The List Column 1 Item 2 J told me to write this so that people will want to read it.The List Column 1 Item 2 J told me to write this so that people will want to read it. For dramatic effect I should have stopped at the word "Yes", but that wasn't the end of last night. Besides, I have time to tell the rest: he won't be home from work for a while, and I don't have to get ready for him yet. He took my car keys and suitcases with all my clothing when he left this morning. All I have to wear is the sheer cotton outfit (you know about that one already--I wore it last night) and a lycra one that he also had me make while I was in Chicago. Neither one is practical or warm, or even very comfortable, and it's late February. It's warm here (compared to Chicago) but not that warm. He also left me all my shoes and boots, my fleece-lined knee-length overcoat (thank God--I'm wearing it now, and nothing else, as I write this), toilet- ries, and some books I had brought. The television is near-useless: the house is so rural that cable isn't even available. I can't start my car, even if I had clothing, so I guess I will read, and write. Maybe I will do a little gardening once I get my feet on the ground. There are ten acres of partly wooded land to grow stuff on, and I've wanted to try a garden of my own ever since I moved into Chicago. My mother kept one back home in Indiana. This is quite a change for me. A few days ago I was spending my last night in the old apartment, sleeping on a mattress on the floor after the yard sale; now here I am nude in an overcoat sitting at a PC wondering when planting time for vegetables is. Life's a funny ol' thing, that way. Best not to dwell on the incongruities. I laughed about it last night, and learned my first lesson the hard way. Last night, when I agreed to try this (by this, I mean This Whole Thing, not just the writing), I felt a weird combination of relief at having made a decision, apprehension about what would come later, sexual excitement, of course (why do I say of course?), and at the same time a kind of serenity: a sense of freedom that comes from not having to care what comes next. You wouldn't think apprehension and serenity would go together, would you? It was like I was outside myself, watching myself worry about the future and at the same time thinking: the apprehension is okay, I can "get into" the experience; it somehow doesn't bother me that I am apprehensive: I am floating above it all. |