Confined To Geometric Spaces

I hear, "Are you shivering again?" And I know that it's getting worse.

And it doesn't surprise me when my memory shoots to a time when the very sick man lived on our couch.

The very sick man.

The very sick man with the very taboo-ed disease.

The very sick man with AIDs.

And I can see clearly his long, pale, doughy feet sticking from underneath the soft quilt.

His feet were almost always crossed: his left over his right.

The very sick man had very clean feet. Almost holy in appearance.

"Are you shivering again? Do you need another blanket?" It was asked in July. When the temperature reached a shocking 104 before three in the afternoon.

Everything was unnatural.

Like solid ice cubes in hot tea (the tea increasingly hotter, the ice cubes growing colder yet.)

Everything was unnatural.

He didn't breathe when he slept. I never wanted to take in his medicines... I never wanted to be the one to find him dead.

And isn't it funny that my mother never wanted to either, and so she sent me in.

And isn't it funny that my father never wanted to find him dead FIRST, so he sent my mother, who sent me.

And before my father? No one.

I never found him dead. He was a very convincing liar. I never found him dead. But I remember hearing the low sobbing of his father... when his father found him dead.

I couldn't escape it.

And yet I still can not escape it.

The door in the hallway wheezes open and my mother walks into the closet, to our rickety wardrobe and pulls out a quilt. She approaches my father and asks, "Are you shivering? I brought this blanket."


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Divinely yours,
BETH

Personal Observations.


I can see the moon peeking throught the narrow spaces between the shades.

His voice is like coffee re-warmed in the summer sunlight.

Memories from Ashland are golden pills.

LSD/Acid.

Lonely children and their vulnerability.

Hare Krishna, Dean of Admissions, I found you near my material possessions.

And are trees really that unknowing?

I'd scream, I'd scream, I'd let them know what you'd done.

Car doors don't open by themselves.

The broken bridge across the creek on my grandfather's property.

Billie Holiday in Maya's living room, on Maya's couch, speaking with Maya's son.

The art of knowing one's self completely.

The art of ignoring one's self completely.

The art of having no compassion.

Bathing infront of others.

Melting skin.

Sincerely, thank you.

The teacher who told me I wasn't a lady didn't realize that meant nothing. I was a freshman... what he said had little impact. Though I remember vividly his white reebok tennis shoes and his hatred for young men wearing shirts that revealed their arm muscles. Only after he died a year later did I remember the tiny quirks that he brought along.

My hair: a goddess unto itself.

Free love is not about sex anymore. Free love is about the openness, the variety, the breaking of society's standards on relationships. Broadening our scope. Don't ruin a good thing.

If you speak with an angle, you'll never live your life correctly. You'll always hear destructive criticism, you'll never open up to the public.

Gather your crops. The snow will come early this year. And we need the money.

Please, consider the situation. Realize that we aren't anything but superficial gasps and angelic moans.

The seals have come to shore.

Welcome our boys home.

They spat on the vetrens in airports.

How do we idealize what we don't know? What we didn't live through?

How do you call yourself poetic?

It's superficial poetry.

And it's blasphemous.

------------------%

Divinely yours,
BETH

Senior, Senior Blues.

I can't believe how exhausted I am, and honestly... I haven't done much lately.

I shifted my physics grade: A--D--C.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. How quickly the year has gone! It seems like it should be mid-october. I wonder what the rush is.

Alex has given me a link to a site with information on VCU. It sounds like a possible school after two years at the community college. Though I feel tethered to my home and content with it, I have no idea how I'll feel about moving out when I'm a junior. Right now it's a scarey thought, though I consider it when I'm frustrated.

I wrote a lot tonight. Mostly while I was on the phone with my brother. Then I wrote a poem about black holes.
"You're silly! You can't write poetry about black holes!" Shelly says.

I'll show her. I did show her. Heh.

I don't need a job. I don't need a life. I want to live in a cardboard box that falls over after a downpour. I love smelling like mildew and wet creatures. I have no need for education. What is knowledge, anyway? I think there is some confusion here, -- the point is that I'm done.

No more physics and bottomless black holes.

Divinely yours,
BETH

Slithering Madness.

Thank you, Mel, for my lava lamp. So aptly named, Lavy.

And now I have known, and continue to know, the complete pleasures of the ooey-goo movements. And I have also known the passing of time in large intervals while I stare. (Hours. Literally.)

Good thing I've been sick this weekend and don't have much to do.

Mm, breakfast club tomorrow. Basically I'm picking everyone up and bringing them home for breakfast and a hangout.

The weather outside is positively delightful. Cold and drippy. I enjoy the autumn. I also enjoy the smell that the heater puts out after not being used for a while.

I'm going to go sit in the tub for a while. Then jump in bed and sleep until 7:30 in the morning when I'll jump back out and back into the bath tub.

And it has finally hit me that my night is the same backwards and forwards. Like the name Hannah. Whatever the term may be.

heh.

Exhaustion.

Divinely yours,
BETH

Censor Strips.

Hung out with Melanie tonight. Drank coffee drinks and laughed, talked about current events and other fancy stuff.

There were ponies, goats and a small cow. We touched them. They made noises, the stereotypical, "Moo" "Neyy" "Bahh". It was sweetly familiar.

I have my work done early.
I've realized I'm just surfing through this physics class. I have no idea what we're doing. And couldn't repeat anything back to the teacher.
"Beth, tell me what happened in Chapter 5."
"I went out for coffee and saw him."

I slept this afternoon. Harder than usual, but I dreamt so I figure I didn't sleep as hard as I thought.

I had strange dreams. They included random people I saw walk by my class rooms and lockers full of drugs.

I think I might have been buying prom dresses from the high school.

But mostly I think that I woke up too fast and ate too many nachos with hot salsa. My stomach HATES me. Which is unsettling because I love it so much.

And then there are the people who don't take life at all.
And they mock AIDs. But I've seen people die from AIDs. I see them dying right now. And I know it's not a joke. These kids haven't seen this. They don't even know what it really does. This disease is behind a filmy curtain. They can make out the big bold letters but have no idea what color or how bright it really is. And honestly, they don't care to move the curtain and find out.

It's just the truth. And I'll tell it.

Divinely yours,
BETH

Green Blinking.


Slowly slipping into a new mindset,
It's autumn again, I see
It will be the same as always.

Folks coming to see the house tomorrow. I can't stop it. I hope to God they don't want to buy it. Thinking about selling the house, I remembered my tree--and somehow I had it in my mind, in the back of my head, that I'd be able to take my tree with me. But I can't. And the truth is this: even though he and I are good friends, he's been here for over a hundred years. It would be inconsiderate to uproot his old soul and move him.

But I want to.
My insensitivity.
I'm the youngest.
I'll blame that.

And this is frightening. The fact that once, not so long ago, I would have been delighted to just pack and move. But now... so many things are in this house. And sixth grade to senior year... there are too many memories.

Too many to count.
And I can tell them as if they happened at dinner, tonight.

But now I look to my right. At the closet door that connects this room and my parents room (the room my brother lived in before he moved out, that I moved into after him)... and there are tick marks. Two sets of five. Ten. They come from the time when my parents lived in this room. Their bed was infront of the closet doors. Everytime my mother scared my father and he jumped and screamed she'd award herself another tick mark.

And somewhere behind the wall paper in my room, there is a small drawing on the old, led paint. And it will be there forever.

I just don't want to leave.
Not yet.

On the plus side, we could end up in a really amazing apartment.

Homecoming=last night. Amazing. A-May-Sing. The time of my life. Loved every minute of it. It was the best one I've been to so far, which is wonderful since it's the last one.

I'm glad that life is back to normal now. That all the birthdays, dances, parties, etc. are over with.

I'm ready just to go back to school, homework, hang out, joke around. Without the big preparations.

Mm, I remember now that I'm tired.

Hasta luego,
BETH

Sorting Through What To Say, and What To Mysteriously Leave Out.


School's coming up, so I'm back. Actually, I'm not. I'm in Marietta, Ohio.

Senior year starts Tuesday. I keep thinking I'm a sophomore this year. Strange.

I've been on vacation for three weeks. It's nice.

When we left, we went to Indianapolis. We saw Joe and Hollie (his fiance) one day, and Tom the next. I met my neice. She's chubby and sweet. She's a total daddy's girl, though. I was the only one who got to hold her for any amount of time and that was because I was cooking hot dogs with Tommy.

Joe and Tom are about the same. Goofy as always. Still look the same, atleast.

Then we went to my grandfather's house in south-central Michigan. That was an interesting event. On average I talk to my grandfather twice a year. Maybe see him for a couple hours when they're passing through from Flordia. But this was new. I stayed at his house for three days. I've never experienced anything like it. It was a family thing. So strange, and yet, I kind of enjoyed it.

I learned a lot from him. About nature, how to observe and stuff.

But the highlight was not the family reunion, which I enjoyed. But I particularly found delight in the fact that the MORNING OF the reunion, I had a massive allergy/asthma attack and my left (your right) eye swelled shut and the other one left only a peep hole. Nice, right? So I wore shade and periodically pryed my lid open to see the whole scene. I kept running into people and everything.

We stayed in Traverse City for the next week. The bay is beautiful. The nice part was that we never had a cloudy day. The first day we went downtown. The think about Traverse City is that they cater to the wealthy vacationer. We're not that. I found a good will and had a hay-day.

We took day trips and went to Northport/Leeland. Northport is a cute little marina town. I bought some great books at a used bookstore and a petosky necklace at a petosky store.

At Leeland, I bought some mochasins. (Spelled it right?) Then we went into Fishtown, little shops on the pier. I was there once when I was eight or nine and I remember is being much larger. There were only four or five shops there that didn't sell smoked fish.

While we were in Leeland we stopped at the lighthouse. I went into the top with my mother. The stairs to the top of the light tower were really steep and were hard to climb. Unfortunately, when I was going up and coming down, there was a group at the bottom of the stairs and I was wearing a skirt that kept blowing up. I didn't care at the time because I was trying not to fall to my death.

Unlikely.

We went to Mackinaw, where the Mackinaw Bridge is. I took a picture and it was beautiful.

We went to the downtown and I found a cute little shop called Twisted Crystal. It wasn't touristy at all! I bought a Jim Morrison poster and these awesome, handmade, coral earrings.

<3

What more?
Basically when we weren't on a little jaunt I lived at the beach. And yes, my friends, I have a tan. I nursed it along so it wouldn't fade before I came home, but it has.

We went to Stevensville/St.Joseph/Benton Harbor after that. They're three seperate cities, but they've grown together. That area is one of my favorites.

The actual lake michigan has a very different temperament than the bay. The bay is very calm with small, body adjusting waves. The lake is ice cold, angry, with larger-hold-your-ground waves.

We went to Ashland after that for two days. The first day I drove myself around for the first time and got lost. I've only walked around the place, which means, I stay on main roads. I had no idea.

I got lost and stopped at this Lemonade Stand to ask little girls for directions back to the Ashland High School. I bough four huge cups of lemonade and drank them all. Shelly will appreciate this, "So I didn't look like a whimp." Then I gave them another dollar for directions. There's nothing like kids from Ashland.

Dad and I went to play putt-putt. It was amazing. Dad hit a small child with the golf ball. Then he bought ice cream.

We sat by the pond. The same pond that my brothers and I fished at when we were little. The same pond that our family ate picnics at after church.

The old house is falling apart... which is to be expected. Lincoln is still there, thank god.

Hopefully my children will live in Ashland and have a chance to grow up there.

Now we're in Marietta, Ohio. Right across the Ohio border. We'll be home tomorrow.

Sigh. Love Ohio.

Divinely yours,
BETH

Did They Tell You?


Did you know when rabbits die, they scream? They peirce the night air, screaming for God to finally take them. To sleep his hand over their head and take them.

We were all sitting there laughing, and he started to run around on one foot. I thought he saw a ghost so I laughed a little bit, and at the same time--three seperate but sychronized times, we realized he was leaving us.

All four little paws are paralyzed, the one things that's moving is his nose... and he's suffering to breathe. To scream.

Mom rocks him. In two soft, red towels. Dad cleaned his cage. Dad and I cry. Mom will later.

Who knew loves faded away?
BETH

Not Standing Any Longer.


This big tree has fallen, again. It can't be taped, nailed, glued or propped. It has fallen before, but it has always wanted to stand back up. Now it just lies there. And it's graying. Silvering?

I guess it's had its uses, and now it has some more. But I beg you to leave it where it lies. It could be used as a bench! A nice, sturdy bench.

---

Well basically I took the Chemistry SOL today and it was... hard. I hope to GOD I passed.

I work today at three.
And yesterday.
And tomorrow.
And sometime, another time.

There's a field trip. I don't want to go. Basically because I hate going places with big groups of people I know. Maybe I could go a million places with one person, or no where with fifty.

And they're moderately obnoxious.

His voice is really calming.

Erin Go Braugh
Mood:  bright
So basically I've realized that I haven't written for a while. But here's the deal... beth+license+Shelly+life=no more computer.

I've chosen to not be online. And heck yeah, I'm healthier for it.


So what's new? My neice is a couple months old now. I heard she's fat. That's pretty nice.

Bob Evans called me last night so I'll probably go in for an interview this week.

SOL's are coming up... so my life is being entangled with a million speckled vines screaming, "You won't graduate if you don't pass" as they squeeze my neck harder and harder. And harder.

But the only thing to ease my mind is the hot men in my life.

All my babies are graduating this year: Roddrick. Or friend, rather.

Man I really want this job. It would really be amazing.

My average in spanish is 101.someoddnumber -- how good am I?

Shelly and I went to Mexi night last night at the Little Grill and it was absolutly amazing. But basically it went like this, every time they came around to see if we wanted more food I had to describe the food rather than say the name because I had no idea what the name was.
Waitress: Would you like anything more?
Me: Yeah, that round thing with the potatoe stuff inside? And yeah, the little taco things that were kind of squishy and what else... oh the rice with the purplish sauce.

Gr. SOLs bite. Maybe if I just run away then I won't have to take them. Infact, I could really do that. I wouldn't get in trouble until I got home and my dad asked me why in the heck I stole his car to run away to Ohio.

Want to run away. To ohio. Where someone could put me up for a little while until I could get an apartment. I'd be happy. -- which reminds me of a Jenny Lewis song... and now it's stuck in my head again.

Mmm, Fresca.
I have nothing to write because I'm bored. Basically the schedule is screwed up so I have 4 - 2- 3-1. So I'm in Mr. Nipes room hanging out on his computer and listening to the "mumblings" of his ninth grade english class. But mumblings is the incorrect word... I'm thinking... I'm thinking... no they really aren't obnoxious actually. I enjoy ninth graders. They're refreshing as opposed the the same people I've been around since sixth grade.

I better take practice SOLs like crazy. And then slack off like crazy. Then stress out like crazy. And then run, run, run, run, run, run, run , run, run, run, run, run. That doesn't translate... I guess you'd have to be hearing Pink Floyd while you read that.

And anyways, nice to see you again--
Divinely yours,
BETH