i think it's true what they say, you can never go home again. sitting in room 265 of park hall, the room in which i received the bulk of my english education at georgia, the walls were a new blue color and the faces were not familiar, and i realized for the first time (maybe the second, maybe the third, but it felt like the first time) that this was not a place for me anymore. i love athens, i will always in some small way love this town, but it's not mine anymore, nor do i think i would i want it to be. i have a new place, and will soon leave that place and then there will be another place etc. etc. i've always lived like this. sometimes it makes me sad that i don't get sad. but then, places have such a poor memory for people. unless you carve yourself into it, or build an imitation of your face in stone and place it in the square, it will not remember you. you will remember it. a strange unrequited love, i think.

i feel like i should quote kundera now, but i won't. speak, memory. answer.

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtain it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

aeroplane reading sometimes so good. it's funny coming out of the dark of benjy's mind into this river. funny such a gorgeous river fed by such a tight-ass harvard white man. reading that it reminds me that no, not everyone is a writer. he was a writer. he is a writer. the rest of us, well, we're lucky to get out of the mud for even a second, a word.

in the shower this morning (oh, there she goes, tell me about being a bird, tell me some observation about water and the world), i did not observe anything about water or soap or tile or purity or any such thing. instead, i felt like i always feel and that is like someone is standing directly behind me. someone not naked. someone not naked and unhappy. i have felt like this my whole life. a life of showers and so many have been spent staring at the wall, waiting for some kind of materialization.

i would like to state for the record that i have never seen psycho. and i'm not afraid of someone coming at me with a knife. it's more that someone is in the shower with me. strangely enough i do not feel this way while taking a bath. baths are lovely and lonely and often smell like flowers. baths do not have invisible strangers stalking me.

oh dear. i have to run and get ice cream now. it is very sunny and very warm and ice cream it is then.