Brautigan's dream world is constituted from watermelon sugar and trout steel, from that mixture of sweetness and detachment that permits you to be kind but never loving, disappointed but never enraged ... Brautigan makes cutting out your heart the only way to endure, the most beautiful way to protest the fact that life can be an endless down.

i have a stouffer's chicken lasagna in the oven. the left side of my stove isn't working, the front and back burners won't ignite. need to call the landlord about it, but i hate having people over that aren't people i want over so i am putting it off as always. i really don't like it when the bug sprayer comes, it's always awkward. i stand in the kitchen while he walks around the corners of my bedroom, my bathroom, etc. it feels personal. intimate. awkward.

i bought my train tickets for christmas two nights ago. i have to find someone who can drive me to spartanburg on the 18th and pick me up on the 28th because i don't know about leaving my car at the station or if they let you do that or how that works. if i can leave it i'll leave it. none of the routes from columbia went to mississippi without going all roundabout. roundabout would be fun but i only have so much time.

i need to be better about punctuation and grammar. i need to think about things more. last night i was in bed trying to make a definitive decision on my stance on punctuation. there are more things i need to examine, but i should at least refresh myself with the basics. what would it hurt? semicolons and commas and splitting and splicing and so on.

i have a 20 page paper due soon. sometime this week, not sure when. i haven't started, haven't even decided a topic. also a group project i have yet to contribute to is wednesday. noone's contributed though, just sent emails about contributing. it is a project i could very easily do alone, would prefer to do alone. some read/response things. a final. that's that, one semester left. i should start applying for jobs. i don't feel ready.

tonight i have tried my hardest to look like a babydoll, to make my eyes as wide and innocent as possible, wearing a babydoll dress and babydoll shoes, and drawing red lipstick over my lips, over my babydoll cupid's bow. only now we are not going out. it's ok, i will sit at home like a babydoll, lie in bed, close my eyes, place my perfect eyelashes on my porcelain cheeks.

no, instead i will wipe off this stupid red lipstick and finish this bottle of opened wine and lie in bed with dvd's. maybe popcorn.

the backs of my thighs hurt from the gym. day before i fell face first on steps that weren't stacked properly. doing calf lifts on the edge it slid out from underneath me, caught myself with one hand, but banged my chin without falling completely over. noone saw, that is the only thing that matters.

he put strawberry in my chocolate milk shake, i can taste it. it's like neopolitan and it's alright but chocolate would have been right. i will never be extremely skinny this way.

he is probably falling in love with someone else day by day. i can't stand it.

it is hard impossible to seperate feelings of i love you with your feelings of let's keep talking maybe one day we can try again. how am i supposed to go day by day on maybe's. oh we don't know what the future will bring, oh let's still be friends! i wish i could go back to not thinking about you like i did right after you left i just went numb and refused to let myself think about anything. i am so tired of impossibly wanting you back all the time so i'm thinking of your internet girls and how you talked to me like you hated me the last night in charleston and how i turned myself into a hypocrite to make things even.

you are probably tired of reading this, i don't blame you.

25 Nov 2006

what should i do with the clothes he left, i don't know, why isn't he thinking about me right now.

we werent able to love each other enough and rightly.

the night has come to where i am horribly slumping over my desk. it is time to go to bed. there the train is blowing.

"when did all of this happen?"

my belly sticking out a little.

i would like to be flexible. at least would make me more sexually exciting. am fairly flexible, more and more so each day. my calves are tight. need my legs straight.

i am upset with myself in general.

good and pure and clean

fante line - not a herring, not a ...etc

we should tiptoe here - then write about jealousies

don't feel like censoring myself much anymore.

i should have better posture, i should be beautiful. at least interesting and smart with opinions on things. i should get opinions.

should enact a plan to slowly attempt at winning him back
step one, extreme skinniness
step two, improve vocabulary and spelling

it is so hard to go to sleep it is so hard to wake up.

somehow i have become very boring and uninteresting and don't know where anything went don't know why i don't think anything about anything.

at least 48 hours of constant crying over you. maybe it was worse with you there. why did i show you that side of me. it felt so horrible, that day, just horrible.

oh well

that means nothing to me now.

he will be gone, possibly he will fall in love, and it will never be the same.

something about being spiritual. never focused on spiritual. don't know. need direction and that focus and inner ideals, ideology, belief, morals, values. too much hypocritical inside movement. can never commit or make up mind.

i want to be extremely skinny.



now i don't have to tell you anything. anything at all.

today is the day that schubert died. if it were 1828 and it were today then today would be the day that schubert would be dying and soon dead. schubert, 31 year old schubert, lying in his bed possibly, and dying.


an extraordinary climax conveying madness at the realization of rejection and imminent death

friday night i went with ann and her friend laura to a show at the art shack. i met two dogs and ate two round pieces of chocolate and touched one 1900's thomas hardy edition in laura's beautiful house. at the gallery, the store, the place, i mostly felt like i was fumbling around touching chairs made from sparkleberry trees and glancing at paintings of chickens and dead trucks and batik fish pillows. ann and i went to see factotum at the nick. it was 9 o'clock and we shared a box of popcorn. i thought about the time when it was adam sitting next to me. i liked when he hit her and i liked when he gave her his shoes in the middle of the sidewalk. i liked lili taylor's barrel gut and hip bones and matt dillon beautiful even when attempting not to be. it was slow and it was depressing and it was empty and it was good. afterward we went to the whig and i liked the whig. i drank more than i should have and maybe i was a little obnoxious, i don't know, but afterward i felt a little obnoxious. i sat in ann's woven chair, drank pomegranate soda, and ate mixed nuts trying to guess each one by their taste, trying to sober up a little. the macadamia gives itself away too easily, first off on size alone.

let's face it. you don't need me, and i don't need you.

sometimes i just sit in the bath and cry and cry. palms over face.

last night i made pumpkin and yellow pepper soup soup. last night i sewed the first of many tote bags i am making for christmas presents.







and ashley wrote me a letter that would have made my heart sink into my stomach were my heart still there.

also, last night, this:

American Cities That Best Fit You::

60% Austin

60% Denver

60% San Diego

55% Atlanta

55% Philadelphia

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

Gertrude Stein, "Reflections on the Atomic Bomb" (1946)

They asked me what I thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it.

I like to read detective and mystery stories. I never get enough of them but whenever one of them is or was about death rays and atomic bombs I never could read them. What is the use, if they are really as destructive as all that there is nothing left and if there is nothing there nobody to be interedted and nothing to be interested about. If they are not as destructive as all that then they are just a little more or less destructive than other things and that means that in spite of all destruction there are always lots left on this earth to be interested or to be willing and the thing that destroys is just one of the things that concerns the people inventing it or the people starting it off, but really nobody else can do anything about it so you have to just live along like always, so you see the atomic [bomb] is not at all interesting, not any more interesting than any other machine, and machines are only interesting in being invented or in what they do, so why be interested. I never could take any interest in the atomic bomb, I just couldn't any more than in everybody's secret weapon. That it has to be secret makes it dull and meaningless. Sure it will destroy a lot and kill a lot, but it's the living that are interesting not the way of killing them, because if there were not a lot left living how could there be any interest in destruction. Alright, that is the way I feel about it. They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.

today i baked chocolate chip cookies for my new neighbor and put them on her doorstep in an orange gift bag along with a candle and a room spray and a note saying welcome to being my neighbor, etc. she knocked on my door and said thank you and we went through introductions at last. i also found out why my internet connection hasn't been much of a connection at all.

saturday i cried and then decided not to think about anything so i stopped. i went to ann's house and we ate at el burrito and had beer and it was still too early so we drove around and then walked up and down gervais looking into the windows of stores and then went to the art bar. she pointed out a boy with sideburns glancing at me and said i don't know about this rachael i am used to being the cute one and i said i'm not used to it and don't think i am with her halo of golden hair and sad blue eyes next to me, how could i be. i am oblivious to glances and never know unless it is blatant, but also at this moment i am not caring and don't want to think about it i am far too sad and it is far too soon with my heart still feeling involved. bald cynical hipster extraordinaire struck up conversation with ann and his name was jon but i don't know i just kept thinking his name was bob because he seemed like a bob, but bob is the name of her ex. i didn't really want to talk to anyone and he said i was very zen on planet rachael and i just smiled and nodded and stared away while they talked about local galleries and art and over the music i couldnt really hear anyway. the bartender reminded me of someone i knew the way his smile was all in the corners of his mouth and the guy on the other side of me smelled of body odor and eventually the smoke was burning my eyes. ann went to the restroom and i felt as if i had to talk in her absence so we meanly made fun of plastic faced girls with botoxed foreheads across the bar. someone passing ran a cigarette across my back and it burned but i didn't mind, i didn't feel it much, like a sleepy mosquito or a lazy bee. it was crowded so we got up, the three of us, and listened to the band for a while and the black light showed all the lint on my black dress which i mistook for chips of paint wondering where they came from. ann and i left and walked to her car in the rain and my hair curled in the back a little. we ate leftover chips and spinach dip and the rain came down harder when i jumped out of her car and into my own.

i went home and it was empty but i was ok and i went to sleep but adam messaged me and it read 'i miss you' and twice it sent and then i cried, a little.

i am going to charleston for the next few days. for the charleston conference. on serials.

i have a ticket to see my morning jacket while i am there but don't know if i am going to go or if i want to go alone.

today i dried my hair twice. once after the bath, and once again because it was all wrong.

next week i will get a hair cut and go to the gym again and eat correctly. i am fluctuating between days of not eating at all interspersed with days of chicken wings, french fries, and pasta. i have been to the gym once since. my body feels a mess.

it is time to close the library.

cheer up.