2018/1/30 Tue
- last night D told me her dog was going to be euthanized. she said, at first his liver stopped functioning, then he in a whole stopped functioning. last week he ceased eating and today he starts to have seizures and can’t breathe. it’s too torturing for him. we have no choice but to euthanize him this afternoon. i remember thinking of her dog the day she asked for my address. i tried to calculate his age and decided not to ask about him. i had met him several times, which happened more than seven years ago. he was a strong dog who liked to dash towards everyone who had come into his sight. sometimes D or her parents would block his path with a bicycle. C was telling me about the ringing sound in her ears and i checked the flight tickets back for this weekend. she said she was afraid to go to the hospital alone. two days ago i started to write something about death, death of every the characters’ grandparents and chests and maybe nothing else, and last night after checking the flight tickets i cried. there was something i could not bear, and it was too very intangible. i didn’t want C to turn around and comfort me instead, but she did anyway. she promised to go to sleep early from then on. today i wake up at 8 to say good night to her. i fall asleep quicker than her. i think i have been spending too much time sleeping. 3 mini chocolate wafers.
- 1 small cup of minestrone soup. in my mind i call it milestone soup. medium mocha (iced). 1 salt water taffy. someone in my class is giving out salt water taffies and everyone else is surprised that i’ve never had them. i have had toffee and this one doesn’t taste much different. it’s chewy and sweet and in the end i realize there’re crushed peanuts.
- 1 cheeseburger with mushrooms and 2 slices of tomato. 1 small cup of coke. tonight the moon is hanging low and bright, large like the sun.
- 11 green grapes. L sits next to me in a poetry workshop. 1 white chocolate covered, animal-shaped cookie. we agree it’s a polar bear, but there are other shapes of animals that we can figure out. later some more people gather near the food table and comment on how good the cookies are. K reaches into the bag and says, oh, a mammal. then they flip another cookie around and say, another mammal. i write something like a poem and consider sending it to C, which i haven’t done yet. here is the thing:
we went to a mountain that was unmistakenly a mountain
perhaps there was no rock that
was younger than either of us
perhaps there was no rock that
was older than the two of us combined
there came a drizzle that
washed some of the mountain away
we asked each other,
were you washed away too?
let’s do the calculation again
because of that we started to sweat
we wanted to eat a tiny bit of the mountain
it would keep our teeth firm
we are supposed to tell someone else a moment when we feel the power of language, whether it’s a positive moment or negative, even destructive one. L tells me a stranger kept kissing him and running away at the halloween party last year, when he had got fairly drunk. he followed that person out of the campus and came to a pause, alone, under the northern wall. there he received one of his favorite poems on the phone. i tell him i went back home for winter and one day, i was on the way to the hospital with my mother. we were crossing a busy street. i was still trying to get used to all the cars and bikes and pedestrians, carefully dodging them in the rain, worrying if i had a tumor in my ovary (i’d been missing periods). my mother was asking me about C, but i wasn’t prepared to answer her right then and there. then she said, maybe in the end you’ll both meet a man you like, and the four of you will become good friends. i remember coming to a halt in the middle of the street, not wanting to take one step further. while i paused, i thought about what to say. am i being too theatrical? am i overreacting? should i laugh? the situation started to seem very funny. i said to my mother, don’t you think it is not a very nice thing to say? she got irritated. she said, it was just casual talk. why do you have to take it so seriously? i tell L this is my moment and he says, the biggest christmas drama i’ve had is a debate between my father and i over whether i should go canoeing; he has strong feelings about it.