Recently in "Deep Thoughts" Category

I won't talk about how long it's been, because I hate going to blogs and reading those kinds of disclaimers. I post when I feel like it; I don't when I don't. This isn't a job. And now that I have a job, it's nice to be able to say that.

My life has changed so radically that I hardly know how to express it. I went from standing on a nasty precipice for an extended length of time (not jumping, mind you, or even quite falling, but getting dizzy and sad from looking at the drop) to suddenly being tossed a lifeline. But it happened so fast that I've hardly had time to adjust.

A few weeks later I woke up after a particularly bad night (45 minutes of sleep is not enough for a growing girl) and realized I needed to move right now. So in that dogged, resourceful way I get when I'm desperate (which, I begin to realize, is quite a useful skill), I began looking for and almost immediately found a better apartment. Same amount of space, nicer building, quieter neighborhood, less money.

Since then it's been the usual cavalcade of completely inconvenient and scary health problems that seem to accompany any big change, and trying to juggle the overwhelming demands of new job, packing up all my possessions (which, for an adult person with a lot of books and a lot of hobbies, is not a small job), dealing with pesky freelance hangers-on, and so on.

It's a lot.

The only part of it that really bothers me is the health crap, because, well, it's crappy. I may need more surgery - two kinds, in fact - and in the meantime, it hurts to do most anything. And of course, the one thing I really shouldn't be doing is heavy lifting. Yeah.

Everybody keeps telling me - oh, don't complain, because it's only another couple of weeks and then you'll be in your new place, where everything will be all bright and shiny. Well, my new place promises to be lots better, certainly, and I expect to be a lot happier there. But bright and shiny and perfect and solving all the world's problems? No. It's just a nice apartment.

I'm still going to be broken and in pain, and needing surgery, and I'll still get lonely at night and wonder whether that swelling is anything to worry about, or whether I've just gotten fat in those four days off the bike.

And I'll have weeks and weeks more of lifting, and shifting, and drilling and hanging, and putting together of new dressers, and the cat waking me up at 4 am because she's convinced herself she's starving to death and needs to be fed right that moment.

In other words, life goes on. And I'm glad it does, because if it doesn't have to be perfect then it's something I can live in. I think there'll be space for me to stretch out and relax, and take my time getting used to the fact that I'm not going to die of starvation because I'm too poor to buy chicken for soup.

Eventually (read: now would be great, or maybe next week) I'll meet a really unusual and preferably very handsome fellow who will find me irresistible and charming and compellingly fiery, and then things will get very interesting.

For the first time in a very long time, I'm not just whistling in the dark about that. I feel it coming.

Well, it's January and life hasn't gotten any easier. I kept telling myself I'd write when something got easier, so I'd have something good to say. It wasn't even something I was openly telling myself; it was one of those not-quite-acknowledged things. But even if I wasn't admitting that that was what I was waiting for, I was still waiting.

It hasn't happened. What has happened has not been easy.

I fell. Hard. I got hurt. Every time I felt like I was getting better, something else happened to hurt me more.

That's a metaphor, but it's also the bare physical facts.

These are not easy days, and they have not been easy years, and this is not an easy place. And I am way past tired of life always being this way.

I need rest, and I need play, and I need pleasure, and there is none of that on the horizon - or at least not visible from where I stand.

I know it's a geographic cure, but I am pretty convinced I need to move. I am also pretty afraid, because it means more risk, and more isolation, and more not-knowing-anything.

It means leaving a lot of important things unfinished.

It means I may make things worse for myself, financially and otherwise. I don't think I have a choice.

I was listening to a song today while I rode my broken bike with my broken body, and the lyric that caught at me was this:

Yeah there are some days
When you peer off the Brisbane Bridge
And think sweet thoughts about the river (by Chris Pureka, who is brilliant)

I'll tell you the truth. The truth I've not told anyone who knows me. The bike is not just my favorite thing, it's my essential thing. It's the thing I do so I don't give up on everything else. Because without it, I have no desire to keep bashing my head against this stone, trying to break through. Or just not the strength for it. When I get on the bike, I am saying, yes, I'm willing to keep at it. When I'm prevented from getting on the bike, things get very dire.

I get human-tornado angry. I get so I could crush someone's head in my hand.

I also get so that river looks awfully sweet. I don't need to be here, anymore, I think. Not at all.

I've seen two shooting stars in the last few weeks, two more than I'd ever seen here before. Last night I'd only stepped out for a moment, and as soon as I looked up there was a blue-white and red fireball cascading down over the rooftops. Big and bright enough that I thought at first it was a plane. After it fizzled out, I wondered if maybe it was a portent.

I'm in a time of hanging drama; on the cusp of great change, but with no clear indication yet of what the outcome(s) will be.

I've been trapped by a blizzard in my small neighborhood for several days, unable to ride or even walk very far. It's given me a lot of time to think (and to try and make some headway on my holiday knitting). It's also given me a lot of time to feel, which is not especially pleasant.

What I feel and what I think are mostly a tangle, but a few things are clear. I'm severely lonely. I desperately need to change careers. I think I need to change my whole notion of what a career means.

I may very well need to relocate. I'm intimidated by the fact that relocating someplace that's easier and better-suited to me is gonna make me even lonelier (as if that were possible) for a while.

It's like looking at a plain white wall that you need to get through or over, but there are no visible seams and it's a hundred feet high, and you've got no equipment - nothing but your hands and feet and an increasingly bad back. I just have no idea where to begin. If only it were made of marshmallow, I could chew my way through.

It's a beautiful day here, and I'm in the strange, mid-blue state that I often find myself during the holidays, coupled with some extra this year because it's been an astonishingly hard year. It makes me not want to write anything, and have trouble talking to people (when there are any people around to talk to, which is not often). I hesitate because when people ask me how things are going, the one thing I can't do is answer honestly.

Not because I'm all that ashamed of being in a mess, but because it makes them uncomfortable. No one really wants to hear you say that your life is a disaster and you're miserable, especially not at this time of year. Even when you know full well it's not uncommon for people to feel let-down during the holidays.

I don't put much store by any of these holidays. I wasn't raised on Christmas, and I envied the other kids who had trees and lights. It was one more way in which I wasn't allowed to belong.

When I lived with Boywich, we had extravagant Christmases. He always overbought for me. We always had a fight when we went to get a tree. I guess the holiday was pretty fraught for him. It reminded him of unpleasant things about his own childhood, and he would tend to be in a serious funk for the few weeks before and after.

But the day itself was kind of wonderful. I made us stockings out of colorful scrap fabrics, and there was always a lot of color in the house. The tree smelled wonderful - we'd decorate it with a combination of handmade and store-bought and given-to-us things. The cats would always drink out of the tree water, and we'd always worry whether it was bad for them.

It wasn't perfect, but for that brief time, I felt like I belonged to somebody. I don't think I ever felt that way before then, and I certainly haven't felt that way since.

And we are still friends, but he lives far away, and we are not in each other's daily lives. And it isn't the same, anyway; nor should it be, with people who aren't together anymore.

But these days the only one I really feel connected to is the cat. I'm grateful for her; every day she makes me feel better about something. But it would be nice to have some humans I felt like that about, too.

Maybe they are coming this year.

(PS. Commenting is temporarily disabled due to preposterous onslaught of spam.)

I know, I know. It's been ages since I last posted, and I was just catching up on my blog reading, as well. And I noticed something that strikes me every year - lots of people's posts are about how much they want to stay inside all the time.

It always strikes me because I love to be outdoors at this time of year. To be fair, I have to be outdoors at all times of year, and in all weather - it's just how I'm built. I wither indoors.

But I love riding in the blustery cold, and I love the way the sky looks on days like today - layers of different greys, with black trees silhouetting themselves in front.

I love the way it looks like children's book paintings outside, and the way the downed leaves smell - especially the oak. I like the silence. I like the rustle and the snap and the lack of crickets.

I like wearing lots of wool, that slightly funky smell even, when it gets a little wet. I like wearing things I've made, the fact that my head was warm and comfortable tonight because I had on one of my earflap hats, which I'd designed myself and knitted out of some especially lofty wool last winter.

It's winter, gang, and I like it out there.

I like coming inside and seeing my cheeks all flushed. I ride along and feel myself smiling. I like being alone in the outdoors.

Strange words from a woman who lives in a large city.

Every time I sit down to write, I end up with something that is either too bright or too sad. The right note - which seems hard to get into blog form - is something like melancholy. The days, from one to next, can be very up and down, but there is also beauty here.

It's in the leaves that sail down, some twirling in mid-sail, others not. In the pumpkins and gourds and six kinds of squash and late, slightly soft apples all piled up at the outdoor markets.

In the cold, windy rides and the dark, quiet rides. In the layers of things I've knitted that all get worn, suddenly and frequently. In the way the cat curls up with one paw over her eye. It's a contemplative season.

Summer is all rush-rush; all about the body, heaving and stretching and pounding the pedals. It's all about sweat and flirting and tiny little skirts that leave little to the imagination.

November is different. It's not quite the onset of hard winter, where being underdressed means risking your life - or at least a few toes. But it's possible to find yourself wishing devoutly that you'd thrown on that extra layer in those first few miles before you've built up enough steam to keep yourself warm.

I'm feeling a little under-the-weather. Maybe because I just got a flu shot, maybe because a lot of people are sick, and so there's always something for my body to fight off. One poor friend of mine has already had pneumonia. I let myself sleep and sleep last night, though I'm not sure how much good it did me, since my dreams were bad and I woke up sweaty and angry.

I've been noticing little bits of things as I go about my daily business, filing them away like snowflakes for a dark sky. There was a large red ship running under the bridge while I was riding over it. One of those long, low industrial ones. A barge, really.

There are several streets that smell like donuts at night.

A cyclist's bag is a little like a Scotsman's kilt - you just never know. I met a fellow who carries hot sauce at all times. "In case of a hot sauce emergency?" I said. "No, I just think everything tastes better with hot sauce."

There was a woman twirling and twirling on the beach at Coney Island. She twirled and then got dizzy and had to sit down in the sand. It seemed to me to be a religious ritual.

I walked into a cafe, and there was a young man dancing to an old soul tune. I watched, delightedly, then went up and joined him. I was sad when an even better song came on a few minutes later, but he was gone and I had no one to dance with.

I'd like to sing you a little song. About little birds and indeterminate scurryings in the undergrowth. About how all the lights look like fireflies to me now.

About an incoming plane I mistook for a supernova.

About how the sky never goes black here, only blue.

I'd like to sing to you, only it isn't singing weather. It's crochety knee weather. It's the weather where toes get numb and I get out the heat packets, because I've never been able to figure out the right shoes for winter riding.

I could hum a few bars of knitted things. I could tell you I finished my sea-colored gloves and how soft they are, with that bit of silk in there. I could tell you I went for a walk and a long-haired man caught me checking him out and nodded, and I blushed. (It was dark. He couldn't see. Plus, I pretended not to notice him noticing me.)

I could tell you I looked at every bicyclist and it was no one I knew, and I decided that meant it's not real winter yet.

I could tell you about special dogs I've known, about my mom's and my sister's (who died a few years ago, taking the title of my favorite dog ever with him) (his fur was very soft) (that's not why he was my favorite).

I could tell you that when my mom called from Florence the other day, I could see and smell everything she was describing, because I'd been there, in the very spot she was calling from. I loved that city; I would have simply stayed there, lived there, if some jeweler had asked me to apprentice with her, or the tour guides at the Duomo had said they needed an English speaker, or the gelati salesman had proposed marriage.

I could tell you how different our city seems, in winter, when everyone is scurrying about like mice in their long coats. I could tell you that the water looks different, as you cross above a river or look out over the long stretch of beach.

I could tell you that sunsets are prettier.

I could tell you that I am lonely, and I miss having someone who knows me well, and likes or even loves me for that. I could tell you, too, that I'm not sure I could handle the reality of that, even if I am yearning for it sometimes.

There was an omelette with a dear friend the other day. She has the loveliest long hair. Every time I see her, I think, now why should we both have to be so sad? We deserve better than this from life. We are both so strong. And we move through the world with verve.

It was a very good omelette. I ordered it with ham, and forgot I'd done so until it arrived, and then it was a little like eating the forbidden dance, with a sprig of rosemary.

Everything looks lovely in this long, low, golden light. This season was a long time in coming.

I've been wearing red nearly every day. I'm not sure what it means.

I remember someone telling me once that purple was a healing color. If that's true, I wonder what sort of color red would be. Martial, fiery, aggressive, confident, powerful? Hot-blooded? Hot-headed? Scorched?

I don't know, but whatever it is, it seems to feel right. And on the days when I don't wear red (or when I do, also...) I wear orange. It's all fire, fired-up, fiery.

I'm in flames, I guess.

What I really am is in change, in progress, and maybe that is what all the fire is about. Fire for phoenix. Fire for transformation, fire for intense growth. Burning it all down before stepping through the flames as something new.

Yes, that sounds about right.

Interestingly, the mittens I've been knitting are the opposite of those colors, and they're mittens for me.

I tend to get into a frenzy of knitting for other people the moment the cold weather strikes, and then it's hard to work in projects for myself, but one terrible day (which hadn't yet been terrible, but perhaps I had a premonition) I went into the LYS (on an errand to buy yarn for someone else) and found myself holding this skein.

This amazing, ethereal skein. All the colors of water, I thought. An underwater kelp forest, spun into 50/50 merino and silk. It's Malabrigo. Into my bag it went, and I knew what I'd make of it.

My well-worn and well-loved sportweight fingerless mittens have been unraveling at the thumbs for two years, and for two years I've been saying I'd knit some new ones, but I haven't. I've knit plenty for other people, including several pairs out of the amazing Malabrigo silk/wool, but none for myself, and it was time. Make that high time.

So here we are, my mittens and I. One done, the other underway. I made sure to photograph them in daylight so the colors would come out right, and lo and behold, they did. This is what they really look like. Water water water. For when all my burning makes me thirsty, I guess.

It sure would be easier if I weren't the sort of person who is haunted by things.

It occurred to me last night that the last time I had to get over somebody, I didn't have to be in the same state, much less the same small section of town. We never ran into each other accidentally, we didn't have to put on a show of niceness, and, oh, come to think of it, he didn't deliberately say something cruel to me in public.

There are various problems with the current situation, some to do with the laws of physics, many to do with the equally perilous laws of Murphy, not a few to do with the fact that this guy spent so much time in my apartment.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's no place in this apartment we didn't have sex. Except maybe the ceiling - though I'm sure we would have managed that eventually.

It's not so easy to put someone out of your mind when the ghost of their sexy naked presence is haunting your house.

And it becomes a whole lot less easy when you can't even think of them fondly anymore. I'm not used to that. With a few notable exceptions, I like my ex-lovers, and after the adjustment period I tend to be glad I knew them (in the biblical sense).

In this case, the whole thing's been poisoned, and I'm not sure how to deal with that, internally or externally. Well, I guess externally I'm hoping to simply avoid ever seeing him again (good luck with that; we live all of 3 miles apart). Internally it's a disaster. It's like a failed piece of origami - every way I turn it, it just looks wrong. I can't see a way through it, and - perhaps because I am no longer 14 - I am not used to this sort of petty behavior. I just don't know how to cope with it.

I'm dumbfounded, in much the same way that I get dumbfounded by the behavior of drivers in this city. "What? You really want to kill me? Just because I'm on a bicycle, on the same road as you? I don't get it."

Yeah, I haven't been writing. I haven't been cleaning house. I haven't been playing with the kitten. I haven't been sending people things they're waiting for. I haven't followed up on six important things. I haven't followed up on six unimportant things.

I haven't been answering my phone.

I haven't been saying yes to anyone.

What I have been doing is riding my bike to lonely destinations and standing there, ill at ease, watching the sky change.

I've put hats on my head when it got cold, I've taken layers off when it got too warm. I've been to the grocery store (which was quite pleasant - the people who work there are often magically nice to me).

I bought ingredients for this soup I keep seeing (or smelling) in my head. It's the intersection of sweet and fiery. (Yes, I tweeted that already, but it bears repeating, because I think it's the ultimate personal ad for me. If I really had guts, in fact, I'd delete every word of my stupid Internet dating profile and replace it with that one phrase.)

Anyway. I will post a picture of the soup (maybe), and if it's good maybe I'll even tell you how to make it. Though if it's really good, it'll almost certainly be because I've made it half-consciously and it'll therefore be unrepeatable.

Anyway. Again.

I'm hurt and I'm angry and I want to build myself a marshmallow igloo to live in.

Instead, I gotta live here. I got invited to three parties yesterday, and I went to the one I'd been invited to first, and it was not as much fun as I'd hoped. I couldn't help but wonder if the other two were better. One of them, at least, might've held the possibility of getting fresh with a young boy (that was who invited me).

On the other hand, marshmallow, ya know?

I'm probably not ready to make myself vulnerable in any way, not even enough to have some well-deserved and really quite needed boy-type-fun.

"Jean-Luc, blow up the damned ship!" - this I hear from the other room. (Not actually a whole other room, but it's essential to small-apartment living to think of your various subspaces as rooms.)

Yeah, Jean-Luc, blow up the ship.

I went to the beach this weekend and discovered something. I like my own company. Sometimes I like it a lot better than the company of other people.

There was a good-looking guy on the beach who really wanted to talk to me, and I put up with it for a few minutes then devoutly wished he would leave. I asked him to leave. He didn't get it at first. Eventually he did, but by then it was getting too dark to stay.

Not that I mind dark beaches, but this one is isolated, and there's a certain line that I walk with regard to personal safety. To stay longer would have been over the line.

Anyway.

I rode home solitary and quite gleeful in the pitchdark. Boywich bought me a really fabulous light not long ago, and I hadn't tried it out yet, and it is wonderful. I felt safe and self-contained and happy.

Then I met up with some friends a few hours later and...again wished I were alone.

They were being irritating, making a big fuss over something that was no fuss at all. There was a brief errand that needed doing, and not one of them was willing to get off his ass and do it, so I did it. Maybe it's just that I like being in motion, but I don't quite understand that sort of lethargy. I have trouble getting out of bed (because it's warm), and I have trouble settling down to work (I'm avoiding it now), but I don't have any trouble riding a bicycle. If I could, I would gladly wake up, eat, and ride the rest of the day, every day of the week. I wish someone would offer me money to do just this.

On a day that includes a lot of miles, my legs may get sore, but I invariably feel better at the end of it than at the beginning, and I'm nearly always raring for more the next day. I've said it before and I'll say it again - born bicycle tourer.

I don't know what it means that I didn't enjoy anyone's company except mine yesterday. Maybe it means nothing. I had a perfectly good day, except for the parts where I was with other people. I wasn't cranky. I felt good and complete. I made all the lights I never make, and when I got to the beach my favorite birds were out in force - tiny scurrying sandpipers. I just wanted to watch them and play with them and talk to them.

Somebody I barely know told me I looked unhealthy yesterday, which, well let's just say it's not something that's often said of me. I can only suppose my ennui was showing. My ennui and my five hours of sleep and my thirty miles on a track bike and a peanut butter sandwich.

I ate and went home and ate some more, and it hailed like the end of the world was nigh.

I pulled the basil out of the window and shut the latter and watched as the streets filled first with debris and then with a river of soapy-looking water. The cat hid under the bed. I was fascinated.

This is the second time in recent weeks that we've had a freakish and dangerous weather incident that came on suddenly, and both times I had been about to set out someplace on foot and took a look at the sky and thought the better of it.

My kung fu is strong, though saying that will probably bring on a hurricane, which I will be out on the bike for.

I put myself to bed early last night, because I was sad and done with being awake. When I woke up, I was dreaming about punching somebody in the face. I often wake to fighting dreams, which tells you how I feel about morning - or the human race, I can never decide which.

There is a deep mess in me these days, and I am fighting with it, and maybe there are outward signs of that. It used to be that nothing ever showed on the outside; I was just built smooth somehow. That isn't true anymore. That comment about how I looked came when I was sitting, resting, in an unguarded moment. What I really think is that I looked unhappy. Because I am.

I spend a lot of time hiding it in daily life, but I won't hide it here. It's not the same as being depressed, apparently, because I am still enjoying the little details of being alive - when I walked into the kitchen this morning, I'd forgotten I bought apples at the farmers' market yesterday, and I was so pleased to see them.

They're what I think of as real apples. All heirloom: Russets and Keepsake and Cox's Pippin. The russets are the ugliest, and my favorite. They have this scratchy-gold sort of bloom on them, and then inside they are intense and tart and taste like nothing else on earth. Oh lordy, they are me. No wonder I love them so.

PS. Here are some pictures from Sunday, when it wasn't hailing at all.

More about fall.

This is, for me, the most evocative time of year. It sends me so easily into other times and places, some of them the ones where I felt I fit best, even if only for a moment or two.

I get on my bike and I ride without much idea of where I'm going - and it hardly matters, since where I'm really going is into my imagination, and the pedaling is just the means of getting there.

I think of leaves, and apples, and the smell of hay, and fires lit outdoors, and people singing. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it really was my life at times. I don't know why I've never been able to bring it back, but I haven't. And so I think about taking a long - a very long - bicycle tour, and living in a tent for a while, and seeing different land and skies every day.

It would be best to do that with a companion - preferably one who's a better bicycle mechanic than I am. But I also think I should take some classes, so that I don't have to wait forever to take this trip.

It occurred to me the other day that I do a lot of things by myself simply because I don't want to spend my whole life on the threshold. I think sometimes that's the reason people get married - because they feel they need permission. They feel they need a partner to buy a piece of land, and to put holes in the walls of a house. They need a partner to feel they can exist, that they have a right to make roots in the soil.

I don't know if I'm capable of roots. I've never quite felt I belonged anywhere, or to anyone. I was barely able to accept the responsibility of adopting a cat, and I sometimes worry about her. What do I do when I want to leave, on the bicycle, loaded down with food and shelter and nothing very much else?

I know that Boywich would look after her for me if I asked him to. He lives far away. It would be a big logistical nightmare.

I sometimes wish she were a dog. A dog could happily come with me. Wow, twice I tried to write "dog" and it came out "god." Twice. A god could happily come with me.

Interesting.

I rode a lot today, and it felt great. The weather is cold, and it finally cleared up enough that I don't have to wear raingear, or even bring it. My feet were cold, and I had to wear wool around my neck. I realize I love this time of year, and not just because it's nearly that brief fleeting time in fall when everything seems crystalline and ideal. We haven't even had that kind of weather yet, really. It's been cold and cloudy instead.

But I love winter riding, I really do. Sure, the layers make it a little fussy when I have to pee, and it takes longer to get out of the house.

But I like the slower pace of riding in cold weather. It's never about sprinting, when it's cold or snowy out.

It's just about getting there, and enjoying the ride. I feel calmer, and less hurried. I feel glad to be outdoors, and I check every face that goes by to see if it's anyone I know. It often is. There aren't that many people who ride year-round, even though the winters here aren't all that severe, usually.

I like the kind of miles that are just about moving along, getting where I'm going, and looking at what's going by. I think I'm a born bicycle tourer, though I've yet to try it. I like spending time with my bike, in the same way that I like the company of my teddy bear, and my cat - quiet companions who suit me.

And then, just when I was getting really lonely doing my solitary ride, I ran into some friends, and we rode together for a bit. And I felt...complete. Like there was nowhere else I'd rather be. It didn't last long; it got cold, and we all parted ways, and I went home and cooked second dinner and ate it. And now I'm thinking about whether to bake oatmeal cookies. I don't know. I have knitting to do. I'll make some tea and see where that leads.

I was telling a friend last night that I could make a list of a thousand things I like about fall. Maybe I'll just give you a few each day.

1) & 2) The smell of leaves as they've fallen to the ground, and the way they twirl on the way down.
3) The crunch of acorns under the tires.
4) Squirrels chomping on nuts with their little hands.

I've tried to post a few times, about what's going on, and I keep getting sidetracked, by what's going on. It's a bit of a shame - some of these drafts are funny, or wry, or poignant. Of course, I could be lying to you. They could be a bunch of dead, floppy fish. Or they could be nonexistent.

You'll just have to: a) take my word for it, or b) write your own version of the truth.

In short, then:

I am adjusting.

I am alternately kind of happy and kind of sad. I am wistful. I have fantasies. My ankle is better. I ride my bike. I overcommit myself both in work and in personal life. I wonder how it will be, when some of my friends move away. I might move away. I might stay.

Things are not the same. I suppose they are never really the same, not even from moment to moment, and that it's an illusion that we ever stay in one place at all. Even the planet spins. Even the moon, which was so huge and red last night as I rode over a giant bridge in the giant dark, that I had to pull over and look at it, after which I remembered that I'm afraid of heights and have to keep moving on bridges.

My friend Shannon is going through a great loss, and wrote something exquisitely beautiful about it. Read it, but make sure you have an adequate supply of hankies.

Another friend has had a baby, and I am, for a baby-averse person, quite smitten with him. I think it's him, not his babyness. He sits on my lap and we read Dr. Seuss.

I think, really, that I would like to write Dr. Seuss, but for adults. I wonder if that can be done. I have some ideas.

I find beginnings and endings to be difficult. This baby-friend of mine is the same way. He cries when he has to wake up, and when he has to fall asleep. I so understand. We like each other, and I am pleased that it's mutual. I can tell my friend is pleased, too. She gets a particular look on her face when she's watching us hang out, as if she's about to cry but doesn't.

I suppose I am rambling, but there is something about it that feels like I'm rambling in concentric rings, building a tree trunk from the outside in. I'm not at the center of it yet, not nearly, but I'm getting somewhere, I really am.

A boy from the Internet (whom I've never met and don't plan to) asked me what superpower I would choose, and I said, without hesitation, "flight."

A few weeks later, I was having a conversation with someone who knows me quite well, and when I told her about how I'd sprained my ankle, and it was taking forever to heal, she immediately gasped and said, "So you couldn't flee."

And I had to laugh, because she was so on the money.

When I wish for the power of flight, I usually mean the ability to fly, in the air, like the birds do. But lately I also yearn for the other kind. Escape.

When the going gets really tough for me, not just tough, but screwy - as in, people are acting weird and I can't deal - I have a powerful desire to flee.

Lately I've been thinking very seriously about leaving not just this apartment, or neighborhood, but the whole city, and in fact, this whole section of the U.S., and really, when it comes right down to it, why not leave the country, and if I'm honest about it, I am highly interested in the search for Earth-like exoplanets.

You think I'm kidding, right? All except Boywich. Boywich will know that I am not kidding. Boywich will be imagining the spacecraft I'm constructing in my head, along with the biohabitat I'm going to need to transport, and what can be built out of native materials on my own private planet, and so on.

Boywich says to me: "You know, sweetie, when you're as intelligent as you are, AND as sensitive as you are, it makes being around other people very difficult."

Yeah, tell me about it. Sometimes I feel like a radio telescope at a rock concert. Ouch.

I rode a lot of miles today, most of it in heavy traffic, and at one point I was a two-truck and two-bus sandwich, trying to maintain balance while hovering and waiting for the flatbed tractor trailer to make a left in front of me (pinned by the buses on the right and the other truck behind). I look at my life and just can't believe it sometimes.

I smelled burning leaves tonight, and made a second hot chocolate when I got home. Last night it was windy, and there were crinkled leaves swirling in tight curves around my head. A bat flew formation with me for a while. It's the first stirrings of fall, and I find that I'm delighted to see/hear/smell/feel it. I want apples. I want new perfumes. I want more of those tall socks I buy at American Apparel, even though they're so expensive for what they are.

I want to make an excursion, soon, when my ankle's ready for the traffic, to Chinatown, to pump up my stores of tea. I'm thinking Jasmine.

I want to buy this movie, and this one.

I want to find a way to get out of town for a while, to be in a forest, to look up at the leaves and listen.

I want to find a man who makes me feel the way my spring-summer lover does, but who wants more of me, and of whom I can handle wanting more, myself. I think it's time, or nearly.

I want this yarn. Isn't it the loveliest color? I'm knitting a simple little rolled-edge hat, to get in the mood. And it only just occurred to me that my new hairstyle is the perfect thing for hats. I tried one on yesterday and nearly fell into the proverbial pool looking at my reflection.

Hello fall.

So I wake up and think, I am gonna ride to the beach! Then I look outside and notice that it's cloudy and threatening rain.

I go and put on some good music and make some mediocre coffee. (Sorry, Stumptown; I know you mean well, but you just can't compete.)

By the time I'm back at the computer, cup in hand, it's pouring outside.

I am desperately trying to remind myself that I like riding in rain. But I know that at least some of that has to do with wearing a lot of Gore-Tex, and I also know that there's a burgeoning hole in the inner thigh of my Gore-tex pants.

And then I think about the impending winter. I like riding in winter. There's something bracing and adventurous about it, and I always forget that the streets get less crammed with wobbly and/or obnoxious cyclists, and that it's quiet when it snows, and that I get to imagine that I have the world to myself.

It's interesting, that phrase - world to myself. I use it a lot.

What's odd is that last night what I wanted more than anything was to not be alone in my apartment, in this city full of weirdos doing weird things weirdly right in front of my wheel.

I am always astonished to find myself getting lonely. I think I should be beyond that, immune. It's true that I enjoy my own company. It's true that I like to have space. It's true that I've lived alone so long it's impossible to imagine comfortably sharing a place with another human being. It's true that I don't think I ever want to be married, and I'm certain that I don't want children, and I don't like the fact that I'm currently friendly with my neighbors. I know that sounds weird.

I need a lot of space around me, and I often can't get enough, so how can I possibly ever feel lonely? That conundrum deserves another cup of super-sugared espresso.

In the process of obtaining it, I discover that I've forgotten about the oatmeal I put on the stove, which happens pretty much every time I make oatmeal. And which also reminds me of fall. I don't eat oatmeal in summer, so the fact that I felt like making it today suggests that my body can feel winter approaching. And I've been knitting a little bit, at night, too.

I don't know what to say about winter, except that the feeling of impending winter has a particular flavor to it - a kind of melancholy that is both enjoyable and like a faint bone pain. It feels like loneliness, in fact. Standing on a windy headland, loneliness is beautiful. Sitting in the apartment on a humid Saturday night, it feels like living inside a crinkled piece of tinfoil - loud and stale and too-shiny.

Every time I look out the window now, it's raining harder and harder.

I get up and think about eating that oatmeal. I like winter, I think. I just have to find my way back to it.

Everybody dies alone. - Malcolm Reynolds
Someone's carrying a bullet for you right now, and doesn't even know it. - the same

Alone, together. These are the two states of being between which we bounce back and forth. I guess that's not an accident, since whether we can ever truly be other than alone is one of those great questions that toss us around like a relentless wash cycle.

It's the reason that love is so compelling, I think. And by love I mean the idea of it, not the actuality, which (while also compelling) tends to be more three-dimensional, more like a plate of macaroni and cheese.

I'm not knocking macaroni and cheese. It's delicious. It's just that it's got more to do with satisfying ordinary needs than with feeding the yawning depths of the soul.

Maybe that's unfair. Maybe your soul really yearns for the blue box, and I should keep my weird analogies to myself. But mine, since we are talking about mine, has this feeling that nothing we do or say to one another can get beyond a certain barrier.

I'm a fan of barriers, actually - or at least of personal space. I don't like anyone to get too close, and I really don't want to see too very much of most people's insides. That's where the guts live - the icky bits.

But there's also this perennial urge to connect, to feel that we are understood and that we understand each other. To feel seen.

I don't know if that's really possible. I sometimes think, listening to music, that the artist - or maybe the song itself - sees, understands, is saying what I would say. But perhaps it's only that I've happened on the right music to match a moment. And is there much of a difference between those two things? I know that the role of art is to express something particular, a time, a place, an experience.

And that theoretically, some things are universal enough - or at least similar enough - that other people will go, "Oh yes, that's exactly it."

But I'm not sure that means we can reach each other. I've been in love before and still felt terribly alone, so I suppose feeling alone while being unattached isn't much of a shock.

Maybe it's like needing an interpreter - we can connect only by standing together on the same planet. The ground beneath us touches my feet and yours, and we are linked through it, but we can't ever quite touch each other directly.

So if art is our interpreter, what is sex?

A very dangerous place indeed. In art we may be reaching out, but in sex we're so close to begin with that sometimes we are hiding as much as possible. Ever have sex with someone but were afraid to meet their eyes? Yeah. The room can seem awfully full with two big souls swirling around above you. Sometimes it seems like the closer you are physically, the more careful you have to be not to let those two things meet.

She put a gun in my face.
And cocked it?
Yeah.
You've come back from worse.
(Scene between these two)

Several friends, to me: Hey, why don't you stay off that ankle for a while longer?

I do everything the hard way. People who know me well know this about me, occasionally nudge me about it, and then back off. Because they know I am not going to listen.

When I was a kid we went on a lot of nature walks, and I remember the park rangers telling us we had a choice back up the mountain - the ranger way or the candy way.

The ranger way, obviously, was straight up the steep slope. The candy way was a gentler, probably safer, traverse. Either way you'd get to the same place. I'm not sure that rule holds as true in life. I think when you take the ranger way, you end up someplace different.

The ranger way has its drawbacks. It's lonely. It can be scary. The park has a spooky element to it around midnight. You don't want to stop.

But if you don't take these risks, you miss out on the low-hanging mist with its visible edges. You miss out on the loud crickets and the solo horn player and the figures appearing suddenly, vaguely threatening shadows, coming out of the trees and onto the road.

I could sit home. I could watch endless TV and eat too many snacks and pine for the right company. I could ice my ankle and stay off it and risk nothing.

No, I couldn't. I really couldn't.