how could you be so blind?

nobody sells you a banjo on labor day. i'm staring to hate all holidays. i went to yoga to unwind, but it turned out to be sort of really intense, a mind-fuck body breaker. i nearly cried a few times, but i refrained. luckily i have made this bodily function optional. mostly. now i'm trying to do homework but i can't seem to get past the fact that i'm staring at a big page full of black text. my mind is on letters, my own words, so many things i need to say. of course, i'm doing this instead.
why do people have to be such bitches? here's what happens when you're depressed on the internet. what can i possibly say? i wish someone would defend me.
also, should i drive an hour and a half to buy this beautiful handmade banjo, which i probably do not deserve?

listening to: joanna newsom - flying a kite

september 4, excerpted from my journal

today in class he treats ben like a dog. yells at him -- "Ben, Stop!" humiliating him and the rest of us. i can barely keep from sliding under the table. why couldn't he say "please" or at least treat him with respect? the classroom suddenly feels like a hierarchy, just like at work, and i'm uncomfortable with my position, wherever it is. i must be a masochist to continually be in this situation, to put myself near this man every day. i consider poison -- nothing fatal. then i consider switching crews but i doubt i could do it. then i'm thinking about my classes, which have seemed fine until now, how i know they will make me miserable because that's just the inevitability of going to school, and being surrounded by humans-- the obnoxious laughing fuckers in film class, the unbearable silence of my all-female women's history class, the droning voice and roaming eyes of my astronomy professor, and dear old bradshaw. it's over before it's begun, and i can't seem to stop the slide. i wonder how long i'll try.

my lip keeps trembling and i'm not sure why, but i'm almost ready to blame it on my new birth control pills. if i stay busy, i can almost distract myself from feeling so loveless and cold. tanya donnelly singing "it's not time for me to go" almost sounds like an omen.
almost, but not quite.

listening to: belly - stay

unfortunately

i'm glad they're happy but right now i would rather not know.
i thought he was good, i'm not surprised that i was wrong.
you are no longer someone i want to spend time on.
i don't remember why i'm still here.
no one confuses and kills me like you do.
the facial structure of certain female strangers gets me dizzy, dry-mouthed.
i was told she was dumb, that's why i'm not jealous.
so why does the dagger still stick warm in my gut?

another anxiety dream about work. went to some sort of convention with dr. b and maybe some friends, students? i get sick and cant actually attend, and i cant make it to work work the next day either. the reasons seemed genuine at the time, but now i cant remember them... later i ask beth if it's okay, if i'm in trouble. she says he's REALLY mad. i spend the rest of the dream avoiding him, running around terribly anxious and frantic.
morgan is in antoher part of the dream... i remember very little of what we talked about. she tries on huge solid color t-shirts (neon green) and she looks like a bell.

a hopeful day, but now i really feel like dying.
or maybe just living alone in a cave for all of forever.
eyes sting, chest caves with unnameable sadness.
how did i get so alone?

stand here and see this

oh god i've realized what my haircut reminds me of. and it's terrifying.

listening to: the blow - come on pauline

if the rocking chairs don't get me

last night i dreamed that i befriended a little poofball with eyes, a creature that made sure the world would continue working as it should and protected the trees, not unlike a kodama. it introduced me to the other poofball types and everything was beautiful until society created some sort of huge metal monster machines to destroy them. i tried to stop them but it was impossible.
i might have remembered more, but i woke up to the sight of two young women also waking up on my extra mattress. unexpected guests throw me off. but it was a nice day, i suppose. better than yesterday. we ate indian food buffet style and wandered around in asheville and read poems in bed. i plunged a toilet for the first time, and it was also anticlimactic.
now, all my homework is done and i'm a lonely one.

listening to: hurray for the riff raff - here it comes

my clothes dried in the sun, i laid in bed not even tired.
went to dogwood pasture for the first time, it was terribly anticlimactic. the sign said beware of an aggressive bear, but not even a rustle. a foggy night with no stars, just sitting on a concrete slab, with nothing to say to anyone.
found out that the midnight serenade from the cows was the mothers separated from their calves. i feel guilty for being soothed by those sounds.
i maintain the illusion that no one likes me, still wants me. the day is a regression, a waste.

first friday

today: two girls cheek to cheek, wooden bench in a circle of trees, everyone is walking to class but no one is around.

the bridge rattles and creaks, a metal bar come loose shakes as i walk over. the drop to the ground becomes clear, stretches out and i'm thinking about dying. you give me a soft smile that makes this okay.


tonight: "open mic two" smells like train travelers and sharp pine, the weight of sophie's shoulders shaking with laughter into my chest, so many hands keeping simultaneous time that i can barely make out chris singing and picking, morgan dances and smiles in a way i'd forgotten, i twirl a yellow flower.

i keep thinking there will be a parade, but the banjos are put away and i go home alone.

film class makes me full of myself. i might turn into a snob. was this a bad idea?
feel like making eyes with everyone... another bad idea?
every day this week i've passed the same cigarette butt on the third step on the stairs by the cowpie patio on the way to the library. i wonder why no one has bothered to pick it up, at eco-college. maybe it's fear of swine flu? but still, it's surprising, nonetheless. i realize that i haven't bothered to pick it up either, which i can justify -- if i picked it up, i might be tempted to smoke it. but that's a silly mind game, and i am just the same as everyone else.

that's more of a lie than it was supposed to be. i am working on honing the skill of exaggerated storytelling. how am i doin?
yeah right.

today i was almost run over by a tractor while delivering the english department mail.

sending off all my hopes on this flight

fuck this summer. fuck a movie.
turning off tunnel road, i roll the windows down and let the sweet mountain air cut into my lungs. how did i forget this feeling of freshness, everything circulating new and clean, not muggy stifling sitting around stuck for the same forever.. green floods my vision and i'm so glad we got here before dark, to see the valley and the farm and a loner crossing the bridge above the road.
we're unloading the car and i spot a squirrel in the dorland lobby. he played the piano but froze when he caught me staring. i hope we get to be better friends.
i'm really starting to get settled in, have i finally gotten used to dorm life, after all this time?
through the open window of my dorm room, i hear all kinds of crickets and bugs and birds... (have you ever had this happen where you're listening to an album and suddenly it's playing cricket sounds through the speakers and it's strange competition for the crickets outside and it sounds like this bizarre echo? well, i think i like it.) and suddenly, from a distance, a flock of geese! i peer hopefully into the twilight and am granted a glimpse of the magnificent v, so close to the trees, so lucky.
i cross the bridge at the exact right moment to see a beautiful moth land on the rail. she pauses, stretches and lets me take her picture. oh, to be a mountain thing!!

listening to: julie doiron - oh these walls

tell me another one

took me forever to get to sleep... thinking about me and brett and our relationship as it slides away from us. depressed as hell and desperate for sleep. however, not sure if i had this dream until after the phone rang early this morning... slept till noon, and this is what happened:

• rainbow-- wanted to steal but felt guilty, justified it and only took a pair of socks
• bar-- hanging out with alice and laylee and friends, they leave and i stay? took a nap at a booth, later they come back and we do heroin (katherine’s birthday)-- it feels AWESOME for about 10 seconds, brett is worried
• documentary about katherine’s dad (me, katherine, and brett are making it?)
• katherine’s footage-- dad at work making faces, shots of cars in garages, women in dentist chairs with globes on their heads waiting for brain surgery (shot through glass window) then the tape turns into trailers for some old docs that were gonna be at indie memphis?? long bit about pygmies (i'm getting all the footage mixed up)
  
• cottonwood tree in grandma’s backyard in georgia (transforms to another house later?) i can look right into the flower and see the little seeds and i think this will be perfect for my shot, but how can i get ryan here?
• hippoes and treehouse in the backyard.
• confrontation with brandon in the treehouse... we talk about our relationship, but he scoffs at a lot of what i say. he calls me crazy and addicted, i try to explain the circumstances, ask “what about tom? you like him.” brandon says tom denied/downplayed his insanity/addictions while he was with steff, and now it’s all broken loose (does he say that it’s just like me? or is that implied?) and i argue that that’s not true about tom (also me?)
• we can see my mom asleep through the window
• i ask if it’s christmas and he says almost. but it feels like summer
• i think he’s wearing my grandma’s christmas shirt but actually it’s a famous artist and my grandma’s work is on a board that he moves behind him
• he chastises me about doing heroin and i explain that it was just a little and i had napped
• i tease him lightly about wanting to have sex with dogs, he denies it... then we see some dogs and his tone changes. he talks about the primal-ness of it and how it really isn’t that bad... he walks over to one by some bushes and fucks it... i am really curious and try to get closer, but i can't really see what's happening, and it’s over in seconds. how does he justify it?
• katherine offhandedly invites brandon to stay over, and later he takes her up on it.. he’ll sleep in the treehouse and she’ll sleep in the hammock in the back backyard
• weirdo nature girl agrees to sleep somewhere besides the hammock-- white flowy dress, sandals, weird underwear that showcases her thin pubes (why did i see them?)
• mom explains to me that the hippoes sleep stacked on top of each other

can't remember it coherently enough for it to be in order, or sound better, or make more sense. that's all i've got.

losing daylight

this dream might begin when my real-life phone rings and for some reason i assume it’s Will calling me about some show, and when it rings again it must be Stephen, and they need instruments or my help somehow.
i’m in a skinny living room where everyone sits on chairs and couches against the side walls, opposite each other. it’s sort of like rita’s old shotgun, but more fratty. why are we here and these guys talking to us?
we go shopping at target or somewhere. there’s a long sequence of picking out toys and dresses and sheets. are we setting up our dorm rooms? the store seems massive and white and things are arranged sort of haphazardly and there only seems to be one or two of each item. me and another girl get into a tiff about who gets the baby mice toys. i feel satisifed that i’ve picked out good stuff and sit down to each with my friends and the guys from earlier, on the other side of the store. here is a long sequence that sees a lot of my plate and a little bit of hte table conversation, about the food, which is rice and beans. the beans are a very odd texture and a sort of clay dirt red color. they seem more like lumps than beans, but i still make a comment that they’re a complete protein. one kid has to go home to get more money, presumably for food. did he spend the rest on junk? i feel like everyone has more food than me, or keeps getting seconds, and i am the slowest.
by the time i’m done eating, i have forgotten what i put into my overflowing cart. i sit down in an opposite corner in the store (front right?) to go through what i’ve decided to buy. nothing seems necessary, and i can’t believe i was planning to buy all these things. i make a huge pile of what i need to put back, i can’t understand what i was thinking. here there is some detail from earlier that i’ve forgotten, about how for some reason i have my suitcase here, and a lot of my own clothes. so another problem is that a few of my own clothes have gotten mixed in with the stuff in my cart, so i am setting those aside, too.
in my cart i find a beautiful green dress, and i look forever for hte price tag. when i find it, all the numbers are sort of rubbing off, and it’s been marked down so many times i can’t tell which is the real price. it was once $796 or something ridiculous but now it’s... $80? i can’t quite make it out, and make the decision to put it in my suitecase with my real clothes. it will be an honest mistake. in the pile, i also find a cream colored slip that doesnt look like my style so i try to katherine if its one of hers. she has her back to me, and i suppose she is busy doing something that i can’t see, but it annoys me that she doesn’t answer me. i ask her a couple of times and maybe throw the slip over to her. i’m pretty sure it wasn’t hers either. then for some reason i’m looking on the bottom of this clothes rack behind me and i find what looks like an old halloween shirt of mine. then i see that it must be my shirt because it even has my old buttons on it still. then i find another shirt of mine, from kindergarten, that has a picture of the class on it, and i find my face on it too. i feel like i am trying to prove to someone that these are my old clothes, but i can’t remember who it is or if it was just to myself. then on the shirt, there’s a scene that scans the faces of the class, who are standing on some sort of float. below the float, there is a band playing in a little row for the picture. the accordian player is a guy from the frat (john katz?) and the guy standing next to him is his brother or twin or clone. they look older although i thought they were the same age as me.
i think this somehow transitinos into another section of the dream, in which i am in some sort of class, although the room is really dark and everyone is sitting cross-legged on the floor, and i think there’s a piano. the teacher looks like patti smith and when she asks who wants to read a poem aloud, i volunteer. a couple of lines in, she steps out. since i started reading, the room seems really loud, some sort of white noise that i can’t possibly speak over. my voice can’t get louder and i can’t be heard. it’s frustrating because i really want to do a good job reading this poem, but i also find myself really struggling with the language, tripping over my tongue in a way i’m not used to. perhaps this is the nature of the poem (ex. “Gilta razors razor lipsticker”) but i feel like i am mispronouncing words and really straining to read the words in the dark and there’s all this noise, and i’m about halfway through when two kids are simultaneously trying to pass me another poem that’s being passed around, and they’re both laying these two pieces of paper on me-- my arm and shoulder, two angles. i try to ignore them and keep reading a few more lines but it just becomes so insistent, wagging the paper on me and being completely distracting, and the room seems louder and louder, and i finally just say “FUCK, YOU GUYS!” and throw up the paper and walk out of the room. i walk down an eerie dark bluey sterile hallway, totally empty, and imagine what the kids are gonna tell our teacher. i make the decision not to go back to class today.

ALL I WANT

crackers with cream cheese and grandma's green pepper jelly.


kill this week.

i am sick to death of cleverness

just took my first nighttime shower in the dorm... so relaxing! didnt have to worry about running to work or anywhere at all. and no party in the suite to make my nakedness uncomfortable or public. yeehaw. homework time. COFFEECOFFEECOFFEE

ugh i shouldn't have written this, it has sparked a miserable chain of internet events that are nothing like homework or phone calls to the bank or any of the other things on my to-do list. and not even a good post.... this is my stupid life.

fraction of a dream

i think i had my first obama dream last night... but i don't really remember the details, other than that we were in the same room. he was all suit and smile, and i think he was staying in my house. i was sort of hoping that more of it would come back to me as i wrote this, but it's not happening.
the night before last, i had a weird bus dream. the whole time i thought i was riding on the back seat with this kid at school, but as the dream went on, he slowly morphed into someone else. it was only at the very end as i was getting up to leave that i really looked him in the face and realized he was a stranger.
i really should start writing these things down as soon as i wake up, instead of pressing the snooze button four times and never cultivating any dream life. brett was talking to me about lucid dreams the other day and i am SO JEALOUS of people who can do that. i wish i could even remember anything about these things... then again, about a year ago, i was have REALLY intense dreams that would just leave me stunned and devastated and unable to move from bed. it really wasn't just an excuse to skip class, i am pretty sure about that. maybe other people dream like that all the time and i'm just not used to dealing with it. it was like my dream emotions were more real than whatever i would feel when i was awake, and anger in a dream would linger and make me pissed for days.
i want to ask, has anyone else had stuff like this before? but i know that i would just be talking to myself.

I SHOULDA BREEN A DRUG STORE
YOU WISHED I WAS THE SPECIALS
IT’S SICK WHAT I WOULD HAVE BELIEVED
I NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED