|
Thursday, 31 January 2002
The streetlights climbed slowly up my hood, over my windshield,
and down the back of my car. Slowly, because, for once, I was driving
slowly. I can't remember the last time I drove aimlessly through
town, zigzagging, U-turning, taking my time. Probably because I'm
perpetually busy (or something like that), because I like having
a destination, because I'm always in the spaces between, running
late and catching up, because I think it's an irresponsible waste
of fuel.
Tonight, though, I climbed into my car alone, rolled the windows
down, and drove. I drove down streets that I haven't been down in
years; the people I once knew there moved long ago, or my apartment
changed, or my job. I again saw the things whose details had disappeared,
my memory having tilted the streets and the distances between buildings.
Raleigh was French: familiar, but growing increasingly distant each
day without practice.
The strangest part was that when I had to make my first decision
(right or left?), I had no idea where to begin. I could only think
of the streets surrounding my parents' town, from high school afternoons
of flying down back roads that had more cattle than traffic lights.
But I then I remembered destination wasn't the purpose. Aimlessness
was the purpose, which might sound like an oxymoron, but it actually
makes sense. Really, it does.
Wednesday, 30 January 2002
He works in my building and strikes up conversations with me
whenever he sees me. Actually, I think he strikes up conversations
with everybody, but I can't be sure. Tall and lean with a soft southern
drawl, maybe early 40s, he usually wears jeans and a big, floppy
hat, and appears to spend most of his time outside or by the snack
machines chatting, commenting, teasing, telling jokes. He tells
me about his daughter or his young, wild days, his dream of living
in Nashville, old jobs, country singers, tricks he likes to play
on people. I'm not sure what he likes about talking to me, since
I usually do more absorbing than sharing. Maybe all audiences are
equal, as long as they're polite.
Today he stopped me while on my way to get a drink.
Him: It feels like out there. It's gonna git cold again this weekend. Next
weekend I'm goin to the Grand Ole Opry. You ever seen that on TV?
Me: No, I haven't.
Him: Well, it's real...oooh, my leg's gittin hot. [He steps away
and starts patting his pockets.]
Me: Yeah? [I shuffle off to get my drink, wondering how to take
that.]
Moments later, he explained that he had a lighter and a battery
in the same pocket, his leg to heat up, which inspired not one, but two
stories about how he detonated fireworks in a car he was sitting
in.
Him: Had I not had my wallet in my back pocket, I woulda hurt my
rear end real bad. And I couldn't hear for two weeks after that.
This is where I'm supposed to insert my own fireworks horror story.
Since I don't have one, what, do you think, is the appropriate response?
Tuesday, 29 January 2002
I didn't watch the address, though I know I should've. I just
didn't want to hear any more lies or justifications or the words
"'Mare-can" or "terra," or anyone telling me
after it was over that he looked "presidential" and that
his approval rating is an alarming 99 percent and that we're doing
the right thing for the good of humanity everywhere. But I should've
watched it, because now I can't comment; instead I must rely on
summaries and commentaries, rather than relying on my own head.
And isn't that the main problem with this country?
Monday, 28 January 2002
I find it disturbing that I can no longer remember what I put
in the big, black plastic bags yesterday, the bags that will soon
be delivered to a local thrift store, dumped out and sorted out,
their contents put on hangers and stored next to foreign blouses
with ruffly collars and double-knit pants that smell like mothballs.
I promised my mom I'd help her get rid of some of my old stuff,
now that I'm to do that to some extent. So yesterday I drove down to
Buies Creek and made piles: clothes to give away, clothes to keep
at my parents' house just in case I ever want to wear them again,
clothes to take back to Raleigh, and clothes that maybe my mom will
want to wear. Together, the last three piles (which are all some
form of 'keep,' I realize) outweighed the first pile, of course,
but progress was made. That's right, two big bags of progress.
Inside those two bags are garments that give me a pang of recollection,
a feeling I've grown used to being able to produce with a peek inside
my old closet. Ha! I remember wearing that. Man, that's hideous!
But that moment of nostalgia shouldn't outweigh some sensible organization
or the necessary return of those '80s gems back in circulation.
I know kids today are dying for a white cotton , a Swatch visor, and some frighteningly short
dresses...right? I know that being able to locate items in pictures
I see from long ago does not connect me with the past, and, contrary
to my belief as a child, any children I might have will very likely
not want most of the crap I've been so busy squirreling away.
I just want to remember what it was that I casually discarded yesterday.
All I can recall right now are those hats and dresses and some cheap,
plastic belts that now only fit around a thigh. I'm not going to
need that stuff, am I?
Sunday, 27 January 2002
According to an advertising supplement in today's paper, this
year Target is selling novelty valentine gifts: a 0.5-oz. autographed
heart filled with candy, a 0.75-oz. milk chocolate rose, a 7-oz.
giant Hershey's Kiss, and a 2-oz. candy-filled SUV.
The top story on the local news tonight was about a goat in a distant
county that got attacked by a wild dog, and about a llama who is
able to protect this herd of goats against future attacks by acting
as a scarecrow. After spending ten minutes tallying up the number
of offspring the dead goat might've had, had she lived, and projecting
how much money those goats might have been worth, the news went
on to cover how a local psychic "got on the wrong side of the
law" and how a custody battle in Florida is "almost like
a soap opera!"
Tomorrow I'm going to try to avoid input that causes such emotional
confusion that I don't know whether to laugh or become angry- frustrated-depressed.
(Usually I end up doing all of the above.) Tomorrow I'm going to
limit myself to news that is depressing in the most thorough sense,
in substance rather than absence. It won't even occur to me to laugh.
Saturday, 26 January 2002
I pedaled around my part of Raleigh for the last five hours,
acquiring a green bowling ball bag, a bell for my bike that resembles
a beehive, and a necklace with a green chicken feather attached
to it, along with a few other less spectacular items. Next I'm going
to burn the roof of my mouth on lasagna because I'll be in a hurry,
rushing to a friend's house to watch a documentary
(rushing there only to sit down, heart still quick), up again as
soon as it's over to make it to the club to hear Richard and Scott
and Suran
play. And an after party? Right now I hope not. Somehow I've managed
to stuff my day full again; only the beginning was calm and paced
and lazy, when I woke up to nothing (no alarm, no music, no phone),
sat cross-legged on the couch and read Vietnam propaganda from 1961
with a bowl of Rice Krispies in my lap. The sun shone through the
window like a spotlight on my cat, and the phone and house were
noiseless. Damn, my time is up.
Thursday, 24 January 2002
You wouldn't think this would be addictive, but it is, to a
disturbing degree. Go on, try
it.
***
For some reason, whenever I pour the mystery dust into my mug to
"make" hot chocolate, my brain short circuits and tells
my body to fill the mug up to the top with that pretty brown powder,
as if my mug is some sort of measuring cup and my goal is to smooth
it off at the top. Only when the mug is three-fourths full do I
realize that I'm making a horrible mistake and I stop pouring. I'm
left, then, with a mug full of dark sugar punctuated with little
cubes of white sugar, faced with the decision whether to pour the
mug's contents back into the , pour it into the , or pour a small amount of hot water on top of it and
stir for an extra minute or two. I swear I don't do it on purpose,
but it does taste surprisingly good that way.
Wednesday, 23 January 2002
I guess I should mention that lisawhiteman.com was selected
as a finalist
in the SXSW competition. I didn't expect to be a finalist at all,
but especially not in the "grrl site" category, as I'd
submitted my site underneath the "weblog" umbrella. I'm
certainly not complaining...just feeling a little perplexed/surprised/flattered.
And happy to be going to Austin for the first time, where I will
no doubt recognize people I see in my computer and have no idea
what to say to them.
***
Filling up my gas tank, getting groceries, roaming around my office
building in order to figure out where someone's desk is—all
things I hate doing. Today it was groceries, tired and hungry. If
I go to one store in particular, I have the luxury of walking down
the aisles like a zombie, knocking boxes of food from their neat
little rows into my chaotic cart, bagging the same fruits and vegetables
week after week, picking out the same variety of yogurt—strawberry,
blueberry, mixed berry, 1, 2, 3—Diet Coke: check, cheese: check,
where did they move the Star Crunch? I don't have to think much
because little ever changes. Occasionally I'll buy a peach instead
of an apple, an orange pepper in place of a red, but I'm probably
not doing enough creative shopping.
Today, however, I discovered a new section; I guess I've known it
was there all along, but I never really paid much attention to it.
It never occurred to me that anything good could be kept in those
rows of plastic tubs, the ones accompanied by little scoops that
sit in labeled cradles, waiting to shovel orzo or cereal or nuts.
That's right: orzo! nuts! yogurt-covered raisins! Why didn't anyone
tell me about the plastic tub section before? Has it really always
been there?
When I got home, I discovered that my cat Leeches, who, like me,
didn't care for last night's trout, likes yogurt-covered raisins
too.
Monday, 21 January 2002
Not only did my brother listen to Top 40 religiously every week,
he made detailed lists of each song and artist, notebooks full of
statistical information waiting to be calculated, waiting to reveal
how long Borderline had been at Number 1, and the speed with which
King of Pain slipped down the charts. And he recorded. Not all of
the songs, of course, but the new ones he approved of, with maybe
a long-distance dedication or two thrown in.
Combined with a weekly dose of Solid
Gold, the pull was too strong for me, and I began listening,
too, picking out favorite songs, rooting for their success, and
sometimes even composing my own awkward dances to their seductive
beats. Before long we were recording joint-compilations, songs chopped
off at the beginnings thanks to a windy DJ or a tardy hand, sloppily
blended with commercials at the ends.
In between the songs my brother and I would talk; he would recite
Bob
and Doug skits, often referring to me as Doug, attempting to
rope me in as his partner. I wasn't very good at it. I didn't know
the lines—in fact I didn't have anything at all to say—though
that didn't deter me from blathering on. If I couldn't think of
anything to talk about, my fallback was usually making sound effects:
producing a noise (such as a whistle) in one microphone and carrying
it to the other, so that the headphones listener would get a special
treat. Again and again and again.
Homemade commercials about breath deodorant and toilet paper. Fake
news reports. An with Ronald Reagan. By our third album, we got tired
or bored or older, and stopped including so much commentary and
focused more on hard-core early '80s pop.
So I'm in the process of preserving these embarrassing relics on
CD, because I just acquired the capability, and because I like to
do that sort of thing, despite the fact that I don't want anyone
to hear them and that I'd like to remember my childhood mind as
being less obnoxious than the tapes suggest. So far I've recorded
two tapes, and today I made the CD covers, incorporating the original
tape covers my brother designed. Hm. Any guesses as to what
his favorite band was at that time?
Sunday, 20 January 2002
Today Martin and I went to a recycling center, to get rid of
the stuff that isn't regularly picked up at the house, to get rid
of the stuff that's been accumulating for months: magazines, newspapers,
and boxes. Today Martin and I went to a recycling center and possibly
brought more home than we left there.
After discovering a magazine bin that had a top layer of publications
from the late '50s and early '60s, we began sifting through, collecting,
and stacking. Unnatural colors, perky fashion, gelled male hair
and flipped-up ends. Jeans: $2.98. "New" models of cars
and , long-retired fonts and . Cigarette and medicine ads with no warnings or listed
ingredients. In-depth articles about "red" China, the
desegregation of U.S. schools, how the women of Rio "flower"
early, and . Covers with an alive Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy,
Winston Churchill.
I'm guessing these magazines were tossed out with the death of their
owner, the person who browsed through them when they were brand
new. (Which puts a new mortality angle on my own pack-rat tendencies...
Will someone throw these out again when I die? I hope it doesn't
come to that.)
So, while everyone else walked away from the bins empty-handed,
we headed back to the car with our arms full. I plan to read the
articles and make tape/CD covers from the ads, so, no, it isn't
really clutter.
Saturday, 19 January 2002
My hair is wavy and tangled from the weather, and my shoes are
wet inside and out, as is my cell phone, which, when I last checked,
wasn't working. of us met for coffee around 11:00 this morning, fogging
up the glass front of Cup a Joe with hot coffee breath, turning
the normally transparent window into an opaque cloud. By 12:00 we
were strategically placing our cars at two different points, two
miles apart from each other, and proceeded to walk from one car
to the other together, along with 500 (so I was told) strangers.
A large percentage of the people wore pageant-like banners labeled
with the names of various countries and carried full-sized corresponding
multinational flags, made of colorful wet nylon that whipped around
in the wind and occasionally slapped me in the head.
Punks, college kids, teenagers, elementary schoolers, middle-aged
and seniors; dreadlocks, afros, and permed white hair. A few chants,
some singing. I stayed quiet and jumped around to different parts
of the queue, snapping quick pictures of i-don't-know-what, the
eyepiece of my camera also a victim of fog. By the time we got to
the finish line, my pants, socks and gloves were reservoirs for
much of the water that had fallen out of the sky.
1:30. Drying out, a heap of raincoats piled on the floor; musicians,
speakers, and poets, also on the floor. I wasn't surprised to find
that I liked the speakers the most, who were skeptical, hopeful,
and rightfully frustrated. I laughed and clapped and got warm, relieved
to discover that there are more than I expected in support of alternatives
to war. I left around 4:00, contributing my signature to a couple
petitions on my way out the door. It's now after 6:00, raining harder,
and my cell phone and I are still trying to recover. Still cold,
slightly more optimistic.
Friday, 18 January 2002
My downstairs neighbors are stomping around in steel-toed boots,
slamming doors and cackling, yelling "What I want right now
is Chowda!" over and over again in a forced Boston accent.
The music hasn't started yet, but I'm certain it will at any moment.
I'm spending my evening at home alone, something I was looking forward
to, but, now that it's here, I'm feeling too tired and deflated
to really enjoy it. A long busy week, a party last night for Stef's
birthday at which I stayed unwisely late, yesterday's long and involved
political conversations that left me hollow and frustrated, and,
of course, other things. Aha! The music just started. It would've
been nice to have been wrong about that.
Wednesday, 16 January 2002
Just rode down to the record store to freeze my bare ears, pick
up a requested CD for a friend, and, most importantly, test my new-old
bike. Did I mention that it's green and silver? And that might not
even be its nicest feature. Of course while I was in the store,
I experienced a new breed of worry, my bike sitting U-locked and
alone, its detachable bird-like seat attractive and unprotected.
I've never had a bike—or a car for that matter—that anyone
ever wanted to steal. I don't
know if anyone wants this one, either—it's a few years old,
with sporadic scratches and mismatched grips—but it feels
vulnerable, I guess because I like it so much.
I need to learn to walk in a record store without buying a . Did I make a resolution pertaining to that? I can't remember.
Tuesday, 15 January 2002
Ah, nothing like listening to Pogo in Togo on the way to work
and mindlessly singing along with the lyrics
to make one realize that the head is full of inane garbage. At work,
while copyediting twelfth grade history test questions, I was reminded
that there's lots of worthwhile information in there, too. If I
could make an inane-worthwhile pie chart of my brain, I wonder what
it would look like. But I suppose that's subjective.
I just woke up from a four-hour nap. Mexican food always makes me
sleepy.
Monday, 14 January 2002
She brought her new video camera over, and, after we made tall
sandwiches including slices of her first avocado, we watched quiet
videos of snow and birds on the pop-out screen, digits clicking
by in the top corner. Then I took over, roaming through the house,
pointing the camera at toys and cats and a monster head that groaned
when his eye was pulled out, and at that bat that hangs in the living
room, who flaps and squeaks when you flip his switch, and, oh, that
in the hallway, and that inflatable grasshopper
on top of the kitchen cabinets! Look! If you hold my cat Leeches
up and stretch her out, she spans the width of the door frame! I
was only able to quit when the battery was dead.
We also scanned wedding pictures—tiny,
faded images in which she and my dad look young and nervous and
sort-of unreal, the way all dated pictures appear to me: fascinating,
yet remote. We were turning those digital, too, just as I had my
house. Attempting to preserve.
Sunday, 13 January 2002
A used bike, of a new one, gears broken (but cheaply fixed),
shiny green with stray scratches, with the character of an old car:
a little worn, but an appealing shape, and a history. No warranty,
and a suspect "restocking" fee. Sold in a pawn shop by
a used-car salesman, slicked-back hair and thin moustache, a fat
tie that doesn't quite reach his belt for his belly, whose young
employee tried to put air in the tires via a screw in the brake
pads.
A new bike, twice the price of a used one, in perfect health, shiny
and black, with the character of a new pair of sneakers: bright
and obvious and virgin. A generous warranty and a year of free tune-ups.
Sold in a specialty shop by a man in a who readily responded to questions with
thorough, straightforward answers, and who, in an odd moment, confessed
that he sizes up his customers and is often wrong.
I the used bike. And last night—after returning a
gift, eating in a restaurant with an incomprehensible menu, scanning
my parents' wedding pictures, visiting with old friends, and taking
pictures of a friend's band (bumping my way to the front and squatting
above spilled beer and sneaking to different sides of the stage,
curling around deafening speakers)—I sat on the floor and polished
my new bike with an old sock. I think I did the right thing.
Friday, 11 January 2002
Strangers are good. Friends are good. It's just those pesky
people in between. I only have a problem with them because of the
small-talk that usually comes with them—I'm no good at it,
and sometimes it seems so ceremoniously false and forced that it
makes me want to laugh, rather than keep up the charade that we
really are interested in hearing that the other person is most definitely
"fine." Sometimes I want to sit on the steps outside of
my office building and do nothing more than think and absorb the
weather, maybe watch. But it's inevitable that one of the in-betweens
passes by, and rather than being allowed to hang over everything
like a cloud, I'm asked to comment, to respond to a comment, to
smile and explain what I'm doing outside, and it's really true what
they say about people talking about the weather. But then it would
be rude for neither of us to acknowledge the other, even if the
only exchange is an unanswered 'sup.
For the record: I'm not anti-social and I usually like meeting interesting
people, and, sometimes, exchanging awe over the news or the weather
with an unfamiliar peer is simply a nice thing to do. But only sometimes.
Thursday, 10 January 2002
Wednesday, 09 January 2002
The moaned and sweared at each other, complained about
our cards, panicked and celebrated, while Scott remained stoic,
true to his claim that he wasn't going to get emotional about a
board game. He seemed to barely notice when I accidentally caused
him to fall into a pit, inadvertently killing him. The rest of us
were enjoying some strange drive borne of manufactured competition,
vengeance, and the pursuit of a meaningless goal. It's odd that
for recreation we shoot our friends, push them into pits, get in
their way, and kill them, finding such satisfaction in victory.
In my defense, though, I should say that I'm a pretty peaceful player,
that I rarely use my weapons, that I like to slip into the win quietly
and unnoticed.
After a brief bout of paranoia, I think I can safely say that CD
man does not visit this site. I haven't spoken with him, but
he's flashed me a couple of friendly grins, not the sort he'd give
if he were aware I'd just confessed my true feelings about his CD
to everyone but him.
Tuesday, 08 January 2002
I drew a stick figure with a circle somewhere around the groin
area, and my partner (correctly) guessed "appendix." I
drew a cube next to a stick figure, and my partner knew it was supposed
to be "blockhead." Before I even connected the stick figures
with the identical bows in their heads, my partner blurted out,
"siamese twins!" I'm pretty sure that by the end of the
game, everyone at the table not-so-secretly hated us.
That was last night. Tonight I slept away my evening, leftovers
on the stove, contacts in, lights on, and book open. Looks like
is going to see some resistence as well.
Monday, 07 January 2002
Doh! , lying broken on the floor. About two weeks
ago, a stranger who works in my building handed me a CD of his friend's
rockabilly band. Why he wanted me to hear it, I have no idea. It
actually took me a couple days to follow orders, but when I finally
did, I discovered that yes! I hated it. Later that day, after he
left work, I quietly placed it on his seat with a polite but non-revealing
thank-you note stuck to it, and promptly forgot about the exchange,
until just now, when he came up to my desk and asked the dreaded
question. Well, how did you like it?
I'd been all prepared to say something along the lines of oh,
it's not really my thing, but thanks for loaning it to me, but
he caught me completely off-guard, so that when I opened my mouth,
the words uh, yeah, it was alright, yeah, pretty good came
out. He said he'd bring me another CD by the same band for me to
hear later. As soon as he walked away, I whispered to myself over
and over: be more honest, be more honest. Well, I suppose
it is only January 7th, and if resolutions were so easy to adopt,
there'd be no need of going to the trouble of making a pledge to
do so. I'm sure I'll get another chance to exercise my new brutal
honesty very soon. Perhaps with the next CD he loans me…?
Sunday, 06 January 2002
The back corner of my closet is empty for the first time in
years, the negatives to all the pictures I've ever taken are in
labeled sleeves, and I've finally long-expired resumes and cover letters. The drive
to organize and throw out crept into me sometime after and is only starting to die now, hours later, sneaking
back out again with each yawn.
While sifting through one particular mound of chaos, I came across
some old writing and instantly noticed how much more jagged and
honest and cryptic it is, compared to what I post here. Some of
it seems much more daring, much better; but, then again, it's sitting
in folded piles on a shelf, mostly unread, and occasionally even
I have a hard time discerning exactly what it was I meant. Maybe
that's why I like it—because it forces me to revisit moments
I'd forgotten, and because it has turned into a riddle only I can
solve. But perhaps that makes it irrelevant to everyone else.
Saturday, 05 January 2002
All of it was a strange coincidence, really. He was in the airport
at the same time I was (although neither of us had planned it that
way), but I never saw him. He was leaving, and I was picking up
a . They met at the while I paced beneath them, searching.
***
I took four rolls of film today, of a wealthy semi-local mayor (a
friendly guy who liked to pose with his cell phone and chuckle while
quoting the Emancipation Proclamation), of antiques (heavy wooden
furniture, porcelain dolls and costume jewelry), and of camera-shy
kids (who either stared blankly at my camera even though their mothers
suggested they look away, or who ran and clung to giant familiar
legs, burying their faces in safe thighs, and then stealthily checking
to see whether I'd disappeared).
Sometimes I wish I could be invisible.
Friday, 04 January 2002
It's slowly dissolving into noisy drips of water off the corners
of houses and the tips of icicles, and with it dissolves the guiltless
time to sit at home pasting pictures in books and watching marathons
of movie trailers, excuses to invite friends over to play board
games, and the incentive to walk to the neighborhood store instead
of driving there. My car is still immobile, and the earth is still
white, but the footsteps that violently crushed the smooth surface
of the snow are no longer being filled in, and the black shingled
rooftops are beginning to undress. Maybe by the time the last of
it melts, I'll be well again, now that I've missed sledding and
snowman-building invitations and two days of work.
I haven't been completely homebound, though. Last night I stomped
through knee-deep drifts at the train tracks and fed chocolate to
a hungry opossum who met me there. I molded one or two pitiful crumbly
snowballs, and I walked to the store with Martin in search of ingredients
for homemade soup. Today I feel up for more, now that I have relearned
how to dress for this weather, and now that the sun is out.
Thursday, 03 January 2002
I can say, with relative certainty, that there's no milk or
bread at the local grocery stores, no shovels left on the racks
at Home Depot, no movies to be rented at Blockbuster, and no kids
sitting in school. Why? Because there's snow everywhere, and it's
North Carolina. Lucky for me, I can walk everywhere I need to go,
except for work.
Of course I'm still sick, so I'd probably be home anyway. Yesterday
evening, around the time the snow was starting to fall, I tried
to venture out, but found standing and walking around really exhausting.
I'd gone to a used bike shop full of animals, and, while I was squatting
to pet an orange cat, I noticed a large, green parrot staring at
me from between two shelves. When I looked up at him, he yelled
"Cracker!" at me, which was nice. I spent the majority
of the rest of the evening inside, swallowing vitamins, eating pasta,
and watching A Time for Drunken Horses, a movie that'll make
you feel guilty for even having the resources to watch it, sitting
there lazily with a full belly, wrapped up in a blanket, in a warm
room, the outside glowing with white frost.
Wednesday, 02 January 2002
So I woke up in my living room yesterday morning (still wearing
the uncomfortable clothes from the night before), laying across
the two-person couch, my shoeless feet hanging off the end, my head
next to the pillow, and a cat on either side of me. The night
before, I ended up going to Stef's for a modest gathering that turned
out to be just the right size. And I just when the ball dropped, which is potentially a good
for the new year.
And, yes, that sickness did turn into something and I'm sitting
at home when I should be at work, which brings me to my (abridged)
list of resolutions, starting with health:
1. Go to bed earlier/get more regular sleep.
2. Get in shape.
3. Try to maintain a healthy diet, and maybe learn to like a few
more vegetables.
4. Save money.
5. Read more (starting with the book Eric just gave me, The Trial
of Henry Kissinger).
6. Take more classes. Practice things I've taken classes for in
the past (such as guitar, German, photography, etc.).
7. Do more professional writing. (If they let me.)
8. Spend more time alone.
9. Be honest with people, even if it means hurting their feelings.
(Also: Be more considerate.)
10. Do more volunteer work/get politically involved.
11. Avoid spending money at the major corporations; support small
businesses.
12. Travel more, and go camping more often.
13. Detach myself from my old stuff (: learn to throw things away).
<<February
2002 | December 2001>>
|
