the habit of being

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)”