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09.01.02 - 4:50 p.m. today i bought a very expensive computer. Moreover, my father bought it-for now- and added it onto the ever increasing debt that belongs to me and lives in the last four pages of a notebook he keeps in his desk drawer. I will stay with medicare for one more week and hand over four bluecross blue shield paychecks with a smile on my face. Im tired of sticking up for my father. Its tiring. I just want to tell everyone that its normal, that its expected that its okay, that love is something my fathers takes out of his pocket along with his keys and his fingernail clippers and keeps in his change basket when hes sleeping. Its always with him, and i know this, but its his, it has his hands around it, and you have to ask to borrow it, and you have to give it back that same day. And then a thousand things i feel i should say on top of that about Indian Princesses, and how hard people try, and how things you learn when youre 10 years old climb out of your shirt collar and present themselves to your children 40 years later. In any case it sure will be nice to have my own area to write in. I think i am like this. When i was a kid i used to practice my guitar in the back bathroom with all the doors locked. Id sit on the floor between the toilet and the bathtub and follow villa lobos unitl my fingers hurt or until brothers banged on the door to remind me of dinner, cold on the table. I need that quiet and that ownership over my space, no matter how small, how ill kept. I cant write in this office with people coming in and out and in. My space upstairs is ready. My 11 year old computer is dusty and resigned and we've talked, and its time. She knows it. There will be a slick, black dell in a few days, in its place, humming, clean and confident. Where polysyllabic words would throw my old love into a dead lull, the dell will skip right along, blinking and blinking, No doubt it will be an adjustment. In the meantime, quiet breaths where mom and dad are gone have me down here with enough liquor to keep me stationary and a familiar ache to have my fingers moving, to return to the place that keeps me aware and warm. � 
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