Sabotage.

Simple word.

Inspired to type it in today. Wonder why. Have been readign The Art of War by Sun Tzu and inspired interpretors and students. Fascinating stuff. Probably shouldn't be reading it -- inspiring too. And yet there are simple lessons and thoughts to the writing. Put your strengths where the enemy is weak, and defend your weaknesses with those who are conservative in nature. Take the strengths as normal and extraordinary, putting the normal forces up as the obvious attack to take their thoughts up. Use the extraordinary forces to winwith, for they are the surprise. All forces can be either and the can mix freely.

Flashes of memory, a theme for me. Thining a lot without a distracting influence loses me in these memories. I feel like I will lose myself int hem and ponder away my days. And yet the distractions are also time stealers. A puzzle then. and a movie for later.

Tired. Party last night at Steve's. Saw lots of people I haven't seen for years, Jason, Dave, Harish, Kimberley. History on the hoof.

And three hours of sleep after last night's 5. That's going to be interesting today. There was a lot of that static sexy flirtation energy going on directed at me from several of the guys there. Nice to know that I'm still in that game.

I think I'd better log off.

Music of the universe pouring through the window screens entwined with street traffic. I lsten to horns and guitars and wonder why I stay home with my cats, safe and warm and sleepy.

Little things pile up without end. Life.

Where are my big dreams?

Sleep is recovery from hyperactivity. weekends are so wonderful these days.

Its been weeks since I've written anything here. And the note from three weeks ago applies as today as it did that week. Although many things have changed. It is the little things that remain. Saturdays are the wonderful time of recuperation and the remembering of more htan work. Now I work too much by choice, as the seeds I planted last year take root and provide leaves and small branches for my happiness.

Last weekend I vowed -- vowed -- mantra'd -- vowed to want one thing a day. I have been terrible at this in a funny way. I don't remember to want things. And I think part of that is about last year. Can i deserve things? Do i get to want too? But what is there to want when I've taken on having nothing, taken into my heart that being without anything is alright even as theives of the past tried to take that rightfully mine. And failed. But part of my defense used aceticism as a heart shield. I am too close to it again.

Sometimes I do things that inpsire me, and usually this is the simple listening close to another person, almost any, for just that sacred moment of time when they heart-speak.

I used to heart speak a lot. Someday again. When it becmes important that i do so that i might feel great and be great.

What a hard-core tangle of ... me.

Rested. Warm. Exhausted still. Maybe I should take some time off soon.

Or look deeper into what I'd like to be, to be doing. On a lark, I let a fellow in a bar do a tarot card reading for me yesterday. He did a general overview, sort of a state of the union reading. I thought I'd like to symbolically layout what I'm going through.Change from a lot of pain over the last year through a new found idealism. And some sort of physical change. And perhaps a stranger coming into my life romantically, a rough sort, with a gentleness, salt of the earth. And a choice between stability and wild creativity -- difficult to choose but important to do so clearly as they are in conflict. Pretty cards, and as usual, mostly major arcana with a sprinkling of minor.

And I had a dream this morning as I woke up.

I dreampt that I wa in a struggle still, the one from last year. Buckling down against badness and fear. And I won in the dream, i conquered the dark shadows of lust and rage and fear, mine and others. As i had done last year.

And now I look into the present rarely almost crossing my fingers for goodness to grow. Where strength and yearning to be wonderful used to fill my heart, now lethargy heals me. I want a sign. i want to know with convictin that there is something about me -- ME -- that is wonderful. Shouldn't I know that already? How do I let myself in on this? And how do I share that inner energy with others when it is so absent? Still.

The patterned ether surrounding our choices makes us weakened. We see others succeed in bold PR pieces,a dn we don't see their softer sides, their failures and their heartaches. We boldly shove forward to create what should be easy when done with love.

Where then is the love in me? Each person has a stake in life and we bump along with good intentions. I find those close to me caremore if I'm weak and need their help. Similarly they will work for greatness. It is the imbetween space, the daily grind, the rat race, the commonness of most of what I do that saps the stength away. Commonness is wonderful in the creation of stability. It isn't though something that creates wonderfulness all o nits own.

Am I less wonderful for having adopted the face of convention?

Or can there be a steely wisdom behind htat facade? What do I know besides that? Steely wisdom. Fighting words still from my heart. I know why there isn't love yet.

Open up and share the fruit -- this is my strength. Two sides are missing. i gave up everythingin my heart anyway to save me. I feel I have nothing to give. I also want something. I want people to look at me and think that I'm wonderful. As I used to want. No longer an outsider, i still hurt daily while surrounded by those who fight for personal glory. Well, I need some of that. And I don't like fighting. Wonderfulness isn't finite. The more there is the more we all have. Can I take a leap of faith? Can i give out wonderfulness without sensing it?

I had a dream this morning, and a dream long ago. This morning I learned that battles and wars can be fought with vicotry. Long ago my dream was that wars need never be fought. Soul damage though leaves no choice. To lose without fighting or to fight with victory. I chose the latter, and still my soul is damaged.

Now on to ethics.

What should I pursue, care about, believe in, help others to accomplish? What is the good? Perhaps I'll go wallow in some Kant instead of junk fantasy, courtesy Terry Goodkind and Amazon.

What will tomorrow i dream?

Do we realize that it is the little things that we see normally while staring out the window? Even the horizen looks like a 5 inch wide curved line. The stars look like dots against velvet cloth. Rain, enourmous rain, is little bits of water dribbling or shouting into the gutters, on our heads. Little things.

They are parts of bigger things, sure. Forest and trees and all that. But only our houghts create the bigger things. Our senses lead us forward an inch or a foot, and tell us what is happening chemically, electrically, photographically, temperaturely (?), homeostatically, kinesthetically, bumpingly. No synthesis. Except the little nueral blips and cascades of blips that make up thoughts.

Forests, storms, distance, galaxies, even brains functioning. Bigger picture stuff. Conceptual stuff. and I see none of it today. Missing sythesis. Or perhaps it is present and I don't like it. Or perhaps instead it isn't really there at all, just the wisps of illusion we dive into as we act out the pretense of life.

Eeek i did it. My dose of nihilistic wistfullness is done. It's been hanging around, lingering in my hindbrain for a week, perhaps 3. I want to sing and scream and dance and let go. and i forget how to! Just one of those box puzzles i saw in Morocco. with the secret of push here, tug this way and twist, the box springs open with its secret comparment exposed. Where do I twist my life and tug and pull and then open?

Grin. isn't it already? I've fought to acheive evertyhgin I have and now I have it. Silly foolish little me with a dose of low self-confidence. What ever do people do who live there all teh time? i couldn't.

Winnowed wisps of thought and motivation. Where we all live. connected by so many things and I feel them not right now. Could be the coming of winter and nothing more interesting. Do i just push forth like a trooper? Or do I solve a problem, after diagnosing it first? Do I wallow instead? Do i fakely believe alternative things ad bootstrap into wondrousness? I always like the latter, but such willpower is needed. Today it didn't arrive. But it has every day for over a year. I guess then that it isn't the best longer term soluton since I need to d it everyday! Okay. one self-discovery down.

Type type type. Pretty pretty words.

I could type in business proposals and talk outlins and marketing hype and all sorts of other things instead. puzzle that.

Type without personal thought. Ctrl-k.

End line.

Did you ever imagine things? Do you still? What do you think you'd like out of your whole entire life? Have you been there, done that yet? Will you try to? If you have, what's next?

What's next indeed.

The man behind Project Gutenburg told me to wait 7 more years to find out what his next project would be. Now it is time to ask Michael. My I've been patient.

And there once was a project on the net... back before the web... in the news groups. It was organized faked news with a two year lead time for authoring the fictional stories. They started in 1991 or 1992, andintended to drop the peices they were writing then into the net in 93 or 94, the two year lag. I never got involved, and have always wondered if they're out there creating half the news, a false reality that we have absorbed as if tking a right turn on the embanment and swimming into the river with surprise. Ctrl-f

That's what the doldrums are like though. Non-constructive. And yet they are the murky waters from which life grows. Slowly life grows. Evolution is a losy metaphor for one human life, so I won't use it. Rather a seed containing the genetic blueprint of a multi-phasic lifeform. (Too many scifi novels in me.) Growing slowly and needing nurishment. yummy hungry. Grow later.

Small things.

Little things like knowing that something is going to happen. And yet not acting promptly on it to form and create into the mold you want to see it occur in. Could I have done something to change the little things? i think so. The courage or wisdom or even perversity to do this though... Alright. Try to keep the boat steady without performing steadying motions doesn't work.

Moving on.

Holidays approaching. Time off to relax and really get into planning my future.

Talk. Louder. Talk. Reach out again. It's time ot interact once more with the absense of bad and the presence of good. Once again I can do this. And I should do it. Little things. Go shopping for something. Plan a trip to somewhere alone. Give someone a hug. I'm so cold and quite alone. Each of us has a life with stuff in it. How do these fit together? Last year I dated a couple of people, and received all these flowers, at the office, anonymously. Slowly over the months, several friends owned up to having sent them. Beautiful arrangemnts. I needed that support.

Now I don't though, and I should reach out further farther and take chances again. Be who I am.

Perk up and live. Be alive. Don't dwell on the unfathomable results of having chosen a single life instead of living the myriad possible lives of the imagination. This life, like all the others,is arbitrary, and yet mine. My job, my company, my apartment, my cats, my car, my view of downtown Toronto. Everything that people look at and poke at to determine wh I am. Who am I? Do I enfoce the ethics and morals I've grown up with, or something better?

But what else? Knowing something will happen should lead to more than the doe in the headlights glazed look I sometimes show. The changes I bring about though don't become anyting except taken for granted by others. Could there be more to it than that?

What am I that I live alone without the warm purring comfort of a partner in life? Scared to compromise? Scared to live with vibrance? Lazy?

The swamp -- life without a solid metaphysical grounding.

Oh ya... I thought that exercise would help. I foolishly grin in amusement at myself. turn to the thought waves before the actions.

Perhaps I'll phone some people with a lot of money today.

Christmas day. A quiet morning. Coffee, cats, sunrise. More poetry in the world than yesterday as people curl up in their corners with presents and family. Everything closed ou int he world. Another round of the day of starvation. Never-ending celebratory regrets. Hit Chinatown for dinner.

Yesterday I was wondering if i should live my life so that the holidays are times of celebration instead of relaxation. I'm sorting through energy bandwidths looking for the thin string of independence and warmth combined.

I thought writing again would loosen up soemthing in me. I used to make a lot of friends over the wires here. And without recognition, this is only, but wonderfully, a diary. But not a social centre. A little bird told me that being creative would enhance my feelings towards living. Curious. Will my high school ever change my low English grades?

Phrases that tirckle like rubber cement through my life inlclude filter feeding. The phrase and I both coated with sticky glue and held together by free-form wishful thinking.

I'm reading Divine Invasions, a biography of Philip K. Dick. I've had a crush on this dead author for some years and months. Reading this story of his youth, troubled and typical, like mine and like Peters, and like so many why people, I think i know this guy. Do I want to know the intimate pains and lessons of the angonizing artist who has drawn me in through his writing? Me, the dark-haired girl he sought and married and lived with and married, over and over. I am that same girl. I entered high school the year he died.

Should my own biography be written? Should I warp myself in the social stories, the myths, that make a person have personality, that create the aura of understanding in others' heads? I could begin to do this again. Right now I am mystic-free. That's a shame.

The story tellers surrounding me have all gone crazy or run-aground in their own stories.

Enshroudment

My youthful stories

Smart kid

Tall kid

Why kid

Naive

Lots of potential

You can be anything you want

Boy not girl

Bohemian (courtesy mom)

Free spirit searching for freedom

University

One of the guys

Smart kid

Lost kid

Academic

Pretty egghead

Eventually wiser

Hyper smart and pretty girl

Adulthood

Businesswoman

Author

It gets fuzzy

Future

Compassionate lover <grin>

Admired eccentric

Free

Just compassionate and liked and well-thought of

Interacted with

The last aren't myths but the results of the myths. What myths would serve these ends for me?

Writing this morning is making me feel better. Remarkable. The sense of creating something. It feels good.

Perhaps that's what's always made me feel good, building something where I know that i won't be judged right away, adnthat later, people will learn about and value what I've done.

It's the formulaic procedures that slow me down. there doesn't seem to be creativity in exercising rule sets. The game has always been in the strategy, and even more so in breaking the rules, creating a new game..

Perhaps if i woke up each morning to water the pototo field or harvest the corn, I'd be a better person. We've always felt a respect for the hard-working handiperson, the guy who works 12 hours fixing other peoples' cars. Ending up with bushels of corn is a process just as builindg web sites is. Perhaps if thesesites didn't take 3 months to build I'd feel that snese of accomplishment. By the time one i finished, i feel like the world's expert on it, and I'm not the programmer or artist or client. How must they all feel? Two of my projects will launch early in the new year. I'll find out.

Each day, add a bit of interest back into the world. Yesterday I sent out Kwanzaa ecards to lots of friends and acquaitances. What about today? Today, Boxing Day, should be a day of shopping for cats and friends and me. Time to get a couple of new suits for work, and some casual clothes for winter. Cats should get a new scratching post, somethng fun for them that isn't a chair. And friends.

As usual, I didn't give out presents for Christmas. I think I'll do something lateron instead when I feel like it. It's not about fairness or greed. For me, giving presents is easy and natural, and I just enjoy it. People misunderstand if you don't attach the presentation to a social cause, and that's alright. That's the part for me, their social bewilderment.

I was called conservative mostly, the other day. Am I? After all my youthful wanderings, have I suceeded in my disguise as an upstanding community hive member? I atched the prime minister on K

Ever think about mortality? Ben Bova writes in this month's Analog that we'll break the longevity codes in our genes long before we invent FTL (faster than light drives). I'd say in about 30 years we'll have potent life extending potions. In other words, i agree with him. Take that and the next step one hunred years following will be anti-agin and possibly even reverse aging potions. I hope they get there before I die. I'd like to play in the world a lot olnger. I'd also like to find out what its like to have a brain supersaturate with knowleddge and experiences. We've never seen that before.

Today's my first day off in a long time. But circumstances require my presence in the office for the morning. So I'm wiring up to handle ftf work. No tie for thought now.

I'm sorry about that.

I remember when everything was between friends, when the world was the challenge, society the monolithic and impenetrable fortress of opportunity, and people were either authorities or fellow helpless travellers. Being a child without any say in what was to be for myself or anything else was not fun.

I've acheived a point in my life where I do have authority over many things. I don't feel helpless, and society has embraced me warmly as I've adopted its conventions and values.

But I fail to feel the child's excitment of the new millenium. As a kid, i recall waiting with expectation that the symbolic turn of events would bestoy new joy on everything. Effectively, the y2k celebration marked the halfway point of my life, barring revolutions in anti-aging research, or an early fate with a large speeding truck.

It's more than that though. The sense of required struggle is missing too. I feel that if I just coast forever leaving things the way they are, as so many do, that it'll all be good enough.

For many years I learned how to get along with others. Although I'm still rough around the edges when I'm confronted, I've continued to develop cooperation skills.

It's time to be competitive again. It's time to step outside of the monolithic fortress, and treat it the way it continues to treat with -- with the expectation that one of us will fail. Each person I meet will either quickly agree to work with me, or find themselves being competed with for resources.

Being halfway inside the fortress isn't enough. It's time for a change of focus.

The dawn wakes my cats and I. Dark, roiling clouds, mythic and daring, tell me about energies our planet harnesses. We wanted to sleep longer though.

Is there some place where we could rest for awhile? Just let go of the worry, and really never pick it up again? Our citification tires me out. Perhaps only the neediness that broadcasts everywhere. Share with me, and take less of me. For I am left with almost nothing inside already.

Philosophers are beautiful. Worrying about existence and ought tos.

And I must run off to worry about a web site.

I went on retreat yesterday for two days. Taking who I am out of my back pocket, unfolding me, ironed out crinkles, a bit of scotch tape holding some of the pieces together, giving myself away to others. Wow.

My coach, Dorothy, invited ten terrific people to her cottage to meet, talk, share, expose, heal, learn, and on and on.

I got in teh elvator just now ater Kathy dropped me off here. There are big mirrored walls, and in them was a smile on may face. My cheeks were rosy, are rosy, and there's this smile holding still and stable under sparkling eyes. I'd forgotten that smile. Right now, for awhile, and as long awhile as reality will allow, I'll smile at the world. Because of the world, adn these wonderful people.

What did I learn? How others see me... I felt understood. But more... i felt allowed to understand each of these others. Dorothy and Mark lead each of us, all of us, on a journey to taste life. My tastebuds are almost raw.

Lingering senses. Warm cats greeting me to say hi. And some sort of friendship / relationship / knowing with each of these people. Each of them gave me something of themselves. I can't say that I understand right know. hat's okay.... my smile surrounds me.

And I'm tired and sleepy and cats need many hugs.

And my taste.

Life is...

0 - 19	Other peoples' rules.	Chess
10 - 19	Waiting	Hide and Seek
20 - 29	Playing ouside the walls and canals of civilization.	Nomic
30 - now	Strategizing inside the given looking for everything possible.	Business
now - then	All possibility coloured by my tastes and values, enriched through sharing, and built from the lessons of the past.	Life
Life is	finite and ever filled with the honey-scented poetry of leaves rustling in breezy glades; and life is agony.	Possibility

She is more wonderful than ever. o O

My sister's birthday today. Amazing that we remember these things for so long. What do I remember?

I read High Fidelity today.. a book about a guy and his ex-girlfriend and who he is without her. About growing up and choosing the adult options finally. Like I try to do sometimes.

Sometimes I'm this elegant and slinky grown-up. I treat others with all the respect they really do dererve -- quite a lot. And I --> -- have the strength inside to find their beauty and share init with --> -- them.

Sometimes I'm this little girl wanting to be held and cuddled warmly and to knowt hat the path is being trailblazed by someone strong and competent, someone I can trst with my life.

And sometimes I greedy adn needy and pushy and shrill and i wish as I do these things that the warmth ofthe universe would cuddle me and remind me that i am the strong one gone astray for a few minutes.

My life is tis person who decided that she would be that strong trailblazer beause no-one else would b for me. I met an incubator for young people, and saw my fantasies of 15 years ago, 20 even, fulfilled by beatufiul dreamers with concrete skills. They build an environment for bright and skilled kids to hatch from.

Why wasn't I picked up by beneolent beings and cuddled? I am now sometimes. Is it as all embracing as my fantaies call out for? No, of course not (cynical bit of me)... Of course not. And yet beautiful and enriching.

Little things like a hug or a ride home, or a friend returning my forgotten skates.

Little things.. like remembering my sister's birthday. Happy B-Day Jennifer. I hope your kids are baking a cake as I write.

Let go. And Angela, i will write my thoughts out re you and Niels and all that stuff that happened way back before we were friends for you tomorrow. And you know, your thank you to me was so right and dead on. We had no room to be friends until you found you!!

and you're welcome. and by the way... i only figured out the things you thanking me for very recently.

i'd always thought it was because niels was between us... but I got it wrong... it was becuase niels painting of me was between us. Now we can just hug each other. i love that and you.

so you're welcome! :) i hoe you know I love you very much after all the crazy times we hated each other. Good luck on the 27th... send me photos.

The good things I've done because of who I am

Carey

Meeting her, and becoming her friend.

FSC

Braving the stats that said 7 out of 10 businesses fail in their first year.

CMU, Waterloo

Attending terrific schools after dreaming for years ofdoing so.

Family

Creating my own family -- water is thicker then blood in my case.

Laura

Hearing what she saw.

Bullies

Learning to deal with them successfully though at great loss.

Aging

Finding life ever more intereting as I learn and grow.

Community

Involving myself in outrech projects for others' benefit.

Carolyn's Diary

Wanting and letting others to see an example of an open person living true to her beliefs.

Moving out

Leaving home in a civilized and yet quick way.

And life continues on as an excercise to the reader. I've heard it said that there are no handbooks or manuals for living. And so it seems. We make it up as we go along. Or others do for us. And we bump into hidden obstacles in the dark while looking for a lantern to carry. And people come out of nowhere intersecting with our own life paths to meet up for good or not. And life flows on.

Writing..

Energy flows around the desk. Plant creepers and computer cables entwine as teh old and new worlds merge closer. Nanotech communicators sweep bits of data into wholesome heaps for later analysis. And I sit in an apartment block, first-world and comfy. Where ambition and desire lurk in crevices. A solitary thing on edge, out of sync with greater patterns in the dusk.

Perhaps the grey sky should reach down and beam a smile to me. There are times that life slips away for awhile letting me rest.

How do we enjoy things? Amused that I haven't taken a vacation and that this was missed. Amused, am I? And what of it?

As friends look into their own hearts for the pursuit of whatever it is they are going to actually do in life, mine, my life, is rich in memories that i cannot recall. My future is enshrouded in several possible outcomes. My happiness isn't a known to me despite that I know who I am pretty well. Little indicators, bits if you will, blink on and off at the confluence of my soul and my behaviour.

God, what am I saying? Where is the peace or at least the second-best focus that drives me forward sometimes? Relaxed shoulders, and dynamic limbs. Inner pleasure that wells outwards to encompass my bits of future.

Where are the verbs?

Like the ebb and flow of the surf. I'd like to hear that now. Like the dreams of others permeating my life -- where are my dreams? --> -- Do we really just make these up?

Or perhaps .. I just read a book that didn't interest me. It stoddled. :) Yeah stoddled. Almost became interesting but went around too few corners to capture my heart. Tanesia. There are mysteries and rumours and no reality. Science and knowledge at war with superstition and faith. I'll take the knowledge. Alone in the dark space pod soaring farther away from the archetypal foundations of neanderthal and tyranosaurus. The net of communicationwe've built still leaves me with an isolated CRT glow. Am I bereft of small talk and barroom chatter? Or more likely bored of it?

And are there other things that would make me glow? Is creation so difficult that I burn out for a weekend and then spring back into it? What an awkward cycle born of the modern age.

As the snow billows by my closed window, the lights go on. I see that there is more to the distant clatter of street cars. People exist everywhere. We all do.

We'll be collected up later and analysed by academics seeking enlightenment and PhDs. Good lunk.

... later in the evening...

I've been wandering through an altered state, questioning some things that seem hard-wired into my life. How do I begin?

I've always led this remote life where I don't commit too much, but when i do, then its serious and important and real. But not the small things. i can't remember things on purpos. So I avoid committing to taking such on as a responsibility. i think that's more responsible. It's not that I don't want to do these things, but I have trouble remembering from day to day what i enoyed yesterday. I am always reinventing stuff. There are very few anchors. I quickly edit out "the same" and see the difference. The same though is often good stuff, stuff i like, stuff others like. how do i remember these things? i trip over them actually. i leave them lying on my floor so i can find them again later. So I live in clutter that is ever changing, mutating from state to state to reresh itself and remind me.

I suppose aging for most people is this heavy thing. I don't age although i do mature and wisen. But its different from others. Its rare that baggage attachs to me. That i carry it around. I have to work hard to remember where I've been and who I am. I'd love to see the movie of my life up to yesterday. I still remember yesterday mostly. Meeting with my favourite client, missed launch of an internet / New Media survey, admin stuff, hanging out at teh office a bit too tired, meeting with new sales manager, off to the Madison to do whatever that place is about (not sure), home in a cab with a cabby speaking this wonderful language i couldn't guess into his cell phone so I alled Bruce and did the same thing on my new cell. home to the computer and winamp's purring. and then tucking into a book, the one i finished today.

I sort of do remember this stuff if i go through and piece it together -- if it was yesterday.

But what is it that i don't travel there on purpose... i have this sort of running total account about what i like and where i'm at, what the world's about today, adn what the current small talk is. falling off the edge of knowing into teh moment where i forgot often what i'm working on if interupted. no attached cues to other things. bits here and bits there. gluebits missing.

So its really attention...

There's this remarkable overwhelming, suffocating feeling i get when i remember. i flash to th visuals. perfect detailed recall with my interps woven into the happenings. and without a guide, i cannot know then that i am only remembering. its submersive as goodas all imagined vr systems will be someday. but my agency is missing.

the past is this stuff that we cannot be agents in, so similar to teh now and yet missing a fundamental causality that the now has. i can sit now and decide to sip the coffee and watch it happen. i can push the cup on the floor or kill a man or lick the icecream sppon. in memoryi watch what happened. perhaps a detour into what might have been but to what end. what is there that might have been that is not? everything. but for the grace of god goes me. and from the grace of god i fall into the now as the only actual possible.

simple little things... cracks int eh sidewalk from which spring the weeds of happiness. durable little seedlings looking for sunlight. opportunity to tread water adn learn to swim. what do we have in life then but memory attached to now attached to yearning furures. for me, hope is the springboard, the bitglue, the movement of desire.

how strange these thoughts ticking in me. extra edges in extroversion and need. looking for that centered place within. being that centering (soon). focused energy emerging, pupating wings of strength and love (an unused word for me) and then the everything.

i do not know. inspiration and desire. momentum. the small of my back held in supple pride. does anyone undertand that life is finite, merry, hard as all hell, and then what.

and then what... edited to display something tasty. should i edit my stories for this insted of letting them go? we love to hear stories.

childhood

loosing my stuffed bear that i made myself

teenaging

alone

university 1

people

university 2

studying

university 3

the height of my dreams

fsc 1

something new

fame

carolyn's diary and the media find each other with me in the middle

fsc 2

lessons

now

pursuit of dreams

I promised once not to make lists, and in doing so learned what they were for. I focus things with them. Do they communicate that focus? Only to the initiated. They are for the self. Words flowing further and faster are for everyone.

Finally writing fere is done for the right reasons -- because I need to write. it was never meant to be more than that.

And I will meet a handsome and successful guy who impressed me and who i impress. and we will enjoy i don't even know what.

is that really all this is about? reproducing?

I want to sing out loud. I want to crash and ring and echo. marketed teardrops of love. shining gems wrapping around ear cilia let go.

never forget.

romanticism...

memories are romantic. sentimental entwinements. missing the urgency of decision, and the taste of the unknown. the results are known and the tastes remembered with fondness. not sought with trepidation or joy.

fascinating.

how much i have let go of romanticism. and wouldn't i love to drown in it again.

Working from home is relaxing and productive, especially on the weekends. i can do all sorts of good things for myself while still getting work done. While at the office, all my little breaks contribute to office productivity instead of my personal life. It's nice to have the mix while at home.

At the same time though i'd miss the energetic office vibe if it wasn't there most of the week. I think I'd enjoy working 20 days straight and then having 10 off to do something relaxing and extended. Perhaps I'll try that for awhile.

I think I'll give up alcohol for awhile too. It always hits me the next day -- sluggish me. It takes me two days to feel positive and perky again. Perky is fun.

So my goal currently is to have fun, to learn to have fun and then to do it. How do we get so out of touch with such a basic thing? Especially one that positively reinforces all the other stuff we do.

I guess i had help.

Inside our brains, quarks roam granting us preliminary insight into all else. Outside, our perceptors glimpse states and flashes, small echoes relating by an unknown correspondence algorithm to the is and the all of the universe.

Inside our brains, wants and desires percolate through the lizard brain into the mammalian centers of awareness. They are filtered through civilization masks, and outward projected as plans and strategies. Outside, we are perceived by others, and again the unknown rations and balances colour our actions to others as we are diluted into their metaphysical awareness, interpreted into bands of activity outside their control.

Inside, we feel and nurture, crave desire and once in awhile even think. We create the known universe as a model of the is and the all. Our models fluctuate and permute until if we are honest and true, we are left still with only a model. As good scientists we might improve this model in experimentation, tests bashing belief against the is. While we are good at maintaining our fictionverse, we give up little bits of it, assumptions and premises, quickly replacing them with new theoretical constructs that seem and feel more real than the last. A model still.

Oh Hume and your single shade of blue missing forever in the unperceived infinite spectrum, you knew this. As we float around the interpretations within our social fabric, and peek outside to glimpse still more, each of us is responsible for creating at least our own subspace chatter.

Small wonder that we get confused in the day to day rituals of civilization. A layer of almost-shared interpretation atop layers of personal filters and metaphysic atop perceptual input and internal chemical soup. Small wonders and large miracles.

Atop of all of this is the wonder of communication. That I can sit here and tell you this with some small hope that you will get it, grok it, absorb and digest, and come back at me with a coherent and related response. How awesome. Do we really believe that this works? My message out, yours in, and they relate somehow. I could be hallucinating, or force-fitting my model of the is onto everything that comes in. But I don't think I am. I think I'm carefully listening for variances to my understanding -- filtering for falsifiers in the mists of meaning. Could I really be completely missing the point?

Quine's verbal points of reference, shared milestones in the acquisition of a communication system. Communication is between people only (or aliens or animals...). Always between one entity and another. There is no communication without another, and no need of such a system without others. So we wouldn't pretend that it worked if it didn't help us to construct pyramids. But this doesn't mean it works well. So much room for improvement.

I linger no more.

Blue sky clouds, grey and white, sweep across the windows as my cats watch pigeons sitting on the balcony railing. I sip coffee and try to find a focus for the morning. It's not there yet. It's not in me. I'm still a free and playful spirit without the professional clothing masking me for others to easily digest. Not yet.

First I'll sip coffee, and chat over ICQ with morning friends. I'll watch the clouds roiling in the winter breezes waiting to snow again. I'll procrastinate a few more minutes to feel the freedom of just being an exposed and relaxed person, hidden of course in my living room -- hidden behind a CRT and an apartment door. Hidden finally by assumptions our society creates that allow us to believe we are only our professional selves.

And Bruce and Angela and Brett chatter in the morning with me with morning smiles and hellos and early morning gossip.

How long will it take me this morning to will the professional layers around myself again. Sheep's clothing, wolf's clothing, any of these. Surrounding protoplasmic humanness. Disguised comfort and ease, decision making and overview insight, displayed outwards for the consumption of others. And inside a remnant memory of being alive in some more natural state.

And I registered a new email address this morning... c@rolyn.org and of course it does not yet work. The ultimate vanity name. Thanks to A.

And I did 20 other things this morning within the scope of relaxing. Didn't get the high score though, not today. And as the clouds sweep closer, a shower awaits, and a new day of old things to enter into, a small pact and renewable with the bean-counter devil.

Miau.

True love, that elusive commodity of the ignorant, spills over to become innuendo laden dialogue between friends. Why? Do we really need to colour every interaction with sex and hormones and the rush of chemical reaction? i don't think so!

It seems so popular and easy to carry on with. Perhaps its another of those lowest-common denominator behaviours. In any case, I don't feel it is worth much to thin about or paly around with. Being wonderful and nice and caring and considerate and friendly, and then intimate where and when it makes sense. That's about it.

This stuff is on mind mind solely because it seems to be on everyone elses'. I wonder if valentine's day would be as effective if it were held int eh fall, when hormone levels drop for hibernation.

ciau

Business Partners

I've had several, and still have three, in three separate businesses. Each brings to the business something unique and valuable. Each has a hard time trusting and valuing me. One does a terrific job of relaxing into the trust / business relationship with grace. The other two have had harder times of it. Things are always interesting though.

I feel like a kid in kindergarten writing that way. Time to stop.

For the sake of...

So many of our choices are made for the sake of something. for the sake of our parents, our friends, a favour, making more money, success, somethng. always something.

When do we step out of the arena to say for the sake of me or even the bigger and better picture for the sake of bettering everything.

And then damnit, the question arises as to what is better. Who am I to say categorically that I know something that would actually make the world a better place. Such is my agnosticism. i don't know. I have suspicions. I try to learn more about it. And as I do the better becomes less obvious. Ideals of childhood drift away replaced with goals and objectives. And I lean back in new furniture to say that i have sold out, whatever that meant to the old me -- this me doesn't really get the meaning any longer.

And still i yearn for that sense that we could pursue better. Couldn't we? If we knew categorically what it was? We could then.

But access to this is logically impossible.. access to a theory of what would make things better, we have lots of access to that. I stumbled across an enourmous list of Ayn RanTings this morning. The gossple is alive and well and growing. Helpful in deprogramming the foolish, its silly after awhile, much as any religion or dogma. And yet it espouses such a list of clear and loud views on how to make self better and others better and society better and economy better and.... yeeeep. so many opinions couched in one unbudging framework. its more like a viral pattern then a good idea. and yet it prospers under the fuise of a good idea.

so alright. are there any measures of good vs bad ideas?!?!?!

is an idea good if i believe in it? if i live true to it and do good -- but then by whose evaluation metric?!?

Is this problem hopeless? I don't personally think so actually.

limiting cases seem to point to living true to self, honestly towards others, openly as often as possible. escape the city or enjoy the city, but don't compromise on any of these points.

be as free as possible without spiting your neighbour's nose.

and build creatively.

well that's my recipe.

puddling off to scrape out the last crystals from a two-year unused instant coffee jar now.

And so we move on.

Bone numbing exhaustion. Deatils to look after constantly, and the echo of voices past. Those around me feeling their age too much as my peers and I move into the second half of our lives.

It doesn't have to be this way. And yet I have chosen a path. The game of business and society. Not my only choice, and the eaiest to have wandered into lately given the past. Ancient looming traditions of ambition and joy and the need to be recognized for being. Expressive motes of humanness under, or rather at the tip of, an emense heritage, humanity's. Buildings and cities, networks of relationships, and the small chatter of all those who've decided not to play. Moving rock formations aside to farm newly fertile soil. Like forefather fever, we make marks in the sand, castles in the clouds, and polluted air for the future. We breathe a sigh of collective relief each morning while noting that the sun rose yet again in teh east, and the laws of reality haven't changed.

Bullies line the streets as beggars... no that is fantasy. they line the boardrooms of corporate life struggling to get a little more than they expect too. And i am too like this now.

A phone call last summer, I think, from a then friend who asked me if he was corrupt. I couldn't answer then for I didn't know why he asked. I didn't know how the success had allowed him the freedom to be true to himslef, and to no other. For the sake of justice, no. For the sake of truth or being right, no. For the sake of feeling innocent whle carrying out bloody deeds, yes. He wanted my blessing. I wish I hadn't given it at the time, for wars and battles surmounted the innocence very quickly. I know now that no-one at all, not even me, is free from the tough and difficult compromises of life.

But then I sit back again in furniture, and realize that I'm just exhausted, and alone at teh moment. It is time, I think, for more.

To say that thoughts percolate through my mind would be pushing the metaphor. I spent time yesterday with a woman who said she doesn't think unless challenged. And this morning Angela asked if I fell like I think too much.

Do I? Do I think in some special way at all? I find thoughts don't happen more or less often anytime. There's this wonderful integration of awareness, activity and thought constantly for me. I've exercised my mind sufficiently in the past in somany ways that it just goes everywhere, providing me with analysis of whatever's going on. It' fun being in my mid, completely elegant and useful.

I've always wondered if my memory weren't deficient. I know though that analysis and real-time processing, and certainly thought all happen automatically without any sense that they are overwhelming or unwnted. I cannot imagine wanting to let go of that sace of constant cretive input -- my own mind . I wonder what woulkd be making my decisions for me if not my thoughts and understandings of the is.

I sure as hell wouldn't want the lizard / emotional stuff to be making my decisions. Gut reaction to stimulii is primitive, even when trained to the extent mine is. Neurosis and libido are simply not good decision sources. Persoanl governance is about more than that.

Do I let go and play outside of the thought realm? Sure, but its never divorced from thinking. It doesn't have to be as there are so many ways to think.

The practice I've gone through has been really valuable. Without it, perhaps I would still be in the pre-human state I arrived at university in. I could neither express an idea or thought, nor could I argue with or discuss other persons' claims. I saw that shortcoming in meeting both Craig and Joe. They were graceful warriours of words, and I simply watched in awe -- that words, those clumsy noises that homo sapiens liked to grunt to each other, could be used for the devolution of conceptual space. They had mot merged for me prior to that. That words could relate to reality or concepts or feelings... this was alien to me at 16.

At 34, words are the most powerful tools I've ever found in that they are the tactical deployments of my thoughts. They literally can cause actions in others. Truly amazing. And more than that, they artistically maneuver others' concepts and thoughts too. We can align our beliefs or thoughts or simple understandings with each other through the expression of a few dozen words. Remarkable words.

Remarkable thoughts.

Remarkable humans.

I for one wouldn't give up any of these.