june 17.

I go to sleep during a thunderstorm and somebody stands at my window & trumpets a dream in like a flock of arrows. By daybreak all of civilization is submerged beneath thirty or forty feet of water and everyone is dead. Also, I'm a badger. I find a metal rowboat outside my upstairs window, hitched with a piece of barge rope eaten by sea worms. I climb into the hull the moment the rope breaks, and the boat is carried away. I start floating through the world, alone. There are wet flags and steeples and the uppermost treetops all close at hand. I put my paw in the water and feel the world at a different altitude: I touch powerlines. The water is cool and clean like something that dripped from the mouth of a cave. I let it soak my paws. I bring back a memory: the feeling of the breath of living creature on my skin. The boat is swimming downtown.

I float through the streets of an underwater city where cars are overturned and human corpses drift to and fro, but I float very fast and the debris of society just sort of bounces off the side of my sturdy silver boat. The water is swift. It moves in me, all around me. Stormclouds roll over; they're even closer now. I feel brisk and adventuresome. The wind's blowing brings the whole landscape to a tremble. I bounce excitedly and the boat swims even faster. In the water ahead, I see something yellow hovering below the surface. My heart leaps, thinking the city has been overtaken by schools of koi - thousands of them swimming through the windows of flooded buildings. My boat comes near to the shimmering shape, but it is gone in the blink of an eye and the water turns dark. A second later, a red shape appears in the same spot. Traffic lights! I let my rowboat float through, far above the underwater intersection. We bump into the swollen body of a drowned police officer. "Oops!" I giggle, "always yield to pedestrians!" The body careens out of the way, its eyes rolled back in the head like it'd just been baptized. I fall into a fit of laughter on the floor of my boat.

By evening I have floated all the way across town. I decide to go see if my friend is still alive so I can show him I'm a badger. I drift down his street and right through his front door. His piano was floating around. I wondered if it was full of eels. "Hello!" I said. "I'm ready for my breakfast now!" The house was quiet. I could only hear the sound of water lapping against the walls. Either no one was there or no one was there who wanted to cook me blackberry pancakes. I lie in the bottom of the boat staring up at the ceiling as I float from room to room. There is a river of water winding down the staircase into the basement. I feel the current take hold of my boat; I try to grab onto something in the kitchen that will keep us from being pulled under, but it's too late and we plunge forward. The basement door flies open like something in a spookhouse. It's completely dark and I can no longer navigate.

i feel him swimming under me at night.

- - -

june 16.

aside from ones spent putting chickens in cardboard boxes at 3 am, this was my favorite saturday of the past thousand. i took a nap under the best tree in the world, listened to a hail storm, ate a maple-raised doughnut, got to lie inside an iron lung, rode the carousel (twice!), stared at flowers, stared at fish, stared at bonsai trees, ate dinner at vo's, rode my bicycle, fetched a candy bar, and began a new book. badger has doubts even had a spontaneous performance at the peak of toboggan hill before the day disappeared from the sky. all this while wearing the correct pair of underpants. hooray.

Hen wakes me up at 9:30, and I dig deeper into my quilts. The room is papered with shadows. On each wall hangs a different bird-voice, framed in winter, dust and flowers. The shadows move.

In winter, feelings translated so fluently into words. Now it is just feelings, only that, and not even good ones.

I lay with outflung arms, hearing leaves ripple. By "good" I mean interesting to me & my imagination.

Silver light spilled under the shade of the nearest window. It spoke like puddles over walls and across floors. I want to wake up someday near the ocean on the coast of Maine. I want to ride my bicycle to where the lobsters are rattling their wooden slats and break the traps open like a heart. A wooden heart, wet and full of lobsters.

Maybe I shouldn't go to Bennington. I shouldn't mistake being morbidly alone for being talented.

The white shade quivered as the wind sucked it more closely. Held against the windowframe, then blown into the room. It rippled and smacked back like a low wave. I thought I heard turkeys gobble. I thought I heard a horn.

Sometimes, I care so much that myself & those I know are even alive, and that we've made it home to sleep in our own beds. It's summertime now. I can't find so much as a scrape of what passed through me this winter, even though it felt sort of magical back then. All for once was good and peaceful.

walking outside, i heard someone playing a piano in a big house with open windows. i sat down in the shade and listened for a long time. it felt like a gift, this wind, these eavesdroppings, and the mystery of other people's lives.

for breakfast i ate the last piece of birthday cake.

ways of measuring life - i can't remember twenty-three days.

the ones i do are often unfortunate.

I'm only doing this because I think you need it.

others, beautiful. when no one said a word.

- - -

june 15. badger has postmortem bubble-blowing contest

just when i thought nothing could top the monday to sunday chicken underpants my sister gave me for my birthday, a fine pair of bubble molds arrive in the mail!

Dinosaur and ghostie friends produce shiny spheres with rainbow patterns when gusts of air are hurled at them.

well, i could hardly resist such an offer. i borrowed a silver pail from my neighbor's garden and filled it with lavishly frothsome bubble-batter (that's why i own a bottle of dishsoap). i flung the pail over the handlebars of my bicycle and lurched away towards the park with bubble-blowers in paw. about half of my bubble-batter ended up sloshing out of the bucket and onto my shoes, but there was plenty left for plenty of bubbles. i was only a little disappointed that the bubbles themselves were not brontosaurus-shaped, it was still a fun time.

- - -

june 44th

understand this is no consolation.

small hands wished away and held back

the first part always involves an attempt to escape from the children's ward, begowned and holding a stuffed penguin close to the breast. i fly through. there are old-fashioned wheelchairs in otherwise empty rooms. i fly towards a podium.

thirty seconds later, a young boy runs up the stairs. two pigs pursue him like playground statuary rocking back and forth on springs; their bodies are covered with stiff quills. i feel altogether indifferent as they tear into him.

i begin my lecture wondering why we don't all kill ourselves. a face in the audience flickers with amusement.

taste the silver jets as they lose control over you

tonight, someone showed me what it felt like to have mites burrowing beneath your skin: he brushed his fingertip across an inch of my arm. it was nice. i must find more mites.

- - -

june 13.

i start having dreams when i'm not asleep. full-fledged subconscious dreams. nothing strange. moments of myself in a quiet room where a clock is ticking, or in bed when a cold hand touches my hair. i have memories of them without understanding when they happened. a dream took place somewhere between morning and the second it came back to me. i don't think them, i really don't. i'd know it if i did. nevermind.

lying in bed last night with the windows flung open. all the winds and sounds there in the blanket beside me. for a long time, it felt like my throat had dissolved. it was nice.

i'm at work now. my eyes're still scratched with smoke. the hundred different things i could have said..

i get phone calls from the financial aid office at bennington nearly every day. they just want this that and the other tax document, but it sure makes me nervous since they haven't finished processing my loans.

it's weird. i'm excited to go there, but now it's tangential to everything about growing up to be a writer. writing will happen anyway - i've navigated years by writing - i have some strange soul that insists on it, no matter what else. the problem is if i will happen. writing alone isn't big enough for me yet. i still feel so young in some ways - i want new experiences and i want to know other people.

i don't have very good hearing. sometimes someone will say a thing to me, and if it's sort of oblique i will have a very hard time believing they really said it. the second it dies out of the mouth it isn't even like a part of that person anymore. so it doesn't even matter that i trust them, and it doesn't matter that they're still there, because how could i start interrogating them or something, about something potentially nice? people probably assume i eventually will ask, while all the time i am expecting the same thing.

so i end up a lot convincing myself i mishear things. but i go to shows and believe people're singing songs about chicken pox and septic tanks, so maybe i do.

- - -

june 12.

raining again. it will be a good night to lie in the dark.

half the time i was standing there listening to red house painters all i could think was, "why don't people just sleep with each other?" it seems like it would be easier. it seems as if it takes more emotional energy to stay lonely.

um.. and the show was awright, too.

at one point i was standing in my house, a small shack with whitewashed walls and floors. i was walking thru & there was a room in the back that was completely empty - i stood in it at night thinking i ought to rent it to K. for $20/mo. it had one window with a wide shade and a door into the backyard. i went there every night and never knew what any of the other rooms in the house looked like.

conor oberst was kind of lying on top of my feet. there may have been something bulky between us. he seemed cheerful.

at church(?) sitting with a large family of black people. a young girl invites me to play chess.

in the bathtub one morning, i discover long black hairs growing from one of my breasts. i am disappointed - if my underfur was starting to grow in, only the roots would be black. the tips would be white and the shaft would be buff-colored, giving me a silvery appearance as i made my way through the long prairie grass. i pull the hairs out and hide them in a drawer.

terrible things were being done to genitals to make them prehensile. this last bit involved __ and __. it was like i was watching it on a movie; their genitals had the expressiveness of hands. i thought it was dumb. it seemed like something only boys would like.

i didn't have any dreams at all last year. i turned 22 inside a chicken shed.

the goings-on in my bedroom have looked a lot like this the past couple days.

only with more strawberries.

I twist my heart around again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if... there weren't any other people living in the world.

happy birthday, anne.

- - -

june 11.

at my birthday party, mommy pointed out that she’d already been married for two years and given birth to my older sister when she was my age. "ew," i said - "i want to give birth to a litter of piglets." my mom told me if i waited a few years that would probably be possible. "oh boy!" i thought. suddenly i remembered something i saw on tv a long time ago - there was a show called picket fences, and on it was a cow who gave birth to a human baby - i wondered if that really happened. my mom said no, but that cows were sometimes used to gestate different species of endangered animals. "like condors!" i said. nobody agreed with me. it was such an exciting idea to think about! i could imagine a cow (brown swiss) lolling through the pasture with two adolescent condors hopping along behind her, dragging their long black wings through the grass. the adoptive mother had not taught the condors how to fly, so their wings were like something that had been harnessed to their bodies by mistake.

we just had a big storm with thunder and lightenings; the sky was turned as green as a pot of pea soup. my socks nearly collapsed with fright, but luckily i was wearing my new garters. it is always a disaster when your socks fall down.

"those look sort of s&m."
"uhm.. they’re for holding up my socks."

woke up excited because i thought red house painters were coming, but no, it's only my birthday.

my parents had a party for me last night since tonight, on my real birthday, i have to work. for presents i got sock garters and a laptop computer. i made raspberry lemonade from scratch and my mom made one of my favorites - sweet potatoes with kale and black-eye peas. my dad made cornbread but it was too sticky to enjoy. i think he used the incorrect pan. for dessert was a strawberry shortcake. i have buckets of it leftover, literally - it's like two pound cakes equipped with buckets of ersatz whipped cream and slurrified strawberries. there's something vaguely unsettling about it, and i've only managed to eat two pieces so far.

- - -

june 10.

there’s no one else around this morning. it felt like easter when i wheeled up to the shop and every street was quiet and empty. i locked my bicycle in a long row of unoccupied racks - it gave me such a good feeling in my stomach to see it there alone.

the truth is that everything’s starting to seem like fifteen years ago for me. i am much more hinged to the place i am now - i feel a little bit like a natural creature in my surroundings and inside my body. this is very exciting, because usually i am alienated even by my own towels.

the weather last night was one of my favorite sorts and i think it’s partially survived - not just temperature but the colors borne by storm and everything else; it made me very adventuresome.

memories of feet getting wet, and flight.. there was some sweet residue on his skin.

i’m in suspiciously high spirits.

- - -

june 9.

right now i am eating a candy bar while i watch the rain. it’s nice. i have a special affection for rain that comes late in the day. this is how thunderstorms would arrive in the georgia summer times, their dark clouds overflowing with slobbery sheets of rain. they came and went so fast. a sudden gush like a giant whale-splash.

we have nice thunderstorms on the prairies too, but it’s a different feeling everywhere. i am always so happy when we have more than one kind of weather in the same day and i get to watch things change.

there was a certain time yesterday when you could be outside and see day on one side of the sky and night on the other.

day being on the left and night being on the right, obviously.

half asleep, we are in deep pasture together with the smells and winds. today is my birthday - you’ve presented me with a mouthful of flowers, maybe poppies. there is one second when i look at you and it feels like we’re together. shadows swim across your skin: you were another continent, everything about you. i came closer. we should’ve been touching each other, but of course we were not. we never are. i become sleepier and sleepier and start saying imaginary things in another language. you seem unconcerned as i begin to speak for the first time.

Mon 8 PM or 7?? Discovery - Nigel’s Wild World of Weasels & Badgers!!!

oooh. i still don’t own a television.

my period came this morning, to hurt me. i had to stand outside in the sun for two hours and it felt like my uterus was a giant leech sucking up all the blood i owned. i wanted to puncture it with a skewer and let everything drain slowly out.

- - -

june 8. persimmons are parsimonious

i saw my best friend yet again today. he seems to be everywhere. the truth is i didn’t actually see him with my own bare eyes, since when i felt that he was there i didn’t want to look at him at all. it’s the same way you know the presence of someone in a dream. i was outside unlocking my bike to go home, and suddenly i knew he was there, with his friends, sitting further down the sidewalk and wearing a blue t-shirt. it made me depressed. and guilty. i never feel i have the right to like anyone. because i could never imagine anyone i like actually liking me back. i remember once when i was a teenager telling my mom that to make a friend would be like winning the lottery. not the kind where they throw rocks at you, either. the good kind. i’ve come up with even less plausible things to do with this life i barely want.. i’m going to be a wonderful writer and people’re going to give a shit about all the pretty things i have to say!

i had no appetite when i got home, but i ate a lot so that maybe i can gain a few pounds and people will stop interrogating me and making comments about my eating habits. everyone who knows me in real life seems to think i’m anorexic.

(some sort of dialogue about vomit totally unrelated to bulimia)
"i haven’t thrown up in a long time."
"she just doesn’t eat anything."

maybe i should not have said that the hunger artist was my favorite story.

lying in bed at 3 o’clock in the morning, unable to sleep with the noise of a million different sirens from downtown. when it finally got quiet, something fell over in the bathroom or the kitchen and my heart jumped like a salmon and i finally just burst into tears.

i thought i’d wake up feeling pretty terrible, but’m singing flaming lips songs instead. i suspect the sundaes i ate last night, which involved heaps of soy dream, bananas, peaches, raspberries, pecans, & syrups, may be the culprit.

this used to make me a little less lonely. i couldn't help it.

- - -

june 7.

i didn’t have to go to work today, so i slept til nearly 11 o’clock and went out for breakfast. if there is one way to keep yourself from feeling completely miserable, it is to wake up and pedal as fast as you can towards biscuits. so that’s what i did. while i was riding my bike across the river, i happened to look up ahead of me and there was a boy walking in the opposite direction. "wow, what a cute boy" is what i thought, even though he was very far away. i have no previous recollections of riding around on my bicycle thinking people were cute; not ever. this is not some habit of mine. i don’t usually think much of anyone is very cute, unless they are a raccoon. you won’t believe who it was: my best friend! i was overjoyed to see him. imagine that we were traveling on the very same sidewalk on the very same street in the very same city at the very same time of the very same day! surely it must have signified something. i guess i didn’t have time to find out what, specifically, like carousel rides or picnics, it signified, however, since i just waved and rode on by without a word or a whicker. being biscuit-bound can make well-intentioned people behave very badly, especially if they are, by nature, bashful to begin with.

i thought about it a little while i ate my breakfast. i suddenly decided it was the funniest thing in the whole world that the one person on the sidewalk i would find pretty is someone i already know and someone i’ve already found pretty. i went into a giggling fit and nearly choked to death on my biscuits, which would’ve served me right for being such a jerk.

right now there’re two squirrels chasing each other around and around a tree right outside my window. lots of chittering and the sound of their claws on the bark. it must be fun to be a squirrel. i think they have a whole language in their tails.

i’ve been troubled lately. often i’m convinced my body is completely deformed. i felt it again today when i was walking across the street; everything seemed out of proportion and i felt i was so close to the ground.

when i’m in the bath, my feet seem a million miles away from me. i look at them, there at the other end of the bathtub, and don’t believe they are connected to me at all. they are so far away. it feels like it does to look at a person sitting on the opposite side of a room. other people are the farthest away things in the whole world.

i think my bathtub is about four or five feet long. it’s hard to say for sure because one end sticks out like a troika.

i need to buy some bird seed.

- - -

june 6.

i saddled him with honeysuckle

we rode up the staircase in the snow

a giant cane chair was overturned and used for a sled.

there were the nightingales' tongues
and the raccoon's approach,
and the warm fumes of the alphabet.

he lifts a paw to my eyes:

pillows riding slow water.

my heart hurts and i want a cookie.

- - -

june 5.

i wish you would say something.

a ghost.

- - -

june 4.

oh, bash my eyebones. i'm so tired.

- - -

june 3. the badger & the ionosphere

everytime someone writes an email with the word "badger" in it, this big scary goverment system records a copy of it.

good. maybe they'll buy a t-shirt.

- - -

june 2.

i ate dinner with my parents tonight. my spaghetti had a mouthful of caulk in it.

no one said they were sorry, so i set up jumps in the backyard and galloped around the lawn and didn’t clean them up when i was done. i have known since age eight that this is the best way to make people angry.

the cake was a disaster. i got ticks in my hair. when i pulled them out they had big pieces of my scalp clutched between their teeth.

i think it’s possible for insane people to live incredibly lonely lives without ever really being bothered by it. i wish it would finally be one way or the other for me.

after work yesterday, i stopped at a place to hang a flyer and ended up buying a skirt. i’m not sure why. i’ve never bought a skirt before. what i want is a pair of sock garters.

and a pretzel.

some night in new york city many years ago, waiting for a train, the person i was with had a sudden compulsion for pretzels, and ran out into the streets. i didn’t want one. i betted they had some sort of egg glaze on them. he bought a pretzel and we went back to the station. i remember sitting next to him while he ate it, and i could smell the warm dough, and the mustard.. it was like sitting by the ocean. it was held in a piece of wax paper and the pretzel left warm perspirations and a floe of salt.

julian used to be a pretzel cellar in union square.

it’s saturday, the one where i wake up early and have nowhere to go. it feels very cold to me. i turned the electric blanket on last night and lay on top of it touching eeyore’s ears for a long time, daydreaming about becoming a badger. for a moment, the usual oppression of being awake had slipped away. i wish it would snow.

i don’t know what i’ll do with the day. i’m thinking of baking a cake. for now i’m going to keep sitting here staring at the stains in the knees of my nightgown, perched like a cockroach with twitching brown wings.

evasion is a train of colors.

- - -

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