Crazy Little Katydids

September 17 2009.

Today was a wonderful one- full of sunshine and smiles. I lay on the grass and read of religious wars in 16th century Paris (ao sensual and bizarre, I’m sorry I missed it), drank a little bottle of apple juice, like old times, went to art class in the morning and drew a car that drove away, went to wars in the evening and fell in love with Tabetha all over. At night, Ben and Liza and I went for sushi, a gorgeous seaweed salad, and coming back to campus, I saw an airplane but thought it was a falling star.

And even though there’s that scattering of spider bites from lying among ferns and katydids behind the bunny ears (bunny years?) and (still) those nail marks, and that terrible sunset amoeba-bruise and the awkward sunburn (of course), it’s all okay, I’m so very happy here.

I have to take all these words and pull a story out soon. It won’t be the same under hard eyes and fingers, but it’s got to be. The future is so close, I wish I could hold it. Tonight is goosebump-cold and full of stars. I want to kiss you. But I’m okay being miles away from everything I ever knew, all that reaching to drop letters into the red postboxes, squeezing my eyes shut over bridges, falling in and out of water, that sewing scissors I never saw again after that night, all those diaries my mother read. My battleaxe and barndoor pushing me over the edge.

I wish that people will stop projecting onto me, that everyone would just understand everyone else...and, of course, that wonderful people didn’t just leave me, but there’s always been this pattern of abandonment. So I let myself dwell a little in soft and sad moments, and then move on with breaths so deep I’ll drown.

But right now I’m wishing that I can just convince her to spend one sun-drenched afternoon with me before the winds grow bitter and we’re stuck having picnics on the crackhouse kitchen floor in some far-reaching pretend… and I don’t know whether to put that in the former category, but I’ll leave it for now.

(I’m listening to Sigur Ros again; they make everything exquisite.)

And all the same, I overcome. Here I am, and was, and will be, happily reading press releases about my daddy and drinking milky coffee, and then heading to the library to make posters for a group of kids who loiter in my doorway all the time, asking me silly things about laundry and hanging things and research and how to find another guitar string and whether we can all make pancakes in the shapes of mickey mouse and dinosaurs together again in the PM, and it’s okay because although I yearn for desolate cities, I like it for now, it’s something. And until winter breaks, I’ll stay here, cooking and cleaning and thinking and collecting big, beautiful empty jars, and threading my rosary through my fingers until I can feel the echo of the Hail Marys in my ears and head and heart.

Anna and I are going to press lavender and make tea, and I may go to mass this Sunday.