It was great to get your email, man oh man! Exams are over, i'm back in raleigh-town, there is a huge physical weight lifted off me, i feel. after exams i went into super-creationary mode........as in, i made crowns for the cats. we had a christmas jam at my place, which was a fun dynamic with gaby's too-cool punk friends (remember our georgia late-night punk conversation which led us to miss Genevieve's exit by about 25 minutes?) and my dorky, nerdy, or hippie friends. Heck, after everyone got boozed up we all ate cupcakes together in peace. I made mistletoe out of cardboard and got a few illicit kisses as the night progressed, mainly from Tara. Gabriel's beautiful emo-licious friend Shane was visiting from Richmond; we were both so shy that we stood under the mistletoe for a good three minutes nervously chatting, including him talking about the "spirit of the mistletoe" and me not pickin gup on it and then he said something like "so...you like batman, huh, cause so do i??" and i said something like "shggrnneeek...um....batman rocks but the clash is awesomer" and then i ran away because i liked him so much. Awesome to see that my male-attracting skills are at about seventh-grade level. So, i CAN'T BELIEVE i have forgotten to tell you this the last TWO times you called. Take a deep breath.....while i was at teh SOA protest this year (which was sooooooooo awesome in its own right but deserves a fleshly conversation with eye contact....ahhh, sweet eye contact...), The Indigo Girls played!!! Whoa!!! but it gets even better!! because.....while i was separated from my group, i was packed into a crowd waiting for the big-ass puppet pageant to begin......and......AMY RAY WAS RIGHT BEHIND ME!!!! SHE TOUCHED MY BOOKBAG!!!! SHE BRUSHED MY SHOULDER OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!!! I FELT HER BREATH ON MY NECK HAIRS!!! It was so weird, I wished you were there so much cause YOU would have, like, turned around and said something amazing like "Your music is the canvas of my life. I respect you so much. Your music is the most longstanding inspiration of my life. I endlessly analyze your ingenious lyrics. You are my heroine and I am an awesome poet. We should hang out sometime" but of course I like, had to pee in my pants and kept looking back behind me at her but pretending I was looking for someone else far away. I'm sure she and her friend could tell (um, yeah), and I had, like, two more photos onmy roll and I wanted to take her picture at the protest but I kept chickening out adn imagining that if you were there you would have taken a picture 5 minutes ago and given her a huge ol' hug adn been like "it's awesome that you are showing you care at this protest, can I get a picture of you here?" whereas I woulda been like "um, hey, i really like your music but my best friend LOVES YOUR MUSIC AND YOU, like, you are her favorite band and she thinks your lyrics are so awesome and pretty much she would marry you if she could, so can i just transfer that to you." Then was trying to take one picture of the puppets and save the other one for you, but then this old lady bumped into me adn i took two pictures, ran out of film, and amy ray walked away. Ah man. I obsessed over this, but in conclusion, it was a special moment between us (and you to some extent cause i coudln't get you out of my mind) that she didn't know we had. But geez that whole protest experience was awesome. So, I am a horrible lett-writer mainly because i start about three times as many letters as i end up sending, so i keep finding beginnings of letters i thought i sent you, but then didn't. so i keep thinking i wrote you all this stuff but then i find it under my bed or something. But i think i was very scared of writing to you about not going to the DC protest against our good ol' war on Iraq. I chose to go see my family instead. I was pretty ashamed of not going, partially because it made me think of what rights and privileges are and what they mean, but mainly because you mentioned being so frustrated about not being able to do anything. I feel ya, i felt ya, but still i hesitated. now, my hesitation (and indecisiveness) has brought me much strife in my life (that will be a rap line one day when i write my memoirs in teh form of a "hip-hopera")which i guess in a way i have elected to experience, but i feel like it also gives me a different understanding of things. There ended up being between 100 and 200thousand folks resisting, or at leasst declaring that this is not OK, to kill other folks so we can drive SUVs and stay rich. And other more complicated things. And i didn't go, and i'm sorry i didn't go, but i feel like i have been changing the world in other ways, in individual ways. So I'm not ashamed anymore, i may regret not going, especially the part my presence would have played in creating a culture of resistance and nonviolence, but i do not know if my standing out there would have helped any organized effort, or lack of one. So I told my boss, Joy, who has become a really good friend, actually, and is an amazing woman who you would love to meet and who you WILL meet when you get back, that i was going to SOA. And she basically said, as "a sixties brat," which is what she referred to herself as, "well, OK, if you feel like your standing out in the cold all day is really going to help close that school then go for it. i'm staying warm here with my students." Whoa. But I felt like this hekped me to clarify my beliefs about protest, those being that they DO create a peaceful, creative, beautiful culture that reinforces the work we do year-round at home to stop bad things from happening. I also feel like politics right now confound and confuse me, and they all start to sound the same. You know, i think, about the beauty in resistance because we have been there together so many times--it made adn makes me cry it's so beautiful. So I tell her this when i get back, and she smiles. I also wanna tell you about this Maharaji guy I have been listening to. I would love for us to listen to him together sometime, i have no idea how to describe him and what he speaks about. It's awesome and beautiful, though.

OK pancake restaurant, I will go for now, i need to let my feelins stew a little, and i have some X-mas presents to wrap. My sister's catholic school insists that you say CHRIST-mas because saying XMas takes the christ out of christmas. awesome, guys.

OK Sugar Beet (as my parents would say), I must go claim my Creole heritage by stuffing my gut with pralines and (spicy) junk food. LOVE YOU LIKE MAGGIE VALLEY LOVES FIGURINES AND AIR-BRUSHED T-SHIRTS,

DJ Katiebird

P.S.--I have a dilemma with living in South America involving seafood consumption. As in, pretty much you cannot eat anything but American protein powder and eggs if you are vegetarian in Chile, and this upsets the seņoras who are your house mamas greatly. To shellfish or not to shellfish? While i was at the clinic getting my HIV test for my Chilean visa, the nurse told me to bring condoms with me because otherwise i would fall in love with some Chilean boy and they have shoddy condoms down there and i would end up with some half-gringo baby and who would want that? Also, did you know that the Chilean judicial system is based upon Roman and Napoleonic law so you are considered guilty until proven innocent, and if you are caught with any type of drugs you are sent to prison for a minimum of seven years, even if you are an American citizen? Guess who will be a hot straight-edge mama exchange student? Also, did i ever get around to telling you what secret thing i did on my birthday, or was that another incomplete unfinished letter?

Also, should I sleep with a man who wears wrestling t-shirts and is a biology major? We will talk later. I LOVE YOUR B.O.!!! I HOPE YOU GOT THE CHANCE TO HIT THE TRAIL AFTER ALL!!! i am thinking trail thoughts for you.......