from 12/20/06

I want someone to carefully preserve their memory of me, to press it carefully between pages and then hold it, thin and fragile between their fingers and ache for me.

Scrap Everything

I just finished a journal. A quick reread betrayed the true identity of what I egotistically think of as my ongoing memoir to be a crude roster of unfinished (unstarted?!) projects and half-baked schemes to get out of my job/town, some of which aren't even mine, all of which wither in infancy. It is also a chronicle of the life and times of My Boyfriend-- sometimes like a detailed report on the habits of a rare and fascinating bird, and sometimes a book of devotional hymns. Those many journals, those glorified shopping lists and unreadable half remembered dreams, might never be protected by some literary society devoted to exclusive study and preservation of my "works," and this kills me a little. I am terrified of the ordinariness of my life. I find myself eating a lot of couscous and watching Curb Your Enthusiasm on the internet and longing for something more-- it is hard for me to live these down times in between great acts of instability and profound tenderness, where I'm just riding my bike to the grocery store and doing laundry. I don't know how I got to this point where I feel like any time I'm not experiencing the emotional equivalent of getting shot out of a cannon is merely biding my time, but being immersed in a society of constant thrill-seeking doesn't really help. I think it's time to scrap everything and cool it out in some oceanside retreat, fill those journals with crummy drawings of dolphins with "om" coming out of a speech bubbles and snacks that I like and just forget it.