Swaying

I'd have never looked at the title on the list had I not received a recommendation to read it. An order, really. When I see the cover, which I am now doing my best to ignore, I falter a little. I look inside and see a digital sort of font and a smell reminiscent of a Junie B. Jones chapter book. My gaze moves from that book in my left hand, 6.99, to the thicker, darker book I hold in my right hand. The second book is 16.99. My mother walks over and asks me if I've found the one I want. I tell her I have and that I also found what was my original choice. I want both. She asks about the prices and I tell her, and immediately she begins attempting to convince me to choose the cheaper book, an attempt poorly hidden by a separate attempt to get me to think I made the 'right' decision on my own. The moment I open my mouth to call her on it, she simultaneously guilt-trips me (a last feeble attempt), dismisses what I was going to say (which included me calling her on her first three attempts), and sends me to parlay with my father. He will not let me get both books. He won't even ask about prices. He expects frugality of us all, and will lie and say nothing's wrong should I pick the more expensive book. So I go to look for him, feeling frazzled and pressured. After seven or eight minutes spent nervously walking around the science fiction section, where I saw him last, I hear my name from the end of the row I'm standing in, reading a book of poetry to calm down. I tell him the situation, and he tells me to pick one, and then he walks away. In his mind, it is a quick decision. In his mind, we can afford to go to Barnes and Noble more than once every year before school begins. In his mind, I'm walking behind him, already having made a choice and placed the deferred literature back on the shelf. I imagine he was irritated when he reached the front of the store and realized I wasn't with him. He will have waited a few minutes, during which time I cracked open each book to get a taste of what I was about to order. The lighter, cheaper book greets me with teenage diction, a character that immediately reminds me of myself, and a few sentences that make no sense in my head, though that is probably because at this point I'm trying to read one book, hold another and a list, and fix my hair (underneath a hood that had better keep its place on my head or so help me) all while maintaining perfect studious dignity because I own this bookstore, I'm a reader and a writer and a literature fanatic who happens to have about three minutes before she needs to run to the check-out line to save her ass and her evening. In short, I look like an absolute fool, but I'm reading so I don't care that much. I close the first book and open the second. It's an older gentleman speaking. He is slow and steady in my head, determined and a little impertinent, toward his children and boss at least. He begins to explain to me how people don't understand how time slips away, how one cannot say 'I am' before it becomes 'I was'. I shift my weight to my right hip, about let myself fall into the book, when my father appears at my elbow. "Are you ready?" he asks. For a moment, I say um, already losing the connection I had just begun to form with the novel, the provoked thoughts growing smaller and smaller in my mind. He has not realized my loss, nor will he until the next time I interrupt him while he's watching Star Trek. He starts composing a monologue on the subject of how he hates shopping and that every decision is simple and should be made quickly and efficiently, and I walk away into the next aisle. I should be in trouble for this. Perhaps I am; I'm highly uninformed in the way of his emotions at the moment. Instead of waiting for him to come lecture me, I look for where this book should be. For the life of me, I cannot find it. I hear him walk away,  or stomp rather, and I take a deep breath to collect myself. I find the spot where I found the book, and I take a second breath and a moment to mourn the ideas that could have filled my mind. The book finds its place on the shelf, and after one last glance, I shuffle toward the front of the store, still finding my balance with the slight limp I have somehow acquired in the last few weeks. I reach my father, and he calls my mother, and together they march ahead of me to the check-out desk, where the clerk gives me a warm smile. Perhaps he senses my sorrow. Perhaps he understands what it's like to lose a book, or to lose time, or to have to shuffle behind one's parents while they pay six dollars and ninety-nine cents in debit for their glorious triumph. I smile back at him, and our little parade leaves the store. I thank my father for holding the door and for buying my book, and I sit shivering in silence as my father drives home, listening to my mother cry about the apparently lost cause that is our family.

The big stupid smile?

Yeah. It's a thing. Hello Econ. You'll get the brunt of it tonight.
I live vicariously through my words. To a point. I do enjoy the conversations I can create, but if I'm really writing, the characters become themselves quickly, with ease. Which is a very good thing.

Things I've realized this summer
1. Water is precious.
2. Don't lock your knees.
3. Lists are very helpful.
4. Write while the words are in your mouth. Don't put it off, or you'll lose the story.
4 1/2. With that, keep a pad of paper and a pen under your pillow.
5. Many of O'Keefe's flowers don't look like flowers.
6. Baby, you're a firework.
7. I extra-hate 'baby'.
8. Honesty is the best policy.
9. I like having pictures of my family in my room.
10. All nighters suck ass.
11. Wishes are granted in ways we usually miss.
12. Serendipity is a wonderful thing.
13. All things come to an end.
14. True fear is true love.
15. Always remember questions that are difficult to answer.

Fred

But not actually. Mother, grandmother, not father, grandfather. I need a name. Eleanor maybe. 
I have gone through that first day in my head too many times. Every possible way it could happen, and it's sort of killing me. I need to focus on here. Now.  
Who's passing econ with flying colors? This girl. And though I'm not particularly proud, as there is very little mental effort involved, it is a large weight lifted off my shoulders. World History will give me things to write about and it will be wonderful to feel things strongly about the modern world. There are very few things I love more than essaying about something I can support with facts. I'm working on one about the Trail of Tears and the terribly admirable Andrew Jackson. 
I need to type a lot of things up. I need to gain back the simplicity of the March mindset and just write. If only I had the time. Way to go Econ, leeching away all my joys. I didn't even get one lousy episode of Grey's in today. And you know what I also missed, which I will blame you for even though you're a class with no direct effects on my rehearsal schedule? I missed the first carefully, cautiously, quietly line tonight, and when it came up later I was mad. Not really mad, just like. "Ugh, you line. Come back in my brain please."
I walked into the house at 11:12 this evening, and I find myself smiling. You Sir, are finding very odd ways of answering me. Thank you, very much. 
I love speaking slow. I love standing on that stage and not being told I need to jump around and exhibit my energy like a child in order to be good. I believe Ella Fitzgerald planted herself and just sang beautifully. Energy is not necessarily motion, and motion should not imply energy. I am an old woman, in more ways than one, and so I fully intend to stand still and speak. I'm told, nightly, the effect is quite powerful. And to be frank, I am very proud of that. 
It's just so relevant, isn't it? 
Sometimes I think of Severus. Sometimes I think of Dennis. And sometimes, I think that I will end up as myself, no matter what happens today, or tomorrow, next week, next year, the next eighty years (here's to hoping I live that long) and upon death. Me. It's already too late to try and fit Someone Else, nor do I have any desire to do so. And in my consistently unstable mind, I find that to be a staggeringly beautiful thing.