Oh sweet cheese. Hurt is coming to the Shop!

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

A Sad Child

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and ice cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favourite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,

and the flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.

-Margaret Atwood

I'm listening to Janet Dailey on tape. What is the world coming to? I'm sure I'll be committed any day now. They will lock me in a little room and feed me little white pills and ask me if I was deprived as a child.

I am also consumed by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Ooo, I might have another favorite author. Is it bad that my "to read" list grows more than my "read" list? I hope not. I hope I can read a lot this fall.

I'm so lucky to have a dorm room to myself. I will get posters that put a smile on my face and I will bring my useless green lamp and rent a fridge that will keep my Ben and Jerry's cold just long enough. I will stock up on Slim Fast wanna be diet stuff and post pictures all over to remind myself that I still have a friend.

Maybe they won't lock me up after all.

Maybe I can put on a mask long enough so that they will never know...