we pin & pin our hopes like children with pasteboard stars

well, the lucky ones came calling last night. i blushed terribly in the hall, because i felt swank and lovely and suddenly there were j and m making happy noises in my direction. we headed to b-side toot sweet and were given the lovely round booth at the back, j, m, abby, jackie, sharon, and i. the b-side is the loveliest place, played snz overhead and served boiled eggs at the bar in lieu of the normal beernuts and etc; this impressed me greatly. i had a big smile on my face and the bloody mary (that's a daddy of a drink! exclaimed jackie) helped that along. food and liveliness ensued and by the time i worked my way through a tall gt i was definitely drunk, and still smiling, and staring into a pair of brown eyes and thinking crazy confusion all the while.

this morning when i awoke my elbows ached; a sure sign of an overloaded liver. i could not help but feel the frustration last night when they left, after hours of porch and kitchen and couch and staring into a disconcerting pair of eyes and hovering on the knife edge of something. would you jump? i don't know, would you? i don't know, would you? and no, and no again we kept saying, but not in so many words. but there is no need to reiterate all this; when you left i heard it in your voice. but my heart still broke in pieces when you agreed it was an easy thing to send me to london.

i think i was looking for a way out, a temporary diversion, a roadblock. but not really. i wanted a smooth whiteshirted deity to save me from the inevitability of the airplane and the runway and all the rest of the unknowability in my view right now.

o the many things that my paper journal sees that will never see the light here.

the point is----the point is that really other things were happening in parallel places and i could feel them hovering close and whispering. and i did nothing about that. i sat there feeling close and far and estranged and dismantled and distressed.

i felt it was a lifetime that hovered and compressed itself into a few short hours of a single evening. london spun in my head, the dervish of love, and i wished i had been undrunk enough to find a.'s number and call. but i remembered he was sick and sleeping, and no fair to call and disturb the slumber of a boy who would worry about this even more than myself, if possible.

i have been visited by an army of possibilities. a battallion, a squadron, a rank-and-file of angels and messengers and tender impossible mercies. oh you catskinner, you blossom plucker, you motherfucker.

on the radio in the coffeeshop, pre-interview, floated swift and lugubrious and aching with ill irony that made me clutch my stomach, "my sweet lotus blossom...even though i know it's just a fantasy." driving me madly out the door and back onto windy boyleston street and up the elevator to my interview.

and it went wonderfully well, and they were responsive and upbeat and happy and impressed, and i felt i acquitted myself in the jury's eyes. they gave me a copy editing test, to fax back monday or tuesday. i am to use the chicago manual of style and the american heritage. i quiver pencilward and alert and ready to unleash the fury of my mind on it.

spoke to jenny when i was through; i told her it's mostly frustration, of all sorts. emotional, sexual, mental. and that maybe a little guilt is in order but no earth-shattering declarations or shifts in policy or similar. i merely crave normalcy, a little window of space in which to rest myself among friends before i step from the exoskeleton of the airplane into all those london possibilities. i need to rest in the lea of the stone, like in the rats of nimh; i need to shift my abode out of the wind and into a sheltered and rested place where i will not think disturbed thoughts of escape and frantic flight.

it's the alcohol that does this, i know. it opens up the lockboxes and the cloistered thoughts that cluster behind all the doors during the day. i know this, i do. but it still surprises me, every time, an offer of reciprocation and then the immediate realization, of the impossibility of infidelity. antony, i am a faithful if confused girl today, and i need your cures especially. keep me in the lea, will you?

there are three pairs of particular eyes searching and combing these words for clues and explanations. i can give you all more words and thoughts, just give me a lea, that's all i really want.

without any lodestar

a man in the square sang this as i exited the T, returning workward after interviewness: the other night dear as i lay sleeping / i dreamed i held you in my arms / but when i woke dear i was mistaken / and i hung my head and i cried / you are my sunshine... and etc.

and so that's what it's like, these days, isn't it? just like the old song. today i am lackluster and hollow-limbed. collar-boned and strip-kneed and penny poor. [in for a penny, out for a pound] i think i need to locate my lucky pfennig from padova, the one that winked up at me from the ground with the dark coppergleam and luck skipped into my pocket, jiminy cricket's pale & far voice.

a. loved the photo. i suspected as much. i must work at the photo project. i must rid myself of this terrible grinding inability to focus; i must cleanse my brain of thoughts of eyes and yesterday's knicker-shifting gaze. i am holy in this heat, separate and distinct, and if water still lingers on my skin like reluctance then i can certainly enter doors i have already passed through. and i will regain sanity if it takes all day with scissors and paste and the project to convince me it's possible. the airplane calls me today, and i want it so badly i can taste it, in the solidity of the air.

i saw heather when i went to see the muffin man, and she had a surprise for me, a copy of penelope fitzgerald's "the means of escape", a short story collection. i think it is quite fitting. but is a new job my escape, or is it indicated i should escape from the new job? this is unclear to me.

enough of this.

sono sfatta, i said [which echoes now]

it is rare that i do not finish the crossword, these days. it bores me. i need a better challenge.

m called and we spoke. she has not read any of this (yet). we discussed our deplorable timing and i think (i guess) we agreed on friendship. we agree that life is long, and absurd maybe, but conquerable in small steps if you take into account the many inherent contradictions. in my head i align this with other, too similar situations. i refrained from extracting promises to invite me to her wedding, because this is catty and untruthful and spiteful and incorrect. and not what i mean, at all, at all. all i mean to say is that i'm looking for some oblivion.

this morning while i was out i missed the bmb. this depresses me, as well.

i wrote a long email to mom and dad, replying to the continuing discussions. i referenced feminist reinterpretations of marxist theories (take that!) as well as two separate media sources. i feel as if the email ought to have included footnotes. or perhaps diagrams of logic, as i attempted to prove to them beyond a doubt that antony is not a sexual predator. it wearies me to continue these talks.

it is time to go home now and sleep away such disturbing thoughts, such wasted and empty afternoon hours, such finite and exhaustible frames of mind. i leave tasks undone on either side of me. antony promises to call and i wait for it, my limbs empty and disbelieving of distances. i want a magic word with which to end this, dispel this, a happy note for this frightening week. i can think of none. where is my lea, my windhidden hideaway? in londontown, where the pied piper lives, the dervish of love, the brighteyed sleekling. but today september is a helpless and hapless million miles away.