minute_letters3 kerry i was pacing around the house listening to neil young on my headphones and moping and trying not to cry and feeling like i wanted to break something. so i went into the kitchen and turned on a small light and ate a bit of the brownies i made him for his birthday, and drank some grape juice, and was so angry, and wanted to cut off all the tips of my fingers, and sat at the stool and tasted the intense chocolate of the brownie i'd made and didn't want to give him any of them. i listen to neil young when i'm upset. i came home and lay down on the couch with a NeilYoung&CrazyHorse cd in my discman and tears slid out of closed eyes and i tried to forget where i was and even fall asleep. then moved to my bedroom and listened to the self-titled album after putting in a mixtape and not being able to stand it. itchy twitchy hands, i lunged for the nail filer, began to file down the callouses on my feet furiously, snapped on my mother who is going to maryland tomorrow, who keeps trying to guess what i am angry about, and here they are coming again and i want to burn your birthday card and all feelings i have for you but thats impossible, i'm already suffocating on the flames in my head you who i shouldn't stake claim to (and don't, really) but hate that i can't, and it was your birthday but no phonecall when you got back from your vacation, remember 'consider it done'? and you said 'you shouldve dropped by last night' because it was 'kind of a party' and i said 'you shouldve called me' and you said you knew, but you were just... 'yeeeashh' and maybe it's just that i feel stupid or something i always do anyway it's nothing new after only being home for about an hour reading 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest' i was clawing again to get out of the house and so i went down to CVS with my dad and bought glue. but being around him only made me upset as it often does the same old stupid feelings i hate that he's my favorite person but if i had to live with him by myself i'd probably be a real wreck he makes me feel like everything i say or do is stupid like I am bullshit and it makes me not even want to talk around him because this sounds so dumb but i can honestly say that i think my dad is the most amazing person and i agree with nearly all his ideas and theories and he's brilliant and he's a wonderful photographer and nothing i do ever impresses him it seems like. stupid one-armed hugs because he says i'm too old. and eye-rolling and snippity responses and i'm so cold sitting in the front seat staring out the window hoping my headache goes away. lately it seems to me that there is no point in Feeling for anyone because i get nothing back. and i'm too sick and tired of that stale feeling to try and make any new connections so that maybe i could Change that whole cycle. why can't everything be like in the movies where you say a couple words and you understand each other deeply and purely and wholely, no question? truly i just want to right now hold some breathing thing in my arms and feel its pulse along with mine everything feels so diluted and dead it was like waking up this morning after a horrible dream where i saw him in line at an airport and went up to him and hugged him and we held each other until i woke up which must have been 10 minutes just standing and sometimes sitting, arms wrapt round each other just breathing together and it was such a beautiful feeling such a terrible thing to wake up to 030613 ... kerry [i am jack's broken heart] [i am jack's inflamed sense of rejection] i'm awake only in my dreams and i wish that you could join me there. so that i may run my fingers splayed like the glimmering knives of sunrise across your skin and feel the face you wash, every pore. here once awake, no only technically groggy half-awareness never listening never hearing, she'll tell you, she tries to speak to me and my ears are shut, without my knowing. but i wish you could slide your dream-feet into my dream-shoes that aren't so full of water and squishing every step as my real-shoes, and look into my dream-mirror that glitters or cracks based purely on theme and mood, instead of unfamiliar jigsaw faces bleeding and broken with only the eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. you whose eyes shine through my tissue-thin flesh to the wall behind and suck all the substance in me straight out of my fingertips. is it good to feel so heavy anchored by this slippery muse with the underlying tongue of all my writing wrapped around them? heavy lids and soaking soul and calloused feet to match, without first heartbreak would my veins glow beneath thin skin so weak it rips at my spine when i stretch in the morning? would i ever be able to shut my eyes and ignore, try to move on, instead of the pupils dilating as the lights go down and the temperature rises, with panicked husky breaths, what to do, what to do? what to do when you are suffocating on the flames that fill your lungs after the heart is long-since blackened and charred? we are too full of hope. we fight to the last breath. 030614 ... frAnk we are too full of hope........................... instead of wondering how long this will last, i am insisting on entering and blinking my eyes until i get used to the light. sometimes things work and all is sparkling, sometimes it doesn't and i hear laughter when i'm leaving. laughter at what an ass i had been. i breathe in fire and my lungs swell with life elsewhere. could it be that what i am doing is wrong? what is right? who is watching me? i hear a rhythm. it is the sound my mother played in the womb. it is the sound of existence before i was born. it is music that becomes a stream that my ragged boat sails upon. and when the wind does not blow, it is my breath that propels me. cheeks blowing and pushing until i pass out. when i wake there are all those i love standing above me as if they have been praying i would not die. birds fly. children sing. old people remember. who will realize how short our time is here? how long until we discover that now is when we are alive? 030614 ... kerry 'how long until we discover that now is when we are alive?' oh frAnk, i don't know if what you wrote was at all a response to what i'd written, but thank you because for some reason what you wrote made me feel a lot better about all this shitty nonsense going on in my life right now, it is 12:45, i just got home and basically i do feel pretty crumby because i helped throw a surprise party for my friend jackie who is leaving town tomorrow and will be gone six weeks and while it was a great party i did see james there and didn't say more than 5 words to him the whole time and it was so awful, or maybe it was that what you wrote was just really beautiful, it was the very very last part that struck me because that is something i myself Know in my ... logical rational brain but can't seem to..ehm.... i can't really live my life that way yet. i dont know why. i guess i Know it, but not in the sense that i should, not like the way you know things like love, and the way someone smells, and your favorite song. i wish i knew it that way because i think i'd be a lot happier. but thank you for writing in here, or Blathing in here, because seeing your name on this blathe just made me smile. 030614 ... frAnk it's an honour, kerry, to know that. you've been gone a while and i missed you. your writing comes from those places where we need our own language to define. secret words that others must listen for hours while we try to interpret. i did write in reponse to what you said because it is what you need to learn, just like everyone does. jst like me, every day. we are alive now. for others. for ourselves. how do we know it? we must want it like we want breath. like a newborn child desires milk from its mother. and then we will grow into the understanding. 030615 ... kerry "they say a rose is a flower and that it is red it blooms, it grows, it wilts and then it is dead they say a stone is a marker and that it has weight they say it's solid but it can deteriorate"-rasputina, 'rose k.' it feels nice to have another Minute Letters. the other 2 got so long they took forever to load on my computer. you left a message on my machine. i'd finally caved, after jackie's prompts, and called you, talked to your mother. and talked to you, we have nothing interesting to say but it's alright, you make noise rambling and i laugh at you and even if we don't have a whole lot to talk about today i am still happy to hear your voice. i wonder what we should do when we hang out, i wonder what you will do when i give you the card i made, what should i do with the brownies? i keep eating them. i dream about a million identical cats walking around my legs and i want to go to a bookstore and buy a book of Rilke poems and i want to go to junkman's daughter and get one of those flimsy lightweight shirts with the embroidered flowers on the front and i want to snap pictures of james if he'll let me 030615 ... kerry i am so pissed off at my mother, i guess it is a bad thing to write while you are upset but i need something to do with my hands. i was just informed that friday night there is a family birthday dinner, it happens to be the same night as the free White Stripes concert. so she is being a bitch about letting me go to this concert i've been planning on attending for a while now. Big, fucking deal. it doesn't matter, really, none of my family will care or notice if i'm not there. relatives, ugh, stupid, they try so hard to realte and bond, they don't care though at least mine don't, this seems so trivial. i'm embarrassed to say any more about it. but i guess i'm also mad because of the way my mom is acting, she completely tuned me out, and i can't do anything about it, why does there have to be such a big fucking double standard?!?!?! honestly right now i am so frustrated. i can't reach kasey or jo and james is probably with trap because it's his birthday today. and i just... i dunno, i miss jackie already, i am so fucking dependent, i guess it's more that i need her here to pour out everything and feel better, she keeps me grounded sometimes. right now i want to just go drink the coronas in my trunk and maybe some oj-and-vodka and the peach schnapps i found in my house except it smells so gross i just odn't even care right now, i want to be drunk and lose touch, i don't want to do it by myself. i want to drink with kasey or james. if only they were around. i'm so hypocritical. but i Don't care. I DONT CARE. maybe drinking will be my new hobby. ughhghhghghg..... i'm trying right now to think of places i could do this. so far i can't think of anything good just generic places like parks, or the creek or even my room but the room thing is kinda iffy. maybe late late tonight i will get some oj and vodka. it would be so easy to do. i am such a bitch, i am "using" will for his car, as a means of wandering aimlessly, with people i loathe, bare mattress and power rangers and on the TV static take a shower.... i didn't Want to join their party, want to have my own by myself because i have this sick unfulfilled craving for human understanding which i am basically giving up on. never feeling Good Enough,i'm sick of that... i know the reason you're not calling isn't because of me, isn't my fault, i know it's because you have Too Many Friends and i envy you, checking messages -Zero- this is a new low. i am such a hypocrite, i want to float away spiral off into some fuzzy daydream situation while i'm not suicidal and i dont want to kill myself, i still hate it here so much Here as in me, my life if/when i make it to college maybe i can escape that, but i'm so impatient. i have headaches wanting so badly just to end things in a less-final way than death because i'm so caught up in my own Want i'm so afraid of never finding anyone, lover-and-not friend-and-not how cliche, someone who understands me or even gives a shit, there Are a few places i dont feel like a Speck On The Wall but here's another cliche, what if i never find My Niche? drinking is something to do. it's social. i love to write but i hate that it's so solitary.... but that's also what i love about it, writing sucks it brings me nothing, it just helps me Spew, like now, i wish i wish i wish i wish i had more thoughts to document, this is just more of the same i've said it all before, the last story i wrote all my originality, or any trace i ever had, is Spent. I am Spent. really in the Scheme of Things, They say this is nothing. i still feel like such a shit. i hate being in this point of my life because They say this is shaping us for who we're going to Be. I'm so afraid nothing's ever going to change. I wish there was someone out there who i knew listened and really Heard me. i wish i didn't feel like i was smothering myself with all of this. i wish i didn't feel like i was constantly bitching about things in general, things that oftentimes are irreversible, but i do feel that way, and that in itself is something i guess i can't change, or not yet. 030617 ... frAnk i listen and i really hear you, fuck yeah. i know the shit you're going through. a free white stripes concert?! no wonder you're pissed. i love your honesty. your guts. i wish i knew you. i wish i was your james. you'll change it. but, that's so easy for me to say. it's just that with every desire you have for change it's like a seed drops to the fertile ground in your soul. it 's buried in the wet darkness, doing shit, right now, but someday, kerry, it will grow into EXACTLY what you want it to. i drink sometimes to escape the bullshit. most everyone does. it feels good to get fucking numb. and then tomorrow comes and you see clearly. you have a victory somehow, not because you escaped, not because you drank, but because you broke through. you were independant. you needed nobody. you did it by yourself. 030617 ... Anna_Began Don't let it go Kerry... You think you grow up and you think you figure it out and then suddenly you wake up one day and realize you've gone dead inside. Hold onto the way you feel things now because intense and passionate is the only way to live life. Let it hurt, and rage and use it all to create and create and create because at least it's SOMETHING. What you write here, ranting, complaining, whatever you want to call it, is real life and better than any work of fiction you could compose. The things that matter in life, good and bad, joy and pain, that mossy clean smell of the air right after a summer thunderstorm; anything that cuts right to your core and reminds you to breathe and feel, that's the shit that matters. Turning yourself inside out is what's important. Writing, and facing solitude, already puts you light years ahead of most of humanity. And when you do connect, it's going to be at a level and with people that fulfill you. Do not ever settle. And if that means throwing back the occasional screwdriver, baby I'll drink to that. 030618 ... kerry thanks to you both for basically giving me advice and "words of wisdom" i suppose you'd call it, and basically for... i guess bringing me back down. i am feeling somewhat better. [le sigh] you both made me so happy 030619 ... kerry ive taken the scissors and cut your pictures out of my head and i pried your fingers away from mine. and now that i am finally FINALLY free, a feeling i've longed for but could never acknowledge, i dont know what i should do with myself. i can hear the rain pounding louder now. i can hear it still through my hands cupped over my ears to block out this tsunami of sound. my bubble had protected me from such reality, my earmuffed oblivion, i can hear you coming closer now. i can hear you still, your bags scraping the floors, full of promises i'd made to myself, and you're bringing them back to me. forcing me to face them, and i dont know if i can, and i have my hands over my ears still, running to the farthest corner. the problem is not my age, and its not the world...its me. what to do when you have no words to make sense of why you're here? won't someone tell me how to live? wont someone spell it out for me? please don't get too close to me or i may find that my wall is crumbling. please try for once not to make me second-guess myself. lying on the hammock at my cousin's house this evening, i did think for a while that it is a beautiful world, and the light was so crisp, and slicing up the deck and i swayed and listened to dad talk about how when he was in high school he thought bob dylan was bob die-lan because he and his friends didn't know anyone named dylan. kids crawling all over the little playhouse, pulling my brother along with them, i kick off my shoes, eyes travel over the railings and the new wood, the painted gourds, the grass. i could eat everything. i can still feel my body swaying. there was a time when i lay on my bed and breathed softly, and the whole room moved around me. kasey and i lay in the wet grass and stared out-of-focus at the clouds at 8:30 last night, talked about acid, talked about her dad, and harry potter, and her job. i dyed jo's hair "rosewood". deep purple-red-brown. dye all over the trashcan, dye on my feet. sat on the edge of the tub and listened to her talk. i do love listening to people talk. tonight was the white stripes concert, and she was there, and she has her license now... what will i think about this summer once i completely stop thinking of you? 030620 ... kerry paperthin morning eating bread and butter, processed my 2 rolls of film and went to home depot. i am painting the back of my bedroom door and my little nightstand deep red and also painting black and white polkadots on the nightstand. i will begin early tomorrow morning, before sarah and i go to the botanical gardens. i got the new radiohead cd. it's amazing. i told my mother i'd like new leather sandals so i can play earthmother. she laughed at me. i am a flake. i just remembered that i forgot to tell amanda that i am not going to her little get-together thing tonight. it has been going on for three hours. i know that if i went i would only end up wanting to leave as soon as i arrived. biting the same fingernail and deep sighs. new pictures, new pictures, sleeping on docks, and laughing hysterically, and jumping into freezing water. i printed these today... would take sitting breaks for literally 30 seconds before i had to get up and do something else. my feet are throbbing, i hadnt sat down anywhere in over 2 hours. nothing especially interesting or monumental has happened today. i made a deal with my mom that if she made salmon i would stay home for dinner tonight, the first time in almost two weeks, which is why i am nearly twitching wanting to call someone, wanting to go out somewhere. restless and impatient... i must go somewhere... 030621 ... kerry driver's ed is by far the most profoundly boring thing i've ever had to do, in my entire life. i sit, for 6 hours, and drift into fog. i watch movies with titles like "Seatbelts--For Dummies, or For People?" and write down the answers to stupid mundane questions from the book. i order in tacos for lunch during break. i read "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" and write to people and play snake on my phone to pass time. today i came home, around 5, and put on my pajamas. i played on the computer and then called audrey back. ellen called, she is leaving for boston and if i didnt see her today i wouldnt until she gets back. so we meet emily and this other guy daniel at a little cafe place and i get french toast and they get some kind of beans and veggie melt stuff. we drive to krispy kreme. i come home. audrey picks me and vail up, we go get ice cream, her boyfriend is there, being intelligent and intimidating. then we go to vail's, and laugh at her cat, and i come home. and here i am. i finished my letter to jackie. i miss her so much. i miss being able to talk and ramble about anything and she understands. i miss some other things, too. i miss 'having a thing' with james. i miss thinking about james because thinking about him used to make me so happy. i miss him. i miss feeling so full. i guess i have been missing feeling full, and being happy when i think of james, for a long long time. i'd like to have something else to think about. i mean, someONE else. i feel like all of it is something i've completely made up in my head. as if i'm crazy. i know it was there because i've had to ask jackie and jo. and they would tell me if it wasnt there. i feel like the music's never loud enough. do you ever try so hard to distract yourself, just to avoid your own thoughts? i never know what to say. or what to write. i write about things i do in the day because there's nothing else here. i try to make it that way, leave no room for emotion, sometimes. 030624 ... kerry i'm sitting around in the classroom and it's humming like a giant recorder hearing all out thoughts logging them down. i want to stand on the top of a dam and feel like a goddess with the water pouring out under me. and i was just thinking maybe you shouldn't call me ever again, i half-dreamed you showed up at my door and it made me vomit everywhere. i ate your brownies, i feel kind of new in a way but so used up, chewed up and spit out like the gum in my dream that was gagging me when the man in the pink speedo came over to introduce himself. and i was thinking that i feel kind of bad about the way things turned out between us. i don't know if you've noticed anything "turning out" yet but i know i have. i know we're not telepathic so maybe you feel differently than i do. but if you do, you should tell me. but you never tell me anything now. it's been two weeks. i'd like to hear from you but i'm not counting on anything anymore. i wander around with half-friends in the foggy sticky evening and we lie on the grass and we pile into cars, and i try so hard every day and every evening to distract myself. in my journals you can see it. you can read the emotionless entries and see that i've diluted myself. i guess it's a good thing, i'm not such a maniac anymore. yeah i guess you did make me a maniac of some sorts. yeah i guess it could've just been me, my fault, that i was near you, physically and not, and it kind of started fraying my wires. buzzing and spitting, sparking up in my eyes and teeth grinding like cars out- of-control screeching along the curb it grates my brain it keeps me on edge, and i hope when we see each other things aren't weird, like we're both falling off the edge of a cliff and we're holding each other barely but we don't trust one another. it's kind of like that for me. i think the only thing about you that's wrong, that's flawed, is how you kept prying at me. how you kept popping my head open and watching the juice of my brain sizzle under the harsh light and it was too delicate and you stuck your index and middle fingers into the fleshy squishy quivering mass and you twisted it, like rolling spaghetti onto a fork. it made me wince and it made me twitch and it made me write insane things, you hit so many nerves, nerves i didn't even know i had. you were picking away at me, a squirrel sitting atop a high brance with big buckteeth gnawing away at some ordinary pinecone, and you tossed me away, the meager core dejected hits the pavement and you can see its orange and rust-colored bristles and hairs sticking up all over the place in every direction as if it was first sucked on and then electrocuted. that's how i feel, electrocuted. the way that people describe EST, no memory no thought right afterwards, i feel as if i've been unconcious for so long and here i am just waking up but i'm still not alert enough to address you, i'm still not alert enough to forget about it completely. in half-dreams you are showing up here making me sick and killing me all over again. killing me with kind words and seemingly oblivious sentiments but i know you know what you're doing. i remember the first few days of it when you were like a needle right in my arm and it felt like you'd never stop digging in, i had to remember to slip it only under the skin, you were sucking my blood [leech] and i tipped my head back and i gritted my teeth and i loved it. i loved it always and finally they're clawing at me and jerking out the needle and now i think it's wearing off. i remember the first few days when my eyes wouldn't stop spinning and i couldn't focus on just one thing. the first few days, my ears were shriveling up into themselves and i couldn't listen to anyone. i was moonwalking and i was tipping headfirst into the sidewalk all the time and it didn't matter. now it feels as if we couldnt get any further from each other. now i can sense the wind taking my little rowboat in the opposite direction of yours... i hear it singing in my ears. and i feel it stinging my lips, both like a kiss we've never shared and the kiss of your silent farewell that i had to strain to hear, the one i nearly missed, and would've if i hadn't woken up when i did. thankfully these bridges aren't burned; if our eyes were stuck in fog and our hearts were sagging under the weight of the weather between us would there be any chance of our frozen fingers being pinned to the ropespun rails as we cautiously cross the wobbling planks of these bridges and find ourselves on the sunnier side? together? i'm so afraid that i'll be the one always holding back in the future. even if i find myself in someone else's car, in someone else's eyes, will my skin and bones be pulling me towards them, while the rest of me sits behind hands folded in lap pursing lips and waiting for some strange fantasy i'd always loved (though it was incomplete and blotchy and scarred) to come floating back over the water where my eyes are sinking back into my head? i'm scared i will forever be divided amongst past, present, and future, past-- where there are so many "what if"s and future-- where there are even more. and present, which--although i try to bring myself to embrace it openly and completely-- still remains skewed, faces jigsawed and screaming as the pieces fall away, the results of my dazed absence-of-mind. my impatient brain, racing ahead of the traffic, "What's Next???" she says, squints and looks almost ill, she's straining her eyes trying to remember who she promised she'd try to be, but she can't take her eyes off the signs up ahead long enough to even address her own questions. i'd pick up leaves when we'd go for walks and i'd pull away at the green flesh cutting right to the veins where they were carved loose and lying frail and empty, naked and useless in my palm. closed my fingers into a fist and the leaf-veins disappeared into my hand, so insignificant i couldn't feel them. picking at these leaves the way you picked at me. except i was always held at arm's length, raging heart swiping at your ribcage to try and rip you open, i wanted to devour you, i wanted to feel your blood scalding my skin, i wanted to bathe in it, be immersed, i wanted to hold bits of you in my arms and feel your LIFE overtaking all my senses; i wanted to be blind in the thick salty juice of your veins. you held me at arm's length, and dangled it before me, you squeezed out some inconsequential amount and let it lie on my tongue and i was too afraid to ask for more, i knew you'd deny me. sick and crazed and craving you with such an intensity, i was slipping down into the floor trying to hold down what i was thinking and how i felt and all my questions. i slid beneath linoleum tiles and slithered away and got lost, and i blame you for it. 030626 ... frAnk unfuckingbelievable writing. kerry, i want to live inside of you. i read this and somehow i wept. not because i was sad, but more like i was thrilled that someone i know through their words can be so fucking brutal with their honesty. you take a brush and with your blood paint what your soul beholds. you take a crayon and draw the images your breath leaves on glass. fuck me! christ. if i could write like that. 030627 ... kerry frAnk, you are pretty wonderful with words too, you know. but i never feel like i can thank you enough for the amazing things you say to me, especially about my writing. i try to be as honest as possible. i feel so naive when i come on blather. people sitting around in this big red.. something, handing out the most important and wise advice, about life and death and love and Everything, i wish, really, that i had my own pamphlet on How To Live that i could pass out, or how to do anything, but (to be honest, ha) what i really want is to someday meet someone who will teach ME how to live. i don't think i ever really thought of james as that person. more of a ledge to jump from, to get to someplace else, maybe for experience, i never thought of him as anything more than maybe a first love, as scared as i am to admit that, no plans for any kind of future, except with a first love there always is the future in which you find it impossible to actually get over the person. but a first love, that's a lot to say about someone, i suppose. i do still feel like despite how angry/hurt/confused i am by the whole thing, i think he is such a person. in good ways and bad. so we had a huge fallingout last night. started by me, when i brought everything out into the open, and told him i wished i'd been more impatient months ago, and that it made me feel as if i was crazy, and there was a lot of silence, and a lot of voice-cracking, and a lot of "i understand"s and "i'm sorry"s and "i don't know what to say"s. and the whole situation, because i realize i haven't completely explained it on blather, is complicated, and i don't want to go through it all really. and there was crying afterwards, after the phone was back in its cradle, and a lot of thinking. and a lot of wondering about why, and what. this is where the last blathe was rooted, though it was written before james and i really reached an End. and i do think that it is an end. what you say to me fills me, because this IS honest, and it IS me, here, in blather_red, and that is why i am happy that you take the time to tell me what you think. so thank you, frAnk. 030627 ... kerry so sometimes lately i'll be sitting in my room looking at my van gogh poster and looking at my new red door with the foreign-fashion poster on it and the turquoise walls coming into the corner spreading out making everything jade and enormous in a wide-angle view of the room as my eyelids kind of slip half-mast the way they tend to do and i'm wondering thinking about james my feet sticking to the plastic tarp i haven't pulled up yet and sometimes thinking about it makes my whole body so tired all at once that it makes me cry again, a little... "it's the kind of thing where, you like your friend off-and-on for a couple of years, and they like you, and nothing happens, and you act on it, tell them you like them, and you spend so much time together and they give you roses and etc etc, and it lasts for months and never even... begins. and then it ends." jo gave me a bag of clothes. we cleaned emily's desk. we ate at subway. i licked all the mustard off my fingers and was very happy. i listen to the temptations and feel my eyes burning midnight-snack itching in my stomach i should go read kesey, i should work on my story, i should watch SNL, but i'm sitting here talking to this guy i know about why we have a hard time attracting the opposite sex. 030628 ... kerry so sometimes lately i'll be sitting in my room looking at my van gogh poster and looking at my new red door with the foreign-fashion poster on it and the turquoise walls coming into the corner spreading out making everything jade and enormous in a wide-angle view of the room as my eyelids kind of slip half-mast the way they tend to do and i'm wondering thinking about james my feet sticking to the plastic tarp i haven't pulled up yet and sometimes thinking about it makes my whole body so tired all at once that it makes me cry again, a little... "it's the kind of thing where, you like your friend off-and-on for a couple of years, and they like you, and nothing happens, and you act on it, tell them you like them, and you spend so much time together and they give you roses and etc etc, and it lasts for months and never even... begins. and then it ends." jo gave me a bag of clothes. we cleaned emily's desk. we ate at subway. i licked all the mustard off my fingers and was very happy. i listen to the temptations and feel my eyes burning midnight-snack itching in my stomach i should go read kesey, i should work on my story, i should watch SNL, but i'm sitting here talking to this guy i know about why we have a hard time attracting the opposite sex. tonight on the bridge at the playground amanda and katie were discussing how you can't believe a girl who says she doesn't masterbate. 030628 ... kerry YIKES! oh fuck me read the 2nd one 030628 ... frAnk i think a lot about things, how they have beginnings, growth, maturity, and then death. we have an old greenhouse back at robin hill (i'm currently in cali.) and i'm always involved with this process, as well as in our work at the little farm. everywhere we're being taught about the cycle and i see it again and again, over and over in my own life and with greta, dennis, jamie, fyn, and ingrid. what you had with james........... it had a birth. it grew. it had a life. and now you must recognize if it is over. is it? that's what you need to see. is it ever really over? and even if it is, death doesn't mean a cessation necessarily. because every plant will live on through some type of regeneration. as they die, seeds are dispersed and given the right conditions will renew themselves. or perennial plants will simply return bigger and stronger in the following spring. i don't mean to give you some kind of horticulture lesson..... what the fuck am i trying to say? i don't really know. except that james is your first love. and if what you had with him is dead or dying you must realize something else will come forth out of it. do you know what i mean? what will be born? it's the kind of thing when you are staring at the turquoise wall. perhaps the revelation will come to you. it happens to me when i'm digging the earth. i will think of emily or mia or elysia and how the broken pieces fit together to make me into some type of person. all of it, all the love we experienced in different ways linking, uniting, swirling around, spinning, to make me into who i currently am. and what about james? he has a part of you with him forever. and everything he does from this day forward will be done with your direct or indirect influence or memory. no shit. 030629 ... kerry you say the best things, frAnk. and yes i know exactly what you mean. and i don't know if it's the end or not. i guess i won't know for a while but maybe that's okay, i'm starting to realize, maybe it would be good to just leave it, because it feels over in a way, but it doesn't feel... i don't know... there are so many loose ends... it's not completely finished. and that doesn't mean it will necessarily pick up again. but we are good enough friends that i know somehow these loose ends will be addressed, Somehow. apparently there are still feelings left over on both sides. i don't know what will happen with them, but i can see now that i'm not supposed to know yet. 030630 ... kerry she listens to "me first and the gimme gimmes" and ever since she put them on my mixtape i have listened to them too. they are the only cover band i would ever download. tomorrow she's picking me up and we're going to go get coffeedrinks or cake or muffins and talk about my story. finally it's finished. everything just needs to be tweaked, and repaired, and organized. and hopefully something will happen with this one. yesterday i bought a pair of brown two-toned doc martens for $18, and two videos for $4 and $6-- What Lies Beneath and Night of the Living Dead. and i can't wait to watch them. last night i got to the courthouse and it was jo and emily and her friend from out of town and danny and daniel and will and john and we went to emily's to watch a movie. we were in her basement and will and i were crammed into one of the armchairs because we both wanted to use the other as a footrest, and jo and john were teasing whispering about us, and i didn't care, it was just a fun chill time, daniel and i lying in the backseat of will's car head-to-head and his face kept turning into my neck, and i hoped my hair wasn't suffocating him. we watched moulin rouge and then will drove home danny, john, daniel and i. maybe it was a good night because i had minimal contact with any of the other girls there and i like that. i prefer being around guys sometimes. i prefer being able to just sit draped around and say stupid funny things sometimes. 030630 ... kerry after a long evening of walking around and watching fireworks and laughing and spinning and screaming, i went home and ended up in bed at about 1:30, exhausted, but couldn't sleep. the last time i'd eaten was 7:30ish, and it was only a caesar salad and 2 glasses of water. when i was in bed, my stomach started rumbling, and growling, and coming up with a slow steady ache. i pushed it away, deciding to sleep and forget about how hungry i was, and i never slept. at 3:15 i drifted off into something that could never be called sleep but wasn't really conciousness either, just a replay of the night i'd had with my friends, except it all was revolving around food, here's Jo eating a bowl of ice-cream, here's Will and Daniel buying me milkshakes and dipped cones, and the whole time i was walking around in my 'dream', in the diner and on the streets, something inside me was writhing and twisting, which i realized later was just my body squirming in the sheets, and at 6:30 a.m. birds were singing outside my window and the sun was up, and i blinked crustless eyes and remember james told me about the birds that sing at his house, only they sing in the middle of the night, ... kept stumbling around the house, there is no toiletpaper anywhere, in either bathroom, and i'm trying to decide how to ration out the last 10 or so squares, and then hunger hits again so i go to the kitchen (longing for ice cream and milkshakes) and get cream cheese on bread, and a chocolate shake, and take it to my room with my book, and trying to drink the shake in my exhaustion it dribbles down the left side of my face, past my jaw and down my neck through my shirt and all over my shoulder INSIDE my sweatshirt. so i change, and i read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. and i finish it finally, and i cry at the ending, and now it's 9 a.m. and my hair is still soft because it hasn't really been slept on, and there's still no toilet paper, and i'm wondering how long i will last without sleep. 030705 ... kerry When we stood on the crest of the hill and the lights of our town flooded out all the stars leaving only the flawless blue sky and headstones half-lit in hazy moonlight and the fireflies swarmed in the trees bowed over the gravel paths, I had a huge rush of rememberance. It was a surge of familiarity hitting all my senses and gushing between my ears, and I saw the house where I lived when I was only a day old, chipped white paint on the walls and cool wood floors, a warm spotted dog draped across a green sofa, its stomach slowly rising and setting with each breath. The husky grating guitars in a bare living room, armoir holding the stereo and the whole house splintering with every note. And soon I was a small girl running through dark pastures with the tiniest, bubble- cheeked boy toddling along behind me, slugs filling the dog bowls on the front porch and bare bulbs flickering under the awnings. I could see so clearly the driest leaves glowing all shades of copper and rust and fluttering like loose paper beneath the maple trees, and the feeling of toppling and falling endlessly, spiralling into the ancient dream of autumn with garden snakes and jack-o-lanterns, every face punched in. tonight jo and ellen and i walked to the park and played on the swings but it was so hot that we couldn't stay for long, we walked back to jo's house and we stood around leaning on the tiled walls in her bathroom with our shirts off and she teased my hair and put it up all knotty-like with bobbypins. then will and daniel and two other guys were knocking on the door, and we are scrambling for our clothes, and then we come out of the bathroom and ellen's undershirt is all poking out and i'm buttoning the bottom button on my polo shirt and they are laughing at us. but we all pile into will's car except jo who drives herself, and we come back down near my house, and end up just daniel, will, jo, and ellen and i lying on the rocking bridge in the dark church playground, and then jo wants icecream and will is saying let's go to Kroger to buy cheap icecream, and i'm saying i'll only go if someone carries me because i don't feel like walking so will picks me up and starts carrying me out of the playground, and i am saying, "where are we going?" because no one is coming with us, "to the backseat of my car" "oh, uh, ok hahaha. you kidding?" "you wish!" so he puts me down on the back of the car while he fumbles for his keys, and then puts me in the backseat, and we lay there for a while with our legs crossed and propped up on the frontseat headrests, and we start messing up our hair and he is shaking his leg outside the window, until they come to the car and start banging on the sides, laughing. so people drift away for the evening, and by 11:15 will is sitting in the seat and my head is in his lap and we just talk for a while, and then he drives me home, and here i am listening to the Police thinking i never want to be home thinking about the stupid shy-vibe i give off, thinking about school and not wanting to go back, thinking about maybe just being able to block out things this year and be a little happier, and i need to just loosen up sometimes, just be able to relax completely, and i am getting better at that. it helps to have friends who always want you sitting on their laps or want their arms around you or their legs across yours. who are always tickling you and poking you and pulling at your clothing. 030711 ... kerry it is 12:20 a.m. I am listening to "positively 4th street" by bob dylan. only 2 minutes ago, my father came to me and said, "come outside, i want you to look at the sky." barefoot i went outside with him, walking into the street gravel sticking into my skin and stood on the line, the moon is almost full and lights up the sky into this beautiful cornflower/periwinkle color, so you can see the clouds so perfectly so detailed like marble, then like bones as they merge and separate in spots like a spine stretching across the sky tonight max ended it with his sort-of girlfriend. "i feel so clean," he said. i said, "i bet you do. so what are you going to do now?" and he said, "well, how about to start - i've always thought you were really cute. take that for what it's worth, i just want to say it." and i say, "well thank you! that was unexpected." things are so breezy today. will called me while i was in Pier 1 with my mother balancing martini glasses in the crooks of our arms. our cellphones begin ringing at the same time and it is insanity. and nathalie is home, finally, from the philippines and australia. and she brought me 200 australian stamps as a souvenier. tomorrow is my little cousin's baptism. i don't know why i am not more reluctant to go. i don't know when the last time was that i was as calm as i am now. 030712 ... kerry talk radio too loud in this room and my father's flashbulb going off in the hall, blinking brushing white against every wall for an instant. and i'm trying to tune out to jack_johnson, we saw those missionary-kids back from africa today and one, my brother's old friend from elementary school, is tall now, surferish, looks my age. they stood and stared at each other in Target and then kind of smiled awkwardly. my mother, talking to the wife, nods at me while i'm in the checkout line waiting for my change. "kerry, she's driving now." as if this is such a shock. [shock! horror!] i think, and look away, try to ignore my mother. but on the way home what is it on the radio, making my tongue travel every inch of my mouth trying to lick up every ounce of whatever wants to come tumbling up and i want to scream, when jo got that stern mother-voice with me on the phone today, she thinks i don't pay attention to her and she gets all stony about it which bothers me so i just start rambling bullshit, which is something i do when i find it impossible to take someone seriously, which is quite frequently. "i can divide my brain in half," i say to her, lips too floppy, "i can do this and talk to you at the same time. what i'm doing really requires no brain-power anyway." "i just feel like you're not paying attention to me." "not paying attention? i've heard everything that you've said." which is a lot, because when she calls, i am a listener, and she is a talker. and i throw in the appropriate responses because i have to, because i have to listen, ohi'msorry iunderstand yesiagree ohhahahahathatssoclever but i hear her anyway. it's not like i tune her out. [except when she carries on about how cute her dog is in that particular position on the floor. or how much it sucks that her father won't let her use his car tonight. how dare he have a life!] i am being pretty vicious right now. i need to stop. max said he'd give me free icecream if i stopped by the shop, because he gets a free one each shift. i said i dont know if i can make it. but i'm sure if i wanted to, i could... i guess i dont want him to go on break and then we'd have to find stuff to talk about... and i'd have to laugh, or smile... or listen to him complain, too......... at the baptism this morning-- it was a young guy doing it. short buzzed hair and fratboy look. his voice was too harsh he talked like he had to write down all his thoughts on index cards just so that he could remember them exactly so everyone would know precisely what went through his mind [to prevent confusion?] they made the parents (my cousins) PROMISE to raise her in a christian way what kind of a promise is that? to hope that she whatevers jesus as her whatever and is a whatever of the church of whatever and then my dad was asleep and the four of us, my wee little immediate family all in a row giggling because how long has it been since we went to church? my parents took my brother and i when we were little only because they wanted us to feel comfortable in a church if, when we were older, we were ever struck with the burning desire to attend. (and we haven't been yet) i wonder how many hymns they pretended to sing? i remember this time in ninth grade it got around that this girl in my class, this quiet/standoffish/maybeinvisible white-beyond-white girl, could do an amazing snake-kindof dance, i don't even know what it's called, it's kind of a shimmy, so we all asked her PLEADED her to do it for us, and she did, and you could feel it in the room after she was done you could feel it, that every guy in the class (every guy who'd never given her a second thought) wanted to bang her, right there, if only for an instant. 030713 ... kerry i called will i said "i'm bored at home are you doing anything?" "nah, just bangin on the piano" "you want to waste some time?" "of course" so he picks me up in his dads huge truck that smells like cigarettes that reminds me of daniel's house the instant it hits me, and we go to the old abandoned waterworks and wander around the woods and stuff, and walk on the traintracks, [the way ya do] [hahaha] and played one game of poohsticks which i won, and got munched on by mosquitos, and then we drove through the new subdivision and pretended we were masons, and we went back to his house to get his car. inside he played a song on the computer that he'd made, and it was really really cool, because he is an amazing musician he knows all about theory etc and we picked up daniel and went to this little mexican place where i saw one of my campers from the camp where i am a counselor this week the shyest boy, he didnt talk to me [i got squirted in the face by one girl, two boys faked sick, i hate kids] will squeezed my knee under the table while i was in mid-chew, choked on my chip laughing and daniel sat there and stared at us [we'd interrupted his story] and daniel put an icecube down my back and flicked water in my face on the way back to will's old grandma car now i am going to nathalie's to sit around in her Blue room and laugh about kasey's adventures in france 030716 ... kerry i am on AIM and this random guy is trying to convince me that we had phonesex a few months ago. but i know for sure it wasn't me. i'm like, "hey, whatever you say because i don't remember doing that." and he says "i know it was you!" so now i still know it wasn't me, and he doesn't believe me, so i just said, "ok, well i still don't remember, so was it any good?" he says it was. and i'm laughing because it definitely was Not Me. last night at nathalie's we watched jackass and laughed like idiots for hours. then we wanted to make smoothies because it was hot, and kasey was sweating and saying, "AAAAGGHGHHHh! HOt!" but there was no frozen fruit anywhere and the peaches were moldy, and all they had were fresh mangos. so, since nat couldn't ride with kasey, (and technically i can't either) kasey and i drove to kroger and bought frozen strawberries and pineapples and mangos. he is trying to convince me to have phonesex with him anyway and it is creeping me out. but instead of doing the practical thing and blocking him or just saying no, i am playing around, doyouhavepicturesidontknowidratherjusthaveactualsex.......... {{mwahahahah}}} ugh, gross. i don't want to have phonesex. and if i did, i'd much rather call up someone i actually like. blahblahblahblah i dont care that your brother was the bassist for boysetsfire you can't have my number!!! 030717 ... kerry ellen and i talked for a while last night after hanging out with The Group johanna she is driving me insane things jo has recently called me: skittish shy lacking in self-esteem intense things i have recently called jo: pretty flirtatious snapping on me rolling eyes i dont care i dont care we walked to the stadium i was gnawing on a bobbypin all night, thinking to myself 'this is jo's bobbypin that she lent me and i am chewing on it.' then feeling angry again and thinking, 'good! chew all the paint off. chew it off. grind your teeth on it.' we sat at the top of the stadium. i didn't talk. at one point i got up and walked under the pressbox to talk on the phone tell my dad where i was etc and it was nice to talk to him and sometimes, because we are so much alike in almost every way, he understands things completely. and he has no idea that he understands like that. things my dad and i have in common: nose, jawline, eyebrow shape, temper, photography, sense of humor, logic, taste in music, oh well there are more, little things you can't really compile into a list james i dreamed you were there on a couch that boy who used to go to my elementary school, sort of him but looking like someone else, he was next to you. why did you invite me over? i was a bitch. tires hanging around like in my garage and i was so quick-tempered and why were you looking like the twins, the bad ones, why didn't you just say you hated me right then, i told you to tell your friend that i wanted to apologize for my behavior. ...your dreams keep me awake at night... when we were lying on the field just blablablabla talking talking Will arrived as we left he was wearing his david bowie shirt, why do people say he looks like a young mick jagger? mom and i are going to the symphony tonight. 030718 what's it to you? who go blather from