14:36 - March 01, 2003
apartment!
About 50%, probably more, of my total stress has just dropped from my shoulders, in the form of having a definite place to live next year. We just signed the lease an hour ago. It's a two bedroom on the fifth floor facing the Flatirons, close to the bus stop et cetera et cetera, and on the way over there I was so jittery I smoked a clove. I smoke cloves about once every three or four months, and only in extreme circumstances, and writing a check for $500 counts as an extreme circumstance. I smoked and I coughed and choked and spat; I can't inhale that shit and I hate the taste, but for some reason every four months or so I get the urge for it, for absolutely no reason at all. Ah well, though. I can deal with an every four month addiction.

Anyway, it's signed. We don't have to worry anymore. On the way home I caught snowflakes in my mouth and stepped in puddles, and we laughed at how these wasn't an obvious catch in the lease, such as 'it is stated herein that the Tenant shall, on alternate Mondays, sell their Bodies on Twenty-Seventh Way, and turn over all Proceeds to the Landlord' or anything like that.

12:15 - February 28, 2003
kindergarten
Even in college, when I look across the cafeteria, all the black kids are sitting together, all the white kids are sitting together, etc. It's just as clear as it was in the gym we ate in back in elementary school.

I can't begin to touch on race relations issues; I've never been able to and I've never felt justified in doing so, but the only thing that seemed pure and innocent even then was when I was in kindergarten and would sit next to Secrena and take all her tiny black braids in my hand and marvel at the puff of hair at the end of them, and she would run her fingers all the way down through my long blond hair and smile at how they went through, and we could do this for hours.

21:18 - February 27, 2003
bus ride after night of no sleep
things keep, not spinning, but shifting. i am in the front row because the sandwich i have just eaten is rolling in my stomach like cement and i can hang my legs over the front bar. andrew is in the front row too because he's nice. this is the express bus, but it misses the express lane because a RAV4 has been directly next to us at the necessary time and after, smirking with its purple paint and its pert spare tire. fucking RAV4. every time i look it's pecos blvd, over and over and over again, pecos blvd. i don't remember it being like that, i remember it being westminster by now, or church ranch. but i can't tell. pecos, sheridan, 104th. i've made this trip so many times. my throat feels half closed like there's gum stretched across it, and everything tastes like the bread from einstein bros. bagels, and my sandwich is awkward hidden under my jacket so the bus driver doesn't see it. 'no food on the bus,' he'll drone, not taking his eyes off the road, because rtd training must be rigorous. 104th. church ranch. lafayette. andrew is breathing raspy in his sleep. i can't sleep because sometimes when i sleep i don't wake up. in the daytime i can't risk it, on a bus i can't risk it, when i have school in an hour i can't risk it. louisville. why are all these towns named after places in louisiana and kentucky? and why does a road named 'church ranch' exist? there are cows by the side of the road. my mouth is sour from sleep and no toothbrush. my eyes are trying to close, but i can't go to sleep, i won't allow myself to.

i wake up at table mesa. (translated: table table.) andrew is asleep on my shoulder. i was asleep on the window. my body jerks when i awaken and his head flies up. table mesa. two more stops; through south boulder my eyes burn and i put my fingers to them to keep them open. we get off at baseline because we're idiots and we've forgotten the length of that walk.

15:44 - February 27, 2003
spitting fire
20 hours gone in Denver for this speech and reception, and of course the speech Michael Moore gave (for upwards of two and a half hours) was WONDERFUL, and moving, and funny, and true. But he didn't show up to the reception beforehand because he was running late. There were hundreds of people there, and I took pleasure in cutting in the long lines at the food tables to grab just one fussy little custardy dessert thing, and then another, and then another. We did get special front section seating at the speech, though.

It's funny how when you're caught up in the moment you think you're going to go home and become an activist and make a difference right then, and do everything you can to change things. It's almost a given, at the time. You wonder what's wrong with you that you haven't done so yet. But the feeling is gone within the hour after. In my case it slipped away in the snow outside the Ritchie Center. Camille was inside at the book signing (the book signing being switched to AFTERWARDS because of the delays) and we had agreed to meet by the lip sculptures outside when she was finished. It was about 23:00. The five of us hopped up and down and blew on our hands and made snow sculptures with our shoes. I didn't have a coat because it was only a short distance to her dorms, but we couldn't get in there without her. Literally hours passed. I believe it was about 1:15 when we gave up and went back to her dorm anyway. None of us are from Denver, and we had a rough time finding it, and the buses back to Boulder had long stopped running. I was livid. I can't remember the last time I really and truly felt like screaming in someone's face, the last time I was moved almost to tears by it. She's late to everything, she doesn't use common sense (prime example: her cell phone was off) and.. well... it's constant, and not just once in awhile. And whenever I mention it to her I get this huge attitude back, like I'm the monster for daring to bring it up. But it's okay. Because that's the only time we fight and it never lasts long, so I'd take that over something worse.

We get back at 1:30, bug the guy at the front desk into letting us in, open her dorm room door, and there she is, asleep in her bed, her leftover Christmas lights flashing on and off. I have never understood how she sleeps with those on. At first I can't even speak. She says she looked for us. In the exact same place where we were for hours. I can't answer, so I don't. I swallow it back down my throat, where it burns for awhile, but I don't say anything about it for the rest of the night. The five of us sleep on the floor; nobody is going to class the next morning. We don't catch the B line until 11.

Those are the twenty hours.
It's not a big deal, and nobody froze, and nobody got lost or hurt or sick, and I like to think of myself as fairly mild-mannered, but there are random things like this that sneak up suddenly and make me feel like spitting fire.

12:59 - February 26, 2003
what?
In about five hours' time I'll be at a 'VIP Dessert and Reception' at Denver University with some student ambassadors and Michael Moore. I honestly have no idea how this stuff happens to me.

12:56 - February 24, 2003
couldn't move
The three boys downstairs (previously referred to as the Creepy Three.... now they're the Creepy Two because one got thrown out of the dorms, plus one boy from down the hall) refer to themselves as some sort of mass conglomerate. Every time I'm anywhere near them I hear 'We don't have any more midterms until two weeks from today' or 'we can't eat until seven thirty today because of basketball so we're going to have to order from Silver Mine' or 'wow, we're really drunk right now'. It's pretty funny and pretty terrible. If you suggested to one of them that they eat alone one night, he would look at you like you grew a third head. I'm not knocking friendship, but fuck. Even Camille and I were never like that, not even in seventh grade when we isolated ourselves from the lunch crowd and ate in our English teacher's empty classroom every day.

This weekend has been a blurry mass of people. As of Sunday morning I had had enough, after having spent pretty much the last two days nonstop at some sort of twisted continuous fort party, in this stoned haze, and I escaped back to my room at about 3 PM to sit in a corner and read books and not talk to anyone. But then my dad called to say he'd gotten the tickets for London and while we were on the phone my door flew open and there was this stampede and flurry of feet and faces tumbling into my room demanding track-making privileges, which was the end of my quiet time. They didn't leave until probably 11 PM.

I guess I'm not really used to, or not at all used to, having this big of a group of friends. I've always had one or two close friends and just a few others, around five or six, not more. But last night I believe it was more than six that tumbled into my room, and it was just a fraction of everyone. I love the variety, and I love everyone who I'm friends with, but it's exhausting sometimes. I haven't read a book through since that week I was deathly ill and couldn't move.

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