monday february 18 2002    |    6:30 p.m.

i don't even know where to start, since i'm still suspended. that, and my internet connection might die any second.

well. valentine's night. patrick and tatiana had a fight the night before, so she and i decided to go out with a couple of other girls and just drink and have a good time. which we did. although somewhere in there i started having a little too good of a time, and somehow when we left ocean's, sex-shop-manager guy had my phone number.

whoa. hello. welcome to the impossibly absurd life of katpowah. i mean, i wish i were creative enough to make this shit up.

so now i have to come up with a gentle and relatively painless way to tell this guy not to call me again. he's a nice kid and all that, believe it or not, but... i really don't think i need to explain.

also at the end of the night we met up with patrick and he and i had an enormous, astronomically-proportioned fight. the kind you don't really bounce back from, that leaves a sick feeling in your stomach for days afterwards. i can't even count how many times i've said that before, but this one was really, really awful. so. i have valentine's day, and i hope mister hallmark, inc. is satisfied.

ok. and then there's the chronic chicagoboy issue. i should be restraining myself from liking him too much, right? i've hurtled blindly into enough brick walls to know better, right? heh. well. i'm debating whether to call him tonight or not. i'm wondering what he meant when he was making the rabid-bunny noises today and i told him i hate them and he suddenly said i remind him a lot of this friend he has in chicago. i said, is that a good thing or a bad thing? and he said, i don't know. um. ok. what?

we get along so fucking well, and i swear if this turns into one of those we're-amazing-friends-and-that's-it situations, i'm just going to track down morrissey and move in with him for the rest of the rest. that's why i'm thinking maybe it's wisest to nip the problem in the bud (by the bud? what kind of ridiculous expression is that? i'm forgetting all languages.) now before i get too nutty. i mean, the bunny voice is depraved, and still i kind of love it at the same time. see what i mean? bad news.

i don't know i don't know i don't know.

in less hectic news, i finally got jimmy's book of poems, the gatehouse heaven, and wow. although it contains the most halfassed foreword ever by charles wright (shame!) -- but the poems! god it's been so long since i got that feeling, adrenaline, elation, ink turning to music, all of it.

i want to write again! it's not that i'm blocked, i'm just dry. completely dry. no raw material to even begin to work with. it's scary. i hope jimmy taps into something. jimmy and carl. today during an early-morning lull at work i wrote out carl phillips' "somewhere holy" on the back of a reader's advantage subscription form just to see if i could still remember it, after months of not thinking. and there it was, just came pouring out like it's a part of me now. wow. good feeling.

tatiana and i went to a notions store after i got off work, and i got these stencils of letters and some glue, and i was so excited about them, and i left them in her car. sigh. oh well. i'm maybe starting to feel like making things again, which is heartening. and damnit i want my stencils! but i'll have to wait till she and patrick are done turning in the deposit to their new apartment. jesus, my friends are starting to get apartments and move in together! she how things are beginning to tear in little vein cracks? it's not necessarily bad, but it's definitely cracking.

and i still feel like running away.