First time around, wintering in Seattle

I found the journal from the Fall of 1996 and it is mind boggling so I am setting some of it down here.

October 29, 1996
halitosis and ding dongs.
Contrast is as strong as reality.
My own boring little slide show.
"It is okay to alter the facts to convey the point."
And suburbia wails I can't breathe but this goddamn cigarette smoke slurred breath icicles shit frozen into cement parking lots and I never learned but inflate the big city and the trees taught me to wail. Where am I?
[I'm not sure why these are out of order]
September 5, 1996
I am an orange. seed ...quite in the center...
I am an ant.
I am a bubble.
I am a bees wing.
My HEAD is a bubble.
My foot is a paintbrush.
My dance the painting.
A dragon fly wing
My words are orange leaves...they fall to the ground.
The rocket push off
crazy fire sputter long tail
thick fountain pressure earth... push and push and push and
strawberry red acid air spurts bottom...

giraffe.

September 10
Sometimes I imagine. Sometimes I can run. & it is good & it is beautiful & far & clear crisp motion. My legs stretch and my feet stretch. I blow. and its down this hall and out this street and real and mindless and good.
... If I could throw myself into a floor so lightly I come back up like in water. & my hands he can imagine my hands he can see them and I am not alone. He sees me and it is only good.
...
Do you hear me? Embrace means grab and hold for a long time--long after you let go.

September 11
Selling kisses ins't such a big deal. Not a bad idea. Bad deal, big idea. Everybody wants one. Follow that sucking heart of yours it just might scrape you off yourself adn push you into feeling some one else's lips. Not just yours. Flapping. Now that I'd like a kiss I notice other people's mouths. not in not out. drop out.
Ben sells drugs. Maybe not maybe he just buys them. whole pounds at a time. I eat too much Ice Cream. My drug of choice. Talking in my sleep. I had a dream
I said, "I feel sick. I don't want to go. & I really did feel sick. Sick like a headache in my stomach. Like a slinky is stuck in my esophagus.
...
Ever been so damn in love that you don't know if you ever weren't?
Ultimate control is determining reaction.
...
My children are going to have a graffiti artist for a father. Someone who is addicted to his art of breaking the law. Addicted to the law of breaking art is worse. Alcohol is worse than cigarettes. Cigarettes are worse than pot. Pot is worse than Ice Cream. Meat is Murder. Tee shirts Kill.
...
Sarai Comes home. She is my opposite and my counter part & I want everyone who knows me to know her. She is nicaraguense ahorita. Mi Corazon. Te. Ven aqui Gringa. Gringiuta. Saraita. Share my space. See my face. Share my house and live and work and silently make everything a little more how it was. Tell mom she is funny by laughing with me. Laugh and go and remember i am yours like your long brown hair. I am your baby sister and I love you love you and love you and I am sorry I don't say it. I know you know it. I know you love me.

[and this next bit is, I think, Quite Shocking:]
September 21
If I were me and you were too,
I'd have no one to kiss
and on those days I drag around,
I'd not have you to miss.
and then when you would need a hug
There'd be no one to give
and if I ran away from home
I'd have no place to live.
We'd dress alike and think the same
perhaps we'd only have one name
I would grow so tired of you
I'd often cry--but you would too
and in that case
who'd comfort who?

[the form is much too silly for the content and that is quite upsetting, if you think of how alone I must have been to have written it at all--High School is such a bizarre time and it seems obvious in retrospect: I had nothing to anchor any of it not a person or place, just myself. Ouch.]

"Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions."-JD Salinger

[next to that quote the lovely Andy Barker, my wild english teacher for that brief semester time at Shorecrest High School, wrote two exclamation marks, just so you know]

September 23
Stop talking to me! I don't need anyone to tell me what to do or ask me questions. Ask me how I feel and you'll probably receive a stupid lie answer anyway. "Fine, thank you." what I really think is: " I'm okay if I don't think about how nice it would be to press my chin against your shoulder. To feel your whole arm."

September 25
What if Isis had looked just awful in that big head piece? I think I would have. My neck isn't long enough.
"...we intellectuals are all screaming of a speech without words that utters the inexpressible and gives form to the formless." Herman Hesse.
Nate didn't know who Ray Bradbury is. Who's fault is that? Not mine-I helped.

September 29
I don't know what time it is because I left my wristwatch in the breast pocket of the shirt he wore yesterday. This is home. This beautiful home. Those apple trees dripping apples. one grape for every tear on those graping vines.
"Pretty rare when you get on a plane without any problems, eh?"
Yeah. Except that this time the problem is that I am catching this flight.

October 1
I know his whole body hurst and it makes mine hurt too like inside something hits against my collar bone and the pain vibrates up and down to you think its my heart breaking?

Some of us are those poor kids who come to suburbia to take advantage of the advantages. we know more and pain like they never will. ... I know the sad stories people sing in any song. I can feel. and when we find each other and recognize each other for who we are we feel safe in the danger we have known.

October 17
"Aren't you cold out here?"-some lady
yes, hold me.

November 4
Picasso invented collage is he lucky nothing existed?
Oh dramatic dog words of times pushed into normalcy.

December 2
Don't forget that those rags are not who you are
just tell people about your goals

December 10
I don't feel good.
My nose is a cork and my sinus is a series of streets in a traffic jam and my eyes are windows when someone opens the door on the airplane and the glass on the front of the overn when the cake is expanding. and my muscles are old newspaper rubber bands found in the gutter sprinkler spit.

January 3
Emma you are the sun and I am the sky and somtimes you just fill me up. Love, Abigail

January 6
I haven't any great stories to tell. No life lessons today. Instead I ponder the existence of the truth. Everybody makes his own.
I read your letter about crying often. ...But I cry and don't know how to stop. It isn't right. How does one know when to stop? You are a wise thing. Tell me.
It is far too warm in this room. My tummy rubs against rocks but I don't want to eat anything. You are tea and I am hot cocoa.

phew.