aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell

june 8 - june 15th(?): charleston, wv
june 19th(?) - july 25th(?): athens, ga
july 25th(?): minneapolis

something like that.

this summer i’m going to learn how to tune an airplane and fly a piano.

okay. so long.


may 30. mercury retrograde

if someone were around i'd ask them to wash my arms--

or a pony. i could ride down the street playing my accordion. i wouldn't need the reins.

no pony, no someone. i guess i'm going to sit here instead. a bee is dying on the floor beside me and i don't know what's wrong with him.

if i had a pony i would be happy.


may 29.

i will fall asleep on a pair of crutches. i imagine a pair of picnic baskets containing our clothes, a snack, and a toy accordion. maple creme cookies and mandolins. two nights ago there was lightning. he touched my ankles for an unnecessarily long time when i didn’t have any socks on. around 1am we made a marching band and i got to play my saw while being pushed in a wheelchair! the parade wound its way through the halls of a house, and i had to kind of hop in the chair when it was time to cross the wooden seams between rooms.

my concert was last night. i played first of eleven people! my song was about how samovar became the prince of russia. tavo used effects pedals to transform his voice into that of a penguin. he sang into a microphone that was hidden inside samovar’s stomach. it was just beautiful and i was only a little sad about tavo never practicing with me and therefore not knowing any of the words or when they were supposed to be sung. i remember holding the belt on the back of his vest and telling him to shake samovar’s flippers at the end of the song. (samovar was holding deer bells.) he forgot.

afterwards sallie and i walked to the grocery store for cookies. a carload of girls from school picked us up on the way there; they kept saying how cute we were, how we are the "hot topic" at school, how everyone at bennington is obsessed with us. we got newman o’s, maple cookies, and coffee-flavored soy milk. maybe someone will kill us!


may 26. the poisoned towel

somebody spilled coffee on me last night and i still smell like it. it was really hot too, right out of the spigot. they didn't say they were sorry.

before i forget: this is going away june 1st. or rather i am going away from it. it will still be here, fixed, motionless, immobilized! but i will be far away, separated by great distances of.. failure to learn how to update my website with anything other than ftp!

well, anyway, if you like me-- i don't know what you should do. be my valentine?


may 25.

i had a nice day. i hope we have an eclipse soon.

sometimes when i feel really desperate i think i smell burning matches; this leads me to believe i should die in a bed-fire.

i wrote evan asking if he'd drop a lit match through my keyhole after i'd gone to bed. he came by and helped me make tea instead, and we sat outside. i don't know why i feel how i am. i talked about how i wanted to engineer drinking fountains so that music would come out of them instead of water--he said that writing about this would reveal my darkest secrets.

of course i went back to my room and tore myself up in fewer than five minutes. knowing i would never in the whole world ask him to hug me, or if i could hold his hand for a second. knowing lots of things i would never tell him, or anybody. then i wiped my cheeks on eeyore's ears, and put in earplugs, and bedtime felt like a real prize.

on tuesday i am performing for my first human audiences of considerable size. my band consists of accordion, saw, banjo, french horn, kazoo, and prince penguin. it has been very hard finding someone to sing this song. first tavo said he would, then tavo said he wouldn't. then evan said he would, then evan said he couldn't. then i asked sallie, who said she would but she didn't really want to. now tavo says he will again. tavo will say anything every time he sees me.

in some parts of the country, drinking fountains are called "bubblers". if i ever go somewhere and say nothing the entire time, i will say one thing, even if i'm not thirsty: "excuse me, where's the bubbler?" what fun.


may 24.

last night i had a new shoe dream. i got a pair of low-top green converse. whoever had made the shoes salvaged the white rubber toe-caps from the pair i have now, and transplanted them to the new shoes. on the left foot is a badger's face drawn in black and surrounded by red (it says "BHD" for my band). the other hoof has a silver star taped there, and a non-descript alligator.

then today i lay in bed all the time, and cried, and fed apple cake to baby woodchucks.

maybe i'll stop lying when people ask me if i'm doing okay.


may 20.

last night i had a dream someone was riding a donkey across the lawn. it was really a parade with kids on the move, on their way across campus, without instruments, to do something low down. they were all silhouetted but i saw the ribbon in the donkey's tail, and that the boy riding him wore a vest. i woke up, went to the bathroom, and when i was going back into my room my neighbor's door opened and he and evan came out. whit was wearing a white flannel suit and evan was wearing a tie and a vest and pinstripe trousers. whit looked like a backwoods preacher; i could see him baptizing people in the river. i went into my room, stood there a second, then opened the door again. "you look like you're going to a revival," i said, "you look like you should be riding mules." they were really pretty. i wonder if they're in love again.

after i closed my door i saw that eeyore had fallen out of bed during the night. i picked him up and hugged him and started crying. then we signed our names to a pact of speechlessness for the rest of the day.

it was a pact of silence but i wanted to play my accordion.


may 19.

last night someone stood on my chest, causing my ribcage to burst open, like a ukulele torn in two. there was much blood, and braying, and stars. then, the heart attack. it was given to me by the large white head of a ghost peering around the corner of a door. then i see spots! lately i have one of dolly parton's horrible songs stuck in my head as i ride my bicycle up a hill. my sister used to work at an ice cream shop, and i went there once wearing a flannel nightgown tucked into a pair of jeans; i think i did some sort of bent-kneed dance and sang that song, which i heard, who knows where:

"why'd you come in here
lookin' like that?
with yer cowboy boots
an' yer painted-on jeans
all decked out like a cowgirl's dreams
why'd you come in here lookin' like that?

that was certainly a worthless little tale. it is very hard to type because the "i" on my keyboard has grown reluctant. i think this is symbolic but so what, it is only about 40 degrees here today.

i am excited about summer. some kids are going to have a house with me in athens, but first we have to find one. i looked in the classifieds and found one with an outhouse! we could paint it in a way that would please the raccoons.

i probably haven't mentioned that i'm going to athens to be the helmsman of a vegan muffin cart. well, i am. fuck am i tired.


may 18.

hm.. it is snowing.


may 15.

two books i read when i was little whose titles i've never been able to remember:

one, about a florist who has a mechanical pony in his shop. it used to only cost five cents to ride the pony, but then the florist turns evil and changes it to a dime. children are all very sad: they can't afford it anymore. they loved riding the pony. all his flowers die. he changes it back to a nickel.

another, about a man who never washed his dishes. he didn't feel like washing them, so he didn't wash them. he was a very smart man, this man. first the sink filled up with dishes. then the kitchen filled up with dishes. soon he was having to put his dirty dishes in the bathtub and under the bed! in the end he loads all his dishes into the back of a pick-up truck and drives into a storm.


may 14.

two things i learned today:

1. don't leave door unlocked.
2. don't let other kids borrow my toys.

this has gotta be worth $30,000 dollars a year.


may 9.

summary of my personality in three fish, fifteen cents, and one boy:

there is a boy i’ve noticed lately, who was once goose. his last name is only one letter different from my last name! he is a gargling goose; i’ve never heard him speak. there were lightning bugs outside his house. they were the year’s first lightning bugs. today i was in the percussion room with sallie, playing a big pair of marching cymbals, and suddenly looked up to see the boy’s face in the window. he smiled just a little bit, and i crashed my cymbals together. he was getting his bicycle from the rack, then he was riding away. so i decided to write him a valentine, asking if i could possibly borrow a pair of socks. i left it in his mail cubby. later, around 11 o’clock, i was still pretty hungry and it wasn’t even bedtime. i walked to commons, which houses both mail cubbies and snack bar, where i bought three swedish fish, which are the only gummi-snacks anyone in their life has ever heard of that don’t involve bones and pony hooves crumbled up. i got two green ones and one yellow one, costing 15 cents. i ate the green ones while reading his valentine to myself in the mail room. when i put it back, i left the yellow fish on top. it looked pretty in the cellophane places where the blue paper and typewritten stars of the valentine shown through. of course halfway down the hill all i could think about was that damn yellow fish, and how hungry i was, even though i liked green better. so i cantered back to the mail room and ate it. and that’s pretty low.

i accidentally slept 12 hours last night. i had a nightmare about hands holding me down to my bed. the hands were saying "the money pit, the money pit," over and over again. in the next room there was a shadow who grabbed you by the ankles if you tried to go to the bathroom. not really like a shadow but more like a lady made out of smoke.

i really wish i wouldn't get my period this month but i've been eating too much.


may 6.

sometimes i stare at a boy and think, "he could've been my sister"--
i remember the flood when we were children together
and had to swim up the stairs
and water was coming out the windows.

then i realize he is one year too young,
that my mother has not been pregnant since 1981, and that my dad has black teeth.

i thought cinco de mayo was the same thing as el dia de los muertos. it's too bad it isn't, as it turns out, especially considering how many times i told people we had to eat candy skulls yesterday, with our names written across the foreheads in yellow sugar.

so it's in october. i would rather celebrate dying in the spring.

but i threw the fire ladder out the window, and the bottom rung hangs down by our porch, behind a lilac bush. i sat there swinging back and forth for a few hours yesterday evening.

evan's borrowed this really old royal typewriter; of course its noises are really great. a few nights ago he sat behind our house writing on it, and i was building a fort out in the hills, and i could hear it from there. this summer i think i'll pick up my manual typewriter--it's somewhere at my parents'--and spend hours clattering away in coffeehouses. well, i really don't know where i'm going to live. maybe i'll stage this display of clattering in a gutter, or a hayloft.

he typed in here last night, sometimes staring up at the ceiling. the typewriter got to spend the night in my room. my favorite keys are 'cents' and 'three-fourths'. it saddens me that the modern keyboard does not include a "cents" key; they are very useful for when you are having a bake sale.


may 4.

ears dangling between bed and wall.

bottle of ink,
bottle of bubbles;

on either side of the standing pony,
his hair has fallen.

his head, so light, expecting everything
and everything to happen--
a toy’s dreaming head.
a tiny brown head of a human:

saddled with stockings.

there are white stripes
and tongues
protruding from the bridle.

--

it bothers me when other people’s things are in my room. last night it was really cold and i didn’t want to ride bicycles in my winter coat, in may. sallie and i dodged trashcans in a hallway for a while. we got tired of it and were sitting there on our bikes, at the bottom of the stairs, and scared a girl just by being quiet. i suggested we have "crafts night," which made us both start giggling and sallie fell on the floor. she dragged a big box of magazines and stuff in here, to my room. i had to shove it and her cd’s into the corner just so i could concentrate for five minutes. i don’t know why this, or anything, bothers me. the morning is very peaceful and dreamy and the next thing is i’m leaning out the window screaming, "go away! i like the grass!", and "shut up!!", practically in tears, to the man on the lawnmower. i have always loathed the cutting of grass. i mean winter just ended a day ago; i like the wind in it when it’s so long and green.

i dab my blood on the dollar bill. today i have to do nothing but be in my room, eventually a boy will come and i’ll sling my accordion over my shoulder.. i have to practice to be in his concert! a real concert! i’m pretty excited. with the saw too, and i like him.

if my hair was slightly straight i would chop it like that. but my hair is not straight.

All this French vegetation--
Violent, tubercular, absurd--
Through which only basset hounds at twilight
Manage to navigate with bellies undisturbed.


may 3.

physical description of myself & my room at 7:22 pm, 3rd of may, 23 and 71 years old, respectively:

i woke up in the morning and washed my eyelids. i am shorter and slightly slighter than normal. my skin has a somewhat diseased quality; it is pale yellow and sometimes it is grey like the moon. my eyes are blue and the skin around my eyes is thin and pink. my hair is not quite long enough to get pinned down beneath my coat collar. it is tumultuous and red. i wear, as i usually wear, a black cardigan sweater whose sleeves threaten to desert me. a safety pin under the right armpit helps keep things together. a green t-shirt with a goose on it, it says "make tracks to murphy’s landing"; postman pants; pink socks. my kazoo is around my neck with a thin yellow ribbon. my underpants are crotchity with baby lambs.

my room is a mess. the light is nice. there’s a sheep on my bed. there’s a marble in her mouth. i’m going to ride my bicycle now so i can’t type as much about my room as i’d like.

the most wonderful new additions to the bennington community: vegan soft serve in the lunchroom, and four baby goslings at the pond!

i like windy days. i like to predict the wind. cimmerian days i get to sit by the window playing my accordion, or writing in my notebook, or maybe i'll go hop over the graves or give evan a haircut!

(he came in and asked me to cut his hair when i was typing that.)