Recently in "Deep Thoughts" Category

A few days ago when my -er- friend was here, I took some pictures. I'm not sure he knew why I was doing it, though he allowed it. It was the light.

I'm not often up in the actual morning, and when I am, I'm struck by how different the light is. A few months ago I was visiting a friend on the West Coast, and every time we went for a bike ride, I kept commenting on the light. At any given hour, it seemed to slant or glow or do something that had me mesmerized.

Professional photographers always talk about light, and I've always assumed they were talking shop - it sounds so technical. But I think it may be more that they're in love with light - how it changes the way everything looks from moment to moment, like those paintings Monet did - the same scene, over and over again, at different times of day.

I have my own experiences like that. Not just of how the light changes, but how the traffic changes, and how the air smells different, and how all of that makes it seem like I'm seeing different sides of a personality. The park, the path, the deep-city streets. These places are not the same at 3am as they are at 3pm.

At 3am, there is a basketball game - 12 people, playing for real, on an unlighted court.

You would never know that if you weren't riding by. I felt privileged to see it.

In her 43rd year, she took a lover seventeen years her junior, learned to play the field, became adept at smoking joints, and got in trouble with the IRS.

Would you like that character, if you were reading her in a novel?

I was just reading a post by another blogger, and realized it isn't just me who's being introduced to herself in her 40s. I had a flash the other day where I looked at myself, where I was and whom I was with, and marveled that this is my life now. You don't think, when you're twenty, that your life in middle age will be anything to write home about. You also don't think, I expect, that you'll still be very much discovering yourself.

I think now that I may be discovering myself forever. In that last moment of breath, I may have a little flash of insight where something unfolds and I want to jump off and explore it. Why not, after all? It happens all the time now.

I only hope I'll still be riding my bike.

I'm not trying to be quiet, I swear I'm not. It's only that I am rushing from thing to thing, and composing little fragments in my head while I'm on the bike, or while I'm falling asleep half-thinking about the old mystery novel I'm reading, whose pages are on the verge of crumbling but whose words still feel fresh.

And because we lack the technology for direct brain-to-blog transfer, there they sit, little postlets, flitting about in the nether regions of my brain, tangled up in Lord Peter Wimsey's long legs.

It's 3:17 am, and I like writing (or doing practically anything) at 3:17 am. Anything I put my mind to seems filled with extra juice in those precious "wee" hours. I have never been able to adequately explain why I seek out the deep night, though people who don't know me often ask, once they find out.

I usually say something like, "It's quiet. I have the world to myself." Neither of which is exactly true, nor is it the whole reason.

I have this feeling, you see, that it's those hours that lend themselves to magic. Perhaps because those are the hours in which the rest of the world dreams, and dreams hard. I prefer to use that dream-time for conscious thought; maybe I sense that the wider possibilities of dream-worlds cling to those hours, and invest whatever I'm working on with extra shine.

Yeah, I like the pixie dust. What can I say?

I'll tell you this - I had an unusual experience recently, which, without giving too much detail, involved being in a slightly altered state. And since then I find that I can, at will, conjure up some of the perceptions that made it special.

Strangely, this ability is related to why I don't normally seek out altered states. Make that artificially altered states - we all know how I feel about endorphins.

I've always felt, simply put, that my brain was quite interesting enough, thank you, and didn't need artificial enhancement.

I still think that's true. What I also think is that a little light artificial enhancement* can be interesting, not just in the moment, but later. I can remember how things looked or felt, and in a sense, those doors of perception (to borrow from Blake) are still open to me. This is the magic of my brain. It goes so easily to Alice in Wonderland.

Reading this over, it occurs to me that this is what it is to be an artist. It's not news to me, but I'll say it anyway. You spend your life - as much of it as you can manage - out on the border between fantasy and reality, between awake and asleep. It's like sleeping in a tree.

*Before you ask, I wasn't doing hallucinogens. It takes so very little to entertain me.

Here we are, at the intersection of weird and sad. Getting over it (it being everything) is visible in the distance, but they're uphill miles.

I'm hungry and I just ate, which is true both physically and metaphorically.

I'm sitting next to the window with the herb plants and today someone offered me a kitten with my haircut. I had to decline, citing Kitwich's continued sanity. I doubt she'd maul it or anything, but I also doubt she'd forgive me for taking away her only-child status. And I have some sympathy with that position.

I just looked over at her, stretched out on the rug looking both quizzical (What do you want? Are you asking me if I want the a/c back on? Because the answer is yes) and content. Cats usually look content. They're either very bored, or not very smart, or far wiser than we are, and it's impossible to tell which.

She's a rather brilliant cross-species communicator, but even so I have trouble telling what she's thinking when she looks at me like that. Inscrutable and imperturbable.

There was a thing - a terrible thing - that happened a few days ago, and I'm having some repercussions from it. The boy who refuses to get the hell out of my head was there, and was spectacularly unhelpful, and I went home and couldn't sleep. And then the next day I ran away and did something that might have been foolhardy (the jury is still out; I keep hoping no harm was done, but it didn't feel right either). And now I have a date with a third.

I am guardedly a little excited about the date with the third, though I really oughtn't to be, since the odds are slim with these things. It would be nice if it worked out well. It would, in fact, go a long way toward solving a few of my current difficulties. Shannon's going to tell me I'm being tantalizing again, but I expect you can all read between the lines.

I often have a post going in my head while riding, but when I get home it's gone, superseded (usually) by the need to eat.

Some nights I wish I could show you what I'm seeing. There's a section of the park that looks like Where the Wild Things Are.

There are bats diving overhead, sometimes quite close. I've been told we have them to thank for the relatively low mosquito count. Another reason to like them.

They fly rather like butterflies, I always think. Giant brown leathery butterflies. Tim Burton butterflies.

I keep waking up and being delighted to remember that it's Tour de France time, and I get to start my day with Phil Liggett's inimitable voice. There's something special about Phil, and it's rather magical to hear him every day.

I haven't heard from the boys in weeks, and I'm adjusting. I've done some riding with other people and a lot of riding solo, and what I've found is that I actually adore riding by myself. I really dislike the pressure that I've begun to sense from other cyclists, to ride more aggressively, to "kill it" on the hill, etc. I suppose I oughtn't to be surprised that people who race would exhibit a competitive streak in social riding, but I'm still annoyed by it.

I was talking to Boywich about it, and he was (as he so often is) clear and supportive on the subject. The thing is, my chief goal is always to be able to keep riding. That means: a) avoiding accidents (as much as possible), and b) not injuring my knees by pushing too hard in certain situations.

Add to that that I'm at least 10 years older than most of the people I ride with, and you end up with a situation where it's often a relief to simply be alone and ride the way I want to.

I don't know whether it's simply on my mind lately or that I've only recently started to see it, but a lot of my friends have a judgmental streak - about what people eat, about the way they ride. I recently started eating a little bit of meat, and I've kept that information to myself for the most part. Several of my friends are what I think of as judgmental vegans, and I just don't want to deal with their reactions to it.

I have my own reasons for eating what I eat, and I don't feel that it's anybody's business. But I also don't feel like being on the receiving end of their horror. It's a turkey sandwich. Get the fuck over it.

I was watching a documentary last night, which followed a long and arduous journey through a wide variety of cultures, and the travelers simply ate whatever they could find, and they made no bones about it. They were, by and large, delighted by the people they met - many of whom welcomed them into their homes. And afterwards, when they talked about what they liked most about the journey, it was the people, the chance to just hang out with people whose lives and ideas were completely unknown to them. They found some kind of harmony in that, and they felt they'd learned a lot.

I suppose this all sounds simplistic, but I find that I'm chafing against that oddly persistent human desire for homogeneity - that desperate need to make everyone think and act just like you.

I wish I'd taken pictures tonight. I was on a roof, looking at the skyline - the Empire State lit redwhiteandblue, bridges strung with lights, the water. Behind the jagged outline of buildings a string of matching fireworks, 6 I think, were exploding into colors.

There were smiley-face fireworks (dorky), planet fireworks (Saturn, with a ring), big puffball fireworks that looked for all the world like dandelions gone to seed (or sea urchins). There were jellyfish fireworks and fizzy-pop red ones, and ones that looked like Christmas tree lights which didn't so much explode as hang there for a few moments and then slide down like leaves off a tree.

It would have made a great photograph, even if the camera couldn't (as I'd convinced myself when I decided against bringing it) capture them very well.

By anybody's standards it was a remarkable sight - the skyline added so much - and it struck me as crazy that it took so little doing to get there. It was a short ride to a friend's house, up a flight of stairs or two, and voila - big famous spectacle.

That's the thing about living here - you get so saturated with the difficulties of it, and the drudgeries, that you hardly notice where you are. It's more like the city becomes a part of you - it's seeped into your pores, and like most things that live in your pores, it's pretty unpleasant much of the time.

You ignore it, or you deal with it as best you can, and if once in a while you look over at the Statue of Liberty while you're crossing the bridge, well, that's pretty, you think. And it still doesn't make an impact. Because it's part of your life.

People fly thousands of miles to see that - they drink it in like some fabulous rare cocktail, and for you, because it's running out of the tap, it's just There. Familiar landscape. Hey, Liberty, Babe. What's shakin'? How you doin'? Nice dress.

There are times when I don't know how I'm feeling. Okay, there a lot of those times. And when I do know, I often wish I weren't. Feeling, that is.

Lately things catch me by surprise - I think I know what I want, and what I can deal with, and then I'm thrown some sort of a curve ball, and what it does (other than require a lot of effort to knock it out of the path of my face) is to stick itself onto one end of something that I'm not really aware of, and unravel it.

And then I'm suddenly in tears (just a bit - I rarely do a full-on cry) pedaling through the mist, because a) I didn't know I was feeling that, and b) what I'm feeling kind of sucks.

Also, c) there's rarely a damn thing I can do about it.

I had a sudden moment of realizing how broken hearted I felt about most aspects of my life, and I wasn't prepared for that, and there was nothing much to do about it, except keep pedaling.

The scenery was rather good:

half-moon rising above parting clouds
fingers of mist with streetlamps pouring yellow sodium streams into them
trees and rain and mud on the ground
smells of river and drowned flowers
that view across the water, looking for all the world like Monet's unknown masterpiece - Park at Dark

I watched the shadows of tire and chainrings, rotating.

I sometimes wonder about the impressions we make on each other. I realize the impact of a human life is about as lasting as a footprint in the sand.

Maybe it lasts long enough for the birds to notice, maybe not, but it seems to me that most of what goes on between two people happens below the surface, at the level that isn't talked about - or can't be.

I remember that scene in Moonstruck, where Cher is telling Nicholas Cage that the big part of him has no words, that it's a wolf, and that it does what it has to do between him and him.

I sometimes think it would be better if we simply interacted with each other that way. No words, no interpretations, just action and responding action.

And here comes the rain, at last.

He: It's clear that you like men. But you never keep any of them for very long.
She: Men make women messy.
He: Here's to the fear of being trapped.
(from The Thomas Crown Affair)

She: It's too bad you couldn't have avoided this.
Me: What? Not get involved after he warned me?
She: Yes.
Me: He was just what I wanted.

Sensing a pattern?

Yeah, sure. That don't make it resistible or even something I much want to change at the moment. It serves its purpose. That being to keep me at arms' length. I have my reasons.

But it hurts, you say?

Well, you are talking to a woman whose legs are permanently bruised, scraped, skinned, and sometimes even rug-burned (yes, for that reason).

I have a certain tolerance. Make that resilience. I may not like pain all that much, but I sure do bounce back from it like a Weeble on steroids.

So I'm in that state where I'm drinking espresso at 8:41 pm and stopping in the midst of my 40-mile jaunt to visit a handsome fellow of my previous acquaintance (yes, like that) for a little free-form flirting, just to juice me up again, and then I get back on the bike and ride the rest of the way home dartin' and a swoopin'.

Finish up some work, have a brief bossy little meeting (I was the one being bossy, which is odd for me, but I was still in traffic mode), eat a clementine, blah blah blah. This is how we get on with life, folks, we just get on.

We move, we fly, we get pissed off and decide we deserve better; we recognize that we don't actually want to get too much closer than that and so we scan the horizon for another (un)suitable boy, and there aren't any, so we learn to play bocce ball and win our first-ever game, because, well, we are really quite deft at certain things. Rolling balls in uncertain directions over chalk apparently being one of them.

I've been a M*A*S*H* watcher for as long as I can remember. So long that I am pretty sure I've really seen every episode they ever made, most of them repeatedly.

There was a sense the whole time, especially toward the end, that everyone was holding their collective breaths till peacetime, and that when it came, something special was going to happen with Hawkeye. What it was, no one knew, least of all Hawkeye. But I never quite believed him when he claimed he would simply exult, party, speed away in gleeful, unencumbered relief.

I felt that he'd never be able to get away from what those years had done to him, and that he'd feel like he was missing a limb to be parted from those friends, those comrades in his brutal, incessant fight against death.

By the time the end came, I was proven righter than I really would have liked.

He'd broken down and was in an asylum trying to collect enough pieces of himself to be put back into his M*A*S*H* unit. He was frail, something he'd never shown evidence of before, even in those moments where he'd show some pain.

He did make it out, of the asylum, and then out of Korea, but we weren't sure at all how he was going to be, afterward. And I suppose that is only right. What we really wanted to see, which was never (of course) going to happen, was him and BJ flying away together, brothers. Because we knew that even in his Maine paradise Hawkeye was going to feel like he'd lost his twin.

I bring this up because I recently found myself making a large leap towards something I've always wanted to do. Not just something, the thing. And I find that, like Hawkeye, I'm not able to simply exult, party, and speed toward it in gleeful unencumbered relief.

Too much has gone before, perhaps. It's been too long a battle, and I am not certain if I still possess the ability to believe in it, to take it in. I'm damn well going to try, because I do believe (or 85% of my self does) that I deserve to have it, to do and be what and who I want to be.

But the battlescars are not insubstantial, and they are not pretty.

I know I'm not the only one who has trouble taking in good things, believing and accepting them without looking for the hidden catch.

Somehow that doesn't make it any easier to grow out of that bad habit.

I've gotten so much better at imagining good things for myself instead of disasters. I've even gotten good at believing I deserve them - some days.

But when I get such a cluster as has happened lately, I start wringing my hands a little. What's next, what's next, I say, in my White Rabbit voice.

It's especially hard when there's another person on the other end. When there's clearly a connection that's unusual, and we keep looking at each other funny but nobody wants to say anything about it, other than "Hi," with a rather dreamy look.

He did something really nice for me yesterday, and it was wonderful, and I did my best to just take it in and enjoy it, and not get nervous. But there were those moments, later, where I just didn't know what to do.

What do you do when somebody does something really nice, just because he wants to? I said thank you, of course. I smiled and let him know how much I appreciated it. But there it was, a long juicy stalk of something, with an invisible bud on the end that nobody can talk about, and I can barely look at in my own mind.

I have no idea what to say, other than that I have an amazing opportunity, for which I must write a proposal, and I am having the worst time of it.

I think it's because it's something I want so badly, and as some of you know, I am sorely unaccustomed to getting what I want.

It's crucial for me to believe that I deserve it, and I'm getting better at that, but the difficulty I've been having writing this thing suggests that there's still work to be done on that score.

I am not sure what to do to break the ice. It's like a scrim in my brain, between me, where I currently am in life, and this thing that I've wanted all my life.

I tried taking a day off and going someplace pretty.

I tried drinking a beer (or three).

I tried getting outta the house and riding for a bit.

I tried various forms of play and socializing.

I tried downtime alone.

I tried parking myself at the altar of the laptop and sacrificing sheepguts.

I tried overeating, two days in a row (ugh).

I tried knitting.

I tried plowing through it in extra-rough, downright corrugated draft form.

Nope. Nothing's working. Nothing's working and I have a scant 18 hours left. Oy.

Tony Bourdain, talking about Provence, says that everyone, including rich people, has a fantasy of living the simple but beautiful existence of French peasants, minus the hard work. We all want to live in a Mediterranean climate, surrounded by blue water and equally blue skies, to walk in fields of lavender, and to eat those sharply flavored foods - aoli made in a stone mortar, fish caught a mile below the house, vegetables so intensely colored they seem to vibrate.

At the end of the same show, he concludes that even more than eating the beautiful, unique, handmade cheeses, he enjoys shopping for them. Kibbitzing with the lady in the apron, being recognized by the little terrier dog.

He says it's really the little details of life there that make it special.

I don't doubt that he's right, and more than that, I think that's true of anyplace.

And I wonder if part of the trick to finding happiness in a real, daily way is simply identifying what your own personal magic pieces are.

I'm not saying that these are necessarily my definitive pieces, but here are a few little bits from the last few days.

I was at a picnic. It was a little cold. There were funny stories. I wished I had a frisbee.

I was at a party. We sat outside on a deck. It was crowded, and yet, this time, I wasn't angry with the crowd.

I wanted to see a particular young man, and it happened.

Easily, and not the way I expected. I find that I like to have a crush on someone, and it may not matter all that much whether anything comes of it. I like to have to guess. Is it mutual? Does he think I'm too old?

I found a crate of clementines for only $5.99. I've been waiting all winter, wanting them, but they've been $8.99, and I haven't bought them. I bought these, and they are fat and perfect.

I am listening to a documentary on Helen of Troy. It's a woman in a plummy accent telling a racy love story, only it's history. Torchlight, and they dance naked until dawn.

[Note: I wrote this a couple of days ago and delayed posting because I was trying to track down the name of the tribe so I could link you to it, but since the Internets have failed us thus far, here's the - slightly vague - story.]

I'm in quite a state lately. Boywich was telling me about an aspect of the language of a particular Aboriginal tribe in Australia, which describes a state of becoming, and for which there is no exact English equivalent.

We were talking about the degree to which our language reflects and reinforces the way we experience time. We may talk about the future, but we imagine it as a static point in time. We only ever think of the now. Current events, new, modern, 2.0.

It's not that we don't care what happens next; we just can't conceive of the flow of time. And it's no surprise, perhaps, that for many of us things seem to happen suddenly. We wake up one day and look in the mirror and exclaim, "I'm old!" Death seems to be sudden, even when someone's been ill for a long time.

Because of this, we don't really experience change. We notice its effects but it's hard for us to feel it happening. Or when we do feel it, it's excruciatingly uncomfortable. It makes us feel that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent, we can't rely on anything, and it makes us nervous.

But that's what I'm doing right now; I'm becoming. I'm in a state of tidal change, and boy does it feel strange.

I'm trying to remind myself of all the things I love doing that are states of flow, of motion, of being neither here nor there.

Or rather, of being always in the moment that flows into another one, smoothly and naturally. Bicycling, traveling on a train, knitting.

It's not quite the same as the tribe's perception of time, but it will have to do.

There are days when I feel exceptionally beautiful. They don't come often, and I always feel just a tiny bit guilty for saying anything about them, for having the audacity to claim beauty.

But I also suspect that it's on those days that I come closer to seeing myself truly than at any other time.

Most other days my judgment is clouded by a lifetime of hanging back, of not wanting to be upfront about what I can do, what I know. It seemed always as if for me to step forward someone else had to step back, as if acknowledging that I have beauty, or talent, or grace, meant that someone else was going to suffer.

It's indoctrination, I know. It's not uncommon among women. It's also a crock of shit. This I know intellectually, but not with conviction.

I have this persistent belief that I can't be great and nice at the same time. And by great, I mean Great. As in, possessed of greatness. Special.

"Everybody's special, Dash." -Helen
"Which is another way of saying no one is." -Dashiell

It reminds me of The Incredibles, where the supers (as in superheroes) were forced to go underground, to hide their powers and masquerade as ordinary citizens, not just in between acts of saving the world, but all the time. Basically they were told that they had to sit on their gifts, not show who they were, because who they were made the non-supers feel uncomfortably less-than.

Have you ever watched the way kids treat the geniuses among them? It's not pretty. And I think it used to be worse.

These days there's at least some lip service to the idea that it's cool to be a geek, though I don't know how far down it trickles, chronologically. And there are still differences between chic geeks and real live nerds.

I'm one of the latter. I don't look it, but I am.

Tonight I spontaneously solved an engineering problem - quite by accident. Then I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "I'm brilliant!" After which I felt abashed.

One is not supposed to exult in oneself. One is supposed, above all, to fit neatly into some acceptable pigeonhole, within which one may exhibit a high level of competence without threatening other people, because it's confined to a limited sphere.

One is not, for example, supposed to be both an artist and a writer, and also to be good at science. One should not understand astrophysics. One should certainly not be able to immediately and intuitively arrive at the solution for a complex engineering problem that's taken a team of scientists years to unravel.

Man, I am so busted.

And worse, I was proud of it. I still am proud of it. It was a moment of gleeful insight, and those give me great pleasure.

I know for a certainty that some of the people I've dated have trailed away from me because I was simply Too Much. Too big, too much energy, too passionate in all senses of the word, too fast, too funny, too intense, too serious. Always leaving them behind. Not even trying to. Trying to be kind, to bring them with me, to invite them to play.

On the way home tonight I saw all these things I wanted to show you. An art installation of colored lights that created, as a byproduct, two long beams of reflected color on the river. Like a more cheerful version of the 9/11 memorial.

A driver was kind to me. She (I like to think it was a she) waited for me to get over, when I was expecting to have to wait for her. I was surprised, and turned around while we were stopped at the light to mouth "thank you."

I'd like to do a PSA campaign telling drivers that it's good luck to be nice to cyclists, in the same way that chimney sweeps were considered good luck in Mary Poppins's London.

A dear friend of mine said to me last night, after we'd blasted through an intersection to make a light that was turning, "You know, you really ought to be racing."

Every other time that someone has asked me if I race, or why I don't, I've demurred - I'm too old for it, I have knee issues. This time, I didn't. She is herself a racer, and a damned strong rider. She's younger than me; she trains very hard. But she's in a position to know.

She went on with some specific recommendations: sprints, no climbing.

It probably isn't wise.

But last night I dreamed I was with a group of people and we were being chased, and the safest thing to do was to get to the roof and fly away to a distant mountain ledge. I didn't, because I was the only one of our party who had that ability.

My dreaming self is always a flier; it's a basic characteristic, like hair color.

Earlier that evening we'd been talking about our families not understanding the risks we take. That it stems from their own worldview, from their need to feel that life is stable and predictable and safe.

In my case, at least, it's been a challenge for me to believe my own perceptions of what's possible, and to follow my instincts about what to do with my life. It's difficult when what you feel born to do is something that everyone in your family, all your teachers and other authority figures considered completely impossible, not even worth trying. Now I marvel that it never occurred to me to push them on that: Why? Sure, it would be hard and there'd be the possibility of failure, but why isn't it worth trying?

Because I'd get hurt? Oh for gods' sake. I've been hurt so much more by not trying, by denying who I am. Better to take the leap and fall on my face.

I rode over a lot of ice patches last night. When my friend noticed that I seemed to be aiming for them, I explained that I was trying to improve my bike handling skills. I could tell she wasn't criticizing; she said I seemed to know my bike really well.

It occurs to me that I may be trying out strategies on the bike before putting them into larger practice in my life. Taking the risk of falling in order to find my strengths, and to develop them.

I've been experimenting lately with letting myself do just what I want in a given moment. That will probably sound elementary to some of you, so much a given as to be not worth mentioning. But I have to tell you, it is quite difficult for me.

Not only am I not used to doing what I want, I'm so unused to it that I have trouble even hearing what I want.

I use that verb intentionally because finding out what I want is an act of listening. I hover there, listening for it like the sound of waves. Sometimes I can't tell. Sometimes I have a small sensation of it, a little nudge of energy in one direction over another.

It's like learning a new language.

I wonder if most people learn it in their teens. That seems to be the time of willfulness and experimentation and striking out as an individual force in the human landscape. That I am sitting here in my 40s experimenting and looking for clues like this is sad.
I don't mean pathetic. I mean quite literally that it makes me sad.

I should have done this a long, long time ago. I should have been living according to my own desires for decades, and I am sad for myself that I didn't have the chance to do so. And I'm sad that it's so difficult now, that I essentially have to wrest my life into my own hands by brute force and determination and ferocity.

On the other hand, it's nice to know one has brute force and determination and ferocity at one's disposal. I've used those qualities before, but mostly to protect or help others.

Now they're for me, and that is so unfamiliar it makes me squirm. I was sitting there in front of my oatmeal and my body was jumping around in the chair. Yeah, I'm not that wild about oatmeal; I forget about it on the stove, and I lose interest in it about halfway through the bowl. But it's also that I don't like to sit still. It makes me queasy.

I remember sitting next to summerboy in a restaurant once and him reaching out and clamping my leg down to keep it still. I hadn't even realized I was constantly moving it.

Sitting still feels like death to me, and repression, and lack of freedom. No wonder I love cycling; it's the opposite of all those things. And yes, I am now going to escape from this chair and pump tires and find the right layers for this frigid (high of 22F/-6C) weather and run away away away.

They say in order to love the city you have to leave it, that returning makes you appreciate it all over again.

Bullshit.

All going away did was make me realize how difficult and annoying and stressful (ad infinitum) life here is.

I went to visit a friend, and now I feel how very much I miss him. I went to a place where things are prettier and air is fresher and there are green things and an ocean, and now I feel how little of any of that there is here.

And what there is here instead is: Noise. Lots and lots of noise.

I hadn't realized how much static-level stress all that noise produces in me on a daily basis. That and the overall nastiness of people. I don't know, I really don't, whether people are bastards here on a larger scale or whether that is the true nature of man, and people elsewhere bother to cover it up more often.

But I tell you, I do not like these people. I do not like them in a crowd, I do not like them being loud. I do not like them in cars, I do not like them in bars.

I lost my sunglasses. I played in the cold foam at the water's edge. I rode in rain and then in sun. I hung out and cooked and watched movies and laughed and got sad. I did not knit, or read, or eat too much of anything when I wasn't truly hungry.

I watched some sunsets. I played with birds. Big birds and little ones. I visited a cat and two more cats and worried some about my own cat, who was being watched by a friend but who I knew would be sad and scared and confused.

I had two bad airplane flights. I wanted to take a long bike tour. I thought about how people get into our spheres and make little houses for themselves there. All I can think about now is how come I don't sleep so well or ever feel that relaxed here?

When I got home I overtightened a bolt on my bike and broke it. I fixed it. I spiffed up the bike with new grips and a bell. I don't think very much will change, though.

I have a habit of looking at pretty things when I am having a hard time, and I've been thinking that I'm not the only one for whom beauty is nutritious.

I wrote here a while back about making something beautiful for someone who's dealing with illness, and recently another friend whose family is going through a difficult time asked me to knit something for her.

It's a practical object that fills a specific need, but I think there's more to it than that. I think she wants me to make her something pretty and soft. I think she knows that I will knit it with a lot of love, and I hope she knows how happy I am that she asked, that I'm glad there's something I can do for her - even if it's just a seemingly small thing.

I will have to remember to tell her that, when I give it to her.

I swear that these little things are what keeps our heads above the dark water when it starts to close in around us. That, and soup.

Have you ever noticed that putting vanilla in hot chocolate makes it less chocolatey? It's like antimatter for chocolate.

Some days you can just feel that things are going to be bad. I was in a fine mood before I left the house, but as soon as I stepped outside I thought, Uh Oh. There was a palpable sense of danger and madness in the air. I wouldn't even have gone out had I not had dinner plans with two friends I hadn't seen in ages.

Sure enough, all the humans were being nasty and belligerent and stupid (except for our waitress, who was pretty awesome). And on the way home one of them nearly ran me over, and then tried to tell me that since there was no bike lane on that street I was not supposed to be riding on it. And that it was somehow my fault for him backing into me. And that it was downright terrible that his window might be in danger of being broken (by my gloved hand smacking it to alert him that he was about to run me down with his giant car).

I was so angry and so flabbergasted and so steeped in adrenaline that I couldn't breathe well enough to get any sensible words out. I ended up trying to yell through sobs and then cried the whole rest of the way home. I don't think I was so much scared as impotently furious.

And I devoutly wished for summerboy, primarily because he would've been able to articulate to the guy just how wrong he was, and why, and then I could've had someone to cry on.

I ran into him unexpectedly at a party a few days ago, and it was a little emotionally charged to see him, but it also made me miss him. We were friends, and now we're not, and somehow I just feel the loss of someone I Iiked having in my life, rather than anything more defined by relationship boundaries.

I am kind of hoping we will become friends again.

One of the friends I was having dinner with confided, when our third member went to the bathroom, that she, too, had detested 2009. I've always assumed that the absurdly resilient hopefulness I seem to carry around in my chest was a permanent characteristic, but lately I am getting skeptical. I am wondering why I bother to make excuses for the horribleness of human beings. It may be, simply, that I wish they weren't so horrible, and so I tell myself that these are simply clouds obscuring the sun.

That might be a lie. Whether or not it's a necessary lie I don't know, but I am getting awfully angry, and I think maybe I am done making excuses for other people.