the habit of being

I feel alone (disconnected). another of those -things- we have. yesterday was floating and fish and I wanted to be kissing someone but I kept seeing myself running my fingers through your hair and that was more than enough. I kept that for hours.
memories swim about like very small fish in a very small ocean
Being to the point won’t do it for me anymore. I’m sorry.
(capital letters don’t make anything better)
Katharine is a Roman name. it comes from the Greek name Catherine
it means pure and loving
pure
-pretty virgins in long white dresses soft blonde hair falling down their backs singing to their god (goddess?) in tiny voices living together in that perfect temple in the middle of nowhere guarding the secrets of life loving one another
no one could touch them no one could hurt them until those men killed them all…-
That was May?

[Nile River]
-longest river in the world
-4100 miles
-source: Lake Victoria
-3rd largest lake in the world
-stretches from the highlands of eastern africa to the mediterranean sea
-sources called “mountains of the moon” because they were so remote
-after leaving the Sudd (swamp)- White Nile
-flows north
-source of the Blue Nile: Lake Tana (Etheopian Highlands)
-6 cataracts
-Upper Egypt: 1st cataract to delta
-Lower Egypt: delta
-northbound boats: drifted
-southbound boats: used large sails
-Egyptians depended on the flooding for their crops
-flooding occurred annually, could be calculated
-worshipped as a god
-beyond the banks of the Nile, Egyptian land is desert
-severe change in land
-deserts blocked out invaders

I spent my school day writing you a letter. It was long, drawn-out, and sentimental. Overly, of course. I’m not going to mail it, or record it, or ever mention it again. Some things are best left unsaid. I do need to know who lied.

My parents bought rollerblades. I’ve seen my mother fall on her ass once. It was scary. I don’t like this at all. Not in the least. Nope. I can’t even rollerskate properly. ( Properly meaning while not holding onto a wall. ) I’m such a wimp. I can’t start many sentences with letters other than I. My grandparents moved their trip down here from Spring Break to next weekend. They’re staying in the Trellis Garden Inn, not my room. This is a good thing. My grandparents are nice. Aren’t they all? No, they are not. My stepfather’s family is terrifying. They’re all racist midgets with minimal education and they scare the living daylights out of me. I’m grateful not to be truly related to them. I only have to see them once or twice a year. NONE of them can spell my name correctly, but this can be overlooked by the fact that the only place any of them write my name is on checks. Do I just look like a Catherine? or a Kathryn? or a Katherine? Jennifer has her ever first oral report tomorrow. I feel for her. Oral reports are evil things. You simply must memorize everything. This is the only method that has ever worked for me. My mother is telling my grandfather I don’t need a top of the line laptop. Where does she get these insane ideas? I’m in desperate need of a Pentium III processor, you know. I’ll find out about Governor’s Honors next month. I don’t know whether I want to go anymore. Flashbacks of the Summer Program for the Gifted at GSU haunt me. They all hated me. I was the weirdo. I do indeed have a genuine outcast phase. Not that it’s over or anything. Soon I’ll start donning all black clothes and writing angsty poetry and cutting myself. Oh wait, I’ve already done that. Damn, what’s a Typical Teenager to do? I’m feeling bitter. Can you tell?

I have a hat with Grateful Dead bears on it. My uncle gave it to me for Xmas a couple years ago. My uncle is extremely cool. He’s a newspaper editor in Newark, Delaware and he has more Grateful Dead bootlegs than I would have thought possible for one man to make in one lifetime. I have no music at all by the Dead. I’ll have to go raid my mom’s old tape box. I think I’ve already salvaged all the good stuff though. Back to my uncle Al. He wears patchouli cologne.

Today my English class got into a heated discussion about whether or not suicide was an unforgivable sin. Mrs. Burke claims the Bible states nowhere that suicides go to hell. We were supposed to be discussing Julius Caesar. I wanted to crawl under my desk. I swear the people at my school cannot even begin to grasp the concept of separation of church and state. Not that Mrs. Burke’s tales of her trip to Israel aren’t interesting and all, but enough is enough. One girl actually argued that suicide is not unforgivable because once God grants salvation he can’t take it away.

Jennifer called me to ask if I was ignoring her. I was playing gin. It was hilarious in its own little way.

These two girls at my school want to set me up with some guy I’ve never met. I was considering going along with this, reason being that I haven’t participated in any nonacademic activities with people my own age in literally years. I came to my senses and pissed off Heather by saying I’d not be attending. I’d like to steal Gloria’s boyfriend, actually. I’ve never spoken to him, but he’s a longhaired college student who has been proven both a genius and insane. Something tells me we’d hit it off rather well. I hear they’ve made love in a church.

Her name isn’t really Gloria.

The book sale was last weekend. I got many new books.
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
Warren French’s book about Salinger
Aristotle’s Poetics (I want to learn Greek now)
We the Living by Ayn Rand
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Diana Maychick’s Audrey Hepburn biography
Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gigi and Selected Writings by Colette
Bhagavad-Gita {I’m going to become one of those cowgirls that make love with Krishna (gopies? something like that) if the Buddhist nun thing doesn’t work out}
and I think that’s all
Mom got The Sweet Hereafter so I’ll get to read that sometime soon
oh I got The Agony and the Ecstasy too

I saw the most beautiful little girl in the world. She was absolutely perfect… a little Omish girl with long brown hair in two braids and a perfect face and gorgeous eyes and we just stood there staring at one another for the longest time. funny black shoes.

Festival is tomorrow. It’s time to bring out the black velvet dress and polish my flute.

There’s a whole fucking chapter on transcendental knowledge.

Well, there was this nurse…

When I watch sex scenes in movies I barely even notice there’s a man in the screen. I used to think this meant I was gay. Now I’m more inclined to believe it means I appreciate beauty. The pigeon is attacking my roses.
If I were to fly into your life this second would you embrace me or run away screaming? You know I would never leave. A million days and lies and miles couldn’t free you. Or no. I am the trapped one. I kiss my invisible chains each morning and growl at the sun I’m not seeing across your back. Sleep forever.

Auburn I.

BOREDOM Jennifer thinks her pretty friend is brilliant. sigh. maybe I could get her (pretty friend not jenny) shot.
James is sending me Tool MP3s. See how fun and exciting my life is?
I went to the movies today. Exiting mi casa is a huge deal. I saw Shakespeare in Love and drooled over Gwyneth Paltrow. It was an excellent movie. yaddayadda. Soon I shall see Elizabeth. I’ve already seen Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. I’m missing a best picture nominee. or two. Mission!
I made chocolate pudding. All by myself. I’m so impressive. All of my internet friends were impressed, and they couldn’t even experience the intense yumminess.
Round and round we go. Where we’ll stop, nobody knows.

MUSIC Such was the extent of my boredom that I made a list of my music. I have a very shallow musical ocean I’m afraid. anyone want to send me cds?

Katharine’s Horribly Small CD Collection
1. Tori Amos / Little Earthquakes
2. Tori Amos / Boys for Pele
3. Tori Amos / Under the Pink
4. Tori Amos / From the Choirgirl Hotel
5. Bauhaus / 1979-1983 volumes one and two
6. Cure / Wish
7. Ani DiFranco / Dilate
8. Ani DiFranco / Living in Clip
9. Ani DiFranco / Little Plastic Castle
10. Hole / Pretty on the Inside
11. Nine Inch Nails / Pretty Hate Machine
12. Siouxsie and the Banshees / Once Upon a Time
13. Siouxsie and the Banshees / The Rapture
14. The Sisters of Mercy / First and last and Always
15. The Sisters of Mercy / Floodland
16. The Sisters of Mercy / Vision Thing
17. The Sisters of Mercy / A Slight Case of Overbombing
18. Switchblade Symphony / Serpentine Gallery
19. Switchblade Symphony / Bread and Jam for Francis
20. Cowboy Junkies / 200 More Miles
21. Various / Gothic Rock 2
22. Various / Undead (british gothic rock comp.) volumes 1-3
23. Various / Soundtrack from Stealing Beauty
24. Michael Nyman / Soundtrack from The Piano
25. Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, etc / Highlights from Phantom of the Opera
26. Dvorak / Symphony No. 9, Carnival Overture, and Slovic Dances 1 & 2 (conducted by Leonard Bernstein)
27. Gershwin / Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, etc. (conducted by Lorin Maazal and Arthur Fiedler)

and her also horribly small tape collection
(random order)
1. Rickie Lee Jones / Pirates
2. BoDeans / Hope & Love & Sex & Dreams
3. Bonnie Raitt / Luck of the Draw
4. Janis Joplin / Greatest Hits
5. J. S. Bach / Toccata & Fugue in D minor, Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, etc.
6. Tori Amos / Amy’s favorites
7. Dixie Dregs / Night of the Living Dregs, etc (bootleg)
8. Dire Straits / ?
9. Ed Van Fleet / Oceans
10. Various / my grandfather’s nifty old country music
11. Pachelbel / Canon
12. Various & Amy Ketchum / a gift from miss amy
13. Smashing Pumpkins / Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
14. Martin Davich and a couple others / ER: Original Television Theme and Score
15. Various / Songs from Friends
16. Cowboy Junkies, Marti Jones / mixtape
17. Cowboy Junkies, Lyle Lovett / mixtape
18. Alanis Morissette / Jagged Little Pill
19. Various / Soundtrack from Dirty Dancing
20. Various / Goth Mix #1 (mathieu)

I bought a bunch of that during my goth stage. Obviously. wow look how much space that took up!

ONCE The weekend of January 31st, I was not sitting at home being bored as I am this weekend. Let us regress.
okay. Saturday my mother spilled coffee on me. This happened on the way to my GHP interview - during which I received an m&m and soon after which I got soaked walking to the student center in the rain (this was at Clayton College and State University). my interviewers were two very perky ladies who may very well have thought I was idiotic but hid it well enough to prevent me from having an anxiety attack. One of them (the one who gave me the m&m) asked me about my trip up and I related my adventures in fast food restaurant bathrooms attempting to dry my coffee-soaked skirt with the tree-saving hand drier things. Before the interview I was taken to two other rooms. In room number one I wrote an essay and in room number two I read some poems and short passages from various novels which were typed on bright blue paper (the passages not the novels from which they were taken). My favorite of these is from The Chosen by Chaim Potek -

Life is nothing more than a blink of the eye when measured against eternity. There is so much pain in the world; what does it mean to have to suffer so much when life is nothing more than the blink of an eye.
A blink of an eye is in itself nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing, but a man who lives that span; he is something. For he can fill that span with meaning so that its quality is immeasurable, even though it’s quantity may be insignificant.
It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning. Meaning is not automatically given to life. But a life full of meaning is worthy of rest. And I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.

it seems I have no skill when it comes to writing things in correct sequence. where was I? getting soaked? Yes, well, I got rained on and it was cold outside. I got lost trying to find the student center which prolonged my time in the cold wetness but I did finally locate the building and my mother and then the car and after much difficulty the way out of Morrow..
We went on to Atlanta and went shopping at Phipp’s Plaza and Lenox Square.
I bought two books (Thus Spoke Zarathustra/Nietzsche and Narcissus and Goldmund/Hesse) and two cds. This was still Saturday. We stayed in the Ritz-Carlton that night. It’s oh so nice. Nicer than the Marriott even (!!!). We watched a pay-per-view movie and had room service for dinner. They had creme brulee, my favorite dessert. I got dark chocolate from the turndown lady too. It was amazing. Indeed, indeed. I have a hotel fetish.
okay. sleep. next day. Sunday. It was once again rainy and icky outside. We decided not to come home (who can blame us? it was positively dreary. no one needs to spend four hours on an interstate in such weather when they could be in Atlanta). So, we went shopping again. I bought a yummy grey skirt from the Betsey Johnson store at Lenox Square. The lady working there complimented me on my necklace, which I had made only a few days earlier from some beads which were my grandmother’s. I think I may have been a bit quick to inform her that I made it myself but I doubt she noticed this. She was busy counting the stack of bills I’d given her for the grey skirt. My stepfather later informed me that said grey skirt looks like underwear but I’m willing to forgive. It’s that 80 dollar underwear, you know. We stayed in the Marriott Sunday night and watched the Super Bowl. Oh the poor Falcons. I think that may have been the first time I ever watched an entire football game. We ordered room service supper again (no creme brulee, alas).
more sleep. You’ll never guess what we did Monday… went shopping. I got a shirt to go with the grey skirt. Then we drove home. The grand total was about 700 bucks… in two days! We’re terrible. But that’s pretty impressive, eh? Most of that money was for the hotel rooms. I used my new credit card for the first time. I felt so special. I came home very very broke.
I bought Valentine-making supplies (a pink calligraphy pen and heart stickers and such) that weekend too, but never got around to making any Valentines. I’m sorry I didn’t send you a Valentine. I meant to. It was going to be the most beautiful Valentine ever.

lately.

NEW PLAN When I am eighteen I will use the money Ginny left me when she died to move to Vienna. By day I will sell flowers on street corners. I will wear flowy skirts and enchant people. My hair will be so very long and I’ll talk in rhymes and smile at people I don’t know. My flowers will be the most beautiful because my perfect lover will plant them for me in a sincere meadow (which is much like a sincere pumpkin patch).
By night I’ll work as a turndown lady at the Vienna Marriott. (Putting mints on peoples pillows is the most wonderful thing in the world.) I’ll make everyone have vivid dreams about their favorite things and everyone will wake up happy and the world will be a better place because of me.
When I get home I’ll have someone to sleep with and I won’t be so cold all the time. In my free time I’ll write fairy tales and floating will always be allowed and reality will not be a factor.
Everything around me will be beautiful and my life will be like a pretty movie. It will all be art and love and sleeping and flying.
I’m not sure if you’ll be there or not, but I hope so.
If this doesn’t work I will be a Buddhist nun and become enlightened. I’ll sit under fig trees and be content.

FINALS The man who shot me with a stick stole my bed and the cow eggs I was supposed to be protecting. (I locked the door to the trailer though, I swear. I did everything.) His ransom note said something about a football game between Southeast Bulloch and Screven County. If you put graph paper under a heat lamp and held it up to a mirror you could see the face of the person who wrote it. He had a beard. My brother was secretly on his side until the end. He (the bad guy) shot my dad but my dad wasn’t really my dad.. the bad guy was. (She knew there’d be something about Joe.) He had a beard (already mentioned. oh well.) We were in the jungle when he shot me with the stick (stick as in falls off a tree).
(The police officer who lived down the road -we lived in our house but it was not in our neighborhood- was a skinny highschool kid with a bunch of zits. We had to keep returning to his house b/c the eggs and the bed were stolen on different occasions. The note was found when the bed was stolen)
asleep at 11– a relay in the music room. genius guy couldn’t spell my name on the sign-up sheet. (That’s twice he’s appeared. He was in the four-breast dream.) There was a huge toothbrush involved in the relay. I ran into my English teacher at the end.
Now there’s an equation about sulfuric acid and water and some other stuff that won’t balance no matter how hard I try and it annoys me.
(it was #6. now it’s gone. the rest of the exam was muy facil and I may just be a chemistry queen)
The thing about math tests is that I forget I’m taking them. Sit sit sit, glare, sit, daydream, sit sit, glance at paper, oops. Repeat for two hours or until asleep. Of the sixty problems, I worked about ten (that’s one sixth. see I do have math skills). It’s all right; I can hide until Monday. (I got a 98. psychic… I’m telling you)
Katharine does not want to worry. She does not have to. She can be content. She is not cold like you. Repeat until convinced.
“brush brush brush brush
comb comb comb comb
all girls who like to brush and comb
should have a pet like this at home”

inanimate
god I feel so inanimate
like notebook paper
waiting to be crumpled up and thrown away and forgotten
dammit.
I’m just stuck in that moment after a sigh.

NOW I’m eatdrinking Ramen soup and sitting in spilt Ramen soup and Ramen soup vapor is helping my blocked nasal passages and Ramen soup is soothing my burnt throat and Ramen soup is being shared with my pigeoncat and it’s all about Ramen soup baby.
Serendipity was my grandmother’s word. I don’t like how it’s become coolcute now.
We have so much in common, you know. martyr and parsley.
I’m going to become a TOOL expert, but first I will buy an album. (I already know that �nima is the album and �nema is the song. Yay.)
Open your heart to me.