prize

I buy nearly all of my clothes at thrift stores. I used to leave that out of my self-definition, but oh, it's in now. Anyway, last week I found a big white t-shirt with a picture of a cow on it that says 'I LIKE GRASS' and it was worth a buck and a half even though it's too big to be anything but sleepwear. I can't wait until I've worn it and washed it enough that it gets soft and thin.

and I remembered to say thanks

There are days when the highlight can be the morning in bed with a book and the afternoon testing out the new hiking sandals and the evening of ice cream at the outside tables of the fast food place down the street and watching a sparrow try three times before on the fourth try achieving lift-off with the french fry in its beak.

left

You know the minute before the minute you lose your cool? Three times in three days I got stuck right there. And that's fine, that's fine, because while I'm stuck I can see both ends of the hallway and one end will inevitably make more sense than the other. Even if I don't chose the right one, it's a choice, not a reflex.

individual

I spent all of today more or less alone in public, and I'm upset with myself when I catch myself trying to defend, trying to offer up excuses for why this is ok. OF COURSE this is ok. I am not now nor will ever be the type of girl who needs to be on someone's arm, or is reluctant to eat out alone or treat myself to a movie, just me. Damnit.

stop! go back!

I've decided that the only way to salvage today is to wash my feet and put fresh sheets on my bed.

earning it

One of the best parts about life is a Saturday morning when you wake up at 6:00 and it's already sunny, so you open the window and fall back asleep for another two or three hours, because.

logophile

Am liking the word moribund today.

lopside

Did I tell you I diagnosed my fatal flaw? One has time to think when chasing magazines up and down cramped stairways and keeping one hand in a back pocket, just in case. Perhaps fatal flaw is too pejorative. Roadblock. I've been in the business of whittling down lately, like the wardrobe full of sweaters I'll never wear. And whittling down my appetite, and the extent of my scheming about (A) but not (B). But what I'm getting at is, I'm whittling down my pile of failings to the heart of the thing: I think, humbly, that I'm not stupid. I'm quick. But here's the rub—although my mind belongs in the category of (at least a little) above average, my MEMORY certainly does not. I might not be wholly anchorless, totally unaffected by what I knew and do know and see and hear, but my ability to anchor—my ability to retain and organize the things I learn—is the ability of someone below average intellect. If I had a memory to match my raw brain, I'd be someone else entirely. Probably, I'd be my brother. My mind gets a B and my memory gets a D, and what the hell, why would I be made like this? Wouldn't I be happier if they met in the middle and I was two Cs? I have time to think about such things, and I'm learning to write my discoveries down, because if I don't, in a month, I'll be heading in a direction quite the opposite.

tightrope

I'm not sure if I'll be able to strike the right balance of none and enough before I collapse. Or of now and in time.

I lied about the 'forward!'

--sort of. Admitting there is a problem is the first step to solving it? Well, what I have here is admittance.
There are voices under my feet again. A few minutes ago it was 10:00 and I sat down at the piano without stopping to think of it being 10:00 and made it through half a song before I realized I can't DO that anymore. I remember the way in high school I used to crave the piano so badly late at night, and then later, when I had an electric keyboard and headphones and could give in to those cravings, it wasn't what I wanted anymore. So it's ok that I'm not playing right now because if I could I probably wouldn't be.
Last weekend I was in an unfamiliar city meeting people who seemed already familiar, even though they were not. Tomorrow I will be meeting Confederate soldiers and a 8 month old kid named Louie, who, based on the pictures I've seen, has a grinning, drooling beach ball for a head.

forward!

The earrings I'm wearing today are a talisman. I am braced for an explosion and fully expecting to finally reach that branch in the trail in 3... 2... 1...

trip

I was holding a city in my hand
weighing it
against the green hill roads
with no lines
and nodding in one direction
(love)
while staring down
its opposite

green grass and all that

I have forbidden fruit issues.

wanderlust

When I'm driving and I turn down a side road I like or am following whims, it is a bit of a rush to think, well, if my car breaks down right here, when I call the tow truck I will have no excuse for why I'm three miles back in the country on gravel roads. And then, when I'm back on track five minutes or an hour later, I can always tell the instant I cross over from what, why?? territory onto solid on-my-way-home. I wouldn't have to have a story to go along with stuck in the ditch on this road.

harumph

What's MY excuse? Caffeine headache. What's YOURS?

the good parts

Sometimes I'm bored of point A to B. I'd rather start in the middle--when we were sitting on the sidewalk and the duck couple waddled by. There are few things (maybe nothing at all) that delight me as instantaneously as ducks do. To say nothing of ducks in a pair, a mallard and his woman, moseying down the sidewalk on the edge of town, on their way to the creek a block off, necks bobbing, tail feathers waggling. It was twilight, and I can assume they were on a little duck date. A romantic stroll. Was that the highlight of today? Maybe. But I did also really like the way the cheap wine and stale cigarette smoke didn't stick to me, but the friendships did.

a stern talking to

April. Sometimes, you know, a Thing is just a thing. It's not a symbol, it's not a portent, it's not even the beginning of a metaphor. When a wheel on the collapsible shelves in the basement whacked me on the hand, maybe it was just an oops, not a scolding directed at me from the library gods. And the ring on my finger with the silver leaves isn't necessarily a representation of new life or openings, and it's probably not a stand-in for thorns. There's no point in continuing to mistake silence with Silence, no point in finding the shapes in the coffee stain on my sleeve. If it rains and the morning is gray, well, it is spring after all. I don't have to always tell myself that the skies are mourning along with me because a beloved roommate has moved out and my brothers are away. I guess there is sometimes a reason to look under and around the actual, to pull meaning out from where it's hidden. But self, you go too far. Too far, when you're reading a sentence that has been handed to you, and you realize if you take it completely out of context, it might Mean something quite different. That is way too much of sifting through way too small a pile. Stop fracturing the the solid into all those shards of imaginary. ...All poetry aside.