_________________
Friday
4 February 2000
3 57 pm pst [ much ]
I nearly ran to the computer when I woke up. I had written dozens of entries in my head last night and I told myself I would remember them this morning. Of course, I didn't. But I woke up with a hundred new ideas. I suppose I am in a creative mood.
I forced myself to have a bowl of cereal; I wind up feeling sick if I forget to eat breakfast. I was going to put on a CD, but I forgot in my haste to transfer my ideas to ones and zeroes. After eating, I made myself put on music, so now Sade's Greatest Hits are blasting.
I caught up on Catherine's Naked Eye. In her 1 February entry, she thanked a lot of people. For me she wrote, "Rachel - heh, you're in a whole class by yourself." It was all she had to say. As I e-mailed her this morning, I think we are exceedingly similar, we just made different choices (or should I say "we are in the middle of making different choices"?). I want to do a side-by-side comparison with her page of likes and dislikes, but I have to get permission and get my butt in gear and whatnot. I'll save that for later...
Several days ago, I mentioned having no cure for hiccups or onions that make me cry. Yen of A Perfect Circle [now Shinkansen] sent me onion advice. When I lived with Desirée, she would come home every week with a different technique, and they all failed. Once it was that you had to leave the roots attached, and once she tried holding an unlit match in her mouth. But now Yen sweeps in with brilliant advice: chill the onion. Stick it in the freeezer for a spell or run it under cold water. Sounds like something to try, no?
Many people wrote with advice on hiccups. To my utter surprise, one hundred percent of the people reported the exact same fail-safe advice: drink a cup of water from the opposite rim, bending your body over the glass. What can I say? It has to work!
And several people wrote in to respond to my entry about my great grandfather's gravestone, to let me know that the inscription means "Sergeant, 377 Bakery Company, Quartermaster Corps". One guy told me where to write for military records, so I feel like I am already on my way...
Isn't the internet an absolutely fantastic place?
* * *
I stayed up obscenely late last night. [She lowers her head and speaks softly as she admits she was awake until five am.] I found an old folder of writing I did, dated from 1993 to 1996. There was a weath of unfinished stories and forgotten ideas. A jotted down memory of some guy I met on the street on 3 Jun 1994, a list of Zilpha Keatly Snyder books I had read, and a story story titled WAR + DEATH: a children's story and dated 19 October 1993 all found their way jumbled together into this pile of my past. Highlights include the following...
- a full sheet of paper, only the corner of which is written on, with:
Beneath the trees,
two dusty lovers wooing
- this quote from a story detailing my first date with David [dated 20 March 1995]:
She ordered her favorite salad and he got a barbeque chicken pizza. He ordered bottled water and she got tap water. When he asked how she could drink that, she replied, "I can do lots of things," with an impish smile. He grinned back as the food was served.
- this opening from a three page failed attempt to start a diary [dated 22 October 1995]:
Sex, drugs, and school work. So this is what college is all about. I have been here two months and two days. I want to revise my initial statement. Sex and drugs are what college is all about and school is just the setting in which they take place. We are all here to learn, right? It is eight at night and I am here scribbling away in what I hope will become my diary. Seal is spewing some delicious lyrics in the background; I am nibbling on my non-dairy chocolate bar, huddling below my electric blanket in my closet of a dorm room here at the best public institution in the country.
- the beginning of a personal essay [dated 25 October 1995]:
All existence is based on opposites. You cannot know hot without knowing cold; to know good you must know evil. This contrast is what I base my interpretation of my life experiences on. I live my life to never regret anything. If you can gain something from whatever happens, it becomes a learning experience, not a regretted experience. I have felt pain. Do I wish I had not? Had I not known such deep pain I could not have felt such elated joy. How, if one has not experienced hatred, can that person feel love?
- the start of this letter, which made me laugh out loud [dated 12 December 1995, six days after my 18th birthday]:
Dear Benjamin,
I don't write unsent letters often, but I do have a few in my posession, always adressed to exes.
Funny to write you a letter that I'll never give you.- these excerpts from a list of words I didn't know from some book I read [I can't pin down the name of this book, though I have page numbers and short quotes (such as "Chateau Lafite to Gallo" and "sacristan dressed in surplice"); I often made lists of words I didn't know when I read a book and I often had the resolve to look up and write down the definitions (if you are inspired, try m-w.com or dictionary.com)...]
prie-dieu
Just for kicks I looked up two of them. Eiderdown is the down of the eider duck, used as stuffing for quilts and pillows, a quilt stuffed with the down of the eider duck, or a warm, napped fabric. An excrescence is an abnormal outgrowth or enlargement, such as a wart, a normal outgrowth, such as a fingernail or a beard, or a usually unwanted or unnecessary accretion: "Independent agencies were an excrescence on the Constitution" (Los Angeles Times).
insouciance
wimpled
pstulants
excrescences
cryptoflorescences
ottavo
salacious
eiderdown
clementines
consistorial
collusion
forswear
conniver
grisaille
carnelian
psalters
colophon
sacristy
prig
rostrum
phlogiston
portecochere
parquet
sisyphean
metopes
incunabula
miter
- this poem perhaps (I used to write so much poetry) [dated 16 November 1995]:
I scratch at the fabrics
wrapped around my frame
clinging
- this quote I love, from a poem I wrote entitled Barren Strawberry [dated 16 November 1995], in which I describe Berkeley as:
this place soaking in the vapors of its history
- this list of characters for lord-only-knows-what:
Marí -- Franch
Bernard -- shy
Jenning W. -- Japanese female karate champ.
Katherine -- new age
Betty -- baby
Billy Joe -- country western
Nancy -- cat
Ohjo2n -- robot
Calvin -- hyper yoga freak
Lidia -- beautiful, sexy
Bernice -- English maid
Alexandria -- anorexic ballerina
- this list of declarations, written in my best cursive [dated 30 November 1995]:
I will make a demand
I will get what I deserve.
I will not settle for second best.
I will not put myself second.
I will not consider myself lesser.
I will do what is right.
I will do what is best.
I will follow my heart.
I will consult with my mind.
I will learn.
I will have strength.
I will resist.
I will hold out.
I will be happy.
I will be honest.
I will triumph.
* * *
I don't know how marriage works. My own parents divorced when I was around eight, and there was much fighting and "let's not do this in front of the children" before that. My maternal grandmother was dead, and my paternal grandparents were divorced. My grandmother had remarried long beofre I was born, but her husband was not a warm man and I never saw them embrace or kiss. They are both dead now.
At least half of my friends' parents were divorced. Half of the remaining married couples had a father who was never home. He would be at work when I would go over so I would never see how the parents interacted.
The couples who were still together took their fights in the other room when their children had friend's over, or saved their disputed until after I had been sent home. Some couples stayed in seperate parts of the house. And for those that kept their fights behind closed doors, they all too kept their affection. I can't remember any of my friend's parents hugging, holding each other, giving a long kiss, or holding hands. I never say anything more that a "I'm running out the door" or "I just got home from work" peck on the cheek.
I have now spent enough time with Matthew's family that I am one of the kids. I am shocked to watch his parents have small fights. Is argueing a normal part of marriage? I never knew. I have no idea how it is supposed to be. I suppose I could have believed that before I started dating Matthew, but we have disputes so infrequently that I could never imagine that changing with marriage. I vow to give my husband deep kisses and long hugs in front of my children.
* * *
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