prelude to a blog

January 1, 2005

 First day of a new year.  It’s got to be better than 2004.  Two-thousand four was a rough year. My cousin Chuck in Pennsylvania died in a fall. Leaving behind kids and a drunken wife.  My sister Genevieve went off to college at FSU.  My brother Regis got a boat and a car.  Four hurricanes crossed Florida wreaking havoc on homes and land alike.

  George W. Bush was re-elected, God save us!  His war is still going on and there is no way to predict when we will get our soldiers home.  He was re-elected inspite of his dismantling retirement and squashing health care reform and getting us into a war we cannot win and may not be able to get out of.  He was re-elected because piously, ignorantly cruel Americans are more afraid to two people of the same sex wanting to be responsible for each other than they are of global war, the deterioration of American power and the ruination of our economy. 

   I began and ended a relationship that I thought had great promise, but it just didn’t work out.  It took me three months to get out of the suffering mode, but it feels good to be free, to be left with only good thoughts.  Naturally in hindsight, I have learned from the episode.  I learned that if someone pushes you away, stay away the first time they do it.  She told me the score, in her own gentle and indirectish way.  It was my fault for not listening and soaking in what she said. 

   I went back to her three times.  I was foolish, but I love her and I wanted more than she saw, thought more of her than she did, apparently.  But it was good.  While we went together, she quit smoking, started counseling, started taking more considered action on her health.  She was the type I have been looking for; smart, employed, witty.  It didn?t hurt that she is quite pretty, too. 

  I really feel that I am over her, that I have put all the emotions aside and am ready to move on.  I have this silly idea that we should keep people we love forever.  This time I had to totally let go.  The idea sits uneasily, but I realize it is probably healthy. 

   And I learned what to watch out for when a woman has children.  You can?t say anything or be parental, and you are likely to get in some sort of trouble if you take any side.  It?s something you can?t mess with, you have to accept that these people are in the equation and you have no say, unless you are allowed to.  I will think twice before I date a mother again.

   And I found it necessary to put my sweet old cat Katie to sleep between hurricanes Frances and Jeanne.  I knew it was tie because she was running on instinct and was scared.  Her gentle soul seemed to have already exited this life. 

  The final blow of 2004 was a tectonic cataclysm of unfathomable proportions in the east.  Thailand, India, Sumatra and so many other islands and country were devastated by an earthquake that caused tidal waves to wash out entire islands.  The death toll is over 100,000 and rising.  The people had no warning, unless someone saw how far back the sea had pulled and recognized the danger they were in.  Even then, water is the most powerful force.  You cannot outrun a thirty-foot wall of it charging you from the sea.  To swim and avoid the debris of a city or a village and not be pulled out into the ocean is a task of miracles.  It?s staggering.  The need there may be more than every other nation of the earth responding with aid to can easily or quickly quell.

   See, 2005 needs to be better.  What can I do to make it so?

 

Everyone is in denial about sex.

That they want it, that they crave it, that it is natural, that its dangerous, that its good, that they enjoy it in all its forms.

 

I live alone and loathe my life.   I most sincerely seek a wife.

 

Tonight I IMed a young man, a 17-year-old boy and we discussed gay marriage.  I never said, because he never asked, that I am gay.  That was his error.

 

Today I was functionally (almost) catatonic (I did get up and do some laundry).  Last night a friend analyzed my recent ex.  I think that pretty much sucked the life out of me.  I had been coming along on getting over her.  To hear someone diagnose what her problem may have been just sort of wrecked me.

   My problem is that I cannot turn off my heart.

 

January 12, 2005

 

I have the fortune of having V?s e-mails saved in an old account.  I mourn the loss of the love a poet.  The more time that passes, the less I feel but grief remains.  Cristy analyzed her the other night and the next day I could hardly move.  Why Vicki hurts more than any other is hard to see. 

   I didn?t pay as much attention as I should have.  I didn?t make her talk.  Did I touch her heart?  Perhaps.  But maybe not as deeply as someone who would have been harder to get along with.  Someone to argue with and baby.  One thing remains clear.  Though she pushed me away, though maybe I was not more than I toy, though we can never be together, I love her, without regret, without reservation, without shame.  What hurts is not being able to tell her.  (I?m not allowed.)

   I feel happy to have known her.  I remember happiness.  I miss being with this woman of depth and childish glee.  Someone smart and sexy cared for me for a time.  I just wish it could have been a few hundred years longer.  It was only seven months.

   I was a fool.  In that seven month period, she pushed me away three times.  Learning experience is what you get when you don?t get what you wanted.

  Now I know when you are asked to go its time to leave.  She made me feel so comfortable and then forbid that comfort.  Maybe she was trying to get me to fight.  And I was trying so hard to be gentle and patient, knowing she?d been hurt and used.

 

   If she came to me and told me that she?d been working on her emotional self and wanted to try ? I might give her one absolutely last chance.  But why would allow myself to be hurt AGAIN? 

   Because I believe in the strength of love and water.  Everything else is a whuss.

 

Gotta go to work now.  Dammit.

 

Later that same day?

 

  So I?ve started this writing project because I have been encouraged to write by friends and family forever.  They seem to think I have some extraordinary something-or-other.  I don?t think so, and I don?t know what it is they expect me to write.  But journaling can?t hurt me.  It was a good outlet for me in times past.

  I think they have enjoyed my observations and my little notes at the animal hospital.   I don?t think I?m so unique.  I think there are plenty of people deeper and brighter and more poetic than myself. (Like V.) Some of them are out there blogging away now. 

They want me to record my observations. OK.

 

Thursday, January 13, 2005

 

Topics for later:

Bear Attacks

Breakfast and Dinner (occasional lunches)Monday, January 17, 2005</st1:date>

 

This journal has competition with a web journal that I?ve started on AOL called Diary of a Native Floridian. Why make it public?  To amuse my friends and quell them somewhat.

http://journals.aol.com/virage65/DiaryofaNativeFloridian/

 

I?m in bed, exhausted.  I don?t know if it?s my life or the lack of food that wears me out.  I have to economize somewhere.  I have to have a house and a car.  The cat doesn?t cost that much because I work for a vet.  Cat?s about 10, I figure I?ll only have to do it about 10 more years.

 

I haven?t addressed the tsunami.  How can I?  It is the most horrendous, unfathomable cataclysm.  It?s so staggering one can?t think anything except: ?For God?s sake we have to help whoever?s left!