The descent of my blog...

I think my picking might be a metaphor for my internal condition. I can't leave all my little problems alone, I keep trying to forcibly remove them because I don't know what else to do... That just makes it worse, but I can't stop! I'm so confused... by my own feelings, this inner struggle that doesn't have one side pulling out ahead. I want to express it, discharge it from my soul... I'm trying to separate but part of me keeps holding on...holding on to what? Every unresolved moment in my past that I carry like a wound that won't heal. Fuck.

I think I just did something borderline insane. It's always bothered me when people paid for little books that have been out for a long time and brought them back in thinking they'd get reimbursed and they don't... So this lady just had to pay for a dinky kids book worth five bucks and I told her if she finds it to keep it. One of those decisions that made sense until after it came out of my mouth. Oh, my god, what did I just do? Tell someone to keep library materials. Fuck.

Couple concepts brought up by Milan Kundera- Beauty by mistake- and the descent of music into noise and pure ugliness... He gives us four primary characters all with very different feelings and perceptions and I have this feeling that one represents him more than the others... Mainly because he brings her out with almost no hint of criticism and the others are tainted by it, either through the narrating voice or the other characters. But not Sabina. She is the character those two concepts are introduced through, her feelings about music and beauty. It's strange because the idea is that accidental beauty has an unintentional superiority to it, but that music has become noise and ugliness. The accidental beauty is NYcity, the coming together of all it's peculiar buildings, individually ugly, but as a whole beautiful...a concept that I need some help understanding. What gets me is both come out of the same culture and time... Is there no accidental beauty in music? It's a different subject, I know... But to marvel at one and disdain the other... feels disparate. I don't think that's the right word for what I actually mean, but I can't think of the word that really captures it. At odds, in conflict. Ooh, according to the internet thesaurus that word does work. Yey me.

I think I want to get a haircut again. It's becoming rather consistant- being sick of my hair right now. Sick of the blonde too. Weird how I phase in and out, there must be an identifiable pattern happening... I want something trendy and medium short, layered bangs that flip out and just long enough in the back for pigtails, the tiny ones. I think those cuts are so cute. I want to feel cute and playful, girlish and light.

I just feel like mentioning that over the history of my blog there have been a few I never posted, and never will... maybe I should delete them.

Thinking about individual moments in my past I have no desire to relive most of it, some places, some times I would go back to, but not most. Before Georgia is good, before all the confusion set in. Just being a happy kid and feeling free all the time. In some ways I'd like to go back and try again. But there is something impossible about that- the fact is I'd just be the same person again, make the same choices again...

Another thought... there was a baby in here earlier largely exploring it's own voice, the shouting kind, loud, unpatterned spurts of baby-shouts. In my mind I understand, but I find it very disruptive to my own mental state. Conversely, a librarian just went out and asked a group of young men to have their boisterous conversation somewhere else and it wasn't bothering me at all. I think I was enjoying it, like white noise. The sound, a long with the sun being in the early stages of setting, reminds me of being at a hotel and hearing all the people at the pool, laughing and conversing incomprehensibly. So why is one pleasant and the other jarring? I guess the baby shouts were abrasive and their laughter and indistinguishable words weren't. Pool noise. Nostalgia even.

freedom and happiness outside the american dream

Okay, so I watched the Goblet of Fire and I can get the quote right this time. A time is coming when you will have to choose between what is right and what is easy. That's much better than my previous paraphrase. I guess sort of laying the ground work for the next story...

I was thinking about a quote that I've carried around in me for ever... Winston Churchill, one of many about success and failure. I don't feel like writing it word for word, and I know it by heart, but the gist is that success is not losing your enthusiasm when you fail. I was feeling doubts about it... Like maybe there is something missing, but what I think I intuitively took from it in the past was not giving up on myself. I think what seems to be missing is change. As good as it may be to stay enthusiastic despite continual failure something about it is beginning to seem irresponsible to me. Maybe I'm making it into a story? Apparently Churchill had an incredible history of failures, it seems that didn't change until be became prime minister. (Is that the right title?) In many ways success has developed a whole new meaning to me. I'm not sure I had a clear idea in the past of what I thought it was, but I think it was similar to the usual interpretation. I think success is being happy. Truly happy. Another concept I came across recently for success that I also find viable is freedom. Freedom from everything, I think that works with my happy concept. The most successful people know how to be happy without expectation- I don't. I want to be free, a big part of me is discontent because I don't see myself as free. I think it means the ability to be yourself without any constraint, physical, mental or emotional.

The Story of human tragedy

On my drive to work I was reflecting on my past, even my recent past and realized it's a tragedy. But also I suspect most peoples lives have been the same. Not tragic in the sense of catastrophe after catastrophe like losing people you love deeply or disabling illnesses or accidents. That is a different kind of tragedy, one that is easier to recognize and feel. I mean the kind like a wasted life, failing self... I guess like Kierkegaard says about how we can't help noticing the loss of a limb but no one recognizes the loss of self. Or looking back and realizing that I've made the choice not to live over and over again. Shrinking from my fears, never standing up for myself, hiding from life somewhere that feels safe... It reminds me of the tallies Harold was making to figure out if he was in a tragedy or a comedy... His first impression was that he had no control of it, here is this story being written about him that he has no choice but to live as it goes. In a sense he changes because of her voice. Her words open him to a world he had been blind to and answered the dissatisfaction he felt about his life. We all compose a tragedy for ourselves as we go along, not deeply realizing that each choice we make is in compliance with the belief that we should be living that way. Tragically.

And now I want to change my story and I'm shifting between a growing drive and it's opposing feelings- inertia and fear. Like the little girl in me so long ago, who surges up to direct me at my most fragile moments, I feel like I'm looking out over that deep pool -frozen, half paralyzed with intense self doubt and a borderline inability to believe in myself and asking why? why has my choice always been to back away from the pool and never take the chance and is it really impossible for me to jump? Can I change my steps, leave a path that I've tread down to bare dirt? and stay on a new one untouched the whole way? (This blog is like composing a book about my life...) I also worry that in my inclination to dip my foot in the pool and slowly enter at some point I'll say "this far and no further". That as the road becomes rough I'll shrink from it and stop. It seems to me it would almost be easier if it were a physical journey. Because there wouldn't be the added job of deciphering. As much as it scares me to feel physically exhausted and overwhelmed I'm more afraid of the psychological equivalent. I'm afraid I'm still composing a tragedy for myself. The fear hurts and I am sad and tired. Still so unsure. Will I ever know myself?

A lot of women read romance novels, my time at a bookstore as well as at a library has made this amply clear to me. It spans the ages, twenties to eighties, perhaps beyond in both directions? On days when I feel tired (not because I need to sleep) it's like a voice calling to me to give in and become like them. To get married, settle in to the standard life and take up the symbol of unchallenged dissatisfaction and fantasy. I think it is the familiar that appeals to me... Which is odd because I've never read a romance novel. I don't know why it seems like a strange drug that beckons. It's also odd because I have no desire to read the books, just to embrace the symbol they represent- letting go, not fighting the current, relaxing my muscles and floating... Becoming like them. I think it is similar to the feeling my mom would express of wanting to be like the stupid people. It used to seem insane to me, but I think I understand now. It's the voice of death wooing us with what is easy... It's hard to fight against a raging current that goes the opposite direction of our heart.

It's getting harder and harder for me to say the date that books are due, it seems like I'm trying to conjure the memory up from a great distance. Like a barrier stands between me and my recollection of this simple fact...

whimpering inertia

It started raining towards the last stretch of my drive to work. Because I don't have air conditioning I keep the windows open all the time, rain or not. I put my hand out to feel it and the rain was like little flecks of ice hitting my skin, so cold!

I want to feel free like I did as a child in Georgia. It was so easy to play. How is it so hard now? Such different priorities. I lived to be outside, on my bike, in the woods, at the pool... The court in front of my house flooded every time it rained, it was an impromptu pool, opaque and murky- but we didn't care, it became a part of our play ground. We tried to ride our bikes through it, sometimes that worked, when it wasn't too deep- when it was, the bike suddenly stopped and the rider got propelled into the pool.

So I stayed up too late last night and woke up too early... I decided to sleep on the deck, which meant waking up when the sun rises. I always forget about the bloody air conditioning kicking on and off. I'm trying to fend off a headache without pills... Doomed! It's Sarah B's birthday tonight and I might not last long... it's crossing my mind to cancel and go to bed. What a crazy day! Painting the shed, driving from baltimore to annapolis to bowie to get sarah to a doctors appt... All in a large heat oozing vehicle with no air conditioning. I am thoroughly spent. I want to whimper and cry. I kept getting all the people applying for new cards before my break- I think of it as karmic return. As I saw each face approaching me with that telltale piece of paper I literally hunched over and whimpered. Strange thing is people really don't notice, I'm actually grateful for it. I have so often narrowly avoided doing new card applications, of course that would come for pay back when I'm desperate to get off the floor and eat.

So my one thought today came from watching the second half of the goblet of fire. It was the line Dumbledor issued about "there comes a point when he have to choose between doing what is hard or merely easy." Shoot, that is a horrible paraphrase, but it still captures the gist if less than poetic. Also the scene when Harry is confronting Voldamort (just dawned on me that the second part of his name means death...) and his first inclination is to jump behind the gravestone then we see the transition on his face where he is literally deciding- no, I'm going to face this, face my fear... At first I felt the challenge in myself, doing what is hard instead of letting inertia win (a feeling my mom has been pondering lately, and a powerful force. Being an object at rest wanting more than anything to remain at rest. It takes so much friction to get a resting object back in to motion...). But then another thought came up, one that does from time to time. So many things in our world preach at us, it doesn't just happen in a church. Everyone likes to get up on a soap box and tell the world how to behave. That actually isn't the thought, but it is connected. We have movies, books, art, etc that have these grand stories and plots, characters struggling to be heroes, to choose the grand good over inertia, fear, what ever... And in the ones that aren't trying to be a reflection of life, that is usually accomplished. The irony for me is a world full of people telling and consuming the story of the hero while most of them are daily choosing the opposite. Inertia and fear rule their lives but we have this dichotomy where we want to go and watch the hero be bigger than us and then go on living small lives. How many people find the disparity jarring? Every now and then I have that moment of illumination and it all seems so surreal.

Mississippi summers

I don't think I have any deep or penetrating thoughts today... It was (still is) a beautiful day outside. Blue sky with large slow moving clouds. The big white puffy kind that make great pictures. They remind me of the opening to ground hog day, all white puffy clouds in a lush blue sky sound like oompa music. buuum, bum, bum, buuum, bum, bum buuum, tweedle-lee tweedle-lee, tweedle-lee... Open with a tuba, deep, comical, surreal, follow with flutes, with a shrill twill. Don't think I'll be posting this one. I wish I could play that music with this post so people would hear it as they read.

My neighbor Sharon read a book recently called a piece of cake by cupcake brown. It's rather an oxymoron, nothing like it sounds. She (Sharon) keeps reiterating that cupcake brown is raw, she writes everything. This involves all the details of being forced into prostitution as a child (eight?)... That word "raw" says a lot. Raw is brutal, unrefined- I mean in the sense of not being polished to smooth the edges, nothing is done to make it easier to hear or read or consume... There is an intrinsic appeal, knowing that this is bare honesty... But it isn't easy to hear or let in. It's abrasive, the raw truth.

My spirit longs to go back to Mississippi, to my grandies front yard, clutching a clear glass jar and watching the fire flies in the early dusk... I want to run down the railroad tracks and find old muscats... I want to see her beautiful vegetable garden again, have her chocolate pie... be there again. But I can't, she's been dead so long and those things probably don't exist anymore... It's the face of the purest part of my childhood and it's gone; all that's left is a memory... I don't even know the name of the city she lived in, I have no idea how to get back. I have all these dreams about being somewhere I don't know, far from home and struggling to find my way back and I usually can't. That's how it feels, nothing inside me knows how to get back to grandies house.

I have this idea about creating a photo album entirely of lost and found photos and oddities that fit. A family album of strangers. Something appeals to me so much about the fact that these pictures are all lost or forgotten. They find there way to me in books returned to the library-and never claimed, run over for days on a street corner...

I forgot to add: what the hell, why not?

Facing a plethora of fears

So I've been thinking about how important my peer group is to me... The twenty somethings (and thirty...) And it crossed my mind to wonder if when I'm forty will I look at twenty somethings and roll my eyes at their obsession with their own social drama like I do now when I look at middle schoolers and highschoolers? My world would live or die according to their petty actions or trite opinions, their beliefs ordered my steps and ruled my life. (This is sort of a paraphrase of something utterly beautiful and poignant that George Elliott said in Daniel Deronda.) Some feather headed lady or gentleman that we fail to take as legal tender for a human being may be making someone else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols. Still that is a bit of a paraphrase, but quite close. Some how the trite opinions and petty actions fits in there too.

There is a woman I met once sailing, Paige, that I keep remembering when I look at other women that resemble her. It evokes a strange feeling in my gut and I've been wondering what is going on in me. It's both a sadness and an affinity... I've been speculating this morning if she represents to me "the woman who went too far". Her anger ended her friendship with Alex. Or rather he cut her off... I don't know the details. My impression of her is curious to me. She's in her thirties, I'm sure. She has a raspy smokers voice, dark tan leathery skin and a certain air, cool (in the sense of a breeze) low key... Maybe she was sad that day? I don't know.

I do think Alex is shaping into something else in my mind. Something negative and distant... A tall and silent wall, standing at a ninety degree angle. I've never stood up at 90 degrees... But I'm becoming very aware of the role of my own perception. That people evoke feelings and impressions in me based on my own filters. Much the way they are in my dreams, they are all a series of metaphors that I use to figure myself out... My god, what a weird realization, every single person I interact with is a tool to discovering and knowing myself... Milan Kundera talks about how dreams are an act of our imagination, that they not merely tell us about ourselves -communicate to us, but they are also beautiful and that is what makes them stay with us- that imaginative dreaming is an intense need in man. It's gratifying to read something that expresses a deep and unarticulated feeling. I think I used to feel wrong for seeing my dreams as almost an art and taking pleasure in their beauty, it strikes me as odd that I would feel that way thinking about it now.

I'm about to do something that scares the shit out of me and my insides are eating themselves... It's funny the effect reading some of the old things from Jonathan has had on me... In one of his sticky notes he implored me and Lillian to do something that scares us. At the time I don't think I did... I wasn't in a place where I was willing to attempt facing my fears. But every time I turn around now I'm doing something that scares the shit out of me. Because I don't want to be ruled by my fears anymore. I've spent my life running away from everything that frightens me... and that is indeed a half life. It's good advice- do something that scares you. It's hard to start when the baggage is so big.

The other thing I've been contemplating about fear is that some things are legitimately terrifying... Not that that means I shouldn't face them... What I'm working on is being courageous enough to face the things that have consequences... The things that ultimately bring up other peoples fears when they aren't ready to face them and they lash out... Light and weight. I think I've always felt like a heavy person (at least most of my memories show me that... there was a time before...) To be light is to float above life, above pain, I guess it is similar to the spiritual concept of transcendence that so many elevate to the highest state a person can achieve... Weight, to be heavy, is an emotional opposite, to feel pain -to be connected with other human beings in suffering... I've always despised the concept of transcendence in spirituality and art, it actually angers me- mainly because in art its utterly pretentious bullshit that makes them feel superior to everyone else, the spiritual stuff is just escapist woohoo. I think there is a healthy balance that can be achieved. It's part of the concept I've been exploring of learning how to enjoy life with out the dependence on other people; but staying connected, not cutting self off from others. To completely separate from other people is a fear based action, to become a wall. But the opposite, (the concept of opposite is interesting because opposites usually host equal intensity and in that respect are the same, it's the neutral point that truly differs...) is to be crushed by life. I guess that is a sort of fear too, it is less easy to identify. Why is it fear based? Because it is a sort of opting out, to be so weighed down you cease to move. Both stop living, but in different ways.

Something else on my mind is I've been feeling like a child a lot lately. Naive, clueless, confused and small. Small for me truly epitomizes that childlike feeling. It generally involves the people around me seeming big. Not all of them, but enough. It also means my sense is that I am feeling things that I think other people aren't- usually I am feeling vulnerable and the people around me don't seem vulnerable. I realize that is just my perception, but that is the heart of feeling small.

life is too temporal

I don't know... My emotions are a constant source of curiosity to me. I guess I really don't understand them a fair amount of the time. To be such a mystery to myself is perhaps a problem. I wish I could pull my thoughts together. I spent the weekend in Rochester... I probably mentioned that in an earlier blog, I do forget. For a wedding. It was an interesting experience for me because my emotions were running higher than I expected. I was happy, but I'd been thinking about a lot of things that have been on my heart for a long time. One for eleven years... It surprised me. Everything about it, it's being there, it's emotional importance to me, how I can go so long with something just under the surface and not realize how it effects me... This is my pattern. I carry these things just below the surface, I'm aware of them but it's my perception that is the problem... I underestimate or fail to recognize these feelings that I carry are important and are living in a cage until I express them.


There is something I've been trying to learn these last few days, how to appreciate good things no matter how brief they are. It's hard because I've always wanted good experiences to last forever, at least as long as I do. So much of what we experience is temporal, brief... It seems to be a core in our existence and I have not really come to terms with that (as I know most people don't, the death thing and all.) It's been hard for me to allow these brief things to be truly valuable, one of my prerequisites was to last... I guess I didn't believe brief moments were legitimate... Something that nags the back of my mind periodically is how pointless dessert is, in the sense of being so temporal. I'm enjoying it as long as I am eating it, but then it is over and the pleasure is done and I've put something unhealthy in my body. I used to wonder if there was a way to taste dessert without eating it. Why do we eat things like that when It's really about tasting it? Sort of weird. (It's totally retarded that our words desert and dessert are so close and mean something so different...) And I never remember which one is which... Is my attitude about temporal pleasure wrong? Is there something good about eating for taste alone? In my heart am I a bit of a puritan? Eek...

At the heart of man

So many different things have been on my mind lately... And I wonder if I should talk about some of them? Or if they are meant to be quiet personal revelations that aren't shared... Maybe a month ago or more a book passed through my hands, Cultural Amnesia, and the title captivated me, as well as the subtitle... Something like the necessary history of humanities and the arts. That's wrong but some of the words are right (necessary and art...) But I placed a hold on it and finally got it yesterday. Last night I read the authors intro and it really stimulated my thoughts. It coincides with the direction my mind has been going in lately. I was first attracted to it because I thought it would be a commentary on the condition of modern and post modern art- which is a subject I greatly enjoy. But looking at it last night I realized it's something much more than that. It is a facing of the dichotomy of beauty coming from the same source as evil. The conundrum of poets, painters, movie directors, musicians who produce incredibly beautiful art but also support, applaud, participate in and believe in evil systems. He is looking at it from the perspective of humanism and seeking a true definition of it, how to know it's real face and it's evil face, but also looking at it's history, at humanity as a whole- at humanism in a universal sense. When I asked myself the same question it was on a smaller scale, looking at individuals who create and who also do horrible things and wondering if it was possible? Is there something wrong with what they create because of their personal evil? Is it wrong to admire their work? My conclusion is no. I guess it was by returning to a larger scale that I found the correct perspective- recognizing that all men have the capacity to create beauty and to create evil, that to varying degrees we all do both. It's terrifying... but simultaneously freeing.

I hate doing registration forms for new library cards. I also hate trapping holds at the return counter... I've only got an hour left which is good, because I'm past my limit. Shortly after I get home I'll be leaving for the weekend. It feels a little crazy. I've worked so much this week and it seems like my free time has been tight.

What did I dream about last night? Art... I was in a sort of class studio, my teacher was actually a middle aged woman, they're so often men. But we were looking at all these unfinished pieces up on the wall and some of them were large frames with thick watercolor paper pulled over them and green landscapes on them. I was telling her that the next painting I did I wanted to be large watercolor paper pulled over a frame like the ones on the wall. She then began to demonstrate things that I could do with it on one of the canvases. She started painting in the upper torso of a large bald blobby man. I was really impressed and studied the colors she used for flesh tones, but began to feel like I couldn't use that one because it wasn't mine... I remember being so struck by the figure that began to emerge on the canvas, how effortlessly she created him.

I guess I really only had one sentence left on this post. I kind of forgot about it. There is always more to my dreams than I remember.

Icarus fell from the sky (and landed on my lawn)

I had a really nice fourth of july. My mom spotted a dead robin in our front yard which generally hijacks the direction of my day, I was about to head over to a friends house to help paint but I can't pass up an opportunity to draw and photograph a bird. The robin was on its back, tail up, wings close to its body but a little open, she looked like she fell out of the sky and landed there in our yard... Her neck was back, too, so her throat was visible, eyes half closed like she was in pain from falling. I was in a show (art show) in Savannah called Icarus. This is the third dead bird I've photographed and it's becoming a bit of an accidental theme. More so than the others the robin felt like Icarus to me, her posture and expression seemed to capture the drama of the myth... In Savannah me and Lillian found a little sparrow in the garden median in front of our apartment, that was the first dead bird I drew. Weird, I was originally going to talk about my fourth, which started (at least the interesting part) with the bird... But after the bird I did help Sarah paint her parents kitchen. What was nice was going out to eat at the Sly Fox Pub. The weather was wonderful, good conversation, good company. We ended up watching the fireworks from the Rowe blvd bridge, very nice.

There was a beautiful young couple just in with a little girl and a new baby (newish) and the baby had hiccups. I think that is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Dreaming Big...

So I'm diligently trying to put to practice infusing every moment with value... Starting today, starting on my way to work this evening. Just wanting to commit to it feels better, light.

Strange, and perhaps sad, things are accomplishments for me. Like fully articulating something to a stranger. I am proud of myself because I sent a man to info to see if he could get a temporary card, he is from Prince Georges county and we usually require people in MD to register for a card. What I did was make it clear to him that he could try, but they might make him sign up for a card. That is what I'm proud of. Once upon a time I would have created a state of unclarified confusion. Little tiny baby steps.

Welcome to your own moments, Sarah. Although still imperfectly I feel there. I still get disgruntled when people at work interrupt my own thought patterns or personal projects... Not fully sure what all is going on there. The cat is proverbially out of the bag. I got an email from Whitney today with the heading "Moving???" I had neglected to tell my boss that I am moving to Williamsburg Brooklyn. I haven't seen her in weeks. I was kind of keeping it to myself until I felt like it was time to say anything, still seemed a bit premature. But Ellen calling to offer me December dates was a bit of a clencher, I couldn't do it so I told her my plans.

I live with a great beast... I have since I was a child, anxiety... I wonder if I could make a children's book character out of that? I think I'll try. What does anxiety look like as a monster? Is he like my little beast? The heart.

There was a little outdoor concert here for families. I took my break out there to get a little taste of it. Kind of fun, definitely for children. They had a sound guy who was probably about my age. All out dreadlocks and a very long very scruffy goatee. I don't see that many people around here that look like that. Meaning Anne Arundel County... So white bread. I think hipsters have displaced grundgy hippies too.

I dropped a heavy block of linoleum mounted on wood on my foot. Every step I take it hurts. I thought it was going to be a huge blue bruise by now but it's still just hint of swollen blue. I bet it will be thoroughly gross tomorrow.

I'm trying to keep my thoughts in the moment. That has never been a strength of mine. I've spent my life thinking about tomorrow or next week or next month... I guess anything that can feed the anxiety. I'm not very good at being present for my own life. Especially if the present is quiet... I'm gone. It looks like I'll be spending my fourth painting my friends house... We'll see. I make that sound so sad, I don't mean it that way.

My mom sent me a very good article on the significance of dreams, but specifically of "Big" dreams which it defined as the ones that transform our lives, like dreams about loved ones that died. It was a very poignant article. Dealing with how dreams are trying to work out our waking emotions through symbol and reliving events... It was interesting to see the scientific connection, what the brain is doing, which parts of the brain are doing what, how different times of night effect the clarity of our dreams. I have noticed that I do have the most vivid dreams in early morning shortly before I wake up. The article explained that this happens because the brain is waking up. Yes, that is kind of obvious. But I don't really know if it was obvious to me with out reading it. I found it fascinating though. I get sad when I meet people who think nothing of their dreams, and I meet quite a few... I suppose most.

Yellow dandelions

That's it, no more June posts. Why is that making me sad? Maybe I'm not ready for June to be over... Not ready for life to keep moving on.

There was a beautiful moth clinging to the brick ledge where we sit outside for break. She blended in so well I didn't notice her at first. Her wings looked crinkled just on the edges like she was waiting for them to fully straighten and harden before flying. Her feelers were huge, unreal. What purpose does their size serve? They look like fans. She looked soft and petable. I wanted to keep her, but I can't. She's alive. It'd be nice if I had my camera and close-up filters, that would be a lovely photograph...

I'm anxious about this week. I wish there weren't a fourth of July. John's birthday is this week, don't know what to do about that. I'm going to upstate NY next weekend with Sarah. Road trip.

I had a cool dream about my moms large brown bear. It came to life and started hopping around on all fours, giddy. I wanted to go out to a green dandelion field and pick a pile of yellow flowers for him.

It's such a beautiful day out. Perfect weather. A soft cool breeze... it's isn't hot.

There's something I want to figure out, but I feel like I'm failing it today... I want to infuse every event, every moment with the potential to be fulfilling. I come to things with so many rules, only this combination or these things can fulfill me... Plus I have a tendency to look at the condition of the world, other people in it, my environment and experience despair at their condition or appearance. That really undercuts happiness. The appearance of any form of poverty, mainly in a persons expression, depresses my spirits. There's a lot more to it than I'm expressing... I guess I'm doing some combination of projecting and being codependant. What I see is other people in despair, leading unhappy lives and it makes me feel that way. I might not even be right. I also decided when I was very young that the greatest thing in this world was to be with a boy. That his company was superior to any other thing in this world. God I cursed myself with that one... I want to be done with it, I'm working on it, but the pull is so strong. It's funny, for someone with that mind set I haven't been with many boys. I have huge dry spells between relationships. I'm fine until someone shows up, then all that stuff comes to life.

Who am I? Who am I meant to be? What am I supposed to do with my life? Do I have a defined path or does it come into existence as I walk and make choices?