  I’ve been listening to Ben Kweller today. In Harriet’s Song, he says “ You say I’m blind/ I think you’re wrong/Harriet’s got a song” and the exact note and tone he uses to say “ song ” brings me to a church camp song, which brings me to church camp. Right, right, I’m no religious zealot. Far from. (Incidentally, I saw a man on the street yesterday wearing a t-shirt that said ‘ Recovering Catholic’ , which is relevant, I guess) But I was raised in the faith, sort of, and my ass has been shipped off to church camp for eight summers now.
I attend one week sessions at Twinlow Camp, and if there is one place on earth that feels like home, it’s Twinlow. The smell permeates in the back of my mind, as well as my duffle bag, for long after I leave. It’s dirty and usually hot, but some of the happiest moments of my life have been there. And I owe that to a really strange assortment of friends, The Butterflies. We are not the fucking Ya-Ya Sisters, non of us are very religious, and we see each other a handful of times a year. But we’re close. We were christened ‘butterflies; when we were eleven, because that was the name of out cabin. The group has morphed and changed over the years, so now it includes young men, but we’re still together. (Even though we live all across the state) Karlee. She’s still cheerleading, though not for her (“ mothering fucking retarded ”) school. We get together and pick up exactly where we left off. She brings out the loud, irritateive eleven-year-old in me (shamefully so, actually) and I suppose I do the same for her. We talk throughout the year, keep up on one another’s lives, and generally motivate one another to continue spending that one, glorious week at camp.
Jenelle, as I have written about before, is my pen pal for life. There’s Christi, with whom I have told my deeper, darker secrets. Paige sends me chain letters to piss me off (it works, by the way) and I think there’s no one better prepared to be happy than her. The twins, Trevor and Travis, crack me up and I love them for it. And then there is urlLink Seth whose brother is Ethan.
Oh yes, Ethan Haberman. Well, there is a lot to say about him. My entire infatuation with John Mayer correlates with my love of Ethan, if that shows the enormity. Whenever it rains or I’m considering things in my life, I always find that my daydreams resolve themselves with us marrying. He is simply beautiful. Tall, relatively fit but not beefy, with dark hair and boyish facial expressions that seem to relay something wonderful. He smiles a good deal, and it’s an entrancing, contagious smile that lights up everything. Did I mention he’s a musician?
He plays guitar and sings. It actually hurts to hear his voice. It’s a low, deep (not Barry White, but deep) assuring sound that emanates from deep in him, and it washes over me like until I’ve forgotten that there is such a thing as time. Really, it’s an impractical way to treat your secret love, because when he says something like “Pass the ketchup” I freeze. I just realized that I intended for this entry to be about camp and it morphed into an entry about Ethan. Oh well, it inspires sappy love song-listening and bad poetry. Affectionately… Anna 
