It has been long and long since I wrote anything, but the desire has been creeping up on me for days. The desire to make sense of my life, to put words to experience has finally got me here, struggling to type with a cast over my broken left wrist and trying to ignore the pain from my right forearm. Both of my elbows are broken from a botched attempt to break in to Jarred's locked house for him after we got home from Thanksgiving dinner. That's not what I want to write about though. I want to write about Keli.

Last night I realized, or maybe realized is too strong a word since a part of me knew it all along, but last night it dawned on me that Keli doesn't care about Farscape in the slightest. We watch at least one episode almost every night; Hany, Keli, and I cuddle up on the bed together to watch John Chriton try to get home, help his friends, evade his enemies, or assault them. Keli is often the instigator for this nightly space drama, as she was last night. She's also often the first to poke her head up and suggest that we watch another most of the time. And this despite the fact that she seldom bothers to watch the screen for more than fifteen minutes before turning her face into the pillows. If asked, she'll say she's listening.

What dawned on me last night was that the reason for this behavior is me. Watching Farscape is one time when I can be pretty much counted on to snuggle up next to her and stay put for an hour or more. There's no talking during the movie, but at least I'm there and in some sense we're together. This idea raised a confusing cocktail of emotions for me. First I was touched and honored that Keli would go to such lengths to be with me. This thought brought me to tears and, after the episode was over last night, I cried a little onto Keli's hair, whispering "I love you so much," while she faded in and out of sleep. Next came shame. Shame that Keli needs to resort to this kind of manipulation just to get some time with me, shame that our supposedly transparent and honest communication skills missed the development of such an elaborate ritual. Shame that I hadn't before appreciated the hoops she jumps through to create connection with me. But I also felt anger. Last came anger. Anger at Keli for manipulating me. Anger at myself for allowing me to be manipulated. I recognized my anger as delusional immediately, based in patterns of fearfulness, anxious that I might be used, that my independence and autonomy might be stolen, that my childhood might be recreated and I be left powerless again. Even so, the anger took a while to fade.

I focused in on Keli's constant stream of contented little sighs, and the whirlpool swept me back up again. I was touched and honored to be the cause, or part of the cause of her pleasure and contentment. How marvelous to be appreciated, to be wanted. But when the little little stream of sighs failed to ebb and quiet I started to feel distressed. Rather than an expression of pleasure, they started to feel like a bribe to stay a little longer. Like when someone starts moaning and groaning about how wonderful a back massage is just to delay it's cessation a little longer. I stroked her neck and whispered "shhh", embarrassed by my temerity. Who was I to shush her, and why couldn't I just keep taking pleasure in her pleasure the way I had at first? I looked over at Hany to see how he was reacting, but he seemed oblivious. Feeling guilty, I disembraced Keli, grimacing as one of the little sighs told of her disappointment that I was leaving (real or projected I have no idea), and made my way through the closet to my own room to play a little magic, watch a little porn, and listen to a couple episodes of This American Life before going back to our group bed and snuggling back up with Keli at three am or so.

I love to be around people who suffer. I see threir folly so clearly; the pointlessness of it; the unecessary misery of it, that I'm able to point it out and ease the pain. But more importantly I'm able to see my own suffering more clearly. I'm able to see what I'm holding on to and it is put firmly into perspective. In the exaples of the lives of others all around me I am able to see the simple truth of being and aply it to my own life.

Wow. I've not written anything since August? What has kept me away? Too much work? To much fun? Too much running from work? Too much socializing? All old stories and none of them really true. It's not fear of the blank page either. Nothing so sinister. It's just the little thing of not having done it the day before. It's just gotten out of the habit of being a habit and I can change that anytime I want to. Am changing it right now, in fact. Whether or not the habit sticks, I give to God.

Today was a good day. I woke up at Mark's house, in the arms of Rosie on one side and Dierdre on the other, with Mark snuggled up with Rosie too. I'd fallen asleep last night with my penis gently throbbing against my sweatpants. Happy, and with no desire for anything more.


And I walked away last night with that entry unfinished.


Now, I've been thinking about the big things in my life that have captured my attention. The first, I think, was otherness. From my earliest memories I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of people who were different from us. I mean really different. Creatures were my favorite. I read book of mythology and folklore that I could get my hands on. All to get to the creatures. The elves, the dwarves, the kappa from japanese myth; little turtle men with powerful magic who could be tricked into rendering themselves powerless by spilling the water out of the bowl like depression on their heads. I was voracious for anything peopled by other than humans. I build up a catalogue in my head of all the peoples I imagined myself to encounter. It seemed endless. I think I must have imagined myself akin to these "other" people and I imagined my role was to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between them and humans. I was especially qualified for this being so different from most humans myself.

Studying the imaginary peoples of the world, I found that many of them had a fascinating power called magic, which could basically do anything if you knew how. Humans had a few special people who had magic too. The wizards and sorcerers, and shaman, and witches. This I thought, must be where I fit in. I loved to read about magical systems. I read fantasy books by the dozen with an eye to exactly how this or that author imagined magic to work.

In college I found biology. Zoology really. I had always loved science. The only reason I ended up in liberal arts is the way the wind was blowing that day. I loved the first classes I took, and they weren't sciences. I meant to get back to them, but that isn't really the way school works. When I finally found my way into that zoology class. My mind was blown. The Earth was already full of creatures! Real creatures, more alien than anything imagined in the fantasy novels I'd been reading. I started to mix the two in my mind. To imagine not just biology, but the culture that would grow from the biology. To imagine what the "people" would be like. This is real magic. This is my magic. To develop the best understanding I can about what makes people what they are so far, and then to push the understanding out through the tenuous filter of imagination into...not predictions... but possibilities. Possibilites have always been more exciting to me than anything already here and real and manifest. Possibilities are the things that have not yet existed, ever, but could.

The most recent leap of my life has been into the realm of the spiritual.

I just arrived at the heart of now retreat. Rosie and some of the other participants are hot tubbing down below my second floor bedroom and I can hear Rosie's telling her "oh the trauma" story at full volume. I always feel a little uncomfortable when she tells it. She sounds mean making fun of the fifth grade fat kid with the funny voice. She just came back up to the room now so I'll tell her what I've written and go to sleep.

After much prompting from friends and family I'm finally at the doctor's office again. Really it was the pain of my most recent pustule that got me in here. My chin is very swollen, but so uniformly that I just look like someone else...someone with a bigger chin, rather than like someone with a deformity, which is more how I feel. The swelling reaches all the way up into my lower lip and gums, making it painful to talk. I decided to try a dermatologist this time, we'll see if they can help or if this is just more good money after bad.

Rosie is here with me. She has a study day off from school and she drove me here so I wouldn't have to worry about parking. I'm glad to have her with me. We tried reading Abhorsen in the waiting room, but I couldn't concentrate for fear of disturbing the other patients.

John Longendorfer, the devil-angel who wants to buy my business called me yesterday. He says the reason his deposit check bounced is because he was the victim of identity theft, which is bullshit, and that the deal is still on, which I fervently hope isn't. Tony didn't show up for work yesterday and didn't call, again. I talked to him today though and he is supposedly straightening things out with our irate customers. The bills are piling up and I can't pay them all. I really hope this deal goes through and puts all these problems solidly in my past.

Keli and Hany are having little domestic disputes down in LA which only make me miss them more.