Reading this all that time without my knowledge wasn't kind. It was the opposite of kind. He should never have shared this with you.

Thankfully I met someone who never would have.

558 days to go

12/19/01

home. foggy. rainy. damp. dim.

love it. love it. love it. love it.

this has been one of the nicest trips home ever. in spite of the melancholy over joe, i just completely indulged my senses in the yumminess of the kids. and it's SO great to be around mel. she's one of just a few people lately with whom i'm not intellectually lonely. it's also nice to have someone who shares ALL the memories. good and bad. from day one. the was right there alongside me during the long days weeding the many flower gardens on our five acres. or shelling lima beans for hours and frickin hours on the back porch. blistering bleeding fingers. she was the one i mentally tormented, who would chase me and pound me with punches until i lunged up at her and punched her back. just one punch from me and she'd fall back yelling. i guess it was a psychological advantage. but she knew how to hurt me too, and we both wielded the edges of each other's hysteria with deviltry and cunning. but we were also friends. we both had to face the mind-numbing emotional games growing up in our house, and bear similar scars. we would sit on the bed in the dark listening anxiously to our parents fighting. there's a lot more to the story. exquisite rifts in our sisterhood that sometimes spanned years. but altogether, she remains the person i know best and who knows me best. when i'm at my lonliest and wonder who would miss me~~~~ i know there is someone who would feel half her life had vanished, who would feel her soul torn.

and that's worth a lot.

my hair is jet-black. too damn black. i'm hoping it will fade a bit. don't go by the color on the box. that's the lesson i learned. if you want dark brown, go for medium brown.

i do like it better. at some point i will ease it more in a black-brown direction. as it is, i look like an american badass goth supreme.

so nice to be back. getting back to my life i'm sure that joe spasm will fade. it's funny~i always said i would never regret it. but i think i am beginning to regret doing it. that it was really a mistake, that ground away at my self-confidence and my sense that i'm entitled to have a man be proud to be with me. these are things that really take time to change. and behavior reinforces them in either direction.

so yes, it was a mistake for me to carry on so long.
from his point of view, it was not. but, he didn't pay the costs i did.

well, i've learned one thing: never do it again. with anyone. ever.

sex.

it will be great again. i feel little strings of aliveness and awakeness and interest in.......certain men. that doors are open and all it takes is to find them. sex, mental engagement, all the good things.

i think the rest of today is chores. i don't remember what my apartment looked like when i left. it could be trashed....i might have done some cleaning. it seems like i was last here a lifetime ago. i'm on the computer at work, tapping away--monday i should have my laptop and won't have to come in here to do it.

the radio station is unchanged as always. but i'm getting the heck outta here and going home where it's cozy and warm.

559 days to go 12/28/01

9:19pm

he replied. "i am seeing someone else." that was the entire text of the message.

it seems as if, after five months of not speaking to him, it should not hurt so much. it hurts like a punch in the stomach. i feel ill.

at the thought that he holds and kisses and makes love to someone else, cares for someone else, is enjoying a life with someone else. that he would rather be with someone else.

i really made a mistake. i shouldn't have done what i did with him, gotten to know him in that way, gotten to care so much. i really, really fucked up. i should not have made love to him. i should not have given myself to him. the cost was so great. he just never loved me like that. and while he got emotional comfort from me, he fell in love with two different women in the time that he knew me. he really valued them above me, when push came to shove. they were the ones he wanted to try with.

i don't know why i kept on with him. it is a mystery. the longing i felt was just so much stronger than my will. and it is pathetic--i know this and can't do anything about it---to care like this now. to feel sick like this now. there's something wrong with me, that i keep on caring so much.

he really didn't love me. i wish i could wake up.
i'm going to ask my doc about treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. there must be some reason the thoughts about him won't stop. along with some other things i won't go into here.

and it might be a good idea not to post for a while.

i don't know why i care when it's not reciprocated.
i wonder how on earth and when on earth i will be able to stop caring.
it's like a reflex. i can't help it. i just do care. and just do still feel everything as if it had only happened yesterday. why?

the only thing i can control is my behavior. blocking him out. just forge ahead through these 559 days.

oooooooooooooh. look what i found.

hey, who needs joe?

...this was

an ice stalagmite that grew on the ground near the wall on the other side of their kitchen sink.

oooooh, can you imagine how fawking COLD that
would be?

"you got one and two heads"

....

it's all still very good grasshopper.

i know he cares. just not in that way.

"i love you but i'm not in love with you."

is there any phrase that i'd be LESS happy to hear ever again in my life?

nope

no, non, negative

*fly back tomolly.*

560 days to go

12/27/01

all my life every last person has told
me i look like dad's family. but we were browsing
through photo albums--just before the big drama--
and i realize in some ways i'm nearly a copy of
my mom.

maybe part of that business about my looks coming from dad's side was about denying mom ever existed.

same

smile

same eyebrows

same eyes

nose..pretty damn like

same expression....

we're foiling mel's hair.

i'm so amazed at my delusion
that he's checking this page.
you would think if a person
cared at all, he wouldn't be able
to resist checking in.

562 days to go.

dec 25

merry christmas

flu-flubered.

twist of opposites emotional cocktail. do i don't i yes i don't.

....................fugly

it gets that way with him

still

8:27

can't help it.

i can't help
writing to him.

mel and mark
have company. they're
nice people. they're just
fine. but i'm out of my
mind with boredom.

fuck it. i'm trying

i'm trying

damn it i'm doing
the best i can.
i'm not made of stone.

damn it

argh.

8pm

bored.

and mad at myself for sending that email to le fly.

damn it. i hate that
i sent it. that he knows now
i was thinking of him.
damn it.

the holidays are the weakest
time for me. when they're over with it will be
easier. but this season
is a vulnerable one.

i guess it can't be helped. i slipped.

i was his first runner-up. how can
i miss someone who thought of me that way?

fuck him.

4pm

golden mastermind. that's the name of this clown.

he supposedly made lots of money in multi-level marketing. (and yeah, a few do. the ones who get in on the VERY GROUND FLOOR.) and now, he makes his money as a 'personal coach.' and targets....multi-level marketers.

who are obviously more susceptible than ....say, people who choose to work at something that can actually be productive.

of all of us in our family, i'm the best at nicking away at dad's reality-barrier. but i only get a little further than anyone else, when all is said and done.

mel is going to talk to suzanne. i am going to talk to dad. it seems suzanne is going to let him bully her into accepting this outrageous gift.

but i don't see myself getting far with dad about this(i haven't before). so i may have to throw a fit. which i don't really want to do.

on the other hand, i'm sick of seeing him hand money to this joker. a lot of fucking good this man is doing.

i would like to get up nice and tight inside his golden master ass. this much i know.

1pm

apparently things are not well back at the family homestead in ohio. dad has been eagerly awaiting suzanne's opening of his thousand-dollar gift. she was expecting/hoping for a treadmill. when she opened what he actually got her, she fled the room crying.

now mind you. this is not like those christmases past when he got her a lump of coal. (ha ha) and NOTHING ELSE. and then there was the year he...what else did he do? something equally heinous. granted, those were his drinking day, and he hasn't pulled that shit in a long time.

but this year he's been pouring mega-cash into this so-called 'self-improvement' king named jeffrey combs. thinking if he can JUST CONQUER HIS DEMONS THROUGH SELF-HELP (and money to pay for group 'improvement' sessions, or 200-dollar-an-hour 'motivational' phone talks with this unliscensed-in-the-pyschological-field guru)---and if SHE can just conquer HER demons, they will be able to

MAKE ENOUGH MONEY THROUGH THEIR MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING JOBS TO PULL THEM OUT OF THEIR FINANCIAL HOLE!!!!!

yes, i SHIT YOU NOT.

so what did he get her for christmas? a thousand-dollar trip to stockton, california, for a weekend with a group of other people with whom she can ADDRESS HER DEMONS.

so she ran crying from the room. he followed her up the stairs. skeezix, eavesdropping by the door, heard him saying to her,

"the only thing holding us back from success is ourselves."

GAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! can you ever, DID YOU EVER, COULD YOU EVER?!!! merry UNchristmas, baby j, BACK INTO THE WOMB AND TO ETERNITY FROM WHENCE YOUR VIRGIN CONCEPTION WITH GOD BROUGHT YOU.jesus jumping DOUBLE FISTFUCK JONES!!!! hello, cult hotline. i have an emergency. help us. good intentions have disappeared into the swirling vortex of my dad's obsession with a perfection that doesn't exist. AGAIN.

so skeezix said she was afraid he would talk her into accepting it. suzanne goes along with so much of his hoo-headed crap because it's an easier battle than bucking the strength of that perfection impulse. skeez asked if we would call back to distract them. i called back; she picked up; handed the phone through the door to them. i talked to dad for a while. surfacy chitchat. he kept sniffling. sounded like he was crying. then i handed the phone to mel. she talked to him for a while. he tried to put suzanne on the phone. she wouldn't come.

mel is going to call her back at 1:30, when dad goes to play !santa! somewhere.

he was so excited about giving her the trip. kept talking about it when he came to visit. "don't tell, don't tell." he kept saying. "it's a secret."

"ha," mark said. "maybe now he'll quit doing that shit to her."

"he told her it's non-refundable," melissa said.

mark: "non-refundable? what the hell kind of self-help organization sells a thousand-dollar package that's NOT REFUNDABLE?"

melissa: shrugs.

not refundable JUMP UP MY BUTT. not refundable? how about if i do that npr story i've been threatening to do? i've never done a piece before, but if ever something seems to beg to have its cover blown, this certainly qualifies. not refundable? i dare this cocksucker to refuse to refund his SELF-IMPROVEMENT WEEKEND christmas present.

"we break up marriages too!" "don't hold yourself back from success!"

oh i can just hear it. "she must not be READY to face the challenge we present!!

would someone please hand me a generator? if i hook it up to my nerve endings i will solve california's power crisis FOREVER.

562 days to go

funny how under the cheerfulness there can be other stuff. last night while everyone was sleeping snug in their beds i cried for what seemed like hours.

and then dreamed

i was calling and calling
and only getting answering machines.
and leaving messages.
and finally i found him or he called me back.
and
he went with me to a swimming competition. in his grey sweats and a green jacket. but he left as i was still competing.

and i was looking for him everywhere. went to his house. looked in the parking lot. checked my answering machine. he just left, with no message to tell me why. or to plan to meet up again later. the whole dream and the whole night i'm just looking. he lived in an apartment up long flights of stairs. i looked for his car in several parking lots. he didn't seem to be home. i looked.i looked everywhere. i couldn't understand that he had just gone. without a word. it seemed unlike him to at least leave me a message telling me why he decided not to spend time with me.just gone. somewhere. where?

and now the whole day is full of presents and children. and i'm sitting here not knowing if i can keep from crying. it might take a superhuman effort. or this might just pass in a few minutes. don't know.

and,

no reply to my email. i know i asked him not to respond to any messages from me. but it hurt not to get a reply. it's better to hurt this way now, though, i guess. false hope or comfort is worse in the long run than going cold turkey.....and it is a cold cold turkey

this is

all the same a brief word would have been all right.

but i guess he's honoring my request to not engage.

still hurts.

the only way to think of this is.....the only thing that helps me is....act like he is dead. he's going to die anyway. how many years of life does a 60-some year old man have? and if i had him, i would have to face it then; even not having him in my life, i will still have to face his death;

it's better to face the hurt of losing him now rather than later;

through death or loss of love;

still

god

i'm surrounded by the people i love most and we've been opening presents and it is so fun to be with them, i swear. sharon "hates christmas" mel says. she's letting out her loud grunts and roars. such unladylike sounds from such a delicate young lady. she likes the green m and m's better than the red ones. she loves the popourri wax cakes.

i got some wonderful shit.

i left mel's damn gift---a POLAROID FUCKING CAMERA--in cleveland. they sent it two days ago ups, but we won't see it today, which BITES ASS.

so here i am in the place i'd rather be more than any.. i'm going back upstairs now to enjoy them more. it makes no sense. all i can do is wonder----is he happy, is he with someone, did he get my email, did he hold someone last night, has he made love to anyone, does he think of me at all,

the thought of him loving someone else and for some reason it is the worst thing and it must be true. it must be true.

and into that idea all
joy disappears. replaced
by a thing that seems it will
beat me.

i don't know why
i can't stop thinking of
a man to whom i was
first runner up
and it must be a sickness of some sort
and i hope in 562 days it makes at least a little
more sense to me.

a very

happy day.

with a tiny
powerful
kernel of grief
in the center.

down far below
the noise and the love.

quiet.
quiet.

day 136

12/23/01

~*~

never mind. whoever you are. i'm over it.
it would be nice to know WHO, since thinking
flyboy was hitting the page had me going. but
in the grand scheme of things, the moment is just...
over.

*boof*

ten-four

bing.

day 134

12/21/01

11am

~*~

it could
only be
someone from the
station.
my guess
is computer staff.
or anyone
who checked the histories of the
machines i used.

instead
of a man who misses me
checking my page ten times
a day, it's some obsessed
geekhead. GREAT.
i'm pissed
off and disappointed. and
you've had your
fun. well, hey!!! isn't that what i get
for using machines at the station? DUH! and you know what,
who CARES? i don't give a fuck-all rats-ass damn anymore! so
fine! so you know! I'M IN LOVE WITH JOE!!!
and i was nothing more than a fresh-faced bright-eyed squeaky-clean FREE FUCK! the saddest girl to ever hold a martini! blow me! what more do you want to know? THANKS, SANTA, FOR SQUEEZING YOUR FAT WHITE ASS DOWN THE CHIMNEY AND BRINGING ME A NICE BIG PACKAGE OF REALITY. was i naughty or nice? does it matter? does it matter a flying fuck in a rolling donut? does it matter a fresh freakin gosh darned goddamn? there isn't any more to say about it without tweaking the tweakedness into beyond outer tweakland!

congratulations, you got the goods. you got it here. I FELL FOR JOE AND I'M A TWEAKER BECAUSE I CAN'T GET OVER IT!
and you're a bigger tweaker for checking back ten times a day to see what new sorry lameness i'm spewing missing a man who just wanted A FUCK AND PILLOW TALK! saddest girl to hold a martini and STUPIDEST GIRL TO BELIEVE THAT FUCKING LINE!!!"BUT IT'S MORE THAN SEX, IT'S AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION! A SPIRITUAL CONNECTION!" HA HA HA! go ahead and laugh at how stupid i am, i don't give a fuck BECAUSE I'M MOVING ON!!! GO TO HELL! PEACE OUT! PISS OFF! hallelujah, HOLY SHIT!!!!!

day 133

12/20/01

11:21pm

i mean it;

i'm still sitting here, and i just saw you check this page. if i don't get an email letting me know who you are, i'm going to stop posting.

i'm

fucking

alarmed......

damn it, identify yourself, yeah, you, whoever you are, with the fixed dsl extreme i.p. address.

or i'm shutting down--or moving-- this page, and that will be that.

10:37pm

damn. it just came to me: after some internet
wandering, more staring at the blackness outside
the window thinking about nothing, jotting stuff
on a pad of paper, more thinking about nothing, finally
the light GOES ON.....
and i
feel
like
an idiot.

i have a friend, and
it ISN'T joe.
he's kept his word and not
checked my page. but someone
else is.

it was a pretty obvious thing
i should have noticed before.

so i have a mystery guest
....like, ten freakin times a day.....

AND, scarily enuff, it's NOT JOE...

WHO ARE YOU?

~*~

9:30pm

~*~

is it really 9:30? my body doesn't FEEL like
it's 9:30. somehow the time difference DOES catch
up even though it's only three hours.

for tonight's gather-round-the-tv-with-the-screen the-size-of-a-football-field-movie, melissa trumpeted SNATCh. we all sort of milled around undecidedly
and finally let her carry the day. bad idea.

i'm sure snatch is a perfectly good movie but this is NOT the setting. or the sensibility.

in the Universe of the Family Homestead, the best thing is really stupid jokes (preferably dirty ones) and light romps. that you don't have to really pay close attention to. i mean, snatch, you look away for two seconds and you miss the stunningly hilarious moment when the dog swallows the chew toy.

*sigh*

i might be feeling a little tude. snatch was one of those movies that was Cool. there was a lot of Buzz. and it's a Guy Movie. not as in guy ritchie, but as in a Dude movie. ....you know, very hip and badass without a shred of feminine anything. so i might have already been inclined to resist it. on the other hand, in a different setting it might be great.

as it is, skeez toodled off to bed about 45 minutes in. Suzanne served pie, which she'd cooked up in the oven. buttery flaky tangy apple-full ......if there were a vat of that warm browned silky melty crust i could just roll into it naked. and open my mouth and roll around
and around

so dad fell asleep. suzanne went to do dishes. james asked if we could watch something else. mel looked bummed out. i dropped off the planet and am here now in the study;

i am
thinking about
567 days.

there's a little window. outside the window
the night is per.fucked.ly black.

and i'm looking out of it and thinking about NOTHING.

i'm thinking
about nothing.

absolutely not a thing.

but once in a while i think:

mdtweezer?

stalker?

(achingly, wonderingly)joey?

....then think more
about nothing.

i think
i'm losing
my mind.
imagining things
i wish were true.

let

go.

10:30am

~*~

lots

snow

everything is dim&blowing white outside.

james: "xinsi"

me: "what"

james: "you look really...beautiful"

aaaawwwwww.....

i love you, will you melly me, me love you long time.....heee heeehee

day 132

12/19/01

11pm

say ni-ni auntie skeez

can't you say?

achoo. ah ahchoo, achoo
you say nite-nite? sharon you can play
with the light switch tomorrow.

voices upstairs.
okay, goodnight, another light winks out.
black rolling hills go forever. deep country,
far from cleveland's smudge of lit clouds.
house goes dark
.....

sitting here in the little study
a kind of vertigo &placelessness.
hard to describe.

~*~

"these are the days, my friends, and
these are the days, my friends."

9:30pm eastern time

in cleveland til sat.

they are yelling for me to get in there
where they are watching national lampoon's
christmas vacation for the 7th year in a row.

surrounded by yelling toddlers,
a meowing cat, a dog woofing and sliding
around on the kitchen floor, my
sisters prancing around rolling their eyes

glenn come back fri.

totally

different

universe.

so far from the gravitiational pull of earth
it's not even funny.

the psycho orbit of
family

looneyness in the comfort
of the living room by the fire

it's

quite

nice, actually.

last night's entry below
is the reason i need
every single one of the remaining

568 days.

deliriously tired last night and
it seemed like something in a movie. an
impossible, romantic scenario. that i would
write that and he would show up. an
outrageous far-flung far-fetched gesture
...and the credits would roll. but,
he'd never do it, even if he is
reading this and missing me ('allo?)

why? partly because he just
wouldn't, and partly because
he understands the whole point of this
700 days thing.and if he really wants me
to go away, i'll still need each one of
these
days....

the dream his heart would change and
he would do something like that to prove it
is cinematic entertainment i guess
for travel-delirious minds, but i lay down
on the fold-out and imagined.

"you got one and two heads," james
is saying. he
is standing on top of me."tell me again
i'm a strange beast."
this morning he asked me, "are you a guy or
a girl?" and melissa said he had asked earlier
"is she a grown-up or a kid?"

always wanted to cultivate a sort of ageless,
androgynous thing.

wrenching a current out of a narrow, deep channel
is not the same as diverting a meandering, lightly-carved shallow stream.
one day after another.
another sandbag set in place. another
chink chipped out of this frozen bedrock on the shore.
and the channel rushes as forcefully
as ever under a quiet
gently sparkling bed
of ice under a comforting blanket of winter snow.

---carved as it was by a rare bolt of lighting
breaking sideways through the earth.--and the flood which followed. --powered,
it seemed, by centuries of restraint and building
energy. ...

and

so the ground still vibrates with the current and
beneath all that ice the river is as warm and vital as ever.

i here with my little pickaxe take a breather and lean on james while mel lugs sharon down the stairs. wordless sharon with her big blue bug-eyes.

under the silent tops of trees sprinkled with sugar-snow. and not a hint of the hot river
carved by lightning running strong under the frozen, peaceful, quiet forest

day 131

12/18/01

12m

~*~

jet lag.

it's not just about crossing time zones. something else happens.

~*~

exhausted.

where are you and how are you,
i wonder sweet joe?

are you

reading

this?

~*~

would you like to come here?travel this land to come to me now?

~*~

get under these covers i'm falling in to, and put your warm strong arms around me& i'll give you a kiss goodnight.

...i have

nothing to say
anymore.
i'm all out of
dreams and all out of love.

but, if you
have a dream you believe in, bring it here. to
3425 eastside drive, louisville. it could change everything.

day 130

12/17/01

......going to sushi. then sabina's to curl up and watch video. then..
had a dream about scottie last night. i miss his goofy trendy self. seems he doesn't call sabina back now, either. sad. we all acted like idiots, i guess. it's too bad we can't be friends again. oh well.

*ack.*

~my christ-mess present to myself;~

broad strokes of sunlight to power my flashlight; megawatts of passion from past obsession
to power my urge to do chores. buckets of tears from the bummerama,
to water the trees that grow new drama.
a pickaxe to carve stairs in the
slippery slope of who cares.

~*~

a pinch of whatever, a dose of forever
with 2/3 of never. blended with clever. and
strength and a lever. (from spanky, a feather.)

half a cup of sweat from an angry man's brow.
the corner of when at the opposite of now.
choked emotions tendered as art. the most tender part
of an artichoke's broken heart.

magnetic residue carefully scraped from a length
of forgotten quarter-inch tape. on which is recorded
the right answers to the wrong questions.

the tears of the harlot in the used
car lot. the echoes of a language
that could soothe her anguish.

with music from an orchestra
of broken instruments.

mixed at the precise speed of a man
escaping from can't and fleeing toward can.

salted with the condensation of ocean air
from a lonely night by the pacific,

divided by the square root
of unfair.

hello in there, hello in there.

who does your hair?

sorry,
didn't
mean
to
stare.

day 129

12/16/01

~*~

freedom!
it's a beautiful thing. shout
and
sing

give me a detailed map to nowhere.
put me on the road, i'll go there.
if you've got a dream i'll buy it. sucker for a scheme
&won't deny it.

shines like gold and buys like copper.

i still say very good grasshoppa

it's all so good you know, in spite 'a

give me a kiss and hold me tighter.
i'll be your new york city firefighter.

ow*yow*owwwww-ta here!
without a doubt.
make me want to
sing
and

shout.

6:45

one hour and f.........OURteen minutes to freedom and OXYGEN

and 34 seconds, 25.....20 seconds...

out of

positions

in which to

arrange my legs

on this damn

CHAIR!!!

from a friendships/relationships-oriented web page: The DOWNER. Clingy. Needy. Suffocating. Scared. Guilt-inducing. Consumed by themselves and their own needs. Stifling. Crisis-orientated. The DOWNER can drag you down. . You feel like they are sponging the life right out from you. You feel guilty when you say no to The DOWNER. . They will always have a crisis. They will never notice you or your life as they are so totally absorbed in their own problems. The DOWNER can't be left alone for one minute, and the minute you walk in the door their helplessness will consume your every nerve. They will drain you, slowly, inch by inch, until you feel you have nothing left to give, then The DOWNER will work on your sense of guilt making you feel like the lowest creature-form on this planet for abandoning them in their hour of need. Every hour is an hour of need to them. They feel they have one constant crisis after another and they may cling to you.

yuck.

4:30

.....had written a longer post and now......

deleted a lot of it.
some things better not talked about right
now and i noticed i got some hits but anyway
it seemed better to take it down for
several reasons....

quiet.......quiet, be quiet, while twilight hangs heavier and heavier in the air
...outside

a landscape of tall buildings &low houses&storefronts, outside the 5th floor floor-to-ceiling windows
gold dust and deepening dark

quiet, quiet as the air cools, as shadows come in on the dusk....

night, good night, along quiet streets

darkness gathering

be quiet and come inside where it's warm. kicking
through dead leaves on the sidewalk. i love your hesitant smile.

2:30pm

*in the traffic center*

some lame-ass sticky-fingered poo-poo head went into my drawer last week and
took my cheat sheet.
this week, my headphones were gone.

not that it's a big deal. they were crappy headphones. but still.

i had been reading about guys and their fantasies, etc. and one said he
liked to jerk off in front of a mirror. that he would ejeculate all over himself, and it
excited him. i guess that was what got me thinking about sex;

i've forgotten,
for a long time,
about sex......

just haven't thought about that much,
in this time of indoorness. dormancy.

sitting in the traffic center.

in a tall building.

mid-wilshire.

city and sky stretching out around me.

around me, swirling and moving in a circle, moments and moments. stretching out
into other
moments. and then
other moments.

and everyone else
moments radiating out
into the past. toward the future.

gold dust trails
lighting
the southland sky

i was

walking along, minding my business
when out of the orange colored view, wham bam alacazam, i got a look at you. one look and i yelled TIMBER!
watch out for flying glass. and the ceiling caved in and the bottom fell out
i went into a spin and i started to shout
i've been hit
this is it
THIS IS IT

i was walking along minding my buisness when love came and hit me in the eye.
FLASH BAM ALACAZAM.
out of an orange-colored, purple-striped
pretty green polka-dot sky..... flash bam alacaZAM, and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD BYE!!!
---?nat king cole, is it?

isn't that how it happens? out of the blue? out of the orange-colored view? i get a look at you and it's too good
to be true.

*sigh* love just feels ....possible. maybe a momentary delusion. but it does, it does.

that great surprise of it when it comes.

that great feeling when you discover you can fight and disagree and it doesn't end everything.

it
moves
the
world

and all the machinations that were annoying become bearable because
there's love.

oh blah blah....i'm going to gag with all this sweetness.

~*~

someone else, a dj named scott, told me yesterday a lot of people ask about me. 'no fewer than seven in the last six
months or so,' he said.
it's good to be an invisible presence. about whom little is known.

this way, people do not find out i'm really a

geek. ....arf! arf!

holidays.

like a cruel joke when love has left you or when you don't love anyone.
but when you love someone, esp. a kid, it's different. i remember mel and myself, in our flannel nightgowns mom made for us, looking
over the balcony in the middle of the night and seeing the christmas tree down in the living room surrounded by piles of presents, all for us. we would poke each other and giggle and she would come sit on my bed and we would whisper about what we might have waiting for us.

and we felt so loved, protected, and so EXCITED by the twinkling lights, the quiet of the night, the warmth of our nightgowns, each other, everything.

one of the truly pure memories i have---a memory of pure excitement and happiness.

heaven.

woke up this morning thinking
about
sex.

~whee.....thank god i'm not dead....i can feel those things still......~

~sharon, 1975, christmas morning~

day 128

12/15/01

~*~

it's all gone

every last thing

gone.

the houses. the neighborhoods. the churches, banks, markets, the twin towers jail downtown. all of century city. the container ships at the port of l.a. all

gone, wrenched away by the thousand-mile-an-hour-blasting
santa
ana
winds.

even the streets, the downtown structures, the overpasses and the underground storm drains, everything torn from the ground.

from the wild blue pacific, to the bare rock of the san gabriels

southern california is
nothing but a raw wound on the face of the earth.

nothing left
but a faint shimmer of dust in the air
a receipt or two drifting along here and there
and the echoes of voices once heard on the radio

every last thing vanished last night

flung into eternity by
the santa ana winds.

"i remember you
you're the one who made my dreams come true
a few kisses ago.
i remember you
you're the one who said,
i love you too
didn't you know."