And and andand

Sometimes you have those days where nothing is particularly extraordinary, and occasionally very difficult things come about, and still somehow you wind up feeling like things are illuminated, and the temperature is right, and not even the big things were too memorable but the smaller things were semblant and good. This some-time is right now. For no particular reason, on no particular Wednesday but this one, I find myself in my room feeling just alright, in that "driving all night with nowhere to go but gas is cheap" kind of way. Remember when gas was cheap?

Last night I washed all my clothes and made a bed of new linens. I tied my stuffed penguin in a pillowcase and put him through the washing machine for the first time in five or six years. Once he was clean I wrapped him in a blanket and laid him out on the bed like I did when I was twelve. It felt nice. I fell asleep cradling him the way I used to do falling asleep at my grandparents house on the fold out couch, feeling so old but being so small. Perhaps I did this because my grandfather is not well. I don't know. But I do know it was peaceful and not scary.

I have dreams where I am hungry, and I am riding in cars with people I know on the freeway and to the side there are Mexican immigrants trying to cross the border through fences and treelines and everyone cheers for their success, and then all the cars pull over and we all get out and pretend we are immigrants too, discovering things for the first time, like bits of "beautiful garbage", and then we play "musical cars" and switch around, and get back on the freeway, and I am in a tour bus with people I know wearing pig-tails. And I have dreams where miscellaneous boys that I know without really knowing are the father of my child, the outcome of a drunken party with a lost shoe and fat dogs, sitting shirtless next to me in a museum of living sculpture telling me secrets, helping a mysterious lady make me patterned clothes while promising a walk that somehow means something bigger. And I have dreams where Bennington is going to the dining hall, which is a series of potlucks in houses, and the first house is a frat house, and everyone there is drunk and it's like some crappy straight-to-video release about snowboarders, and some of the guys there try to have sex with me even though I say no, and Bennington kids try to save me but they can't, so they move on to the next dinner-house, and I try to hide until all the frat boys go to sleep. And for so long I only had nightmares. But I have these things now.

And I am impressed when you can tell doctors the truth. I am impressed when doing a head stand reminds you of being seven and being told to do hand stands instead because you will hurt yourself. I am impressed when three voices carry like ten. I am not tired of seeing girls who write notes to each other on the legs of their pants, the kind that get wet to the knee in the rain. And I am not tired of the rain, even though this is Vermont and everyone is tired of the rain. And I am not tired of the lives I create for imaginary dogs I find that have crooked jaws from being kicked in the face, or the imaginary house I create where they could all live. And I'm not humble when I say my sister is going to take us all in the race to find good things because she is some sort of tiny force that is barely even real and understands that time is immovable and people are softer than they want to be. And I am the baby my mother toted around on the back of a bicycle in 1986 when she had feathered black hair and sang songs like Carol King along the shores of Tacoma across the train tracks and past the smoke stack they tore down when I was older. And I am not Jewish, but I have hopes for the future. And "Richie Partai" will be the new slang coming into rotation, so look out.

Tara and Erin have come to save me. I don't know what from, but writing about my sister saving the planet and my bald-headed-bicycling days is a start. Oh, Bennington. Good night, America. All two and a half of you.