the habit of being

My life is so teeming with symbols, yet they don’t really stand for anything solid. While in the shower I said to myself maybe these tokens of mine are the thoughts floating down that river as I sit by and watch, instead of dead cows and the like. But no, glass doesn’t float, and I’d rather not have sponges for lifestamps. I want them gossamer and lace, or tiny and fragile like snowflakes. (Snowflakes in a moving river provide the irony necessary for an accurate portrayal of my circuit system, but I’m thinking synthetics would be more likely. Plastic, trying so hard to appear breakable, but we all know the rocks just bounce off, leaving a bent or scrape at most.)

I’m always out to suck the grace out of things. I want to desperately to believe that it doesn’t stay in me, to decay and atrophy in that heated hell of self-deprecation and vanity. On occasion perhaps I do give off something in return, a psychic ribbon or a featherweight pearl, but it happens without premeditation and I’ve never once in my life tried to give back, to really give back. I repeat a word or phrase over and over in my head while I ride in the car with a loved one and hope they can feel it from behind. Why not turn around and say, “yes, I know, I know, I’ve always known”? Why keep driving while I squint my eyes for more push? Let me think I have some control, that I can send out my pigeons in a waking state, that I can project on cue. I want to feel I am worth all that I take in, but I know it won’t come to pass.

Today the wrath of academia took shape and I mourned for my dreams of superiority and snob college. I want to go to snob college as bad as Odysseus wants to get home, and I’ve been scourged today for my sickness. The SAT did a number on me and I still am a bit in denial. We’ll just push the envelope away and pretend it never came. I’ll go out with my girls and eat ice cream, mint chocolate chip for old times sake. I’ll tell them how being touched is my favorite thing, like it isn’t obvious. (Ellen gave me many hugs because she is amazing sweet. When we went on our picnic I gave her a unicorn book and I’m so glad I did. She’s got magic. Maybe she got it in Ireland. The clock on her wall ticks and tocks and cuckoos all night long. I know because I was awake. I was too amazed to sleep.) I won’t cry anymore. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. I’m smart. I’ve always been smart. Too smart even and I won’t let this make me stupid in my own eyes. I won’t believe numbers over testimonies. I have wonders in my life. I have a yellow sarong from Costa Rica hand delivered by a boy I’ve known my whole life. I have enough to make me gluttonous and full of fantasy. I wouldn’t know how lucky I am if I didn’t have a brain between my ears.

Jennifer is leaving this online forum of ours for months, months. It’s a terror but I know we’ll get by. In my head I can hear Sylvia Plath on tape and J. reciting along and everything is overpowering and too strong for words. She understands Sylvia’s rhythm, I’ve seen it in her paragraphs, I’ve seen it in her eyes. I wonder who I will write to now, if she’s not around to read these false journal entries of mine. (Don’t be so blunt, Katharine. Cryptic is in this season, it will make you intriguing. No, no, no. Think of Salinger. Think of Hesse. But Winterson rides in with her blindfolds and exotic oils and I think I’d rather have dancing princesses and web-footed boatmen in my life than Zen.) We said we’d go on a journey together through the West breaking hearts along the way. She’ll take the cowboys and I’ll have the girls, because most days I hate guys, I do. I hate them for not being glamorous, for not making me want to but my hands on them, for not knowing about beauty. But J. and I, we shall take our blue blanket and my tear-stained hat and roam the plains for years until our toenails are long and we’re black from the sun. We’ll stop to seduce the masses with our longness and cute smirks that say take me away. We’d make it- she’s got the touch me eyes and my lips can wear paint well. We’ll join up again when all is done and lean on one another saying nothing in that very talkative manner. It’s quite the appealing fantasy, but I know it wouldn’t work. I’d kick her cowboys. I’m not as nice as you’d like to believe.

Not nice, modest, aesthetic, aggressive, naive, creative, wordy, quiet, cryptic, sensual, silly, brilliant, afraid. Yesterday at work I had to stand out on the porch with a senile old lady and it was so scary. I felt so sorry for her, just like a child. But I didn’t know what to say. It’s hot out here. She wants in and she just spent 15 minutes begging to go out. She wants to go to the bathroom. The wheelchair won’t fit. She’s wearing a diaper. She doesn’t know. She thinks she’s peeing all over herself and there’s nothing I can do. She’s crazy and I want to be away from her because she’s an annoyance and a bother but everyone else feels that way too. A pity of a child and those women laugh at her illogical answers. What do they know about cause and effect? You’re next.

I like my girls sharp.
>I’m getting sharper.
Me too, me too.

He’s sleeping and I’m writing and no one said goodnight. I worry for everything when everything is perfect in its way. I wish I could say I’m sorry enough. Can I give all my trust? Can I manage without? All the questions mean nothing in light of finding myself smothered in an aura not my own. Blue and yellow. I don’t even remember which was me to begin with. I can flap my wings in green. I can sing my songs in green. I can fast, I can grow, I can enlighten. An artist or a mystic? I’ll be a quilt, I’ll be a trap. (I never wanted so badly to be pinned down. It’s only fragmented from a distance.) I can’t believe no one else knew it would happen. I’ve anticipated for months and years. Now I have to live with the flashbacks, that strange almost-sick-almost-pleasure-struck feeling, until I can finish what I started