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Hi. My name is Kate.


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wWednesday, December 12, 2001


So it's goodbye for the holidays. Don't have internet access at home. I admire my parents for some of the ways in which they've refused to let technology be unabashedly infused in their lives, but I disagree whole-heartedly with their choice of keeping internet access out of house and home. Mostly for selfish, personal reasons I suppose. Anyway, I'll be back soon.

posted by Kate at 12:53 AM


wTuesday, December 11, 2001


I decided about a month ago to grow my hair out. I had super super boy-cut short hair, and it's just now beginning to reach that awful fro-esque inbetween stage (welcome to the next 2-3 months of my life, sigh). Anyway, this morning when I got up I decided to forgo any last minute cramming for the sake of flipping this impossible hair of mine.

I look like Meg Ryan on crack.

Sigh.

posted by Kate at 9:25 AM


w


The midol's beginning to wear off and my easy mac's getting cold and my exams are still very unstudied for and I just wonder when I'll develop the propensity for caring because I don't right now and I haven't in a while and I know I'm not stupid and I know I can do it but it just doesn't seem very important and I let myself stay curled up in the womb of such an endless sea of ignorance and I'm happy as such except for brief moments when I realize the bulk of all that I don't know and should know or at least go about trying to know but I blame my (largely) useless memory and keep safe and warm in my crutch of a fetal position and I like it...sometimes.

I'm always tired.

That's no excuse.

I'm always struggling with apathy.

That's no excuse.

I'm always wishing to write more. I never do.

That's no excuse.

And when I'm surrounded I feel alienated and when I'm alone I feel even more alienated.
And I've never before been so dependent on the availability of other people.
And I've never before felt so surrendered to the unfortunate fate of the sexes - how I'm not sure I'll ever be in love because I think somewhere along the way I lost faith in the idea of it.
And I know I'm only 19 and I can't make such dire predictions without seeming ludicrously naive.
But I am ludicrously naive.

See, thing is I know I'm supposed to be something more than what my future seemingly holds. I'm more than a potential wife or mother or employee. And I've always known that somehow the natural laws of common man don't apply to me. I'm special. And it's sad to rely on such a sparse sense of faith. No, not even faith really - more like a gut feeling, a simple statement in the pit of my stomach that won't go away: You are important and one day your life will be almost a household item and people will respect that. Because I've always vied so desperately for respect and sometimes I don't even quite know that I do. And other times it's very aparent and I'm ashamed of that need.

I live so selfishly.

I always have.

I'm sorry.

But I won't change.

posted by Kate at 1:50 AM


wSaturday, December 08, 2001


Watching Center Stage on illegal HBO. Had an estrogen moment and nearly choked because I wanted to cry but didn't. I spent 16 years dancing. Only 2 of those were spent as a half-heartedly serious attempt to actually learn something: my sister and took private point. The only valuable result is a picture my mother took of the both of us in costume putting on our shoes before a professional picture for the recital's program. It's a beautiful photograph, even more so because it captures Carrie and I as sisters, bonded through both blood and dance.

I still love to dance.

I never had the technique. Never. I could never really learn anything. I progressed as far as I could and then it was like hitting a brick wall, but I never faulted for heart. That was the blinding force that drove me. It was always easy - fooling people into thinking I was a good dancer. I worked so hard, made it mine, put everything I had into it. So I couldn't do the turn or I cheated on the wings or I dropped the baton...but I tried so hard that people forgot I wasn't perfect and they rooted for me and they enjoyed my performances and they were all sad when I grew out of it and had to move on because I couldn't, I can't, find a place for dance after high school. Just like I'm beginning to realize I don't have much of a place to play my clarinet anymore either. College is the beginning of compartilization, and I...I am not good enough at anything I do to compete with people who are focused. I am not focused.

And now I don't guess I'll ever really learn how to dance. And I'll never really be any better at my clarinet. And if I do draw or paint no one will ever really want to see the end result but myself. And writing?

Writing...these words are claw marks in the earth of who I'll never be. please, someone notice me. They are the most selfish of endeavors. And with every sentence they become less mine.

Tired because it's late. Drained because I've got 2 exams left and then a (probably) dull break for the holidays. Unsettled because there are facets of myself that are most unpleasant and I don't know if I should stifle that or let it flourish.

posted by Kate at 2:32 AM


wWednesday, December 05, 2001


Finals tomorrow.

I'm going to two "formal" parties tonight.

That's fucked up.

posted by Kate at 5:19 PM


wTuesday, December 04, 2001


I've been unable to emerge from under a thick sulphurous cloud of depression all day. I've been like this a lot lately. Only fighting against it because I can so acutely feel it this time. Feel it taking away my concern. Feel it robbing me of words. Feel it settling in like dust. Feel it taking the edge away like painkillers, like waking up from surgery. I feel sick and tired. It's going to be okay, though. I know how to go on anyway.

Walking to the library, suddenly I was very aware of the way the sun was setting just behind a building so that orange-gold light spilled over onto the trees, illuminating their scaly branches against a rosy backdrop of light - light painting the landscape until everything was movement in that it was so perfectly still and I thought maybe it was just a picture and not very real at all. I walked directly into it, hoping to see it better, to make it real, to be able to see the actual sky, the source of all this light...but when I did step into it I was only blinded. Beautiful things are always more beautiful if you're slightly removed. Getting too close is akin to being blinded or, even worse, seeing far too clearly the situation for what it really is. Lately I've been thinking of how much more I like people when I don't really know them very well.

Except for the few who have been worth it.

posted by Kate at 4:40 PM


wThursday, November 29, 2001


The Sneeze

I sneezed - Oh gross.
How utterly disguisting,
My diseased insides combusting
And exploding through my nose
Something icky, I suppose.
It's so vulgar grandly vile
How such mucus ladened bile
Can be processed all the while
My poor sickly glands compose
Through my runny slimy nose
Sprays of snot and sticky spit
Spreading germs disease and grit
Infecting others I confess
With the groggy achy stress
of the cold that I possess.
Do you have a tissue please?
For I feel another sneeze -
One which I cannot repress.

Dear god...my projects aren't even near finished and I think I'm hallucinating...

posted by Kate at 8:02 PM


w


Yesterday, on the hazy rainbow fractured edges of sickness, my head was like a helium baloon and I spent all day feeling as if I were leading it around by a string. I was off in space for the most part, far below my usual awareness, but it didn't really matter because by 3:00 ...

break for brief sneezing fit

...Miranda and I were on the road to Birmingham, and I was a drunk bird flying down I65 with Ben Folds in my head and direly foreboding tornado warnings at my heels. It didn't feel real until we actually walked into the music hall. I was pretty far gone by that point - too hyper to make much sense and too strung out to explain myself. I walked up to the t-shirt guy and, once my sickness-belated senses picked up on his British accent and his chizled good looks, proceded to engage him in a lively banter of the exact meaning of "Sham on" before I finally just paid for the damn shirt and walked away. Miranda was mortified. I felt like a bunny rabbit - very jumpy and quivery - and I'm sure I ceased to make any kind of logical sense from that moment on. It didn't matter too much though, except for when I mistook one of the stage hands for Ben Folds and proceeded to be the only moron yelling and screaming...even though I've always dissapproved of the whole "star-struck" concept. Anyway, the real Ben Folds was a lot younger, a lot less hairy and lot cuter than my look(sorta)alike stagehand, and he sure played the hell out of that music hall, exuding more charisma and excitement and entertainment than a magician and room full of elephants, giraffes, bunnies, and junkyard cars...or something like that.

I dunno. I like my t-shirt. I had fun. I even enjoyed the drive. Very peaceful and relaxing.

Go ahead. Puncture my head and drain it.

posted by Kate at 4:02 PM


wTuesday, November 27, 2001


Suddenly I was sprinting ahead, arms out on either side - good enough for wings - and the night was roaring past me like water and I was breathing as if at any moment I would begin to taste the air. I have never pretended to deliberate a static, tangible heaven. I have maintained the belief, for some time now, that the human brain is simply incapable of grasping the idea of time juxtaposed with place, especially what has happened or will happen along the infinite arrows jutting out from either side of our desperately short lives. But I do have a favorite description of heaven.

The very last book of The Chronicles of Narnia describes heaven as a concentric mass of infinite Narnian worlds, each leading into a purer and more beautiful incarnation of the first. We follow the characters as they delve farther and farther into the condensation of heaven, traveling through world after world, swimming up waterfalls, scaling mountains like foothills, running as fast as they can without ever once becoming winded, cramped, without ever getting tired. Imagine that. Imagine the pure exhileration of running: how for a moment it's almost like flying - limbs pumping, vision blurring, wind rushing, faster, faster, faster, almost losing control and balanced precariously on the edge of a euphoric lunacy just at the prospect of so much speed and abandonment: the pure unadultered joy of actually leaving. Now imagine how it would feel to never be winded by it, to be able to pass by miles and miles in such a state.

Jesus...

posted by Kate at 2:02 PM


wMonday, November 26, 2001


Spell your name backwards. Nosugref Ueillib Enirahtak
Where do you live? Troy, AL and Alexander City, AL.
Describe yourself in 3 words. Words. Words. Words. (no, really: words)
Who is your worst enemy? Apathy.
If you could have any animal for a pet, what would it be? A cheetah. Shame on me.
Have you ever used a spork? Yes, at McDonalds when I was very little once. I think I ate an ice cream sunday with it.
Do you even know what a spork is? Yes. Yes, I do.
What is the latest you've ever stayed up? Most recently, 6:00 a.m. The latest (earliest) I've stumbled in after a night of pecularities: 2:00 in the afternoon.
Ever been to Belgium? No, but I have a Belgium friend.
What's your favorite coin? Silver dollars for the way they're rare enough so that when you come across one, as occasionally happens, you feel sort of special and try not to spend it.
Underwear Mostly Victoria Secret string bikinis. Colorful, all. Bras: an ecclectic mixture of brands and kinds.
Keychain Green leather license holder that holds much more than my license, keys to my car, to my dorm room, to my mailbox, and to my house in Alex City.
In My Mouth *glug* Red Mountain Dew
In My Head A very ominous cloud of stress and worry. Bigger than it should be even if I am a student and therefore naturally predisposed to such elements of the mind. I'm going to need a break, a resorting, and perhaps a couple of changings (big and small) in atmosphere and routine to fix this one. It's fixable, mind you, but it's very worrisome.
Hearing Until 5 minutes ago: The Cranberries. This Wednesday: Ben Folds in Birmingham :-)
Wishing For Lightly and absentmindedly: an empty bladder. Seriously: the time I need to bleed poetry.
Pick up a book and write a sentence at random from it. "I am sorry to say that from the moment you have arrived in this class, my dear, it has been apparent that you do not have what the noble art of divination requires, Indeed, I don't remember ever meeting a student whose mind was so hopelessly mundane." --J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Do the same with a lyric from a song. I just happen to like apples and I am not afraid of snakes. --Ani Difranco, "Adam and Eve."
Quote from a movie. "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what people say to each other when they're uncool." --Almost Famous.
Have you ever tried to analyze your own dreams? Yes, but I usually only retain the smallest fragments of my often epic-like dreams. There have been some dreams so strange that I simply save them for humorous anecdotes because, well, I really can't see any meaning to them at all -- just the circus corners of my subconscious I suppose, just pure entertainment.
What posters do you have in your room? Would you believe none? Soon, I'll have a poster from the aforementioned Ben Folds concert. Besides that, I've hung up a framed watercolor of mine and a poster-sized photograph that my mom took of a stained glass window in Georgia.
Can you sing? I don't have a bad-sounding voice and can hit the key for the most part, but unfortunately, I don't have much of a range and my voice is pathetically weak, giving out on me when I sing for any extended period of time.
What's your favorite color of post-it note? All of the bright colors.
How many cassette tapes do you own? Four. All French lessons. Blegh.
Ever bought a CD for just one song? Guilty.
Have you ever lied to get off the phone? *sheepishly* uh, guilty.
Have you ever written a survey? Nope.
How about a song? Once. When I was 14. Just the lyrics, though I had a tune in my head for it.
Or maybe a poem? *rolls eyes* Do I breathe?
Are you addicted to Napster? Not now that it's been shut down.
Ever been in an airplane? Yes. Once.
If so where were you flying to? We were flying around Kitty Hawk. It was a tour that my late grandmother paid for as a gift to us when we visited the Outer Banks with her several years ago.
What color are your shoes? The requisite brown loafers, blue/white (dirty) sneakers, tan boots, black hoofers...boring, really, especially for someone who claims to love shoes so much.
Describe your bedroom. Ugh. The half of it that is mine: Clean (for the most part) and colorful and bright. Lots of blue. Lots of other colors as well.
Would you ever shave someone's head? They'd have to plead. I think I'd shave my own head first.
Name your favorite type of music. I can't do that. I just can't.
Are you a vegetarian? Nope. But I'm definitely pro-vegetable.
how about an aspiring actor/actress? Nope. I'm simply awful at acting.
What famous person dead or alive would you interview if you had the chance? That's way too tricky of a question. I'd like to rumble through quite a few famous poets' heads, though.
What movies do you have almost all the lines memorized to? Encino Man, The Goonies, Sleeping Beauty and The Emporer's New Groove.

posted by Kate at 4:45 PM


w


Diary entry, 11-24-01:

Outside: rain. We have gone weeks without it, and I have not missed it except for rare misplaced moments of nostaliga in its absence. This is the slow meandering pitter-pat sort of rain, perfect for last moment euphoric pud-muddle-jumping, good for the way it embraces with just the tiny hint of sting, for wetting the backs of your calves with folds of blue jeans, for running in wayward streams down the tip of your nose and gathering in light refracting droplets on your eyelashes to grow heavy and then blink and cast, flinging, away.
I am unusually good at separating my life into moments, of being able to love the hot chocolate, bed-sheeted, overcast, comfortable goodness of a light rain storm in the face of an ominous week with deadline after deadline and no loopholes with which to scamper away by my oh so seductive methods of procrastination. Problem is, I feel as if I've simply run out of energy, of the ability to care enough to try. But I will make half-hearted attempts, and I will end this semester, return home in the folds of a gilted Christmas comfort, think of not much but pine smells and santa clauses and burning candles and colored lights...

Exerpts from a new poem. What sort of magic makes words hit like this? Hurt?
...
It never killed me that day-lit sobriety served
nothing but steel between us

...
and though you heft your torch above you,
burning aflame like midnight America

photographed from a satellite,
you will never be Atlas

...
I carry my world like grease smeared beneath fingernails.
I scatter your dust with one cool breath

because it is better to be the serpent
than to be stoic,

to have eyes for apples
than dreams for illusion

...
and it is better to be the one leaving
in the birth-bright wash of morning...

Not finished with it yet. Those are only selected lines. The poem is way too personal and angry, but I'm writing at least. And there are good parts.

I will shed French and Earth Science like scales.

posted by Kate at 12:49 PM


wTuesday, November 20, 2001


Unconceding. Major wake up call. Anger because I trusted too much and it was futile the entire time. I never even began to understand how futile...

It's hard for me to have faith in people. Generally, I have to be proven to. I have to have some sign, some clue that you're not going to disappoint me. Otherwise, I take you for face value and enjoy you for face value and never expect anything more. It's rare that I slip up and make people into something more than what they actually are. But when I do I feel lousy because it was my own fault, not their's, and I know I'm demanding with my friendships...but I have so few that are actually 100% genuine. So I'm stingy with the people I choose to really care about. Forgive me...

Thank god for Josh. Who knew he'd be 10 billion times better to talk to until 6:00 in the morning like this? (with his tongue not down my throat ;-)

But such revelations are nothing new. The genders have been screaching at each other since we evolved vocal cords. As of thus far it's still impossible to breach that rift. I am no different, and I recognize such.

posted by Kate at 2:52 PM


wSunday, November 18, 2001


It always hurts to leave him because such is our relationship that I never know how to approach him from one time to the next. Still, I let myself go long enough last night so that he may know I'm trying. Maybe now he'll try too.

This is not a burning. It is not self destructive, nor is it violent. It is merely quietly unavoidable. I cannot control it. And I cannot rationalize it.

Conceding to it now...

posted by Kate at 11:37 PM


wFriday, November 16, 2001


I feel like I could fall upward today. Like the sky's the ground.

The sun's a burning. The sky, a piercing. And when they tackle you at once you either feel unbearably overwhelmed by such intensity or it becomes a cradle of sorts: a wrapping and rocking and holding. I am transfixed by sky and earth. Forever up or down. I could be flung into the crayola nether or sink down until dirt I become. Is dying the resolution of both urges? Sometimes I am more than human. Sometimes I desperately long to escape this skin, this flesh, these bones.

Last night:
Josh: I don't believe we've ever had a conversation that lasted less than 3 hours.
Kate: I believe you may be right.

And when Richie had me pinned down by his eyes I didn't know what do except panic. Panic.


posted by Kate at 12:57 PM


wWednesday, November 14, 2001


Tired now. The French test already half deleted from my mind. I've the rest of the day to get through...no, not just trucking onward blindly. I'm living, yes. But I cannot excuse the fact that I sometimes whiteout these awful required courses by the whirlings of my mind on such beautiful fall-cool blue sky days. I've got unpleasantries to systematically execute later today: I've got to writhe my way out of a horrendous Christmas Spectacular-esque dress rehearsal 2 weeks from today or Ben Folds will never be mine. Come on people! I'm 2nd from last clarinet. I'm absolutey dispensable. But will the omnipotent Ralph Ford buy that? I'm operating on a kami kazi method as I've already bought the concert tickets, made arrangements to get there and everything.

Anyway, perhaps I can clear up a few personal matters tonight. Tonight. Tonight. And then perhaps I will be happy and feline and completely and utterly destructive with feminine charms...I'm just enough pissed off with the male gender right now to resort to that.

posted by Kate at 12:49 PM


wTuesday, November 13, 2001


It is too late to be awake and not studying for French. Instead I have been cleaning as if a there were a demonic spirit in me in need of exorcisement. ...if indeed that is a word: exorcisement. I am not a neat person. Clutter grows near me as naturally as fungi in a forest, but lately I have been painfully aware of my smallish living space and have been absolutely frantic about keeping it fairly clean. Clean, bright, colorful and as uncluttered as possible. This is a last ditch effort of mine to ensure that even if the rest of my life is going to hell I at least have this one semblance of order and control to grasp desperately. Who knew it would come to this?

Last Monday I did some things very uncharacteristic of myself. And then Wednesday I admitted that I'm not as confused about my love life as I claim to be. And now I'm in limbo. Limbo. But I'm going to wait this time. And I won't quit him 'til he quits me.

Clean, bright, colorful. I'm going to see Ben Folds in Birmingham in 2 weeks.

I'll wait. I'll wait this time.

posted by Kate at 1:45 AM


wThursday, November 08, 2001


Hello world. I am new to you. I don't mind it, not even if you hurt me every now and then.

posted by Kate at 12:32 PM


wMonday, November 05, 2001


I had a nice weekend. I ate good food. I have 3 major tests this week. I will try. I will try.

My boys are throwing a big party tonight. I'll go, but probably not for long. There are unresolved issues floating around that will probably only make me unhappy, and I don't need to be unhappy right now. So I'll make an appearance. I'll be sociable. I'll be friendly and speak to everyone even though there will be some who will no doubt make me want to run and hide. It won't be that bad, and I'll regret it if I don't go. I will.

posted by Kate at 12:17 PM


wFriday, November 02, 2001


Here it is: and I'm tired and a bit empty. Don't think I'm always sorry for myself. Don't think I'm always falling in love. Don't think I write nothing but sappy love poems. I write good strong poems and I'm getting myself back, bit by bit. I've just been shaken recently; that's all. But I'm barnacle-ing up again, so I'll be alright. Hopefully, from now on I can manage a sort of balance between feeling too much and not feeling enough. I think so. I think so.

The night feels like liquid on my skin, like how on a hot, sticky summer's day you can submerse yourself in cool water and feel weightless as the currents flow over your body. It doesn't seem like November here at all. Instead, it feels like the first stiflings of May: just when the air has that suggestion of summer in it, when underneath all the delightful spring warmth there lies a sinister heat. It reminds me of how when I lived at home during that time we'd turn on the attic fan to save money on electricity bills. The living room area of our house has a great big window looking out to the front porch, and there are great big curtains that used to billow in with the sucking current of air streamlined to the fan. I would sit between the sill and the curtain: just that overwhelming blanket of cool flowing air and myself, brased against the dark of night outside, my back against the golden glow of lamplit fabric. How like a private world. How safe.

posted by Kate at 2:14 AM


wThursday, November 01, 2001


It's back to a pumpkin for me. Best pick-up lines for the night: "Youuuu look shhooo niiiiiccceeeee" and "You actually have a body!" I was a wood nymph for Halloween, but everyone thought I was Poison Ivy from Batman Forever. Whatever. Same principle behind both: seductress and epitome of desire. I just wanted to be the opposite of everyone's prefabricated conception of me tonight. It worked. Maybe too well.

posted by Kate at 3:01 AM


wTuesday, October 30, 2001


Here it is. Please, this is my poem. Don't pilfer it. I don't know if anyone even reads these posts. I don't know if anyone even knows I'm here, but if you want you can leave me your thoughts. I'd like to hear from you.

Ophelia, Before the Madness

So tell me - what now?
Do I wait for you?
Yes, I wait for you.
I wait because I have the courage
(unfathomable by you)
to wait while boulders sink to sand,
while river pebbles wear to glass
and because there are stars piercing through
from the night whose lights are lies.
I know this about you and I don't care.
What is this love that it reverberates
through all of life?
Even if the source is dead
it still insists,
knocking over those of us who wait patiently
in the dark for lost loves to billow up
like smoke, then disappear.
I know this about you
but I will wait because I can,
because my attraction to you is not a violent one.
You are not a flame, not a cliff, not a knife.
I am not a moth, nor a lemming.
There is no sadistic pleasure here,
no taste for blood,
no self-destructive urges.
And when you sink by the weight of your own turmoil
I will be quite alright
so that when it is finally too much for you,
when you are helpless,
when you are the one drowning,
you can look up from your lake and
find me here always, waiting and waiting
and waiting.

posted by Kate at 5:11 PM


w


For the first time ever, a title and an image for a poem has presented itself before the actual poem has had a chance to come into existence. It's called "Ophelia, Before the Madness," and it will be all about the new advent of physical touch on someone who had kept herself so closely guarded...and the waiting and the patience. But can I write it now? I must write again. I'm walking around and I feel like ash inside.

posted by Kate at 1:57 PM


wMonday, October 29, 2001


Yes, there is lots to be done. And no, I haven't done it.

posted by Kate at 8:58 PM


w


5:00 a.m. and awakening after having fallen asleep with Richie

Kate: KEYS! KEYS! KEYS!
Richie: Mmph. Hrmph...rrr...
Kate: KEYS! KEYS! WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!!!
Richie: Mrmhmphle...Bruhmph...
Kate: Richie! Hey Richie! What did you do with my keys???
Richie: Mmph. Huh? (He sits up, looks at me, kisses me on the cheek, and then lies back down)
Kate: RICHIE! WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!!!
Richie: Mrhmphhhhh...Frumph...FRUMPHLE!
Kate: What?
Richie: FRIMPH...FRIMPHLE...FRIMPHER!!!!
Kate: Huh?
Richie: FRIMPHER...FRIMPHER...FIMPHER!!!!!!!
Kate: OH! Finger! I'm on your finger? OH GOD, I'm on your finger! Sorry...

He then got up and retrieved my keys. As I was walking toward the door he pulled me into the bathroom, pointed to the mirror and said, "look." I can tell you there couldn't have been a sadder looking pair of people looking back at us...rumpled and sleepy and irritated. Oh well, at least I got a kiss on the cheek out of it.

posted by Kate at 12:08 AM


wThursday, October 25, 2001


A mood far too sober, blackberry merlot rememberings and Ani DiFranco echoeing all the while...

I see you and I'm so perplexed.
What was I thinking?
What will I think of next?
Where can I hide?
In the back room there's a lamp
that hangs over the pool table.
When the fan is on its wings,
gently, side to side,
there's a changing constellation
of balls as we are playing.
See Orion and say nothing.
The only thing I can think to say is
fuck you
and your untouchable face
and fuck you
for existing in the first place
and who am I
that I should be vying for your touch
and who am I.
I bet you can't even tell me that much.

posted by Kate at 3:00 PM


wWednesday, October 24, 2001


I love my mother.

posted by Kate at 12:22 PM


wTuesday, October 23, 2001


What I hadn't realized is that I've been rebounding for quite some time. Now I'm in very real danger of jeopardizing some really great potential friendships. Complications inevitably arrise between inter-gender friendships. It's so hard to keep it platonic, and then sometimes I myself slip up and find myself wanting more...makes me wonder about my tendency to make mostly male friends. Of course, my really close friends are all female: Bonnie, Miranda, my sister, even Sarah...but, uh....the list stops there. Everyone else I hang out with is definitely very male. I enjoy it; most certainly I do. Guys are the greatest. They're refreshing and fun and entertaining and, for the most part, very honest. But I still feel, sometimes, as if though a great majority of my friendships with guys revolves around that ever omnipresent potential of date-ability. And to a certain extent that annoys me a little even though I do, I definitely, definitely do enjoy the attention I recieve...for the most part.

But there comes a time when I just want to shut them all up. Yes, you've told me I'm cute and I know what parts of my body you find attractive and I know it's all in harmless fun, but I'm so much more than what my appearance is, and even though my friends are my friends for my intellect sometimes I still long to divorce the physical from the mental because physical attraction just seems to muck things up.

Yes, I'm on the rebound. I don't quite understand why I'm acting like I am right now. I'm sorry if I hurt you.

posted by Kate at 2:30 PM


wSunday, October 21, 2001


Sometimes, just because two people like each other very much, it doesn't mean they can ever successfully date.

posted by Kate at 7:58 PM


wSaturday, October 20, 2001


Red Mountain Dew, tuna and crackers, a brief interlude with Richie (I do like that boy), romping about in the Arboretum after dark, stumbling through overgrown trails, pretending to be in a bad spy/war movie, hitting Scott up for entertainment, retiring to our respective dorm rooms, Animal Planet blaring on the TV, heavy lidded discontent...it's only 10:00 and I'm so tired...

Tomorrow: dress up and look nice for once and then off with Scott to the choir concert. After that: world, surprise me.

posted by Kate at 10:16 PM


wFriday, October 19, 2001


Just now I danced very badly to Moby's remix of the James' Bond theme song - exhilerating. I also took a 5 hour nap this afternoon. My life seems to consist of boring, normal days, mucked full of deadlines, petty obligations and small talk; my nights however...

Last night I was simply scooped up into someone's arms and carried across a room. It was if I was no more than a small child, and I realized that for all my pretenses of being tough and self-sufficient (and much heavier than I actually look) I really am relatively small and helpless.

Messes. I am constantly engaging myself in messes. You can't imagine how beautiful the stars were at 4:00 a.m.

posted by Kate at 7:46 PM


wThursday, October 18, 2001


Because this is all at once where I want to be and what I want not to be and how I want the will of words to bend in my fingers and how I know they truly bend me and why I love it and abhor it all within the same breath...

"Under One Small Star"

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each
second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is
the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from
the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being
asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a
spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the
occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere
at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and
each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

-Wislawa Szymborska

posted by Kate at 4:46 PM


wWednesday, October 17, 2001


Walking back from French, I was suddenly submersed in a wind swirl of dead leaves. I swear sometimes I have my own private weather.

posted by Kate at 12:40 PM


wTuesday, October 16, 2001


Pulled another one of those surreally strange nights: talking of everything and nothing at once with whomever would listen...mostly Richie and Snyder and sometimes Miranda. I felt simultaneously involved and alienated - nothing unusual; I feel like that often, but it was magnified last night somehow. Somewhere in the haze of exhaustion, of M&M cookies and the audacity of being totally groped by Richie, of ludicrously deep conversation, of the innocence of Frank's wagging puppy-dog, of jadedly recieved compliments and insights once more into the male mind...somewhere within all this I simply dumped myself onto the carpet and then without making any sort of fuss whatsoever, gathered myself back up and locked it all tight within again. I wonder if anyone noticed...

posted by Kate at 1:17 PM


wSaturday, October 13, 2001


Gone pud-muddle jumping! What homework?

posted by Kate at 10:11 PM


wFriday, October 12, 2001


Hello Friday. No rest for a while. Just play and work. I don't mind it too much. I've got 3 packets of poems out in the mail, circulating through some cold, impersonal editor's office soon. It's a soul-sucking process - this writer's plea for a chance, a forum. I will write much more as soon as I can breathe and stop this rushing around, as soon as I can quit passing out the moment I stop. Hopefully I will be able to see Apocolypse Now Redux tonight. Hopefully, hopefully. Saturday will be mad fun, full of shopping for Halloween and spending time with my mom and sister and Miranda, and then the madness will begin: french exam to be studied for, science project to be finished (and begun by the way). Sunday I'll be at war with the natural world again. Tell me what it's like to canoe 6 miles down a river? I don't know either, and that's why I'm going.

posted by Kate at 12:42 PM


w


56 rejections. I have been sporadically submitting poems to magazines for almost 4 years now. I have 56 rejections and 5 acceptances. When I ponder on the nature of this it seems that I am crazy: who airs their demons out in public, much less submits them for criticism on an acceptance/rejection level? Apparently I do. The rejections don't even phase me anymore.

They don't. They do. Let's put this week to rest. I have a weekend to begin.

lately i have been feeling sorry for all the opportunities missed. there are many. many things i should have done. many people i should have known. many places i should have gone. the flip side of this is when one flings oneself headfirst into the drama one often gets hurt. eh, josh? ...not fair. he didn't mean it. this isn't even about him anymore.

posted by Kate at 1:02 AM


wThursday, October 11, 2001


Because I am bored, because French homework is so utterly unappealing to me right now, and because I seem to really like to talk about myself...well, here goes:

PERSONAL STATS:
Given (First) name: Katharine
Middle name: Billieu
Nicknames: Kate (really everybody calls me Kate), Katie (if you want to piss me off), Martin Peas (a reference to the philosophical nature of my personality as expressed in Candide), and Kato (hi Dad).
Screen names: kabillieu
Heritage: mostly Scottish/Irish Mayflower Pilgrim, a little French as well.
Birthday/Age: May 29th, 1982...I'm all of 19.
Zodiac sign: one of those pesky Geminis.
Place of birth: Alexander City, AL
Height: 5''4'.
Eye color: dull blue or blazing swimming pool blue. they're hardly ever inbetween.
Hair color/cut: a natural dirty blonde. very, very, very short. I like it that way.
Tattoos/body piercing: nope. I used to have pierced ears, but that landed me in the emergency room at 10:00 one night...yeah, it was brutal.
Shoe size: 7 1/2
Normal style of dress: total granola crunchy earth muffin. very casual. jeans are god's gift to mankind. I will marry my Birks one day.

WHAT:
Is your stance on abortion? very pro-choice, though god help me if I'm ever actually in the position to make such a weighty decision.
Is your good luck charm? the silver music note necklace my friend, Audra, gave me in 11th grade.
Do you want to name your kids? Jane, if I ever have a girl. I haven't explored the possiblities of boys' names yet.
Do you like to do for fun? um...hang out with my fun, goofy friends, go on weekend excursions/adventures, other things too...heh heh...oooohhhh...
Do you think about Ouija boards? I had one once. might still have it, in fact.
Famous person do people say you look like? no one in particular. though I have had several people tell me I look like a little elf.
Are you afraid of? failure. rejection. powdery laundry detergent. "business" phone calls. small talk. cancer. apathy. stupidity. a world without chapstick. cars. bank tellers. and spider bites.
Are you wearing right now? Union Bay jeans. my favorite blue baby tee. 3 rings. a watch. 2 homemade bead bracelets. my music note necklace. bra: white and Wal-Mart. underoos: blue and Victoria's Secret.
Is the most romantic thing someone has ever done for you? not really big on romance. perhaps nobody's really ever treated me in a romantic fashion and I just don't know what I'm missing. but the best thing any guy's ever said to me was, "I wanted to because I have so much fun with you," right after he kissed me for the first time.
Do you think of roller coasters? hell yeah. (oooo but the straight down drops scare the bejesus out of me).
Is on the walls of your room? my hand-painted bulletin board and a blown-up-to-poster-size framed picture my mom took of a stained glass window in Georgia. I used to have my one and only water color hung up too, but then one day it fell off the wall and hit me on the head. that hurt.
Is under your bed? tupperware boxes of...stuff. drooling, red-eyed dust bunnies.
Is your lucky number? 2
Is your dream car? ha. yeah right. if it gets me from point a to b and has air conditioning i LOVE it.
Career are you going to pursue? free lance writing. poetry...sigh. I do like to eat so...*shakes head*
Was your favorite thing to do when you were little? dress up like Sleeping Beauty or Maid Marion and entertain myself for hours in my magic make-believe lands.
Would you do if you saw your guy/girl flirting with someone? get pissed. re-examine our relationship.

HAVE YOU EVER:
Drank: yes, though never excessively.
Smoked no.
Gotten high? on M&Ms and exhaustion, yes.
Come close to dying? no, but I have been given a survival rate before. 98%. not bad, except for that pesky 2% always lurking in the bushes somewhere.
Told someone you loved him or her? never outside of my immediate family, and even that is hard.
Cried for no reason? there's always a reason. things build up and if the fact that I can't find my left shoe releases the floodgates one day then so be it.
Betrayed a friend? no. I hope I never do.
Broken the law? of course.
Ran away from home? no.
Broken a bone? no.
Played strip poker? hah! yeah RIGHT! I'm terrible at card games. I'd be naked in 2 seconds.
Played "Truth or Dare"? yep.
Been in a fight? nuh-uh. girl-fights are so tacky. though I would definitely defend myself...
Been out of the U.S.? does the Bahamas count?
Ridden in a fire truck? sadly enough, no.
Been on a plane? a small private one, yes. I got to, like, steer it for 5 seconds!
Been convicted of a crime? unless you count my one speeding ticket, no.
Been in love? infatuated? yes. in love? no.
Thought about changing your name? no. I really like my name.
Had a scary experience in the ocean? nah.
Been hurt by someone you really cared about? yeah...yeah...yes.
Said, "I love you" to someone and not meant it? never.

WHERE:
Do you hang out the most? my itsy-teeny dorm room, the TKE house...I do a lot of wandering, but not much hanging for the most part.
Is the farthest from home you've been (without your parents)? Tennessee.
Is the farthest from home you've been (with your parents)? Rhode Island.
Is your computer? sitting atop this awful metal/woodgrain monstrosity of a desk that's built into the wall of my room.
Do you do your homework? homework?
Do you see yourself in five years? not sure. writing hopefully and making headway into literary respect.
Do you see yourself in ten years? *refuses to think that far into future*

WHO:
Is your best friend? my sister.
Is the most annoying? I avoid annoying people.
Is always there for you? physically? my parents, god bless them. mentally and emotionally? I've learned to rely only on myself.
Is like a sister/brother? yeah, that would be my sister and brother.
Knows you the best? ha. good luck with that one.
Who do you look up to? my mom. my dad. my sister. Miranda.
Who are your closest friends? Bonnie. Carrie. Miranda. Scott. and John, even though he's been distant for a long time.

FAVORITES:
Color? blue.
Smell? the afterscents of people: after they're long gone and yet you can still smell them even when the scent should be long worn away.
Word? I don't have a favorite particular word. but I am completely and utterly in love with everything about language: the images, the structures, the way it feels spoken aloud...such a dork, I am.
Food? jesus, anything homecooked right about now.
Cereal? I honestly don't really like cereal. Apple Jacks if someone has a knife to my throat.
Sorbet? when have I ever eaten sorbet?
Vegetable? far, far too many to decide.
Candy? peach rings, M&Ms, Mike and Ike's, kisses: Hershey's, Reeses Peices.
Drink? Coke, chocolate milk, 2 %, water, Dole's strawberry juice, mmmm...
Restaurant? don't really have one.
Movie? not going there.
TV show? when I do watch TV, which is practically never, Jackass, anything with Brak in it, Sports Night, uhhhh...Gilmore Girls (come on, I have to have my estrogen fix).
Magazine? Time and Poetry.
Comic Strip? Zits, Mutts, and (faithfully, faithfully) Calvin and Hobbes.
Thing to talk about? bunches and bunches and bunches of things. bunches.
Animal? cheetahs.
Sport? I can stand baseball. I have an admiration for soccer. (I love to watch ice skating).
Season? spring.
Holiday? I do love Christmas.
Inside joke? superpsychofreakythunderbootysisters. blueberry waffle orgasms. the wig store burned.

posted by Kate at 9:39 PM


w


Smell: Febreeze because I've been over at the house again and in the midst of all the sociables and their cancer sticks. Funny how I really thought I wanted to socialize too. It's been such a mucky week already, and I've been stuck inside my dorm room with obligations since Sunday night, but really all I wanted was a talk, a sorting, a time to air my brain out. Thank you Scott.

This weekend I'm going canoeing.

posted by Kate at 2:35 AM


wMonday, October 08, 2001


It was a good weekend. Simple. Good. I felt loved and loved and loved and loved. I think it will be a nice week. I hope.

posted by Kate at 12:08 AM


wFriday, October 05, 2001


Crushable. I am.

Exhaustive wrestling matches with Ritchie. Stumble in at 7:00 a.m. Sleep...maybe two hours? Class. Two hour drive home. Doctor appointment. i am so dissappointed with the way my back healed. so tired of doctor appointments. tired of this helplessness that cancer spreads. Then family time. Explaining to my mom that I'm not dating Josh anymore, that I'm having trouble keeping food down and nausea seems commonplace now. My dad yelling at me over my checkbook fiasco. The supper I barely ate. The two hour drive back to Troy. Dark. Dark. Darkness. Over to the TKE house to fetch my sweater. Techno music and two unwelcome jello shots. Exhaustive wrestling matches with Ritchie.

Cyclic. Bad karma. I'll feel better in the morning.

Good night.

posted by Kate at 1:38 AM


wTuesday, October 02, 2001


How is it possible to separate love from infatuation?

posted by Kate at 12:57 PM


w


His name was Alex and he liked me when he was sober and he liked me a lot when he was drunk. After all this I am still attractive to the opposite sex. No use in surrendering myself to nunhood quite yet. I'll be interested in dating again. I'll come around. I'll stop thinking about Josh.

posted by Kate at 12:21 AM


wMonday, October 01, 2001


My left shoulder is stiff and sore. Too many rocks to climb. I was laughably poor at it. When I'd finally scrambled up the trail to rappel for the first time from the face of the cliff the view winded me. Imagine: miles of rolling foothills giving way before you, sun lit trees like broccoli dissolving into shadowed pockets of darkness, a shining lake spangled with refracted sun and wedged into the forest below. It looked for all the world like a lone puddle made and forgotten by both time and the process of evaporation.

I pulled the harness as tight as I could. It cinched at my waist and made me feel tiny and fragile and undeniably feminine. The wind was cool on my skin, the sun, burning bright into my eyes. Anderson hooked me up to the rope and told me to walk backwards to the edge of the cliff. I could feel infinity, like destiny, spread out beneath me, undeniable, inescapable. Initially I almost panicked as I felt myself dip over the edge. Then I stepped down and I was hanging off the side of a 93 ft. drop, my body parallel to the ground, my feet parallel to the rock. About a third of the way down I stopped and looked to my right and then to my left. It was like staring at a postcard. A human being was never meant to look at the side of a cliff from a horizontal viewpoint. There was gray rock and blue sky and green trees, and I was sideways in the air, pulling the old figurative sheep skin over gravity, crawling downward like an ant searching for purpose and a destination, feeling for all the world like I was stepping onto the glossy surface of a post card because the gray, blue, and green colors were assaulting me with their vivid potency, and I knew I wasn't allowed to see the harsh beauty of nature so closely in such an element of fundamental danger. The rock was craggy beneath me; I could feel myself fluctuate and recede, so close to being out of control and yet so controlled and all the while the rock grew above me and my left arm screamed tiny threats of betrayal as it maneuvered my speed and restraint and therefore my safety.

The second time I rappelled using a single rope instead of a double rope. When I pushed off with my feet I felt like a bird for moments at a time. My wings were simply not strong enough, and for all my flapping my feet touched ground once more and here I sit, with nothing much to show for scaling a mountain other than cuts, bruises and memories that scream and a burning from within to find that place again where I can escape my own pathetically human limitations.


posted by Kate at 10:13 PM


wFriday, September 28, 2001


Early morning and on the phone with my mother. I bounced a check. She was more unhappy with my decision to drop my art course. Accused me of running from the situation when it got tough. I've beaten toughness into a corner with a stick. My concern is desire and there was none for that course. I believe I made the right decision.

Must I learn to compromise my time for the things I think unworthy or trivial?

The problem with idealism is that the great ghoul that is life will crush it.

posted by Kate at 7:33 AM


w


Tomorrow night I will be in the mountains, in a tent, sleeping. Saturday and Sunday I'll be hiking, rappelling, and climbing. What will it be like to touch the forbidden places of rocks, or, jumping backwards off the mountain, how will it feel to crawl vertically down the palm of the earth?

On my way up will I be closer to the face of God?

posted by Kate at 1:02 AM


wWednesday, September 26, 2001


Diary entry, September 25, 2001:

4:00 a.m.

It was the first cold night of the season and the stars, aeons away, flickered in their wavering gasses. Ultimately there was nothing to say but everything all at once, and I'm so proud of myself for letting it all go and telling Josh how much he hurt me instead of sucking it up for the sake of appearances. It was very adult of me. That was the cleanest breakup I've ever experienced, initially anyhow, and I'm fairly sure we will still be friends.

Now I am numb and almost as happily complacent as I wished myself to be in the last passage. Tomorrow it will hurt, but this will heal quickly and eventually I will date someone else, and it will last for more than three weeks. Meanwhile, I have wonderful friends and a gaping need to spill onto paper my recent relevation in the utter aloneness of the human being.

We are all broken.

...Later...

The golden glow of morning grows more richly each moment. It escapes the blinds like gold dust, bursting. I am happy to have awoken so quietly - the usual trauma of being wrenched from sleep by an alarm clock gone. It is a perfect metaphor: light filling where once was dark, awakening consciousness. I immediately felt strange and thought of Josh as I surfaced from sleep, but I did not feel empty, only slightly sad and distant. Amazingly enough, I feel more real than ever.

This is the most perfect light that has ever touched my skin.

...Later...

The tendrils of afternoon exhaustion creep slowly over. Bright splatterings of blood in my underwear. Morning convulsions over the most uncomforting toilet imaginable. A blue sky as intense as a lover's eye, as deep as the space beyond which the atmosphere relinquishes.

It is cool and windy outside, haughty and unapologetic. How do I explain I do not miss him, but the idea of him? I made the conscious decision today to drop my art class. My heart was not in it. I felt no drive or desire to learn the particulars of the class or the computer program. I was killing myself softly by my own apathy. I wasted my time. I wasted my intstuctor's time. I never for a moment thought to take that class seriously.

Time creeps faithfully along the edge of the earth. Winter swirls in suddenly, completely displacing Fall. I know the temperature outside will rise again as will the temperature inside...me. I am going to feel very lonely and weak for awhile, but I will handle it. I always do.

posted by Kate at 9:08 PM


wSunday, September 23, 2001


I am an American, and when I think of what America represents I am beyond proud; I am snobbishly self-righteous for I was born in the most peaceful, grand and formidable nation of the modern world. America's glory is her birthright - or so I always subconsciously believed. Now I know she is not impenetrable to senseless acts of bigotry, hatred and jealousy, and as much as I love all the red, white and blue, the generations, races and religions reaching out across barriers, the simplistic unification and surge of pride and love for what is undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world...yet I am also saddened immensely by all the noise, pomp and ceremony for they will fade away, and I am very afraid we will inherit an America shaken at its roots with even more suspisions and distrust and racism and religious misunderstandings. I am disheartened by a future that seems darker now, disturbed because this world is so unsafe as it is. Before, for the most part, heinous crimes in America were perpetrated in isolated moments of the debilitated psyche of human beings - though rampant, they were scattered in both location and time sequence, giving family and friends room to heal and justice time to enact.

Now this. Poof. 6,333 people dead here. 189 there.

We all suffer.

In the anarchy of the human, Democracy is the El Dorado of life. I thought that was my right. More and more I wonder if the concept of entroppy could actually be possible. I fear it to be a very legitimate argument. Perhaps I am a coward for saying this, but I am glad my life is but a blink in time. I won't be here for the most terrible repercussions of this - the center is folding.

And we fight. We fight with words and hugs and time spent toward the birthing of a better place for us all to live. I am proud. and I will do my small part to be a considerate and well-informed citizen. I do not have to build mountains; it is enough to remain as one of the pebbles supporting the boulder. Though tiny, my voice is shrill, my pen, persistent. and I will uphold my own personal morales of which engrained within are the right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. The gift of words such as these is immeasurable.

posted by Kate at 12:23 AM


wSunday, September 16, 2001


I find this hard to believe, but the world has not stopped. Every news chanel on TV is covering "America's New War." What war? What is retaliation in the face of such a tragedy-induced monstrosity? If we were all Kate we would have crumpled up into little balls on hard cold cement floors long ago. Perhaps this is cowardice. What, then, is the capitalization of the media and product manufacturers and stores off of the greatest blow to America since Pearl Harbor? Indeed, I fail to understand the concept of money - its influences and underlying mechanisms. meanwhile, I have a French test tomorrow and all of Candide to read by Wednesday. Add to that ten simultaneous art projects and you get a crazy, crazy Kate.

I've been really upset about this.

posted by Kate at 8:26 PM


wFriday, September 14, 2001


And there are bible quotes on the hall boards, and there are people dressed in red and white and blue, and suddenly we're all proud; we're all patriotic; we're all scared. Life goes on. The weekend is so near I can taste it.

I watched the TV coverage with Josh for 3 1/2 hours Tuesday morning. As a result he's more familiar than I could ever imagine. That's all it takes to pull people together or push them apart: emotional tragedy. I haven't had the stomach to digest TV news since. I read news releases and listen to NPR when I drive, but I can't bring myself to turn on the television. It's too real when I do that.

I'm an emotional basketcase. Parts of me are mucked down into the depths of this recent tragedy while other parts have just been flung loose into the batty flutterings of a brand new relationship, a brand new person, a brand new state of affairs. The newness of both have me bouncing up and cruelly jerking back like a paddle ball. It's okay when for moments at a time I don't have to be self-sufficient, but, inevitably, I am alone again and crumbling apart. Solitude has been acidic lately. This cannot last. Hopefully, soon I will again feel like a whole person when I find myself alone.

posted by Kate at 1:02 PM


wSunday, September 09, 2001


Nearing 4:00 a.m. Fleeing road melting back the hours from Tennessee: everything condensing toward darkness while outside the droning hum of the Jetta's motor, Orion's belt remains permanently fastened among the myriad stars.

Air and air and more air blowing on my face, drying out contacts, moving in sleep. 5 hours coming. 5 hours going. 4 hours at the actual game. Sugar rushes, nervous energy and the natural high of an open road adventure culminated in a naive ecstasy, and the world stopped for me while I danced. We lost. Coming home, Josh was a million miles away in the front seat while I was sandwiched beneath Thad and Laura in the back. It didn't matter because as soon as we were alone again I was in his arms and feeling very safe and tired and he told me he would call me when he wakes up. And he will.

Friends and friends and friends. I burrow farther into darker corners, looking for empty places only to find them full. Perhaps I have the capacity to tolerate being cared for after all.

posted by Kate at 4:17 AM


wFriday, September 07, 2001


There is gravity to the air. Humidity descends and envelopes until it's a fishbowl world in which I live. There is that quiet inevitablity, always, of being pulled toward the earth. I feel it more some days than others. But when the skies are mutable shades of gray and the air feels cushiony like an underwater world, I know that the ground has such an unescapable hold on me that I'd never even desire to be free from it. Rather I long to sink downward...as eventually I will. We all will: surrender to earth.

Pears ferment in the dirt. People stare. I don't write very much. I have too many friends.



posted by Kate at 12:40 PM


wThursday, August 30, 2001


So we got nothing but positive feedback from the the article. I'm very pleased. Matt, the editor, seems to want us to become semi-regular contributors. I wonder if I have it in me. Too often I doubt myself.

My back is still healing. Soon it will be as if nothing had happened, ever, except for the scar still purple and raked across my skin. I felt content today for many reasons, sad and distant for many more. There's a constant balance with which I battle: that of juxtaposing my need for people and friends and inclusion with my desperate tendency toward solitude. Words do poor justice in describing the quite physical feeling of being stretched across such a massive plane. I need both places and they don't coexist very well. I haven't written a poem since Elkahatchee Road calmly composed itself.

I feel very wrong when, for brief interludes or long stretches of exasperating barreness, poetry leaves me.

posted by Kate at 10:27 PM


wWednesday, August 29, 2001


I'm already exhausted. The column is written and pending...the paper runs tomorrow. It's an okay article considering we had to have it completed by this morning. The structure and quality of it is...decent, but lacking fluidity. And it's a freaking opinion article, so we had a lot of fun with it, and it will probably piss people off. But that's okay. My only concern is that we sound unprofessional. Except that we are unprofessional, neither of us having ever before done any kind of journalistic writing...oh well. It took true gumption, and we did our job with an admiral amount of grace and intelligence. And so even if everyone else hates it...

*pats herself on the back.*

posted by Kate at 12:46 PM


wTuesday, August 28, 2001


4 1/2 hours of Earth Science lab work. I am a poorly-made thinker at times.

I did a very rash and (maybe) stupid thing. I accompanied Miranda to a Trop (newspaper) meeting and voluteered to co-write an opinion column. We still haven't decided what we'll write about. Maybe our most noble Governor Siegalman and his recent brush with publicity concerning the unethical and immoral stigma of a 3rd grade boy and his ear peircing. Perhaps the prickly debate over embryonic stem cell research...or the man with the artificial heart. Does that make him a cyborg? :-)

At any rate, I don't usually form strong opinions about many things. I'm far, far too adept at seeing the three dimensional sides concerning many issues, and also I'm probably poorly informed and, most sadly, more than a little apathetic at times. I've never been one to entertain a heated debate, but I can and will. And every once in a while I enjoy it...and it's good for me.

Let's entertain the 5 senses in a little descriptive exercise. *this is very unoriginal of me but I like the idea so much*

See:
Many, many things. My computer and its tangle of wires. My brown Nine West purse perched atop the moniter. My ugly snot beige metal desk/drawers fixture. A framed picture of my Grandpa and me when I was only 3, huddled closely together and laughing like we'd just shared an inside joke the rest of the world will never be priveledged enough to know.

Hear:
The pur of the tower. An old AMC movie, softly playing from the far corner of the room. Hollow voices in the hall. Doors slamming and opening. Other girls living lives like mine...only quite different, paralleled by our living arrangements.

Smell:
Air conditioner. Dust. Some far away sent of a Glade Plug-in. The cold.

Feel:
The keyboard, grooved beneath my fingers. My knee propped against the metal drawers. The air, the chill of it, rushing in through my nose and the warmth of it rushing back out.

Taste:
The bitterness of sour cream and onion Pringles consumed 2 hours ago. The natural saltiness of my own mouth.



posted by Kate at 12:40 AM


wMonday, August 27, 2001


I recieved my check from Cicada today. 36 sweet dollars that I will no doubt waste entirely. It's the first time in my life I've ever earned money by doing something I absolutely love.

I am wearing my farmer blouse. The cotton is so light I tend to forget it's there.

I think I'll go buy some low-fat frozen vanilla yogurt with M&Ms in the middle and on top. Ater that I think I'll go find some place outside to sit with my journal and write because I'm a stupidly-worded girl right now, and I throw about my potential word-savyness like the 3-year old flower girl I once was, deserting words like petals for the sake of the ceremony. When I have calmed myself down considerably and once more entered some semblance of a creative state, I will again remember that I am not a social creature, that I am meant for social interaction (god, yes) but that this constant coming and going and catering to everyone's void for a social darling has left me quite empty. examination: and who has morphed into the role of femme fatale lately? perhaps it is truly my fault that i weave webs of unconscious charm. it is rather, i'm afraid, a poor if lucky excuse for the awkward sweetness i've been known to exude. what i never realized is how macho that can make men feel. In any case, off I go.


posted by Kate at 2:59 PM


wThursday, August 23, 2001


I'm as arid and carbonated as sprite...fluffy, social, sweet...cotton candy. Lately I have wanted to be anything but alone. Strange -- to need people so when usually I push them away. It was such a hard summer that I almost feel as if I need people, many of them, always around to be a buffer against all the jagged edges (physically and metaphorically) that I've collected since June.

When do I retract? Back into my shell...

I recieved two Cicada magazines in the mail Tuesday. They had printed my poem, "Sundays, Going Home," on page 1. It was rather amazing to see my work in print. Ethereal.

Beautiful.

posted by Kate at 11:32 PM


wSunday, August 19, 2001


Dead

It's as if tomorrow will never happen. I walked across the campus in knee high grass, eyeing the fallen branches victim of the storm last night. A circular peice of styrofoam was caught in a tree and hanging limply like a noose. There were no birds. The air was thick with humidy, almost not breathable, hot, sticky...and not a soul in sight anywhere. Classes start...tomorrow?

posted by Kate at 3:24 PM


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Hey. I'm back. Spent the majority of the night catching up with friends. My whole family came down with me today to deliver my stuff. Afterwards, we went out to eat and I thought - I can't possibly be happier with these people or love them more - and then they left, and I felt peculairly like I'd lost something. A blinding storm, hurricane-like in its intensity, knocked all the lights off at dusk. I was terrified of going into my empty, dark, lonely dorm room and sitting there all by myself for god knows how long, so I stalked about outside the TKE house until someone let me in. There I learned how to play pool, and that I'm invited to their Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday parties, and I had a nice chat with Richie and Thad. When I got back to the room, Bonnie was there.

I'm glad to be back.

posted by Kate at 2:17 AM


wFriday, August 10, 2001


Taking a chance. Posting at work. Why I can't wait 7 days until I'm back in Troy and back into regular internet access I don't know. My shoulder is terrible. The Grand Canyon uprooted and settled deep into the flesh of my upper back. It's an out of body experience, sometimes, having an open wound. I know it's there, and yet it's all so surreal. I'm glad I can't see it very well.

posted by Kate at 3:13 PM


wWednesday, May 09, 2001


This is it.

Tomorrow: my last exam. Then I quit this place, and in a way I leave something very simple, a whole year of smooth white naivete, behind. I realize this and it's a quiet pitted feeling in the bottom of my stomach because I know it can only be more wonderfully complicated from now on.

(fire alarm. like a thousand mutant alien flies. the lights flash in the shadow-bathed halls: a surrealistic movie. I am moving slowly, eyes closed, my fingertips brushing past the concrete walls. into the warm-moon night.)

I strained the small of my back as I was hefting a gigantic tupperware box full of books into the trunk of my care. Who knew reading could cause bodily harm? My body so rarely betrays me that painful sensations sometimes confuse me. I hardly recognize them, and then I don't really understand that they limit my functioning capacity...so I try to do all the things I normally do, like the time I ran with that shin-split.

Today I said goodbye to Patrick and I thought: I'll miss you and Wes and the way you both make me feel like I'm worth all the ditziness and clumsiness just because sometimes I manage to convey a half intelligible thought. I also thought: you're even hotter than when I first met you. I will also miss Sarah, who has mysteriously disappeared in the last 2 days. I hope I don't leave without saying goodbye to her.

My room is unraveling. Soon it will be as barren and cold as when I first unlocked the door and stepped into its unfamiliar grayness. That first day I felt so young and out of place. Now I leave a room that has come to feel like home. I've also discovered that I place a great deal of weight in feeling at home even though I like to think home is something that doesn't matter, that if it changes so be it: I like change. No, I like the substance of memories constructed, housed, and aged. Now I understand that this little gray room is not really mine at all, so ladened it is with the scents of girls past. But I leave marks too...namely, my name scratched in ink beside the closet door. ;-) Sometimes I hate leaving...even though I've never really left any place at all.

Lucid was the day. I was too hurried to notice it much until after Bonnie and I left SAGA, and then I let the greenness below and the warm gray-blueness above surround me all within the folds of the warm summer-scented breeze. Sometimes I think it will be many years before I pass another time period of my life so...languidly. I've been saying goodbye for a long time now. Here it ends.

See you in the fall.

"What did you expect?" Ursula sighed. "Time passes."
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez--One Hundred Years of Solitude



posted by Kate at 1:12 AM


wMonday, May 07, 2001


The nervous energy of today culminated in a surrealistic hour and 15 minutes while I meandered through the Pre-Calculus exam, the specter of which I've been maniacally avoiding and, at the same time, obsessing over for the past week or so. I failed it. I might have to retake the entire class, in which case I will close my eyes and forget what it feels like to have something leech onto me and sap all the realness inside, and I will work...hard. Perhaps by chance of miracle I've actually passed the requirement, and thus I can continue to ignore the place inside me that so fears my inadequacy when it comes to the logic of numbers. It's as if I fail myself when I fail these numbers. They're so essential to our basic existence as human beings and deep down I know this and it frightens me that I cannot understand it. I fear what I cannot understand. I hate what I fear. It's your basic equation for fool-hardyness...the demon that keeps superstitions alive and progress repressed. I house it. And I despise myself for that.

The day was so cloudy with muck: undercurrents of inadequacy riveting beneath my skin like the overcast sky above. So many days have passed sweetly here without memories of this. I so often feel squelched and suffocated, and today has felt, especially, like a dull continuation of such apathy, while inside: the erratic bursts of panic, like I know I've been stifled somewhere. There are times when I feel so alive and so real...and times when I feel but a mere shell of what I know I am, a perpetual hollow feeling: the idea of emptyness that so fascinates me. It has ever since I was a very small child, and I knew what it felt like to be very alone even among the comforts of family, especially with family.

Nevermind that. I am not afraid anymore of what the summer might contain. I am not afraid to leave the false security of half-friendships and a pseudo-social life. I will make a lot of money this summer. Pay off my debts. Spend time with my sister. Play baseball with my brother. Read. Tease my cat. Laugh and joke with my parents. Write. Take explorative walks. Jog. Play on my keyboard. Take pictures. Draw. Clean out my computer. Laugh. Work. Work. Work. Work.

Tomorrow: the cleaning up and packing away. Goodbye Katharine Billieu. You are not who you were.

"Remembering those things as she prepared Jose Arcadio's trunk, Ursula wondered if it was not preferable to lie down once and for all in her grave and let them throw the earth over her, and she asked God, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications; and asking over and over she was stirring up her own confusion and she felt irrepressible desires to let herself go and scamper about like a foreigner and allow herself at last an instant of rebellion, that instant yearned for so many times and so many times postponed, putting her resignation aside and shitting on everything once and for all and drawing out of her heart the infinite stacks of bad words that she had been forced to swallow over a century of conformity.
'Shit!' she shouted."
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez--One Hundred Years of Solitude

posted by Kate at 11:05 PM


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Insomnia.

And I have a busy day tomorrow. I'm currently listening to Robert W. Smith's Inferno, which is soooooooo appropiate for my mood of impending doom...PRECALCULUS EXAM!!!!!!!! Bah! I'd take time to describe the intimate feelings of hatred and abhoration I house for any kind of math whatsoever, but I'm not quite up to it. However, listening to this CD of an honor band I participated in last year is fascinating. On the one hand, I have, if anything, regressed in my musical abilities (clarinet skills); however, just being a part of such a well-oiled machine as the TSU Symphony Band has created within me a musical ear that even I cannot deny. I hear with such accuracy all the flubs and intonation problems I amaze myself. I never thought I could hear so much within music before. I certainly didn't believe I was capable. On the same line, I've been piddling about on my keyboard more lately, and hopefully by the time summer's well under way I'll have made some progress in teaching myself how to play.

I am tired with no prospect of sleep. Summer looms...apathetically. I cannot expend so much effort this time around trying to expound upon that. I kept losing all my beautifully written blogs...dammit.

I leave friends behind. And a really great guy with a camera for a third arm who made me feel, for a moment, a bit diminutive and feminine again...and I really liked it. No, really, I did. I will miss him. I will also miss another great guy who's been making me laugh hysterically and ponder the meaning of life at intermittent bursts of frequency...I only know him through the internet. We've become great friends, and unfortunately, my limited internet access over the summer will keep us from talking until fall. Snail mail is still the most exciting and fun form of communication (in place of good ol' face to face, of course), and perhaps we'll keep in touch fairly regularly anyway.

So I thought I was going to write something fairly deep and beautiful, but really...I don't have very many of those thoughts in my head right now. Really, now I just feel slightly trivial and...awake, even though I wish to be asleep.

I wish I was alone, because I'm not...and it's with the same intensity that I wished myself with company just a few hours ago.

"I cannot be sure that I felt all that then, although I can be sure that it was in the fig tree, a few years later, that I was first puzzled by the conflict which would haunt me, harm me, and benefit me the rest of my life: simply, the stubborn, relentless, driving desire to be alone as it came into conflict with the desire not to be alone when I wanted not to be."
--Lillian Hellman--An Unfinished Woman


Goodnight moon.

posted by Kate at 2:14 AM


wSunday, May 06, 2001


This is right. This is what I want. I'm lonely. I don't want to take my math exam tomorrow. Come on, I KNOW you want to take it for me. Look at you! You do! You know you do! Of course you do! :-)

posted by Kate at 10:10 PM


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Ho de dum...yeah.

posted by Kate at 10:03 PM


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ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just lost PRECIOUS thoughts! PRECIOUS words! PARTS of my life!

DAMMIT!

This thing fucking timed out on me and LOST my post!



posted by Kate at 9:38 PM


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Okay...here goes. I'm just incredibly stupid about these things, and I keep losing my posts somehow. Sooooo...what i'm gonna do is NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL I CLICK ON POST AND PUBLISH!!!!!!! Alright, I think I'm ready now...I think. Here goes, yeah...

posted by Kate at 8:50 PM