A Butterfly Writing for Butterflies...

location: Hearing the Celtics playing in the background...I dislike it

mood: bored

music: What Is This Feeling? - Wicked

It’s a rather sad state of affairs when your day is so uneventful, so utterly boring, that you have to wrack your brain to find a single thing inspiring enough to write about. Even now, I really don’t have anything of importance. I spent the morning reading that book again. It’s not getting any more appealing. He’s gone from mentioning a guy who “fell like a sack of cement” in every single paragraph, to mentioning a guy who stepped on a grenade and had to be peeled out of a tree even more frequently still. However, I am about half-way through it, so that’s somewhat encouraging. After my reading spree I did less-than-nothing for the rest of the day.

            It was somewhere within this marathon of boredom that I realized I was, despite all my efforts not to, slipping into that summer pattern; the pattern of being desperate to do something productive or useful, starting something, becoming bored, and being too lazy to do anything else. Even more frustrating is the fact that it is only the second day! What in the world am I going to do? But, this is most certainly complaining, so I’ll move on to the one small thing I found inspiring.

            At some point in the afternoon Carly gave up on typing a report on whales, much to my relief as she had been doing so in my bedroom. She went into her own room, turned on the fan, and screamed that it was hitting the post of her canopy bed and that it would break and hurt her. Kurt came to investigate and made this statement, which I heard from where I sat trying to amuse myself by playing mindless video games,

“I think there’s just a screw loose, that happens now and then.”

For some reason, that ordinary comment struck me as very appropriate for the day, a day in which I had been antsy and bothered over having nothing to do. Sometimes, especially when we suddenly have a change in daily activities, some of our screws loosen up and we panic. We think ‘That’s it. My whole summer’s going to go this way!’, which is similar to thinking that you’ll get killed by a wobbly ceiling fan. The next day, we’ll find something new to do and everything will be fine.

Wow, what a lame moralistic entry, I’ll have to bring out my sense of humor soon or no one will keep reading. But really, I am loosing screws...

location: Looking at a computer screen with dry contact...

mood: good

music: Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

            Day one of summer and I’m more bothered and bored than on a usual Saturday. I only slept until 9:30, but that could be because I crashed before 10:00 last night. Rather than “chilling” I’m kind of pacing, trying to make myself busy, but really I just feel restless. Maybe the fact that it’s summer just hasn’t sunk in yet, my brain still thinks it’s a normal Saturday and it’s frustrated that it can’t come up with any history homework to stress over. But, this counts as complaining, doesn’t it? And I did promise not to complain in here, didn’t I?

            So today, in an attempt to fall into a lovely and productive schedule this summer rather than sitting around doing nothing, I cleaned my room, which was still littered with the debris of yesterday, stacked up my new used books in the closet, and cracked the spine of The Things They Carried. It’s good, if you’re into the guys-in-the-jungle-with-guns sort of thing. So, thirty two pages later I went searching for a bookmark. I figured a novel about the Vietnam War really needed something cheery stuck in it so I spent about ten minutes searching for New Moon, which was the last place I’d seen the metal bookmark that has on it the adage quoted above. This was about the time I remembered that I’d lent the book to Catherine with said bookmark still in it. I was (and apparently still am) trying to read the middle of the book which is rather tedious due to the lack of vampirism. In any case, I figured a John Lennon bookmark would do for now as it is set in the 60s.

            Later, due to boredom and the fact that there are about a dozen random lemons sitting randomly in my kitchen, I decided to make lemonade. Because, isn’t that what we all do when we’re bored? Anywho, about half-way through this endeavor that quote came to mind again. I’ve always liked it. It brings to mind feelings of summer and has so many delightful variations. (i.e., “When life gives you lemons, make orange juice and let everyone wonder how you did it.”) Of course, it’s supposed to mean that when something bad happens you should try to make something enjoyable out of it. However, as I sat there juicing and tasting and measuring and stirring, I began to realize that the process of making your own lemonade is not the most enjoyable. The juice stings your eyes and nose, the sugar goes everywhere, and the whole thing is highly sticky. It’s a lot of work! Of course, this could give the phrase an alternate moral of “You must work hard to get good things.”, but for saying simply “Make the most of bad situations.” It isn’t too effective. I rather think that a better phrase would be this,

“When life gives you lemons, go to the store, buy some lemonade, and drink it. You’ll feel better. Later, when you’re bored, then you can make your own and realize it tastes better than the boxed stuff Crystal Light makes.”

location: Not supposed to be online...

mood: complacent

music: "Defying Gravity" - Wicked Soundtrack

Oscar Wilde once said of his brilliant and famous three act play, The Importance of Being Earnest,

“I hope you enjoy my ‘trivial’ play. It was written by a butterfly for butterflies. [The play] has its philosophy…that we should treat all trivial things seriously, and the serious things in life with sincere and studied triviality.”

While Wilde, the Prince of Paradox, often used such language to give his writing a comical twist, this statement rings with something of a universal truth. Maybe we shouldn’t be as ridiculously trivializing as Algernon, Jack, Cecily, Gwendolyn, and Lady Bracknell but if we all took just some of those things that we kill ourselves worrying about (money, grades, looks, popularity, etc..) and spent a moment thinking nothing of them and, at the same time, put a great deal of thought into simple things (the weather, cucumbers, color, your cat, etc..) we’d all be a little healthier and a lot happier for it…at least that’s my philosophy.

I intend to do this. I intend to, every day this summer, write something for fun and place it here. Even if I’m not able to be online to post it, I’ll write it down or type it and you’ll get it eventually. I won’t write about worries, problems, work, or summer assignments, just silly simple things that have nothing (or almost nothing) to do with each other. Why you ask? Because what better time is there to talk about nothing than a time of year when you so often find yourself with nothing to do?

It begins Friday June 6.

Enjoy.