july 24.

there was a reluctant moment in the empty doughnut shop this afternoon when i thought,"oh no. this is what it's like to be a grown-up."

it is a disaster to feel this was at the doughnut shop. normally it's a peaceful place to go, a narrow, heavenly smelling bakery tucked in a strip mall near the midway, where i feel how i sometimes used to feel at the baskin-robbins or dunkin' donuts, leaning against the display glass like some magic spell hung over all those buns and cartons of ice cream. my mom used to take us after the pool and my hair would be drying in worm-like strings, my bathing suit would still be wet under my clothes - that very distinct feeling of walking into an air-conditioned place and having the cold reach you. in a small way, the doughnut shop provided a resurrection of all those things. being vegan cuts you off from america's crummy little junk food places. you get to the point where you forget they exist. if you haven't been in a baskin-robbins in fifteen years, they really don't exist. it isn't bad or anything, it certainly isn't, but it's tough not to have some continuity overflowing from childhood - that magical time when you could just viciously bite anybody you didn't like. so this doughnut shop is very exciting to me. a moment out of time when i am sitting with my mind on other things, or a hurrysome visit to fetch a gleaming white box of a dozen doughnuts marching in orderly rows. then i am off, on the way to some other adventure. how i remember the night i stopped there before the big chicken rescue.. the beginning of a night some january when i would be awake for 24 more hours.. i was so damn excited when i arrived with my doughnuts that i thought i was gonna cry.

today was different. this whole summer's been different. i was sitting at a table with my puritanical wax paper sack and a cup of water. there was no sound except some horrible radio station playing in the back room, and i was staring out the window kind of waiting to see the rain come. i ate the doughnuts mechanically, one after the other with no expression on my face. i knew i was just feeding myself the way other people do. it was a very wretched and depressed feeling, and i suddenly associated it with all of the adult world. "this is what it's like." it was the first time i'd ever thought that.

A is for apple pie,
B is for bear,
C is for crocodile, combing his hair

no one showed up for my ar meeting tonight. i got there ten minutes late and the office was still dark and unoccupied. that sort of thing happens about once a year; i always hate when it does. it makes me feel like some sort of insane creature when i realize how much i am always expecting other people. i processed the mail, bought some toilet paper, and went home wishing a half-read book was waiting for me there. no such luck. there's a whole month of summer left and i can say for the first time there isn't an unread book in my entire house. you would understand the magnitude of this proclamation if you had ever seen my house. there are rumors that i do in fact own a bookcase, but you wouldn't know it from all that's spilled into other rooms by now, leaning in stacks against the walls and piled in chairs and formed in pillars beside the bed. it is that sort of house. one just itching to go up in flames.

it's a lot more tiresome to get lost on a bicycle than in a car. i must have biked three very lost miles this morning (along with five not-so-lost miles). it started to rain.

but i had a nice time & arrived home with a smile upon my face (that is a figure of speech).

one place i went was a library in st. paul that seems entirely dedicated to children - the biggest part of the building and the only part with any good books at all was the one for kids. i read two daniel pinkwater books that i'd never seen. one was about a duck who lived in a candy store, and he was an angel. it was silly. i looked at an old copy of bedtime for frances like i used to have. this one has black & white (and sort of green) illustrations instead of color ones. i started laughing because i realized i based the nightmare of the unbelievable oven mitt on this story without even realizing it. in bedtime for frances, a moth - clearly a predecessor to the oven mitt - beats against the window and reminds frances of getting a spanking. i was amazed to see how i'd even unconsciously mimicked the gesture of the frightened badger with a wondering claw to her mouth.

- - -

july 23.

Peculiar. I was having all sorts of "E.T" imagery tonight while riding my bicycle. Usually, if I think of something from a movie, I am imagining myself as the boy from "The Shining" pedalling through the halls of the Overlook Hotel. But tonight I kept thinking about what it would be like to ride parallel to the treetops, going over them, going right into the sky and stuff. When I got home I was being bored on the computer. I asked google to please come up with something nice for me to read involving both Built to Spill and pistachio nuts. Some archives from this girl's journal matched the inquiry, and before I knew it I found myself very engrossed in reading about how she was mad for the boy from E.T. She made a whole maggy just about how she had a crush on him. An admirable thing indeed. It is a nice story. In the end she encounters him at a Belle & Sebastian show and they become chums and eat french toast and sing Smiths songs together. Together! Isn't that magical?

cloud rats
tundra swans

I would like to be friends with anybdody who owns a teaset or a tandem bicycle.

- - -

july __.

I don't even know what day it is. It's night. Is that enough? I wrote a book in the blank tablet I got at the drug store this morning. Now I'm sitting at my desk trying to come up with a way to avoid having to go to the doctor. I am supposed to have a physical exam so I don't disease everybody at Bennington. It sure seems like I could just fill this sheet out myself.. a few check marks, a few numbers, a grown-up looking signature..
They think they can fool me with their fancy words, but they can't. I know what genitourinary means and I am NOT taking off my underpants.

Laura is back from Prague. They drove through Poland and all this stuff, and came to the Baltic Sea. She saw Lidice. I asked for a Franz Kafka pillowcase but she did not mention finding one..

The book I wrote is sentences and badgers. I want to publish it!

fox mouth
devil teeth

the teenage boy is the ringleader.

I miss my friend. Somehow it's different from other crushes I've had on people I never talked to. I go around a lot wondering what he's doing, if he's asleep or if he's alone.

I draw pictures of us as badgers. We eat biscuits and hold paws. I put a pair of sneakers on him so you can tell us apart. He plays the violin in my band. There's a picture of us playing by the window with our eyes closed. It's January. You can see it snowing outside. He asks me to marry him.

The bed cries like a dog.

- - -

july 20.

my ol' bicycle got its brakes fixed today while i was at work. when i went to pick it up, the person at the shop said, "that bike is begging not to be left out in the rain - it told me so." that broke my heart. it was like being accused of kicking kittens or something. i took a vow that if it ever rains again, i'm gonna let my bicycle wear my bright green slicker.

- - -

july 18. roses smell better in the dark

the only reason i have the energy to type this is because i just ate four root beer floats very quickly. now i’m having a coughing fit while christmas music plays in the foreground. boy have i felt bad lately. it has been sweltersome degrees (fahrenheit) this whole week. when i am awake, i can hardly see straight. i am tired and slug around wherever i go - i don’t even want to ride my bicycle anymore. it puts me to shame, like i am a dead thing strapped to a living thing. i want to be asleep at all moments. on mornings i don’t have to get up early for work, i sleep a dead sleep straight through ‘til one o’clock. even then i don’t want to get up very much. but there’re limitations on what you can blame the temperature for. my period didn’t come this month. i think it got mad at me for being sarcastic about that blood sisters stuff.

for all the waking lousiness, i’ve been having the most vivid dreams. there were moments like catching snowflakes as big as my palm in the middle of july.. in some big field with a ditch dividing us.

but there are things i’ve got to muster the motivation to do before expected doa of september 6th in bennington, vermont. lots of things i hate:

go to the doctor
go to the eye doctor
get a pair of spectacles
go to the dentist
a hairchop from a real person
have my passport made
get my car fixed, and sell it
buy a new pillow

wait.. i like pillows.

my ma doesn’t want to help me move anymore. she says i should just go on a plane, have my bike taken apart and packed into little boxes! imagine that. all i do is have nightmares about airplanes and lost packages with dead animals inside of them, and grapefruit. parents stink!

- - -

july 16.

the loudest shuffling ever
(two geese with one body).

when i woke up today, my teeth hurt, my eyes hurt, and my throat hurt! i'd been dreaming about a waste christmas pageant. in this dream, i had no less than three pairs of tonsils. they were outside of me.

i've been drawing a lot lately - it's fun to sit in bed and play records while i draw. i can enjoy that for hours. i can't write at all this way or i just fall asleep.

the raccoon bride: i have so many new excuses now.

- - -

july 14.

A few weeks ago I was wondering if Low might play one more time before I hopscotched off to Vermont and never got to see them again. Last night, they played for free at Orchestra Hall! So many people came to see them. It was nice. I felt really jubilant and cried "hip hip hurray!" in between songs. I hope that if any of you ever come to hear Badger Has Doubts play, you too will shout "hip hip hurray!" It would make me grin.

The only other time I ever went to Orchestra Hall was with my family not very long after we moved to Minnesota. I don’t know why they took us - me and my sister - we just wandered off in the middle of the performance to look for blueberry muffins. Anyway, there were these ice cubes falling from the sky. They’ve fallen partially through the ceiling there, and used to be red, or blue, or something, but now they are white, which is very proper and pleasing and gives one the distinct feeling of being inside a lemonade pitcher. Well, it gives some people the distinct feeling - I suggested it to my friend I saw after the show and he just gave me a look like I was making shit up. Fine!

All through the show I stared up at the ceiling trying to decide which box I wanted to live in for the rest of my life, because I imagined they were hollow... I mean, as if somebody was forcing me to choose at that very moment. The ice cubes had melted into different sizes, and had fallen at all different angles. I’d have to decide if I wanted a big box or a small one, what shape I wanted my body to be wrenched into all the time, what distance I should be from the stage. It was kind of like picking out a pony on a carrousel. When they’d finished playing, old Alan said something that sounded like "come to the roof," and I thought, "This is it! Now we get to see the ceiling from the concave side and choose our boxes!" I realized a little bit later he said to come to Duluth. That isn’t a bad idea either - I’ve never been.

Right now at work I am reading The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: A True Medical Mystery. And drinking strawberry lemonade and listening to the new Built to Spill record! I want to let you know that Bon Appetit, despite being a really crummy place to eat falafel, has the very best strawberry lemonade in my town.

- - -

july 13. hee hee hee

are you an activist,
or do you want to give up
and go out for dessert???

The picnic was fun. Hen and Eeyore both came. Our supper was more elaborate than I ever suspected. We had soy dogs, biscuits, blueberries, cinnamon rolls, and lemonade! We sat on a quilt underneath my favorite tree. Someone walked by with a xylophone. While we ate, we listened to recordings on a portable tape-player that I borrowed from my parents. I brought a whole bunch of old tapes - Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Enormous Crocodile, Back to the Future soundtrack, my unnamed komodo dragon story, and Learn German in Your Car in 10 Minutes. Some of these I did not even know I still had! After supper we relaxed and enjoyed pleasant conversation together. Eeyore misses Kurt Cobain. So do I!

After that I 'wang on the 'wings too much and made my tummy hurt. Ow'm.

stage a revolution in the comfort of your own underpants.

i still ask for a hysterectomy every christmas.

i never, ever told anybody i got my period. i remember very well one day when i was about 13, my dad was looking for something on the uppermost shelf of my closet - that was the hiding spot for the bebloodied shoebox full of underpants. he called to me and my heart froze.. i was sure he'd unearthed the underpants and i was about to be confronted, so i ran into the woods and didn't come back for hours.

i think puberty is the most traumatic thing that happens to someone in their whole entire life.

don't forget that my band is having a picnic tomorrow night! i made a sackful of biscuits, and they're not even all gone yet.

- - -

july 11. july 11th?!

I rode through the park with my eyes closed. The ‘larm clock began to ring. I am like Tock, I thought, or the white rabbit.

I like to ride my bike in circles.

Circles are comforting.

i saw my best friend at the potluck dinner tonight. i’d been missing him.

"i wonder what happened to kirk."
"he skulked off without saying goodbye to anyone."
"oh. how do you know?"
"i was watching him."
"oh."
"that is like what i would do."
"what?"
"skulk."

he still is my best friend. the morning in history still exists that i could’ve invited him to come along to biscuits with me. i could have pushed my bicycle the rest of the way, beside him, i could have said something. that place makes you want someone else. the wash of daylight marching down towards the big room; it is like it’s always 11:30 there, and time for breakfast. we could’ve sat by the piano with our biscuits and blackberry shakes.

"did you talk to him?"
"no, i guess not."
"so you.. don’t like other people?"
"i dunno, i.." (staring at the wall)
...
"is there any cake left?"

- - -

july 10. famous last words

"potluck schmotluck."

i should take a cold bath.. maybe that'll keep me out of the cobbler for a few more hours.

- - -

july 9.

i misread a lot of things. it is my great talent. i just wish i could go on believing them afterwards.

you make me weak.

a cute boy came in the shop today to sell these very sad, lifelorn looking volumes of proust, and i couldn't even stand them being near, it just gave me such a dismal feeling in the sleeve of my throat. like when you are trying to get dressed in a hurry and clawing your arms about in an attempt to get through - i wanted to play scrabble with him for some reason.

i wanted him to tie me up with kite string, if you really want to know. the pages were soft and smelled like someone's bed.

storks are who i always envision atangle in kite string.. i'm not sure what made me wish this. my collarbones are in the wrong places.

- - -

july 8. the temptation to exist

spiritful, on a sanctuary for donkeys.
i would rather do that.

feeling only those things that donkeys feel, like shadows and cold bones of grass, and trees sweeping the sky clean.

grey donkeys, brown donkeys,
black donkeys, white donkeys,
piebald donkeys!

donkeys drinking bathwater with their eyes closed.

the old barn is disguised by moths. that’s where i live. someone gives me a quiet room. a glass of soymilk & peach cobbler. someone sets it out on a little plate, at night, i don’t hear them.

i hear the donkeys,
donkeys rolling over, rubbing the hills red.

i walk amongst the warm boats of their bodies
which smell like old furniture.
when they sleep,
they turn the pasture into some dark parlor
with the dead buried upstairs.

they are very hopeful creatures. we stole them from the circus.

on this donkey farm i eat breakfast for dinner.
i wear rugged brown overalls
and a pair of pink sneakers.

i am some light-eyed lifeform you have never heard of before.

- - -

july 7.

a worm in a hat like a hero.

a note on the handlebars: marry me?


lately i’ve been thinking about buying a new pillow.

- - -

july 6.

My bicycle and I have been going on experiments late at night. Most of them are about flying.

- - -

july 5.

the ideal way to see fireworks would be to glimpse them indifferently through the window of a passing bus. but i'm a loser, so i rode my bicycle to the river and watched them from a bridge laden with thousands of others. i knocked someone's can of coke off the railing and made little children cry just by looking at them.

- - -

july 4.

It seems I can't sleep enough these days. People all around me are falling in love. Not just in books, in movies, in every fifth weblog I read. That I can feel far away from, or bandage my eyes. But not when it starts happening in the back of my car, for crying out loud.

I don't know what feeling it is - not jealous, not lonelified, but not detached enough to just forget about it. For the first time I wonder what my place is in all this. Well, I don't have one. It makes the world so goddam boring.. looking for meaning in other people. By boring I mean utterly scary and impossible... anything I can't do is boring.

Actually, even besides that, it does all seem a little bit boring, if you want to know the truth.

But not so boring that I don't think about it at the end of the day.

I try to walk among all those others and - I must not move too fast or I will appear to be anxious; I must not move too slowly or I will seem to be swept away; I must find the right speed to no longer exist, to have velocity but not location.

such trivial things as liking boys...

Oh, but'm tired of eating cake for company..

- - -

'uly 3.

i feel sick all the time.

my entrails creak like a boat that too many passengers have stepped aboard.

- - -

june
may
april
march
february
january
& december
& norris & the dreaded biscuits