Standing on the sand as if it were stone

Here's my version of the debates tonight. For your information, i did not cry with anger and/or despair:

Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom, enemy.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, and if'n I done that is no matter. You change your mind all the time
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, freedom, enemy, alliances, Sept. 10th, what kind of message.
Kerry: You sleazy lying sonofabitch, why don't you just go back to Texas and shove a fencepost up your butt. (okay, that was just wishful thinking).

But on a happier note. My dreams have now come true. Do you remember hearing those stories about the make-a-wish foundations where terminally ill children got to meet celebrities? Well, I always knew that if I were ever terminally ill and got any wish in the world, it would be to meet barbara kingsolver. Okay, so really I didn't meet her. I saw John Sayles too, and although I love his work and his spirit, it was nothing like seeing Barbara. Afterwards, I stood not three feet from her. our hands might have even touched. She signed my Small Wonder. I also gave her a letter that I spent the better part of two days writing (when I should have been writing my paper). it's a good thing I had the letter, because I forgot how to speak English when a actually went to talk to her. I think the words "this" "note" and "thank you" came out sounding a bit like my native tongue. She smile and said thank you back, and then she waved as I packed up all my stuff and headed out the door.
The talk itself was fine, but not really informative in that anything new was expressed that had not been expressed in their work. I just couldn't take my eyes off her. She glowed. Don't get me for blasphemy here: But imagine Jesus walking across a stage and sitting down in a chair and staying there for two hours, it wouldn't really matter what he was saying...it's jesus, and he's sitting in a chair ten feet away. Barbara Kingsolver isn't jesus (although i do count her as one of my own personal deities in my scewed version of Pagan-Christianity where you can have a big God and smaller earthly ones), but you can imagine my reaction.
And also I feel very proud of myself having mastered the city enough to be able to find my way from Lexington and 42nd to Park on 34th all on my very own...and at night too. Plus I didn't get mugged, and I didn't get murdered, and that is always a good thing. Cities confuse me, and they make irritable, and they scare me, and they give me a headache, but other than that, I really like going to NY. If I were more confident I might could function better and be happier in NY. I would never want to live there though, or at least I can't see myself living there. I've been thinking of places to settle down one day, if I decide to remain an American. And I like the northeast, but something still doesn't feel right to me. The west doesn't feel right, although perhaps if I live in a city center and not in suburbia it would feel different, and more an more, I see myself moving back down south, and for the first time the idea doesn't repulse me. I read this article in Glamour or somthing called "Where's my village?" and I want my children to have a village. I want my children to know their grandparents and really truly consider them second parents. I want them to grow up around trees and mountains and unpolluted water. You can't swim in any of the lakes or streams around here because they are polluted, and they make you feel greasy. More and more, I keep thinking about Asheville.
Must go catch the shuttle more later....

I was just a little girl when your hand brushed by my, and I will be an old woman happy to have spent my whole life with one man

One man, one town is all I need. I wrote a sappy love song last night that you may hear very soon on the country music radio.

It's called We Made


Verse 1
They’ve built a shopping mall
On the hill where once we parked,
Spinning dreams into the stars
And stealing kisses in the dark.
I know the way the dirt felt
Under the mark of our bare feet,
As we danced around your truck
Without a word to speak
And that mall, it pays the bills,
And that mall, it keeps us still,
But it won’t ever be enough to bring us back to that hill

Chorus
Where we found a new little soul,
Where we found a new pair of wings,
Where I knew I’d spend my whole life
Harboring this little precious thing
We made

Verse 2
You didn’t have a dime
And my folks didn’t approve,
As we strode up to that alter,
And swore we’d never move.
So you took a job in milltown
And I went to sewing clothes
Then meet back in our little house
And this life that we chose
And this house, it’s made of stone
And this house, it’s made of bone
And of all the tears and love it took to make this house a home

Chorus

Verse 3
Fifteen years go by,
And this one will be our last.
You hold my hand and pray
That we are still up to the task.
She’s got my big brown eyes,
Like all our children do,
But her grin we’ve never seen before
And she’s looking at you.
And this babe, is all we need
And this love, is all we seed
And in her eyes we see our own and all the ways they’ve seen

Chorus

Bridge
In the handicapped space
On that ground where once we kissed
I take your hand and cry
For this place, our genesis

Chorus

Ha! I think I am just very premenstrual. Today at nursery school I had to leave the room when Jacob's mom had to leave. She said goodbye and he started screaming and I started crying. I mean, geez! Poor Jane didn't know what to think. I always do that when I'm about to start my period. I cry at the commercials on TV with puppies. Like yesterday in the campus center i saw a national tudoring service comercial, and this boy's parents get him tutored, and low and behold a few months later he hands his mom his report card and she puts her hand on her heart and smiles proudly at him, and I just burst out into tears.
Alright...I'm off to get mouse traps, and later tonight I'm going to a old-time music jam.

Love is a Tanglewood Tree

Hmmm. Before I forget about it....I had two very disturbing dreams last night. I dreamed that I was back home for a holiday and Mama and Daddy were in the final stages of a divorce, but I didn't understand it because they were acting completely normal, and yet I knew that they didn't love eachother anymore. In my dream I cried and cried, just completely heartbroken, and Leah was there telling me that I should be happy for them, but I told her that she didn't understand. And I cried more, and I kicked and screamed and threw things but no one would listen and no one would talk to me. And as I cried for my parents I realized, in the dream, that I was actually crying for Anna because I would never see her again. And then I woke up. It was about 4 am. Then I had another dream in the early morning which came from this really violent movie I saw yesterday called Leon which was about the mob in NY. It was a game, and there were two sides and we were fighting eachother...really fighting. We lined up, and everyone had guns and knives, and then I realized that I didn't have a knife, and I was captured by this boy I knew, and I begged him to let me get my gun to make things fair, and he said "no way, not after the way you treated my people. I will show no mercy." So then I asked if I could go to the bathroom, because I remembered that there was a butcher knife in the bathroom. He lets me into the bathroom, but it really isn't a bathroom just a toilet and he watches me, and somehow I sneak the knife into my hand, and then I stand up and stab him. And in my dream, I could feel the knife in him. And I was so scared because he started laughing and said, ooo that doesn't hurt, and so I stabbed him again, and he fell. And I started crying because I had killed someone, but then I stopped crying because I wasn't sad that he was dead, but I knew I would have time to be ashamed later. But I kept thinking about it as people got killed left and right around me, and the dream ended with me alone in a room with two of the enemy around the corner, and I knew that I was going to die because they had guns and all I had was a knife. And then the dream ended with me thinking that I had a mouse in my hair. Or maybe there really was a mouse in my hair, but I think it was just my fan, blowing my hair around.

Speaking of the mouse, I'm sorry, but he's gonna have to go. I think part of my nightmare was fighting with my conscience over deciding to take action against that mouse. But I am firm in my resolve. I cannot cohabit with mice. I'm going to get some no-see traps at the hardware store on Wed. What if someone wanted to kill me, just because I was small and dirty and hungry and scuttly? Then again what if someone wanted to kill me just because I tasted good?

Eeek!

There is a mouse in my room. He keeps making himself seen, which I would rather him not do. If he's going to be there, better he just scuttle around under the floorboards. What's worse is that he is actually quite sweet looking. So I hate to do this, but I'm going to go get some mousetraps, preferably those little black box kinds. Or maybe I'll just lock the cats in my room until they have had ample time to dispose of the mice. I'm just not about to share my living space with anyone...mice or otherwise.
In other news, the coldness has come. I did finally get my window shut, so I can stop worrying about dying of pneumonia with icicles coming out my nose come December.
I had a good music week. Maggie is going to start playing banjo with us. She follows really well, and it gives us a really nice sound. She's abig Gillian Welch, and Dave Carter/Tracy Grammar, Lucinda Williams Fan, so we can jam on a lot of my favorites. I'm thinking in a few Sundays we can take ourselves to the Black Swan and blow them away.
Alright, time for a nap before a night out.

From a Walking Point of View

I'm so unbelievably tired, and I haven't even gotten to the paper writing part of the semester. From 3pm to 1am with a fifteen minute creak for instant mashed potatoes and green beans, I read 300 pages of an super dense novel (which turned out to be worth the strife) and 100 pages of a history called The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. If you think the title is impressive, try reading the damn thing. So many foreign names, so many battles, so many deaths, so much reading. It is my own fault in ways. I have penciled in too much time for my social life and not enough time for my reading life. I have, however, managed to barely complete my reading assignments for Cultural Anth. and US Lit 3, as well as writing a decent song under very odd circumstances. I am resigned to my songwriting class, although I admit the desire to rush right to the registrar and drop it as soon as I heard that all songs were cowritten. But I have succomb to the idea that maybe my professor is trying to teach me something about the process of songwriting that I didn't know before. My American Folk music and dance class, on the other hand, is the highlight of my week. Bill is a real character with little direction but much heart. He ate dinner with Leah and me last week, and I actually had a real substintave conversation with him about my work with Michele Dominy (speaking of Michele Dominy--seems as if she isn't terribly well liked by a mafority of the faculty here) where I actually had to stand up on the spot for why I thought New Zealand post-colonialism had a lesson to teach us that couldn't be found elsewhere. Mostly the conversation made me realize that I have yet to discover that reason in a pure form.
Suffice to say that I am yet again challenged and happy (despite my complaints) for my exhaustion. Better to be run ragged, than not run at all.
News on kittens....we have two now. Cassidy and DePuis. Cassidy is the most enjoyable, while DePuis (having only one eye) is a bit of a mental case.

The Cat Came Back!

I'm getting a kitten! I have requested a girl, but they haven't been sexed yet. We may have two kittens if Shana gets one two, but I think that is better anyway because then they can keep eachother company and get into mischeif together. If I happen to get a boy, I'll name him Atticus. Names on my list for a girl kitty: Polly, Sidda, Mavis, Pearl, Lusa, Adah, Halia, May, Iris, Muriel, or Edith. The kitten won't be ready until mid-October. She will be an expert mice killer.
In other news:
1) I have started classes. My independent study is kicking my ass already. I don't think Michele knows that I do in fact have other classes. Michele fascinates me as a person, and I respect her so much as an anthropologist. She had the courage to take sides with Pakeha New Zealanders in a land renewal act between the Ngai Tahu and the pastoral Pakeha of the South Island Highlands, which is an incredibly unpopular stance to take in New Zealand in the post-colonial world. What's more, not only did she write polemic after polemic on this issue, but she appeared as an expert witness in front of the Waitangi Tribunal hearings. She was, of course, slammed in the US and Europe for her stance, and I don't understand why. Liberals don't even think twice about their judgement on Palestine. The year is 1946. Who has more claim to the promised land? The jewish people claim it on the grounds of spiritual identity, something they claim to have been denied in Europe. The Palestinians claim it on the grounds that they have been living and raising families in it for the past 500 years, so that it has become their national identity. Liberals aggree upon the latter. The year is 1946. Who has more claim to the South Island High Country? Maori's who have never inhabited this unfarmable land, but claim it as a part of their spiritual mahinga kai. Or white pastoral stationmen, indigenous New Zealanders, who have been raising sheep there for the last 300 years. Anyway, something to think about.