the habit of being

i have had an epiphany. (just thought you should know). it is this: my Problem Of Late is not due to lack of friends, lack of money, or lack of sex. rather, it is due to lack of literature. somewhere, I stopped reading. i mean, not completely… but picking up Generation X or the fuzzy-handcuff chronicles for a few hours a week at Barnes and Noble is not Reading. i used to Read. my house, in georgia, is practically a library. reading is all but my mother’s full time job.. a week where she hasn’t read four or five novels is no week at all. and i was like that too! I was always reading something! something good! even when I was traveling.. god you should have seen that copy of War and Peace we had held together with duct tape, and our rained-on Rilke and everything.. and anyway, I Need that! I need books. lots of books. Literature, no less. and i’ll probably never have this much free time again in my life, and I’m not reading jack shit. i haven’t read anything really really amazing since The English Patient.. and what was that, a year ago? until now, that is! i absolutely devoured The Sound and the Fury this weekend, and it feels so good. like parts of my brain, parts of my heart even, are getting turned back on… and anyway, I bought Light In August too. and I’m going to go get in the tub and start that one. and maybe I just won’t stop. a fulfilling reading life is oftentimes just as important as a physical one.

. . .

All I want to do is Meet Someone, but I read and write instead. It’s more noble that way.

James used to tell me that if I sat around writing in public, eventually Someone would come up to me, someone who wrote too, and ask me what I was writing about.

I would tell them my whole life story, which is my wont to do, and I’d thus have a friend, or a lover.

No one, in my entire life, has ever done this.

. . .

I decided I wanted to go back to the Mountain. I decided the fact that there is only one coffee shop and no cucumber rolls to be had was workable, considering the natural beauty, the seclusion, the cathedral. To share an alma mater with Quentin Compson’s father and to have my financial aid provided for by Tennessee Williams would make up for having to live in the middle of nowhere for at least three years. However, having taken all this into account, I did not realize until I was already halfway through the application and had paid the fee that none of Sewanee’s merit-based scholarships are available to transfer students.

. . .

Every other week an Indian summer. My nails are chipping. My resolve is slipping. I am making a fool of myself.

. . .

again and again. i had a lovely time too, as always.

one of these days, though, in lieu of a thank you, i’m probably going to need to have this whole situation explained somehow. i honestly don’t have any idea what i’m getting/have gotten myself into. not that not knowing is necessarily a bad thing, but i’ve just never learned how to do the whole casual once-a-week thing. i don’t know the rules, not that i buy into having rules for emotional things in the first place. but anyway, i’m used to superheavy superintense superdrama (i.e., the anti-casual), complete with enough baggage to give atlas lower-back issues, and i’m still kindof trying to deprogram myself.

but hey, one day at a time, they say. today, for instance, i was at the grocery store (gasp), and i actually Put The Jar Of Ragu Back and got onions, peppers, tomatoes, garlic.. I am going to cook something myself. i don’t even know how long it’s been since i’ve done that. months. i feel like a bear coming out of hibernation! very exciting. maybe it’s the wind.

. . .

Sitting around with girlfriends drinking red wine and talking about penises. Talking about Peru. Andrea is going to climb a mountain. Lisa says put it on your credit card, it’s worth it.

I fearlessly ride the metro escalator, tipsy, with my torn suede coat and hobo bag. I haven’t had sex in a month today.

. . .

I rolled out of bed mid-afternoon, dragging the last ten unfinished pages of my book sleepily into the kitchen, where there was light. There is no unread Faulkner in the apartment now. My roommate lovingly ordered a used copy of As I Lay Dying from Amazon.com. Literature As Sex Substitute is my way of life this month, and it may as well be high school all over again.

. . .

I wonder if fiction writing can fall on you, like a sickness.. if one day I might wake up with some other storyline in my head. God, please let this happen to me. I would like so much to be freed of this diary. Please let me discover the third person. Please let me out of here.

. . .

Not so long ago, I was in a room with a hole in the wall. There was a Batman poster, a computer monitor covered with post-it notes, and a muted television set with a fuzzy reception. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing there, but at least I was happy.

I slept with a man and his neighbor’s old black cat. It was after 3 and he fell asleep, so I turned off all the lights and set the alarm clock and tossed and turned. I barely knew him, and that’s what made this lovely to me: when you’ve slept with a man before you’ve even fucked, maybe there’s something there.

Maybe there’s not.

. . .

It’s not only that I don’t want to go home to the dirty apartment I should clean up and the fridge with no food. We threw away the moldy applesauce and there are not even any Poptarts left now.

It’s not that I come into work in the morning and scratch things off my list all day and add more and scratch more and yet always I seem to overlook something.

It’s not just the two hours on the phone with my mother, wherein we conclude that there’s no way for me to go to school for cheap now, the best way to kill yourself is by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (it’s very hard to fail and you’re washed out to sea), and there are only two types of people in the world - mean and pathetic.

It’s that this was a happy conversation. A laughing conversation. For the both of us.

. . .

I want my Southern accent back. I may as well have lost an arm.
. . .

so it’s the beginning of thanksgiving and i just finished angela’s ashes, which is good for reminding me how much i have to be thankful for. because as much as i worry about having to pay three months of overdue this and that, i know as sucky as that is i can still pay my rent on monday and have plenty of food to eat. and even if none of my family lives here and i’m not doing a damn thing today and everyone i know is out of town, i don’t even eat turkey anyhow, and at least my personal brand of good-for-nothing-alcoholic-father called me from whatever treatment center he’s in this year to wish me a happy thanksgiving. and even when i was at my very lowest, i still lived in a country where i could be standing in a line at a convenience store in missouri or someplace with a rag on my head and hadn’t bathed in who knows how long counting change to buy some tropical skittles and the lady behind me in line would up and hand me fifty dollars saying “you look like you could use a break.”
i cried when frank finally confessed to the nice priest in the brown robe about having his first pint and hitting his mother and sending theresa to hell. i’ve always secretly wished i were catholic.
jenny’s in florida till sunday. maybe i’ll have another cleaning frenzy. or just keep right on reading.. chronicle of a death foretold (marquez) is next on the list.. and then as i lay dying (faulkner, again)
i hope you have a happy thanksgiving.