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wBillieupool |
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Hi.
My name is Kate.
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wSaturday, November 23, 2002 |
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Friday Scenes:
Walking the channel of wind between two buildings on campus. Red leaves flooding the walkway like a snowstorm.
The bunny that let Miranda and me watch in wide eyed rabbit wonder as it calmly nibbled its supper just off the sidewalk next to the Natatorium. We stood for thirty minutes in the November cold, the tiny rabbit munching the last fall greens not five feet away, tolerating our dopey urbanite delight with eyes calm as a domesticated cow's. Finally he obeyed his ancient quivery-nerve rabbit genes and startled and bounded away, the flash of white bunny tail disappearing around the corner of Smith.
Then, shrimp and alfredo noodles at Allen's, red wine that didn't quite go so well with white pasta and Sinatra and Korn. Discord was, apparently, well themed...quirky and nice somehow. Afterward, there was the ride to Montgomery, strawberry ice cream at the Marble Slab, and The Ring at the theater. At one point in the movie the phone rings with what is most certainly ill fated news. "Hell naw," Allen said, "You check the caller id and if it says Grim Reaper you don't talk to that bitch."
Today, E. club restored eroded stream banks in Providence (Alabama). So it's been a dirty, dirty, woodsy day, sun-dappled and mud-caked and creek streaming. We planted many willows between rolled sheets of soil blankets and grass seed. We planted cedar saplings by a tiny water eroded ravine. We picked out deer and turkey tracks in the sugar sand banked in the crook of the river bend. Finally, an hour before sunset we piled into the back of the university car, four of us packed tightly enough to not need seatbelts, and I fell asleep with my temple on the cold window, the rolling pasture land of lower Alabama softly humming by in my ear as we fled back to Troy in the diminishing light.
posted by
Kate at 8:06 PM
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wFriday, November 22, 2002 |
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So this is how I feel about college, particularly this college: I hate it. Yes, I hate it. No, I don't think you understand. I hate college. In my opinion this four years is no better than an incubation period, time for me to grow up a little, time for my writing to get better, good enough to get me into an MFA program. And then I'll write for two years. After that, who knows.
posted by
Kate at 3:54 PM
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wThursday, November 21, 2002 |
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I realize this list is slightly belated, but I think it's important anyway:
WHAT I DID OVER SUMMER VACATION
drove by myself to Birmingham to visit Miranda
attended City Stages with M. S. and B.
worked as a counselor for physically and mentally retarded people at Camp Civitan
learned how to wakeboard
applied for a checkcard
got vaccinated for hep. B.
bought a new camera
bought lipstick
read The Nanny Diaries
got a DVD player for my birthday
watched a stage production of Hamlet
skinnydipped
skydived
had my eyeball licked
had a huge fight with my mother
got into some pretty serious trouble with someone not my parents for the first time ever
slept naked
worked as a counselor for mentally and physically retarded people at Camp ASCCA
read Little Alters Everywhere
drank beer with a British guy named Simon in Oxford, AL
discovered that my hair is naturally curly
read Maiden Voyage...again
took seven rolls of film
started a scrapbook / photo album
read parts of The Lord of the Rings, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, and Savage Beauty
watched Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, Lilo and Stitch, Bandits, Animal House, Riding in Cars with Boys, Signs, XXX, Orange County, and A Beautiful Mind.
posted by
Kate at 1:34 AM
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wWednesday, November 20, 2002 |
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I suppose I'm just tired and frustrated. I could barely drag myself home after American Lit., crashed hard on my bed, one leg dangling off. Later the phone rang. Who ever it was let the answering machine pick up, but he/she didn't leave a message. I hate that.
It would be a shame to actually do my homework now as I've been on a homework strike for two weeks, but I suppose I will. Then I'll go back to sleep because even though I've had so much lately my body is worn out, worn out, worn out. Typical end of the semester blahs. I work like clockwork, doncha know. Very predictable.
posted by
Kate at 8:40 PM
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wTuesday, November 19, 2002 |
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Come to think of it, there was only one boy that left me anywhere near love, and he had me buckled over its threshold for four years. Maybe this type of love doesn't count at all because it was so very young (we were fourteen when it started). Maybe this love doesn't count because it was almost always unrequited on my behalf. Maybe I'm just making it all up in my head, but no boy has ever since come close to making me feel as much as this first boy did.
He was a wonderful boy, though. Maybe crazier than I was (am), certainly more lost. The last time I heard from him was this summer, and it seemed nothing had changed at all. He was moving toward his third college, third apartment, third job. I'm at a dizzy stasis here in Troy.
He could draw. He sure could. I wish he was still around just so I could show him all the nude pictures I've amassed this semester, how drawing was always something I loved too, but never knew how to catapult forward with until just now. He was smart. He had a wonderful smile, teeth he would whiten because he was forgivably vain. He was just a boy when I last saw him. Now I'm sure we're both being pushed into the adults we can't help becoming, and I wonder sometimes how he looks now and what he's doing and if he's at all different. I had to let go of him, though. You do that with things you love. You let them grow apart. Most times they distance themselves regardless of whether you decide to let them, but I've found it easier if you just allow the space to happen peaceably. I don't think it really was that I loved him. But I certainly do love the idea of what he was to me now. For the rest of my life men are going to come and go, but I'll never ever forget that boy. Somehow, that's a nice thought I keep returning to.
posted by
Kate at 2:18 AM
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wTuesday, November 12, 2002 |
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At the local Blockbuster: two men, each in dirty jeans and white undershirts.
"Whadja say the movie was?"
"Red Ocitpus."
"Red Ocitpus? You sure bout that?"
"Yip, Red Octipus. I thank."
"Naw, here it is. Red Dragon."
"You sure it ain't Octipus?"
"Yeah, it says rightchere. Red Dragon."
"I sure as hell thought that movie was called Red Octipus. Well grab it."
"Sure thang."
Is my life a movie or what? Two rednecks in the wild. I'm so lucky.
posted by
Kate at 1:11 AM
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wMonday, November 04, 2002 |
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Friday morning I woke up in a place I'd never been before, in the soft crook of a strange elbow, and the sun from the window next to the bed was very bright on my face. I could log the hours of my own strangeness, lying next to a snoring someone someone in the first lit hours of the morning, into a long logbook of patient stillness. There are all kinds of lonelinesses, and not being asleep next to someone who is is one of the sweetest and saddest I've ever known.
posted by
Kate at 11:41 AM
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