Back.

Nothing like a beach house full of relatives to put the islands in your wrist watch.
Kurt's sister graduated college with flying honors, so everyone came out, I'm talking like 30 highly educated, white linen pressing red wine connoisseurs draped over the rails of a second floor balcony. It was awesome. I met some characters and got some hugs.

The best part of a graduation ceremony is right after the pomp and circumstance recession, after they've finally called all the names, and saluted all the flags, and rocked all the votes, and the graduates march away-somewhere-you can't quite see where-cause you can't see anything-and then you're left alone with your aunts and your hung over cousins-alone and dehydrated-wondering where your little graduate could possibly be-so you do what you've always done-you find her-you comb the lawn for her-you keep and you herd her.

That's what I'm talking about. That part where everyone is sweaty, and quietly controlling their chaos in heels and pastel neck ties. The exodus of family after family sinking into that Kentucky air lifted turf, nursing the utter confusion. And then the gentle bursts of relief and embrace when they find each other, when they kiss, and pose for the camera, and unzip their nylon, eel black, highly flammable robes.

It's this sparkly combination of saying goodbye forever to one family, while simultaneously coordinating the early dinner at Outback with the other family, the family you've known all your life, forever, the people who find you on the lawn.

Like a wedding, or a christening, or a funeral, huge groups of people congregating with purpose, in common support, a pattern of people never to be formed again. A dorsal fin of shiny faces.

Congratulations!
Love,
Your favorite cat lady Jesus freak sister in law!

Egg Head Chronicals Installment the First

First off,
You have to understand that when I say egg head, I mean egg head.
He is an egg in red tennis shoes.
And the egg has been hollowed out, his first wife blew the yoke down the drain,
And replaced said yoke with baby vomit.
The shell of an egg containing baby vomit in red shoes.
That is the person we're dealing with.
And when I say first wife, I mean mother.
Because he was a nudist in the eighties,
So, they are one in the same of course.

Just wanted to paint that picture before we get too far into this.

Volley Ball Time,
Skin & Toast

It's funny.

Kind a funny how sometimes all you need for music is the Damen bus stopping and starting every twenty five minutes outside your open window. I imagine myself in leggings, working for a newspaper, long, straight black hair, red plastic glasses that take up half my face. I'm 24. I used to take ballet. I grew up in Virginia. I have a baby grey hound. My mother invented the Thesaurus. I've been to Rome. I didn't like it.

(Music, bagpipes)

My real mother will be 70 this August. I've lost track of whether or not the east coast hates her. It's easy for me to forget that they've fostered some sort of routine with her the past 14 years. They have that luxury of time. I'm sixteen when it comes to my mother, and probably the rest of the east coast. I seem to have separated three major events from around that time, and crowned them all as the last time I saw her. Even though I know I've seen her at least a dozen times since. Even shared a bed with her, pretended to be asleep while she kissed my hand--drama queen. One; sixteenth birthday on Longwood Drive, fried chicken and ice cream cake. Two; checking her into the nursing home, stopping for chicken nuggets. Three; visiting her with Debby, brought a cranberry muffin from Java. Debby cried. She was clearly much better, and that ironically, as usual, made a huge mess of things.

But, the Damen bus runs northbound, or southbound, nothing in between. So, we don't really have to worry about any of that right now. And as much as I'd like to rescue a grey hound, I would never risk upsetting matchbox's bladder.

Would You Rather

Stand up for something you believe in, or repeat the 4th grade?
Eat a delicious piece of peperoni pizza, or repeat the Holocaust?
Hang a poster on the wall, or grow a breast between your but cheeks?
Be Mormon, or Amish?
Change the taste of cum to your favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor, or be immune to hangovers?
Be forced into the nunnery, or be vegan?
Only know how to play the guitar, or cry tears of poo every time you're in public?
Find a pubic hair in your burrito, or find out you were adopted?

~This is like the best game. Road trip!

Always

Makes me feel better.
And usually has little candies
In the front pocket of his back pack.

Yes Virginia There Is A Grad School.

It's bittersweet to leave my company, but sometimes artists work alone, sometimes they leave their vibrant communities and hammer out some letters behind their names. Sometimes they become obsessed with their own ability and shimmy down the table legs. Tired of eating out of other poet's hands, resting on the neighborhood lore, the line around the block, the lucky price of admission. Those people aren't standing in the cold for ol' skin toast, not really, they're there for the clothes line, and the clock, which used to be an honor until the rights and properties turned out to be finely printed on the bald head of the ham burglar's bastard son.

Dear East Coast Half Number Two,

It happened. It's all true. I've been dying to call you. But, we're too far apart in age. And I don't think I actually have your phone number. It wouldn't make sense, I got the Internet on my ninth birthday, I can type with my thumbs. I wish we were fifteen months apart and I could spell it all out in traces of my fingertips across your back while we're supposed to be asleep, sleeping soundly on the floor of the one room school house because she forgot to pick us up that day.

I hate him.

I don't know where to start. The beginning? The red shoes?

There are six copies of King Lear in my dining room, and I can't imagine being without any one of them, not for a second.

I feel sorry, I see that I clearly hit a nerve, I feel sorry about that. I also feel like my nerve was hit first, and I'm reacting too, and the joke's on me because I'm the one wandering into bookstores in the middle of the day like an Alzheimer's patient wondering what I was looking for and why there are snakes on the wall.

I'm all muscle memory, excited, and sentimental, and broken, thankfully busted, because I need a new look. Put me on the g-mail pintrest timeline-- time to grow out the bangs already.

I'm lumping things together, I can find the delete key in the dark, but I always have to look for the plus sign.

+++

I would say there are three major things going on right now inside this coconut of a shell. I have officially separated them into three different proteins.

Which is good because it's one thing to fry bacon for dinner, but a completely different thing to accidentally eat an entire package of ham while you're frying the bacon, because you're thinking so hard you have no control over your hands.

I think I will write about these things clearly. In parts. Starting tomorrow I will try to start at the beginning. Part one of many.

++++++++So very happy to be going back to school in the fall. School for me is more about personal triumph in the face of adversity than it is about getting a real job. That said, I intend to put my Master's to use, and get the hell out of waitressing. The plates are so hot.

Going to Grad school has everything to do with me and nothing to do with egg head. That said, I've had enough. I'm going to let him win so that I can take a shower, turn the faucet all the way to the left and piss my brains out.

I got an assistantship. That's the best part. I get to work closely with a smart, nice, silver haired guy who's written lots of books. Plus a huge break in tuition, and a nice stipend.

Sigh.

More later.

Promise.

Maybe if we have time tonight we can roll down the windows and blast the Teagan and Sarah all the way to the DQ. I feel like indulging.

Love,

#4

Female Circumcision Suspended in Liberia

I love you all so much.

Skin & Toast & Progress