"this summer has been a firefly" I am sitting in Alterra teary eyed, because my cousin can do this to me. We had two very different summers but we are ending them the same way, with the same sort of denial and excitement for what is coming next. Summer's end crept up on me, and so did another sort of ending. I've been waking up afraid again.
It's not fair, really, that we all have to dance around in these jagged spirals, and last night my friend asks me "Will any boy ever like me as more than a friend?" and i tell her yes, because YES, but it's funny how these things bring us down and we have been walking around the city, trying to come up with resolution that doesn't exist. I've been struggling with my place in the world as a woman, because I want to believe there is no such thing. Is there any sort of balance? Can I be one of the guys while still being a charming sort of gal that someone might like as more than just a good pal? I used to have full faith that this was possible, but this summer has got me wondering. This sounds like some shitty Carrie Bradshaw article, I haven't found a way to make it poetic. And if I have to choose, I know I'd choose to be a spinster with lots of close pals rather than work on becoming a more feminine sort of woman with lots of tricks up her sleeve. Nothing about me is a challenge, and maybe that is a disappointment. I don't know, and I suspect the boys don't either.
I've been reading fragments of Sappho, which were recovered after being half destroyed and translated, and Anne Carson took lots of liberties, but they are short and sweet and fucking great, because there is so much missing.

#26
]frequently
]for those
I treat well are the ones who most of all
]harm me
]crazy
]
]
]
]you, I want
]to suffer
]in myself, I am
aware of this
]
]
]

#52
I would not think to touch the sky with two arms


I should be more disappointed and discouraged, but mostly I just feel a little confused and worried and always, a little bit desperate. This summer has been perfect, I got just what I wanted from it, including a new family, whom I love as much as mine blood relations and whom I will work hard to keep in tact through out the years. No matter how much I change, I'm never that much different, it's a comfort. I am in my twenties, I am working on loving where I am more than where I am not, I am learning to "watch the donut, not the hole" (as mom told me once, when I was in the depths of despair, and which has stuck with me, even though it's pretty stupid. I told her this, and we laughed and I can't explain why I love my mother, but she is funny like I am funny, and sometimes, only we think we are funny and that is ok) and I am happy, with full faith in what I like to call "da charmed lyfe".

I have been writing nothing but run-on sentences for the last three days, regular sentences aren't long enough.

EL CAFE

I only mention this because I had a nightmare, probably up there on one of the worst nightmares I've ever had, and it was about losing El Cafe. No one fought for it except me. No one. I woke up crying, and fell asleep again, still crying. I know it can't stay the same forever, but I will fight as hard as I can to try. I am not sure how much of my own life I am willing to give up for it, but probably a lot of it, because it is the most important place. I know that these things will fall apart if the Carpe is not around. I know that we will all be a whole lot lonelier. It isn't just MY home. I don't want to just see these people once a year when we have an annual reunion party. This place has more love than I have ever seen, anywhere. I hope that it's love can keep it alive.

The Carpe is something I talk a lot about, I know. But it is MY place. It is my home, in the strongest sense of the word. People always says that it is not so much the place, but rather the people that make a home. I am not sure I can stand behind that fully. And with the Carpe, it is different. Even if it is the people that make the place, if we lost the place, we would lose a lot of the people. Most of the people. Places have spirits. I don't know why I believe that, but at the Carpe, when I am downstairs listening to folk music, watching the lights dance off the guitar I look around the room and I know that it is alive. Perhaps it is the love that is made when a group of people hears something perfect. The room just holds this love, keeps it. I don't want this to be taken away. I don't want someone to come in to my house, OUR house, unless they know it, unless they LOVE it the same way I love it. I have never found a place that so many people have felt so instantly at home.

I know that I have a strong sense of family largely because of the Welches. But the Carpe has passed on this sense of family too. It is in the way the Dennis sounds happy to hear my voice when I call from school, and Scott gives me a hug every time I come home. It is the way I feel as comfortable around these people as I do around my family, because they were there when I was growing up, not just intermittently but everyday. It is why I never know what to call them when talking about them away from home, employees? no. Friends? no. Aunt's and Uncles? It's the closest I can ever really get to, though it is not quite right either. It is the way I want everyone I love to come home to meet them, want to tell them, but never do "this is my family."

I wish that I could tell you everything. I know I can't, but I will try.
The warmth of the back room when everyone is listening to an amazing show. The people that come here really know how to love music, and you can feel it.
The regulars we are always acquiring. Because El Cafe is filled with so many lovely people, it often ends up taking in strays and making them a part of the family. I had always known this, but noticed it more when I went to school and would come home only to find there was some new person that everyone was talking about as if they'd been around forever.

I can't do it. I can't tell you right now, not without ruining it. This is something that takes time. But maybe there will be a book someday.


THIS IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.