breathe

i've just had an absolutely crazy, very great, yet very surreal 6 days. tuesday brandon got here at about midnight, and we sort of accidentally stayed up all night. his family, who were also evacuating new orleans and heading to memphis, got into town at 5:30am and came to escort him to the house of the friend they were staying with. the plan was for him to stay there until his family left on friday, and then hopefully stay with my family for the weekend. however, as brandon found out 45 minutes later on wednesday morning, this home for refugees was also being occupied by another new orleans family, and was located in olive branch. therefore, brandon showed up at my house after school and never left. thanks to my wonderful parents, who will apparently take in any stray. he, brock, morgan, and i hung out at home for a while before heading to pick up tarah and eating a lovely dinner at memphis pizza cafe. LA met up with us as well, but she and brock had to go home before tarah, brandon, and i went to play in the park and go out for dessert. brandon and i went to sonic, where i got the goddamn thickest vanilla shake of my lifetime and we sat forever listening to the tribe called quest album i had recieved in the mail that day. which is great, by the way. back at home, i did no homework and got little sleep. brandon was feeling guilty about invading our home, so as a favor to my parents, he drove morgan and i to school on thursday. he was supposed to go to the zoo with his family, but something happened and he just wasted a bunch of time driving all the way to olive branch and back out to my house a couple times? there was some craziness that happened and it turned out that he was supposed to pick us up from school, which i didn't know, and had katherine drive me home. which turned out to be nice because she got to meet brandon for real and inhale cloves with us on the patio. that was nice although i wish politics hadn't come up... that's okay because i think they still like each other. mom took me to get my new reading glasses and also to get my regular ones adjusted. when i got home, katherine had gone home, so i bunkered down to do some homework. morgan and brandon kept me company, and made sure i got very little work done. they went to pick up some backyard burgers for us, and i managed to complete six physics problems. eventually i gave up so that brandon and i could go crazy. LA came over in the middle of it to work on something for art class, and while we loved seeing her, i think she was annoyed that it took her so long to get her stuff done. morgan also was working on an art project, and i had a hard time sitting still for her to draw me. sorry, guys. i hope you both get an A from the brilliant mr. berlin. once everybody was done working, brandon and i listened to kid a and beck and had a lovely night. he took us to school in the morning, this time because our parents couldn't. he came to lunch, and i got to sort of show him off. he let me eat half of his sonic toaster sandwich, and life was good. i think he had a good time, even though lunch is so short and i felt guilty that he had to drive all the way out to school just for a few measly minutes with my posse. i tried to convince him to come to all three lunches, but he wouldn't. oh well. he had to come BACK to pick us up. morgan had to do something with ms. kitts, so while we were waiting, we sat in front of the school listening to iggy pop and smoking cloves. it was the real punk rock. when we got home, we lay around on the futon forever waiting for plans to get made. eventually we hopped in the car, turned on the fugees, and went to pick up laylee and alice. on the way we saw about 23957023575320 cops and they stuck around to make a theme of the night. it was pretty weird, but we had a really wholesome day so nobody minded. it was just damn weird. anyway, we couldn't think of a goddamn thing to do so we drove all the way back to midtown and got milkshakes from java. everything was blocked off crazy because they were setting up for the cooper-young festival. being at java was sort of depressing, but nobody really suggested leaving. we ended up buying this cd called "nose songs" by a local guy named müller who uses melodies to bob dylan songs and writes his own lyrics. we then decided we were hungry, and somehow the collective BRILLIANCE of alanna, brandon, laylee, and alice made us decide to go to molly's where we ordered literally nothing but chips, salsa, bean dip, and cheese dip. SWEET LORD. we all felt bloody AWFUL after that, as you can imagine, so we high-tailed it home. we all lay on the futon in the dark and cuddled. brandon and i listened to the cd while laylee and alice gossiped and giggled. LA finally brought don over for us to meet him at like 8 something and we dragged ourselves out of bed to rent a movie at black lodge. it took us forever, but we finally came home happy and ready with "heathers." in the middle of it, kevin showed up with motherfucking william, who was in town for his mom's birthday. we turned off the movie and talked to them for a few strange minutes before they left to explore the city's changes. we put the movie back on, and alice fell asleep quickly afterwards. it ended some time after 1am, and we drove laylee and alice back home and saw 239057352 more cops on the way. i slept allllll morning long-- brandon didn't wake me up until 12, probably prompted by my father, to tell me that i had to be at theatreworks in an hour. the first rehearsal for the show was three hours long, but it went pretty well and i had a good time. even though i was anxious about getting home the whole time. if we weren't going to miss two ensemble rehearsals for voodoo, i would've tried to get out of that one. for brandon's sake, of course. he stayed at home and watched raising arizona and rock n roll high school. back at home, we sat around on the couch for a while before heading over to the cooper-young festival. to be honest, i don't know why we went, other than to see people. i don't think we stopped at any booth for more than a minute, and we only stopped at about three. we just sort of mosied along hoping to glimpse a familiar face. we did a good job of that, but then we never really talked to anyone for that long, unless they ended up joining our procession. it was a really weird concept to even be there that way. we eventually made it into java, after latching onto brock, eileen, mouse, and some friend of somebody's who i don't know. in java we found becca, daniell, laylee, kevin, and william who we sort of sort of kind of attempted to make future plans with, but did a horrible job. brandon and i got really hungry but didn't want to eat at the festival. with yet another craving for pizza coming on, we grabbed morgan and high-tailed it over to memphis pizza cafe where we had a strange meal because i made morgan feel to guilty to buy anything since she'd forgotten money. i'm a horrible person and i'm sorry. then she had to go home to work or something? we dropped her off back at home. we went on a quest for greenery and ended up on the metal floor of peabody park's jungle gym. so that was a failure, but we had managed to enjoy ourselves nonetheless. i love the sound of trains going by. we then rushed to studio to see garden state, which i had already seen, but brandon hadn't and he loved it. i was really glad. plus it was sort of a perfect goodbye movie. at home we listened to julie ruin and cat power before going to bed way too late. we woke up at 7:30 and layed around for a while in my tent. we went to breakfast at IHOP and pretended to be a pair of happy collegiate artists taking joy in life's simple pleasures-- coffee and cigarettes. it takes me forever to eat so we were there for an hour or so? i apologize to everyone who has ever had to take a meal with me. back at home we had a second anti-climactic ending to our surreal little venture. we sat around for a while burning cds. i mean come on. but seriously, folks, it was a good time. brandon left at about 1pm, rolling away towards union inside a round, green little car. he didn't look back, and i couldn't look on. i went with the family to see sky capitan of the world tomorrow which was a very silly, but very beautiful movie that took my mind off things until i got brandon's home-safe call. new orleans is still above water. it didn't even rain.

listening to: godspeed you black emperor! - sleep