101018 she said use your typewriter in bed millie gon wake up soon i have to pee the alarm is just so startling, even if there were dreams, i don’t know if i could ever rememnber them i was thinking about telling my studetns about schand and icoul, but why? hang on, i have to pee. these pedestrain things are all i can get right now, that’s why it’s been so hard to keep up with themornings faithfuly. the prolem is that some kind awesoke things happenjed early on (i think) and not, not as much. so it’s like why. i cam’t think of anything, even though it’s five in the forsaken morning. all i have is lumps of bananans. no i mean it. literally nothing. i got nothing, and every few words I can’t help pushing the space bar in the middle of the word i was lying next to shauna steger who was 14 at the pool, about to take swimming lessons. i was myself but also not myself; older but also the same age as her (we were both in high school even though i wasn’t) i wasn’t libby’s dad; i was her ex boyfriend. the pool was indoor. it was huge. there were people everywhere; all the different classes and levels going on. Mrs. Sharp walked up and looked down at us lying there. She said (with thin lipstick unevenly applied, and that wan smile she sometimes gets) “Nicely done” or something, implying that I was like on some kind of date with Shauna or something. I sort of prayed that Shauna didn’t figure out that that’s what she was saying, because obviously it wasn’t true; we were literally just by chance lying next to each other. but on the other hand... she hadn’t moved away. she hadn’t been mean or rude. we were kind of talking a little bit, so...? and she had glossy long full inky black hair, and that white, almost translucent skin, and that perpetually pouty mouth but kind eyes. she looked out at the world from a place of almost innocence, it seemed; unaware that her beauty was potentially fatal. “But” Mrs Sharp added, talking about the Libby that in this universe wasn’t my daughter because I wasn’t even old enough to be a dad or to have ever even thought of that, “That one that likes to eat chocolate ice cream to make herself feel better has graduated to the gallon tub.” I felt bad. Oddly, actually, I didn’t feel all *that* bad... I mean, I did, but only a little. Mostly I feel bad *now,* on waking and typing this. Cuz Libby’s so small and lithe and bright and elfin and strong and fragile sometimes. Like I mean in real life; I don’t ever want her to have to deal with getting hurt by some oafish, narcissistic, privileged, entitled, sneering, self-important, thoughtless, inconsiderate, asshole *boy.* I mean, I know that’s whatever. But. Like yesterday, when I walked up to pick n save and there she was, messing with her bike lock, and then i saw her placing something carefully into her (my!) pannier— doing some more shopping? I asked. she looked almost guilty for half a sec, and then brightened and smiled, maybe when she saw i wasn’t mad. she literally hopped up and down; she was lighter than air. i asked what it was and she said a sub. Where are you getting the money for this stuff? My piggy bank! She’s so young and on the threshold right now, it rends my heart into fresh salt water taffy, pulled and folded and pulled and stretched and folded, over and over again with the unbearable sweetness of it all. Take me back, take me way way back. so many things during the day; so many times little subtextual voice stories rip through my mind. Little moments, perfectly choreographed and blocked, with perfectly observant, witty, understated, wistfully debonair, fallible, heartbreaking, solidly plain-spoken lines. Just human beings interacting in a plain old way that makes you love them. And then they’re gone, and I can’t think of them now, when I’m straining at the keyboard despite every nerve in me body screaming out to go back to sleep! Like Celi alling Libby a string of half-accusatory adjectives, including, “gettin’ ink on the wall” -- that whole phrase was one adjective. It was perfect. Sometimes Cel’s delivery is just perfect. Understated, yes, but guilelessly so. She gets this funny deep tone to her childlike sing-song voice sometimes; she’s like a bubbly soda that surprises by being as deep and complex as whiskey sometimes. She has that schulte girl sadness to her, to the underside of her voice, making her jokes have a little stinger, making her innocence have a certain rust to it, reminescent of a lost ghost town out on the prairie, with an ancient round-faced buick sinking slowly into the weeds. i just love them all so much, even though they basically all always drive me crazy. as they get older it gets more treacherous to know when to hug them, when to leave them alone, when to yell at them, when to just be quiet and let things be. but i just love them so much, i don’t care how hard it is. yeah, i say that now, but... but so far it’s true. things could be so much harder. we have our problems, but no one requires a special school, or to be restrained on a regular basis, i mean, no one’s threatened or tried to hurt or kill anyone else, not really. no one has any big horrible diseases that i can tell. we have our challenges but we’re basically getting through OK. If there’s a chance that any of them (us; i should include myself in this i guess) can rise above the societal slots that chance, circumstance, and my own decisions based on all my own flaws and weaknesses have conspired to constantly try to file us away in, so much the better. If they can survive school. If they can survive jobs. Hey, maybe it’s like *In the Gallery* by Kafka. Maybe if there wasn’t that awful, cruel, whip-weilding presence of cruelty and ruin out there, we wouldn’t have a story. We wouldn’t have even the opportunity to rush bravely into the ring. We’d just be sitting on the sidelines, heads resting on the rail, watching YouTube and weeping silently without knowing it. At least in hell, we have a chance in hell.