Today I made a choice;
I followed a path
and it took me to a place
of learning
and of loss.

The knowledge came from the faces
that lined the sterile walls;
I dared not think about the pain.

What I found there raised questions
about myself
and others,
but the television we all watched so intently
had but one channel
and no answers.

At the end of an hour,
I had what I'd come for,
and a little more besides;
so back i fled along my chosen path
pursued by that sea of grim faces
mouthing questions to which i had no reply.

I drafted some New Year's Resolutions tonight at work. They run as follows:

~To make the most of my last year at Northwest, and to fashion lots of new memories, ones that will linger in my mind long after the sound of our footsteps has faded from that green linoleum.
~To recognize those things which I cannot or should not have, and let them go.
~To go through my relationships like I'm going through a closet; gettingrid of what no longer fits, setting aside what needs to be mended, and cherishing the all-season favorites.
~To maintain those relationships which mean the most to me, even when we're all split up this fall.
~To remember, as best I can, everything about this time in my life.

"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
I wish I had that ability. But alas my life more follows what e. e. cummings so sagely noted:
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."

Over the past couple of years, ninety percent of the quotes I've used for just about everything have come from this one website, Qood Quotations from Famous People, which is a loooong list of quotes compiled by some college professor with a degree in computer science. It says at the bottom of the site that when using one of the quotes you have to credit the professor guy. well, i've used about thirty of these, so i owe him a lot of crediting. it's still the best site for quotes i've ever found, perhaps because so many of them are sarcastic.

umm....i'm not sure i like this template either, now that i look at it more. a little too in-the-face for me. poop.

It's now about ten days and counting till jen is removed from the house once more, leaving behind her wonderful tv/vcr/radio for me to play with. it's an awful think to say but sometimes i feel such brimming antipathy toward her that i never want to see her again. and when i repent and think no, that's not true, it's usually only for my mom's sake that i envision her staying in the picture. sigh.

my left hand is warm and working fine, and my right is cold and stiff. why do things like that happen?

testing

new blog style! i couldn't for the life of me get links to show up in the old one, even after i stuck them in every place in the HTML template. it sucks that i lost whatever computer skills i once gained by keeping up all those shameful websites.

my best friend got asked out by the boy she's secretly been adoring! yipee! i love when things like this happen. and it's amusing, because i've been trying to convince her to ask him out herself and not wait around for him to take charge, and she's been insisting that she really wanted him to ask her first, and lo and behold, he did it! a man who is not afraid to call a girl up and ask her to dinner is a rare find in our advanced society. it seems with the advance of feminism and gender equality, a lot of guys no longer feel obliged to take the iniative, preferring to let the girls chase them instead. what most of these boys fail to realize is that equality or no equality, most girls still like being pursued...."wooed" being the old term. personally, i like it both ways, but i'm much more likely to do it myself rather than get frustrated waiting for him to do something.

so it seems that ashley, sandy and annie are not going to europe with us. hilary is; her parents said they wouldn't force her to choose between portugal and martha's vineyard. personally that wouldn't be a conflict for me, since my friends are almost all in the hill class, with the notable exception of my best buddy meg *i love you meghan!* taryn and nicole have become worried about why annie's not going. since she has a bad feeling about it, they're getting a bad feeling about it. i think about it this way: if i die on that plane, at least i'm dying with my friends, instead of staying home and losing all my friends in a fiery plane crash. i think the second would be worse than the first. although naturally i have no plans to die or be harmed in any way while in portugal or en route to portugal! and i don't have a death wish, either, since there's so many things i look forward to in life, and so many people to be thankful for. topping the list right now are my friends and of course my beloved boyfriend greg *i love you greg*

I love that boy so much, it surprises even my cynical mind.

Oh, in other news, I got deferred from harvard. deferment is not a rejection as such, it's more like saying you're good, but they're not sure if it's good enough. that's fine. i think i've gotten over my initial feelings, which were intense disappointment and that awful sensation of being told you're not good enough. i wasn't so much upset that i wasn't definitely going to harvard, i was upset that they looked at me and didn't immediately see someone they wanted. they saw someone they might want, but they weren't sure. i'm not planning to wait around to find out if they graciously decide to accept me in april. fuck it! the guidance women told me "the next step" in this would be to send them a letter thanking them for deferring me and assuring them that i sooooo want to go to harvard. yeeeeaaaaah. i don't want to go there that much. i wanted to get in, that's what i wanted.....and that's not a good enough reason for me to suck up to their admissions people. i'd be lying if i told them that this was really something my dreams depended on. does it sound strange, that i wanted to be admitted more than i wanted to go there? i tried to explain this to someone who doesn't see academics the way that i do, and they didn't understand what the big deal was. i'm sorry....but it's the way i am, the way i was raised, the way i'll probably always be. if they never understand that, that's ok, because i'll never see things their way either. and don't get me started on those people who say that knowledge you get from a book is useless compared to knowledge you get in the "real world". name me one famous philosopher, no matter how radical, who didn't go through a classical education before they thought up their own theories and i'll eat my history book. education provides a framework and a foundation upon which rational thought and creativity are based. nietzsche was a professor of philology, whatever the hell that is. kierkegaard had a doctorate in philosophy. descartes taught geometry at the sorbonne and later to queen christina of sweden. they didn't get to high school and declare the subjects taught them mundane and unworthy of study. wisdom might be found by the experienced mind, but it's the educated mind that puts it to use. and yes, the things they are making us study, like the global economy and NAFTA and the WTO and GATT, are horribly boring and make my head hurt. but they're necessary to understand the world we live in. we can't insulate ourselves from reality.

I love that boy so much, it surprises even my cynical mind.

Oh, in other news, I got deferred from harvard. deferment is not a rejection as such, it's more like saying you're good, but they're not sure if it's good enough. that's fine. i think i've gotten over my initial feelings, which were intense disappointment and that awful sensation of being told you're not good enough. i wasn't so much upset that i wasn't definitely going to harvard, i was upset that they looked at me and didn't immediately see someone they wanted. they saw someone they might want, but they weren't sure. i'm not planning to wait around to find out if they graciously decide to accept me in april. fuck it! the guidance women told me "the next step" in this would be to send them a letter thanking them for deferring me and assuring them that i sooooo want to go to harvard. yeeeeaaaaah. i don't want to go there that much. i wanted to get in, that's what i wanted.....and that's not a good enough reason for me to suck up to their admissions people. i'd be lying if i told them that this was really something my dreams depended on. does it sound strange, that i wanted to be admitted more than i wanted to go there? i tried to explain this to someone who doesn't see academics the way that i do, and they didn't understand what the big deal was. i'm sorry....but it's the way i am, the way i was raised, the way i'll probably always be. if they never understand that, that's ok, because i'll never see things their way either. and don't get me started on those people who say that knowledge you get from a book is useless compared to knowledge you get in the "real world". name me one famous philosopher, no matter how radical, who didn't go through a classical education before they thought up their own theories and i'll eat my history book. education provides a framework and a foundation upon which rational thought and creativity are based. nietzsche was a professor of philology, whatever the hell that is. kierkegaard had a doctorate in philosophy. descartes taught geometry at the sorbonne and later to queen christina of sweden. they didn't get to high school and declare the subjects taught them mundane and unworthy of study. wisdom might be found by the experienced mind, but it's the educated mind that puts it to use. and yes, the things they are making us study, like the global economy and NAFTA and the WTO and GATT, are horribly boring and make my head hurt. but they're necessary to understand the world we live in. we can't insulate ourselves from reality.

footsteps and the dirty streets


empty hallways
slow walks and
my feet hit the ground
softly
and i saw the winter today
and i saw it was beautiful
the streets may be dirty
but so is life and so are life's lessons
and it touched me
i knew it all then
i knew she loves me
i never had doubt before but now i'm sure
i would cry for her
and i saw the winter today
it all sounds so simple
so i saw it all and i knew then
so i saw it all and it reached out to me
and i walk on this dirty ground
and i walk through these hallways
and my life is this love i have
it is everything
and all the times i thought about suicide
were so wrong
and i was wrong
so i admit i was wrong about it all
so my sadness is fading day by day
so i can not see what lies behind
and the future is clearer
and i knew she loves me
and i knew i love her so much
and i saw the winter today
almost for the first time
and i saw it was beautiful
i walk the dirty streets
my feet hit the ground
softly
and they make the sound of life
and i saw it was beautiful

~greg paul

Today is the day I find out whether or not i have been accepted to harvard. At some point this morning, an email will go out in cambridge that could possibly affect thecourse of my life. isn't that an odd thought? thecontents of this email will definitely affect me. i just don't know how, yet. if i've been accepted, i'll rejoice, but then i will face the decision of whether or not i really want to go to harvard. if i'm not accepted, then i have the joyous task of dealing with such self-recriminations and disappointment that naturally accompanies such rejections.

meghan made me a support basket of stuff to cheer me if i dont get in and make me happier if i do. she made popcorn and brownies and there's lotion anda cosmogirl and a scrapbook of attractive men for me to look at. and two letters--one for if i get in and one for if i dont.

oh yes, the math test. i should go study now. you know, in case i do go to harvard and i somehow need to know logarithms.

The school's internet blocking software has just informed me that i cannot check my email here because it contains "adult content". is it my fault i get all those porn emails? i shouldn't be barred from checking my email illegally during classes just because of a few emails about penis enlargement thrown in among the herbal remedies and home mortgages ads.

meow.... mrs. juda's hot teaching assistant guy just walked in. he goes to the university of hartford, so i'm told. he looks like freddy prinze jr!

Greg lent me his Modest Mouse cd last night. I like the songs i head this morning on the way to school more than the ones i heard before. I should ask him the name of that norwegian band and have meghan dl some of their stuff. it sounded like something she would enjoy, or rae.

God bless ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay....

contrary to both what i have read on other corners of the internet and what i have sometimes myself said, i don't hate people. people make the world interesting. sadly we cannot pick and choose with which humans we share the planet, so we have to take the good, the bad and the ugly all at one go. sometimes it's harder to put up with the good people than the bad. and ugly people can be so nice.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways


I love you with a beard
and I love you clean-shaven.
I love you in your cords
and in your baggy jeans,
in your Boy Scout socks
and your big floppy sneakers.
I loved you in your old white van,
and I love you in your “coffin mobile”.
I love you when I haven’t seen you in a week
and when I see you every day.
I love you online, on the phone
and most of all, in person.

I love you in Starbucks, Borders, Friendly’s,
and all those places we hang out.
I love you as a housecat
and as a jungle cat.
I love you when you’re smiling
and when you’re not,
when you’re relaxed
and when you’re frustrated.
I love you in your basement
and in your bedroom.

I love you when you’re listening,
and when you tune me out.
I love you when you sing in the car,
and when you play air drums.
I love you dressed
and undressed.
I love you in my thoughts, my dreams
and my fantasies.

I love you when I think of how much you love me.

So I was reading greg's blog this morning, lacking once again any kind of real schoolwork/research to be doing on this computer, and there's a truly frightening picture of me on there! I look somewhat demonic, to my mind, and not even in the cool way. I have a phobia when it comes to pictures of me. No, phobia isn't the right word.....more like a deep and abiding hatred of any image of me captured on film. It comes, naturally, from all those years that I don't speak of, and those pictures which have long since been shredded, to the perpetual annoyance of my mother.

I sense a lot of bitterness and anger on greg's site. it's not something i can fully understand, never having been treated in the same fashion by someone, but i do understand that bottling it up never helps. it just sits and festers and grows even more terrible in your own mind, until when you finally do release your emotions, they're a thousand times more vitriolic than they were in the beginning. i have a problem with that, and i've tried to work on it in the past. so far i'm doing ok i think, but there's still that one big thing that i can't talk about to anyone else. i mean i can, and i do, but they don't have the understanding of the situation that they'd need to make me feel comfortable talking about it. i always feel as though i have to keep clarifying and making explanations so they don't get the wrong idea. and of course i never discuss this with jen or mom, jen because she's too fragile emotionally when it comes to the topic of dad and mom because i feel as though it would make her think im heartless. sometimes it feels as though i can only have honest discussions about him with myself. i can't even write down what i feel because there are too many emotions, and the guilt that follows some of those emotions, and then the sadness that just overpowers everything. how can i reconcile all the ways i feel? the fact that sometimes i think of him and i want him back so bad i'd give up everything on this earth to see him again with the fact that sometimes i look at the way things turned out and i'm glad? how do i reconcile the desire to have him in my life with the knowledge that i wouldn't have my life as it is now if he were here. i wouldn't be this free. i know i wouldn't be this happy. i know he probably wouldn't have been happy.

and how exactly do i reconcile my memories....the way he was when i was younger with the way he was before he died. i read his journal the other day--it was full of love and happiness. he ended every entry with "i love them all so much". he sounded like he knew what he meant to us. the voice on that tape i have is full of amusement, full of a smile! how do i reconcile that against the memory of the man who was so often sick and tired and not satisfied with his life? just thinking about it makes me want to cry again. and i can't stop, i never stop feeling guilty. maybe one day i'll have forgotten all this but i still won't have forgiven myself for the things i did, and above all the things i didn't do, didn't say, didn't understand. and then people tell me that they don't believe in an afterlife, that we just float away into cosmic debris and vanish and it makes me sad and it makes me ANGRY. how dare they say that to me? don't they understand how much i need to beleive i'll see him again someday! that i'll have a chance to make it up to him, and explain, and have a chance to be happy? don't they know how much it means to me think that he's up there somewhere, happier than he ever could have been here, and being proud of me for what i've done? i don't want their depressing theories about the transitory nature of human existence. fuck it!! i don't care, i don't need it, i don't want to listen to it!

and now it comes back to what it always does. me sitting here, staring out the window with tears burning my eyes and thinking the same thing over and over and over and over.... "I'm sorry." I'm sorry for who I was, and who I wasn't. I'm sorry for it all.

Why oh why can i never get beyond this.

I skipped school today heeheehee!!

Greg just left my house, slightly late for his 1030 curfew for the evening. i hope none of my nosy neighbors noticed (was that assonance or alliteration?), though my mmom kinda sorta knew he was coming. as in, i told her, and she said ok, but then i told her he wasnt, but then he ended up coming anyway. *laughs at private joke* he tells me that i'm more sensitive to smells than other girls, both good ones, like his hair, and bad ones, like BO. i think this is true, because now that i have time to think about it, i place a lot of importance on the way something smells. when i was a kid, i used to smell-test my mom's new dishes before i would ever taste them. if it didnt smell ok to me, i wouldnt try it. used to piss the crap out of my mom. then there's my dad's old cologne, canoe...we have the last bottle that he didnt finish; sometimes i open it and it reminds me of sunday mornings, him getting ready for church in his room, slapping on the old spice and smelling strongly of cologne. (it's interesting that although i loved cologne on my dad i hate it on other guys. ) sometimes it even reminds me of waking up for school when it was still dark, walking into my parents rooom, where the lights would still be off so my mom could sleep, and finding my dad rushing through his bathroom routine because he was late getting up. i wonder if the smell comforts my mom the same way.
then there's just the host of other things that i absolutely love to smell for no good reason, such as gas, wet ink from old school printers, shoe polish, etc. i can always detect the odor of something before my mom or my sister can, though my mom claims to have a chronically disabled nose. so maybe greg was right about my fantabulous powers of smell! i am Super-Smeller! I can smell evil-doing a mile away! muahahahahaha!! heehee but my heightened olfactory abilities don't make me adore him any less when he's stinky. i don't know what it is; on any other guy, perspiration and BO is absolutely gross, get the fuck away from me gross. on greg, though, it just smells like him, and it's ok. i'd rather be smelling greg stinky than another guy clean!

greg's father just called and asked me to "send gregory home, ok?" in a very authoritarian tone of voice. it's as though he thinks bad things could be occurring! what does he take me for, a woman of ill fame? it's not like i'm going to tie him down and rape him or anything, although as greg so often points out, one cannot rape the willing.

yawwwn it would appear all my friends have lives this friday night. no one's online. and i'm getting hungry now anyway, since i had dinner which was in the oven cooking, but then greg came over really early and i ended up abandoning it. tootle-loo

This post is expressly designed to postpone even further the beginnning of studying for the biology test. the last period of the last day before the weekend, and before the semi, and we have to spend it furiously regurgitating factoids about respiration and glycolysis and thylakoid membranes. who comes up with these scientific names, i don't know. personally, i am much more fond of the approach taken by scientists observing apoptosis, programmed cell death. after observing the globular breakdown of the dying cells, one of them said "hey, that looks like a bleb!" bleb is not a real word, but it stuck, and so the process by which a cell self destructs and is consumed by neighboring cells is known officially as "blebbing".

I suppose the inevitable may be put off no longer....here i go

Yawn. Today is a good morning, though indescribably cold. Why can't dress clothes be made of something warm, like fleece? Or flannel? I've been reduced to wearing nylons for the first time in recent memory. I hate nylons. They inhibt movement and if you put your hand on your own leg it feels like you're touching an alien skin. Creepy.
I meant to come online last night and record the most amusing thing which greg said last night, but then i got tired and went to bed at ten o clock instead. Imagine! me in bed at 10! it was refreshing, i must say. oh look-- "there's my poppy!" :-)
Our school just got a bunch of new computers, pentium 4s with windows xp and the most delightful little keyboards. not annoying at all! i could sit here and type all the day long, except we only have three more minutes of first period. oh well.

Corny joke: A mushroom walks into a room and says "Hey everybody, I'm a fun guy!"

It was indeed a happy turkey day, for me, at least. and today was a happy day-after-thanksgiving day, too...i finally got a chance to try out the four wheel drive on my car, and i wasn't really impressed with it besides the control it gives you for turning. and, as sara and i were slowly rounding a turn near my house, we managed to glide ever so gently into a snowbank. we both laughed, cause it was amusing, but i guess you had to be there. and i got my contacts, so no more annoying glasses, but my eyes haven't quite adjusted yet. if i look around quickly i get dizzy, and i sort of feel disconnected. it's probably a good thing i'm not going out tonight, since i don't think i'm in too great a state to drive.
The brand new Muppet Christmas movie comes on in half an hour! yipee!

It's after one am right now, so it's a happy turkey day to all! I really do have so many things to be thankful for this year. it seems as the years go by, the number of "thankfuls' seems to multiply exponentially. i mean, when we were kids, we said "an' im thankful for mommy and daddy an' my house an' my kitties..." and that was basically it. and now there's just so much more to be grateful for in this life.

The List
i'm thankful for my friends, for their differences and their personalities and their idiosyncracies. they're what supports me in my life.

...for greg, and for the chance to love him and be loved by him. i hope i never forget how lucky i have been to find someone so amazing.

...for my my mom. she drives me crazy, i don't understand her, and sometimes i don't even feel close to her, yet it was she "who made my hands and my feet."

...for jen. she is the hardest to be thankful for, yet she too is family, and a part of me that i need.

...for my dad, for his example and for what his life and death have taught me these past two years. wherever you are, i miss you, and i love you.

...for the life that i have, the extraordinary privileges and opportunities that await me every day. may i never take them for granted.

...for my pets, because sometimes in their furry fury they remind me of God.

...for my memories, which are my most prized possessions. i treasure them every day, just in case i wake up one morning to find that they are no longer there.

...for everything i have been given, every gift, every chance, every dream. it all means something; it's all worth something. there is nothing in this world that i would throw away.

I went over heather's house to watch gilmore girls tonight. it might seem strange. driving across town just to watch a tv show when i have perfectly good tvs in my house, but it's so much more emotionally satisfying to watch with someone else! then the two of you can squeal and giggle and do other girly things at the same time, and discuss plot points and comment on the hottest actors and, during commercials, have extremely meaningful conversations. three minutes' worth of them ,anyway. twas fun!

life is good....and greg is really, really really hot. like, wicked hot. mmm. pumpkins.

I had the opportunity this weekend, while spending four and a half hours in the car, to reread one of my favorite books, In Pursuit of the Green Lion, by my very favorite author, Judith Merkle Riley. I think I've read this book all the way through about seven or eight times now; it's one of a trilogy about a woman, Margaret, in thirteenth-century england. It's an awesome read--there's medival customs, battles, crochety relatives, ghosts of mothers-in-laws and ex-husbands, a demon-summoning Count, alchemy, the Inquisition, all told by a former midwife-turned welathy widow-turned newly married knight's wife who can talk to god and see spirits. and it's not just the storyline that's good. it's margaret herself. the thing i love most about jm riley is she creates such lively personalities for her female protagonists, and sets them in such interesting surroundings. genevive in the oracle glass, which is set in France under the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was sarcastic, observant, cool and extremely intelligent. sibille, in the master of all desires--set in an earlier France under King Henry IV--, always tries to be poetic and delicate, even though she's really nothing of the sort. susanna, in the serpent garden, which is set in England and France in medival times, tries to be a perfect little wife and be pious and make soup and all that, but she lets herself go when she's painting her miniatures. And Margaret is such a good and nice person, but she's got spirit too. I've read all these books so many times that i can just open to any page and start reading, and i know exactly what's happened before. with the oracle glass, which is perhaps my favorite book of all, i can quote entire scenes. it's like sitting down to a conversation with an old friend; you already know so much, and it's warm and comfortable, yet there's always something new to discover.
I love the guys in her books too; they never get center stage, and even when the women are in love with them--which they always are--they don't act like idiots. well actually, margaret leaves her two children behind and travels across europe and defeats this gross satan worshipper lord guy to get her husband back--but naturally it's all worth it. and anyway, she had Mother Hilde, an herbal healer/midwife; Brother Malachi, a seller of religious indulgences and alchemist (the Green Lion in the title is the last part of Transmutation, turning metal into gold);Sim, this weird little street kid; Madame Belle Mere, Margaret's dead and snobby mother-in-law; Hugo, her vain and unbearable brother-in-law, and God, who pops in here and there to offer advice. It's so wonderful.
Oh, and did I mention that the name (or one of the names) of the man Margaret is so hopelessly in love with is none other than Gregory? :-)

"The path of true love never did run smooth." ~The Bard

why this quote qould be applicable to the current friend situation, i don't know. it's definitely not true love, and it's not even true like between them! unfortunately, i just discovered that the young man in question is indeed enamored of my friend. she initially had intended to convey to him, by means of his best friend, the idea that she only wants to be friends. unfortunately, the best friend told me in math class that he will tell his buddy no such message, since guys don't do things like that when its likely the messenger will be shot. he thinks my friend should be telling him this herself. it's still possible that he only thinks he likes her because he thinks she likes him back, a case of that old "look-like" syndrome that we defined a few years ago.
and in case anyone's wondering, yes, writing without using proper nouns is a pain in the ass. even though anyone who has access to this page most likely knows all the details of this situation already, i still don't feel comfortable throwing everything out there onto the great wide web. but wait, this is a private page, so only the people who know my address can read it....anyway, i will continue with my small attempt at secrecy. i am a secret agent hahaha.

Today is Junior Investiture....another crop of disaffected teenagers will assume a "leadership" position in the school. Yipee.

Sucks the way teen relationships go...one of my close friends is in a tight spot when it comes to boys. there was this boy, and he's sort of cute and nice--although very shy and quet, especially around girls he doesnt know--and he was suggested as a possible date to the school semi for her. long story short, through the various machinations of our friends jeff and sandy, it was discovered that yes, he would like to go with her, and that he thought she was very cute. however, they didn't actually talk to each other. at all, becauase they're both so shy--despite all the urgings of certain well-intentioned people. finally, this guy walked up to her in the hallway and informed her that they were going to semi together. "You will join me for dinner! That is not a request!!" -->that's not what he actually said, but it's a relevant quote. anyway, he knew he'd get a yes thanks to the unstoppable NWC grapevine, which moves quicker than the speed of light. it's like we're all eerily connected. so now she's going to the semi with this person--and still not really talking to him--when she finally realizes that she's not actually inteered in him at all. so naturally she feels awful, since she has no idea whether he actually really likes her, or if this was something that jeff and sandy orchestrated. she still feels obligated to go with him to the semi, but she doesnt want to date him and doesnt even want to see him in the hallway! a pretty telling indication of her lack of romantic sentiment for the young man. of course there's also the fact that this seems to be sandy and jeff's pet project, so she feels guilty about that, too. personally, i support her, since she should go with what makes her happy and comfortable. i don't think the current situation is doing either.

Ahem. I am truly a slacker when it comes to this blog, and for that I am heartily sorry. Well, no I'm not, but who cares.

There's been a lot of news in my world recently, and I guess i should update here. i don't think it's been noted on my blog before that sara broke up with steve like a month ago or so because of various reasons, the most pressing of which appears to have been a long-concealed discontent with the relationship. it was afterward revealed that steve had partaken in some indiscretions while he was in berklee, adding more fuel for dissatisfaction. i guess he ended up with the incorrect idea that she dumped him because of that, and he was wildly apologetic. anyway, post-dumping we were all finally free to reveal our true feelings, similarly concealed--though not very well--concerning young steven. although sara may find him attractive, i don't, and i would therefore be less inclined to put up with his boorish behavior. his monkeyish antics are amusing in small doses, but he is quick to offend those around him. and very foul-mouthed. i was personally amazed that sara was able to stand him for so long, but in the end it turned out a lot of her supposed rejoicing wasn't really rejoicing at all--how much? i have no idea. the depths remain unplumbed. anyway long story short, it was good riddance to steve, until recently, when it seems now that we are witnessing a possible return to that era. personally i don't think sara should make the same mistake twice--she is having trouble remembering her reasons for dumping him in the first place--but if she ends up going out with him again, there's nothing any of us can do about it. i haven't talked to greg about this yet. he knows that i dislike steve, so i wonder what he will think. there's also the issue of sara and pete, and how young steven will react to such news. tune in nest time for more soap opera updates.

now on to a different storyline. i'm worried about one of my friends. she recently underwent some changes that have made her more attractive to the members of the opposite sex....basically, the girl got hot. so ofcourse she's getting lots of attention. and she started sleeping with a guy three years older than us, who kind of doesn't treat her well since he doesn't want to go out with her and has stood her up a few times. but she really likes him, and likes having sex with him, although i recently found out she had sex with another coworker too! this girl only lost her virginity a month and a half ago! she's using protection, but she's not on the pill and this kid hasn't been tested for any nasty diseases. she told her someone related to her has contracted an STD, HPV, and she's worried about getting it fromher. i think she should be more worried about getting it from the guy she's sleeping with. i don't trust the entire idea. she's my friend, and i don't disapprove of what she's doing cause it's what she wants to do, but i worry about her and i want her to be safe.

let's see.....in meghan news, she may be soon getting a date for the semi,and possibly somethign more, but i can neither confirm nor deny any reports. heehee. i'm excited for her! speaking of which, guess who needs a dress? moi. oh and the sandy-jeff situaiton hangs in the balance! tonight may be the night sandy breaks it off, once and for-- wait, it's not going to be final, what am i saying? tonight may mark the beginning of another short, rocky separation culminating in a joyful reunion sometime within the month. ah, the allure of men who own goats.

the HILL boy-girl situation has not been resolved and will never be resolved! we are officially the class that didn;t make it. oh well. so we'll never all be best buddies? i can hang with almost everyone in that class and be perfectly comfortable, their seating preferences nonwithstanding. i see no reason to get depressed over personal choice.

I'm wondering what this respect me campaign is doing for the school. raising awareness? i don't think so, since everything discussed thus far has been touched upon more than once in the past. increasing respect? perhaps, but it would hard to find evidence of such an increase, and then connect it tangibly to this assortment of presentations and workshops. i like the thought behind the project, and i appreciate its goal, but change must come from within. you can't really force awareness on others, and if you can make themchange briefly in accordance with a school-sponsored program or event, you can't make that stick. any changes that occurred in the student body after last year-s investiture--and there were changes, from my point of view--came about because the people decided to change. it was not forced upon them. i know the respect me campaign is trying to encourage such an internal decision, but for some reason it seems incapable of finding the right wavelength along which to transmit the message. i dont doubt the world can be changed, but i believe it iwll be a grassroots change, not an organized, orderly, spear-headed reforrm movement. i will be the best agent of change, in the way i see fit, that i can be. a tshirt will not cause me to alter my thought, behavior or actions. only i can do that.

I have not posted on this blog in so long! Blog, have you missed me? The period's almost over, but I'll come back and write more during lunch.

Although I conquer all the earth,
yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
and in that house, one room only;
and in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
the shining jewel and joy of all my kingdom.
~anonymous

went to the tool concert last tueaday in new haven....it was awesome. i noticed when i was a kid in music class how when someone was playing the snare drum i could sort of feel it in my chest; i thought i was imagining it, but later i learned all abotu the interesting properties of sound waves. the really powerful ones, like those of tool all amped up, resonate across your skin and through your body and make you feel like there's something inside you. i'm wondering, actually, if sound waves interact differently with your vocal cords, which resonate themselves already; it felt like there was something in my throat that i couldnt get out. it was awesome.
the music was great too.

it's hard, accepting the fact that you may never get something you want so badly that it makes you want to cry. now i feel sick, and i'm not sure what's causing it, my emotions or something i ate. just go away, world....i want to be alone

welcome home, meghan! i missed you!!

I couldn't blog the whole HILL trip experience if i tried, so i'm not going to sit here clacking away for hours....i will say it was incredible, and so much fun, and somethign i will remember for a very long time. i love the people in my class, and it's great to think that we're only going to get closer from here. in the future, i'll have my notebook and hastily scrawled notations to remind me of what transpired and the way it made me feel. now that notebook has the record of my hill camping experience, and all the stuff i wrote when i was at the breadloaf conference, two very important times in my high school life. i hope i'll have it for a long time.

Who ever thought that a woman's heart's desire could come down to macaroni, glitter and popsicle sticks?

You'll never guess what michelle found in the giftshop of the wadsworth atheneum today :-) .....none other than a painting of The Lady of Shallott!! i can't believe that i failed to notice it any other time i've visited. i know the last time, with creative writing, she made us focus on some stupid tells-a-story painting. i also remember seeing the "hercules wrestling death for the body of alcestis" and "the disenchantment of bottom", which is apparently a scene from a midsummer night's dream. it's very lsd-hallucinogenic, lots of demons and swirling colors. but back to my miraculous discovery--- there, between two other paintings which i cannot recall, was the most beautiful creation i have seen in so very long. trumping, even, my favorite ecstasy of st. francis and the dark horse, the gallery of cardinal something or other. The Lady of Shallott, an interpretive painting from the early nineteenth century by one William Hunt, who was involved with Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the Pre-Raphaelite Society. (Since pre-Raphaelite was an era of painting, i would assume this to be a group of painters, although i had only known that rossetti was a poet). anyway, it's utterly gorgeous. the array of colors is really unusual for the period, since you expect most things of the 17 and 1800s to be dull and drab and gray/brown. i loved it and i want it. heather told me that if she had the money she'd buy it for me, but alas, high schoolers can rarely buy museum-held masterpieces. this one is going on The List, which documents those paintings/works of art which, when i have the proper resources, i will buy/steal/swindle from their rightful owners. i actually found a poster of it in the gift shop, nice and glossy, but it was twenty bucks and i decided to let it go for a few months until i can trick someone else into buying it for my birthday. but i bought the postcard, which is a shabby replica to say the least, to add to my wall of other shabby replica postcards.
i think i will be going to the wadsworth again next thursday. they have one of those little couches right in front of it for lovestruck patrons to collapse onto. heehee. *does pretty painting dance*

i hate cigarettes. and i hate restaraunts that allow people to smoke their little cancer sticks even more. why should my life expectancy get lowered because some wrinkled, croaking old cronies sit there puffing noxious fumes in my direction for an hour? they can cough up a lung and die on their own; I'd rather take the consequences for something stupid that i actually do, like chasing a ball into the path of a bus, or petting a really hungry zoo animal. or something.

i think i'll visit the wadsworth tomorrow. i've never been to a museum by myself before; always with family or friends or school. it'll be a new experience...plus i just can't wait any longer to see that st. francis in ecstasy painting again. you wouldn't think that you could miss a painting, but... liquid darkness, that's what it makes me think of. then there are the paintings that you could just eat up with your eyes, the ones mario told us about that you just want to take in until they're a part of you. especially the big ones, where you can sit down on that terrible industrial carpet and gaze at until it surrounds you and maybe if you look long enough the people inside that frozen world will come alive, and turn and look at you, and welcome you inside to join them. florinda, in the met in new york city...i only had a few minutes to admire it but already i knew i wanted in.

if i get into harvard or bc or bu or northeastern, i will LIVE at the boston metropolitan museum. it'd would of course be more fun if it were the NY met, like in "the mixed up files of mrs basil e frankweiler". then i'd set up a tent in that egyptian temple downstairs. the boston museum unfortunately lacks a temple, but i think i could manage.

The Lady of Shalott


On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I memorized this poem once, like in Anne of Green Gables, so that I could go around and recite it to myself. I thought it was one of the most lyrical poems I had ever read. However, I was never inspired to dress myself up as Elaine and send myself floating downriver on a funereal barge--which would inevitably sink and leave me clinging to the side of a bridge, thus necesitating my rescue by the handsome Gilbert Blythe. Um....not like I reread those books all the time, or anything.

just said goodbye to meghan on the phone...she leaves tomorrow for New Mexico for a couple weeks. what is it with people i love ditching me to go camping in NM? well, a week and a half until the HILL trip. minus meghan, it's me and my friends and four days of sweaty bonding. plus those four random guys who for some reason are in the class. i really think the reason connor and chris are there is because mr. tressler didn't want it to be just poor luke and steve against fourteen girls. they wouldn't stand a chance.
i guess i'm going to be sharing a tent with heather and rae for sure; heather figures sara will want to tent with annie, who will want to tent with taryn and maybe jennie. rae and heather want our fourth tent person to be a certain grumpy young man whom has been long fancied by the female half of the Northwest population. never me, of course *cough cough* it cracks me up to just think of him waking up next to heather. heeheehee.

Someday

everything will be ok someday they say
but i'm sick and tired of waiting around for someday
i want someday to be now
i want to know what it's like to never worry to never lie
i want to know what it's like to be happy to never die
when's the day that everything will be ok
when's that day because i know it's not today
and i'm so fucked up
and everything is so in vain
but everything is going to be ok
someday
~greg paul

i love living in a house with no men. i enjoy the freedom to run around scantily clad at all hours, probably to the great horror of my neighbors. i would be quite amused by the possibility of answering the door with only a strategically placed towel, but i don't think old mrs. long would take the shock well. she might fall over and die.
i suppose i should begin those dreadful assignments for school. ugh. i haven't read three of the four books yet. i'm almost done with LOTR, thankfully, although i took time out this afternoon to read The Princess Diaries Volume III. short book, but so good *sniffle*
you know what we watched last night? well if you're rae or heather, you do, actually, but anyway....Robin Hood!! the Disney version with the foxes and other animals!! :-) It has to be my favorite Disney movie of all time. when i was a kid that was the first movie i'd always try to get from the library, but my mom got so tired of seeing it she tried to not let me take it out anymore. but i hadn't seen it in years, so when we watched it everything was so hysterical again! and sad. there are many parts that make you go "aw...." like the little poor rabbits and the old owl couple in prison...*wipes away a tear* i think i need to buy myself that movie. heather had it taped off the disney channel, but it was still surprisingly good quality. but i want the shiny plastic box, too. i just hope they haven't stopped selling it now...such a great film. and Sir Hiss heehee god i loved that snake! heather and i both love the romantic waterfall scene, naturally, but we both remembered it being a little different from the way it really went. rae had never seen it, egads! so she needed to be shown the glory of that foxy Sherwoo Forest bandit.
continuing in this theme, perhaps i should watch Robin Hood Men In Tights again. I love all the Robin Hood movies, even that bad one with Kevin Costner. Legends of Robin Hood were my favorite when i was but a small child reading this one volume of my dad's encyclopedia that had all the fables, myths and legends my little heart could desire. only thing i never read were aesop's fables because they bored me. it's sad though, i never liked the end of the robin hood tales. maid marian dies, robin hood's old and dying in some convent, and he has little john give him his bow one last time so he can shoot it out the window; where it falls, he is to be buried. there's some poem he recites too, but i forgot it.

my hair's almost dry. i think i need to find myself some clothes now.

nothing works for an upset mind better than driving around with your stereo so loud you might just crack the windows. my mom sent me to the grocery store for baking powder--to make delicious banana bread--and i cranked it up as loud as i could physically stand without wincing. it really makes you feel like you're inside the music....but it leaves an unfortunate ringing in the ears once you shut it off.
even my sister's being nice to me. i'm frightened. she bought me a book of !!! crossword puzzles. i didn't even know she knew i liked doing them. but they're not the hard ones that i like.

had a fun time at sara's today with heather. i love girl talks; i usually just get them one on one; me and heather, meghan, sara or rae, but rarely a combination of people. it's nice. heather and her flapping-in-the wind sexually suggestive motions, which she was performing in front of sara's wide open front door for the pleasure of the populace, made me laugh. heehee. i love heather. tonight, her show mame is on, which i have to go get dressed for. i don't feel like getting dressed. i feel like going as i am now, with the too-short ducky boxers and pink tshirt and totally messed up hair that i haven't brushed. i went into koko's like this. well, i had my hair in a ponytail then cause we'd come over from the gym. but the proprietress said that compared to the getups some young people wear, mine was "mild". that's good to know. however, there will be many people at this show with whom i must attend school that i haven't seen all summer, and i don't really need their first memory of me to be quite this frightening. us in our little uniforms is scary enough. god just thinking about those skirts and the damned knee highs makes me ill . i hate having to cross my ankles all the time. one more month and then they're back again. two months from today is a.) my seventeenth birthday and b.)the day we start having to wear our awful sweaters until fucking may. by which time i'll be a-graduation anyway. wow, by then i will have been rejected from harvard. or, with some divine intervention, accepted. then one more summer and i'm off and free, free of windsor and my family and everything about high school that i hated, except for the people i'll always love. you guys i'll keep. it seems so far away, us all having to say goodbye. but i know all too well how time flies...it's been two and a half years now since he died. he left me a freshman, and now i'm getting ready to go off to college. what would he have thought, to see me now...
that's a recurring chain of thought for me. once i get started thinking about him i can go on for hours and never reach any sort of a conclusion. better not to try, and just go get dressed.

Dad, I miss you

A couple of my dad's friends are over my house right now, talking to my sister. They've given her a scholarship every year since she's been at school--which she used once to purchase an expensive laptop computer which she ended up detesting and giving to me *eyes laptop lovingly*
Anyway I used to love these guys when I was younger, especially Bruce Chamberlain, who is roughly the size of a small elephant and the most amazing chef I have ever met. But now I'm wondering why the heck they're still here, because I really need to go shower and go buy some things for the project that I need to finish by tomorrow, but if I go upstairs I fear I'll be sucked in with the questions about school and life etc etc. Ack.

greg came home tonight....what can i say? you'd have needed one hell of a giant-sized eraser to wipe the smile off my face. it's still there now when i think of him.

when he got off the plane...he was in his little boy scout uniform, and hadn't showered, so of course he smelled pretty bad, and still i thought he was more beautiful then than i had ever seen him. i'd thought i had his face memorized, but seeing him reminded me that no memory can ever take the place of the real thing. it was like the two weeks without him were some weird dream, and suddenly there he was again. Poe wrote "Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream..."
Never have I been so happy to have that gossamer web torn to pieces. It's terrible: i made it through two weeks without him, but now after seeing him for so short a time tonight i don't know how i'll make it until tomorrow night...

Sweet dreams to all.

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold


of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)
~e.e. cummings

Wowie that was a big font. Well, it deserves big, because I'm so happy he's coming home!

Greg comes home tomorrow!

We got our scores for the AP exams about a week ago. I only think of it again now because the report is sitting right next to me, and its contradictory results are glaringly obvious. i already knew I had gotten a five in US History *yipee* I had suspected the worst of my Physics exam, the one I didn't actually bother to finish. Expected the worst and hoped for the best, that's what I did. I got the worst--a one! It doesn't bother me except in the abstract; I feel bad my for my poor physics teacher, so convinced we'd all get fours. No one I know got a four. Three is the highest I've heard of so far. He did make it sound ridiculously easy to achieve a three, and we shouldn't have believed him, but I hope he's not too disappointed in us.

Yawwwn. I offered to close for Kate tonight, since she works two jobs and was really tired....almost all the waitresses have two jobs..Kate does paper-pushing at GE, Rebecca does CAD programming at a construction company, Karen works at the cafe in the new Bushnell theater, where she's in love with the guy she works for. I like Karen, even though most of the others waitresses confided that they don't really like her because she's so weird. The first time I saw her, she had her close-cropped hair in a tiny ponytail on the top of her head like Pebbles from the Flintstones. She just came back to the US after living with some guy in Athens for five years. It didn't end well, apparently.
All waitresses love to gossip, naturally. It's the most interesting thing you can do to pass the time. Being only sixteen, I don't have much to put into these spicy conversations, but what I get out of them is always intriguing. Tonight, for example, I found out that Rebecca, who is 25, has been dating a 45-year old married man for several years now. He finally separated from his wife after he and Rebecca broke up over it more than once, and they're living together. Apparently, she throws him out regularly and did it again just last week. He also has kids who are Rebecca's age, who aren't taking dad's new relationship so well. They're planning to get married, eventually. In five years, Rebecca will be 30, and this man will be fifty. Truly, love is blind.
I also discovered that this woman Janet had my grandmother as her third grade teacher. She said that Mrs. Hennessey always made her write out "I will not talk in class" all over pieces of paper because she was so talkative. She also knows Mr. Dumais from Northwest, because his brother is married to her niece. Small world.

In conclusion, I am tired, and Greg comes home in two days. :-)

I watched Scarlet Empress late last night, with Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great. It was a really intriguing movie, besides one roll-your-eyes bit in the beginning with the tall, dark, dashing general declaring his deep and abiding love for a young girl whom he has just met. Oh, and a charming demonstration of exactly what is meant by the phrase "a roll in the hay". Dietrich came off beautifully--as she does in every movie--showing Catherine from her beginnings as a sheltered German princess to a hardened woman, the most powerful in her time. They kept pretty true to Catherine's life (besides her and her lovers all being unattractive), and didn't sink to having her reunite with Mr. Oh-So-Handsome and Slept-With-Your-Predecessor general.
The costumes are wonderful, as well, though I can't imagine how those women managed! This was in the times when women got their waists cinched in until they could barely breathe, then got plopped into what amounted to a big wire birdcage, over which went all the skirts and petticoats. I read in Dietrich's autobiography that they couldn't fit her skirt in the studio's car when she was in costume, so they had to take her to the set in the back of a farm wagon. That was probably the reason that palaces always had double doors in those days, so that the girls could fit themselves through without turning sideways. It looked kind of ridiculous, the tiny waists and then huge skirts, but then again, I'm certain some of our modern fashions would make those women choke on their hot chocolate. I mean, compare how much skin they used to show, back in the days when seeing a woman's ankle was tantamount to foreplay, to what's revealed by your average cocktail dress today. Their negligee was less revealing most of what we wear every day. Obviously what we wear is more comfortable, but I think a lot of clothes leave too little to the imagination.
As for male fashion, it reached its peak in the days of the noble toga, and has been going downhill ever since.

If I had a superpower I know what it would be....it would be that when I touched someone, I could know their entire lives in an instant--where they grew up, their first love, how much they hate their job, their favorite brand of jeans, how many cups of coffee they drink in the morning. I'd know the color of their bathroom, how long it'd been since they'd been on a date, how their sheets felt, what the view was out their windows in the morning. I would get all that and more, every memory and thought and feeling, all the love and remorse and confusion and joy they'd ever experienced and I would know them, better than anyone else ever had, for just one second. And then it would all go away, like a dream, so that I could just recollect vaguely what it had all been about, but not the hows and whys....
I would take my new power everywhere, and I would use it all the time. Imagine being able to discern exactly what someone needed, and being able to just be that for them. Imagine what that could mean to someone who can't seem to express what they need, or might not even know it themselves.

Old people can be so annoying. Today I got sniped at by more than a few of these "redundantly living" for failing to seat them in the section by the window, which has an utterly fabulous view of asphalt. Only once so far have I ever tried to explain that there is sort of a formula for seating people, so that all the waitresses get an equal number of tables, and no one has too many or too few. I heartily regret that one error, because that little old lady glowered and complained until she got her premier parking-lot position. So now I just give them the seats they want, which doesn't win me points with the waitress working that section, either. And then they make no attempt to conceal the fact that they're complaining about me the next time I walk by.

oDE

o

the sweet & aged people
who rule this world(and me and
you if we're not very
careful)

O,

the darling benevolent mindless
HE-and-She
shaped waxworks filled
with dead ideas(the oh

quintillions of incredible
doddering godly toothless
always-so-much-interested-
in-everybody-else's-business

bipeds)OH
the bothering
dear unnecessary hairless
o

ld

~e.e. cummings

Seems that the man and I are of an accord.

Patterns


I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
~Amy Lowell

Patterns, patterns, and more patterns....give me a vision of a woman, a proud woman, a face unlined but eyes ancient, lashed by the corset-strings to the great rack of a society that is breaking her just a little more with every turn. Show me the afterglow of a dream in ruins, and tell me that all this has a purpose.

What have I felt today?

Residual anger...it shouldn't have happened.

Loneliness. I miss the people who aren't with me, and I can't wait till they come home.

Trepidation. No one's ever sure of the future. But I look ahead and see so many maybes, so many could-bes, that I find it hard to pick and choose the ones I would want, because I know I can't have them all...

Frustration--sometimes I just wish that baloon would come and take me up beyond the churches and steeples, to the city in the sky filled with pretty people where everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves

Confusion, sadness, resentment. I never sorted out that jigsaw puzzle...I still can't seem to make sense of the picture. I feel energy building to some sort of a climax, but I can't foresee the outcome. All I know is I both want it and don't.

Mmmm....sometimes I wish I could write like e.e. cummings...and sometimes I just get frustrated and I'm like ok that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever!! More the former, though. I got his complete works from the library and was quite interested to discover that more than a few were rather sexually frank, if not downright explicit. I always imagined him to be this old man who only wrote about death and spring and puddles. They're not overly appealing since they're all written from a male point of view, and you get the feeling that he didn't like all of these woman. Either that, or in a very messed up way he thought using terms like "manure-shaped head", "white worm of her nakedness" and "vital vicious vegetable of her mouth" to describe his partners was flattering. *shakes head* I think I'd rather prefer thinking that he just didn't like them anymore.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,slowing stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new
~e.e. cummings

Can you imagine the havoc that must have wreaked on whichever typist did e.e.cumming's work? you can't use spellcheck because it would go insane. but then again, if he messed up, we'd never figure it out, and maybe neither would he.

I got paid today! Yay. 136 bucks, which means I now have around two hundred in the bank. Not bad, but I still have a long way to go if I want to pay for that HILL trip.
Oooh and more good news, I got a 5 on the AP History exam! My teacher, Fitz, called Heather's house to tell her--she got a five too--and found me and Sara there, watching the Marilyn Monroe movie How To Marry A Millionaire. (It is not, as a my mom mistakenly thought, connected to the reality show Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire). We were all on the phone with him for quite a while, and it was highly amusing as Fitz always is when you're not in his class. History was frustrating as all hell this year because while he is hysterically funny most of the time, his totally over-the-top comments and jokes make my inner feminist rise to the occasion. Even our fights were generally amusing, to be sure, and I managed to produce two satirical ballads for him, to his great delight. Plus the aura in that class was so very male. I mean, we had Steve (with whom Fitz is in a love-adoration relationship), the class clowns/village idiots Tim and Conor, silent Andrew, Farmboy Jeff, sort of silent Luke, Steve's tall pal, and the ever-bigoted future dictator, Trevor. And for girls? Ones that stayed quiet or always agreed with him and laughed, except for the Back Row Girls which were me, Sara, Heather (always vocal. always.) Caitlin, and sometimes Ashley too. Fitz believed we were a subversive group, of which I was ringleader, out to undermine his control of the class. Actually we were just annoyed, and spent our time cracking jokes and passing notes openly. All this may have conspired to eqarn me the Most Likely to Drive A Teacher to Suicide in the Paper Plate Awards. Fitz likes me anyway.
Of course the class was a blast in many respects, even though I hate US history in general, but now he's bothering me to take his class next year. AP government. Well number one, I don't like politics. They bore me. Number two, I don't know if I wantt to take a third AP exam, along with Bio and English. However, I know I can ace Fitz' class, it looks good on the old transcript, and a part of me does miss the fat Irishman. Just dropping in wouldn't be like seeing his chubby face lighting up with malicious glee every day. Plus it's first period, not eighth, and it's only half a year. In conclusion, unless something happens to stop me I'm probably going to sign myself up. Rae's taking it too, I think. Sara tried to tell me not too, which was kind, but the more I think the more I kind of want to.
This is all moot, of course, if it won't fit my schedule. But---gasp---the best news of all?? Mrs. Kane RETIRED! Thank the good Lord above and hallelujah, because if I had to endure another year of her owlish face in the library dealing out detentions left and right, I'd throw a book at her. But what are the chances of a senior spending any time in the library anyway? It's me, so the chances are pretty good. Let's hope the classified ad for the position doesn't go: "Lonely, vitriolic old maid sought for librarian position in parochial school. Must be able to deliver forty-five minute speech on library donors to each and every freshman student. Ugliness a plus."
Fitz also told me that Haglund told him that our Bio class is all female. Interesting, I've never been in a single sex class before...unless you count Creative Writing this year, with poor Andrew the lone representative of his gender. I miss that class, though not the dreaded Lynchie.

Power went out today. This isn't an unknown occurrence, but it was the first time in memory when it went out and stayed out, for about two hours. There I was, in the fading light of dusk with a pile of oh-so tempting books fresh from the library, unable to read in front of the windows. I'm not particularly fond of trying to balance a flashlight and turn pages at the same time, so instead I lit a bunch of candles (enough to send my mom into a panic: "Didn't you hear about that house fire in Hartford that was started by a candle?!") in the kitchen and started on The Plague Tales, which fit the dark-ish environment. The effect of the candles was cool. It made everything so warm, made the room small and cozy. It felt as though the only real world was what was inside the radius of illumination, and that everything beyond loomed large and dark and foreign. I was actually rather annoyed when the lights came back on and the TV started up. I think we all underestimate the virtue of silence. So says the little philosopher, sitting here making an ungodly clacking on the keys while her music blares through the headphones! It really was nice, though.

I bought the most interesting pants today. I haven't bought really tight pants in a while, so it was odd not feeling the usual swish of air when I moved. But the cool thing is that instead of a zipper, they lace up with rawhide in front. They'd be perfect if not for the fact that I really need to go get a belt. Cause they pretty much fall off when I sit down. Among the other purchases made were a pair of hot pink underwear with a duck on them!! :-) Really, I'm amazed that our fascination with these particular waterfowl has endured four years now. I wonder if we'll still be referring to them as the ducks when we're in college. Or when we see them at class reunions, god forbid.
Nine fifteen already. Whatever shall I do with myself now? Go back and read, probably. I forgot to get a book of crossword puzzles to keep me occupied at work. Reading Glamour and Cosmo is certainly intriguing for a while, but the interest pales quickly. I did get the entire collection of e.e. cumming's poems and thomas more's utopia. I shouldn't have gotten another classic read when I wanted to start the Republic, I know, but it was such a cute book.
When I am rich, instead of a personal shopper I will have a personal reader. This lucky individual will be payed by me, with full benefits, to spend their time reading books and finding ones that I would like. Of course they'd have to know me pretty well, but I could train them, right? Saves me the time. Book lists and reviews rarely help me; one because I have no intention of buying the books until I have read them and like them, and two because sometimes books that appeal to one reviewer would never click with me. I just can't rely on them. My friends and I all tend to read the same books, so they're not always a source of new material. They do get me moving sometimes, though. Example: Rae mentions Republic one day, Michelle goes home, digs up her copy, and finally opens it. Next day: hasn't gotten past opening it. Oops.

Yaaaawwwwn. I don't know why I bother staying up late at night. Then I'm just extra grumpy when Jen wakes me up to drive her to work. It is so amazing that I haven't hit anything, cause I'm on complete autopilot in the morning.
I have to stop reading those vampire books. I need a change of pace! I've read five of the seven Greg lent me. I think I'm going to work on Plato's Republic tomorrow anyway...that's one of the ones I've had but haven't gotten to. Rae was telling me today about how it supposedly promotes something oddly close to communism, so I intend to read and find out. I'm not quite expecting it to be a thriller of a read....my mom's not going to be trying to shoo me off to bed with me saying, "But mom! Socrates is going to totally put Thrasymachus in his place with his next speech!!" Yes, dear Thrasymachus really is a character. The others are Glaucon, Cleitophon, Cephalus, Adeimantus, and good old Polemarchus. Thank God for the English and names like Tom, Dick and Harry. And Greg.
Anyway Plato's not that bad. I really like the Last Days of Socrates. It made me sad, but at the same time I understood why he couldn't escape. Leaving would just have proved that he really was a bad influence on the society; in death he validated his own principles and practically made himself a martyr. Either the death scene translates really really well from Greek, or someone played with it a little, cause it is completely saddening. Although I don't think Greek really does translate well, cause I had a book of Sappho's poetry and some of it just didn't flow like I bet the original does. It's funny, but her poetry used to be on the Catholic Church's list of banned books. With the stuff you see today, hers is bedtime stories comparatively. She mentioned loving another woman--egads! All who read it shall be damned to eternal--er--damnation!
Oooh speaking of damnation, I want to read Dante's Inferno again. I made it through Purgatorio and Inferno, but never Paradiso. I told Mr. Janeiro that I thought that was too boring and he almost had an aneurysm. Apparently all the true meaning of the entire tale is to be found in that section. I have a sneaking suspicion that he means all the high-minded religious symbolism really comes into play up there, and I wasn't really reading for that. I was reading one for the inventive punishments and views of Hell, cause that was cool, and second because I found it ironically humorous how Dante used this classic as a jab at his contemporary enemies. The poor guy got driven out of Venice, and was pretty pissed about it. Note that all of his enemies suffer particularly horrible torments. Also I got one of my favorite quotes from the Inferno:
"There is no greater sorrow in this eternal woe, than to remember in pain our moment of happiness."
That was voiced by Paolo and Francesca, who were in one of the circles of Hell for adultery. Francesca was Paolo's brother's wife. Naughty, naughty! He caught them and killed them, and their punishment, since they valued the physical over all else, is to spend eternity as formless winds. They claim that their love triumphed and they're still together, but you';re supposed to infer (I read the notes) that they really didn't triumph, since they blame each other for being there.
My fingers, neck, back and feet all hurt. Time for bed.

This is another Breadloaf creation that I like. It might help if you'd heard of Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote the Spoon River Anthology. Basically he created this fictional town called Spoon River, and every citizen who is buried in the cemetery gets to talk about their experiences, good or bad, from beyond the grave. Thel title of every poem was usually just the person's name. They were very understated, and you usually have to read between the lines to get out of it what he meant you to.
This is one of them, nowhere near the best but it was the first one that came up...
Judge Selah Lively
Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
And then suppose through your diligence,
And regular church attendance,
You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And through it all
They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes
And your polished boots? And then suppose
You became the County Judge?
And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,
And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants
Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand
Before the bar and say "Your Honor" --
Well, don't you think it was natural
That I made it hard for them?
~Edgar Lee Masters

This is another one I like.
Mrs. Charles Bliss
Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him
For the sake of the children,
And Judge Somers advised him the same.
So we stuck to the end of the path.
But two of the children thought he was right,
And two of the children thought I was right.
And the two who sided with him blamed me,
And the two who sided with me blamed him,
And they grieved for the one they sided with.
And all were torn with the guilt of judging,
And tortured in soul because they could not admire
Equally him and me.
Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars
Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak.
And no mother would let her baby suck
Diseased milk from her breast.
Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls
Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight,
No warmth, but only dampness and cold --
Preachers and judges!
~Edgar Lee Masters

Anyway, here's my attempt at creating another Spoon River denizen:

Mrs. Doctor Brown

We came to town as newlyweds;
he, a proud physician starting out on his own,
I, a newly minted woman
eager to prove herself with pots and pans, needle and thimble.
But too soon I found that winters in Spoon River are long and weary,
and too few nights is the doctor’s bed kept warm.
Cold, too cold was I those long winter nights—
and then suddenly I was warm again, happy and content
to be Mrs. Doctor. I was the wife of a good man.
But nine months later I choked back tears when he said
our baby had his mother’s eyes,
knowing full well that they were not.
Yet I kept my silence all my days;
I keep it still.

Now for this one, the original was pretty rough, but it had the germ of an idea. It took like four or five different versions before it did what I wanted it to do, but I like this one.

I realized today that I haven't written anything in quite a while. I'm never usually very prolific during the summers, but still some part of me feels sad when I don't have anything new to be playing around with. I have, however, been revising a lot of older stuff that has aged sufficiently to allow me to look at it objectively. Mostly stuff from Breadloaf, and damn, some of it's good! That atmosphere up there was so utterly perfect. I wrote more poems there in four days than I ever have before. Somewhere around thirty, and at least half of them were decent even on the first go-round.
One thing I saw in Vermont confirmed something I'd thought for a long time. You can always tell the more professional, long-term writers from the ones who've been writing for a shorter time or who never share their work. The latter group will always refuse to edit anything, believing that it comes out of them riding some crystal wave of spiritual clarity...divine, perfect, and something that should not be messed with under any circumstances. If you should suggest improvements to these people, unless they're totally obvious ones, they will respond by squirming, and being uncomfortable, and ignoring the advice. People who've had more experience writing, or just more exposure to pro writers, are more comfortable editing and letting people comment on their work. I just can't understand the non-editors. They always have this lengthy defense on how they really don't feel the need to edit, because they wrote at a very stressful time and that's pure emotion on that page, dude, and they write exactly what they feel, etc, etc. But they don't realize that writing a poem is so often like digging a gem out of a mine. It's pretty enough, in a raw sort of way, when you get it, but polish is the only thing that can make it shine. Just going back and changing a few words later on, after the passion has faded, can mean so much. Some of my poems have gone from "meh" to "yes!" just by rearranging things months after I wrote it. Plus if you go back and edit, there's always a chance you can salvage a few good lines or even one cool phrase from an otherwise terrible poem that should never see the light of say again.
Of course, further support for the pro-editing camp is the fact that if you want to be a writer, and you don't want to edit, you're pretty much screwed. All famous poets had to edit. Not just because they had bitchy editors who demanded it--every writer I've talked to has had at least one of those--but because they understood that editing their work helped it grow. That's why Walt Whitman had ten editions of Leaves of Grass. Ten! Every time, there were subtle differences, minute revisions. No way e.e. cummings made all those cool concrete poems and such on the first try. He had to go back and say, hey look, there's more words I can totally mangle!
I just finished re-editing this poem, another of the Breadloaf bunch. This could be a member of the subdivision Robert Frost poems. If you didn't know, Frost lived in Middlebury, Vermont, right down the road from the Breadloaf campus. The whole place is like a monument to his memory, and he gets quoted every two seconds.By the time I left, I was damned sick of the man, but I understood how he could retreat to someplace like that. It was so beautiful. Anyway, if you're familiar with some of his more famous poems, you'll notice that this one is stitched together with lines from of a few old favorites.

An Apology Well-Intentioned


I entered the yellow wood knowing full well what I would find,
Seeking validation, or perhaps only peace of mind
His oft-quoted poems replaying internally
I knew which road he meant for me to take, surely.
But the day had been long, with miles to go ere I slept,
And so I broke a promise that ought to have been kept.
With one sly glance about me, down the traveled path I stole,
Emerging from the woods again swiftly, but not quite whole.
This world may end in fire and it may end in ice
But before it does, I hope this apology will suffice:

Dear Sir: I realize now my foolish choice made little sense;
So I promise you that one day will I
Take the road less traveled by—
And I hope that you will not know the difference.

If I put the original up here, you might not really notice the difference. I added maybe three or four words and changed punctuation. But I can feel the difference between them. I actually came up with the last three lines first and them made a poem. I thought they were cool.

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
Kahlil Gibran

Ain't that the truth. Dammit, I miss Greg!

I stayed up till about two fifteen in the morning the other day to reread the book I mentioned in my last post....it's actually called Howl's Moving Castle, not just Howl's Castle. And it's even better than I remembered! I hadn't read it in a long enough span of time that I'd pretty much forgotten the plot twists, though not the ending. Must have been two or three years at least. I realized, though, that this book had the same kind of age-transcendent qualities that Harry Potter does. I must have been around eleven or twelve when I first read this, and now at sixteen I still couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. It was only a few hundred pages, so it's not terribly long, but it really maanges to pack in the storyline. The author, Diana Wynne Jones--i couldn't remember her name, but I knew she had three of them--had a bunch of other really good books, especially the Nine of Lives of Christopher Chant and Witch Week, but they pale in comparison to this one. I think I'll have to go buy myself a copy, in case some terrible mishap destroys the library's. Seriously, though, read this book!

Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'est born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

~John Donne

The first stanza of this poem was in a book called Howl's Castle that I read years ago. It's a really good book actually; there's wizards and enchanted things and a demon that lives in the fireplace called Calcifer. And they pretty much describe Howl himself as a hottie, even if this is a book for youngerish teenagers. I actually don't know what age it's written for, since I never stuck to one reading level. I'm probably going to get it out again and reread it. It even has a sequel!
But I digress. There's this whole part of the book about this spell or curse that involves Howl. The spell is really the first stanza, it just wasn't credited so I thought the author made it up. It actually gets acted out in the book....Calcifer was a falling star, and Howl gave him his human heart to keep him alive...he ends up telling the truth for once to Sophie while they're in this fierce windstorm...it all plays out.
Anyway, I was quite surprised to spot the whole thing in a book of John Donne's poetry that I was reading the other day. There's a whole section of this book devoted to love poems, of which this song is one. But if you really read it, you notice the last few lines don't exactly sound loving. If you find someone true and fair, the narrator doesn't want to know about it, even if he might find her next door, because even if she were true to the person that found her, she would show her true colors eventually and be unfaithful to others. Hmmm...doesn't exactly sound like "My love is like a red, red rose", does it? Turns out every one of this fellow's so-called love poems revolve around the fact that Love Sucks. Or, more correctly, Women Are Evil and They Suck. They all end with him getting his heart trampled over, women being cruel and heartless bitches, and life generally being unpleasant. Aside from that, it's really good poetry.
Amazing, Donne had a long happy marriage to this woman named Anne, to whom he wrote really touching love poems that never make it into the books alongside the spicier, women-are-whores stuff. Apparently the works we see are those that reflect the cynicism that resulted from his earlier encounters with the female sex. He must have met some mighty nasty dames to be that angry about life.

Today I decided to play amateur librarian and organize my books downstairs. There were about a hundred or so on this shelf and I broke them into fiction, classics, and philosophy...then for no particular reason I separated the classics and philosophy sections into nationalities. English, American, Russian, German, Greek/Roman. Some of them I had to actually peruse the author bio to figure out where they went. George Orwell, for one, turned out to be English. And Rabelais turned out to be a a fourteenth century French monk. I actually think I knew that from freshman history, but I forgot. Unfortunately, the one thing I couldn't do, try as I might, was get rid of some of them. I have no more physical space for books. The books in my room barely count, since those are ones from younger years for the most part, sci-fi fantasy and the lot. One down stairs bookshelf is now full of my books, the other one has my mom's plus some random ones, my dad's take up the one in the den plus all the spaces under desks, and my sister's bookcase is overstuffed. There's nowhere for me to put them anymore. (Actually I realized this like a week ago, and guess what I did the next day? Visited this thrift store bookshop with Heather and bought eight more books, of course.) My mom suggested I "pare down" the ones I have. But for some reason I have a maniacal obsession with keeping every one of them. Some of them I have to keep because I haven't had time to read them yet. Some are ones that I keep meaning to force myself to read, like Emerson and Hemingway and *shudder* Marx and Engels. There are a few I started and gave up on because the foreign names got annoying, like Anna Karenina and Dostoyevksy's Crime and Punishment. I don't think either one had a happy ending anyway. The large majority, of course, are books that I read and liked and keep around in case I want to read them again. But there are books, like everyone damned one of the Tom Clancys, that I have read, and loved, but I know I will never ever pick up again. They are way too long, way too complicated, and once you know all the twists and turns there's no point. But still they sit, nine of them, taking up more than a foot of valuable book real estate, and I don't have the heart to make them leave. It's like a collector's impulse. The only one I don't have is The Bear and The Dragon, which of course I've read, but I know if I see it somewhere I'll buy it, just so it can join its siblings on the shelf. It's crazy.

Yes!!!! My sister finally has a social engagement that will remove her from the house until Saturday morning! Thank the Lord above. Jen's awfully lucky that I make a point to be at home as little as is humanly possible. I guess I have to trade really terrible summers for the bliss of being alone during the school year. It's so beautiful to have a house entirely to yourself all week. Of course my mom is physically present at certain hours, but we don't see each other much and we get along fabulously. That was my reward for fourteen years of living with my dad's continual presence: solitude. This year will be even better because now I have a car! My dad's car, ironically. It might be said that I profited in certain ways from his death, but I didn't really. As much as I appreciate being alone and having the truck, it's nowhere near a fair trade for a parent.
That's the reason that truck has always meant so much to me. My dad loved it so much that in my mind it's inextricably linked to him. Every morning I'd be getting up as he was leaving the house. I'd look out my window as he'd back the car out of the driveway, hop out, run around the other side of the car, flip open the mirror which is too wide to fit into the garage, hop back in, and drive away. It was funny to watch in the wintertime.
For a long time after he died, I'd be walking up the street coming home from school, and I'd come around the bend and see the Tahoe sitting there in the driveway and I'd let myself pretend that it had never happened. I'd pretend that he'd come home early from work, that he was down in the den doing paperwork and that when I stood in the doorway he'd look up and say "Hi honey, how was your day" with that sort of tired smile. I really almost believed it sometimes, when I could see the light was on downstairs, that maybe it really was some stupid dream and he hadn't died. But I could only pretend until I opened the front door and there was no one there. Those weren't the only times I pretended, of course. There were other times when I'd be in the car with my mom and I'd see a bright red Tahoe and I'd immediately check the driver to see if it was him. Those times I wished so hard that I'd see a big guywith glasses and thinning salt and pepper hair. Like maybe he'd just go cruising past us as though he had never been gone at all. Those were the kind of tricks I used to play on myself.
It's only been two years, and look how things have changed. I drive his truck now; he always said I was the only one tall enough to drive it anyway. He also said he'd never ever let me have it, but as it turned out he didn't get much of a say. Now when I come into the den, it's really my space, not his. I took over his desk, put away all his books and his stuff and put my decorations everywhere. The drawers are a disaster. A lot of the stuff is still around; this big paperweight that says "DAD", this rock that I cleverly painted to resemble a penguin, his weird lamp--the base of which is made of part of a pipe or something from a decommissioned reactor. And of course his books, from the Valve Designer's Handbook to the Handbook of Thermodynamics--none of which books actually come close to fitting in your hand. But it's like his presence is fading, and it's faded in the truck too since I stuffed my CDs in there, I've probably got makeup rolling around where he kept his car phone, and I have a hula hoop in my trunk for some ungodly reason. He's still there, though. That truck was more his than anything else he owned. Of course I love that it's big and powerful, and I love the feeling of being so far above the other puny little cars on the road. Most people assume that's the real reason it means so much to me, but that has nothing to do with it. My dad has everything to do with it. If something happened to it, nothing my mom could do to me would be worse than destroying a link to my dad, one of the few that I have left that I can really feel.