A Trivial Comedy for serious people archives

These things just wash out of me

My brother is wonderful. Oh, did you know that? I love the way his eyelids flicker, and he smirks a little, and says "I could have told you that." (Of course he didn't, I think as I laugh, because he knows me better than that - he knows me as a stubborn and stupid girl. I love him, I think. He's smart, I think.) He makes me laugh like no one else. I love the way his head is sharp, he is observant. I sit next to him and beam my bloody face off, and hug his arm, just because I am so happy he is sitting next to me. His grand master plan is to be a game show contestant, and mine is to have him for my drinking partner. I'm glad our grand master plans will go well together. I really wanted to take him to Karaoke night at the local inn, alas, he didn't feel like going.

I just finished the first book I've been able to read all the way through since, I think, this summer. Oh, I finished Katharina Blum, that's true. Okay, second book. I did not cry, but I suspect the happy pills restrain the amount of sheer emotion I am capable of expressing. I have not cried reading a book in a long time (Bell Jar, 12th grade). But man, that was a sad and beautiful and spectacular book.

Everyone should read it.

Everyone.

I'm not going to tell you what it is, though, cause that'd be pushy.

But it was poetry, oh it was such spectacular poetry. And it was bloody sad. I finished it and just lay on my bed, and went next door and laughed about how sad I was I had finished that book. I feel so amazing having read it. I just let the language wash over me, I was reading too fast (unfortunately) to count commas (mercifully) but I still know I was affected. I made fun of the novel half way through, denouncing it as postmodern bullshit, but took it back and apologized formally, uncomfortably. "I'm sorry," I said, and felt dumb. I love you! I said. I'm sorry I called you names. I think I love you.

It was so carefully made, and intricately too, that I wanted to start it over again as soon as I finished. That's a rare feeling (Katharina Blum - that was a similar experience).

Oh, honey, I wish sometimes I could just hook people up to feel what I feel. You need to feel this! I say, but it's so futile. You need to taste this! You need to read this!

For Eliza Still a Baby

You know you'll turn out fine. You know that, at the least, you can have what they have. They have quiet, and a little peace. They don't criticize what they say much. You'll have an unremarkable life but it will probably make you happy. She said you were impressive, and what did you do? Laugh, it's true, and glowed from the insides. She thought this! She is a most beloved woman. You are a flattered baby. You probably won't want that unremarkable life, huh? Huh.

I appear before her door, wanting to go now. I am all dressed up. "You're all dressed up," she says. Yeah, but I'm always dressed up, I say. Or something to that effect. I just got dressed, I said. I have not been dressed for a while, I was wearing my pajamas.

It isn't true, you know. It's a new thing - dressing up. I have been taking care of myself, I am very vain. I preen before the mirror before I head out. I don't think I really quite look stylish, but I like how I look. My jewelry is funny. I cannot ever tell if it's quite too much, or perhaps enough. It's a little eccentric, maybe, to wear those hoop earings. It's maybe a little funny to dress the way I do, but it's fun. It's new to me.

2002-11-30, I just let these words wash out of me

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