LOOKING FOR A PORT OF CALL
This has been one of those evenings when I went to a get-together at a friend's house (with lots of parents and such around, of course), chatted amiably with everybody there, and generally felt everything to be simple and clear. There are times (more and more often) when i want a big country house with nice things in it, and a garden, a front porch, and a big oak tree outside with rusty iron chairs and tables underneath. I imagine having friends over for dinner, just to see what it feels like to act like my parents, to be so civilized and thoughtful. It sounds so lovely. I want to cook for my friends.

DON'T WORRY, MOM, THE BAND DOESN'T SOUND HALF BAD
I'm feeling really good about the next issue of the zine. It's my actual writing now, not the lean, spare sentences I had been trying to perfect in the last two issues. I'm a gusher when it comes to detail and extension, so why describe the color green if you aren't going to push it all the way out to the edges of the farthest hills? The whole point of writing about small things is to write about them in a way that isn't small. They aren't supposed to be lists of my favorite things, and they arent' supposed to be finite. You're supposed to experience them with me. It's the whole reason I write at all, probably.

SOME SILENT MOVIE
After a while, the white collar internship goes without a thought. Answer phone, forward message, read magazine, type letter, write speech, tease coworkers, eat lunch, sit. I'm grateful for what must be some kind of financial security that I get from this job. It's not the kind of financial security that actual adults look for, but the security that I need to buy books and albums on the weekend with only a modicum of guilt. Teenaged financial security, let's say. I'm sure it would all be different if I had rent and bought my own groceries.

I'm enjoying becoming a regular in Waynesburg. The old men who sit and smoke on the courthouse steps wave to me, and a squirrel in the park hassles me for apple cores. After two weeks it's already becomg a routine to drive in at 8:15 listening to the Pixies, buy a 75 cent cup of coffee, eat half my lunch at one, the other half for a snack later in the day, and go home sleepy at five. Finally I have a situation in which I can check up on all of the second-hand stores on a rotating basis, recognize new things and swoop in to make the kill. I had another strange spell of thrifting luck today, picking up a vintage blue polyester dress, a pale pink flapper slip with brown and white tulle trim at the bottom, and a red le tigre (the '80s label, not the band) polo shirt. All for $5. And on Friday I got a bag of zippers from the '50s for 52 cents. So far I've run into the librarian of my childhood five times, all because she shops at the City Mission, the Busy Bee, and the Cherry Door as well. I feel a mash note for Waynesburg forming.