20 Marech 2004

I awoke to the sound of dogs howling this morning, and a persistant knocking on the door. Fucken hell, that's annoying. There is almost nothing worse than waking up to howling dogs. Except screaming children.

So, I lay in bed for a few minutes with the pillow over my head. And laying there, I had this... dyadream, sort of... You know those really profound daydreams that are damn near visionary? So, I saw myself, in my mind, in a parking garage -- a parking garage on State Street in downtown Binghamton, to be precise. A parking garage I know well. I saw myself on the bottom floor, looking through a backpack. The backpack wasn't mine; somebody had left it there, and I guess I was just rifling through the crap.

And all of a sudden, I remembered this exact thing ACTUALLY happening. I was hanging out with Aaron one night, trying to think of something to do. I don't know WHY we were in this parking garage, although I suspect it had something to do with Aaron wanting to have a party at a stupid club, and me insisting we do something else, and then both of us wandering aimlessly around until we discovered something to do...

So, we're in the basement of this parking garage, and Aaron yells, "Hey, Helena! Check this shit out!" And there, just lying there, were two backpacks. Not old grungy ones, like you see on the backs of homeless people, but nice new ones, clean and unblemished.

So, OF COURSE we had to go through them. I mean, who wouldn't?

I think, initially, we decided to see if the bags contained any money. If they did, we were going to take it and run off to Denny's with it. (Yeah, how lame is that? Whatever; we were broke...) But the bags didn't have any money in them, and anyway, I got the distinct impression that the owners of the backpacks were young runaways. Not TOO young; maybe seventeen or so... And I couldn't have stolen from them anyway, unless they had a couple grand in there or something. There were journals -- without any content of interest, unfortunately -- and a couple of cameras, and a few little knick-knacks and so forth... Nothing really fascinating. The only really fascinating thing about these bags was the fact that they were hidden on the basement floor of a parking garage in downtown Binghamton. In the middle of the night.

So there was this sense of mystery, and this sense of... I don't know... maybe a little bit of disorientation. You know, if you find a basball in your toilet and the bathroom window is smashed, you can sort of hypothesize about what's happened. But finding these backpacks was kind of like finding a baseball in your toilet -- and the window in the bathroom ISN'T smashed. Where the fuck had these bags come from? Who did they belong to? And what the hell were they doing THERE?

I lay in bed thinking about the backpacks for a couple of minutes and this kind of weird sparkle attached itself to my brain, compelling me to get the fuck up, put some clothes on, and go work on my book. It's been three months now, since I've touched it. Call it a casualty of my stupid decision to take a philosophy class with a bunch of insane smart people over winter quarter.

My final evaluation for that class was Friday afternoon. I got all my credits. Haven't lost one yet! Hell yeah! Now I'm just waiting for the verdict on my speech class... But anyway, winter quarter is officially over, and I DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING DEAL WITH IT ANYMORE. Yeah!!! It wasn't that BAD; it was just too much, and that's my own damned fault.

Next quarter, I'm doing some writing stuff, and some literature stuff, and a math class. The literature stuff will be cool; basically, I'm just going to read an absurd number of books I ought to have read by now. I've gotta have a few selections each of British literature, children's literature, and world literature... If anybody knows of anything in these categories that's absolutely remarkable, please do let me know...

Whatever. Presently, my brain is sort of fried... I'm gonna get something to eat and locate a place to chill out and write...

Love,
~Helena*