Driving back to my mountain, snow on the side of the road. So many stars.

Brief and intense moment of panic over seeing him tomorrow. Time for me to admit to myself that I have no clue what I'm doing.

Roll call: who reads this thing? Email me! alextree314@writeme.com.
Just curious.

love to you all,
alex

Read this. Dammit, I knew that they were feeding the cops all kinds of lies, but I didn't really want to understand them. I know that this article isn't exactly riot-cop sympathetic, but I understand, I think, a little. It's still criminal. How can you shoot retreating people - kids - in the back? How can you beat scrawny hippie girls into the pavement? Wouldn't it be obvious that we're not a threat? But at the same time, I know, all you have to do to get most policemen really freakin' mad is call the other side cop-killers. I understand that. I wanted the police to be the enemy - something real, something visible and yet faceless. Instead the enemy is back to being the rank behind, the invisible people pulling the strings.

This does not stop me from wanting Timony kept from any job more important then burger-flipping henceforth, and all the bastards that hired him unable to do even that. It's an impossible dream, but it gives me pleasure nonetheless.

I had forgotten that behind every physical illness or strain comes the emotional illness, like a long shadow stretching over the following days. I should not take it out on my family that they have a quiet life. I should not take it out on myself that I didn't get my head broken open. I have been sleeping ten, eleven hours a night and only now am I rested enough that I have started to face the emotional fallout of Miami, however unwillingly. I listened to the protest audio last night and was struck by the calm in those kids' voices. Yes, the cops are closing in. Yes, I have four stitches from this morning. Deadly calm. What happens when that calm passes? I suspect my friends in Miami heard that calm in my voice for a solid week, covering the scared-animal panic. I am safe now.

I think I will be okay. I think I will be back on the streets. I also think that I will stay myself, that my goal is not to get beaten or arrested. It is not a badge of courage. But if it happens, I will be there bearing witness. And if it is my own head the blows fall on, well, it is as it is. I do not want it. But I will not be afraid.

(the pirates yes they rob i -
around a campfire in Georgia we sang Bob Marley, and for the first time I understood the words.)

love,
alex

Listening to the song I woke up to with the hot morning sun in my eyes, beside the alligator river. I was wearing his spare shirt and sleeping in his spare sleeping bag. I understood already that I was going to fall in love, but then I fell in love with everything, with the trees heavy with grapefruit and the skys over Little Haiti, with the walk to Automax to buy car part after car part, with the hot steamy protest kitchen and the crates of tomatoes waiting to be chopped, with every night I fell asleep with a friendly hand on my back and the sky spiralling with choppers.
When this song is playing, there is little space in my memory for the terror, for the blood on the faces of my friends, for the smell of vinegar and pepper spray. It's there too, the pain under the skin of the orange. I know it. I love this world knowing that it will hurt me, and I love it now knowing that I am wounded. Somewhere in my chest it aches, for every bruise on a peaceful person, for every trust betrayed. At the same time I love. Maybe the image for this feeling is jesus with his heart laid bare. When we love the world it is not in ignorance of pain.

I am supposedly working to put my stories together. From all of this. When they're compiled I will type them up and link to them. In the meantime, ftaaimc.org is your best bet. Hold us all close in your thoughts. The only way we all have through this is each other.

love,
alex

Home is hollow, a chilly afternoon nap that lasts too long. My parents are turned away utterly from each and every brightness and darkness. The world is gray.

It's so hard to realize that your parents are old. My mother walks with a limp now.

I am keeping myself feeling with memories of this last week. I miss my boy. I miss my people. I miss the Bus, and I miss my university though much less. Still, I need to accept that my parents are not responsible for my loneliness. That maybe it's their right not to know what happened. That it's their right to begin going quietly into that good night thirty years before the fact. I have learned what is meant by the raging against of that poem. I intend to.

I miss my boy. Tomorrow I'm going to make my day so full that I have no time for the general immature irateness I'm feeling today. I had a fight with my mother that I really don't want to think about. Apparently the family's been living on cheese, cake, frozen vegetables, and various varieties of 'health' chips. I have a belly full of said non-food. Not only does no one want to hear what happened to me in Miami, it almost doesn't matter.

love,
alex

There are a thousand things to say, none of which are easy to communicate. I am proud of humanity and disappointed in cops. I am not arrested, which is good, as being beaten and or raped by said cops is not a good deal. I would like everyone to know that pepper spray really really hurts. I have lived out of a van for ten days. I think I'm in love. He's almost twice my age. The sky spiraled down around Miami, and the helicopters flew their search patterns over the warehouse where the army of the peaceful and ragged gathered. I am not defeated.

I love this song. (Radiohead: Hail to the Theif: Backdrifts.) It was on the mix cd that we woke up to, that first morning in Florida camped beside the crocodile river. I think I already understood then that I would fall in love. I think I already understood that my whole world would change. I need to understand what happened, and I don't know how I will. I love Miami and I don't know if I can ever go back there, walk down Biscayne without remembering the sound of concussion grenades. The sound is still so loud in my ears.

I love you all, and I hope you've been well.

love,
alex

That was enough. A stairwell conversation - a hit of redemption - a little snag in the social order to carry me through home. I like people being proud of me. I like people being real.

love,
alex

random, because it's been a while since I wrote like I meant it:

shh. Because the moon is rising half-shell and butter-yellow over the tower, and the wind tried to blow me back down the stairs and out into the tossing-tree bitter night, and because tomorrow the world opens up. I want the shell-moon rocking in my hand passionate. I want the trees to open up and bloom. I want the whole world to spiral down into the streets of Miami, and it will, it will, and I'm terrified. And I'm exhilarated. The whole world opening up.

I miss a thousand tender little things in the world. I will be glad to return, to have some blahs, to have some long sleeps and nights spent studying in front of the fireplace, to have tired midnight conversations. I will be glad to no longer be this transmitting wire stretched tight between this and that, no longer anticipating but exhausted and ready for the long slow coming down.

I want to tell you. I want to tell you. I want a story to tell you about other people, but right now the story is me going out alone. Passing out into the world. I am not lonely. But I would like this story to be about all of us, not just me.

love,
alex

Well, folks, this is it. I'm packing, I'm trying desperately to get a dozen things done, I'm really really scared, but I'm also really really buzzed. I realized - putting my calming blue protest clothes in the washing machine, suddenly stopping short - that I will tell my children about this, and therefore will be the sort of person who raises their kids on protest stories. I don't know how to make it seem as significant as it did that instant - this sudden void opened up between me and suburbia, between me and normalcy, between me and society. I am suddenly on the other side of the world.

I've created a new blog in the hopes that I can update it from the streets. Probably just notes here and there. Find it here.

love,
alex

I asked my Ecopolitics professor (the hardcore marxist) if he had any last-minute protest advice for me. He replied that I should do the exact opposite of what he did when he was my age. In other words, if the cops are starting to get mad, I should leave, I should not start looking for larger and heavier things to throw at them. Also that now cops usually bodyslam protesters, where before they went for the head. The whole class was so intrigued by our general discussion of damages that they asked me to explain the FTAA to them. This made me so, so very happy. Also, the One With Dreadlocks and the Kayaker are both so very enthused about this, which is good. I'm always glad to have senores activistas around. Also a nice girl of the daytripper variety, who I would be glad to see become a leftist. She knows more than I do about the history of Earthfirst, which I figure can only be a good sign.

In other news, I have cramps and a nervous headache and a paper to write, but you know? It's okay. Also, I can't tell if my concious abandonment of food the past two days is a good or bad idea, but I think I'm off to make something chocolate-based while I work on my paper.

I love my life.

love,
alex

Hard on the heels of that last entry, I'm going to post again: I hear that I'll have internet access from the convergence center in Miami, so I'm wondering about posting from the street. I would like to, though I won't have much time and will have to post a long recap when I get back. What I'm wondering about is how to get those updates to my family, because I want them to know what's going on. I don't want to give them the address to this blog, and I don't have time to post in both - maybe I'll move back to Fallingrain for the week? Having this blog seperate has been a real comfort to me, having it away from the 'rents. Some thing they don't need to hear about - I switched addresses just in time, the next _week_ the Boy was on the scene.

Talking to someone I shouldn't be encouraging. Lately I'm starting to feel stifled by any and all potential ties to other people. Other people are icky. I don't like them.

Eh. My back hurts. I need to go sleep and in reality I'll be online for another hour, I know it.

alex

Ever have one of those conversations with people that leaves the air awkward for a while after? Not like you said too much, but like you got in too deep, like the edges are a little rough for something like that to be said. I think there's going to be strain, having a youth group of two. Usually a youth group is big enough to shunt off the excess emotion. Here it's dialectic. God help us all.

I have no clue what I'm doing. I keep feeling like I'm in over my head with the Miami thing. But I think I'll be okay.

love,
alex

Today my department head told me not to worry, getting tear gassed isn't so bad.

I love my life.

love,
alex

Well, last night I had many excellent conversations with people that I've been meaning to talk to and never did. Today I'm feeling touchy and saying things that piss people off by accident, so I think I'll sorta keep my mouth shut and stay in Becky's room where it's safe. Still, I am glad to know that I am not intimidated by the One With Dreadlocks, and that the other UU kid here is pretty damn hardcore.

At church yesterday I asked for everyone to think of the people in Miami this upcoming week. When I went to sit down, a teenager visiting from another church hugged me and went, that's awesome. I miss that youth reinforcement. Brotherly love is a great thing when put to proper use.

Also, I found out that professors in my program have been trying to find subtle ways to get me - me specifically - into their classes. While this makes me feel very self-satisfied, to be frank I have no need to be The Smart One, again.

My back hurts. I feel like going to sleep. I'm pretty much just hoping that this tired icky feeling is PMS and not one of the dozen plagues circulating around the dorm, because I can't afford to be sick.

I think I'm going to make double-strength echinachea tea, put it in my water bottle, and go read by the fireplace. Our dorm has a fireplace. Go ahead, admit it, we win.

love,
alex

Urgh. I hate how I always end up filling up on candy after I eat cafeteria entrees. I think it's all the salt and garlic. I have discovered that eating a healthy balanced bean-burger-and-salad lunch makes me eat junk the rest of the day, while a lunch of brown rice and a carton of soymilk keeps me from eating more than fruit at dinner. I have to do what it takes to cut back on the processed sugar, I know, I know, I'm headed straight for insulin problems later in life, but at the same time - would you want to eat brown rice and soymilk for your one non-cereal meal every day? How healthy can that be, really?

Has anyone noticed that whenever I'm stressed about things beyond my control, I post about food?

An off-kilter day. I cleared my Miami abscences with the last pair of professors, so I'm good to go. However, I have easily four books to read and a paper to write on a movie I've yet to see, and I think I'd better get this done by Wednesday. Yesterday I read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and the ever-classic (if icky) Brave New World, so obviously I can do the quantity reading. It's just the paper that's worrying me.

alright. Class time. luv to all
alex

It inspires me that I have been in this program and dorm with the same 200 people for two months, and yet there's always something new to do and see and say. I know I haven't been as outgoing as I'd like, but also there's something about this place that produces so much variety, so much creativity. It's awesome. I know it'll get tiresome, but in the meantime it's all so alive. Maybe I should take a light schedule next semester after all; major in being Here.

I feel so outgoing now. Heh. Hey, and I hugged UU boy. He hugs very properly but he always puts his hands on my waist. We have nothing in common besides a church, but at the same time, yeah.

Eclipse tonight. I sat on the front steps of the dorm, where admittedly the streetlights made it much dimmer, but still I could see the shadow on the face of the moon. I don't understand what I'm supposed to feel seeing it, but then when I think back I realize that I stared skyward, hardly thinking, for half an hour, watching the light move across the moon.

and singing Pink Floyd's Eclipse under my breath. Because, how often do you get such a good excuse?

love,
alex

Oh my god I did it. I DID IT! I went to a party by myself, and I didn't even bail fifteen minutes in, I stayed. See, the last party I went to I went with Jess, but she was in a pretty foul mood after yesterday and announced that she didn't want to go. I was going to not go because I didn't want to be alone, but after a nap and three dollars worth of junk food, the shuttles were still running and I went, you know? I need to be able to do things without using someone as a crutch. It was seriously one of the scariest things I've done this year. And I did it. I didn't drink, but I talked to people - and held down a couch in the corner, staring into space, but so do many other people - and in retrospect I even mingled a little. I'll get better. Now I know I can do this; that's enough. I'm so freakin proud.

love,
alex

Okay, last night turned out better or worse then I thought. We ended up cramming six people into a compact Honda to go to Burger King, and then having a crisis when Ren took her happy meal and her beer and locked herself in the room of a guy we didn't trust not to try something. Eh. Much pounding on the door and veiled threats commenced. Personally, I think if someone's old enough to get themselves plastered, yet sober and assertive enough to yell for help if they need it, well, you should let them be.

After that I ended up sitting with eight drunk-of-their-ass people watching Monty Python, but at least it was a somewhat new group of drunk-off-their-ass people. Tonight I'm going to my program's "Fall Social", which involves a house somewhere full of everyone in my program drunk off their ass. Ah, the joys of college for the non-drinker. I'm just glad that this is a fairly mellow crowd, and thus they're fun to be around. All that happens as the keg empties is the conversations get wierder and wierder and people start singing along with the guitars who usually don't sing.

It amuses me that I'm practically straight-edge (well, I had a Mike's last night, but that's not enough to do anything) and yet my clothing permanently smells of cigarette smoke and vodka.

Next weekend I want to hang with the musicians, I think. Because you would not believe the music in this dorm. Last night I walked through the tower room and two girls were singing harmonies in that half-stoned tear-your-heart-out way and three guitars and you know, drummers of the kind that seem to play with their whole bodies.

It's beautiful today but my primary option for getting off campus is going to the parkway with my ex-boyfriend. Which eh. How about not. Especially since he just walked by the computer lab with glasses on and no shirt, and let's face it, in that combination I'm not quite over him. How depressing to realize my motivations can be so base! How nice it is to realize that I'm only human after all!

love,
alex

Okay, I'm officially a looser. My last weekend before Miami and I'm sitting in a dorm room with two very drunk friends (I of course am sober) watching Police Academy. I did, however, find out that it was my DEPARTMENT HEAD who was involved with the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He's also one of the committee higher-ups in my church, which is about perfect.

I was excited about this, but the primary person worth telling knew already. And I want to talk to my UU friend, but he's currently talking with my suitemate the beautiful British girl, so it's a lost cause. Meep.

alex

Melissa wrote this very touching letter on the idea of commitment. It's something I've been thinking about lately, especially since someone said, I'm just to young to commit, and I went, commit, the last thing I want is commitment. Commitment is something my parents did, and I know I'm lucky to have married parents but let's face it, they're old and icky, and also, I've never seen a committed relationship where the woman was not subsumed into that relationship identity. How is this different from the (admittedly dated assumption) that in an uncommitted relationship the woman is being taken advantage of emotionally? Maybe it just sucks to be female. Eh. I think I sympathize more with the stereotypical male point of view, always straining against the boundaries.

Ended up in an elevator for three minutes with the ex-boyfriend. Nothing is wrong. We can be civil. I don't resent him. Hahaha.

heh, time to go to a meeting. blessings to all,
alex

A panicky feeling that I have something I should be doing, something, somewhere. Not just boredom or loneliness, volition.

Got back from my Miami meeting. They're happy that I've found housing, though we're probably still going to crash a couple nights in the van before the church basement we've reserved opens up. Ten scruffy anarchist kids and a queen-sized mattress on the floor of a bus. Heh. Guess who's sleeping on the roof?

I don't know why I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? I'm so terrified! But I need to go see it, I need to look this thing in the face. I need to know what I'm doing.

Turns out I do indeed have reading for class tomorrow. For once I will go to class prepared. Because I am strong. That's why. Dammit.

Ah, fragmented. Days when I'm this alive don't wind down easy. Today I saw a maple tree with a few slim leaves clinging, curved red in the direction of the wind and the spill of red and gold at its base, and for an instant I could hardly breathe. So beautiful.

love,
alex

Read.
because I want Joey Comeau's babies, that's why.

love,
alex

(p.s: a rainy day with nothing to recommend it, trying to figure out why my next-semester schedule starts at 9 a.m. and goes till 7. luv to you all.)

Ten. Still not asleep. However, I hugged my UU friend twice, helped Mada rescue her beta fish from algae, and had an angsty conversation with my ex-boyfriend. Also, I think I decided not to go to class tomorrow. Huh.

I had one of those this is my life? moments standing holding the shower curtain while Mada scrubbed out the beta jar, wondering, you know. Why this moment instead of a thousand possible others. I'm not in Kansas anymore. Funny thing over a fish.

Report: turned in paper, I think I did okay on both tests, but I am on instant messanger. I also babysat a friend through a paper, which was fun but I hope she doesn't expect me to every time. I have resolved to go to bed by nine. I mean it this time.

I reset the timestamp on this thing, so now in theory it no longer shows me updating in GMT. Good. God I'm tired.

Resolution: tonight, no instant messanger. Study, yes, sleep, yes. No instant messanger. Today: two tests I am not prepared for. I already made a 93% on one, despite having done maybe a tenth of the textbook reading. The next I did study for two days ago, so here's hoping. Also today: a long program meeting and a paper due at 5 that I haven't started yet. Luckily, for the paper I can adapt some journal entries from a field trip earlier in the semester.
I actually love busy days like this. Too much spare time is bad for me. Maybe I should go ahead and take 19 hours next semester, but February makes me sluggish, so it's still up for debate. One of my professors got two majors and two minors in 4 years by taking eighteen hours every semester; I only want two majors and one minor.

Yesterday - or rather, this morning, right at the point where the days crossed over - I discovered that a conversation I had with someone caused them to change their major and decide to give dating another chance. I am both inspired and frightened at this. On one hand, it would be cool to have some sort of miracle curative powers, but on the other hand, it's sort of freaky. I guess people just get to the point where they need a push, and I provided one.

A discovery: the food service coffee shop has really, really good coffee. Fair trade ethopian organic, the kind of stuff that it's best to drink black. Besides the burnt tongue, I am very happy now. Of course, I drink coffee very rarely, so now I can feel energy rushing through my veins. It's a good feeling.

It's raining and I'm rambling and I think I'll go eat lunch now. Y'all have a nice day.

love,
alex

You know what I love? That feeling right after you do something stupid but not necessarily bad. Like stepping off the end of the diving board. Whoops. No taking it back now. The slope was slippery, and now you're building up too much momentum to stop. Just try to miss the trees.

I had a good day yesterday, in the end. It started when I sat watching the shadow of the sun pass away across the face of my building and realized that, in moments, I have been happy here. Then I told my Marxist ecologist professor that I am going to Miami, and he went on for five minutes about how I needed to keep myself safe while making my voice heard, and then he grabbed my arm and went, I'm very proud of you. What a difference some pride and protectiveness make in the way I see the world! I don't think those are just the emotions of parent/child interactions, I think those are the emotions of tribe. An old dreamer to a young dreamer. You know.

My UU friend kept hugging me yesterday. I need a lot of general hugging and affection to feel all right, so that's a good thing. Also, if he's interested in me that would make me very happy. I am not going to date any more southern Christians for a while. No matter how much someone tries, a puritanical upbringing will show through. Unitarians are much safer.

I had a lot of conversations yesterday that made me realize how much people here are waiting for me to come out of my shell. When I figure out how to reach out, they're there. Maybe in little increments, I can do this.

And then I had a long conversation via AIM that I will probably regret later. But that's okay. That done a stupid thing feeling is just too much fun. And it is nice to have the sort of conversation before you go to sleep where you wake up and you're still thinking about the other person. It's good to wake up thinking about a friend or uber-friend, because the alternative is waking up thinking, mi cabeza, le me duele. Because here, my cabeza always dueles.

love,
alex

Blue sky, golden-leaf path down the mountain. A beautiful day.

alex

Long conversations with real life people help.

love,
alex

Once I dreamed that I died. I was an FBI officer, or running from one, and I saw the bullet - two - like red ripples in still water, and then I was out of my body and somewhere where all the heartbeats and vital signs and brainwaves streaked in red floating letters like the text on a stock market ticker floating in space. And then I was watching, in a brown dark blackness, these bars of color like stereo light indicators, yellow and green for heartbeat, and I was waiting for them to fade or to feel pain but instead I was back in my body with the breath growing stronger. And then I woke up.

I don't think I'd mind being dead. I'd mind dying; I don't plan on dying unless I can help it. But I don't think I'd mind being dead. What I'd mind would be being a ghost, you know. Like the hungry spirit of Japanese mythology. Wandering through a world I could no longer touch.

Okay, people. Don't worry that I'm going all Sylvia Plath on you. It's just that I've decided maybe if I let myself really feel negative feelings instead of trying to block them out, I might do a little better. I don't really go into dark places, but if there're a few gray spots, maybe that's okay. I just wish that in having a little down spell I didn't feel like I was descending into the realm of permanent I-am-deep emotional gothdom I've spent years fighting off in my friends.

All the people that love me communicate with me only via AIM! Why? Because, I suspect, they're hanging on from back when I was happy.

And one of them just hit on me! I'm not sure if that's supposed to make me feel better, but it does!

love,
alex

I wanted to say -

Yesterday scrambling up and down the sides of gray granite bones of mountains, the thing that I saw was the perfect oval leaves of laurel, in a halo green against the sky. I will remember the cool outbreath of the caves under the mountains, and the scrambling sides of gray granite boulders - (and the scrapes all over my arms and legs) - but I will remember that halo of leaves against the sky more. Funny the little things.

love,
alex

::sigh::

Yes, that's the sound of ennui you hear

I suppose this is about the right time of year for some blahs - leaves down, indian summer doing its best to hit you in the gut with an impending sense of mortality - but you know what? I'm not happy here.

It's my fault, I suspect. I think if I poured myself completely into either my schoolwork or into socializing I'd be doing a lot better. I mean, I skipped one 3-hour class for the whole week last week, that's enough to throw me off a little as far as too much spare time. But the fact is, I'm bored, and I'm more then a little lonely. More then post-breakup blahs, it's just plain sad that the only person here who I really feel both comfortable and happy spending time around is my ex-boyfriend. (not over him? who's not over who? I don't see anyone in denial around here, no sirreebob!)

Heh. Anyway. I do remember the last time I broke up with someone who conciously I wasn't all upset about. I had this dragging sense of ennui that I tried to blame on everything but that. Maybe in a few weeks I'll feel better. But still, kind of like PMS can bring things that just aren't right in your life to the surface, this is bringing to the surface that I'm bored, and slacking on my work, and feel quite alone. I feel like there are no real people here, like I pass the images of people and can't get through to their reality. I look over and I think, hey, being like that would be nice, but in reality I have about as much connection to them as other people have to movie characters.

Wow. This entry is one long sulk. I think I'll be okay, really. Also, the campus ministry meeting is tonight and I'm freaked, because I have to be leaderly and I don't want to be.

As soon as I can wrap up the AIM conversations I'm going to go into the woods and run around. That will help.

love,
alex

I've decided that I need to just do what it takes not to be weak when I'm old. You know. I'm pretty sure no exercise regime will keep me from dying eventually, but I refuse to be forty and incapable of clambering up and down and around rock faces the way we did today. I almost fell down one - trying to climb down, started sliding and announced, hopefully calmly, that I would just not move until someone came and caught me, thanks. Luckily the person I was with is stronger then I am heavy.

We're on a beautiful stretch of parkway, a hundred-mile view across the pouring rippled expanse of brown mountain. When my family lived in the hills, my mother said she liked this season the best, because you can see all the form and curvature of the withered slopes, like a think person's rib cage. I sat on the open curves of rock, reading environmental politics and thinking to myself, maybe he and I can be friends after all.

love,
alex