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wBillieupool |
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Hi.
My name is Kate.
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wFriday, September 28, 2001 |
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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
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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
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wWednesday, September 26, 2001 |
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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
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wSunday, September 23, 2001 |
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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
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wSunday, September 16, 2001 |
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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
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wFriday, September 14, 2001 |
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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
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wSunday, September 09, 2001 |
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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
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wFriday, September 07, 2001 |
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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
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