You might feel as if other people are still being pushier than necessary, but it may not disturb you today because you have found the courage to stand up for yourself. Your unshakable conviction is your secret weapon now; if you're in tune with your own purpose, then no one can come between you and your soul's destiny.

-Today's Horoscope

A big if there at the end, but I'll take it.

Weekend streets

The quiet weekend streets of this town ask me to walk down the painted lines or pedal my bicycle in lazy arcs. The leaves are fallen and blown and grown anew, the old faded skeletons picked up either by hand or that loud monthly truck that the signs warn of. New electric green leaves are bending lightly overhead. I'm on my way nowhere really. I have a couple lists in my pocket for grocery and hardware stores, the library and bank, for the corner liquor. It's my weekend and I have nothing to do but follow water with coffee and coffee with tea and juice and eggs. There's four cups back home holding different purposes.

The weekend warriors are parked elsewhere. How strange the way America's wealth manifested itself in the second and third homes of McCall, Jackson, Bend, and our beloved Tahoe. They're there now surrounded by their stuff. I can only imagine how many garage door buttons some people have on the passenger visor...

I'm still dreaming of my great escape, though every year that notion becomes a little more distant. As I near thirty I begin to truly feel assimilated, planted, and strangely content in this thin, imperfect skin. This body will do. Now what to do with it.

I'm the youngest of a philistine triad from the pacific northwest. We ran around like wild things and it's really a miracle we ever became socialized, civilized, functional. When I was young I acquired a secret strength drawn from items and acts. I would will it and use it for my own good and those that I cared about. I was reckless, fearless, and not afraid to fail because I assumed I would, that it was only a matter of time.

Some days, depending on his mood, my brother would let me dig through his dresser drawers and find some piece of clothing to borrow for the day. I felt older and more confident in his loose-fitting shirts and baggy shorts. I imagine now that I looked ridiculous or depending on the angle, like just another kid in his older brother's clothes, but to me in those moments I felt like a new person. I felt invincible. It changed my day, it determined my day. I still search for that feeling and sometimes I can find it in something like a new haircut or the final words of a novel, when I step out alone to see the night sky, or best when I'm driving and someone special has their hand on the back of my neck and just in that moment I feel I can finally stop being me and be us.

Take this longing

When I meet people I look in their eyes and wonder what they see and how they see me. I wonder how much they're here with me and how much they're off with a memory. And then I wonder if I could love them.

Sometimes when I'm thin and tired and still treading recklessly and gratefully in gladness away from the storm of melancholy, I think about that imperceptible line between under and overwhelming. Does that feeling just belong to me and people like me? Am I so fragile that like a baby I could laugh and cry in the same minute? Perhaps the only difference is now that I'm older, I'd be ashamed to show such opposing feelings in uninterrupted succession... but feel them all the same.

I've been dreaming in strange vivid movie sequences lately and it makes me wonder how my emotions are hardwired to chosen programming. Also makes it harder to take myself seriously. I think of Joel sitting on the morning train in Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, fidgeting in his seat, eyes moving between the passing scenery and faces on the car... catching the eye of a woman and thinking, Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention? Those ridiculous feelings... I have those, and I also have those internal rebuttals, constantly.

I'm asking, why you? Why do you make me feel this way. I don't even know you. I couldn't possibly love you. And yet, I do.

For me, forever ago

I couldn't find myself for weeks, maybe more. Never found that moment when I could check in with myself and see how things were going. I used to have that with tobacco, be able to step outside under the night sky and take a moment to reflect on the day and my play in it. Or at least that's the power I gave cigarettes and then took away. It's been three months since today...

This speed is dangerous, this speed is necessary. As I get older time moves faster and it seems I'm just as reckless as ever, perhaps only with a thicker skin now. Less apt to give a fuck if someone doesn't like who I am. I've always looked forward to that feeling. That and the patience and thoughtfulness of old-age.

This morning the sky was overwhelming. There was this thin line of cirrus clouds in wisps and billows spanning up from the desert southwest and us walking in ones and twos out by the San Joaquin delta. The richest shades of green bending in the breeze and an enormous herd of goats wandering up a hillside to the east. In front of us the river slow and steady on its way to the bay. Rails and pheasants hiding in the thickest thatches of grandelia and pickleweed, calling out sharp and clear in the morning air. I was zero and became less as the day passed.

I was thinking about the book I'm reading and how I might not make it through. Don't you hate it when in the end authors lose the feeling and tone of their entire book? It's as if they took six months off and came back without a clue. You can feel their unease and haste as they rush the final sentences, draw their characters into unlikely endings, trying to wrap it up and get that rag to the printer. It wasn't that good of a book anyway, but to lose himself like that... bummer. And it reminded me of me and how hard it is to hold that feeling there, the one you love, close to you. To see it through and make good of what you started. That's the hardest part.