The Thunder Builds Up
(13-22 March 2000)

22 March 2000
-MS Works good.  MS Word bad.
-I was thinking about phone numbers & stumbled over the disconcerting realization that I still remembered PLB's old phone number.  The imprints of extremes on our mental reality are deeper than we'd like to admit.
-My awareness of others' awareness has never been so high.
-Walking into town this evening, through what I call the "Dylan section" of South St. (a long story - I might discuss it later), I noticed a squirrel walking very gingerly across a covered telephone or electric wire.  It seemed so earnest & fragile against the twilight sky, moving steadily & deliberately.  I wondered how it knew the live wires from the safe ones, envisioning a horrible scene where its final moment was to step from that wire to a live one.  It occurred to me that I'm living my life in much the same fashion right now.  If only I had the judgment of a squirrel.  Because it seems like squirrels never fall off, but human error is far more likely.  Apparently this little metaphor was ALL I was supposed to get out of tonight's venture into Waltham.

21 March 2000
-IHOP rules.
-Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating on myself.  In keeping with the theme of quoting "The Same Old Frontiers" in the rhetoric of this section of the page, "but we all destroy ourselves, that's why we are here to rebuild each other".  6 July 1999 was a long time ago, but in many ways it was yesterday.
-The rain & the fog & the woods were perfect in their sympathy.  But also perfectly sad.

20 March 2000
-Life is profoundly skilled at giving directions.  Not instructions, but directions.  As in "go here now".  Some nights, it's just remarkable.  Which is why I felt compelled to remark thus.
-What am I supposed to SAY to that?  You can't tell me that's not deliberate.
-Rest assured, everything you ever do to anyone will come back to bite you in the rear.  Hard.  The universe is a grand scheme of karmic observance of the golden rule.  If you lacked sympathy at the time, you'll feel it later.  Guaran-frickin'-teed.
-How long does the clock have to be stuck at 12:12?  What's the message here?
-I'm sick of politics.  I'm sick of democracy.  I need to go nationless tomorrow.

19 March 2000
-No work for the next 5 weeks.  Till after Debate Nationals.  That's absolutely insane.  What am I gonna do with myself with all that time?  Maybe it's time to finish a novel...
-Why am I filled with an uncanny sense of dread?  Oh that's right, now I remember.
-The power went out in the whole state of New Mexico yesterday, according to my parents, & no one in the national media seemed to notice.  Maybe Brandzy is right about "New" Mexico...
-Nobody trusts optimism.  Least of all, coming from me.
-So Pelta-Heller walks in from NYC while I'm in the midst of playing "Desolation Row".  Right after he's in the door, Dylan says "I think you're in the wrong place my friend - you better leave".  There's still people out there who believe in coincidence & don't believe in God.  I don't understand why.

18 March 2000
-That's some kind of gravy.  Talk about surreal.

17 March 2000
-Happy St. Patrick's Day.  No one asked you, Stina!
-I remember grade-school when I took it upon myself to enforce everyone's wearing of green.  Now I'm faced with a debate tournament.  Why don't I own a green tie?  This could be a mess...
-Problems on 15's tend to resolve themselves by 17's.  Everything should be resolved on a 17th.
-Screw normalcy.  Why are so many people taught to swallow blindly rather than think critically?
-I made it through this week.  The rest is gravy.

16 March 2000
-Maybe it had just been too long since I cried my eyes out.
-Why does physical ache always accompany emotional distress?

15 March 2000
-It takes a while for me to realize how excited I really am.  Crazy sine curves.
-It's really uncanny how good the March 1999 tape I made sounds, even today.  It sounds even better, knowing how far I've come from a year ago.  Some of it's just March, though.  & now it's the Ides, for what it's worth.  Not much, hopefully.
-Twenty Februaries tape also excellent tonight.  As Fish once said, things are looking up!  This Introspection thingy is already outta control.  I'm going to end up writing myself into infinite self-absorption.  Oh well - I s'pose if I having fun, what can I really do about it?  Maybe I should reverse these by backwards date-order, so the top of the page doesn't always look the same.  Alright, that's really enough musing for now.
-Squirrels are everywhere.  We are all being watched more than our capacity to envision.

14 March 2000
-Sometime senior year in HS, I told Mike Galya that if certain matters were going well in one's life, the rest of everything was peripheral & didn't matter.  Now, apparently, I get a chance to prove that to myself.  He was skeptical at first, but later told me that it was some of the best advice he'd ever received.  Quite an opportunity to bring that to life.
-It seems that I'm never good at being alone in college.  Either I don't want it or I don't get it, but never both.
-Ten years from now, existence permitting, I hope I'll remember the poems I wrote more than the number of classes I took.  Otherwise, I could be in some serious trouble.
-Coffee-houses are always productive places.

13 March 2000
-Strange dreams the past couple days.  Getting extra sets of teeth & living through a live-TV rendition of the film "Magnolia", complete with live dropping frogs in my living room.  At least they're becoming more mundane, more easily drawn from life.  This is the result of too many hours of sleep yielding far too many dreams.  Could be worse.