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.

I just woke up with the thought that the brain is like a net, as if the nueral network were literaly catching information out of the air. When we are born, thrust unexpectedly into the crazy world, we start frantically weaving this net, designing it as we go, to catch the few things that we're able to make sense of, to ignore all the rest. At first, this buisness of ignoring is the most important, since we're so overwhelmed with information. Then sometime around pueberty we have a working model of the world that mostly makes sense, even if it's woefully incomplete. We then spend the rest of our lives trying to unweave parts of or net, so that we can experience more directly more of the world we were so eager to filter out.

My back pain is not so poor a companion as one might think. I'm learning to appreciate it's hearkening call back into the moment. With my attention right there on the experience it's never unbearable. Just the opposite really, I usually stretch or twist or turn to somehow momentarily increase the sensation, as if I were saying to myself; this? is this all? no, surely the pain that's been calling so incessantly for my attention is more than this, wait, yes, okay, THAT hurts. Good.

Jason had invited me to get together with him and Erica last night. He said he'd come over by 5:30, but I got distracted playing Titan Quest and didn't realize that he hadn't shown up yet until 7:30. I called to ask what was up and it turns out he'd fallen asleep. He called the whole thing off and I felt relieved, disapointed, and irritated all at the same time. I had worked hard, ha, make that walked around alot for three hours or so doing the fire inspection for The Pines with Tony earlier in the day so I was beat and my back was screaming. I'd thought about cancelling myself and didn't. And that's the irritation peace; I hadn't really relaxed fully or made other plans because I thought I had this thing to do. Probably the only thing I would have changed is to smoke more weed though anyway.

So far today:

downloaded porn
watched two very hot scenes
wrote Keli a return email
wrote Roz a return email
read a few pages of Rice and Salt
tried to pay the sales tax but realized i don't have a complete printout for june and the tax is wrong for august
transfered music to my phone
wrote a journal entry