the habit of being

The scene is charred black with a hint of navy in the air. White strips stretch along guiding the way to the edge of the sphere. Every now and then a strangely bent tree shows itself, and she assumes that even a tree must feel some pain in being made to stand in such positions for so long. The rain which pounded the windshield on the drive down has backed off into cold humidity and mercury puddles. An old tape plays. She knows all the words, but she isn’t listening. She only stares off into the distance as if in a trance, seeming so enchanted by those long long lines. Her breathing has fallen to clockwork, her senses blurred over by disinterest, her mind will not shut up.

They are complete opposites, these two I yearn for. She is true beauty by nature, but on closer inspection it becomes obvious she is a genius as well. He, the reverse. Together they lay out the spectrum for everything I’d want to be. If by this age I have drawn in all my wanted attributes, so that I might eat them alive and suck out the juices, if by this age I have seduced all my lacking virtues in others, then certainly it could not be such a terrible thing that I have neither beauty nor genius on my own. I must have something sincere in me, if this glass creature allows my lips on her thighs, my eyes on her thoughts. There must be something unforgettable in me, if she lets me mangle her imagery into a winter coat I’ll never need. Surely I am not stupid, if he’ll put up with my faulty logic and never-ending ideals. He never said an unkind thing about my dramatic unreality, so he must be protecting my pride out of some kind of admiration. There must be something there, or else I have fed myself the harshest lies thinkable. I’ve swallowed such a lethal pill that so much as a breath after its discovery would render me inconsolable with such acidic self-destruction as to turn me to ashes in the waterfall.

Yes, my soul might prove to be nothing more than soot floating in the bubbles of my own private waterfall within the wet ripe redness of a cherry not yet reserved for purposes other than to decorate the vanilla-specked dreams of another. But what of the alternative?

The music shuts off with a click.

Katharine, what are you thinking about?

[pause] Homework.

What homework do you have?

History.

What is it?

Reading.

But that’s not homework, it’s reading. Is it a lot?

A pretty good bit.

What else do you have?

Nothing.

And that’s what you were thinking about?

Yes.

The driver lets it go, but the music is not turned back on. The lines become bright again. She notices the crippled trees, the cold color of the sky, the drizzle of returning rain, drops running races across the passenger’s side window, the the absence of other cars. A rabbit runs across the road up ahead. Did you see that? Yes, you did. Really? Uh huh.

A collage of our relationship would do best for Lust. Many small sketches molded together into one idea with some sloppily scripted words. These words wouldn’t even have to entirely mine, I could use yours. Stolen beauty is such a theme with me it wouldn’t even be insincere to use them on my art. But it is so silly to try to bring sense to it all. I cherish the jumble. The jumble is what I should capture. Something of wilderness, because it is indeed wild. I don’t want to bring margins onto something so nonlinear. I want the rub of grain against grain to be evident, the unfinished understanding, the partial unclarity and ghastliness of it all, along with the have-had equilibrium that exists only when we give up our quests for completion. The pictures pile up so quickly. To tackle them one at a time would take a lifetime. A mean, a consensus, is the only approach to recording it all.

They stop. A gas station. The driver, in her full-length coat, stands out in the cold dampness pumping Premium. She, our hero, walks to the convenience store to use the restroom. On the bathroom wall, above the sink, hangs a mirror. Most of her hair has fallen out of its half-hearted ponytail, but she doesn’t take the time to fix it. On the way out, she passes a car full of boys who stare and shout a few unrecognizable greetings. She won’t look back. In the car again, she locks the door.

I’m feeling stircrazy for undisclosed reasons. I skip back and forth from the kitchen, wherein my mother is tearing up lettuce for three salads into one bowl, and this, my, room, wherein netradio from the University of Pennsylvania is playing.

I’m covered by hundreds of scarves. They hang about my shoulders and strangle my throat. One or two more and surely I could be Juliette Binoche. Mr. M. said he wanted to talk to me about the old recycling lady in Bleu, but he never did. I want that room badly. The blue blue walls and the odd lamp with glass gems. (My own glass gems are in a cylindrical container clearly marked.) Would you come running with a paint bucket on each arm if I gasped loudly enough in your image? For you I moan mostly; in some areas you will never be second.

In my home there have been so many species of olive. Most robbed of seed and filled with Something Else. Many aren’t really from Greece. (I’d like to see an olive tree some day.) Remember when we sat there in that restaurant trying to figure out what exactly pimentos were? I thought they were fish. (Is that beyond beauty? I wonder if innocence lies beyond beauty.) I’m a pepper, you’re a pepper. It makes me laugh out loud, it really does. A fish indeed. Bananafish, pimentofish - it’s all the same.

What’s a pimento?
Why, they are those Red Things inside olives.
Yes, but what ARE they?

It cracks me up.

Julie wears no scarves, I know. Or does she? Those who write symphonies don’t need ineffective means of concealment. You, my dear, are one who writes symphonies. The contrast fits.

I said I was sorting out a dead dream. Even in that, in my attempt to confess, I do you wrong. I know how horrid I have been. Could you drive it all out of me? I know I can’t take it back, but I don’t want it there. I know what you are worth, I do. I try to. I can’t decipher love from hardcore want, endless need. But you already know, don’t you? Oh it is so cliche to say you touch me in ways no one else does, bring out emotions in me no one else does, inspire sins in me no one else does. But what use it is to try to explain. I have tried before.

One of my lines, one of my lines to you no less, inspired someone to write a poem. Not any poem, a spiteful love poem. I am worried about this. I mean nothing but pinkness here, softness, romance language.

. . .

“I hate You, God, I hate You is though You existed.”

I’ve read and watched The End of the Affair. I melt for that kind of thing.

. . .

In a leopard bra and a V-necked white undershirt, I sit listening to music sung in French. I wish I knew the words, whether or not they affect the mood. There is still a bit of paint on my nails; it never goes away. I have left-over mascara rings under my eyes. A photograph would reveal this scene in no way pretty, as it would seem to me upon reading it. Idealistic, he calls me, and I can’t put heart into the denial of it.

Someone I barely know sends me messages on ICQ. Hi, Damien.

The room is a disaster. On my bed are towels, sweaters (sincere), the many pillows and blankets I have no need for, my pocket book, the ragged thing I carry to school in absense of a real booksack (It’s green, like the phone and the comforter I hid under while talking to you. You hate green, the color of ego, even though you have trouble seeing it.), a box with chocolate chip cookies inside, recommended reading lists, hair clips, notebooks, my strapless bra, two plates and a fork, a 3-hole puncher, grey socks, a pink shirt, Webster’s, Ritz (crackers), a wide-toothed comb, a hanger, a pen, a paint rag, eliot, and I, Katharine. Let us not forget the hats, the “Crown of Victory”, tassels, and peacock feathers above. And remember, that is only the bed.

“I think you should write in your head in your journal “in your head” “”in your head” in your journal” in your head (in your head)”

I’ll never know enough words to make you realize that I love you.

I don’t put much stock in trivialities. I’d like to keep my life a secret, while revealing only the most vivid images which make my vessel home, but it is not as easy as that. Perhaps it is for you. I cannot continue to hide behind my thoughts. I can’t skim off all the muck. Maybe there is some sort of enlightenment to be found in sharing the things you can’t even find value in yourself. James always said he felt closer to me when he told me such things. I think he really can find value in them though; he is beyond me.

Is it better for me to present something easy to digest to the masses or something seemingly incomprehensible that would really touch someone who may actually ride the same waves? Surely finding such a person would more than make up for any amount of lost random senders of complimentary notes. I am changing sides already.

This is my dilemma. What do I do with this web page? Who is it I’m talking to? I aim to write here as I’d write in a paper journal, but such really isn’t possible. I know what it feels like to write for myself. I miss that feeling. I don’t want to lose it completely.

I wear a shirt pink and loose without sleeves. I like it for being too large and showing my clavicles and almost my breasts. The straps slide off my shoulders without warning. I don’t worry about my arms anymore. There is trimming that ostentatiously mimics lace. I wear also my St. Jude necklace because I am a hopeless case. It was blessed by the pope or so says the red circle. My hair falls in my face and I think it looks better that way. It is plainly short and I do miss my curls. I still have my pre-Raphaelite hands. Maybe not a Renaissance girl now, I could still at least lead a black and white photo life.. and sepia tinted no less. I’ve always been limp enough.

He said some lovely thing about a woman’s hips being the most wonderful thing, and I agree.

I made salads with two lettuces, green pepper, broccoli, three cheeses, celery, and garlic salt. Two on plates and one in a bowl. It took a long time to tear up all that lettuce. My mother said salad could be my forte.

All I do is peacock feathers. Peacock feathers of india ink and pastel and watercolor and acrylic. Lust girl from the deadly sins project will sit on the foot of the bed, nude, looking at the floor, holding a peacock feather in one hand. Peacock feathers are about decadence. The rest of the project I don’t know yet. I want the end to be art and the research to take weeks or months. Maybe a piece for each sin or maybe a series for each. Maybe only lust, because I can think of the most images to fit it.

I want to be able to write like the waves again. I have no pencil to hold onto now and it hinders my ability to keep my focus off of the internal editor always smirking at me. Never let the point disengage. I don’t remember the name of Melissa’s writing manual now, but I’d like to read it again. I felt to privileged that she let me borrow it. She let me play her Cowboy Junkies CDs as well, and told me I used loaded phrases. I have a picture of her hidden away somewhere. Files and files of lovely things. The way she said “Bible” impressed me. I had her phone number written on my hand at one point and felt like a queen.

My fingernails are never free from little bits of paint. Now my hands have ink stains as well. the stains touch also my sheets, the library of universal knowledge, and various sheets of paper. I never could be neat about art. I’d come out of drawing classes looking like a coal miner. Between the charcoal and the fixer from the darkroom at work, I’ll die of poisoning soon enough. What does it mean to be killed by the media?

I need eyeliner.

Forgive me, sweet father on the other side of the glass, for I am full to overflowing with sin. This is not the full of my first confession.

I am neither Catholic nor any other brand of Believer for I am too proud to love a Goddess and too sexist to love a God. I have in years past failed as a pagan, witch, and magician because my internal compass made only ovals and the astral plane I found was nothing but smoke and floating. I couldn’t even remember the words to the spells let alone shoot bright lights from my forehead or provoke any goddess to enter my body. At the dead of midnight I went out in my front yard in my grandmother’s dress, lit candles, and spilled Costa Rican vanilla down my arms. Could my my soul now belong to the Devil? I am an atheist and a heathen and now worship anything I can find a faint trail of beauty left in. I have not even read the Bible, save the last chapter, though I have been known to criticize those who live by it. I laugh at women who wear large gold crucifixes around their necks. I cannot say a Hail Mary or an Our Father because I do not know the words. Still, my mind becomes full of religious symbols I cannot begin to grasp. I am obsessed with sin and saintliness and I find myself yearning more fervently to die a martyr. I find religion pretty. I am a walking sacrilege.

I have lusted deep within my heart. My mind and heart are known to fill with unclean thoughts and images. I have too much faith in love. I think my love of another could purify me no matter what sins against the world and heavens I commit. My love and lust have been directed at creatures more delicate than I, for I want only to possess things of beauty. I find women more beautiful than men. What good could there be without softness? I see this girl and I can think of nothing but wanting to touch her, run my fingers through her hair, paint her face hips breasts neck heart crimson with my lips, learn new things about fruits of all flavors. And when this I cannot have I only think it in my own heart while committing further sin in a locked room with red light. I do not want only to have but to be had as well. I think of men taking possession of me. I have even dreamt of rape. I have thought many perverse things and did not even have the decency to keep them to myself. I have scribbled them down in old notebooks and have even put them up for grabs in a public domain. I am a sick minded thing.

I have envied those more beautiful than I am. I have envied those more faithful, more true, and more together. I have envied those who have experienced unthinkable horrors. I have envied those who have seen Vienna. I have envied those who are brilliant. I have envied those with talent. I have envied those who are intelligent. I have envied those who know things. I have envied those who understand their thoughts. I have envied those who are humble. I have envied those who are loved. I have envied those who do not think too much.

I have thought too highly of myself. I have fancied myself an artist. I look down on people who do not have as much culture as I do, though I do not have much. I am arrogant and pretentious and a snob. But I have also despised myself. I have wanted to hide under rocks. I have felt like I could never live up to my own standards. I have felt shallow and meaningless and unworthy. I have pitied myself. I have considered suicide. I cannot keep of one opinion. my moods run away with me and one moment I will be weeping uncontrollably and the next I will be perfectly content. I have hated people for being above my level and I have hated people for being below it. I have hated the people I love. When I have not hate anyone I have been either in an unhealthy state of obsession or one of complete apathy. I am confused.

I have cared more for myself than for my neighbor. I have often been greedy and unkind. When I have been fortunate enough to have found those rare things of beauty I have wanted to keep them all for myself instead of sharing them with others. I have never been satisfied.

I have lied to myself and everyone I know. At times I myself do not even know when I am being truthful and when I am not. I am not to be taken seriously, yet I cannot bear it when I am tossed aside as one who knows nothing of what she says.

I have neither loved nor respected my father, because I do not have the capacity to forgive. yet still I expect forgiveness from others without haste.

I am horrid but at times I do not even care because maybe it just means I am creative. people say I am creative. I try so hard to make it so. I worry about how others see me. I let petty things make me so miserable. I wallow in my misery. I eat it for berries.

I care too much about my appearance. I have attempted to seduce.

And I am very, very afraid