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15:44 - April 28, 2003
I started laughing, in amazement. 'Did you just say the end of the world, Dad? The end of the WORLD?' This kind of attitude? What has happened to him? He grew up in the sixties, smoking a lot of pot and ducking the system. Granted, he minored in Finance. But still. Paint on the stucco. It's a crystal clear example of materialism sneaking up and biting you in the ass right when you least expect it. And not letting go. If I had said to him thirty years ago that he would be that concerned over paint on the stucco, he would have said to shoot him if he ever got that way. I'm sure of it. And now... (shoot me if I ever get that way.)
21:54 - April 26, 2003 'It's Exquisite Corpse,' I say, looking at it. 'It's about necrophilia. I don't want it to change my life.' Today is a day for celebrating ourselves, we decide, only half-kidding, as we walk past the wine shop. 'I want to sit in an outdoor cafe sipping wine with the slanting afternoon sun turning it burgundy and watch the people walk by and eat rich extravagant food,' she says, so we go to Boulder Cafe and do exactly that minus the wine, since her 'forgotten I.D.' trick, though expertly attempted, doesn't work. 'This sounds strange, I know, but if I were living in ancient Roman times, I would go up on a cliffside and have an orgy with a bunch of women and grapes and wine,' she says. I agree. We should say that during a lull, in the room with all of our (guy) friends and see what happens. Probably nothing. Probably some guy saying, 'Well, I would too.' 'Do I seem really dismissive when I'm high?' I ask, concerned to the point of pleading, suddenly, and in the next sentence being dismissive about her answer. I almost stumble into the bookshelves. These stacks and stacks of pages I have not and will never read. All I'm doing is thinking. I don't mean to be dismissive. But when she's asking me if this isn't this the perfect day, I am staring over the roof of the bank at the mountains and thinking about sliding behind the rocks in Evanston while the cops' searchlights strobe the beach like a sombre disco, for no apparent reason. 'It's easy for you to say,' I don't say out loud, because it's the snippy little bitch voice in the back of my head that isn't very loud. And besides, I am having fun. There is a guy striding, pacing actually, back and forth in front of the music building on his cell phone, yelling excitedly and probably drunkenly. 'I mean she was a fucking Amazon, man,' he bellowed. 'Six foot four, 190.. 200 pounds at least, and by twenty minutes into it she was headbutting me. I just booked it to the bar and took shots of whatever was strongest...' We rocked with laughter on the bench behind him. Everything and everyone was so surreal. What I never said at the right time was that a haze is not always bad, nor is it always a haze. The blades of grass even, so sharply drawn, and the scenes we kept picturing, from above; the children with balloons and the guy who stopped to talk to us, flowers drooping from his left hand, and the waiter asking with barely suppressed amusement if our 'stuff was good', knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that we were stoned because we took an hour to decide what we wanted and another two hours to eat it. I love today.
16:01 - April 25, 2003
23:35 - April 24, 2003 I can be so swayed by words. I just spent my Thursday night hauling keyboards back and forth down a dorm hallway and then discussing drowning, the last gurgling breath, lungs filling and distorting and failing. Why do I discuss these things when I know I'll be thinking about it and gasping for air the rest of the evening? He shudders and curls up, and shakes a little, but he forgets the next second, and, predictably, is off about Dante's Inferno, describing all the terrible punishments for the terrible sinners in all the layers of, well, YOU know the story, and my stomach turns and turns and turns even as I continue to talk about it, pushing my limits, seeing if I can keep it up, because I used to do the same thing with vomiting... talk about it obsessively until I thought I would collapse, just to see if I could. Strangely enough I keep thinking: my body is surrounded by air, empty air, and it is smothering me. I need a hug. (the story continues on repeat:) but.. I can't have one because this is Boulder and no Nora or Erik exists here. He does sit close enough though for the heat of his body to give me some comfort; it's not all empty, not the room, at least, as we surf the internet for SparkNotes on the book so we can... who cares, who cares, who cares. I can't stop thinking about it, the drowning. How can I ever deal with things happening if I can't deal with thinking about things happening?
01:21 - April 24, 2003
12:28 - April 23, 2003 I think behind all these terrifying thoughts of halted breathing and stage fright and guns and tunnels is something very simple, and it bothers me that I can't get at it. This, too, is in my head, and probably out of it too; somewhere in the pages of this diary or any other diary or even in the scribbled mess of my four-year-old picture stories. Every time I find something else out I think it's IT. The car crash, the abortion, the endless fighting, stage lights, the smell of sulfur. I've tried to make an epiphany out of everything. None of these are, in fact, an epiphany. Just facts. Just facts I am too young or stupid or stoned to remember. At times like these I think the only thing I can do is lay back and do what I can and wait for these moments of running in the rain.
01:26 - April 22, 2003 i am stretching and snapping... don't tell me these things, it is breaking me. radiohead cannot wail loud enough to drown this out. i cannot twist the knob to glassbreakingheartbreaking volume because it's 1 a.m, although it shouldn't even matter, after all the j.lo horror i've been put through this semester at the witching hours of the night. radiohead, though, it just drifts out the window, out with the odd mist (colorado mist, once in a blue moon), out onto the hill behind my building. i harmonize it. fourths. sounds medieval. my voice breaks and cracks, twenty hours of being awake. sometimes it is something very simple that i want. most times. me playing devils' advocate to your argument doesn't change a thing: we agree on this one idea, anyway; all anyone ever wants is to be happy. i do not bring up the complications, the dangerous ones.... everybody's happiness interferes with someone else's. [all i want is to leave my hand on the tanned back of your neck while you doze, in the sun, on an april day.]
19:45 - April 20, 2003 Anyway, it's 4-20 and all the pot disciples (read: most of my friends) were dutifully out on Farrand Field at four-twenty in the morning with a tent and twenty pre-packed joints while I was blissfully asleep in my bed (I mean it's fine, we planned it that way.) It turned out that the day we spent was a wonderful natural high; the hike with perfect weather, the oranges, dipping our feet in the creek. We didn't want a joint at the peak (romantically because it would have 'ruined the majesty' but realistically because we were afraid of climbing back down high.) We went to Farrand but were there really late, like 5:30 or something, and not too many people were there still, and I guess that's a travesty for some of my friends, but what the fuck, it's just a day of the year like any other day. There's a cop circling the remaining groups of people, smiling behind her sunglasses. Boulder cops. (Not going to mention the being-really-high-right-now-like-when-I'm-writing-this-now part since it would taint the story, but geez. Why else would I have written super orange monstrous pinesol? I have the right. I did love today though, no joke.)
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