...In which our heroine rambles on.

Another late evening ramble, yes?

I think I finally may be tiring of Girl Talk, which is not surprising since I've listened to Feed the Animals hundreds of times by now. I am so ready for school to start, to find another album to define the year and shed all the baggage that the past year has brought. I'm still wondering about what'll be like to see him. I don't think I'm properly utilizing Twitter yet, and still kind it kind of ridiculous. Diablo Cody is my girl though, I'll even forgive her for making me sit through Megan Fox for two hours in Jennifer's Body. Speaking of, what the fuck is up with movie lengths? I'm tired of two and a half hour movies that do not need to be. I started writing again, something I think that'll be a TV pilot, or at least in my own head it will. Somedays I still worry if I'm going to be able to summon the muse to pay the bills. I kind of want to go to grad school, then come back and teach at Columbia. I'd get to live in Chicago, enrich the lives of young people, and write on the side. I've met a grand total of one cool new person. All the freshman are bro assholes who cannot work a key card or an elevator and are trying oh so very hard to work their game on the opposite sex. It's kind of pathetic. My roommate, Alexandria, is back. Let's talk some opposite lifestyles now. I haven't even heard her curse yet. I have no idea how to broach the subject of substances or boys, and limits on either. Speaking of that, I'm thinking of detoxing for a month or so. Telly is very into all sorts of natural remedies and teas and such and I'm getting really tired of my lifestyle. Granted, I've cut way back, but still every time I've smoked lately I just feel like a mass of wasted brain cells. The charm has worn off, maybe. I dunno. And I think it'd be good to start the new school year with a clear head. Yes, I am tiring of this Girl Talk finally. I keep getting the smell of ammonia wafting off of my hair, which is freshly cut and dyed. Too dark again, but not as bad as before senior year. It definitely looks somewhat brown. I can't ever get my bangs cut the way I want even when I bring pictures. My Morning Jacket is covering "Get Down on It," which would be intolerable any other time. Inglourious Basterds is probably the best thing of the summer, and the best thing Tarantino's done since From Dusk 'til Dawn. I loved Hans Landa. I tried to read the script in the bookstore today and it made my stomach hurt. I guess it's a stylistic thing I'll develop too, but my god, so much descriptive text and camera movements and such. Summer is pretty much over and I'm not even sad about it, I'm just glad school will give me something to do. I still need a job but have quit looking. Extract wasn't very good at all, and neither was Mike Judge a very thrilling Q&A. Kevin Smith is at the Chicago Theatre in a few weeks and its taking every fiber of my being to not purchase a ticket although I'll probably cave. I feel like as soon as I have any money to spend it's gone, feast or famine. It's weird having someone else's food in the refrigerator and towels on the rack. I was quite liking being on my own. She doesn't curse - how do ask someone like that if you can have the room for the night, should it occur. Jeff Mangum is the King of Carrot Flowers, parts one through three. "Communist Daughter" certainly has the oddest lyrics on the album. Nancy Botwin finally learned that she can love men but not depend on them in last night's finale, good advice Not Francie. The ladies had a particularly good week on Mad Men and I still envy Christina Hendricks something awful. I would very much like Santa to bring me a PS3 now that they cost $299 so I can begin to move towards Blu-Ray and all that jazz. "Two-Headed Boy Part 2" makes me want to cry every time I hear it. Mangum's voice is just raw. Pangs of nostalgia hit hard this week, the chill in the air, the old rituals. How I've changed in this year. My dreams and deja-vus have been particularly intense. My scalp is stained with pigment and I want another huge, colorful tattoo of a feminine origin. I like how it challenges a conventional notion of beauty. But I don't want anything that'll show in a wedding dress, ha ha ha. I think Mia Wallace, hypodermic needle and all, will happen for Halloween, especially with this new hair. Say it Jeff, "Two-headed boy, she is all you could need. She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires and retire to sheets safe and clean, but don't hate her when she gets up to leave." I did leave him, whose birthday I didn't even acknowledge this week,  and I'm tired of safe and clean sheets, but it was the best choice. Second chances, are they worth it, or better yet, am I just imagining them. Who knows. I always project grandoise situations of reality before they even begin to germinate. It's how I go to sleep at night, imagining an alternate reality for myself. I always have, since I was little. Frank Black is screaming about some wild honey pie and I'm sleepy.

The "Cat People" scene in Basterds gave me chills like only a good movie can, but I prefer my Bowie like this:

...In which our heroine most certainly has a purple aura.

The thoughts that come late at night are often the ones I find simultaneously most interesting and most troubling. I've always been one who takes a while to sleep, as it in these times that I think the deepest and thus it takes me a while to fall asleep. These are some of those thoughts.

Lately I've been wondering a lot about my perception skills. As mentioned before, my dreams are definitely on the odd side, but they're only part of the equation. This is going to seem like a weird thing to talk about, but I've been wondering if I have some kind of, for lack of a less cheesy term, sixth sense. Please, let me explain a moment before you go "wow, Katydid needs to get put the pipe down and get out of art school..."

I know things sometimes - what people are going to say before they say it. I have intense instances of deja-vu that come from things previously dreamt. I've dreamt things - like that Princess Diana died the night she did, or that Emily and Lane broke up the night they did - before they happen. I dreamt about someone I hadn't thought about in a long time, and suddenly they were back in my life in a very big, interesting way that the dream foretold. Sometimes, with new experiences, I know what they'll be like, what things will feel like before they happen. I get feelings about people immediately upon meeting them on whether or not they'll be important to me. Not everyone, but sometimes.

This all sounds totally fucking ridiculous, I know. But it's weird as it goes on, and I find myself wondering about it lately. Agnostic as I am, the two concepts I kind of buy into are reincarnation and karma. As I understand it, the Buddhist notion of reincarnation makes sense of ESP and things like deja-vu as moments when a former incarnation of the self brushes up with the present self. Karma ties into the equation in that every thing's present incarnation is directly proportional to the good or bad karma they produced in a former life - if you were an asshole, expect to be a dung beetle.

Reincarnation kind of also ties into the idea for some that time is in a continuous loop and these feelings of clairvoyance/pre-cognition/deja-vu what have you are when these loops of time of the past, present, and future self brush against each other.

I don't know how I feel about reincarnation or karma fully - science tells me, and I wholly believe when we die we're nothing more than worm chow. It's a nice thought that good people get what they deserve as do the bad, but life proves that to be unrealistic. I question myself for even hesitating to think that such concept exist, but then I wonder about why I know things I shouldn't. And the things I do know are tied directly into my dreams.

There's really no point to all of this other then my questioning of the situation. I think it's fascinating how little we know about the human mind - for instance, I was reading today about the pineal gland in the brain which is thought to release DMT, the most powerful psychedelic substance known to man. Some cultures think it to be a literal third eye because of its placement in the brain. DMT replaces the user's entire reality with one dose.  It is released in humans when we're born, when we dream, and when we die. It also occurs in lots of plants and can be smoked for what is apparently the most intense trip that one can take. It's also the most illegal substance on the planet in this form - but yet occurs naturally in the human brain and causes few side effects. Doesn't it seem like we would want to try such a substance and not condemn it? Down, hippie, down.

I have no answers to my questions about such things as a sixth sense or reincarnation. I don't know why I dream the way I do, know the things I do, can guess things before they happen. I should probably read a book on Buddhism or something, but honestly, I don't know that I'd buy it fully. We're not supposed to know the answers to the big questions, so why worry about it? I guess, but I'm still curious as to why I dream crazily and then see things again in deja-vu. If there was a former Katydid, I should certainly thank her for the good karma she's passed along.

These are the thoughts best kept for late nights, sitting up with friends when the conversation unexpectedly turns into the heaviest of the heavy stuff. We won't ever know the answers, at least most of us, to this mortal coil, but half the fun is in the wonder and awe of life that creates.

Unrelated, my love for Jim James and My Morning Jacket continues. This is beautiful -