"I think I might do it. I'm going to visit the Help pages."

After the drool, the blood falling onto my jacket, the gauze, the sulking, the pea-soup-on-the-face, the vicodin, and THE NAP:

Sometimes it really is the thought that counts!

When it's all over, I'll come back for another year

Quick coffee that turns to "Highway to Hell," milkshakes, and playlists -- quick visits that turn to "Facebook events" -- Voicemail 1: "Diana, I'm dying, save me!" Voicemail 2: "By the way, this is Caralyn" -- "Only you would get your wisdom teeth out and plan a road trip," and of course Beth and I would go to Albany -- images of "training" -- "Thank God you answered!" Rachel says -- the way we laugh when we laugh together --

Another year closes, and don't you know? Once again with the best of people.

falls on me

"Besides, there are so many right paths."

So it is. I feel this way. You don't really have to do this. But I will. They give you hell. I make my hell. Their voices rise and fall but I open myself to the gentle indifference of the world--I live as such.

I know, you know.

--

Hi, Angie!!! :-D

sprinkle cheese and noodles

"It'll be summer soon enough," my mom says as December fades.

Even so, I hate January, February, and parts of March.

Too much gray.

--

New Year's Resolutions (yes, actual goals this year!):
-get published.
-finish the tale of Nick and Pete.
-find an outlet for mi espanol.
-run ten miles without stopping.
-or more.

--

I'll be sore tomorrow for certain,
but it feels so right to fly.

"If words be a Tsuk,

let me stick the landing." - Mike Mc

"What do you think about Jesus?"

"Can I get his number?"

"Do you think she has the potential to be ____ Scher?"
"...I just put salsa on my hamburger."

"Oops."

Oh, friends, you truly have my soul!

la Nochebuena

At 2:30 in the morning, the duty phone warbles and wakes me. I answer, hang up, sit in the dark to orient myself for a moment.

I am here.

But before I move, before I can remember dreams, a thought whispers -- so very clear -- so genuine --

and it is something worth saving, I think, in paths frozen by ocean breeze and nights with blood run red, the one thing to turn thunder into mist.

a relaxed walk

This is how we should live right now: no words. Just the look. That look.

Fall (we laughed, we cried, we sang)

Shades of spring and summer (something about forgiveness)

pre/post-op

Before:

My stories will keep me safe.

After:

My stories will keep me safe. But I am allowed to smile.

How do you measure a year? (Winter/Spring)

A taste sensation

My mom is officially awesome: http://thedailydish.us/dessert/lucilles-lemony-sprinkles/#more-3131

about an hour or so ago,

something is trembling and I realize it's me.

Bist du bereit, es mit deinem Leben zu erkampfen?

Sprecher: Ihr Fremdlinge! was sucht oder fordert ihn von uns?
Tamino: Freundschaft und Liebe.
Sprecher: Bist du bereit, es mit deinem Leben zu erkampfen?
Tamino: Ja.

Speaker: Stranger, what do you seek or ask from us?
Tamino: Friendship and love.
Speaker: And are you prepared even if it costs your life?
Tamino: I am.

-The Magic Flute

"Oh, my God, a rubber (rubber) (rubber)"

I don't feel like being awake today.

Let it be, lady. Let it be.

decisions we make

A fantastic summation of life by the one and only Laurel Frega:

"Because for me, this is idiotic but it's like a car accident - you don't want to stare but you can't look away..."

phasing

This is one of those rare clearings in life where I take a seat, look back to last night, and wonder, What the heck HAPPENED?

From "I'm sorry if it's lame" to Beth on the phone before she arrived at my house to three in the morning at some rave-type event we didn't know existed, looking at each other in bewilderment and dancing anyway, Sarah yanking sketchy guys from Beth by screaming, "That's my girlfriend!" to driving home with no headlights for the sake of listening to our CD--

It seems that we always make this life work for us.

--

This is one of those clear times where I know exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing, and have a decent enough sense of what will come of it.

"It's like they kept you on a leash in Cortland, and then you went to Southampton," she said. Timing-wise it's a strange place to begin--I'm older and wiser by now, you'd think--but evidently there's something yet unstirred in me.

And it's all a phase. I know this. So it's easier to laugh.

The difference? I once knew it all wouldn't matter, so I never tried.

Now I try anyway, knowing that it will end just the same.

On the second glance of last night:

"We Are the Champions" and "A Whole New World" will forever hold new meaning.

As well as Irish brogues.

And I think that's what kept me buoyed throughout the whole conversation, which turned out well enough anyway. But a few moments I saw it turning sharply the wrong way.

Yet I knew that no matter what was said, I could walk into the next room. And they'd scream my name and laugh and hug me.

We've all made it to Friday once again

How many times have I literally screamed this week?

Oh, life!

I write.

Why?

Well, it began because I loved words, could leap over them faster than my classmates, quickly learned what it was to stack them like blocks and knock them down.
I was good at it, you see.

Now?

I write to scream. To keep myself from screaming. I sing when I write, I hit just the right pitches, don't you hear? My words are the gymnast I am and the gymnast I never can be, they elevate and I watch, they are nonsense and so goddamn clear.

I write about you. I write about what's not about you. You are sometimes what I write, but never why. Do you know who you are? Do you try to find yourself in my syntax? What would you think if I wrote you out, deleted you with a swift press of backspace?

I write to be tall, to be pretty, to be enraged, to remind myself of humor. I write to race, I write to obfuscate, I write to clarify and mystify you with simplicity. I want you to be bewildered and torn and thrown to your knees. I contradict. I make perfect sense. I slash cliches.

I can't write when I'm bleeding, only after the scar begins. I write with joy, write when I am joyous. Write to draw you into the dance with me, around and around until we fall down breathless.

self-motion

Today's had an interestingly perfect balance of positive versus negative.

There are some risks that I am no longer willing to take.

However, with the unsolicited chocolate cake from Joey and wonderfully random mix CD from a "secret snowflake" whose identity I'm fairly sure I know...

I shut the door before inertia gets the best of me.

I know you know I know

If you won't tell, they will.

She sits across the table from me. She has no idea but I have an inkling. And I calmly eat my clam sauce and pasta as she tells me what I ought to know.

I hesitated for the right reasons.

there was fire.

I laugh under lights but as I pull up my hood and shine my flashlight over the dark sidewalk - dark walls - the wind wails and sighs through cracks.

I am scared.

Stars and distant highway lights are the brightest illumination right now. Wind whips clouds from moon. The windmill sits dark. Silent. Blue Christmas lights hushed for now.

They tell me that the transformer blew, that they saw it. "It kept pulsing and then all of a sudden it exploded and there was fire," they say. People in Bridgehampton said it looked like a lightning strike.

I smile as they play cards in the dark - scream as the handle to the vacant room gives way and sprint up the stairs, leaving Deana bewildered but chasing me. We sit in the common area and the emergency lights extinguish. One. By. One.

Outside, wind warns.

And yet for light, for the electric pulse and collective sigh of relief - the return to just another night -

I will wait a moment longer.

For a storyteller

The broken light on the freeway
left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
but I haven't forgotten my way home

For you who is most likely "waaasteeeddd" right now in a manner that only an SBU main campus student can dream of, who giggles mischievously and answers simply, "You love me!" if I even begin to look at you crossly, who rides shotgun when I decide to traipse to 7-11 or the drive-thru to stave off boredom for another few minutes, who does not cringe when I sing, you who know that you are not meant for this sort of place and will leave sooner rather than later, but whom I am so glad to have met:

Happy birthday! :-)

"That's the sound of a shitshow."

Children named after presidents. Chicken and ranch. I thought tonight would be a quiet sort. No; I sing "Down With the Sickness," Lauren and I watch UPD lay down the law, we escape to the drive-thru before much else can happen.

Chris rambles. KC shakes her head. Faces and feet shuffle in and out, smiling brightly and stepping over me on the stairs. I hear the texting jingle of my phone upstairs. I know exactly who it is. Moments slide to 3:00 a.m., I quote Anchorman, Katie nearly cries with laughter, and I realize that we're all cracked up, all of us here, and there's something in us that loves it, loves this.

now running on or close to schedule

As we all recover from Lauren's 21st, I've banged out six pages about the return from Mexico (ironically, though I've used "fuck" as a verb in other tales, I'm too embarrassed to say "constipated" in this one), made cookies, offered some peer feedback, found the location of books that I haven't read for tonight's class but will pretend to have, and printed the directions to an address in Quogue, in whose quest I'm fairly certain I'll get lost in.

And I'm left wondering, Will I sleep tonight??

...Nah.

--
"To be honest, I'm not sure if I'll ever finish this story," I say, gesturing to the final half of the final chapter of Nick and Pete.

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," he replies.

Looks like we're in for it now, boys.

redemption in dreams

I've never met her but in my dream she has large, beautiful blue-green eyes. I almost stare.

But this is my opportunity. I stand in the parking lot tonight. The crowd has thinned. She's waiting for me.

I won't bring up what I really want to. Who am I to be entitled? What can I demand or conclude? But I have my first opening.

She looks at me. We are just about the same height in this dream.

"I'm really displeased that you brought my brother into this situation," I say coldly.

She starts to cry. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

That is all it takes.

the stories I find

"I asked Joe if he would give me a piggy-back ride and he at first said no. Then I just stopped walking and he was like 'fine' and I lept onto his back, stole his hat, put it on myself backwards and kept calling myself 'ghetto.'"

Rachel, you will always have my heart!

In the rain, the pavement shines like silver

Mind-altering stories.

--

I cannot get "Miracle" out of my mind.

--

--

Still there...

--

Dear Diana,

I'm sorry.

It's just that I can't stop being myself.

Sincerely,
the part of you that knows better