april 30. one pm again

i ought not to scuttle so much. i like a boy and when the time comes to walk a great distance before and after him, i stick a hairpin in my mouth and watch the ground go by.

"hi sarah."
(wave)
"did you get that thing i put in your box?"
(nod) "i wrote you an email."

email. indeed. bah!

the only pair of argyle socks i own are matted like a pie-crust into tiny cords of sweat. i wish i had more of these beautiful socks.

i don't expect anyone to believe how happy i am sometimes. tonight i spent a few hours in a green chair at the library putting together a small book i've written. they even let me use their paper-cutter. it was raining. arthur rimbaud is my friend across time.

last night at the violin recital you were sitting behind me and i had a thought, that i wanted you, leaning forward, to part my hair for me and maul my neckbones between your teeth. now that is the sort of occasion that would call for blue straws! of course you got up and left with all your belongings and things, so i didn't even see your face. "who wants to fuck the accordion player?" you said, and i felt my heart lurch.

sitting in my room drawing and listening to records is the best, but it only seems to help my "mood" if it's night, and if, when the record is over, there is any man-made noise outside or anywhere, i will murder somebody. i think about farm sanctuary so much lately, and meghan. i imagine being there when it's warm.. root beer at night, and ithaca. if i can't find any way to live in athens this summer maybe i'll return there.

a few weeks ago i suggested to evan we go to coney island. "what's there?" he said. "freak shows and rollercoasters!" i said. he wanted to go. sometimes, i would see him in the hallway and he would just say, "freak shows!"; smiling and obviously very excited. it made me excited too. i couldn't wait to go. what fun we would have.

the next day evan's friend sat down at my lunch table. i took a pen and wrote "let's go to coney island" on a piece of pita bread, then threw it at him. he wrote back, in red ink, "when it gets warm."

long weekend came. i went to portland and rescued two lobsters. they were released back into the sea on saturday, april 20th. i had no place to sleep. i walked around in a blanket. the cookies there were very good. i had a nice time.

when i got back, evan's friend had been in a car wreck. he was pretty mushed up. i let him sleep with meghan (my new stuffed sheep) for a few days, and gave him my magic eye to borrow. it allows you to see at 90 degree angles. i figured he would need it so he wouldn't have to turn his head around to look at things. his neck probably hurt. you could even read a book or stare at the ceiling with my magic eye.

then it started raining all the time.

this morning i was walking to lunch when i saw faustus jinglebells (a cat) run out of some bushes near my house. i stopped to pet him, but he kept running back into the bushes and clawing at something. then i realized it was a baby rabbit. i crawled under and picked him up--he was small and very frightened and brown, with a tiny white spot on his forehead. he could only have been a few weeks old. the first thing i did was take him to the clinic; that was the nearest place. i pay them a fucking $400 "health service fee" every year--you'd think they could at least look at the infant rabbit and give him some ointment for the place on his back where faustus jinglebells bit him. no, they wouldn't even look at him. they suggested i call animal control. i wanted to kick them in the knees. then i called security. "hello, the cat caught a baby rabbit--can you please get me the number of a wildlife rehabilitation center?" no, they were too busy to look it up in the goddam phonebook. i decided to just take him to a vet as soon as possible--based on the fact that he was holding motionless where i had him pressed up against me, i knew he was scared and in a considerable amount of pain and shock. i went to evan's door and knocked. well, i knocked it with my toes, owing to i was holding the rabbit. he is the only person i know with a car. evan's roommate answered the door. "hello, is evan home please?" no, he wasn't, he and his friend had left for coney island that morning.

eventually i got sallie to go find one of our house chairs while i sat in my room with the rabbit. she drove us to the animal hospital. they said they would treat him and have the wildlife rehabilitator come get him. actually, they kept referring to the rabbit as "it," and trying to close the lids of the cardboard box in which he'd travelled. both these things upset me. "HE isn't trying to get out," i muttered.

if he'd been old enough i would've kept him and helped him get better. i already put a blanket down in my accordion case-- he would've become my best friend and ridden around on my shoulder, or on top of my head. it is about time i gave up all hopes of having a best friend. where on earth is a best friend? i don't know. leave me alone. my ears ache.

today is my one year anniversary of getting hit by a car!

i can't decide if i want this one or this one.


april 29.

i just spent a day and a half writing on a song on my accordion; a few minutes ago i thought, "golly, that sounds really familiar." that was when i realized what i'd actually done was transcribe an entire bonnie prince billy song, death to everyone, without knowing it.

maybe i should stick to making t-shirts.


april 27.

here are all the quiet saturdays, thrown down in a meadow. it’s almost eight o’clock. a fox is busy digging her home under the telephone wires. further downfield there’s snow, a lost pipe, and a harmonica case, lying open. there is nothing in sight to tell me how long i’ve been alive or not. not a birthday or so much as a christmas; not an unexpected letter from any old... anyone. a boy lives here, but he always seems to be coming back from a trip oversea. he has always just returned. i suppose there is accumulating filth; i suppose my stinking trousers denote the passage of time--

this morning i mailed a letter, saying, "let’s live together in athens this summer," saying, "you can be the helmsman of the snow-cone stand," etc. i know it’ll never reach him.

i guess i hate it when people say things about me when i am within shooting distance of the ears. last night--did you see the moon last night? at around eight o’clock, here, in vermont, the moon was huge and yellow, so very low in the sky. it was just above the mountains. it seemed squeaky. i was walking to the carriage barn to see pauline oliveros play a concert. i saw the moon through the trees. i ran to the top of the hill to look at it. there were some kids sitting there, facing the moon. they turned around and stared at me. i was holding samovar, my lawn penguin, in my arms. he is handsome. i’m.. otherwise. my hair’s a bit farflung these days, since i cut it, and i’ve always got my bubble pipe dangling halfway out of my mouth. these people kept staring at me and i heard one of them say that it (the sight of samovar & i) was like something out of a david lynch movie. at first i was annoyed because it was a dumb thing to say--it was not like something out of a david lynch movie. david lynch is not the goddam curator of anything and everything unordinary; he isn’t even a hawker, really. i hate reference to almost anything. then, for some reason, after i walked away i began to appreciate that the person had said it, and that i’d heard him, because i guess you’d think people at bennington would talk about david lynch a lot or have things remind them of his movies, or just want to say his name so somebody else would say, "i loooove david lynch" (someone did actually say that to me once; he was drunk, he’s always drunk, but it was the only other time--anyway you get the point). who cares.

i only want the world to be bountiful with iced coffee and chocolate chip cookies and all those things which are chariots of sugar.

oh! pauline oliveros was exciting! she played her accordion and a seashell and something that resembled an ear baster. it was very good. the music made me imagine giant candles on the prairie, and i was a badger avoiding huge clumps of falling wax. the candles were as tall as trees.


april 1.

it's been years (or one, anyway), but i still obviously need a weathervane.


march 31.

my hand on the donkey's back; the bread is still by the water. i can barely open a single door without passing out.


march 29.

no, i would not like a pretzel. i want us to drive a knife into our two arms and tie them together with a handkerchief. the blood can come out like hot soda, or cold soda, or soda with bees in it; i really don't care at this point.

For sale: mathematical certainties and astonishing harmonic leaps.
Unimaginable discoveries and terminologies--available now.


march 27.

today i'd like to be a buffalo! a boy buffalo or a girl buffalo, as long as i was one whose tonsils did not breed mysterious chunks of illness. i still want the candy. a buffalo could carry an easter basket in her mouth or kick it over with a hoof, and graze on the colorful contents.

today i'm writing a gamelan piece in which people play crow-call, duck-quack, deer bells, and baa like sheep.

evan and i were going to run away to new york city together but he's going with someone else--mean and scary--instead. he asked if he could bring me anything and i said something to eat, a pretzel, but now that i think about it i'd rather have a hug. it's probably too late to change my mind.


march 26.

today i'd like to be about nineteen, a boy, five-stomached, with a big basket of candy on my bed.

the midwest lately seems better than this.

a molting mouth. a kind cake and no future.

i decided to run away last night, but only got as far as the telephone wires on the other side of the hill. i don't want to be friends with anyone. i'll start telling people my father tried to cut my throat when i was a baby.

every indestructable part of me being something someone else would call a joke anyway.


march 25.

part of my plan essay for school. they made me revise the one about turning into a badger.

My plan has worked perfectly: I have become the chauffeur of the rowboat. Now it is my responsibility to shuttle souls to and fro across the pond without allowing, or inciting, or encouraging them to drown, unless suicide is their project. This is an important role in the college community which I alone was able to fill, for my rowing skills are keen, and I can navigate by the clouds. When it becomes more and more spring, I will set up a regular schedule and advertise my services. Rowboat rides will be offered weekly. Passengers may ride alone, in silence, or they may bring stuffed animals and play a kazoo. Riding in the rowboat will be pleasurable, especially if there are cookies on hand, but it will also be a way to pursue the most serious and scholarly endeavors imaginable. All kinds of artistic projects are encouraged to take place aboard the rowboat. I myself plan to record a percussive ensemble, beaten out inside the hull as we circle the pond. Metal rowboat is perhaps the most neglected of instruments despite its versatility. It can be struck, bowed, whipped with shoelaces, or filled with marbles and rocked.

I will someday perform a concert in the middle of the pond using only my rowboat and microphones. I will find a way to amplify all this and perform at night. The audience, seated at the pond’s edge, will be blind to the ever-changing source of music as it drifts around, coming, it seems, from the water itself. Maybe I will not even tell them about the rowboat--I will simply promote the show as "songs by pond"--they will flock, and be mystified!

evan should stop leaving his clothes in the bathroom...


march 23.

sometimes i wish i was tall enough to whisper in your ear--


march 22.

I have followed a rigid swoon program since my youth, and still rely on rapid fainting exits from life when I am otherwise too sad to eat my silencing grain, scared of my father's wood shop, or unreasonably pleased when a person touches my head.

i believe i once wrote that "my head has been touched far too little in life," but it, too, might've been ben marcus.

i want to swim in the ocean.

of course they didn't make those cookies yesterday. it was all a hoax. i fell on my knees in despair before the dessert tray.

as luck would have it, i got cookies in the mail today, escorted by a ceramic elephant.

i've been writing a few stories lately, and i'm putting together a package for meghan.

i think i will have another cookie now.


march 21. eeeeee!

Lunch: Chickpea and Rosemary Pasatta, Thai Tempeh Cakes, Mushroom, Onion, and Sundried Tomato Strudel, Crepe Bar, Stuffed Bread, Broccoli, Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peach Raspberry Crumble

i'm taking a bag.


march 20.

it snows and suddenly i am dead. or i am alive and bleeding from the anus without knowing why. i am dying vicariously. i pull the sled through the valley--a piano falls shut. the boy walks beside me he is the same one as tomorrow. he carries a bust of rilke carved from snow and i ask why it is so grotesquely large, for rilke’s head is now nearly as big as the boy himself. he says it is to start an avalanche and i say rilke already started an avalanche with his head among other things. we descend the slope in silence. at the bottom it is already june. the wind is warm and i should get presents. i feel gloomy. we would have more fun in the snow if we were otters.

certainly i am alive. i am more or less alive, then somebody touches my arm and i die. two people touched my arm today, so i am doubly dead.

it was the left arm that means i’m going to have a stroke.

in heaven, charles blondin walks across a zither string in a pair of pale purple stockings. there are sheep, and cookies, and dinosaurs. neutral milk hotel has been performing there every night for the past four years.


march 19.

evan and i were just today discussing how many toenails (glued together for viscosity's sake) it would take to drown out our reality. i think we decided sixteen.


march 18.

i met william burroughs yesterday. he doesn’t live so far from here. he isn’t hard to find. the house is white, and slightly chimneyed, and in most places the roof has collapsed. it could be the reindeer (the flying ones) thought the house was abandoned when they landed there--i can certainly see why. the porch is filled with broken lawnmowers and half-eaten chairs; the upstairs windows are smashed out, the downstairs windows are dark and smeared with moth-prints. you can’t see inside the rooms (though they appear to be filled with newspapers and capsized furniture), but there are ephemeral objects sitting on the sills. a seashell, portraiture of various insects, spider-webs, teacups, and porcelain animals wearing cloaks of dust. one had written the letter "S" on his back with a fingertip. my hero! we knocked on the door.

a few minutes later, when the door started falling backward, i think sallie said, "a ghost!" and i buried my hand in the arteries of her left arm. the door was falling very slowly--you could almost say it wasn’t, but it was. then it was simply gone, noiselessly, and in its place was the strained face of an old man with no teeth--he was wearing a raincoat! with the hood pulled up over his ears!

at that point sallie and i decided it would be best to go get a bottle of cream soda. but we went straight home, or rather straight to the music building, and i sat in the bathroom for about a year with heaps of toilet paper covering my legs. if you ever feel sick, and the bathroom is cold, unspool great lengths of toilet paper and build a nest.


march 16.

actual customer review on amazon.com: Monsieur Roussel Rules!

i think my friends are murdering each other. but nevermind that.

today i made twenty dollars! i might buy some gum.


march 13.

it’s around 5 o’clock. there are boys in my old room who talk especially loud this time of day. i sit in bed as angrily as i can, waiting for them to perish. i turn to eeyore and yell: "hey eeyore, i wish those people nextdoor would shut up a little bit so we could hear the rain."

it’s quiet later on. i go stand by the window. my roof still looks like a jackson pollock painting, all black. a girl in new york city writes me things alluding to pumpkin cake that make me want to get on a train.

syncopated dripping reminds me my gamelan band is falling apart. i like a boy in that class a little bit and yesterday he hit me with a mallet.

i am desultory.

i resent the sky for refusing to snow.


march 11. buy me candy!

of course i love jesus!


march 10. conversing with carnivores

i am too lazy to scrub the constellations off my feet. i like them anyway, these most outward stars of another disease. but let me keep them inside my socks; then i will be unrecognizable to everyone. that is the only way i can stand being alive while i still am, i still am--alive. i am not yet intertwined with 9 billion miles worth of intestinal loopage, not tonight, but soon they are going to open my neck up and tear me into pieces. you won’t see me for a few days. don’t panic: this is what’s called "processing" or "inspection," and it is for your own safety. soon, soon enough, there i will be, suddenly, but unmistakably--you will click your tongs in hesitation when we meet again, when this is all that’s left of me--the dappled skin on the anemic flesh, in a steamer, in the lunchline, next to a plate that says, simply, "BADGER (V)"! then the wind will not have to blow anymore around the corners of my body. then the canyon will be quiet.


march 9.

it was warm this afternoon. evan and i ate sorbet, then sat on the roof blowing bubbles. i poured some of my printing ink into the bubble batter to make black ones! the flocks of evil bubbles were a sight to behold. they flew all around, and left stains where they exploded.

including the side of our nice white house, and our nice white arms, feet, faces--flecked with whole galaxies--. the periphery of the mouth especially was blackened from coming so close to the sputtering bubble wand. evan drew raccoon spots around his eyes. i felt like meghan. we had to wash the evidence away afterwards in case somebody spotted the house (in the line-up of suspects our paws would be black), which was too bad, because it seemed to me that we were sharing a secret disease.

it was transmitted by wind.

it was an allegory for suicide.

now i am ready for bed.


march 8.

i can only imagine meghan must be having a nice day.


march 2. gymnastics against emotion and cleaning duty at the fainting tank

he doesn't mention you, me, or the peas

too busy fumbling with his tornado-blown trousers. but can he resist the temptation to see a male seahorse evaporate into a cloud of fatherhood, and pancakes, as promised? we shall find out!


march 1. winter of undue seriousness

having finally wrested my saw back, i play for a bit and eat sorbet by an open window--outside are the trees i can identify by counting up all manner of scars. leaves have fallen off of me in two places--once when i was little and smashed my face on the coffee table, and once last april when i got hit by a car--that makes me a larch.

when i am finished eating i will sit down and write a breakfast invitation to ben marcus.

also, i'm going to learn how to speak!

Paper Bullets of the Brain - Spring
Tue Fri 10:30am-12:05pm

"Words pay no debts," Pandarus states, but, caterwauling or quietly, we express our basic and most complex thoughts by and through them. This course deals with confronting spoken language and developing an ability to move written lingo from the page, to inner conviction, to outer communication. It is possible to break through oral inhibitions by forging connections to sounds, words, word-clusters, phrases, and rhythms. The approach involves experimental (action) exercises; in and out-of-class releasing of sounds, words, and phrases; working passages of narrative prose, verse, blank verse, and play dialogue.


february 27th.

a few pictures of friends:
meghan, arbuckle, billy martin