occurrences

mom and I talked again today about homosexuality. I doubt we'll ever agree. Though we may not think alike, can we not love alike? Certainly, Mr. Wesley.

I think I should be depressed, and if I were allowing myself to wallow in depressing thoughts, I very well might end up that way. But dammit, I just can't stay down. I start smiling like a goon for no reason at all. I dance across the kitchen floor, swaying my hips to Joss Stone and licking the cookie batter from the spoon. Some things in my life will have changed very little from age three to age seventy three, I think. And I really believe I'm all right with that. I look at who I am, at where I'm headed, and even though things seem mighty convoluted, I believe the kind older black lady at H&R block, who manages to tell me with a straight face that I am going somewhere, despite the fact that she is looking at real numbers of my financial worth. $12048 gross, $4978 taxable income, 2005.

I believe her.

I start working tomorrow, working like Cerberus himself was pawing at my heels. Things come together, and things fall apart, Mr. Achebe. And I keep having story ideas, writing when it makes no sense to be doing so, finding myself in a big, white box headed to Chicago where worlds collide and chicken chokes and Mr. Stevens warbles on softly in the background about bone cancer. It gets hot in small cars when many people are inside. And there is love, and seminary posters featuring exploitation of 3rd world countries, and no my uncle didn't answer the phone, even on the fifth try. And there will be some that I will continue to love, beyond all reason, measure or hope, and never, ever tell them about it. Why? It doesn't matter, the dark keeps being dark and cold is cold is cold.

Jeff and I will mountain bike this Saturday. And go see OTR in April. Once again, I will sit in the hushed stillness of a packed canal street tavern, listening to heaven drop on my fertile ears. And I will rejoice, and be glad in it.