the bank, only to learn that i did not have much money. this did not come as a surprise. walked back towards work, noting that i did not see anyone walking or riding a bike, only in cars on this dreary from-hell day. how depressing. i decided that i am definitely moving back to amsterdam when i get the chance. my other observation came screaming forward. people are fat in the states. i feel guilty recognizing that, almost as though by thinking that i am causing it. i forgot that when you eat like shit and don’t exercise, you are bound to become large. i just don’t eat. this flashed me back to a story that i had seen on cnn this morning. apparently, in beverly hills, you can inject wrinkles with certain types of poison, killing the nerves below them which allows the wrinkle to disappear, making you look younger. a new trend in the fashion-fiend city. i am a fashion fou-pas.

into my office, onto my computer, only to receive a request from a friend to check out his latest webpage: imood.com where you can put your emotion on a webpage for the world to see. “shitty” was not an option. i felt shitty. what a blechy society and culture. we only continue all of the horrors that our culture has started. they become engrained and we let them perpetuate.

i just want to be a hermit.

silly ole me never learns. i knew i would hate austin powers 2 and yet, like a dumbass, i agreed to see it. we saw it in one of those big indoor ritzy malls – the ones where people dress up to go to them. this did not help my mood. there were pretty fountains in the mall, as people walked between banana republic and tiffany’s to get the perfect outfit. i rolled my eyes in disgust. they stared at me in return. apparently, i don’t look like i belong there. figures.

anyhow, back to austin. mainstream movies have gotten unbearable these days. eek!!! this movie, its humor, was entirely based on gross-out. the whole point was to disgust the audience. and for some reason, this humors people!!! one character, “fat bastard”, was entiredly for the purpose of gross-out. why?? why??? blech. what was i thinking. i paid $8 to watch mainstream audiences be humored by filth while the guy behind me kicked me and i had to pee standing up because the bathroom was so filthy. and then, i couldn’t even get toilet paper to wipe myself. and that is lame next to the shit i had to watch on the screen!

art is such a wonderful thing! a good friend came over for the evening to work on her model for her summer class. we watched random movies and did art all evening. she worked on her model while i scultped random comic characters with “sculpt and bake” shit. also, i learned to paint with acryllic on a canvas and i made an itsy model of a computer (for this, i got mocked by my dear ole friend who loves to make fun of me.) ahh.. i feel so much more relaxed by this. art is such a good thing, such a wonderfully good thing.

i love my brother.

he is just so adorable and so precious and it is so much fun to watch him grow. ahh.. i just spent a nite with him, in the woods, appreciating how much i love him. he is just so cute!!

i have been so angry this week. i don’t quite know how to manage it. i didn’t want to write it up on my diary because i was afraid of thinking about what made me angry, letting the frustration flow onto paper, making it a document for my anger and frustration, a way of revealing to the world why i am so pissed. but, yet, i had to. i have tried other “positive outlets” this week but to no avail. i don’t know how to get advice on this and yet everyone tells me to go to a shrink, the last possible thing i would even consider doing. there is nothing i hate more than dealing with shrinks all the time. they drive me insane. literally.

so what is it? what is driving me nuts? it is quite simple – feeling powerless. i hate that feeling – knowing, truly, in my heart that something is inherently wrong and not being able to do anything to fix it. this drives me bezonkers. i cannot cope with this. i want to fix it, i want to fix the problem in our society, and yet i am powerless to do so.

sex is complicated. this was another lesson that everyone keeps trying to shove down my throat. frankly, i don’t think sex is that complicated but that society keeps telling us that it is so if we don’t make it complicated for ourselves, someone else will just to continue that attitude. what a pain in the ass.

well, as we know (thanks to foucault who i currently want to kill.. except that he is already dead)… anyhow, thanks to foucault, we know that power is a part of every relationship and every interaction, including mine. well, that is nice but what the fuck does it mean? does it mean that someone else can describe the power that they believe should exist in that relationship, regardless of the actual power relations that we have forged? does it mean that power relations can be stereotypes and labeled, just like that which they are describing? does it mean that a book can tell me how my relationships are managed because “that’s the way it always is”?

i know i know.. i am being damn ass vague (although i am certain that those who are reading this and actually know me understand every gripe that is not said but seethes from between the lines). unfortunately, i have this uncomforable feeling about talking about it.. talking about it seems like validifying it and i cannot. how can i put words to a situation where the words were created by the opressors? how can i define something in a way that is appropriate when what is appropriate can only be measured in emotions? why must these complications exist?

all i know is that i have once again been reminded of what true anger is.