new copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Reading Memoirs of a Beatnick is an incredible experience. At least half of the pages are devoted to thrust-by-thrust narratives of Diane di Prima's sexual encounters (which include Allen Ginsberg and Jack Keroac, who wanted to do it lotus-style), and to the sexual revolution. She was a beatnick before the word was coined, a true bohemian liberated independent woman, fiercely polyandrous and openly sexually inclusive--anyone was fine--and a woman of the world before the concept existed, and I want to be her desperately.

(My dad looked it over and asked if he could borrow it; I told him not to read it because it was intensely sexual and he wouldn't like it, and he told me to "be discriminating about what you read." I found this funny because I'm one of the most discriminating readers I've ever met. It's depressing, really. I read obscure books, sure, but I never read anything I'm not sure will be worthwhile, partly because once I start reading a book I have to finish it. Anyway, I got this book from Eric, who has never lent me anything that hasn't been amazing.)

I was reading in the hallway, on my way to get breakfast and relieve Dan of watching my bag (I'd left my book in A52 and had to interrupt Charlie Blanc's class to get it; he really hates me now) and feeling great when I heard music coming from the meetinghouse--DFL and his five-piecer playing "My Favorite Things," or whatever that song is called--the one from The Sound of Music. I was enchanted. I stood in the doorway and watched for a little while, and Justin smiled and nodded over his upright bass and I felt wonderful.

I've tried many times to prove to the world that I'm not really a hippie, but my friends always find some detail to use against me. "Look at the way you stand, all leaned over to the left!" "You wear shoes with holes in the toes!" "You ride a brown bicycle to school!" But I'm not a hippie, really. I have whole weeks when I wear nothing but black. I read classic literature and listen to jazz and rockabilly and befriend anarchists. I've taken to correcting people: "I'm not a hippie, I'm a teenager with bohemian tendencies." Then again, these days people don't differentiate between the hippies and the goths and punks and beatnicks and jazz cats and anarchists and neo-nazis, it seems.

But I don't care. I'm my own hypocritical semi-bohemian self and I love it!