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.