OK, so Steve came over here and he showed me all this neat stuff about HTML and what a template is and how to put in pictures and links to other websites and colors and all kinds of stuff. We played with the computer all afternoon and most of tonight til he went home and I had a goddam blast! I mean, it was fun. We went all over the place and he showed me what other people's sites look like and we went to a lot of other blogs--Jesus, there's a bunch of them--and I actually had a good time doing all that. I put links to the sites of the rest of the class over there on the sidebar under the calendar. The print is kind of tiny. I tried to make it bigger but the formula Steve gave me didn't work. I must have done something wrong because he says it don't take much--one little comma or something that ain't where it's supposed to be and you won't get nothing. But I'll figure it out. See, HTML is what they call this computer language that makes everything show up on the screen (don't ask me how, that's as far as I got) and all's it is is formulas, like algebra in high school, only different. If you know the right formulas you can do anything--well, anyway you can do a lot. Like I can put pictures up now and links to other sites and change the color of the letters or how big they are. It's pretty neat. I'm practically a geek now! Though to tell you the truth, I ain't too sure at the moment why I'd want to do any of that stuff but I suppose it will come in handy one of these days for something.

Steve's a good guy to help me like this, but he's like that. I seen him once jump into the rapids on the Wilbur's--well, we call them rapids because there's this section with a whole bunch of rocks and it's about as fast as the Wilbur's ever gets, though it ain't but shoulder deep even in the middle. Anyway, he jumped right into the river because he seen a cat hung up on a rock out in the middle. Well, it was early spring, the water was pretty high and moving some even for that stretch and it was cold, I mean, not, you know, below freezing or anything, but cold just the same. I said, "The hell with it. Leave it there. It's a cat, for chrissakes--if it can get out there, it can get back." But Steve, he could see that was one wet, cold, scared cat and he couldn't just walk away from it so he jumps right in and wades out to the middle and the water's pushing him around so bad I finally took my jacket off and went downstream because I figured he was going to lose his footing and then I'd have to wade right in there after him before he went over the little falls downriver where the electric dam is, and then we'd both be freezing our asses off and the cat probably wouldn't be no better off than it was before Steve got all stupid over it.

But I give him credit, he kept his feet all the way out to where the cat was--a big black thing with a long-hair coat all matted down. That one was one damn wet cat. So he got there and he braced himself against another rock and he reached out to grab it and the damn thing was so scared it hissed and scratched him all over his face so I could see the blood way over on the shore, and then it took off, hopping from one rock to another until it could jump on shore on the opposite bank, then it took off into the woods, and Steve is just watching it go while he hangs onto this rock and the water's trying to push him down to the falls and blood is running all down his face. I don't bet he was too happy about it.

So he finally wades back to shore and climbs out all dripping wet and freezing and he scowls at me and he says, "Don't say nothing, not one goddam word, you hear me?" and I said, "I wasn't going to," and he says, "Yes, you were," all pissed off, but I really wasn't going to, you know, I was too busy trying not to laugh in his face. That wouldn't have been nice but he looked funny as hell and I had all I could do not to let her rip but i didn't, I stayed serious and didn't even crack a smile and I was proud of myself for doing it because even though it wasn't the brightest thing in the world he ever done, it came out of a good heart and you gotta like that about a guy.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the class. So they're over there on the sidebar and you can click them if you want and see what they're up to but I'll be honest with you, I looked and it ain't much. They only got a few entries apiece, and it seems like they been doing it about a month or so, most of them.

"A Frame of Dust" is some poetry Emily wrote. There's only a couple poems there, though, because she's real picky and she don't think the others are good enough. There's a couple I liked better that she wrote for the class, but she says they're "not ready." Oh, yeah, I should tell you her name ain't "Emily", it's Merilee, but we call her Emily because she likes it. She's got this thing about some female poet named Emily that Sam likes, too, Emily Dickerson. It sounds familiar, I think I must have read some of her stuff in high school but I don't remember any of it. In fact, the only poem I remember, and it ain't really a poem, only part of one, is from some English guy, or, no, he was Irish, that's right, an Irish guy, and he wrote "Don't go gently into that long night, rage, rage against the dying of the light." I knew what he meant right away. He was talking about dying, my teacher said, but I said he was talking about living and I still think that even though she gave me a D for being stubborn about it. I thought he was saying that you ought to live life as hard as you can, not just sit back and let it go by like it was somebody else's business, but Mrs LaJoie said it was about fighting for life in the "last few precious moments before death" and I said that was stupid because what good was it gonna to do you then? and she give me a D. I remember everything about that clear as anything because it was practically the only time in all the time I was in high school that I was really sure I was right. I could feel it, you know? Anyway, I thought I could.

But I was telling you about the class, wasn't I?

The other poet is Julie and her site is called "midnight blue" because she says she writes the stuff in the middle of the night when she can't sleep. There's a lot of nights I can't sleep, too, but I don't write poetry about it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Ma used to say that, especially whenever I thought Cyn did something really dumb, and it just means different people like different things and there's nothing wrong with that. There's lots worse things than writing poetry, even if most of the time I can't think what they are. Hers is real weird, although sometimes I get it, or anyway I get a little bit of it. Like she's got this one poem on there that's about pirates coming to get her, or some shit, I didn't really like it until the last line where she says,

"i could not watch my death unfold
so casually mistaken."

I got that part, alright. Nobody wants to die over somebody's stupid mistake. And she's got another one she done for the class and there's part of it next to her picture on the website and my god is she a doll! I mean, she's really beautiful. But anyway, the part I mean is like, well, here it is.

"i came within a cloud and never left it.
it surrounds me now.
i see dimly, as if through the leaves of trees."

OK, so what the hell does she mean about coming in a cloud? That don't make no sense at all, nobody can be in a cloud. They can be in a fog and that's what she says she meant, sort of, but different. I just can't see it. But the last line there, I know just what she means, like when you're hunting and something moves in front of you but you can't tell what it is because the leaves are in the way. She means she feels that way about her life and brother, I know just how that feels. I always feel like that, more or less. But the one I like best is the one about the cats. I got that one all the way through.

Then there's Rachel's blog. She named it "Poor Girl" probably because that's how she thinks of herself. But I shouldn't get down on her, she's just a kid. And I gotta give her credit, she ain't really whining about her parents as bad as she does in the class, in fact she ain't even mentioned her mom yet, which surprised me some since it's really her mom that gets after her. Her mom and dad are divorced, and I guess she's living with him for the summer, I don't know. Anyway, she just talks about stuff mostly but there's one on there that's about, you know, sex and stuff, and my eyes bugged right out of my head on that one. Two, actually. One of them's how she feels about it and the other one's this sex-story that, well, I hate to tell her because I don't think she meant it that way, but it's more funny than sexy.

The last one is the guy I was telling you about that wanted us to be surprised. Well, I was. I don't get it, though some of it is funny. I think he meant it to be but I ain't sure. Anyway, he's got this thing about Egypt and he's pretending to be some god or something. His site looks really good though, he must know some stuff about this HTML business. Maybe I can get him to teach me some of it. His name is Jack and he comes from Texas, so maybe that explains how weird his site is. They're all wicked whacked down there--no offense, Tamara, I'm sure you're OK, but Kinky says, "There's a lot of wide open spaces in Texas. Between people's ears." And from what he writes and the Texans I've knew, I gotta say I think he's probably right.

Jesus it's late. I went from writing nothing to a goddam flood, didn't I? Maybe it was because I felt a lot better when I seen they didn't none of them do no more than me the last couple weeks, in fact I wrote more than all of them put together so I guess I ain't doing as bad as I thought I was. Anyway, you can go check them out, it'll make them happy and there ain't no harm in it. You might even like some of it, just because I don't. Don't go by me, I don't know nothing, that's been proved over and over.