The last ten secrets before I left the sunshine state:

I will just pretend that nothing ever happend. I like to run away it's good exercise.
I don't like getting disappointed. I don't like to lose control. I love to lose control.

My backyard is beautiful, it is the portal to the calm wild.

It's getting late in the game. My stomach knots up. I hate change. I love change.
I love.
The future freaks me out. I want to play the trumpet, badly. I was going to wait until I was 30 to pick it up, sort of as a reminder to keep trying new things. But I don't want to wait.

I want to go swimming. I want to camp under cold damp stars. I want to make things with my hands for people I love. I want to love people I hate. I need to banish insecurities because they get in the way of living. I don't want to worry. I worry. I want to be an amazing listener.

Sometimes I'm too ideal for my own good. Who said that?
I expected to be there in between the lines, but I wasn't. Not even a little bit. I made it a rule not to look and then I did. I did and I didn't like what I saw. Not true. Constant uncaring contradiction. I'm sloppy about my predictions. Maybe it's not idealism, or not in that case ... it is a case of mistaken identity. My heart is a blind optimist and my head is a perpetual pessimist. I'm such a kid.

200 people living out in West Virginia have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within ya'

Two things on writing that may make sense (sorta)
1) I skipped out on the Carl Sandburg/Spoon River Creative writing festival I placed in. I mean I still won, but I didn't go and read at it. I spent time with The Books and best friend in the whole world instead. I'm still too nervous about my work and new places. That would have been my first reading outside of Bloomington/Normal. I'm lame, but so thankful they chose my work. What an honor.
2) I wrote a poem on the train into Chicago it's disturbing. It was based on a phrase overheard in transit, and the dilapidated towns I passed through:

Abby Campmeyer put your shirt down.
I want to see your doll.
Show me your doll
Show me your doll
Show me your doll
Show ME your doll
Show me YOUR doll.
Grandma says show
Grandma says doll
Grandma says 1976
Mustang Convertible
Grandpa says you been
taught better
old tractor
rusty trailer
Pa says sit down
Pa says sit down
Abby Campmeyer
Pa say sit down
git gone
girl takes too damn long
Pa say to ma
time for bed
Goodnight Abby Campmeyer
now you're dead.

Don't ask I don't know. I hear two kinds of music playing in the background: Impending doom music, and synthesized sunshine music. Babe, I wonder which one is going to win out?

One number, two letters ...

Nine Hours

and I couldn't begin to explain what my Monday was like on a Thursday. I can try to understand, but the more I try to do that the less everything else makes sense. But I am compelled to record these abstract notions for archival purposes.

Another first in the life of the last unicorn. It was the most lovely and exhausting night of time. I didn't feel rebellious. For the first time I could feel what I was made out of. That is an inexplicable feeling, I don't even understand. I experienced utter pain, sorrow, and joy in the span of a night (probably more like an hour). I got lost in familiar territory. I saw someone in a very specific way for the very first time, full well knowing it may be the last time I'd see them in that manner ever again.

Is there really a there, there? A night of contradictions left me closer to and further away from people I care dearly about. The darks were darker and the lights lighter. I spent an entire hour on the threshold between tears and laughter. I became the child and and I grew as an adult.

All in all a peculiar and beautiful night that I wouldn't take back for a pillion dollars.

Now I leave you with this, a fan favorite that helps sum up my experience...

... Bizarre and lovely, tu vuo' fa' L'Americano!

On Growing Old ...

I'm just not very good at it. As the years pass I feel as though I'm getting younger. On each birthday my skin gets pinker and I have less and less figured out about the world.

I'm mostly okay with that. Birthdays are funny. A weird custom controlled by numbers. I've never been too fond of numbers or people making a fuss over me. Must be my middle child syndrome. Every birthday since I can remember always starts out as if it's going to be completely awful, and then like magic everything falls into place. This year was no exception to the rule.

The weekend held surprise visits, decadent food, dance parties, copious amounts of liquor, and sunshine! I love my people. I love them a lot. I had a big smile plastered on my face for the entire weekend. It was lovely. I suppose it's all these people that are keeping me so damn young.

It will be tough facing the week after such a lovely and carefree weekend, but I am all grown up now (yeah right) so I think I can manage. I guess I should start cleaning my room now ...

Hot Damn!

Such a funny day. Went to classes.
THEN an epic nap, where I dreamt that three of my teeth came out.
I mean sheesh, it woke me up. I never dream, and certainly not about weird shit like that.
I had a funny feeling then I reached into my mouth and felt two lose. I pulled them out and one more came with it. In my dream I completely freaked out, and then woke up. I guess that's what happens when you sleep for three hours mid-day.
Apparently lots of people have the "teeth coming out" dream.
Dreaming is just bizarre, I'm glad I can only remember mine in the day time. Otherwise I would get even less sleep at night then at current.

anywho.

The highlight of my day, was whenI got to spend a little time with nature. Hot damn. I'm perpetually impressed by how dynamic and beautiful spring can be. I feel like I've never seen so many shades of green in my entire life. I saw the most perfect back yard of time. It looked like a magical forest. Someday I want to have a magical forest backyard.

I also saw a woman come this close [tiny finger gesture] to hitting a squirrel on her bike. Squirrels are crazy little beasts. I'm convinced they all have death wishes. Ahhh yes, I needed the nature, sun/dirt/air, to center myself. I also needed the time to tire myself out pyshically instead of mentally. It helped me to take a step back and feel like, yes, everything will be okay.

While it may be true that everything won't be okay, when the sun shined on my face and I got mud on my arm I really felt like everything will work out how it's supposed to (which is inevitably in my favor). What can I say, nature makes me an optimist. mmmmm!

It's been a long long while

Busy. That's what I am. Trying to graduate. Oh me oh my. It's a long hard trial. Not really in the academic sense, but in the Last Unicorn on her own trying to balance 8,722 things at once. I never claimed to be a good multi-tasker. I need to take some time out and think long and hard about this "future" thing, but I'm way to busy with the present.

So future is a constant flutter in the back of my mind. Future flutter get the hell out you're crowding my current right said flow. And gee I'm not sure how I feel about all this static from one day to the next. I know what I want to be doing, but timeouts are unachievable at this junction.

Past couple of weeks have been some of the most in some sectors and some of the worst in others.

Where is my audio visual recorder where I can speak softly and say loudly these are the college years this is what I see, this is what I feel, this is who I know with the intimacy of a gardner and his precious bulb. I'm no good without words, and so much I've wanted to record for preservation.

I feel good about what's going on, but tired oh I'm so tired. The pie chart cannot be divided equally they're not enough calming colors to attach to each and every thing that I must devote time time time and other extraneous and lesser things to.

This I know now, le sigh, preserved.

woke again at an unreasonable time. melookingatyoulookingatme.

We smiled. Oh we smiled, decided six am was a good time to make
waves out of blankets. The waters were touchy choppy grabby and uncharted.

I find myself trying to set a course, but always just letting the sails take us there.

For once I had no galley of stashed words. For once I wasn't worried about what came before or
what's coming after no past no prefect no last glacial maximum. Anchors,

and on that day I hit the snooze alarm gingerly over fifty times.

Quality Revenge At Last

Click on the link "Quality Revenge At Last" for an absolutely impressive speech by author and environmental activist, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has encouraged the advancement and development of several political and environmental issues. He just spoke at my school and impressed the hell out of me. He called Americans the least informed most entertained culture in the world...FACT!
Anyway, tonight I can't sleep.

I completely forgot that Super Grass had like a top hit, what a bunch of goofs. On good days, this is exactly what my life is colored like. This song makes me feel pretty good.

My writing has been pretty funny lately. NOT funny ha ha. Poetry angry, prose sad. I'm writing a story about an awfully sad man, it kind of convinces me that I'm sad. I'm not. I have a lot to be happy about these days. But I suppose there are always things to be sad about.

Actually last week I had a good hard cry. Damn they feel good. I hadn't cried so hard in a long time. Everything seems clearer after I have a nice sob fest. I think physicians should prescribe good hard crys to people. You can start crying about one thing and then it just opens the flood gates for everything else that has been riding on your back. Comparable to a good laugh, but laughing serves a different kind of cathartic function.

At one point in my life I couldn't cry. Being really sad without crying may be one of the worst feelings ever. It's like being stuck in a desert where the oasis is in plain site, but no matter how much you walk you never quite get to it.

Anyway the character in my story isn't actually that sad, he's just lonely, I suppose that makes me sad for him. I want to give him a happy ending. I'm getting quite attached to him, but I don't think it would do his story justice to just throw him a sweet pastel ending. In terms of my poetry, as long as I am surrounded by construction on all four sides, I will be an angry poet. I need my annoyance and frustration to manifest itself somewhere...

and maybe things are getting back to normal domestically.
I hope I hope I hope.

all the usual hearts to you

One month baby

I am the best procrastinator that ever lived. I wish I could get my doctorate in procrastination and silliness. I like spring. My spring is chocalate and good books and storm clouds. But I wish I didn't have to attend classes and meet the disapproving glares of disappointed professors. OH me I'm too unfocused for the academic world!

Send good thoughts out to me concerning a certain not for profit organization!!!!! And plant a Victory garden. Oh yeah speaking of I had a dream last night that I worked for the University Commune ... p.s. my school doesn't have a University Commune. But if it did I would grow poppies and then fall asleep in the field like Dorothy in Wizard of OZ! Then everyone in the commune would probably kick me out for not growing enough vegetables and not rolling up my hammock ...

Best Saturday Ever

Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is just perfect. A lazy day was exactly what I needed.
Now I promise I will buckle down and write like a good little girl, and attend mathematics like a good little girl (maybe).

Had a reading the other day for Women's History month and I think it was perhaps my best yet. Though my heart still feels as though it's going to drop out of my uterus everytime I step up to the microphone, I think it's getting a little bit easier, I hope I'm doing a little bit better.

I do believe that despite all the movement in the background I can achieve happiness. For those who are near and dear but a little lost, I'll continue to think positive thoughts and hope you come out on the other side in the best place possible.

it is warm and windy and rainy ... just how I like it. Alas I cannot believe it is April already.