He is dressed as the statue of liberty. He carries a torch and a sign that says, 'HAVE SOME FUN, GET YOUR TAXES DONE.' Before I saw his face I expected him to be different- older and more defeated, maybe, but he is young, and miserably defiant. His hair and his eyes are black and his skin has a tint like thin shene of soysauce. His jaw is clenched and pointy, and shved almost clean. I catch his eyes; they are so smart and so sad and they follow me for just a moment as our car slides by. I think how it was the only job he could get, how they are paying him next to nothing even though there he is, humilated and cold, and probably hungry, too. There is something ironic about the stiff, awkwardly draping grayish green clotch, the spikey crown, the torch that does not even have a real flame to warm him. He looks noble, though, bitter and brave behind the patriotic facade. I try to think of something I would give him, if I could, if I had passed him on the sidewalk instead of the road, but all I can think of is the bland hot chocolate you get at sporting events, and that is not good enough, that is no match for the precision in his eyes.
We are gone.

There is this line in this song that goes, “You want to be a perfect fire burning white and tall, and to be free of all this terrible impurity,” and then later this other line, “You just want to be held and told you’re worth it after all.” And it’s close, so close, too close. When did everything get so muddy? When did our maps become Australian? That’s it! That’s why. That’s why there is ‘AUSTRALIA’ in big loose letters on my pimply ceiling. Because Upside Down. I got it. I figured it out. I remembered. I think I should get some sort of reward, now. A drink that tastes like roses or the solace of darkness and shiny shiny snow.

And there are types like him all over the world. Comforterably caucasian, male, and middle class.
Terrified of adverbs.
Everything in this room is souless and stale. I can not keep my eyes open and the air tastes like dust.
I need a window and endless hair. Escape.

Down by the rivers where the willows bend it's cold and still and there are leftover crabapples soured but not gone always under foot. Everything is all right, there.

Ah, the remarkable blueness of newness!

I want cold that I can bury down deep in the middle of my bones, and the cleaness of ice. Snow more than anything. Fernlike dendrites and whirligig wings. Fallen angles, all white and rainbow. Magic in the world again. I want my winter back.

Silver fluttering through the sleek dark sky like a raindrop, then suddenly gone into the muddy water. Wishes weighed for worth. Coins assigned. Promises forged.
But the next day, more spectacular yet, a zoo lost as completely as our change opens up its lion's jaws, and lets us in.

I had the most remarkable day. Ask me about the lions.

It never fails to strike me how much of a difference there is between CDs and live music. And JJ Alberhasky was no exception.
It didn't even bug me too much to be in UAY.
Love songs and murder ballads played with closed eyes and his neck turning red.

The best parts, other than the music:


"You guys are quiet. Not to blame you, that's fine. You're here to be entertained, not to laugh and make me feel comforterable."


"Hey, do you have any questions? They don't have to be about the songs, etiher..."
Some tall guy kind of in the middle: "Where did you get that shirt?"
"I got it from an old friend who borrowed it from me long ago..."
Tall guy: *faux-uncomforterable laugh*
"Sorry. I'm abusing my power. I have a microphone. I can be louder than you."



I'm feeling pretty infatuated, actually. But don't worry- you would be too. It's only too bad I'm so shy. I'd wanted to say something to him. I'm not sure what. It probably would have ended up being embaressing no matter how hard I'd tried, but even that might have been better. But it didn't matter that he laughed easily, or that he wore a white shirt embroidered with roses and arrows but dingy orange and gray running shoes, or that he is a substitute teacher; he was intimidating just by virtue having written a song that I fall asleep listening to.
Damnit.

((This is going to confuse you. Mostly because I switched it's place with the place of the entry I wrote before it. Plus, it is really long and fluffy. Just to warn you.))



So, apparently some of you actually read my diary.
I had no idea.
I always assumed that whatever I wrote here was just me talking to myself.

I understand that I am writing on the internet so anyone can read this, but I never make my entrys friends only, so you aren't notified, and it had never crossed my mind that anyone would be either interested enough or bored enough to bother without my prompting them.

Anyway, I'm a little unnerved, but also kind of flattered, I guess.

So don't go away. Because I always did know that it could happen. I'm bound to embaress myself now and then; but I've decided that I don't care. I'm not going to be any less honest because I am being overheard. Which is a warning, in a way; though my honesty is a usually softer sort. It's actually sort of nice to feel like I'm talking to someone, instead of just cyberspace.

Have you ever felt really reluctant to write something new because you don't want to have written anything more recent than the last thing you wrote? Wait. I'm not making sense. What I mean is: you know when you have an experience so happy or just overwhelming that it was all you can think about and all that you want to think about, but then the world keeps spinning and new things happen, and you can't help but think about them, too, and it makes you feel guilty? Like disloyal. To the old thing. Was that any clearer at all? Probably not. I am feeling very sleepy dreamy and unable to think straight or at all. My point was: I still can't stop thinking about that concert, and while I feel like putting this in my diary now, I don't actually want it to show up on the page before the entry about that. Don't want the memory to be eclipsed, even partially.

So I'll say this: this entry is completely uninteresting and unimportant, I'm just thinking with my fingers because I am, as previously mentioned, too tired to know better. How come Jill Barnes never gos away and leaves her tramautized classes with JJ Alberhasky when I am suffering through her odd, sometimes gentle tyranny? I don't know; but it doesn't seem fair.

I almost hope you aren't still reading this. Not because I mind; it's fine with me, but I am simply not at my most articulate nor my most lyrical nor my most interesting. If you really have nothing better to do, though, you should at least stop reading this rambling entry and read the one below it, because that one is at least somewhat entertaining and amusing, and I can't tell you how long I am likely to keep finding irrelevent tangents to continue along.

I really like concerts. I wish there were ones I actually wanted to go to more often. I miss Caleb Brown's mandolin. I miss Jack Whiteside's guitar. I need to find a new quiet boy with an acoustic guitar, who will be too good for me to be really friends with, but will sit in a corner and play where I can hear him. Those sorts are always comforting.

The only reason i started writing this at all was over and done with in the first two sentances. I just wanted to say Hi. Hi, whoever you are. Hi, and I'm very confused, but thank you, and don't worry.

That's all.

Hi.

A green so bright
it surely must be sticky sweet.

Little chalky marbles amougst shards of broken glass.

Japenese Soda in undulating bottles.

Smiling spheres.

Throats filled with honey and dew and melon.

In the shadow of the railroad tracks.





....I was in a mood to count my losses.

Madeline’s Trip to China



It would not have been so bleak had it been dry. Though, nor so sleek. It would not have been so bad at all, really, had it not been damp. But it was: long and sleek, damp and bleak.
Madeline looked down at her little pink feet. The tunnel stretched out so far in front of them, that it was nearly impossible to believe that she was not at the very mouth of the thing. She was one hundred footsteps in. Well, give or take. She had several times strayed from her counting, lost track, forgotten, added numbers at random.
It was taking a very long time to get to China. A very long time to pass through the center of the earth. And she suspected that there was still much, much farther to go, as she had heard that the center of the earth was molten and orange, and the tunnel had not been getting any warmer.
Madeline wiggled her little pink toes.
Barefoot had been a bad decision.
But how happy they would be to see her, how surprised! Immediately, they would abandon their colleagues, and forget about the concept of a business trip. They would scoop her up and fit their fingers into her curls. Then they would take her out into the streets, and there would be paper lanterns and kiosks that sold glistening fish meat. Somewhere, there would be a big thicket of bamboo. She would hang a paper lantern from one thick green stalk, and sit in its quiet pool of light, eating her fish with her fingers.
Then, it would surely be worth the walk.
In the meantime, however, it was a very long tunnel for such little pink feet.
Madeline began counting again. Numbers marched from her little pink lips one by one, two by two, and finally, three by three.

Deep amber wax freckled with soot. Then silence, then smoke. Twining, rising ribbons of smoke like a deadman's tresses. The gentle, warm smell of beeswax: honey and embers. Brimming pink lungs. Uncomforterable-but oh, how sweet!

I could tell you a story.
I could tell you a story that you already know.
I could give away the ending.
Then the ending would be different.
Just because I told you.
You'd have time to change it then.

I could wake up every night because I am on the verge of tears
Because my throat is closing up like it does when you are crying really hard.
I could wake up from dreams of your own betrayal and of salt water dragging me down and the world all warm and empty.
I could.
I know this because it's what I have been doing lately.

But also,

I could read Swedish picture books about bright yellow sleds and little swedish boys with bright yellow heads.
And I could sit under our christmas tree where it smells like twine and treesap, and where the lights are only festive fireflies.
And I could tell myself stories there, where it's safe and green.
And I could change the endings.
Just for myself.

And that's easier, anyway.

I love you.

By the way.

Hiding doesn't work, by the way. You just get hollow.

So don't try it.

There is a movie called ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES. I am dead serious. It is completely unbareable. At one point, these luminescent pale girls in bright bakinis are flailing around in the mirky water screaming franticly, their faces blotchy and their mouthes wide. Screaming, screaming, screaming. It's not even very convincing. That's not the bad part, though. I haven't gotten there yet. The bad part is also not even the underwater shots of long white limbs kicking slowly through the currents as eyrie Jaws-esque music plays. No, the bad part is that they are screaming because perfectly ordinary, smallish red tomatoes are bobbing along innocuosly in the water next to them.
And the worst part is that it's not even funny. It sounds halarious in the abstract, but it isn't, it's just completely painful. It's like watching lemmings commit suicide.

That feeling like you're underwater. That feeling like everyone you talk to is just the murmur at the other end of a conch shell. That feeling like you are drifting. The saltiness of your tongue. The thickness of everything. Being that far away. Being that drowsy. Hearing mermaids distantly, ignoreing them and going back to sleep.
Being ill.
Hiding.
Dreaming. Dreaming some solidness and suriety into being. Then waking up, your throat all full and scratchy, and coughing, coughing, coughing until a blend of whiskey and lemon and honey appeares on the table beside you, which you cannot drink but which you try to, anyway.
Darkness. Drawn curtains.
Solitude, then lonliness.

And suddenly six days have been spent. Six days have been spent, alone, at the bottom of the ocean.

Today's the day the teddy bears have there picnic....

Actually, todays the day you tremble when you stand and later you drink mint simple syrup and your hands seem slower than normal, sluggish, and if you stop to think about it you really can't remember what the 'Z' key is between. You don't know. Your fingers know. Your body knows, your mind doesn't. Today's the day you're two seperate entitys or your bones are just facilities.

You aren't necassarily quite like yourself, today.

You're willing to read all the email scams today.
You're willing to count your fingers.
And you haven't done the laundry in so long, that now that it's cold, you find yourself tugging sock puppets with floppy ears and button eyes onto your purple toes and you know you are doing something drasticly immoral but you're doing it anyway.

Haha. Just kidding. Psyche. I love you, guys.

I find it touching that your initials spell your postal code.
And that you cover your mouth when you smile.
And walk up the down elevator.
And own gleaming red shoes tall enough for an executive.
And swallow your watermelon seeds because someone told you a tree would sprout.

But I don't care.