the habit of being

-I feel as if the world is angry at me for taking up too much space. I long to be as small as my own worth. This week is at a standstill. Two more days, yet this month will never end. I am guilty of only sitting, only breathing, only sleeping. It’s all so minute, yet I feel sickeningly massive.

-I’d planned to make money doing henna tattoos. I was so excited. I’d discovered the perfect afterschool job. I even ordered the henna and a book of traditional Mehndi designs. I ran across the book today while I was attempting to bring some order to the anarchist society inhabiting my bookshelf. So pretty. The henna powder is still in a box around here somewhere. I never follow through. Also while organizing the books I found the copy of On the Road my sister gave me for Christmas. I should read that.

-You asked if you were boring me lately. No, it has nothing to do with you. I’m just bored in general. The rain falling outside is not adequate. I’m waiting for an awakening, something to wipe the steam from my windows. I yearn for new eyes.

-As I lay there in the empty tub I thought of the pictures I could take. I want to capture uncontrolled emotion, and it’s the only way I can think of. Beads of water drip down the walls. The red light blanket. Different breathing. It’s all too sacred for me. And I know I am too yellow to bring a camera into that pink unfocused world.

-Both the pieces I submitted to my school’s art competition won first place in their respective categories (photography and painting). I think I’ll get $60. Maybe it’s only $50. I know I should be very excited about all this.

. . .

old email from GHP to take up space :

June 27, 1999
I got soaked yet again today. This time when I was walking back to Langdale from the concert. It rains almost constantly here.
The clock on the computer I’m using (#4) says it’s now 12:14 AM. I think it’s really around 7, but there’s no telling really.
I’m reading Microserfs, The Tao of Pooh, and The Wives of Henry VIII all at the same time.
The concert went relatively smoothy, considering the music was incredibly hard and we only had that one day to practice. It went “relatively smoothy” for me, for the god-like music majors it was extremely easy. Being around really talented people depresses me.
I was a model in drawing class on Friday. The only person in there who can actually draw anything decently had a view of my (insert another non-dorky sounding word for ass here). I was lying down. Being still is harder than I thought. I can’t draw, I really can’t. God, I was the only person in there who admitted to not being a -terrible- artist before we started and I’m eating my words more and more quickly as the class progresses. I can draw people better than I can draw chairs.
There is a much higher percentage of attractive people at GHP than at my school. I feel ugly and fat. I went to an aerobics class one morning at six but I haven’t been able to make myself go again. I only went the first time because Ashley the Photography Queen said she was going and she’d come wake me up if I wanted to go to. I really want her to be my friend, dammit, her and the bassoon guy. Why is it the people who hardly ever speak to me that I become obsessed with? Whine.
The people at the computer next to me are French majors. Darcy just came over here to tell me that she and Jessie and Doni (the people I came over to the library with) are leaving. I need to do laundry sometime soon…
The computer clock now says 12:34. How cosmic. Darcy is really into Tori Amos. I miss my Tori CDs. I miss all my CDs. Melissa (one of my teachers whom I worship) has this -huge- CD collection. Maybe I’ve mentioned this before? She let me play the Cowboy Junkies before class the other day (Friday, I think).
The French majors are looking up Paris astronomy for some reason. I shaved my legs this morning after I woke up at 10:30 (woohoo.. we don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn on Sundays). This is important, really. They were hairy. Hmm. I’m struggling for a topic here. Maybe that’s a sign that I should quit typing and go read one of my books.
I may buy a phone card just so I can call you. Feel important.
I haven’t used Granddaddy’s laptop once since I’ve been here. I haven’t really had any assignments. I had that group presentation for Philosophy. It was on goodness. Martin Buber is just all fucked up. Have you read anything by that guy? That I-It I-Thou stuff? Wacko. Buber’s a goober.

. . .

My mother entered my room yesterday morning, poured my schoolbooks out of their bag and onto the bed. I sat up.
“I’m taking this,” she said.
“Taking it where?” I half-yawned. She leans over me.
“I’m taking Wayne to the beach. I want you to clean up your room and study,” she says in a whisper so as not to ruin my little brother’s surprise.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later I hear Wayne’s voice from another room: “From what’s in the back of the car, it looks like we’re going to a beach.”

When I wake up, two or three hours later, the house is empty. I check my email, take a shower, get dressed. It’s bright outside, and colorful. I think about Italy. Italy is good.

I flop onto my parents’ bed upstairs. The window is open. The colors are coming in. The air smells like Italy. The Graduate has just started on Turner Classic Movies. “Do you want me to seduce you? Is that what you’re trying to say?” I look out the window during the commercials. Happy endings are good.

Back downstairs, I remember I’m supposed to clean my room. I don’t. Matt just came online.
“Have you seen The Graduate?”
“I don’t think so. What’s it about?”
“This guy has an affair with an older woman and then falls in love with her daughter.”
“Doesn’t sound like my kind of movie.”

They came back highly sunburned. Wayne showed me his shells. I miss things like that. Sand and shells are years ago for me. It’s ridiculous how little I allow myself.

. . .

July 9, 1999
Chris says I ‘make some good marks’ so I feel artistic. The last few days in drawing class have been wonderful. I get dirtier than anyone else. I don’t understand this. Everyone else gets maybe a little charcoal on their hands and I get completely -covered-. By the end of class it’s all over my arms and my clothes and my feet and my face and in my hair. I’m a sloppy artist.
Today was my last day of Creative Writing. Sad, sad, sad. I’ll miss Melissa. She’s the coolest person alive.
We played Mortal Kombat in Media Literacy. I won my round even though I’d never played before. I’ve got killer instinct.
I’m allergic to Valdosta. It’s the damn sulfur in the water, I swear. I’m breaking out so horribly.
I wonder what time it is. I don’t think this computer’s clock is right. I don’t really have anything to do until 9, when I have to practice a skit for the coffee house on Saturday.
I gave Melissa some of my freewriting to read.
Marcus has a crush on the dorkiest guy I’ve met at GHP. Jenna still seems to have a crush on me, which is fine because she’s always ready and willing to massage my back. Speaking of which have you read The Media is the Massage? or Microfiction? or any of David Ives’ short plays? oh! and Philip Glass rules. yep. we watched that coolass movie with his music. I don’t have a clue how to spell the title [Koyaanisqatsi] but it was -so- good. I need to watch it over and over. all pictures and music, no words.
Have you read Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread? it’s one of those David Ives thingies. I’m the first woman.
I have charcoal under my nails.

. . .

My necklace broke the other night. The green one Jennifer sent me. The one with the little heart in the back. It was such a sad, sad thing. I was taking it off and it just broke. Beads went all over the bed and onto the floor. It was about 11 at night and I’d woken up after an hour or so of sleep. And I felt so bad because if I’d just not woken up it wouldn’t have happened. Evil. I put all the beads I could gather up the next morning into the little orange bowl Amy gave me.

I attach way too much symbolism to things. The necklace made me feel a bit had. Now it is all torn to bits and pieces and really it should be a tragedy all its own.

. . .

I wish there were something I could do to let you know that yes, you are living. You are alive. ALIVE. It’s unspeakable. It tears me.

I’ve been trying to get started on the entry for three days. Needless to say, it hasn’t worked out very well. It seems like whenever I actually have events occurring in my life, writing becomes harder, perhaps because I feel more obligated to not only write but to write well. Here is something I want recorded. Here is something that I’ll want to read again later. Here is a -moment- I do not want to forget. Here is Katharine with writer’s block.

1. preamble - a car ride

First off, she’s upset. She’s spending her days dealing with a bunch of people she just cannot reach, despite all her efforts. The problem haunts her and she cannot sleep. It won’t leave her until she finds a solution, though she knows that is unlikely to impossible. She is tired and emotional and soon will be crying. I am listening. I have no answers.

Somehow, the telling of a tragic love story follows. I sit there amazed as she recalls this tale with tears in her eyes, because it is so real. I didn’t know such things could be real, because I am so used to dreaming them up. Here beside me sat the carbon form of some fairy tale vignette I hoped to write, and how horrible horrible I was to think it was beautiful. On paper it would be beautiful. Written out in a perfect simple soft manner, on pages with ruffled edges and grains showing through the type, it would be the most lovely thing. But there, in her eyes, only tragedy for tragedy’s sake, and the pain was so deep and the love torn away so true. Better writers than I will be in ten or twenty or however many years it’ll take me to mature would not be able to hint at it.

I want so much to attempt it. But the crime against my readers I commit by leaving an enigma is not remotely comparable to the crime I’d be committing against her by telling a story I neither own nor understand beyond my petty love of sacrifice. (The -idea- of sacrifice, no less.) It would certainly be a sin beyond.

Yet I must say I am enraptured now with this thought of my birth and what it means. I feel a bit of responsibility to an ideal that, for once, is not my own. I am actually quite literally a product of metaphorical beauty. Perhaps I was damned with drama from the very start.

She never even thought to wonder if it were not real.

The streets are dark and scary. We lock the doors. “Most of Atlanta is like this,” she says. “It’s not all Buckhead.”

2. bread and wine

I took a deep breath in when she walked on to the stage. The way she situated her wrists about the microphone stand for that first song, it took me away. The first line and my jaw just dropped. I whispered an “oh my God” to none of the people crowded around.

There is a definite high to making music. You can get so lost in it you never want to find your way out. It reminds me of a relaxation exercise last summer. “Breathe in. See your breath as a color. See it travel down your arms. Release it. Watch it retreat. Slowly. Breathe in. See the color extend down your fingers. Hold it in your fingertips. Hold it. Release. Slowly.” She said I was good at it. Was it apparent from my positioning it on the floor, from the look on my face, that I really could see it? That comes from five years of playing the flute. I can see the music that way. I block everything else out and just float along with it, inside my body or wherever else.

Trying to explain things that are beyond words makes them so sappy. But inside that theatre Friday night there was such a vibe, such an appreciation, and everything just felt alive. The music high works both ways, and we were all hanging on to those notes as if we never wanted to let go. It could have been ages or seconds. I fire could have broken out in that room and I would have continued to start in my place, mesmerized. It’s all about atmosphere. A concert or an orgy, there’s not much difference, if the mood is right. Synchronicity.

So on my bruised feet I danced. And I am so grateful.

http://www.cowboyjunkies.com

3. also

New books to eat: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, Innocent Erendira and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. The last I have already read once and adore. If you are a writer, you Need this book. If you are not a writer, you need it too. I promise. It will inspire Things to happen.

I swiped a Vienna Choir Boys poster from outside the B-n-N from which the above reading materials were purchased. I want a choirboy of my own. I’d pet it comb its hair and feed it creme brulee and passion fruit. I’d build it a pretty little cage and give it its own lapdog. It would sing for me in the mornings and look angelic with long girlish eyelashes. I’ll snag one when I move to Vienna.

4. tangent (and signs)

I painted my fingernails graffiti, but it’s really a very tiny blue.

It just occurred to me that despite all the time I spent tracing the lines of Jennifer’s palms, I still have no idea what her future with bring. I’m no fortune-teller. But that is neither here nor there.

5. last night and more days

With each passing second it becomes more evident that we will always Be.

I spent the last few hours trying to make up for sleep lost last night while I was exercising my right be to an emotional wreck. It’s happening too frequently now and I’m wondering if maybe this is more than just the dark side of the moon that is creativity. Perhaps I should be popping happy pills like the rest of my generation, though I know I won’t ever go there. But the thing is.. Not Okay doesn’t constitute brilliant and fascinating, being miserable won’t get me anywhere, and my ability to pinpoint my Issues won’t dispel them. When they invent a pill which will make a person Grow Up, someone let me know. None of my attempts to wash the mildew of adolescence from my skin have been fruitful, though I’ve left my body all inflamed and red from the scrubbing, and the same are my eyes from the crying, and the same is my heart from the lies. There’s a war being fought here, in my head, and at times, I think nothing will escape existence as a Casualty.

As I finally resolved last night, leaving myself to suck away the last few restful hours left, great Questions don’t amount to much. I am so concerned with these great and mighty ideals of Love, Beauty, Enlightenment, Understanding, the horrors and consequences of Indulgence and Sin, that I miss what is sincere in my experience. I even attempt to turn sincerity itself into something of that haughty and Capitalized race. Some things are better left untouched by amateur swordsmen. At this point I am no more ready to think than a four month old child is ready to accept his faith. I wonder how many people who would have become wise philosophized themselves off the edges of tall buildings in the years following puberty.

Socrates said ‘Know thyself.’ Jesus said ‘Deny thyself.’ I’m confused, but I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me to figure it out.

. . .

Perspective from this morning:

Sitting here, pretending to take notes on a physics video (waves), it seems unlikely that just a few hours ago I was in such a state of miserable hopelessness I could do nothing but cry and shake and mourn an unviable fantasy. How many more children stayed up all night paying homage to the impossibility of love and unrelenting consumption of lust? I want to keep faith in higher planes, the feasibility of enlightenment, yet when I strain myself to reach for something of a pretty (petty?) ideal, I cannot keep my eyes on the fig tree and it somehow uproots and moves farther and farther away.

I must learn to accept. I must learn not to hate myself. I must learn not to exalt myself. Great changes must come. Growth has fallen dormant. I must stir it up again.

Ignorance is not bliss.

You shouldn’t hate the choirboys or the wearers of two pound crosses; they’re probably more sincere than most.

. . .

Something I wish I could describe in words is that sometimes-random timewarp when I can truly go back and see Then. For a slit-second the whole atmosphere returns to me. There’s a tension in my crest and nervousness all about, and I think this is part of what they mean when they talk about someone making someone else’s heart beat faster. There’s your scent in the air and it amazes me how at home it makes me feel, considering we were never completely comfortable. I can remember at these times the exact texture of your hair, the temperature of your skin, the way you breathe. It makes me wonder if I store up such details about every event in my life and just don’t know how to access them.

That feeling is what is most important to me about being Together. I could wallow in that for years and never speak to you, if it were necessary. Conversation is overrated sometimes, I think. We worry so much about what does and does not constitute a meaningful conversation, when the meaning is buried so far underneath topics. I can’t remember what we talked about, I really can’t, but I can put together the whole scene in my head. It’s a silent film.

A moment like that so greatly overshadows our little word problems

Maybe it’s got something to do with Valentine’s Day, or the end of the Second Year. Or the abstract(ed) woman without clothes and her shadow lover. It could be related to flowers or the lack thereof. It could be all about my bruised foot and painted hands. Perhaps the secret lies in this box of chocolates, or that little heart I scribbled out in Spanish class. Rejected offers of cohabitation. Unused chances to say something, anything. Secrets on those lips I kissed or those I never dared to. The pink scarf. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.

There was a musical moment and I was filled, though within a mold of those who know the notes but not the magic, and those who don’t even know the notes. It all, yes ALL, goes back to floating. There is only one form of happiness. Someone said she felt stupid just by being in the same room with me, and I wonder how, when I do nothing but peek-a-boo along my hours, serving my debt, rotting my central nightlight. Smashing it to the pavement, cutting my hands on the shards. And again and again I say ‘Oh, it’s just paint.’ Right now I want a pretty symbol, a great scene, and I have none. Yes, I understand all too well what it’s like to splatter out a sentence for face value only. Raping the English language.

Who will plant me my fig tree? Oh please hurry. I’m sitting here choking on water.

. . .

One day I’ll tell you to your face that you’re without a doubt the best thing that will ever happen to me, whether or not you take any form other than a mist that floats around me. That painting, it’s yours. It’s ours. I’m giddy.

It’s funny funny how things go. An hour ago I was crying and now I feel on top of it all.

Brick.

A teacher of mine, my favorite teacher actually, said, in class, that at times I am so smart it scares her. I don’t know how sarcastically the statement was meant to be taken, but I like the idea of people being afraid of me, as ridiculous as it is. If there are people out there who fear me, I suppose I have less to fear myself. (BOO!). But I did, after all, get a 96 on my Federalists and Whigs essay, so I’m rather pumped.

. . .

After work on Friday, Sam took me to Uncle Billy’s farm, a few miles outside Clito. We walked out on the dock and checked traps. Just one fish. The wind was blowing, but it wasn’t too cold, and I felt very alive. The pond sparkled, seriously, the color of toilet bowl cleanser. A sign nailed to a tree read “Gone fishin’. Back at late-thirty.” There were young weeping willows spaced out around the perimeter. Uncle B., my great uncle really, said he saw a lot of Tillman in me, noting in particular my gigantic feet.

We drove around looking at houses. HUGE houses. Sam is soon to build his own. “I guess that one’s pretty, but I hate it.” He told me how he decided to become a physician. He told me other things. It was an event.

. . .

For a lovely span of time I lay there on my bed, reading a book. The fan was on, blowing the scent of a candle in circles. It felt like spring time with a window open and someone cutting grass off in the distance. It was lovely and short lived. Those moments come so infrequently now. It’s not often I feel truly calm. It seems, of late, the only way for me to get to that state is to explode and wait there for the tide to come back in, covering me over with a blanket of isolation and apathy. Even that won’t last for long.

I can barely help but take your happiness as a personal attack, when I’m so anxious and uncertain and jittery and afraid. So the same as always. It’s never growth on my side of the mountain. Never. This feeling of hurt is the same one from three years ago, you know it, I know it. It’s only more intense now, because somewhere along the way someone went and fell face first into something she just couldn’t handle.

. . .

While pirouetting around a corner Saturday night, I twisted my right foot and fell, scraping my left knee in the process. The knee burns a bit and has one of those annoying red burn marks which refuse to go away for months and months. Sigh. The foot is worse off. It hurts to walk on it still. Now that the swelling is starting to go down, it’s turning this lovely shade of purple, with a blue ring around the edges. I doubt anything is broken, but it’s been twenty four hours and it’s still hurting. That couldn’t be a good sign.

This month has been horrid. I’ve gotten sick for the first time since I was four years old, yes, FOUR years old. (This comes straight from the only person who would know.) I’ve inflicted a slightly serious physical injury on myself for the first time ever. And then there’s Valentine’s Day coming up, and I won’t even get into that.