Didn’t get to go to Rome or Florence today. Sad. Nobody else wants to go, despite being all excited last night. So I’m going to Montepulciano. To draw and write in my journal some more, cause I didn’t do enough of that yesterday. I’m getting all emotional from reading Stiffed. I think maybe I’m gonna have a period two months in a row. Won’t that be exciting!Faludi’s main point so far seems to be that men need to be put into groups that they feel safe in, teams that will remain unchanged, with a common bond that all can remain loyal to. I may just be skeptical because it’s all about men, but I’m trying. Maybe I should be reading Backlash at the same time, to balance it out.

I can agree that physical production is important, to have something to show at the end of the day, instead of points, or stock prices. But I think that individual production is important as well. She doesn’t negate that, of course. And that isn’t really even her point; the group dynamic is. So I don’t know why I brought it up.

Why wasn’t the vilification of women covered in the mainstream press during the Citadel fiasco? Why wasn’t anything done preparing those boys to deal with women?

Sensitivity training is such a dirty word.

The Browns were sold out of Cleveland because people forget about the importance of personal connection and time investment to honor the more fleeting media connection and monetary investment.

I feel like my chest has been scraped empty. I have so much to say, not just about Stiffed but about how I feel about any number of things, and I can’t find the words inside. They’ve all been scraped out.

I don’t think Kablooey and I will fit together for very much longer. Just writing that sentence makes me cry. But we’re going to such different places. The last thing I want to do is lose her, but I don’t want to lose me either. I don’t have to choose yet. I may not ever. But I know that if I don’t go to grad school right after Wilson, this whole animation thing will go down the drain, and I’ll end up as a technician/web designer.

But that’s wrong. All of what I just wrote is wrong. Because I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know where I am going. So why not just go where she goes? Because it doesn’t feel right. Because I’m scared. Scared of newness, scared of the North, scared. Was I this scared in Asheville? I don’t remember, but I don’t think so. I feel like I might drown, and drag her down with me.

I feel like I should be able to do something. I thought that by the time I graduated from college, I was supposed to be able to do something. I can mess around with computers, with paints and brushes, with words. That’s all, just messing around.

But she’s scared too. She’s going through the same process I am. She’s better prepared, and has more “College for Dummies” books on her side, but it’s the same stuff.

Why do I bottle all this up, distill it into quiet dis-ease, hide it from her, when I could share it and be done? It wouldn’t really be done, but it would be shared at least. She knows I’m worried, she coaxes it out of me, but I shouldn’t make her do that. She shouldn’t have to make me open up to her. But I put her in that position everytime, because the only way I get out what I feel is on a keyboard or with a pen. I suck at personal communication. Shades, oh Shades is a media image. She isn’t communicated, she is projected, and Kathryn is left without the ability to confide in her girlfriend without a computer screen.

I don’t want to be a prodigal. I’m scared of wandering away after college, getting my ass kicked by the big real world, and limping back south in disgrace, just like my dad implies everytime he looks at me. I don’t want her to have to enter that world any sooner than neccesary. I shouldn’t be worrying about protecting her. If I am, then all my claims to see her as an equal are hot air. But I know she’s safer living in a dorm. You don’t have to make the rent every month, and your campus meal is pre-paid.

Dusty says that if we aren’t already in the real world, then where are we? I don’t know where I am. I know who I am. I’m Kathryn. I’m a camp counselor and hundreds of children drop what they’re doing at the rise of my hand. But I don’t do that anymore. So how am I defined now? Just Kathryn? That doesn’t seem enough. Kablooey loves me, and that is incredible, but I can’t define myself through her. I’m just me, I guess, unadorned, without those kids. Is that what made me who I am? My power over small children? No, but I don’t know what it really is. It was all so clear.

But I defined myself through what I did for 8 weeks out of the year.

But I was good at it.

That is the one thing I have ever done that puffed out my chest, sent a burst of pride through me, let me know that, here at least, I was necessary because I knew what I was doing. And now, whenever I am called upon to do something that gives me that feeling of pride, of knowledge, I can feel Shades in there, taking the credit, puffing out her chest. It doesn’t happen very often anymore. I don’t know much out here. Especially not here. When we go places, I sponge the place in, soaking up street names, directions, maps, learning alleys and autostrada. But I can’t soak in the people. I can’t soak in the way they think. So all the maps in my head are useless, skeletons in a necropolis that won’t be alive once I leave.

Except for Gulia. That’s a little much to put on a 9 year old’s shoulders, or perhaps, just the perfect weight. The memories of one camp counselor, slightly distorted by time and wine, populated by one child she can’t tell to stop running or get in a buddy line, because she does not know the words for such things. This one girl forever climbing the marble walls in the corner of St Peter’s. Maybe that’s just right.

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