to mark progress, several years after inception:

serifs, those tacky little hangers-on.
still.

oh ho, do i have a bad feeling about this. hello my friend Terrible Sense of Timing. hows Unabated Frustration these days? i know, disneyworld is nice this time of year. great that Viral Misapprehension is housesitting; i knew id seen her out walking the dog in the neighborhood. well, ill catch up with you later - sooner, you say? great. fantastic. i look forward to it.

oh, but. i left maine thinking i might have to stave off regrets as soon as i sobered up (fig.), had a few days to days to organize my thoughts. still, i should know better ; even the things i do that are poor, not of the best morals, materials or construction, dont comprise regret. missteps tell me a lot - one, that i know they are what they are, and getting that far is hard enough (my everyday morality is a cobweb, and my personal preferences are surprisingly elusive - do i want to be in new york? if only my desires were that compartmentalized and accessible! instead i have to play stupid stomach games, where i divine deep, morphic, volcanic sentiment by testing whether or not a certain hypothetical causes what i like to call a walnut to develop in that place where our instincts live...anyway). two, they draw attention to things i would otherwise pass over as well-oiled ; if you see it coming, after all, thats not much of a misstep so much as an inconvenient decision. and im still not totally settled on this one, which is whats a bit galling - i need to make a choice, go one place or the other, and i keep pushing each end's bounds, teasing it out, and thats just miserable. What Do You Need, dear. for its not just a matter of wanting, either - its testing out my cravings when i know im not eating well, what am i missing, what can i hear that i need. whos wholesome, whos tasty? oh my, im all for trashy metaphors.

i am so busy that although i missed antm last night - for the knife at webster hall, amAzing, but again, too busy to process (busy, but cute and computery!) - i hadnt even thought of downloading it until now, which im promptly not going to do, because ill end up watching it instead of indulging in my sweet, achingly small dont-burn-yourself-on-the-heater four hours of sleep. also, i forget how to talk. doot d do

oh winter; oh youre on me like a lover, sweating me up, its 70 degrees out, but im not fooled; i know its you, underneath where the piles of leaves would be, here, if there were trees. summers woozy and slow, but youre a chokehold, the plucking and dripping of the heater in the night, last-minute mojitos, baths on the floor when the weak light comes in the window and cant get out, and you Madame before all others, wont let me forget that i fail in my faith; what is easy, what is not.

edit. i give up on drugs and am now trying cookies, more cookies, and lots of many sundry liquids. i feel better already.

it is so cold, and the heat isnt on yet. im leaving my window just the smallest half-crack open because i cant even fathom how germ-encrusted everything would be if i didnt let at least a little air move. sniffle, snivel, i should go buy some real tissues, but again, it is so cold. its too bad i wont let myself waddle across the street in blanket-wrap, because it really is cozy and nice; its also nice to think that if anyone gets sassy i have my sexy, infectious cough to fend them off with.

maine was very, very nice, but there was just too much going on; too many fireworks, not enough stars.

ok, clearly "sick and functional" is a big lie; back to bed for some more "sick and od'ing on dayquil, which, oddly enough, still makes me as drowsy as nyquil does." im frustrated because its too hard to read, movies are too stupid, and everything else takes energy. also, its nice that the one thing in the history of man my roommates choose to throw out, ever, voluntarily, is the pleastic bottle i keep to make my orange juice in. i cleaned it and left it on the counter to dry, and lo, i get back and its the one damn thing on the counter thats been moved - not the tv remote, not the sinkful of dishes, not the other plastic container (bent in odd, unacceptable ways) sitting on the counter. whiz kids, these.

i go forage for warmth.

i am going to maine tomorrow and its going to be great. everyone should come to maine. maine is awesome! i love maine! beaches and my moms apple pie should be enough reason for anyone.

my moral compass has stopped working; i cant tell up from down, so its a good thing im sticking to familiar roads for a few days, anyway. its just too bad that i keep having to scale what i want down to all these wacky distortions i cant recognize so well, so its hard to say whether or not i still want them. to borrow from the roomie, it may still be yours, but its not cake anymore after you eat it. and i keep pretending like i care what the smartest or wisest thing would be - as if theres any point in lecturing myself on that one - when really i just need to sit down with my dignity and ask her what she needs. does pretending its dignified help, or is it better to just own up to the trashiness and make your peace?

fucking watersheds; tomorrow i promise myself i will be showering and together like i believe in the nothings wrong. and to think, it really isnt, everything is, or will be, even-keeled: im hastening the correction of a long, exhausting, slow starboard tilt. i think once its righted ill feel good about knowing my own longings better than ive been able to intuit for a long time. im scared of my own dedication, here, my own incontrovertible stubborn will, and once i move past the stupidity of the forms my lessons need to take i hope ill find my whitewashed, born-again clean dignity on the other side ready and worthy, more so than id ever really actually hoped for, not without artful dodging of questions that matter - the newly-discovered stubornness actually a pleasant surprise, the demands i make on myself having reassuringly high standards, the things i dont just aspire to but insist on doing are, actually, genuinely, really good, noble in their way. still, my head hurts, a lot.

oh honestly, youre not going to take on that kind of responsibility. its not that im foolish so much as optimistic in asking for help here, and i dont see the malignancy in asking for it when all parties involved know that the aforementioned responsibility is always and forever, bless its soul, going to rest with me. so yes: i am belatedly aware that you were right in citing your selfishness, and for looking at me like i was a little cobwebbed up-there when i suggested generosity as even an extant but out-of-reach desideratum; there was a woman in the park today who looked straight from the bell jar, dressed up sane and belted but clearly not of this, this, she didnt tilt her head when she watched! i cant name what it was about her post-electric remove, but something wholesale beyond, above, horrific and dreadful utterly POST-, her airs not circulating, this is what so much is leading-to pointing-toward the remove, the meta, within-without, that were prodding at and able to prod at only because its unfathomable, unobtainable, distant, the stupid benumbing fact that our ideas are and so we may, faithfully and penitently (mostly), take them very seriously indeed, this is all so old i know and im sorry (concentration in penitence, my new favorite life major), but it was like she had no faith in this at all - automaton - whose reasoning consisted in acceptance and therefore imitation, they do it must be - past the cogito, past the guilds, past the petty distinction between harlots and whores, past even the deserts and neons and clover-leaves and fury, to, to, to what: there is nothing inexplicable, patterns are reckless, theres never any reason not to, the fucking future:

this wishing, this constant, dire wishing i have, suddenly out of place, and more importantly not petty, even if futile, even if it continues its ignored, unknot-yourself existence; which it might, and which it might not, depending on the fury and the scorn and the figuring out if im really so clever as to have exacted revenge on myself, being evidently capable of an unhappiness so genuine and so thorough with my own willingness to compromise that i have to break every reasonable bone in my body to demonstrate EXACTLY HOW VALUABLE THOSE REASONING SKILLS ARE, and then theres today, the day left with my point proved and a lot of what looks like broken china and no rhyme (not that there ever was - i dont live that particular poetry) and definitely no reason anywhere left to understand it.

so i do in fact who wouldve thought exaggerate, because there are by far too many reasons left, and theyre all reverberating and echoing and yelling at me. oh theyre very clear about how they feel; i just didnt know they did any feeling at all. its nice to know, i guess, and thats what i have for silver lining; how very, unexpectedly intense they can be, and its oh so much the worse now that theyre pressed into knowing of their solitude - or, if not knowing, knowing that thats the only allowable assumption. im not even sure what my pronoun here is referring to, but whatever they are, they are pawing and fetal at the same time, grabby and offensive but skittish, malnourished, translucent, seeing the light of day for the first time and not quite able to blink quite enough.