listening to the daylight

My feet are shod with tacky flipflops. You know the kind. Cheap with strips of brightly colored fabric tied to the thongs. They are the craft/party favor from Victoria's afternoon birthday party. I helped the 8 to 10-year-old girls make theirs, and I came home tonight and made my own. They're not my style, but hey. They fit better than five-dollar ones I bought at WalMart the other day.

The other day I orded two books off of Half. I love buying books. It's my most valuable addiction. Possibly the most expensive, too. I don't care. I ordered the C. S. Lewis novel I've been wanting for months, but it's used price has been a little too high for my tastes. I finally broke down and bought Till We Have Faces for five dollars. The seller mailed it yesterday. I can't wait. I also ordered Robert Cormier's 8 Plus 1, a collection of short fiction. I'm planning on basing my teaching reading unit plan on memory, and Dr. Higginson suggested a story from this book to use during my demonstration. Any excuse to buy a book is a good one.

I know where my fear of relationships comes from. I fear conflict. I fear the moment when raised-voices and hateful looks are the norm between two people, two "close" people. To avoid this moment, I shut off any communication of feelings, any vulnerability. I've wondered what the difference is between the relationship in which you love someone and the relationship in which you tell someone you love that person. And what I see that the point at which you freely yell at someone is the same point when the I love yous come, and by that time, do you really mean it? This might not be a general rule; I don't know. But it's what I'm seeing, and it's what makes me tremble in the core. If that's intimacy, I'm not sure I want it.

I'm about to go women's lit on somebody. I don't know what it is, but I suspect it's my three-days-a-week exposure to unabashed feminism. I can so clearly see the blatant oppression of my sisters. That's right: my sisters. I look on as I see men openly degrade women. And we, by doing nothing, are degrading ourselves. I mean, how am I supposed to feel when I watch a man look a woman in the face and sincerely say, "You just wasted my whole day,"--while, of course, he has the power of his day, not she--and she goes on as if not a word was said? Like it's what she deserved. I didn't know what to do, so I just let the tears well up in my eyes. Not for me, really. For her. For us.

I am so unsure of what to do with this rage I feel. Burn a bra? For a picket line? I have no idea. But I think, because I need a cup of coffee, I'm going to pack up my Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and go to Starbucks. And I'll keep my journal in tow. Here is a wellspring of emotion that needs some catharsis.