( just barely ) sunday january 20 2002    |    12:10 a.m.

the problem with keeping journals is that, years later, you can look back and get sentimental and starry-eyed about the months you spent obscenely happy before your relationship crashed messily on its head and went all to hell in the space of one day.

sigh. but i have to look back sometimes. i suppose to remind myself that it did happen, and for a while it was good, and that it's possible, and that i'm glad it's over. ( as much as i still miss him. but i say this only in parentheses. )

i've been cleaning my room tonight, with a little help from sebadoh and the archers of loaf. ( they get my butt moving and the all-purpose lysol spraying. ) of course now it looks messier than it did when i started, with empty boxes and filled trashbags taking up most of the precious remaining floor space, but i did get two drawers cleaned out -- space was made for books -- and my bookshelves rearranged and piles of paper sorted/trashed. and some laundry done. and the old journal unearthed. and the night is still young. why not? i have nothing to do tomorrow, and the house to myself, essentially, soon, once the parents go to sleep.

i dug a xerox from saskia's poetry class out of a box as i was cleaning. a quote.

The people who are my best friends all have that hunger. It's what we recognize in each other; and mostly we don't talk about it. Mostly we gossip, and complain, but what allows those conversations is the mutual recognition of an ideal.

Jorie Graham

and then on a corner on the other side of the paper, in my handwriting, but tiny,

i had my showdown with michael palmer + jorie graham + we all survived, w/ minor cuts + bruises.

i spend too much time missing things and people and too little time... i don't know, doing something about it.