Communiquez Avec Moi.

Avant la mort, je panique... comme un hiver morne, gel couvrant tous. Ete... vous dehors la?

My broken, broken french! And I can't figure out how to get the accents to show up. Ah well. C'est la vie, oui?! Har har. I'm like a 19th century Russian aritsocrat. My french sucks and my accent's phony, but somehow a different language can convey the certain... urgency that one's native language just doesn't.

Everyone describes the world with a different arsenal of colors.

I am coming back to the original idea of what I am. Original as in the stability and calm of one month ago. On the big speakers: Erik Satie, Troi Gymnopedies. A time for reflection. An update from this satellite dish, to follow.

Power tools. What every woman wants for chrixmas. 

All The Answers

I just happened to be on msn's website for a split second, where I read the following:

The way a relationship works the best is when a woman is getting everything she wants. When a man serves a woman, the relationship flies. When a woman serves a man, the relationship tanks.

Like, seriously, this was the advice columnist's response to someone with a "relationship" question. Homina homina homina. If my room appears vacated, or if I suddenly become hard to get a hold of, it's because I've moved to a cave in New Zealand with just my notebooks and a few marionettes to keep me company. Can we really be so.... ugh, but the words just fall flat. Philistines! Because, you know, a relationship isn't about two individuals plowing through this madness [life] together, it's about being served, and getting breakfast in bed, and, uh, manicures and stuff. I mean, who cares what's going on in your mind, or what your personal code of ethics is? As long as you feed me strawberries when I demand it, we're cool.

Kill me now.

Si Jetais Diable!

Woke up this morning thinking, “si jetais dieu, tout la journee j’me chanterais…” (I am sure that’s been butchered to hell and back. Perhaps ahniwa will assist?) Music is like a direct link to our consciousness at times, a little piece of a once significant melody can so easily jolt one back to another time and place, and often to such an acute degree that the corollary smells and emotions are queued up, too. What a powerful mnemonic device.

Back to the Dalai Lama’s book:

Human beings all share a similar quest to have the most basic needs fulfilled: compassion, safety, acceptance. We must relate to each other with the understanding that we all have these goals, liminal or subliminal, in common. First and foremost. Wall-building, ego posturing, etc, only hinder the pursuit of these things. Ahhhhhh, blech. All of this talking, and what’s really being said? Trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice! I am lucky to have people in my life who fight doggedly to help safe guard my level of consciousness. Feeling like that half-boy at times, and I hope that I will not offend. [As long as I learn I'll make mistakes.] What will emerge, once the surface of the water calms?

And by the way thank you
for keeping your face hidden--
I can hardly bear the beauty of this world.

Do I Have What I Need...

Double standards.

Thinking about Wittgenstein and his admonition that we must stop thinking of the mind as a little man within. I am tired of having to play a certain part in order to be accepted. I am tired of the look with trepidation and much talking behind it. I am weary, and my head wants a rest. We cannot stack ourselves up like Mah Jong tiles and compare, compare. There is no high water mark for any of this [life.] As soon as you stick your hand in the river to retrieve something you saw glinting in the sun, it's an entirely new universe. Constant motion forward.

I remember the day that Anne and Pat graduated from Evergreen. Anne accused me of losing some CD of Patrick's, and without even asking me any questions about it, demanded that I buy a new one. Two weeks later they found the CD in the wrong jewel case and I only heard about it from a third party. We are not always at our best. Perfection is a myth, and the goal is just to keep learning.

One Hundred Per-Cent, My Babies!

"What are your insecurities," he asked me so point-blankly. I blinked a few times; every thought that had been in my mind scurried away at once, out the door in the back. A pin dropped and I saw so many irridescent eyeballs staring back at me from the dark spots. I continue with the task of pointing them out and calling them by name; this is hard work. But necessary. Conversation is at times so focused, pointed, straight forward like a meat cleaver cutting away the excess. Sometimes I feel like a top, on my head, spinning.

This is something that I have been thinking about almost unceasingly lately. At times I feel like a stranger in even my own mind. Fears lately more than anything, I feel my mind spreading out its reign in the foolish attempt to control that which it will never be able to. Are you going to be around what is your father thinking about two nights ago what is my father thinking about all of this in general why do i seek these approvals anyway, shhhh. Brains like conflict. I think of the cycles we fall into; forty-hour work weeks, sedation on the weekends and evenings, tv humming, commercials, consumerism. During the car ride home Pat asks, "do you suppose that most people eat meals so lacking in nutrients on a daily basis?" At times I feel absolutely crazy.

I think of my first psychology professor at OU. "My thesis was based on the hypothesis that most people have much more depth than they are willing to show."

I am having so many doubts lately. Trying to figure out the balance between the selfishness that will keep me sane in this culture, and the humility that will keep me compassionate. Hard, hard, hard.

Pixchers From Aimee's Bday

If there was ever any question that there is a smart twin, and a ... "special" twin....



Pat is easily one of the coolest guys I know. And he always makes the coolest faces in pictures. So this picture is cool to the second power.



The kid in the santa hat was helping me make my get away with Aimee's new chopper bike. (She's 7 now!)



I really wasn't ready to be done, but the natives were restless.

Like Flight

When I think of


my history of wall building



I am fearful



but not prostrate.



Each second an entire universe.

Head Is Like A Seive.

Two pen knives sticking in each temple lobe. Concentrate. Tired in my bones. In breath. Out breath.

Like a tornado, yes, thoughts careering in on themselves. The calm will be back shortly simply because it must. A cross-section of my brain would look like:

• Do I remember how to do warrior II properly?
• Will I find the time and fortitude tonight to sit?
• "I'm glad you popped into my life."
• How will I get transportation...?
• How do two people actually really connect?
• Click click whirrrrr.
• My bed is a warm haven that beckons me, cutting off my focus.
• What is the goal of all of this? Life looks so random, but really, how random can it be?
• The amber light under a surface of clear water. Unwavering.
• Trying to control emotions that have no desire to be controlled. And to what end?
• Do I divulge enough information to him? Lately when I talk I feel like the words are representative of these stray arrows.
• Forget about shining up that icon.
• So hard to keep this in mind, in the thick of it!
• No comparisons because you're not going to go over those old and tired synapses.

Oh time, you fleeting beast! All that we have and yet of late I feel that it works so doggedly against me. I am no longer captivated by Rimbaud. Our work is to be sustainable. The candle doesn't need to burn at both ends, despite my previous statement, there is time for everything. Shhh. Come to a dead stop and look around you. How would you do things differently? Make your notes and continue about your task.

The First Time The House Burned Down

Lava under the surface of my skin.

"What is troubling us," said Wittgenstein, "is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within."

Often I am faced [like a ton of bricks] with how difficult it is to appreciate each moment for what it is; one solitary moment. This post-modern brain of mine! Conditioned to reach out and grab at the future, reach out and grab at everything but the only thing that truly exists; the myriad goings on right here, right now. I have let my meditation practice slip, and must doggedly pick it back up. So many stray arrows riccocheting wantonly about, my mind is like a Roman battlefield. Time again to take up the collection.

The more deeply I go into myself... strange and foreign as this aspect of myself at first seems to be, I soon realize that it is me, and much more me than my superficial ego.

The training is to worry about whatever minutiae may pass through the goopy cavity between my ears. What is it like, in the brain of the little cat? Do cats know anxiety, or are they the true understanders of zen philosophy, living only in the here and now? Knowledge of the future brings about emotional reactions to future events before they happen, and thus anxiety because, for example, one may get sick or will eventually die. And apparently this does not trouble the creatures who act by instinct. To be dissimilar to Doestoevsky's Akakyavich and Chernyshevsky's ideal man, both.

I Want To Live.

Hey MLE! I have a note for you, from yourself, listen listen:

From the moment I wake, to the moment I sleep, I'll be there by your side; just you try and stop me.

Don't you start this hiding thing, kiddo. There is something on your mind, and so you get it out. Even if you stumble through. It is hard to break out of so many old habit patterns. I wonder if Anne and Pat have observed this thing, this tempest in me that as yet has not found its way to words, and just haven't said anything. I'm fighting, hard, I think. Being human we have all of these sinews sensations chemicals hormones to overcome, before anything logical can take place. So I keep putting one foot in front of the other, uphill, uphill. I long ago realized that Sisyphus is a work of fiction. Hahahahaha!

There is nothing that I can concentrate on here and [now].

Stress. Stress. People just want so much. Everyone just takes and takes takes takes takes. I gotta straighten my thoughts, I'm thinking too much sick shit! Ohhh, Mike D. So many insipid MSN headlines grocery store check-out magazine covers glitzy glamour best new sex secrets hottest lip gloss of the season pink pink shiny lips cheeks breasts powdery soft, smells like sweet fruit. I am more like a guerilla warrior than I am like Brittney Spears. What am I trying to say?

Diesel, diesel. There are eight hundred thousand stories and ideas rattling around in my brain most days, but one must possess the ability to listen and to understand. This word, the gift of Patrick, and by the way thank you for reminding me that people actually do really connect. He will never understand you. And still I continued, though! Haha. But, now the test. Perhaps this entry causes me to sound quite crazy indeed, but for me, it all makes sense.

Fssssssssss.

Grocery day with Nana

She ambles up to the first available grocery cart.

"Emily? Where'd you go? Oh, here..." handing me her list, she places one unsure foot in front of another, and we begin our trek up and down so many grocery store aisles.

The first stop is to the bread counter.

"Now sometimes they sell out of Presti bread, so I called in beforehand and had the girl put a loaf behind the counter for me." We approach the counter and are greeted by two gleaming shelves full of fresh-baked, waiting-to-be-purchased, Presti bread.

"Oh, here you go Nana! Wow, lots of different shapes and sizes, sliced or unsliced...." She looks at me vaguely. There isn't an employee anywhere near the counter, and I cringe because I know what's coming.

"No, they have a loaf back there for me, we'll wait for the girl."

A finger-stroke in the sand. When will the tide come? I remember the truism that Anne and I used to share so many summers ago, "how random is family!? You're supposed to be so close with them, and yet you can't choose them..." I absent-mindedly take in the bright signs, pink faces also ambling behind steel cages on wheels, picking over food that I wouldn't take if it were being given away. I think about my mother. Who am I, who am I, who am I...

My reverie is punctured by the chipper voice of the bread counter person. Nana receives her safeguarded loaf, and picks over the other loaves on the shelf anyway. "Must have the best one!" is what I hear rattling around in her brain. I begin to stare at her, to absolutely stare. Death is inevitable, death is inevitable. A little wisp of a soul, carry around a corpse. She is so weak, so frail, and so absolutely unprepared for what will soon come.

"Well, OK," she mutters, resigningly putting the original loaf in her cart, "time to stock up on frozen meals."

How does one address the frozen dinner section of the grocery store...? These are meals so laden with chemicals, trans fats, sodium, that my body instantly recoils at even just the thought of eating one. Perhaps if I were starving I might be persuaded to let one of these insidious meals cross my lips. If I were starving and had already picked the ground clean of meal worms.

She approaches the freezer door, opens it, and stands -- mouth agape -- pouring over the subarctic contents. Minutes go by thusly. She just.... stands there. Looking. Poking. Reading. How can I tell my grandmother that she's wasting energy at an inconceivable rate?! I mean, it's usually the mother figure who nags at you about leaving the fridge door open, right? This is a role reversal that I want no part of. So I stand there too. Years go by and the entire store is twenty degrees colder by the time she makes up her mind.

"Well shit, where's the one with the meatballs?!"

My eyes dart straight towards the package she's looking for, and I intrepidly retreive it before she can spend another eternity looking.

"Here you go, all set?!" There is something ironic about the fact that during this entire episode, Gloria Estefan is wafting over the loud speakers commanding us to get on our feet, get up and make it happen. Nana hobbles towards the canned soup and I am thankful that these, at least, don't require refridgeration to be stored.

"She is so afraid..." My mind wants me to start sliding down that slope. Like a bolt of lightning I think of the four vows. It has been ages since I read Franny and Zooey, strange that these things can just crop up when standing in front of eight million cans of Campbell's Chunky Soup while staring at your dying grandmother. We all start with the same tools (well, essentially...) and there is really no purpose in greiving for those who never get around to taking up the task. Been thinking about the wheel of samsara lately. These things will have to be dealt with in time, your task is to begin the work on yourself, and show the light to those who demonstrate the ability to understand. Perhaps this is myopic? At any rate it's what I've come to so far.

Wishing that I could have started my dhamma practice this December...

When she dies, things will be more peaceful. I am trying to come to terms with this statement. It's true. Nana, I wish that you could have made your peace.

Rock The House

From the Watts book:

For ecstasy is a necessarily impermanent contrast in the constant fluctuation of our feelings.

Death has simply ceased to matter, because the present moment is so complete that it requires no future.

For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.

Intelligence, which is in some sense systematic doubt...

What I wanted to tell you two, is: thanks for leaving the keys in the mailbox the interested inquiry the laughing at my skateboard theme and all of the ridiculous and corny things that make their way out of my mouth, the happiness, the happiness. And the reciprocity. I have not known honesty like this, and it's one part that conversation with mike, one part my desire for something real and one part the plunging forward, headlong. So thank you. Sometimes one realizes that old definitions no longer fit; when this happens there is no choice but to throw the thing off and start over. The A-Team? Yeah, that's what I'd call it. My soul mates! Such a strange sensation when you flip something over and make it stand on its head.

Do whatever it takes.

Scrapple From My Apple.

"Four years," he said in the email, "happy anniversary."

Four is of mythology, nature. Time is elusive. Beginning again, how does one begin again, when it all feels so strangely comfortable - familiar - like [i agreed] something that we should be watching on IFC. Time, time, time. Washing over me. We all are done for.

The Alan Watts book talks about intelligence vs. instinct, such an interesting take on these human minds we carry around with us. Intelligence necessarily causes anxiety because of our need to collect facts and arrange them, building towards some cohesive idea of reality. Our desire to do this without input from other individuals. Anxiety. Anxiety. So many little islands. I will make further comment when I have my notes in front of me.

I remember talking to Hannah in the living room four winters ago. Four winters ago. Hannah, where are you today? Do you remember our conversation? The ephedrine in my brain makes me sentimental and slightly apocalyptic. We never change, do we?

Yes, yes. There is this bright and shining core that remains. The rest changes, falls away, dies. Dies.

This One Is For... Epictetus

Not anything to say today. Actually I feel a little bit crazy today. My thoughts are like little tempests, clashing, flying about, uprooting things.

Everyone dies.

This is the one that's underneath each and every single thought. Every single person who's on the earth right now is, one day, going to die. And me too! And who knows when. Oh, these bodies. So fallible, prone to decay. A little wisp of a soul, carrying around a corpse.

All Bedazzled.

It's amazing because it's been so long since I felt that I needed to hide something from them. Sequester information away. I don't remember when all of this changed, what the catalyst was, but the honesty feels so liberating and wonderful. So glad to be sharing a home with two people who take what I say at face value. Who don't hoarde it away only to do research later and come to their own conclusions about the person "underneath." Lately there is no person underneath. Cannot even describe how freeing this feels. This is me, this is emily, what do you want to know...? Feeling quite lucky indeed. Would otherwise be going crazy today. My A-Team.

Mom and dad, I am learning as I go. Not one of us is perfect. Perfect is one of those words that will have you chasing your tail in a mental hospital somewhere! Life is about making mistakes and being stupid and flailing around but coming to logical conclusions about things. Stop being so contextual. Paxil is a narcotic. Bud Light is a narcotic. Your best friend has done prison time. We all make our own choices. We are only as bound to the person we were yesterday as we choose to be. I am sad and disappointed and slightly bruised because I wonder if there exists any respect for my decision making process at all. I'm going to live the life that makes me happy. Not the life that looks cookie cutter big happy thanksgiving turkey family front page of the church bulletin when everybody in those scenarios is always doped up and falsely tranquil anyway. Trying to hold off on the stinging judgments but there is this latent anger under the surface that slips away like a guppy when I try to pull it out of the river.

Trust me, trust me. I am not done making mistakes. (I'm not dead.) But I can no longer pretend that I don't understand what it means to be a human being, that beautiful desire for compassion and acceptance. I am giving it as much as I can. I have found someone in the world who sees the convulsive beauty, with whom I really fit, Jesus, this feeling... an open and honest channel of communication. It is absolutely a new experience, and very very strange when I think about it. What do we have, if not a base of understanding, compassion and the ability to communicate?! Please, please, let me get through.

That Do Or Die Undercurrent, Fuckin' A.

Brain is caught in a vice, eyes are hot and I feel emotion directly behind them. Anger, sadness, fear. Hollow, cold, pale, empty. I can’t think. This day, this fucking day. I should’ve, yeah, I, but… there aren’t even any words. I shouldn't have to think that way, it all would have come out in its own time, can I. Just. Get. A. Little. Trust. It’s all so stupid, and illogical, and out of control, spinning spinning spinning. Does it matter to you, what I think, or am I still just the innocent sixteen year-old, afraid to live, having never been trusted with the ability to make my own decisions?

I am trying, so hard, and as long as I learn I’m going to make mistakes.

Isn’t this true for all of us?

Of course I am afraid. Of course of course of course. There is an ocean of the unknown. An absolute ocean. But you've got to trust me to wade through at a pace that's reasonable. Thoughts are problematic today. The commune, Anne and Pat's wedding weekend and that feeling I came away with then, last night, my trek to washington, it all feels so mother fucking far away! And I can't seem to tie these strings into anything cohesive! It has been awhile since the last time I cried, and I haven't got any fucking tissues in my office.

Breathing in, I calm my body.

For The Emily Waiting For Me.

Just this one little tiny infintessimal second.
Pathways in my brain.
Figure it out, figure it out, figure it out! How can you possibly relate to another human being without seeing that... light under the surface of so much water.
How can you possibly.
One icon talking to another icon...?
Shine me up, babes.

Sometimes I have so many thoughts converging upon my brain that I can't concentrate on anything, and begin to feel quite schizophrenic indeed.

My amygdala has been the boss of the house for the past several days. Well, not entirely. I am trying to not do too much post-game evaluation, because it seems unfair and my training is such that I am immediately wont to find conflict problems red flags. When in the thick of it I [do what i can] to remain conscious, [think i am doing a good job] and these things have not brandished themselves. I forget how to take things one step at a time. I forget how to begin! It's hard. But so so worth it.

The Nature of Freedom.

Beats trickling down from upstairs, calm calm calm. At the board meeting last night I spoke with eloquence and grace. Yes, I am paying myself a compliment. Perhaps this is the first time such a thing has ever been done? Oh, Emily. So much to learn.

A fist full of light. Everything being so different, I keep commenting on it, but it's true; each experience is brand new, my brain is forging new pathways, long dusty synapses are jumping to life! It is apparent to me now that this core I have uncovered will not be cast off again. This is the beautiful thing about total honesty. [Most importantly with yourself, in every aspect. Though I don't pretend to be an expert yet. That I chose to include this "yet" gives me hope...!] You aren't beholden to this shiny little icon of yourself. Your ego will try to tell you to be embarrassed about a thing, or situation, or to hide information away as though our selves can be cleaned up, shined, polished for some momentary dinner party. As though no one actually lives there. There is no point! No point at all. Your precious image of yourself is a dungeon, a prison. To know the freedom of acting, not reacting. I will get there I will get there I will get there.

For so long, I have been standing on this insurmountable precipice, looking down, afraid and uncertain of the depths below. And in August, or September, [time is tricky] with perhaps a slight push from my best friends, or at least a nod of assurance, I jumped. And nothing will ever be the same again.

Haiku + 5

your touch on my skin --
a thousand small explosions.
something in my chest,
moves as if in sleep.

I am looking for words to describe this thing, last night last night! The excitement that establishes itself in my brain upon reflection immediately makes me feel silly. But I like it. Ohhhhh, got to concentrate my thoughts. Or run around the block a million times. Got all this pent up energy to expend! Ha ha.

Amazed because: there is no falseness. there is immediate comfort. there are still many things to be touched upon but there is no trepidation with this thought.

When I hear others speak your name,
something in my chest (where not much had been happening of late)
moves as if in sleep.

Do I Even Speak English Anymore?

Bass line wafting into my brain like so many college parties getting lost in the music. No sensory dillution this time and the feeling is so much more accute. Encompassing.

I try to do a lot, more than I can chew. Balance out my ambitions is what I've got to do.

I want the whole damn world.

When Anne wrote,
I am a fist full of light.
I have excoriated myself.
I am nothing,
I am nothing.
I am the emporer,
admiring his finery.

I wonder if she knew the importance it would have for me. My mind feels absolutely spastic and I only got done meditating about thirty minutes ago. So much, so much, so much! Emily, there is time for everything. So much time. Collect your arrows and continue about your task.

What is this thought that I am trying to convey...? Brain like a rollercoaster. At one moment on the crest of the wave, and at the next... all of the mud and the muck that I am working to understand and see. Like walking from one side of a pitch black room to the other, hands outstretched, no idea what objects one will come into contact with, or when. I will get to the other side, this is not even a question.

Straying from my point.

It is quite simple, really. When we relate to each other from a mutual level of humanness, compassion is easier, interaction is easier. All connected like a lego set. Stop bifurcating all the time, stop stop stop. Kittying up self image to the image one perceives through the filter of those we encounter will surely only lead to unhappiness! Who are you really, if the slighest perceived "misperception" of that front you present to the world sends you into a tailspin? You are only surface, and the base [core] of you needs cultivation. And when you do away with this aspect of using those you encounter as mirrors, you will experience an entirely new depth of intimacy.

Your ego would love to keep you miserable, the little bastard. Don't forget!

Sima, uh, lacrum.

I am; just that echoing over and over. I am. What you need to remember is that this is enough. This is all that you need! When you can say this, all of the tools are at your disposal.

We will not get into philosophical diversions for now. Not just yet. Brain is screaming.

I am not a slacker because I'm writing this while at work. This work in my brain right now is more important than the United Way grant which will probably only require 3 to 4 afternoons of dedicated attention anyway.

It is hard, opening your life to someone.

And as for now, there are so many negative thought patterns, trained patterns, to do away with, to forge something that is unscripted. I am conscious of it now, and that is a large part of the battle. I am excited mystified and scared. When did this "scared" creep up! Fighting to be honest with myself about things.

It's interesting, the timing.

Just as the pendulum had reached the arc of its swing. Thinking that I would never again feel moved by human emotions. Thinking that I would never again feel captivated by ... but the words are flat and trite. I have no idea how to say what I'm trying to say.

[go within.]

I am so excited about this "something new." My first (and the enduring) thought is that I want you to be in my life for as long as it's possible. So while I am not uncomfortable around you (this has all been so new to me, I have no high water mark!) I think doggedly about being cautious, painstaking, I don't want to do or say something that would make this feeling stop.

Feeling silly, not myself! I realize entirely how ridiculous it is to think that way, but there it is. Quiet your mind and remember. "Your task is to be a good human being. Don't be anxious -- nature controls it all." Today I have been feeling as though I don't know my brain. Like I have a loaner. Too much talking. Distraction. Today. With night comes the quiet, yes? Yes.

Livewire.

Shhhh. Trying to calm my mind down again, to the state it was at two weeks or so ago. So much stimulus of late! Like a fletcher I try to gather all of the stray arrows, and hold them all together in my quiver. This endless task. The russians have a saying, "glaza razbegayetsa." Translated this means, "the eyes dart about in all directions." This saying cropped up at the end of the soviet era, when western goods and "culture" (I use the term loosely here) with all of its sensory overload made its way to Russia. Apparently the first utterance came from an old babushka, senses dull from the years of going without, upon her first visit to an American grocery store. The eyes! How they dart about! I am changing this saying for now, to suit my temperment: "mweesl razbegayetsa!" The thoughts dart about in all directions! Shhhh.

Rethinking atheism.

Consciousness:
A faculty of awareness. It is the power to grasp, to find out, to discover that which is. It is not a power to alter or control the nature of its objects. (The faculty of perceiving that which exists.)

The primacy of existence.

Levels of consciousness. (?) Think logically. Ignore the post-modernist knee jerk that tells you not to ascribe delineations between things. On earth alone we see myriad examples of consciousness levels below our own human level. Look at the strata of the animal kingdom. (Compare a dolphin with a Great Dane -- or squirrel.) How can we be so pretentious as to assume that this human level of consciousness through which we operate is the crowning point of existent consciousness? The Everest? It is illogical to believe that we hold the cap-stone of consciousness. Epecially considering how tenuous this human brand can be.

Guard the mind, lest it become glazed and flaccid.

Guaranteed To Bring The Bruhaha

Yaucht says, "what's pleasing to the eye is an illusion of my sight. it's not what i find, when i reach into the light!" And then you sit and look at the emotions converging in your brain (or wherever it is that these things occur) and you think, "well what about what's pleasing to the eye and the brain and the heart and all of my limbs and filanges and even my socks, too! My socks also feel excited. What say you, Adam Yaucht!!"

And you know that he would probably just smile back at you, and not say a thing. This is comforting.

I have not lost my mind. This is an entirely new sensation. I find myself saying that with more and more frequency. The trepidation is missing... the red flags the things that say "get out get out get out" all of that, actually, none of that. At peace. In the sun, the warmth of your smile, the glint in your blue eyes. I am a sap. "Go cautiously." And I have. Tried to. Remain aware. Conscious. An entirely new sensation.

Dear Alex and Marilynn,

Work today feels pointless. The United Way grant application keeps blankly staring at me, I have absolutely no willpower for now. Cannot force myself to begin editting. Writing. Revising. Facts and figures.

The interaction with Martin today has caused me to realize how asexual I tend to be in my brain. It's weird, the show he puts on to act interested. And there is not even the capacity within me to consider for a moment that this outward show may actually stem from something inwardly genuine. I think I have gotten very used to feeling as though I won't have much in common with most of the people I interact with. Lately I have been of the mindset that if there isn't some immediate deeper connection, that there never will be. Perhaps this is myopic, but I can't find an aspect of me that is bothered by it! Not misanthropic. Not aloof. Not vacant. Just...cautious. Cautious? Deliberate.

Enough of the golliwompus. The trees across the way are looking barren and tired. I want to go explore.

Just So Blah.

IQ results: 133 and I'm characterized as a "visual mathematician." How strange. However, this is a number (the 133) that I will be brandishing with all the regularity that was to be found when the “youth” vote was mentioned, and Dubya would trot out his twins.

Except I’m just messing, and he was serious.

Today I truly want to do just nothing. Just putz around. Watch movies. Read my book. Lie in bed some more. It’s never an option on the days that you want it with every fiber in your being! This is perhaps the most mundane blog entry I’ve ever created. I’m tired in my bones. I really feel what Epictetus was getting at when he said, “a little wisp of a soul carrying around a corpse.” Heavy. Languid. Not cantankerous. Edgy. Will run in the grey and the mud and the muck. Will look forward to tomorrow. And five minutes from now. There is this sense of newness. Adventure. Clarity.

One Big Psych Experiment

Awake this morning at 630, all of the body is wondering, wondering, wondering. Hoping. The news. "Undecided."

Ballot issue one has found refuge in the constitutions of 11 states. I live in one of these states. I realize the mindset of the country that I'm living in suddenly, like a sledgehammer cracking my head open and pouring the information in like so much hot lava. Rage to the point of prostration.

It smells like cat shit in this room in which I find myself typing. This whole country smells like cat shit.

We are lying to ourselves, constantly. Any bigoted midwesterner who voted for the "sanctity of marriage" and wears an XXL sweatshirt with the good ol' starts and stripes emblazoned across the chest, is lying. Or perhaps that's too strong of a word; misguided probably fits better. Though some part of me believes that this concept [and liberty and justice for all, remember?!?!?! The free pursuit of happiness...] is so base, so rudimentary, that the self righteous ones are simply playing dumb and hoping that it [rampant ignorance] will sweep the country, and people will forget that the bible has no place, whatsoever, in government. And look how fast this epidemic of idiocy is taking hold! Has it always been this way?!! Stop living out your stupid little fucking closed minded idea of how the world would be if you were king for a day. Think about why this mother fucking joke of a country (now) was founded. Ha ha! Wringing the rage out of my skin, kids, don't worry [too much] about my head-space.

My deepest apologies to the statue of liberty, on behalf of the country as a whole, but not at its request. So far from the ideals scribed at her sturdy feet. We ought to change it, we ought to stop pretending that we stand for something more than Wal-Mart and an unending supply of the black gold. Let's change it to "give us your closed-minded, mouth-breathing gin sots, the ones who think that Vegas is high class, the ones who think that the international dick-waving can be defined as culture, the xenophobes. The vitriolic pontificators. We have a bunch more people to piss off, and too many liberals foaming at the mouth about 'fairness.' Give us your rabid religious fanatics."

Got to spread lovin' before the world goes cuckoo! I am so incredibly afraid that it's too late.

If you live in America and didn't vote yesterday, you need to start packin'. Especially if you live in a swing state and supported Kerry, or at least, didn't approve of Bush. You don't have the right to be ambivilent in this country anymore. Too much hinges upon what one wing-nut in the wrong place can do to this country. There is no room for mouth-breathers. If you don't care about the issues, or voting, or think that your vote doesn't count anyway, then go and really live on an island on your own, end the facade of helplessness.

Ohio, you glow foreign and lonesome in my homesick eye.

Right Temple Lobe.

So much hope in my body right now. I wonder what it'll feel like tomorrow at this time, if it'll be lamentations or joyous goof-balling.

Like Anne said, if Kerry wins I will be dancing naked in the street, even in the rain. Surely this country has not fallen so far down the crapper that we would legitimately elect a freakshow like dubya. Right?! Yeah.

Head heavy with the stress of thoughts beyond merely the election. Not heavy bad, I'm excited, I'll admit. Just... clunk clunk clunk. The gears in my brain want a rest. So I will acquiese. But not before I mention how fortunate I am to have anne and patrick so closely in my life.

How many people in the world can honestly say that their friends are of such character that they can be relied upon to provide a life raft when one is drowning? The tough guy is telling the sap to hush up. Three words more: I am lucky.

My Head A Splode.

Yes, yes, this pendulum thing. Wicked wicked. No, not wicked. Insightful. Sort of funny.

Rethinking. Trying occasionally to not think, to just feel. Ever the analyst though, this doesn't last long. But. Talking with Pat last night was sort of eye opening, though I try to tell myself otherwise. This is where the rethinking part comes in, this whole relationships business.

Sleepwalking.

Stop that. Just looking because you're supposed to. Just bumping into something without thought or wisdom or seeing the thing through to its logical conclusion. Yeah. But the ones who this would apply to (advice) wouldn't be clear headed enough to understand. This is the irony. You have to see the something deeper before you can see the something deeper. Ha ha! I wasn't even talking and you can just keep plodding along learning the lessons half-assed and then forgetting them a moment later.

Who was I talking to?

But back to the original dealie. Pat is willing to point to this whole business of being human when I am not. My weakness. I admire this in him. And in Anne as well. There is some starting point I have to find before it becomes... iminent, and I get flooded with all of this, you know, human type stuff. Hormones emotions insecurities. The funny business. I am simply prattling on at this point.

The main idea:
This thing, this elusive concept I call being awake, it's like lotto, you gotta be in it to win it. This will makes sense to those who it makes sense to. Ha ha! Life is funny.