not so terrible.
Actually, did you know I have another assignment? Not for school, not that anymore, and not as part of the job I'm keeping to keep my room until Fall Break, either. No. I'm meant to make lists of things for which I am grateful, or things that make me happy-- well. Lists and I have always liked one another.
1. Kenzy was playing this song in the office the other day, and while I suspect it might be considered an embarrassing song to love, I'm very, very fond of it right now. Unabashed in my fondness.
2. Kenzy was also wearing shiny, light blue parachute pants that day; they kept threatening to fall off, and she'd absentmindedly yank them back up her hips with her left hand while typing with her right.
3. I get letters, still. I get letters that smell like the people they're from.
4. It took me about two days to read Sputnik Sweetheart, and I liked it a lot. I may need a few days to form a more settled opinion than that, but...I liked it a lot! It was a very comforting book for me to become involved with right now. Maybe that sounds odd, considering that its main themes are alienation and thwarted desire.
5. I get invited to sit at tables already spilling over with boisterous students when I eat in the cafeteria, even though I tend to be tense and taciturn and generally not a sparkling addition to most conversations.
6. Feral cats live in the blackberry bushes. They aren't scrawny or pathetic. They just aren't tame. Their claws are sharp. They run quietly and have kittens on empty back porches.
7. Someone told me I look good in red. Someone else told me I was a pretty good singer. Someone else told me I wasn't quite the worst banjo player they'd ever heard. Of course, two of these people were drunk.
8. I met Fern in town today and she seemed happy, confident, purposeful. I think she's one of the leaders in her activist organization now, which is quite incredible considering her age and the amount of time she's been involved with them. Her clothes had mud on them. She was with some skinny, weatherbeaten dude who looked around forty; I try not to be uptight about age differences in adult romantic relationships, but I was still relieved to realize that he was another organization leader or spokesperson, and (probably) not her lover. They were both wearing enormous knapsacks and carrying sturdy wooden walking sticks. Going on a journey.
9. At eight or nine PM, lately, I like to go outside and smoke a cigarette by the fire that someone's usually started near the picnic tables in the middle of our dormitory-lined cul-de-sac. It clears my mind up something wonderful. The stars seem more friendly, then; far away, yes, but not aloof, never austere. I like the way the world gets simpler in lousy light.