A Reprise

I am well-satisfied with this month that has seen me through late summer into fall. There is something about late summer that drags at my heart. It burns brightly at its end with no promise of abetting and then relentlessly it is swept away by the breeze. I have not yet felt the crispness of fall, but I feel strange tonight, looking back and longing yet feeling a peculiar attachment for this present time. I guess I have been doing what I'm doing long enough for it to have made an imprint. This is the time of the Treo, the blogs, my yet unyielding grapple with the meaning of technology and my strange desire for it beside my relentless passion for what is natural. This is as I have said a time when I am to connect my past to my future. I am changing. I am energetic, running away from this shadow that threatens always to drop on me, pinning me down like a heavy cloak, and I might crawl from beneath it with only the greatest effort. I still have no words to describe the shadow distinct...

Again, the photographs. I know you must be tired of hearing of them, especially when you cannot see them, but they are obsessing me. Really no wonder I have been so obsessed with the way I look. I guess anyone would feel that way taking a crash course through their own past and staring endlessly at photographs they haven't unearthed in ten years or more in an attempt to order them chronologically. I note the changes in my look and it sends me on long mental journeys of how I felt at a certain time of my life, or more unpleasantly, how blatantly bad I look at times. And more depressing, though I'm on an upward swing, I do not look my best right now. I'm going to talk about my appearance now, which is something I try to avoid doing, because I end up deleting these entries anyway. I have a sense of guilt about it, like it's immoral to think too much about the way I look one way or another, because it leads to unhappiness, but really not thinking enough about how I look has...

I have found a new barometer by which to judge my actions, or rather, it is an involuntary barometer that is improving me perhaps without my say. For every weak thing I do or begin to do, I ask myself if I would admire myself for it. I have felt so critical of myself lately, so ugly, so awful, and out of it has sprung this quest to improve myself. I don't want to become a slave to style magazines; rather, I could not admire myself for doing that. At the same time, I want to look right and decent and keep from embarrassing myself. I feel like my hygeine is always falling short, just like the housework. Every time I turn around, there's hair where hair shouldn't be, there's stuff under my toenails, my tee shirts are shrinking up and showing my stomach; to say nothing of my wildly oxidizing jewelry, scuffed shoes, &c. I don't understand why I don't see anyone else with these problems! Do they spend all their time at home cleaning their jewelry and ironing their...

I have been quiet about doing this scrapbook as I examined my feelings and thought many times about coming to write about them but I never knew what I would say. Now it is that end/beginning time of the week that I always half-look forward to, half-dread, Sunday night, when Nathan has gone to bed and I stay up a few hours later to get back on track for my night schedule. I thought that I would write of my feelings tonight but even now words fail me. I don't know why my Beta photos affected me as they did. All the others I looked on with a sense of nostalgia or humor, even the very worst. I guess I'm not as good as I thought. When I see those pictures when I am with all the other girls my age, my heart breaks. They were all so pretty, just as every sixteen-year-old should be, and I looked awful. I wore my long, long hair straight back from my forehead, and my glasses were so large they scarcely stayed on my face. I had this baggy shirt and teal cardigan sweater vest over the shi...

Yesterday I found a Grosset & Dunlap book at an antique shop in Comfort. After dinner wih Lydia at der Lindenbaum, we took a late-night walk around the town and saw, to my amazement, swarms of bats circling a light pole, chasing insects. They are so strange: I see why they are the stuff of lore. I retired later reading my book A Little Mother to the Others, remembering again the absolute silence of country night, which once amazingly I took for granted, not knowing differently. After breakfast we saw Truer der Union and the old Comfort train station, of which I took several pics for the purpose of the half-dozen stories I've started that take place in abandoned stations. I want to revamp my writing notebook with stories most important to me featured, because having taken it on the trip I realize that nothing I want to work on is in here. Sent from Amanda's Treo @-'-,--

I get out here and feel entirely different. Suddenly the world's problems seem so far away. Pollution and crime can't possibly exist. There is no greater safety than these uncivilized places. Sent from Amanda's Treo @-'-,--

We're on the road between Hico and San Antonio. All around are hills, dotty shrubs, and prickly pear cactus. So far we've visited the Hidden Valley chocolate store and we have a few places where we plan to stop on the way home. Tonight we'll reach Comfort and perhaps have dinner with Lydia. I can't wait to see the little towns. I got the best antique books in Fredericksburg and I hope to have similar luck now. Unearthing my old pictures and scraps put me in a mind more to archiving, and it's hard not to snatch everything I see for a memento. I haven't been on the computer more than sparingly and it's made a wonderful difference for my home time. I do a great deal more and feel more lively. I bought us some web space for email addresses and Nathan's music, and right now I have no plans to develop it for myself. I'm happy with this blog and my Fiction Press account. Sent from Amanda's Treo @-'-,--