a shocking hour of peace and quiet, unexpected but needed. these days i hardly know what calm looks like anymore. i am self-conscious in my search for sense, for meaning, how ordinary after all of this to find... what, faith? what shape does faith take, when life has become so strange? i don't feel belief so much as desperation for belief. perhaps that's where everyone starts, absent a burning bush, perhaps the need is more important.

still, i had to find something, and i am terrified of the people who went looking and found power, went looking and found thirst. the danger of turning inwards, of wallowing in self-interest is all too clear. i must find a reason beyond the obvious to love my neighbor because it is all too seductively easy to put my blinders on and see nothing but what i need, what i want. i have gone too far in the name of my self-interest already.

lately, my life is full of strangers, see also, kindness of, see also, never talk to. it's surprisingly easy to tell the good from the bad, and like a parable the bad always come offering temptation and the good always come offering compassion but no easy answers. i suppose they have been my burning bush, in a way. i remember a story i heard once, about a man who waited out a flood, confident that god would save him, waving off all offers of help until he was finally drowned. when he appeared before god he asked why he wasn't saved and god told him that he had tried, with offers of kindness from strangers, again and again god had tried to save the man, and he couldn't understand how the man had ended up in front of him.

if i died tomorrow, is that the conversation i would have? i couldn't tell you for sure, but the chances are a little better than i'd like.

for now i shall content myself with a glass of wine and the soft satisfying click of well-loved, well-worn wooden beads in my hand. today i have no answers, but it's better than the wrong answers.

last night i dreamt i was riding around and around on top of a record, the needle edging closer. things were moving towards me but i was just going in circles.

tonight i am months ago again. tonight it's not really real and he's walking in the door any minute (any minute, oh god please, any minute), if i could only remember where it was he had gone.

there's no forward any more, like the woman in the book i'm just reaching backwards and backwards and backwards, trying to find my way on a path when i can't even find my feet. my ignorance is terrifying. i've been tasting blood for days and i can't sleep but i don't doubt that it was worth it, anything that brings the needle closer is worth it.

i threw away something good tonight, threw it away because this, all of this is why i can't have nice things. how do you cry on his shoulder without feeling like an asshole? you don't, because you are an asshole, because this is inherited pain and because he'll always be second-best. what an awful thing to say, but true nonetheless. so i threw it away and i resented it, and i resented how empty my bed is and how nothing, nothing is as big and as real as the hole that was cut in my life.

some decisions are made for you, though. tried to talk myself out of it for a while but some decisions are made for you.

it was disgusting how nice he was about it too.

eating them, being one. chickens are what i'm all about right now.

in math class, there was a section at the back of the book with all the answers, i would like one now plzthx. i am for sure a train traveling away from something at some speed, but i don't know what or how fast. if i am traveling away, then i am doubtlessly traveling towards as well. however, without even having all of the question, the answer seems like a cruel joke. i admit, i would be cowardly and take the easiest path, if i even knew which path was easiest.

you know, el jay, the past year has not been so hot. i would be okay with a few pitches that were nice and slow, right over the plate.

tomorrow, j is taking me out dancing, which is like an awesome thing mixed with a terrible uncomfortable feeling in my gut. like being handed an adorable kitten, and then being told there is a 50/50 chance that you carry a disease that will kill the kitten. blech, too much death in my metaphors, too much death in my everything.

lately, i'm thinking about becoming a vegetarian. then at least, the only chicken would be me, and it would be a drastic reduction of bleeding things in my life. i think i best throw in the towel here, lj, i'm unlikely to make more sense any time soon.


i wish he did not smell so nice, el jay.

(simple food + wine + sincere appreciation + generosity - complication) X (music + dancing + aching sore muscles) + good night's sleep = getting over one's self.

thank you for the kindness of strangers.

somedays everything feels broken.
somedays i feel like glass and everyone is whispering the moment i leave the room.
somedays the best history is no history.
somedays i can't figure out how i got so lost so fast. somedays i feel like i'm losing you.
somedays you're the rope i'm clinging to.
somedays i can't talk with all these ashes in my mouth.
somedays i can't imagine why you're still here.
somedays i can't stand anyone.
somedays i'm too alone and my heart beats too loud.
somedays i know too much.
somedays i'm disgusted by what doesn't disgust me.
somedays i can feel my compromises on my skin. somedays you're so lovely it makes my heart ache. somedays i want to wake up and know you're there. somedays i wonder what you've got figured out. somedays i wish i'd never met you.
somedays i love you like a kid with a crush. somedays you're what gets me through the night. somedays you don't want me around. somedays i don't want me around either. somedays a smile is all i need. somedays i wake up happy.
somedays you're in my head. somedays i wish you knew me like you knew him. somedays i wish there was a storm. somedays i wish i had homework to do. somedays i wish i'd gone with you.
somedays you can read every lie written on my body. somedays a stranger is what you need. somedays i wish you'd succeeded. somedays i'm afraid of you. somedays, somedays, somedays.

just one of those days.

okay, this maybe is sort of silly, and maybe is more about company than safety, but one of those charming boys in blue suggested that what i needed was a guard dog.

and i thought, okay, good idea.

so i went dog shopping.



he may not be the fiercest thing of all time. but look at that face! could you have said no to that face?

he (and i) are going into training though, so he will be totally fierce and protective. his name is christopher marlowe, because i intend to misattribute the things he says to shakespeare.

and he is not a german shepherd, he is a belgian malinois, they're like german shepherds only with less fascism and more waffles.

don't get me wrong, the dcpd has my heart for all time, they do.  i just can't get over the fact that it's so hard to find one guy.

e is still on the loose, the cops have seen nothing of him since he came after me, so i'm just stuck sitting here and wondering when and where he's going to show up, still not knowing what he had planned in the first place.  the whole e thing has been happening for more than a year, and before i was just exhausted but now i'm exhausted and terrified of what he will do next.  for so long, it had seemed like he was withdrawing, focusing less on me.  i had barely seen him since s's death, and i was beginning to believe that he might even be moving on.

so, it wasn't anything like moving on, he was just waiting for the right moment when he could drug me and do who-knows-what to me, and i somehow doubt that one failure will put him off the idea.  i hate it, i hate being afraid of him, i hate that feeling when i'm at home alone at night and i hear a footstep in the hall.

ugh, and this is my song of pity.  who wants to go out this weekend and think about absolutely anything else?

i am moving, really moving, this weekend, and i really can't do this.

i mean, i can't do this at all, but especially not alone.

g, please be not-busy? pretty please?

i do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
i love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

i love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
i love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so i love you because i know no other way

in which there is no i or you
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand
so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close.

~Pablo Neruda

you know that feeling you get when you walk into your apartment and nothing is changed but you can just feel in the air that someone has been in there?  yeah, the police don't take that very seriously.

can i talk about work here?  it seems dangerous, somehow, but i won't use names, i promise.

i developed another regular client, i think, which is good because i only take the ones i can stand as regulars.  he's not bad, undemanding, really, mostly just wants to serve me in this quiet, mild mannered way.  he seems ordinary, like the dorky father of a high school friend.  it makes me wonder what in his life made this sexual for him, cleaning his own kitchen at my instruction.

boring clients are the best clients, boring means undemanding and ordinary, for people who want to relinquish control, paying submissives can be amazingly picky.

i have been dragged onto the internet.

commence operation narcissism.