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wBillieupool |
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Hi.
My name is Kate.
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wWednesday, February 27, 2002 |
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I saw Amelie last Saturday night. Lovely movie. I join the chorus of people dreamily hailing it, convinced I, too, can have a better life if I but learn to enjoy the finer things, work a bit of magic into the world around me, and, in the mean time, focus on fixing my own (often) lackluster attempts at happiness. Really, the movie said very many things I needed to hear - about love and my (already) jaded misconceptions of it and about missed oppurtunities and lucrative chances. And it inspired me.
So after verse writing class today, instead of just watching him get up and walk alone out the door and out of my life, I called after him and together we walked the ribbon of sidewalk lining the Quad, stopped where our paths were to diverge and talked in furtive, awkward tones. The students streamed around us like rivulets of water catching on two pebbles in a river. I felt strange and disconnected, but I did it. I went after him.
posted by
Kate at 12:14 AM
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wFriday, February 22, 2002 |
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Several things:
Closest thing I have to an "old boyfriend" recently emailed me. Don't know what to think about that. He's a good person, but I'm just too different now to do him much good. Plus, he likes to use me as buffer to his own insecurities, quite subconsciously I truly believe, but it gets old.
My main preoccupation from last semester has apparantly inquired of me also. This is "what is Kate doing?" week, I suppose. I wish I could say that it didn't matter that the first thing out of his mouth was, "Is she dating anyone?" I wish I could say my head didn't get light and my fingertips didn't tingle and my breathing didn't get any heavier, but they all did, releasing a rash of old memories to haunt the nights without rest and the days of heavy speculation and idle dreaming.
My friends, good friends, are hurting and I'm hurting because they're hurting and I'm not hurting near enough. Doesn't do anyone any good, and I preside like a spectator. Life is just not good enough sometimes. At least my own discomfort and pain can be mostly justified, but when my loved ones hurt I cannot justify the fact that I'm not hurting just as much.
Detachment comes easily, effortlessly - so much so that I'm scared. I know what I want to do with my life.
But insecurities breathe as heavily down my neck as the next person's. I know where I go wrong: forget to wonder, forget to love, fall back to old comforts, scrape desire from the barrel, sleep too much or not enough, and never reach back.
posted by
Kate at 12:45 AM
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wThursday, February 07, 2002 |
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Eyes are much better. Apparently, when I took my contacts out the next morning I ripped the skin on my eyes. Ouch. Didn't even know eyes had skin. I've always taken them to be sort of like muscles with a smooth jelly-like coating. Ew. Eyes are much prettier than that. Certainly mine are now and other someone-someones'...
posted by
Kate at 9:03 PM
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wWednesday, February 06, 2002 |
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Diary entry, 2-4-02:
We camped at the foot of a massive sand dune 30 feet off of the wilderness trail. When we were done setting up camp we picked our way through a small dessert of rollng dunes, finally stumbled onto a white beach/gray ocean, then spent the rest of the day playing in the freezing surf and walking the abandoned beaches. Once dusk fell we watched the hot orange sun slide into the watery horizon. The sand all around us was first blue then a bruising purple, not sparkly like one might imagine but peculairly matte. The sky where the sun had just been was rosy, fanning out royal blue. When we unfocused our eyes and stared just below the ocean horizon the colors blazed: startling blues and firey pinks. In the distance a scattering of dolphins surfaced and jumped. The sudden cold forced us back to the campsite.
That night the sky emptied its jewls. I could see striped above me, for the first time, a sprawling hazy arm of the swirling Milky Way. Orion's belt glowed feircely, static. Some of the stars above were a pale blue, others were pink and still others, a stern white. We dragged our sleeping bags to the top of the sand dune overlooking camp, dug holes in the sand to stabilize ourselves then fell asleep, I, closer to a celestial heaven of wonder than I'd ever been before. There, even dead stars' lights still shone, and my last thought before falling asleep with starlight settling onto the stardust of my eyelashes was that I was seeing into aeons worth of light traveled distance, and that quietly shocked my little human brain to sleep.
When I awoke I couldn't open my eyes for a very long time. I touched my face to try to clear away the fog of sleep, but no matter how I brushed at it I couldn't erase that or the sand clinging to every pore. My contacts were glued to my eyeballs, and I immediately regretted leaving them in for the night. Then I unregretted it because how else on earth could I have fallen asleep under a galaxy of stars and actually have been able to see it? Eventually, I pried my eyes open then stumbled down the dune to camp. I was the first one awake so I pilfered matches from Bonnie's pack and tried to make a fire, failing miserably. At first my eyes were okay - just dry, but as the sun rose the light became more and more unbearable. I finally took my contacts out and then curled up in my tent and waited for the others to awaken. My car was parked two miles away, and I knew I would have to make two trips to get all of my stuff put away, and so as soon as Sarah was ready I made the first trip, following her exhaustedly, mostly blind, my eyes red and beyond painfully irritated, a constant flow of tears dripping off my nose. We made the trip in an hour, I - scared and blinded by the white hot sand, the white hot sun, by my eyes' failure to filter the incoming light to my pupils. The second trip seemed even worse, alleviated only because I only had to make it one direction. I gave my keys to Miranda, and she drove us back to Troy, each hour bringing neither relief nor further irritation to my constantly running eyes.
Back in Troy I showered then asked Bonnie to take me to the emergency room. Sarah and Miranda came too and waited while the doctor looked at me, let out a low whistle then cleaned my eyes and bandaged them both so that I was completely blind.
I spent the night in utter darkness.
This morning I dressed myself without sight, ran my fingers along the cool cement brick wall until I found the bathroom, touched everything I could like touching a man for the first time, soft and tentative. Bonnie took me to an eyedoctor referred by the ER, and the nurse clucked with pity as she unbound my swollen eyes, and later, the doctor was extra gentle with me as we sat in the half-darkness - I trying, rather unsuccessfully, to keep my eyes open. I've spent the rest of the day stepping from the shadows, trying to see again. I'm almost 100 percent better now. My left eye is still a little red and both are still slightly swollen, and my head hurts a bit now from writing in the half-light of this room where Bonnie sleeps only five feet away. I'm disasterously behind in schoolwork. Not quite sure how I'm going to pull off turning in my paper Wednesday or auditioning for chair placement in Symphony Band or making up the speech I missed today.
Sleep is heavy within my lids. The night is plain outside, corrupted by yellow streetlamps and orange-glowing buildings. If I had it to do over again I would sleep in my contacts just the same - anything for that myriad scattering of cold light, anything for the rough white slope of the dune beneath me, anything for the rushing sound of breaking waves, for the velvety darkness of night, cool and wild all around me.
posted by
Kate at 11:42 PM
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