I wish I had known in that first minute we met

the first time in ages I've felt like writing in my journal, I was thinking about new years eve 2009 and how I was different. Physically more empty and mentally more depressed. For one I was sans tattoo but avec a drawing on my wrist! Perhaps that will become a reality this year?

My bed has lit up but now again feels lonely. But I feel a new respect for "me" coming into the picture. The sort of " I want to do good for myself" while I'm on this earth. For some reason I used to think i wouldn't make it that long. Perhaps that's why I yearn for deep relationships but don't always see the worth in bothering to invest in them in the present. I sometimes forget that people have feelings and occasionally I do too and that I have the power to effect others. It might be a matter of recognizing when it's meant to be and when it is selfishly serving someone else's needs. Resolution '10? Who knows, it doesn't always take a new year to change, for I feel the change beginning already.

Until next year...

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

FRANK O'HARA

hallelujah

It is painful to visit a relative you love, but hardly know except through ancient stories and the few experiences you've had over the 24 years together. The Christmases and Thanksgivings, and summer vacations that you spend together fail to clarify their personalities. But when you see them hurting its hard to not feel for them as you would your best friend. Harder even when you realize their sadness is out of pure loneliness; for who wants to be alive after the love of their life has left this world? The one they spent 50+ years with without a wince, with trials and tribulations that I will never hear about but that clearly didn't matter enough because they stuck it out.

What overwhelms me more that the solid loneliness that I want to take away from her is the familiar (and yes, selfish) commiseration with the feeling of love-despite-it-all. I never thought i'd even experience love, much less believe in it, but what gets me is the power of it all. She spent more than ten years witnessing him as a different person, an anxiety-ridden, clueless, forgetful man who lived in the body of her long-time love.

And to this day, she misses him. She knows him not as that man, but as the man she married half a century ago. She misses the man she married, the man she had 2 girls with, and the man who retired to allow them to travel the world. That is what strikes me as the most beautiful kind of love.

but i can't tell her that. i don't know how to tell her i admire her, and that i find her to be incredibly strong. I don't know how to be anything but a five year old around her because she didn't change with me since. I can't connect and I can't console, and I can't figure out why.

i yearn for days when jeff buckley makes it all better, while making it all worse as i discuss my loves made and lost with my love child.

it's not that i'm procrastinating, but it's that i'm waiting for inspiration to strike. hopefully it will soon.

"never turn down an invitation" my friend once told me, and now i've decided to take his advice. which means that a brunch can turn into a day long affair with museums, and champagne and dinner and wine. it's not ideal for getting into my zone, but these are the moments i can't stand to pass up. so with this impending social schedule and drunk nights and hazy hangovers that are sure to come with this new social mantra, when will i have time to create?

i feel like its all pending. like the beach ball is spinning and at any moment it will turn into a regular cursor and say Go! You're Ready! You've Got It!
until then, dear friends...