I don't know what it is, but often after I finish a really good movie, or I read the last page of a good book, or I walk alone in a secluded place for a nice, long time, I have this deep calm settle over me. All of a sudden I feel just at peace, like some sort of insight has come over me. I feel like I've reached some sort of transcendental nirvana and I'm at one with everything, you know? I can really think. I feel sort of smarter, deeper, more stimulating. It's always been this way, since I was really young. I guess I sort of retreat into myself. It's happening more often now that I'm alone more and I'm reading more. I'm not exactly sure what it is.

For a little bit I feel like I've become a different person. Sometimes I feel like I must be a schizo, I've got so many different personalities all warring with each other. But I love the calm. I'm not angry any more. I have a slight headache most of the time, but I'm not angry. I'm not sad. I am detached. I am watching me. I just am.

But it never lasts. Always, something comes to muck it up. It will be a perfect moment, me and a soft chair and an imaginary soundtrack playing in the background while the camera pans slowly towards my face.

Now, for instance. My father is home. And soon it will be gone. The feeling is already ebbing away; it's almost physical. He's hissing "FUCK" downstairs right now, I can hear him slapping down letters and making an awful hissing face and baring his teeth. I can't stand it.

I hate it when people interrupt my calm. Sometimes it isn't so bad. A friend walks in, calls up, IMs me. And all of a sudden my smile is just a little too wide, my voice is a little too loud, I've said "fuck" or "cool" one too many times, and it's gone. Others like my dad, I try to preserve it and walk away from them and keep quiet but they keep nagging at me and persisting.

I guess it would be a pretty lonely existence if it was just me and my calm. I wish one day I could just run off somewhere for a few months or so and live with my calm. I would be so quiet, just observant. I would watch the world with judgmental and unblinking eyes and they would perform before me, unadulterated and pure because they wouldn't even know I was there. Sometimes I wish to god I could go there.

When Greg walked into the Rocky Horror picture show audition, I didn't really know what to do. I asked if I could go in and was denied so I dragged my feet outside. It was probably in the low 70s and the atmosphere was milky grey, leaves on the ground, slightly windy. The grass was still bright green. Not too many students were on cmpus. It was near perfect. The calm began to set in.

I wasn't exactly sure where to go at first. I sat down on a bench and looked through the tree canpoy for a bit. I was still reeling, a little, I guess from my encounter not 10 minutes ago. I thought about Eleanor.

I'd asked Eleanor for cigarettes, ubt shed said something about Steven and had just handed me my five bucks back. Justin refused to give me anything because he was convinced I was a narc. Now whenever he sees me he avoids me uncomfortably. He can't seriously think I'm a narc. What is it? Just because I'm an editor-in-chief smart asian girl I can't score some fucking weed? I think maybe it's time to rip open my virginity and get wasted. Maybe I need to experience life a little more if I am ever going to fully understand its paradoxes. I'm not saying I'm going to have weed epiphanies or anything...maybe I should just...experience, that's all.

I was thinking about all of this while staring down at all the little cigarettes stubbed out in the grey ashtray. There were cigars, too. Big fat stubs. I picked up one and I unwrapped it. My fingers would smell of tobacco for hours later. I sniffed it deeply and it smelled of smoke and musk and infiltrated my lungs. I tossed it back in. Then I picked up the cigarettes. I was surprised at the first one, a slim white one, probably some pussy low tar menthol one. It smelled almost sweet. Like a little dessert--the most sinful of all. I could tell a woman had smoked it. The filter was still perfectly round, only slightly browned on the inside. Someone had placed it very tenderly between their lips, like a gentle kiss. It was smoked down to the filter and extinguished at just the right moment, before it began to burn.

The rest smelled similar. Maybe a little less perfumey, but similar. The Marlboros, the Camel. I thought I must look like quite the freak sitting there smelling other people's cigarettes so I picked up the longest one and put it in my pocket and got up. I felt kind of pissed off with the long one. Cigarettes were so expensive, why the fuck would anyone take two puffs of one and stub it out? I wondered what exactly that person was thinking when he pushed the ember into the grey ash. It was a moment cut short. They were all moments cut too short. These people were slicing and hacking away moments of their lives.

I told Greg later that I think smoking is for people who hate their lives but are too big of pussies to commit suicide, so they try to do it as slow as they can. I believe it. I planned on sucking that long cigarette down that night.

When we got back to the dorm, it had smashed in my pocket and was now nothing more than dust.

He told me he'd buy me cigarettes if I wanted. He said he didn't like it, but he wouldn't condemn me for it. I think he was trying to set an example for me and the drinking thing. It isn't so much just drinking, though. It just goes against his personality and everything that he's stood for. It's just embarrassing. But I'd secretly wished he had told me not to that it was stupid and unneccessary. Instead he said he'd taken a couple of puffs of one a couple days earlier but put it out when he realized what he was doing.

That only made me want one more.

Andrea laughed hard the other day at Angela doing the exact same thing I am. Analyzing how she was deciding that from now on, she would be hard-core. "I think I'll become a heavy drinker now," she said, in the same mock-voice she uses for everyone, blue eyes rolling up into her head. I knew that at some point I would come home and write this so I laughed but it was a guilty laugh. I'd like to think this was different somehow but to anyone else, I think, it's exactly the same.