the cowardly lion
april 5th, 2000

in my previous entry, i described murfreesboro as a "barren place full of 
nothing but dead asphalt and concrete," for which i was promptly 
reprimanded with many testimonials on the true beauty of the place. so let 
me clarify.

murfreesboro *is* a beautiful place. even the campus of MTSU has its shady 
places, full of trees and flowers. the last few months i was in the town, 
i lived with these really wonderful people, brad and amy, who now have a 
little daughter of their own. their house was very neat. it was set in a 
little alcove of trees, and there was nothing better than to sit with some 
friends on the porch in the warm spring nights, barefoots, watching 
jessica and mat drive by (which seemed to happen often.) there were 
rivers, and fields perfect for kite-flying, and if you happened to live on 
the 8th story of cummings hall you could even see the mountains in the 
distance, and sitting in that window was one of the most peaceful things i 
did in murfreesboro. and even outside my window at wood hall, where all of 
my friends would come calling at odd hours of the night and day, and 
occasionally i'd smuggle a few in for slumber parties, there were trees, 
and grass, and in the autumn millions of multicolored leaves to jump into 
and play around in. there was the tree outside the KUC that i would always 
climb around in with taylor and the rest of the hippies, there was the 
president's picnic where i gathered a collection of all the new people i 
had met around the most beautiful tree, and taylor and i danced in the hot 
summer sun. murfreeboro *is* a beautiful place, in its own way, and it was 
wrong of me to say otherwise.

the problem i have with the beauty of murfreesboro is the same problem i 
have with the beauty of chattanooga. not only do both places remind me 
vividly of persons i would rather totally wipe completely from my life, 
but they also are stinging reminders of the very worst times in my life, 
of the very worst i could possibly be. i didn't like *myself* when i lived 
in murfreesboro. i was a frantic ball of madness. there's not an inch of 
the college campus that doesn't carry a painful memory for me, save 
perhaps the knoll, the hippie-climbing tree, and peck hall. i glance at 
the weeping willows, the now delapidated place where the old twisting tree 
used to be - *his* tree, the field beside the observatory where we saw 
meteor showers during the night and he chased my kite down during the day, 
some very beautiful farmland that i was unable to appreciate since i 
walked past it during a time i wanted to die, which was all to often when 
i lived in that place. the rock quarry, the duck pond at chelsea place, 
even kid's castle. too many associations.

and i have the same problem with chattanooga. until recently, the only 
times i had ever ventured into that city i was either with nathaniel or i 
was carrying his memory with me like an open wound, driving around at 
night and getting hopelessly lost because i missed him so much, and i 
"couldn't believe i'd pushed something so wonderful away from me." 
chattanooga *is* one of the most beautiful cities you will ever see...but 
it embarrasses me. i made some of the worst mistakes of judgement in my 
life in chattanooga, i lost all sense of reason and morality in 
chattanooga, i spent two years of my life constantly fearing that everyone 
in the city wanted to kill me (which wasn't entirely untrue.) and there's 
this certain place, driving from chattanooga to murfreesboro, that i still 
can't look at, i still can't watch. those big stretch of bridges over the 
river. nathaniel drove me over those bridges, and we watched the sun set, 
and it was the absolute most beautiful thing i had ever seen in my life, 
river on both side with the multicolored sun reflecting in the water, 
dappling over the small islands. and he played this song for me, more like 
a spoken-word fantasy story thing, about a man seeing a woman at a 
crosswalk and remembering her from all the other lives they'd lived on 
other planets in other realities, and he took my hand and asked me if i 
had any idea how happy i'd made him - and i still can't bring myself to 
look across those waters anymore, no matter how far away i am from the 
person i was then.

there are certain parts of the beauty, however, which are mine. totally 
and completely mine. i've always loved the drive from lebannon to 
murfreesboro, with the ranches and state parks and familiarity on all 
sides. it's always filled me with happiness and given me peace. the same 
with the drive from murfreesboro to chattanooga, especially around the 
area where sewanne is. i love twisting around those mountains. on the 
downgrade i'd always shift my car into neutral and coast, windows rolled 
down, singing loud songs to the evening sky. one night i randomly drove 
jeff halfway there, and we talked long into the evening. many of the 
things i already mentioned before: the hippie tree, the knoll, the piles 
of autumn leaves. it isn't that murfreesboro is really a barren wasteland. 
it was just that i was a barren wasteland when i lived there, and the 
scenery is a constant reminder of just how much of my life i had wasted.

and it's my own fault. i let someone totally and completely dominate my 
life. i sacrificed time with friends and loved ones, i refused to truly 
experience college or life or anything else but nathaniel the entire time 
i was living there, despite their continuous pleadings and askings and 
invitations. it is the thing i regret the most, that i wasted my only 
chance at ever really having "the college experience" rotting away in some 
computer lab, pining after a man who never truly existed as i knew him, 
anyway.

but asthetically, the main difference between the beauty of greeneville 
(or really, mosheim, since that was where i lived, out in the country), or 
even the beauty of oak ridge, where i am now, in comparison to the beauty 
of murfreesboro, is that in murfreesboro, you have to go seek out your 
beauty. the last month i was there, amy and i found some sort of 
walkway...it's some sort of a paved trail that takes you alongside the 
river, with all sorts of trees and wildlife and little historical notes 
you can read along the way. and it is pretty amazing. i hated the fact 
that i found the place only a few weeks before i had to return home, and 
that the day we scaled it, it had been raining a lot lately and part of 
the path was closed due to flooding, and with me becoming very noticably 
pregnant by then, walking had become a bit of a chore, anyway. but i was 
quite enchanted with it. i was even enchanted with that historical 
reconstruction of the village where the storyteller's guild meetings were 
held, as silly as that sounds. so many beautiful things i discovered my 
last semester of college, when nathaniel was gone on business to the far 
corners of the earth and i could breathe freely in murfreesboro for once. 
which probably says a great deal of how my perceptions influenced things 
right there.

but in mosheim, or even here in oak ridge, you can simply look out your 
window and you are surrounded on all sides with beauty. there are trees 
which seem to enclose the house, and mountains on all sides of you. this 
apartment is two-thirds surrounded by a hill. i open the back door, and 
rabbits are there, visiting. and all around you, the mountains loom 
overhead, like comforting arms holding you in place. and i know that my 
feelings about this are simply because i was raised by these mountains, 
and they are in my blood. eric once said that the idea of anything flat 
scared the hell out of him, because he'd never left mosheim, and the 
comfort of the surrounding mountains. his father was a truck-driver for a 
time, and used to bring him stories of the plains as if it were nothing 
less than hell itself.

in all honesty, i hated oak ridge for a very long time. negative 
associations again. this time from childhood. my brother's father, whom i 
hated. the place that took my brother away from me. the place where 
whatever those neighbor boys did to me when i was five years old happened 
and totally terrified me for many, many years after that. then, there was 
nathaniel spending the summer here. that summer where all we did was fight 
because of my accusations which were, of course, "totally unfounded" and 
"complete erratic," which amuses me to no end now. but we had our 
moments...i tripped over myself running out to meet him, and ended up 
skinning up my toe really badly (yes, i am all full of elegance) and he 
carried me inside. we made love outside in the middle of the night during 
a thunderstorm right there, beside the window. we had tetris tournaments 
and wrestling matches, watched movies and played final fantasy seven. and 
it was here that my mother first noticed how insignificant nathaniel made 
me seem, how he would brush off my comments as if they were unimportant, 
tell me that i was stupid and incompetent, and she tried to warn me then, 
but i didn't listen. i was intensely miserable, but those heavenly moments 
always more than made up for them. except, of course, that they didn't.

those old associations of oak ridge have been replaced. now when i look at 
this apartment, i think of the beautiful chaos of my pregnancy summer, 
with susanne and andi and erin and lyndsay and Dust and taylor and elf and 
everybody else halfway, if not completely, living here, of ice cream and 
messy kitchens and belly rubs and decorations and music and dancing and 
so, so much love. and then, of course, my daughter. starting out from such 
a tiny creature and growing into something wonderful, amazing, every 
single milestones imprinted on this place, the sound of baby toys and so 
much joy, realizations, reminiscence, and the truth intensify this place 
and have made it more and more beautiful the longer i stay here. and as 
much as i hated it when we first moved here, and as much as i thought that 
i would like nothing better to move somewhere - anywhere...i'm really 
going to miss this apartment. and i really wish we didn't have to move.

and that in itself should serve to remind me that my opinions of a place 
may change as the positive memories i have collected therein intensify. 
wherever i go, the past should not play too much of a role. perceptions 
are easily changed, and i remind myself that even greeneville was once not 
nearly as beautiful as it seems to me now - even the intensity of that had 
to be proven to me.

but there are still images i can't shake from my head. i have nightmarish 
images of going out to eat with a group of friends or even *gasp* possibly 
be out on a date, when i spot nathaniel sitting at a table across the 
room. and he sits there and bores holes into me with his eyes, slowly 
stripping me of every protective mask and cloth, revealing my flaws, my 
inconsistancy, my insecurities, until i am nothing but a cold shivering 
husk who is incapable of continuing the conversation with whoever she is 
with, because her confidence has crumbled like a heap of long-dead bones. 
or suddenly i get a court order claiming that i am an unfit mother because 
it's just me and Aisling, and me without work or money, just school, and 
since there is no one else in the household to help with her care, i am an 
unsuited parent. or that nathaniel will be knocking at the door to my 
apartment every night, using Aisling as an excuse, but in reality wanting 
to exert some sort of control over my life again, trying to weasel his way 
through any chinks that may be still left in the armor. and as much as i 
like to think i'm too strong for him now, and as much as i'd like to 
believe he would have no influence on me at all, every single time he 
speaks, i am already wrong. i never would have believed in a million years 
that my will could have been so easily tackled, that i would ever put up 
with the kind of treatment i recieved during those two years, that i'd 
ever be gullible enough to let the wool cover my eyes so completely that 
i'd be suffocated. but it happened. and who am i to say that it won't 
happen again?

so there, Dust. the true reason i won't go to murfreesboro? the true 
reason why i see it as a "barren wasteland"? because it scares the hell 
out of me. because i am a coward.



lobsters and shellfish
april 5th, 2000

*that* was a messed up dream. and it feels like it was probably very 
meaningful, especially since it ransacked my sleep after my coward entry. 
i can't even begin to put it into any sort of coherency at all, so you'll 
have to settle with a list of images.

there is this play, about a lobster and some other smallish sea creature 
with a shell that i can't remember the name of now, but the gist of the 
story is that they go to a feast and end of getting slaughtered. (similar 
in theme to "the walrus and the carpenter," i guess.) i think, "what a 
dreadfully horrible thing to do!" later in the dream the play is acted out 
as some sort of postmodern finger-puppet show, where the lobster and the 
shellfish are in a "seafood farm" (or maybe a zoo?) and are attached to 
long rubber-band-like harnessing devices. they are not so much "lobster" 
and "shellfish" as the lobster is just a husk of a creature with pinchers 
and the shellfish is just a shell that sticks on an old barbie head for 
decoration. the "feast" they stumble upon is a pot of fish that is used to 
feed all the other sea life in this area. at some point the shellfish gets 
stuck on her back, and looses her barbie head in this puddle of fiflth 
where there are many pieces of broken toys, and the lobster has to fish it 
out for her, except at first he fishes out the wrong one. somehow the 
shellfish gets free, and the lobster watches her from a distance. she 
wanders into a dollhouse, and starts to talk to one of the doll-guards. 
the captain of the doll-guards comes out and shoots the guard, calling him 
a traitor, and then starts pacing back in forth in front of the house 
madly. the shellfish is frozen. i am assuming she was shot to. and i 
think, in the dream, "they were never meant to leave that place."

at some point i belong to a troupe of actors, which includes doug, meghan, 
and nathaniel, among a lot of people who i don't know. i can't really 
remember much of this at all, except doug's part in the play was falling 
down the stairs for comic relief, and then he wished one of the stagehands 
happy birthday. and that meghan kept making fun of something, and then 
when the topic of the possibility of having an awards ceremony came up, 
meghan suggested throwing it in dreamscape. i also know that i had written 
some sort of a screenplay. and that at some point there was this elaborate 
choreographed dance attack of some strange mutant army that i was trying 
to escape from. nathaniel was there, but i have no idea what part he 
played, and don't remember seeing him at all.

i was in nathaniel's old house, except it was different. it wasn't 
nathaniel's house in real life, but it was a house that i *remembered* in 
the dream and it was totally different from how i remembered it. i don't 
know if you can carry memories from dream to dream, or even if i had 
dreamed of this house before, or if the memories assigned to the place 
were just a part of the dream itself. either way, i wandered through the 
house, looking and things, amazed that how while nathaniel kept everything 
neat and perfect, now that i stumbled in on the place while he wasn't 
there, beds hadn't even been put together. there were just bed-frames, and 
folded up mattresses everywhere, and suitcases. even the big tub (which 
really *was* a part of his old house) had not been put in, and was instead 
leaning against the wall as if waiting to be installed. nathaniel wasn't 
here, but his parents were downstairs. i think they said something to me, 
but i can't remember it now.

at some point, i was watching some computer guy (bill gates?) check his 
email, except it was like a flashback, and he had to change all of these 
different settings on his computer, so many dials and switches in software 
and hardware both, and at some point the computer expelled a reddish gass 
and then a bluish gass which were supposed to be rubbed together to make 
green (again i know, impossible), which was part of the process of 
checking email.

my mom and i had planned to throw some sort of a party for her friends 
from work, except maybe five people showed up. i was out with my brother 
and we ran into lyndsay, and claire, and jeanna, i think, and a few other 
people i haven't seen in forever, and i decided since the place was set up 
for a party (streamers, decorations, food, dance lights) they should come 
over and we'd have a "dance party." i brought them over, and asked if i 
could invite some more people, and mom said i couldn't, and i asked why, 
and she said because she had already cleaned up after one party that night 
and that she didn't want to do it again. i pointed out that originally she 
was planning on throwing a huge party, and promised i would clean up after 
it was over, but she still said no. then i got furious. i started 
screaming at her, about how many times i had cleaned and cooked and done 
the laundry that previous weekend while she fiddled around with the 
computer and how she didn't appreciate any of it (which really happened - 
at least the cleaning part.) then i said that this was exactly why i 
needed to get my own apartment.

my mother was driving, and for some reason we were on this winding 
kentucky road. why we were in kentucky, or how i even knew it was 
kentucky, i have no idea. but kentucky it was. we were talking - possibly 
about the previous apartment comment - and she was upset with this guy at 
work and was taking the curves really fast, at times where us as 
passengers in the car would get turned upside down. it was more like a 
rollercoaster ride than a car ride. i was scared. shortly after i 
vocalized my fear, mom says, "oh shit!" and i see a really, really sharp 
curve ahead that she wasn't expecting, and the breaks are not working. i 
bend down to try to push the breaks with my hands (and no, i have no idea 
how this was physically possible), and then mom says, "just don't look 
down." apparently we had driven off the cliff and shot up into the sky. i 
got really scared, and suddenly the entire scene was turned into 
cartoon-like comedy and we were akin to the three stooges as we crashed 
onto the ground in a pile of rubble.

colour me bizarre.