11:58 PM

I can't hold anyone's hand for too long. I don't know what is wrong with me. The weight feels heavy against my fingers, and I slip away. I guess when I really get down to it, I don't want to be comfortable.

8:52 PM

The final straw was imprisoning Arnold
in the attic crawlspace, Deedee. Flaking paint shards peeled skin shavings
off my knees as I climbed the ladder
thirty feet while Greta kept the bottom steady,
keeping careful watch for cops or, worse,
her wrathful, gelatinous monster-mother. We knew
you were out, Thursday being Single Seniors' Bingo Night
at the rec center from nine to one. Tucking him into the angle of my arm, his feet
dangling against my torso, we made our brazen escape
back through the window, which I left gaping open
to ensure you'd know, unquestionably, that someone
had been in your house, a stranger. You'd feel unsure in your every action,
judged, observed. Even at nine, I knew what vulnerability felt like.

But that was the final straw. Greta and I were not content with simply
the success of the retrieval, especially not after
you sheepishly recounted your discovery of the open window, the missing
feline, to Greta's grandfather, accusing
those wretched invaders
of committing the deed. We flashed our gap-toothed smiles innocently, but
it was no use. We'd been had by
the worst of 'em, and were promptly relegated to the cruel
and inhumane task
of watering your expansive, prize-winning petunia garden
while you tipped back in your sun-faded lawn chair, grinning. The observers
had become the observed, and nothing was going to sit right
in our stomachs till you paid.

We waited a week after deliberation led us to conclude
that any less was overtly incriminating, then waited for night. War paint
bouncing the moonlight, Greta and I crawled on our elbows,
silent refugees, through the hole in the fence
between the houses, shears at the ready. Methodically,
each individual blossom
was snipped free of its earth-anchor and shoved by the fistful
into one of several Stop and Shop bags. Gleeful, we scurried
back through the fence, but what of the evidence? We had to
go all-in. We devoured thousands
of flowers over the course of four hours. Our bellies aching
with what we assumed had to be pride, we vomited victoriously
and waited for your shrieks come morning.

8:27 PM

I have too many people coming at me from too many angles and proclaiming themselves pillars of universal consciousness. Don't they know the best show is seen from the last row of the crowded auditorium?

11:19 PM

I become fixated too quickly. Everything becomes a reference to one over-exercised point.

4:45 AM

Overwhelmed would be the correct word for it, I suppose.
Tonight, I went to Jasmine's 21st birthday party in rainboots and had to wrestle Liz's phone away from her so she wouldn't curse out her most recent hook-up via text message. Today, I cuddled with Colleen in her bed most of the day and analyzed "Degrassi" as if it were a profound piece of literature. Last night, I dressed up for Dana's Staten Island-themed 21st birthday party, stayed on the table for twelve games, fled the cops and took care of Beckie's little sister while she vomited everything inside of her out.
At least I'm achieving my goal of socialization, right?

11:31 pm

I have been in a strange place. There is only wine to drink and only bread to eat, but I know what you're thinking, and it's so far from biblical it's laughable. There is nothing moral or righteous about these goings-on.

4:24 AM

Breaking Irving's bicycle with twigs.

Well, I feel like a grape
with peeled-off grape-y skin:
liberated, but softer
to forks jabbing in.

4:20 AM

Monet's gardener probably wore gloves.

You swear you've been
born fresh a hundred times,
but, baby, can you even remember
when a hundred was a big number? You make meaning
out of what you're
given, and you've done a good job
selecting your stimuli. There's no hope
for people like us these days.

4:16 AM

Scolding the FutureMouse.

It was just tonight
(it took all the way till tonight!) that I
realized that all
my friends are daydreamers
and all your friends
are felons, and maybe it's got
something to do
with the ways we were raised, but
everyone had
a bad childhood, and that's hardly
an excuse, anymore.

4:13 AM

There's no such person as Alice.

I had a dream,
I had a dream,
but what does it mean?
I painted rubber cement
o'er the mouth of a queen.
I dripped dribbles,
smeared squiggles;
I pasted her quiet
with dismal drizzling.
No more giggling or
chin-wiggling from that
fat Cheshire Cat-of-a-thing!
Her orders then had borders:
the corners of her food-hoarder.

4:07 AM

The gravy train leaves town the same time as the other trains.

I've been staring at your father's
bedroom ceiling for
weeks now, forming right triangles
from the bumps in
the paint, but only now, in the very early
dawn, do I understand
that this habit is
only a feeble attempt to
make something right. It makes me
a little sick
to say, but when I find
myself confronted
by someone eager to spill
his story, to have a moment of
complete
vulnerability in the presence of another, I also find
myself half-listening while the other half
of my attention, the real part, is
critically rating his jawline
on a scale of one-to-five.

7:12 PM

Sometimes I start to feel like I spend all of my time ripping baobabs out of the asteroid.

1:23 PM

Today, I learned that in order to get the shredder to make confetti from the brightly-colored post-it notes, you have to insert them with the sticky strip on the side so they don't get stuck in the slot and cause the machine to fly into a fit of beeps and blinking lights. The sad part is that the confetti was for a small party I was going to have during my lunch for the folder full of documents that do not belong to any of the parties directly involved in the case, a folder unceremoniously marked "No Party". Subsequently, I also learned that if there is a tiny face with a frown drawn next to the label on the No Party folder, my father becomes confused, then irritated.
It's been a productive day at the office.

12:39 AM

The new year brings with it a strange array of possibilities. Maybe I'll force myself, kicking and screaming, to leave the comfort of my apartment and interact with my peers. Maybe I'll make a list of things I've never done before, things I find intimidating or believe to be impossible, and actually do them. Maybe I'll really hunker down, write everything I want to write, ace all my classes, blossom as a late-season social butterfly, stop self-medicating, and find happiness and a not-at-all-hokey sense of inner peace.
Of course, I'm currently doing nothing to prevent Jasmine, one of my freshman year roommates, from entertaining the notion of setting me up on a blind date with her dentist, so in all likelihood, I'll spend the coming year getting stoned and glaring at my phone from behind a pillow every time it rings.

12:57 PM

I don't feel like a real person.
My apartment got broken into Friday at three in the morning. Rachel, Colleen and I were home. I saw one of the guys hanging off of the railing on my front porch, and I screamed at him to get off my house. He jumped off backward, and I chased four of them down the street barefoot, but I lost them about five blocks down because they were on bicycles. They made off with a couple of bags, a couple of wallets and a hunting knife, which they apparently used to slash the screens to our bedroom windows.
It worked out to be kind of the best case scenario, considering they were trying to get into the living room where we were when I saw them, and we have roughly twenty-five grand worth of musical equipment and electronics in our living room. The other good thing that came out of the robbery debacle is that now we know that the three of us can clear our apartment of all illegal items and get them to friends' houses in under ten minutes if the police are scheduled to show up.
I've been on a wicked Magnetic Fields kick for the last month or so. It's really starting to affect my ability to function.

10:17 AM

It's like when I spot a live ant carrying a dead ant, and I wonder whether the dead ant is being taken to be eaten or given a proper burial, and I remember that it all depends on the species.

11:12 PM

I've really just been trying to skim the surface lately. It's not working out as well as I had hoped.

8:49 AM

I think birds have the right idea; if I was going to build a love nest, I'd hold the pieces together with spit, too.
I'm a sucker for YouTube covers of Magnetic Fields' songs.
Lately I've been having a hard time focusing my eyes on what's in front of me. It feels that the more I acknowledge the shapes materializing, the further I alienate myself from everyone else in the room. I've stopped trying to verbalize anything other than what I feel safe labeling the clearly objective, but most of the time it's tricky trying to identify even that.
It really does seem that we're looking at the same things, though.

5:19 PM

I wish no one had ever explained reflections to me; I feel like I would have come up with a much more appropriate story.

11:36 AM

I have one tiny spot of dry skin on the very end of my nose, and it kind of makes me look like Rudolph in a pencil skirt. It's not flattering.
My print of Cousteau came in the mail, and it looks even better than I imagined, though I do need to replace the frame I bought for it already due to scratching. I don't take very good care of my things.
The therapist through the wall is screaming at a patient, who is in turn screaming at her. I hope they're making progress.
Yesterday was remarkably and needlessly stressful thanks to Rachel. I think I might strangle her when I see her next. Tomorrow is Colleen's lamb-and-sangria birthday dinner, and her mother is coming in from Tennessee to stay with us, so I doubt things will settle at all before Friday.
My father and I visited my great-grandmother, Nana, in the hospital last night. She had a hip replaced a few months ago and has had some recent complications with blood clots. I had forgotten what a sweet, adorable old lady she is, what with her cataract eyes and penchant for butterscotch candies. As we were leaving, somebody who looked exactly like my father, except much younger, started hitting on me in front of my father. It was unsettling to say the least.
After the second morning in a row of waking up from horrible dreams with a jaw sore from clenching, I'm starting to think that maybe I shouldn't have switched brands of Sleepytime tea.