davidleigh log burning fire when he thought of her he lapsed into a pleasant waking dream that his friends had to yank him from, pulling him from a place he could escape to, like a memory of just the sound of her voice. the remembrance of an early morning fone call is all he had left of any kind of tangible reality. her words were fragile like glass. everything else was chaos colliding with fiction. still, it was history on pause, as if the present was waiting to be completed. he still had her number. he wanted to dial it. he wondered if she emailed him. but he never checked. 040728 ... unhinged ---- (marked by) . 040730 ... unhinged she had erased his number years ago, but it didn't matter cause she still knew it by heart. she still knew her phone number and address that she had in kindergarten even though she'd lived in a few different places since then. her second book 'industrial abandonment' made the harcourt short list also but just like 'private psychology' it didn't win. she was the susan lucci of the harcourt short list. she almost wanted to stop writing to spite them not giving it to her finally. it might have looked like their discouragement won and made her stop to some, but whatever. like 'private psychology' was about david (she could think his name now without being incapacitated for hours), 'industrial abandonment' was about natalie. natalie...natalie....... natalie and that damn town they lived in together. so much drama that 'industrial abandonment' was even less fictionalized than 'private psychology' and shortly after it was published and natalie got her hands on it, she left leigh. leigh tried to hide it from her. she didn't want her to know all that. natalie would know from reading it that practically ALL of it was truth, non-fiction. and she left, just like leigh thought she would. somehow, leigh always attracted the straight girls that wanted to pretend they were bi or lesbians or whatever. and of course natalie loved the attention, and the glass flowers and the sugar-free candy and the gas in her car and the dinners at her favorite mexican restaurant attached to the hotel on belmont so she didn't try too hard to say no to any of it. and when they were alone.... but she still strung along all her boys, mike included while she paraded leigh and her own sexuality under their noses hinting at how they were both bi *winkwink* always sure to leave that tiniest of a glimmer of hope in their eyes. because now she had an entourage that fell over each other to buy her drinks when she was out making deliveries. and even though leigh was always at her right hand, leigh definitely didn't like being the leader of the buffoons that fell at natalie's feet. but all that aside, leigh was madly in love with her and even though she didn't like being the leader of the buffoons, she continued to be regardless. so she was a drama queen, so what? she was also a thouroughly beatiful human being. a soul mate, a goddess, and leigh placed her on a pedestal so high that when the pedestal was published she ran away. so leigh ran even further away from david and kar and natalie and the crackhead that ambled past her porch every evening to find some more drama to barely fictionalize to WIN the harcourt short list this time. 040821 ... log burning fire "while the city's busy sleeping all your troubles lie awake I walk the streets to stop my weeping but she'll never change her ways don't fool yourself she was headache from the moment that you met her my heart feels so still as i try to find the will to forget her somehow she's somewhere out there now her love is a rose dead and dying dropping her petals and man i know all full of the wine the world before her but sober with no place to go oh my tears fall down as i tried to forget the love was a joke from the day that we met all of the words all of her men all of my pain when i think back to when remember her hair as it shone in the sun it was there on the bed when i knew what she'd done tell yourself over and over you won't ever need her again" ~jeff buckley, 'forget her' 040905 ... crOwl i think square_the_circle is a stepping stone of this story, a growth along the evolutionary chain. a blossom on the tree of life. 060618 ... unhinged yes, i started to read it again a couple weeks back and it seemed very short and incomplete in comparison; i think i only have one or two more entries on my chapter left. i feel not quite right without trading it off. 060619 what's it to you? who go blather from