the habit of being

New days of less complication and I’ve been curled up with Jane Austen, lounging, going to my x-ray job, not missing Sewanee, anticipating J’s visit next week, and dreaming dreams that I remember. Certain distractions not the least of which may be symbolically erotic email pop up but I have no excuse for not writing in nearly two weeks. So I say to myself and also James on AIM “I should do something about my website” and I will. The easiest way would be to relate the various events I’ve lived through since my last sitting. Before I choose the route most taken I’ll point out that upon getting out of the shower I put my t-shirt on backwards and have no intention of correcting the error, since my plans for this particular day do not exceed flopping around in my bed and being generally sluglike and gross. I am extremely gross lately, I must confess. I’m eating disgusting foods and living in squalor and I don’t see a cure in sight. Pray for focus. Maybe J’s coming will help.

And so begins the telling of unhappy things:

Wearing all black, pleats, no bra, camera in hand, strapped down, can’t move, can’t smile. Dark room, after the banquet at which I said nothing, but that I didn’t much like vinaigrettes. Will sat across from me, he thought me brilliant though I don’t know why. Maybe because I’d replied when he asked us all why he told us the things he did that it was because we were listening. That seems not particularly brilliant but obvious. Will never talked to me either though. He ate lots of bread. My mom says bread is unhealthy. Sitting here like this is unhealthy, everyone is dancing, having fun, not caring. It’s the last night. There is the point when you can’t give in to the pleas of others to join in the entertainment whether you secretly want to or no. Believe me, I want to be making a fool of myself. But I slump farther and farther down into my chair, the silly disco music might as well be a funeral dirge. Even Kerry’s kind attempts to converse are rocks. And Kat comes over with her face close to mine making sad eyes at me begging me to save her a dance. And I tell her she has to stop. I do not tell her that if she does not stop I will kiss her, and not out of any affection for her, only a very sudden and sharp need to be kissing someone.

I walk out of the room, finally. Out into the darkness along one of those state-named roads of Sewanee, past tall stone buildings, perfectly manicured lawns, the chapel modeled partially after Chartres. Then emerge people in cars from the gloom and I am aware that the shirt I wear is quite tight. Maybe the strangers would kiss me. I try to move in a more sexy way, but all hopes are lost in melodrama, and I’m, to say the least, terribly bummed. I slouch against a column when I reach my dorm. Those who stayed away from the dance are there on the porch, smoking. They ask me a few questions. Was it lame? Yes, I tell them, it was lame. One of the straps of my shirt falls from my shoulder. I let it stay there, and try to be very very still. I am good at being still, calm like Sarasvati. I close my eyes. I consider following when they walk around back to get high. Instead I enter the building, trudge up the stairs to my floor, and sit in the shower, letting the water run over me until I’m content to get out and fall asleep in my bed in that empty room I’ve already packed. I slept hard that night, my last in Central Time.

I’m awakened at six by the phone’s ringing, and is it the pacified sound of my roommate’s mother’s voice I hear upon answering it. I’ve heard that voice before on numerous voicemail recordings. She obviously wants to speak to her daughter, but her daughter never sleeps in her room like she should, so I promise to seek her out. After much trouble in finding the right room (the name signs are by now taken down) I poke my head into K&C’s room and tell my fair fugitive to call home. Back upstairs, I sleep for a few more hours and then conclude my packing by stuffing my sheets in a bag. I do not have quite so much difficulty in getting my heavy suitcase down the stairs as could be expected. The lobby and porch are covered with luggage and people who are sad to be leaving. I am sad to not be sad to be leaving. Some people hug me. I wait. I’m one of the last to be picked up, though Sam arrived in Sewanee two days early.

The ride home is terribly long. I’m in the back seat with my twenty-something step-uncle, Chris, who is quite detestable and asks me questions about the colleges in which I’m interested. He thinks he’s smart and related to me. He is neither. I pretend to be asleep. We stop at a Waffle House and have vanilla cokes. Not that, or later the visit to the farm with peach ice cream, make up for the ride. Indescribably long. It stretched from 10 am to 9 pm with the stops, but eventually I did make it to my home and my nice big bed, which I’m now lounging about on. James slept in this bed not so long ago. He just sent me a message on AIM asking if I was still trying to write and I said yeah.

. . .

unfinished:
The flower finest of Joseph (the sea-spun aristocrat with such an odd nose and taste for his daughters) spent fifteen years blooming in a garden (mythical Martinque) with tea and the company of women, till she was seduced by an officer with shiny buttons, sweet tongue, clittering hands. Yes, she thought that he loved her, she did, and they were wed. Then he refused to present her to Marie, thinking her too rough, not up the the occasion of meeting a queen. From then on she shunned him in total, the bastard, and they say not one tear was shed from that unsophisticated eye when he was sent to the guillotine. Still, they locked her up, turned her in, and she barely whispered a complaint, turned her nose high to the scoundrels, till released in prelude to five old men.

*

Translated from the Incomprehensible by Katharine Tillman, this note reads “I love you, colder than inclination or provocation.” When I read it first, I sat up with a start, a sharp breath in, as if it made perfect sense. But now it is lost to me, as lines of poetry in my head sometimes are.

*

How odd it seemed that out of eight girls my age, I was the only one who’d ever taken nude photos of herself. When I was the only “I have,” someone asked if I sold them.

*

What things are worth writing poetry about? I think that most of those things call under the category of Too Untouchable for me to attempt writing about. And I say from time to time “I would never try to write that” and am shocked at my cowardice. Should I not try to write everything? Good practice for when I get better, and they all assure me I will, if I work at it. I like words that function as both nouns and verbs, they amaze me.

*

And I’ll be all “Jenny, you dirty tramp!” then I’ll jump in with something about how pretty your eyes are and you’ll go look in the mirror and be all “wowwww.”

. . .

So many so many so many words, from dragons and pearls to peacock feathers and porn. I wonder what all our words all these months have made, what we are, how far “us” spans. The things you write to me now have to business on a computer screen, and it seems unlikely that this medium could sustain us for very much longer. And you said I should write about coming to visit you in Austin for Christmas. I could do that, but at the moment it doesn’t seem right to write stories about us, projections. You’re saying all the things I’ve wanted you to say for two years, and I feel positively tongue-tied. How can I help but feel indebted? I often feel much more sorry for the things I haven’t said to you than the things I have. At times I’ll be on the verge of something grand, but the words just won’t come. I hope that you can know the whole of it without my having to articulate, but perhaps that is another illogical assumption.

What beautiful dreams we are.