It’s 11pm Friday night, and I’m back at Shalom mountain again after last week’s TBS. This is the work weekend, and I’m still getting my bearings. So many new faces, a different culture, and stranger still, so many familiar faces, without their familiar ecstatic expressions and costumes.

The drive here was beautiful. I spent the entire three hours in solitudinous bliss that I had been only barely aware that I was aching for. Having Rosie visit was wonderful and beautiful, as always, but also as always I was happy to be alone when she was gone. I wonder what that is in me that I can’t feel my freedom as fully as I’d like when anyone else is around. What am I protecting? Do I fear their disapproval? Is it only a relief not to have to choose between my love and my comforts?

Jamie is here with her oldest, her daughter, Emma. And Kristen is here with her son Keenan, of the same age. What’s more they’re all sharing a room together, and Jamie and Kristen seem to be bonding only a little slower than their children. Keenan went to bed early with a stomachache, and he’s been vomiting in his sleep, the poor guy.

As soon as I got here I went to work, first helping Annie cook scalloped potatoes, her contribution to the potluck (which I forgot all about and came unprepared for, as usual), then putting up siding on the house. The work felt great, and I was happy to find myself so useful.

Kristen asked if I wanted to lie down for a while after dinner, and I did. We went first to her room, but she was tense, expecting Keenan to burst in at any moment. So we moved up to my bed on the fourth floor. We took off our clothes and tried to ignore the people coming into and out of the room, but with only limited success. We started to have sex, but I was tired and Kristen was tense again, worrying about her motherly duties. We had a sweet, frank talk, cuddled some more, then went downstairs.

I went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette. Keenan soon joined to ask what I was doing. With some reluctance I showed him, but I was grateful for his curiosity and I was hoping that he liked me. I like him. I watched him thrice catch and release a big frog that lives in the little pond near where I was working on the siding.