The Journal of Winifred Burkle -- An Autobiography in Days

wasn't special, and in the end it is what ended up making it that way. It was just roads and reststops and fast food places and too many billboards. There really are too many billboards, taking up bits of the sky. And it isn't as if people don't know what is there. I think I'd rather have someone tell me something is good anyway, or find out on my own. I don't need wood and paint to tell me how to think.

...which shouldn't make any sense, me off to grad school. But it does. It still does and for everything they teach me, I will teach something back. That way it isn't a billboard at all, it's

Conversation. Yes. Conversation.

And I miss them. I know they miss me, and I know its in ways Mama claims I'm not even in a place to understand. But they're not in my place to understand either. No matter how long I lived in Texas, they'd lived there longer. No matter how well I know our house, they knew it that much more. And it felt like they were trying to get that way about me too, sometimes. No matter how much I learned about myself, they were so sure they'd learned more.

But I know me better. It's why I'm here.

I pulled out an add in the campus paper today, they were looking for help up at the library. I'm not sure yet but I think I'm going to go ahead and

-57-