Needs and Doubts

Wed. February 11, 2009 10:50 am

I still need him. Javier, I miss you everyday. I want to sing. I want to make so much noise that the neighbors throw tomatoes at my door. I want to scream my anguish and hurl my happiness to the Mexican World, disguised in words they can't understand but felt through the indescribable power of music. I want to get better, enhance my craft. I don't know what I would have done without this music. Somewhere along the way, over these past...4 and a half years?, I seem to have become a "musician". This must be what it's like, huh? Needing the release, depending on the calm after breathing out the tension inside. I want to make love to a major 7 chord. I want to ride down flights of phrases to the bottom of my soul.

I find a little bit of release in writing these excessive passages. I used to write a lot of awful poetry in high school. I guess I still do. I figure, whatever works for you. Everybody has a way of letting go.

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10:50 pm

I realize that I've been slacking. Many beautiful things have happened to me. Many wonderful, hilarious things have happened. And you don't know about them. I am often tired when I come home. And I'm just plain lazy.

Today I had Migrations, which is really fucking boring. Holy shit. Then Literature of the Yucatán, which is really fucking boring. Holy shit. I don't like Wednesdays for this reason, even though I get out at 12. Two hard classes to get through. Afterward, I talked with the girls for a little bit, went to the bibs with Ezer, talked with Leticia, and had a bangin burrito from the cafeteria. A bit about my talk with Leti...

She brought up a topic that I'd thought about but not put into words: the culture of the school here. I realized today that I am really uncomfortable here. I am scared and intimidated by the students. I mean, there are so many of us, coming every semester. How do they feel about us? Annoyed? Indifferent?

I am worried about my appearance. Lately, with my new haircut, I seem different. I wear my giant-ass white-rimmed sunglasses with my headphones and I feel...like a stereotype maybe. I would be so easy to judge. What do people think of me? This little hot-shot thinks she's all that and a bag of jalpeño-queso chips. And now!! Who the fuck does this gringa think she is? Look at her with Ezer, what a lucky guy, he got to her first. Ah well, first come, first serve I guess. I wonder how many guys she's had, the easy American.

I am terrified.

I know that girl is not me.

I am the crazy, ridiculous Ashley Hamel who is in the greatest Wizard Rock band in the world, who pretends to be an undead kind of sexy? vampire while promising to get there on time, next time, if she only didn't need to shower (oh the bane of my existence!), she would be there skinny dipping and making lame jokes and obvious innuendos about sex. I am the Ashley Hamel who tells her novio that she looks hot in a mustache because for some reason she'd rather he knew of her weirdness and left her now than find out for himself and leave her later. I am the Ashley Hamel who would sleep for an entire day if society didn't mandate that she contribute to the world's production and consumption. I am the Ashley Hamel who didn't realize that the reason she could not open her heart was because she didn't know the password was in Spanish.

But despite knowing this and relishing it, I am still nervous. I suppose I should stop worrying and try to make more friends. Mayhaps they are just as afraid of me as I am of them.