feb 09; next stop, atlantic avenue
so much.

i will be silent for 48 hours this weekend.

i saw a woman in
the buddhist temple a few weeks ago who was doing a vow of silence.
she breezed through the kitchen and passed a note to my friend
al, who i was visiting. i didn't even see her face, i just saw a swish
of her pale yellow bathrobe and a toss of her long hair as she left
the room quickly. al looked at me and nodded gently and told me her
name then said "she's silent this week" as he tapped the note with a
calloused fingertip.

i don't know anything about vows of silence, or why they are
traditionally taken, but for me, i think it will be a form of
meditation and a way of calming myself and living a bit more
deliberately. i'm not interested in combining solitude with the
silence at all. i'm actually more interested in existing in the
speaking world without speaking.

...

writing feels really forced tonight. i think maybe this is all part of
a need to cut off expression for some time. blame mercury retrograde too.

...

strong waves of negative emotion have come over me frequently but
unexpectedly in the
past three days. not depression, not irrational worthlessness like
depression or chemical imbalance. that would be too easy. i have
something that i am genuinely sad about, a loss, and a major change. a
mistake. jealousy, and burning regret. so, the pain comes, in waves,
so strong i want to hold onto something for fear of collapsing. this
is the price i pay for feeling life deeply, the price i pay for my
moments of joy. i know i owe the universe some sadness, so i don't fight it.

a year and a half ago, last time i was sad like this, also related to
a boy, i learned to deal with the way emotional upset rises up in me. i am
pretty sure i wrote about it here, but i'll write about it again.

i know these waves of pain - lump in throat, urge to cry - are finite. i
learned a great thing from doing
drugs: bad trips end. look toward morning, keep telling yourself that
this is transitory. just wait and it will be over and you can sleep
and when you wake up it will all be okay. i compare it a lot to coming
down off e. you get waves of feeling high and they lessen and lessen
and eventually the e is gone and you can see straight again. if i can
wait out waves of confusion and misery during a 12 hour acid trip, i
can breathe through this.

also, i know these feelings shouldn't be resisted or judged. i use
some things i learned in meditation with kristie to deal with the
surges of unhappiness. i let the badness rise, acknowledge it, and
let it pass through my mind and heart unjudged, i don't try and
control it or resist it. the feelings rise, exist, then pass. it would
be disrespectful for me to ignore these emotions, but like the
chattery thoughts that rise in your brain when you're supposed to be
concentrating on your mantra, no action need be taken about them.

...

i'm now steve5's roomate. i can't tell you how glad i am about this.

<*yeti*> If I am going to get filovirii, it better not be from fucking
<*yeti*> BOLIVIAN RATS
<*yeti*> er
<*yeti*> DISPLACED BOLIVIAN RATS

i should be asleep.

even though i broke my vow of silence a long time ago, i'm still feeling guilty for talking.

feb 14; 8:22pml; ugh, hearts
minor freak out. crying. i wish life always felt as good and calm as
it does after sobbing. it's like being post orgasm.

san francisco feels so foreign and i feel so restless.

<*gadjo*> chin up young person

i never write any poetry anymore. it's like it's not real enough.

peter is here and he is soft and confused. i'm going away for a long
time and that's soft and confused too. i'm curious about what it would
mean to get back together and we write about it and talk about it and
i just kinda feel him hovering and see all the pros and cons resting
all around him, almost like paragraphs haloing his body as he sits
near me. i realize i am a volcano, a rainstorm, a natural
disaster. it's not malicious, but i've just destroyed and
will destroy again. can i learn to be better? can he. we learn a lot,
but you can't teach the sky to stop brewing up thunderstorms.

most people i talk to seem to believe it's a bad idea. in the darkness
when it's just me and peter, and i realize we speak volumes without
words, i clutch him and none of you see that. it's like some distant
land.

i shouldn't be writing about this here. so many things i should and
shouldn't be doing.

i am repeatedly punished for optimism, hope, for belief that honesty solves
all problems. and i fuck up. oh how i fuck up.

...

two things, with numbers1. kristie, lithe and full of wine, hollering down to the street from her window. her voice squeezed out through the bars: "we're starcrossed!" and i was proud to have her assign such a great word to our somewhat dull problem. we're both just busy and unable to overlap our days. we made plans to get together so i could ask her about love. i know kristie knows something about love. i'm hoping she might have some information i don't have.2. "if a cute girl tells you she's selfish, you'd better be listening." -michelle tea.

...

there was an entire email thread recently about the mantra "om mani padme hum." the best thing that happened was that i learned about a work of art that alex grey did, called 'prayer wheel.' here is a description of it, and a picture. taken from the alex grey site.

"In Tibet, prayer wheels are used by monks and laity to increase the power of their meditation. Carved or printed on all prayer wheels is the mantra - Om Mani Padme Hum - literally meaning, Om, Hail the Jewel in the Lotus, Hum. With the correct understanding, the mere utterance or inspection of this mantra is believed to transport one directly to paradise. The mantric prayer is dedicated to the Buddhist deity of active compassion, Avalokitesvara. It is said that when Avalokitesvara saw the suffering of the world, He sprouted one thousand hands and arms to assist the world, each palm containing an eye of unobstructed vision.
In the performance of 'Prayer Wheel' my wife and I were bound together along with a skeleton, while holding a realistic baby doll and a knife. Our bodies were all painted gold. We were attached to the Prayer Wheel which turned as we walked around it chanting the mantra. After circumambulating for an hour and a half, I cut the rope attaching us to the Prayer Wheel and we walked out of the space. Sound was recorded at the Avalokitesvara Initiation given by Deshung Rinpoche in Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 1983."

morning.
i woke up at 5am today, because i went to sleep at 9pm, because i went to a rave the night before and i was tuckered out. dancing barefoot and breathing nag champa while surrounded by dreadlocked hippies in flouro gear really takes it out of you. that plus being up all night. eating breakfast with other cracked out ravers in a diner in ukiah california. mmm oatmeal. we crashed at a crappy hotel before driving home. the cuffs of my overalls were muddy from wandering around in a field of sheep outside the party.

but anyway, i woke up at 5am. it had been raining all night. s5 went to bed as i was waking up. so, i became s5 while he slept. what did i do?

for starters, i watched cartoons. scooby doo! scooby scooby doo, where are you. also i ate dry cereal out of the box and drank some juice. i read perceptions.diaryland.com which is pretty good. cyan pointed it out.

then, i began to agonize about the roof. the lake was larger than i had ever seen. obviously, the roof needed pumping. i stood looking out over the lake. i bit my lip. yes, it definitely needed pumping. but my intrepid capricorn homeowner friend was fast asleep.
7:30 am at this point. i meekly opened the sliding door onto the roof and carefully fingered the power cord to the pump. it was laying under the lake. i considered electrocution. i started to uncoil the extension cord but was unable to commit. i wandered back into my room.

i chatted. i posed for the cam. i mentioned the need for roof pumping to my friends on irc. no advice. i paged peter: "hi, i think i should pump the roof. s5 is sleeping. can you wake up and get on chat?" no response. i was all alone and the lake was growing.

8:45 am at this point. i stood and considered the lake once more. it was time. i rolled up my pants, and waded barefoot out into the lake. i sloshed across the lake and grabbed an empty clay flower pot, and rested the power cord on top of it, thereby rescuing the power cord from the water. i moved the pump over to the deepest part of the lake and fiddled with the hose to remove kinks. at this point my bare feet were numb and aching from sloshing around in ice cold rainwater.

upon coming back into the house, i plugged in the extension cord (and, since steve says it's a bad idea, i was careful not to cross my arm over my heart while doing so). i was not electrocuted.

i walked downstairs and stuck my head out the door to ensure that water was coming out the hose and splashing all over the front steps. it was. the pump was working! i pumped the roof! i am clever and useful!

also, i put the lake on ellycam.

feb 22; 7:45pm; lazy.
too lazy to write. everything is too easy. i don't do anything.

my first boyfriend took this with a polaroid camera that i got for christmas that year. i was naked. i've lost the original. today i was emailing with a guy who first found my site in 1997, and back then he told me i look just like his ex girlfriend. i scared him today because not only do i still have his email, i still have the picture he sent me back then. but he scared me right back because he still has this picture of me.

kinda makes a person want to grow their hair out. that, however, would not make me 14 again.