Sleeper 1972

I don't know what any of this is. I don't know why the North is so great, why being a Nordic child makes me wrap scarves around my skull. Makes me run through fields and drive downtown, sit on Church Street and drink coffee and pretend I know everyone passing by. This is the most beautiful thing; I mean I think I've truly, finally realised it all. Not all, but some. I am okay. I'm listening to Yo La Tengo, holding pretty, fragile things and hearts in my palm: taking care of myself (better care of myself), staying away from that brick hell of a building that is the Academy. There used to be ivy growing, climbing up its sides. They took it down, ripped it all off. I’m not glad. I miss it. Miss so much, can’t remember so much about everything.

I wonder what summer is like in other places? I only know what I know. Smile, damnit. I’m so grateful for so many things. The North, especially, now. This god-awful state, I can’t not feel something for it and for the time I’ve spent here. And I will be here one more year. Not a completely horrific thing as of now. We are northern people for a reason. Everyone used to spit out how everything happens for a reason; I sincerely cannot even begin to grasp how that can be true. Everything? Spinning, tripping on a compass and axis that points and pricks and lies -- it always lands somewhere meaningful? I mean it always, always manages to fix itself in a perfect little fit to accredit something for whatever has occurred? I want a religion so I can blame someone. I want to study religion. Religion’s such a weird thing for me. If nothing is sacred then so shall everything be, too. I think I’ve said that before. Rather sure I have.

But it is summer now. Classes are out, pretentious bfasta kids wandering as phantoms along the streets and parks and smoking their skulls out. I hate them and I love them. I overuse those two words so revoltingly much that I believe they may have, perhaps, lost all worth. Everything I hate I also love, and everything I love I clutch and keep so fully, so honestly that either I begin to despise it or it begins to make me sick. We aren't going to be sick and trite and tired forever. I don't know how long that's going to be. I hope you're all out of school, too, and I hope PHX isn't as far as I think it is.