good radio morning
april 4th, 2000

today was what you would call a good radio morning. one of those mornings 
when you stick your keys into the ignition and find yourself driving 
head-first into some antedulivian mist and while you are flipping through 
the frequencies the perfect songs come on, and they make you sing, and 
they make you think of people, and they make you roll the windows down 
even though it's freezing outside, even though your hair is wet, even 
though you know you'll spend the next two hours in class huddled inside 
that black leather jacket matthew gave you all those years ago with the 
pockets wearing thin - still, you do it.

it was a good radio morning. whatever i listen to on the radio has a 
tendency to effect my entire day, who i think about, what sort of a mood 
i'm in, though i've been in a particularly better mood as of late...i 
suppose the sleep has something to do with it. i am so terribly proud of 
my daughter. i wrote a letter to eric this morning, prompted by an email 
exclaiming that he didn't want to lose touch again. i don't want to lose 
touch, either. i was scrawling my thoughts on paper and there they were, 
in black and white, and they stared back at me, trying to help me make a 
decision. where to go? i'm not sure anymore. i love my grandparents, but 
they have this uncanny way of completely tearing whatever responsibility i 
have learned to shambles...they have this way of making me feel like an 
eight-year old stuck inside a twenty-year old body. i feel that way 
enough. i need to get out on my own, i think, perhaps...but murfreesboro 
still puts the fear of god into me, and it doesn't get green, there, like 
it does here.

this is the first tennessee spring i've spent back east in a few years 
now. a tennessee spring after that first april deluge. overnight, some 
switch was flipped and the shade of emerald in these hills can only be 
outdone by ireland itself. there is nothing more beautiful than a 
tennessee spring, that sort of green that pours into everything, that 
makes even your fingernails green, the kind of green you can smell on the 
air when you walk outside, the kind of green that even penetrates your 
dreams. this is what tennessee is all about, when i'm driving home, and 
the wind carries the green on the smallish leaves just beginning to wake 
up, when the dark rainclouds break into small patches of sunshine only to 
cover the canvas up with storms a few moments later. when you pull into 
the driveway to two redbirds courting on your front steps. that green that 
doesn't need a soundtrack, but if it had one, would be some sweet mixture 
of counting crows, tori amos, and REM.

    when i was young and full of grace
    and spirited, a rattlesnake
    when i was young my fever fell
    my spirit, i will not tell
    you're on your honor not to tell...

    ...and spring brings fresh little puddles
    to make it all clear
    makes it all clear...

    ...i will walk along these hillsides
    in the summer 'neath the sunshine
    i am feathered by the moonlight
    falling down on me...



that's what it sounds like. and i watch these trees, these mountains, and 
i wonder, how could i ever leave this place? how did i ever leave it 
before? it never gets this shade of green in murfreesboro, no matter how 
hard it rains. there aren't any mountains, deep foggy afternoons, where 
clouds and horizon meet. there's only sky in murfreesboro, wide open sky, 
and tornadoes, which i've had my share of.

but how will i ever learn to use these two feet on my own if i continue to 
hide behind the precipice of home?

i'll manage. i always do. my indecisiveness sometimes gets the best of me. 
if nothing else, i can always flip a coin. or turn up the radio.



an elephant inside a boa constrictor
april 4th, 2000

yes, i'm watching the little prince. yes, it's the musical version with 
gene wilder. i love this movie. and the songs are really cheesy, but i 
still love them all the same. i used to sit in the floor of my 
grandparents' house curled up in a little ball watching this movie when i 
was very, very young. and then my grandfather would go out to the garden 
and bring me back a rose, and i would look intently at the petals trying 
to find the woman inside the petals. i think i found her once, but it's 
hard to remember what those things looked like when you were a child. like 
Boy, my "imaginary" friend. he had wings, and that is all i know.

i just noticed that all of the sudden the box surrounding the logo at the 
top of this page is a different shade of blue than the background on some 
machines...is this a problem for any of you guys? i really need to polish 
up my layout.

it's been such a wonderful day. nothing really exciting has happened to me 
at all, and the starfish has been a little more on the fussy side than she 
has been in the past couple of days, but there's just something about the 
day, the air, the clouds flowing over the mountains, the sky, and that 
green...the green that i described in my previous entry. the green that i 
would like more than anything to go out and make love to someone in, if i 
had someone to make love to.

but it is such a beautiful day. i've spent so much time this afternoon 
staring out of the big picture window in the living room of the apartment. 
the wind, the trees, the soft little birds...and the starfish and i played 
in the sunlight.

i remember being so very homesick when i was still living in murfreesboro, 
and these mountains had everything in the world to do with it. i haven't 
been nearly as homesick since i've been living in oak ridge, even though 
it's not technically "home." and i thought of this, in relation to the 
decision i must make, to the where's and why's i will be travelling to 
sometime in the near future.

i miss murfreesboro. except i don't miss "murfreesboro" the place. i miss 
the people i met there. murfreesboro is a barren place to me, full of 
nothing but dead asphalt and concrete, and as i said before, tornados. but 
the people i met there, they were simply amazing, so totally accepting - 
there were no games to play, masks to wear. i was just me, and that was 
enough. some of the most loyal and loving friends i've ever met. i miss 
them horribly, but i think stacey said it best, "devon doesn't belong 
here." people are transitory. my friends will be scattered to the far 
corners of the earth when they graduate from school. so many of my friends 
already are.

in either place, murfreesboro or greeneville, there will be a tremendous 
test of strength that i must pass for the sake of my daughter. i must not 
allow very influencial people to influence me in negative ways. i must be 
my own person. no matter where i go. there will always be hardships and 
trials, and i must learn to overcome them, no matter what. and i think i 
do need to go home, for a final time. to set my wrongs to right. to 
immerse myself in mountains and trees and poetry. to go into hibernation. 
a chrysalis. clean the wounds, dress them, instead of continually picking 
at the scabs. which, even without intention, i would be doing if i were to 
move to murfreesboro.

and anyway, i couldn't leave these springs behind.

wow. it's days like this i count myself lucky to be alive. sometimes i 
think that ourselves, as humans, forget to truly appreciate what we have, 
are ability to see, to taste, to touch, to imagine, all of our experiences 
amounting to a some sort of mathematical equations of synapses flashing on 
and off in this mesh of gray matter beneath our skulls. i'm always taking 
it for granted, wrapping myself up in my troubles, woes, worries, this 
universe of self-absorption that i mask with self-discovery. it's easy to 
forget how lucky we are for the simple things. a beautiful day outside a 
picture window. a long-awaited email. and counting crows blaring on the 
stereo.