my life in an acorn shell
july 31st, 2000

i'm sitting here in wal-mart having what could quite possibly be the best 
hot dog of my life. who'da thunk it? miracles in the most unlikely of 
places - the last place you'd look, like a pair of carefully hidden car 
keys. i think about gaiman's death, about the chemical aftertaste. i 
remember eating a hot dog with Dustin at governor's school. quite vividly, 
as if it were yesterday. such a strange memory to carry so clearly to now. 
to suddenly appear. all of the sudden, the dam breaks, memories flood in 
from that summer. the ballrooms our banquets were in, someone playing 
piano in the corner, me wanting to eat nothing but sugar and ice cream, 
picking at my food and putting daisies in my hair. there's sarah with an 
h, there's claire in the cloak she made. there we are at the pool, the 
basketball players watching us and making faces through the window while i 
make a sign in chalk "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS." Dustin and Jeanna dancing 
together only to fall down in a collapsed heap. the tree with squirrels 
throwing acorns at our poetry. talking with Mark in the auditorium. i had 
been singing there by myself when he found me. the record store we weren't 
supposed to go to. a lady telling me she wanted to name her daughter after 
me because she thought my name was pretty. uncle miltie sitting there as i 
was recovering from my bout of confusion, with me terrified that he was 
going to send me home. anna clark's house, with the little minature ones 
within, tiny lights inside, and plants everywhere. older now, i look back 
and see just how well they *could* see me, when once upon a time i 
believed no one in the world would ever understand, and i thought my 
universe was invisible. uncle miltie always trying to get me to eat a good 
breakfast, continually feeding me stories of what an incredible person i 
was to build up my bony confidence over spoonfuls of cheerios to build up 
my bony stature. mary nurturing my gift with her small delicate lines of 
criticism barely creased within the margins. anna showing me through a 
veil of positively charged negative material and prayers collected to 
match my rosary beads that the world was much bigger and braver than my 
small-town mindset could ever comprehend. all these teachers and 
professors understanding *exactly* what i was going through, and *caring*, 
and myself too blind to notice. it was the little things, the small and 
subtle ways they changed me, the details they attended to. and now, i sit 
here, in this wal-mart, with the phallic inflatable pencils dangling from 
the ceiling like suspended erections, and i think back on another wal-mart 
with half a mcdonalds nestled inside, somewhere in martin, on the other 
end of tennessee, and half a world away from here.

memories flash through my mind. other places, other times, other people. 
words from a poem Dustin wrote for me years ago. curled up with Nathaniel 
on Chris's couch where i watched last of the mohicans for the first time. 
a gray mazda with a dream catcher hanging in the window, a collection of 
hair-ties around the gear-shift (and i always wondered where they all came 
from). a treehouse, a rope ladder, Doug still half-green with paint, 
helping me find my way down because i was terrified of falling. running 
through fields of tall grass with him until i could no longer breathe. 
Susanne and i walking laps around a swimming pool, eating marshmallows, 
and discussing douglas adams. i was wearing my platform shoes. i thought 
perhaps we could walk on the water if we tried hard enough. a crashed 
truck half a mile from eric's house. standing in the autumn heat as he ran 
back and forth bringing drinks and calling for help and doing whatever 
else he could to make me smile. that train. i still associate trains with 
that boy, to this day. a machine in gatlinburg that told you how desirable 
you were. me and angela taking turns. it told me i kissed like a cold 
fish. her sister and us running a paper route in the middle of the night, 
talking to truckers over the cb radio. the last supper painting that hung 
in her mother's kitchen. our dreams about lighthouses by the sea. vampires 
and mutants, rock stars and x-men. her outlandish tales of banshees and 
demons and dolls coming to life. lestat and louis visited us in our sleep 
back then - every word of it true. i believed every word she said, the 
universe we concocted together, in notebooks, in volumes and volumes of 
stories and movies and dreams we would write ourselves into, and out of. 
throwing a tennis shoe over the railing in the locker room. when i first 
met eric. he, angela, and i were all lab partners in physical science. he 
began his infamous impressions, quoting movies and cartoons, brandishing 
the yardstick as a broadsword. Dustin at governor's school, with his 
bizarre nametags. his room full of toys, posters of old movies, rem, 
comics, and star wars. always taking photographs - downtown, in roller 
skates, downstairs, in saran wrap. our last valentine's - playing sadly 
with lego toys in his father's house, so silent you could hear the hearts 
cracking. the smell of cloves in the coffeehouse. i would come home, and 
the scent of the place would be stuck to my hair, and my clothes, and my 
books, and i would bury myself to sleep in that scent, loving the musty 
creativity of it, my mind like a wildfire. the stage, the lights, the 
wings, a small voice pretending to be big. the 
chaotic-happiness-madly-in-love. sitting in mr. lamb's class with brian, 
singing "a long december" and making clay acorns. the boys locking me in 
the art closet. my addiction to surge. the last time i saw the ocean, and 
threw eric's roses into the sea by the light of the full moon. laying in 
the grass of the front yard calling the wind with erin, ely, and lyndsay. 
a broken heart. a rickity all-night resturant on the other side of 
greeneville. sitting there late at night with matthew and chris and mum, 
eating candy, listening to the jukebox, and trying to get my mind off 
things. i was lost for a long time. and on and on.

my life flashing before me, memories from far away and long ago. 
everything replaying itself. "is this what happens when you die?" i think 
to myself. your life flashes before your eyes. is this how? i'm scared of 
starting school again, of starting all over. i'm scared i'll not make any 
friends. i'm scared of making too many friends. i remember the summer of 
my pregnancy, with everyone popping in and out of my life. it all seemed 
so full, i loved it. i miss people popping in and out of my life whenever 
they pleased. but it's hard to do, when you live out here in the middle of 
nowhere. and i wonder if i'll meet anyone to start filling my empty house 
with when the semester starts.

i finally updated my about me section. it still has a lot of work, a lot 
of additions to be made, but it's basically there. i'm also working on 
getting the photographs section up and running again. i'm just being so 
particular about everything with the thumbnails and the pop-up browser 
windows that it is taking a painstakingly long time to do everything. but 
hopefully this time i'll love it all and never ever want to change it 
again as long as i live. (yeah, right.)

i've been feeling rather depressed tonight. for some reason my mind went 
off wandering on the direction of death, and i had to come to terms with 
the fact that my grandfather is very, very sick as much as i've been 
trying not to think about it. he's a very sick man. i'm in denial about 
the whole thing. "it's just one of his spells," i tell myself, "and he'll 
be over it soon enough." but it's not. it's the middle of summer and he's 
*never* like this in the summer. and if for no other reason, i'm glad i 
came home for that. for him. to be whatever form of moral support i can 
be. and to pray, in my own silent manner.

life's weird. and memories are odd. sometimes i just want to go back. and 
sometimes i just want to escape it completely.