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February 2, 198X

so long later

It's 2:30 and I want to sleep. My head hurts inside from wanting to cry and my insides hurt from cramps. The lightning makes it all worse - great harsh fluorescent sheets flung before I can duck. The kitties are afraid but they won't sleep with me. I grind the heels of my hands into my damp eyes and smear black - then I automatically wipe it away. My hair is matted from pressing my face into the pillow.

I want to sleep. I have things to do tomorrow before 1:00 - when I have to sit naked on a stool, hands in lap, for fifteen or so dull-eyed sculpture students.

From 1:15 to 3:00 I'm powerless to do anything but think of my posture, my muscles, the time, and watch the diarrhea clay take shape.

I try to think of something sunny and happy, (now, that is, while that uninvited lightning jumps in and out of my three windows) and I think of the botanical gardens in Oxford. And it's a pretty, sparkling, bright, symmetric, geometric, calm and satisfying memory picture indeed - until I recall that terrible need to pee the whole time I was there - the stroll became a hunt for a loo or a private place where I wouldn't go on anything too decorative - a faster and faster tramp through greenhouses, rattling doorknobs and pressing false doors. But then so many moments I had in public places - the better part of an hour in the strip-lit basement of the Tate Gallery, on a black vinyl couch, watching the three teenage girls across from me share one paper cup of coffee. And a spat w/ a woman in a post office line (they were always forever) in Oxford. The woman who let us use her bathroom during our ten-mile walk through Oxfordshire. I've been thinking lately I wish I had someone to write to in England - I guess they'd be the ones.

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