quiet

There are moments when all I want is to be free. To be single, to stay up all night and answer to no one. To be a sleepless academic working on papers and drinking with my professors.

Sometimes I really do want to get married.

And I don't know which one I'm going to eventually choose. I hate this not-knowing that plagues too much of my life. For once, I just want to know and be done with it.

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in
love with language." -- W.H. Auden

Watching my little airplane plant lift its leaves to the sun, I wish I had something to say about this morning. Bright yellow sunshine on my balcony. Chattering birds. I forgot to write on Saturday about the pool. I spent an hour or so down at the pool near my building. Remarkably quiet for a space so near the homes of so many. The only company I had were large ravens, talking loudly to each other and sometimes circling the sky. A few monarch butterflies and a blue-green dragonfly. I've seen so many butterflies lately. Swimming in the morning when everything is still calm soothes me, takes awaysome of that nervous edge.

(no subject)

Timothy McVeigh dies in 9 days. The vultures are scrambling for the best position.

As if killing him, as if watching him die will change anything or bring any comfort. This is wretched.

Bud Welch is one of the few sane voices. Thank you.

American consumerism

Went so spend the other part of my gift card at a ridiculous clothing store. I would never ordinarily go anywhere near such a place. At least I was able to find some shorts and some tshirts not plastered with the store logo or some other ridiculous 70s inspired nonsense. While in the store, the power kept going out. I suggested to my friend Deb that we start the looting, while the employees ran around with their useless headsets.

After going to a half dozen stores, I can't understand why there are no Dr Marten Mary Janes to be found. Damn it. I just wanted some shoes. Other circumstances intervene, and I think I won't be able to afford them anyway, so perhaps it is not so bad.

something peculiar about the darkness

Listening to this Russian techno that I swear is sampling this instrumental piece from the American Beauty soundtrack. I keep watching that movie, over and over. The first time I saw it, I was alone on a Sunday afternoon. Kept holding my breath in, listening intently to everything said and unsaid on the screen. These movies, these American movies like The Ice Storm and The Virgin Suicides will always represent this point in my life. Remembering watching them all in the Arbor theater, the people I saw them with, the people I didn't see them with.

My roommate's cat crawled into my lap for a little while. Black/grey long haired tabby cat. I miss my own cats, being able to hold them, the strange empathy these creatures had. All of them were raised at our hands after abandonment at the clinic where my mother works. Kittens with broken bones, kittens covered in fleas and mud, kittens left duct taped in airless boxes. The casual cruelty towards animals never ceases to amaze me, even here in Austin. My mother has eight cats at home now, including a little orange and white kitten named Jacks. He slept in my arms for an hour on Sunday morning. My cat is a fluffy long haired calico, Rachel. Such a pretty thing. I've never understood how a person could want to hurt something so beautiful. When they took her into the clinic, she was so dirty and sick no one could tell what color she was. My mom brought her home to me after I had spent a few years without a cat. My previous cat, Angel, died a traumatic and horrific death. (One which I still have my suspicions about even now, but this is not the place.) This tiny calico kitten, with a bow around her neck sat in my hand. I slept with her in my arms, propped up on my bed.

There is something very different about these cats, being raised by human mothers. They share a bond with us that is sometimes uncanny. the night my sister attacked my mother and was taken by the police, the cats slept all around her on the bed. Like some kind of psychic guard. I've seen them come to me or to my mother in these moments of grief, stress or uncertainty. They seem to know things, I'm not sure how. But I've seen it too many times for it to be simple coincidence. They simply know.

(no subject)

The stillness of the air unnerves me, with the sirens racing in the distance. I have turned the stereo up to cover what I'm straining to hear.