The Man in the Moon

I found the old man.  (Well, damn, the site won't load the video...)

Diane Schwartz had been in the puppetry department of YMA the year I met her.  Her parents pulled her away from the last day early, but no one told me.  I spent the rest of the day looking for her to tell her I'd fallen in love with her or at least get her contact info, give her mine.  I was still searching even after the flag ceremony, as everyone was leaving, until almost no one left and it was after dark before someone finally let me know.

The next year I switched from art to puppetry in hopes of spending more time with Diane, but she wasn't there.  That year the puppetry department staged Peter and the Wolf.  I made sure I got the part of the old man, specifically because I wanted to do the puppet.   Turned out that I was pretty good as a puppeteer as well, really comfortable performing even in the contorted positions it required, interacting with the other performers.  You don't just hit your marks and wiggle the damn thing if someone is speaking the role, you channel the mood and the character into the puppet.  I got an audible intake of breath out of the audience when the old man intro'd.  Mr. Biggs, Franklin's drama instructor, approached me after the show and suggested that I take up drama when school returned.

*********

My time is running out more swiftly as the date to be moved out approaches.  It's moving much too fast.  My niece has promised many times that I can stay with her until the date of my flight, and now it sounds like she wants to back out.  She can't, I need that space for two weeks.  She's also supposed to be my ride to the airport, though I do have a backup for that.

Still no dreams or dreamlets of Dana as of the 23rd.  Still have clothes and art supplies to pack.  I hope I haven't got too much already boxed, everything is kinda jumbled together - the most important with the less...wondering when to pack off my art table with Kris T., thinking my TV and stereo can go with it.  It'll be a wait but I'd have them.  Mostly I need the TV now for weather reports (when the antenna picks up a signal).  It's nice to watch a movie in the evening but I could read or try something creative instead.  Hard to get enthused over starting anything if I may have to abandon it undone.

I had a sudden worry, and sure enough - I can't find my birth certificate along with the papers mom kept.  They're not all here, like the medical files.  I do have a copy, but not the original.  This is upsetting.  I'll have to ask Karla if it's with the stuff she kept.  I know it was here somewhere.

*********

My room is no longer my room.  It's almost one on the morning, Saturday 27th. My room is empty now to be painted and have a little work done on it, so I;m in mom's room as of tonight.  That's going to feel weird.  Don't know if I'll be able to sleep - oh, right, melatonin, I'd better take some.

Okay, the image that started with the man in the moon has almost come together, I think, and I have a name for the painting.  I want to do it on a large masonite board in crayon and enamel.  Since I only have a small masonite board I may do a test run in only crayon on a large tablet and then do the real thing in N.Y.   At least that way I wouldn't have to worry about packing it.  It won't have the depth of color or the smooth texture I want but may be worth doing as a test run anyway.   I  still don't know the clothes for Dana except she'll be dressed in white but as it is a nighttime setting will be pretty mostly in blue.  Not sure of her skin color, as I want her hair to be bright copper, which doesn't match.  But then, remind myself, no need to be realistic.  The field she stands in won't be.  Not do I have to strive for a strict likeness.  The only problem is the exact color of her hair...I really do not want to look at her FB page (it just makes me feel worse and even more removed from her)  and may have to go from impression.  Lore sent me a bag of chocolates while I had the flu, and I should have kept one of the foils.  They were the exact blue I want the sky.  For that matter I'd love to attempt this image with transparent paints over foil.  Let this serve as a reminder to self, start looking for colors of foil once I reach Oswego.

Pthalo Blue Birthday

Friday, January 19th.
It's my birthday today.  right now it's a little after eight in the morning.  Yesterday was a good day, today I didn't want to get out of bed.  I slept all night, unusual, had dreams that were unremarkable.   Woke up knowing the reconciliation with Dana won't happen.  It's the only thing I was living for, I've waited thirty years for it, and she's walked away again.  There will be no winning her attention for another try, this was it.  I want to go back to bed and sleep until the day is over.  Actually, I don't want to wake up.  I would like to die in my sleep.  I just get up day after day.   There's no sense to it.

John wanted me moved into mom's room by now but Karla needs the room as she had to come into town for eye surgery.  Obviously she can't leave until she can see to drive safely again.  I'm going as fast as I can boxing my stuff, but now I am supposed to 409 the kitchen as well.  Last time it was the bathroom.  Before that it was 'move it somewhere else 'cuz it can't be where it is' after which the reasoning for it would fall through.  I fully expect to get yelled at and lectured again by somebody.  Some of my stuff can't be packed up yet, I still use it day to day.

***********

Jesseca has a posse of friends in New York, though she says she doesn't see them often outside of pagan functions.  Figure I'll meet them, and I wonder if a romantic spark will emerge anywhere.  I hope so only because I'm so tired of being alone.  Problem is, my feelings for Dana always got in the way before and they still aren't changing now...well, I'm not entering a post-Dana era, I've already been in it all these years.  It just didn't function that way.  I couldn't see past the promise of visions or my misplaced faith in her as a friend.  And my love for her refuses to leave me be.

Caridad (met online) wasn't wanting a romantic connection, and she pulled away when I started to talk seriously with her.  I think she mistook me needing someone to confide in as me falling for her.  I could have, though.  At first she hooked up with me because she thought I was gay and that turned her on.  I liked her, every now and then I wonder how she's doing, what's up with her.  I hope everything's good for her.

There's the post title, btw.  One of Cari's old screen names incorporated pthalo blue. 

Huh.  I think Cari lived in New York.  No, I'm not jonesing for Caridad.  I'm wondering who might be out there, and whether I can get past Dana enough to give anyone a fair chance this time.  It's not like I haven't been in love with two women at the same time before.  Never been a practicing poly, though, hadn't been introduced to the concept.

***********

One of my nieces may be able to get me a computer with a disc drive.  With that I could get screencaps again and thus resume reviewing movies.  There are movies I am hesitating over because I don't want Dana thinking I chose them to send her pointed messages.  They're just movies I wanna review.  So when I start again I might pick something safe and innoccuous.  Hope not, it's timid...and she's gone (note to self, fucking reminder, she's gone).

Oof.  I had some started and lost them when the last computer died.   Lost images I was working with too.  Have to find out what might have been saved to flash drive.

***********

Six-thirty in the morning, Saturday 20th, hoping to fall asleep again.  I fully believe Dana has turned her back and gone.   I have to stop making excuses for her, stop finding reasons to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She sent me something in the mid-Nineties...at least, I think that was her.  It was in response to a letter I'd sent.   I'd accidentally stumbled across her again and had an address to reach her through so  I sent a trial balloon.  Would she talk to me?  I think it was Dana who replied, her handwriting was on the envelope.  What came back was...interpretable, I guess, but it looked to me like the biggest 'go fuck yourself' I've ever had.  In essence the message was that I was less than nothing to her, that she would treat me like any other total stranger.  I was devastated and sent her back the pictures she'd given me years earlier and wrote out how hurt I was on the back of one of the programs for 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' at Franklin. 

The time it would take for that to reach her passed, and then I had a dream of her backstage at Franklin after a play.  She was sobbing, inconsolable - just like I was - the look on her face as she gazed at me broke my heart and made me feel so ashamed.

So, first of all, was that just a dream - was it even her I had tried to correspond with?  Will I ever know?  Only she knows.  If it was her, and if that dream was psychic (it had felt immediate like the ones that turned out psychic, "one of those") then did I misunderstand her intention?  Had she meant it as a tentative step toward talking to me, and didn't guess how I would see it?  It didn't look like a step forward, it looked like an insult - but was I wrong, was she trying?  It haunts me.  I still want so much to say I'm sorry (I did say it then) if that's what really happened.  So tired of all the guessing and the dreams, torn up by not knowing.  If it's all in my head she should tell me.  Hell, if it's all in my head what reason could she have not to?  Her silence re-enforces that I must have been right about all along.

If that was her, then yes, I do know a number of other things that she needs to hear are okay.  But I'd have to be talking with her privately to do that.  See, she blocks me from her life = she "protects" herself from the very things that would heal this wound for her, so I too am blocked from ever healing. 

This is not thirty years ago.  Things have changed for her, and I've finally managed to change how she understands me now.  Her reasons back then are not whatever her reasons are now.  She sees more clearly, she must.  But it hasn't changed her mind and I'm still damned.

***********

Nice.  Just got told by my brother's wife that I have done nothing to help.  Like hell I haven't.  And if everyone had stopped giving me conflicting instructions every half a week my stuff would be done by now instead of me having had to move it around for no damn reason when I could have been sorting it.

Fights breaking out again about who's taking what, I'm trying to stay out of it.   I hope no one was expecting me to lie if someone asks me where a piece went, I'll tell 'em without their commentary - not my battle.  That's where tensions are now, people turning hostile and being unnecessarily rude and unreasonable to each other.  Would help if more people were doing the work, or if we had more money to cover it.

***********

I got my Bailey's Irish Cream!  Looking forward to trying to relax this evening.  It was mom's favorite drink and one of mine.  Once I get to New York, then I'll get some Kahlua. 

Experimenting, trying out a generic bread pudding recipe.  I always told mom to try it with a flavored bread like pumpkin but she wasn't sold on the idea.  So I'm trying it now with banana nut bread.  Aroma from the oven is nice.  (...)  Came out maybe too dry at the edges but has a good flavor.  Really do need to try it with pumpkin bread someday.

Booked

I stopped by Goodwill looking for a paperback to take on the flight.  A collection of erotica enticed me, but I put it back.  Maybe if it's still there next time I pass by.  Instead I ended up with Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which I've always been interested in reading.  Never saw the movie. 

Here's a conundrum in gender bias worth considering: I have never been much drawn to erotic fiction written by men for the same reason that I am not drawn to men themselves.  On the other hand, my favorite author of erotica is Pat Califia, a trans author.  Now that he is no longer a she, should it make a difference?  I don't think it changes my response to the work...does that mean I still see the work as issuing from a female mind?  That might be a slight to Mr. Califia. I wish to be mindful of this.   Gender range is  real.  I do think it a mistake to be entirely blind to gender, however, much the same as the argument about being colorblind versus - uh, I don't think there's a short phrase for it, but inclusive and loving of ethnicity.  It's the difference between celebrating diversity and denying it.  I've always been big on individualism.
(I had begun to type 'gender fluidity', but the vocabulary is wrong.  Wrong concept.  I don't mean to say that gender is morphic day to day for most of us (it certainly can be), rather that we exist not poles apart but along a scale.  Like orientation, there's a range we fall upon, each somewhere else.)
I've been missing the news - the Me Too movement has spread to China!  And now Hollywood has something called Time's Up.  Sweet, I was hoping it would be critical mass this time... now if only the public writ large would stop fooling itself that this doesn't apply to the Orange Stain on our democracy, that impervious disgrace.

***********

My birthday is on Friday.  I can't remember whether I set Facebook not to notify anyone.   Thursday night Scott and I will go take in a movie.   It's meant to be a rainy evening - perfect, I love a rainy night.  Wonder if I'll get that bottle of Bailey's.

***********

If I'm not talking about Dana, I don't have much to say lately.  It's enough dealing with depression and my dubious, frightening future, trying not to be overwhelmed.  Like I've said before, I am trying to keep all feelings submerged, and my attentions aren't being engaged with anything all that interesting.    No time for art, no dreams worth attention, little news intake, and severely curtailed contact with friends.  I hope when all this settles I can get back to movie reviews.  I could opine about spirituality, though I'm not much inspired to at the mo'.  Or I could go on about these meatballs that refuse to stay warm fresh out of the oven.


(Oh, shit, this flu is almost over but the cough is still worse.  The sore throat is gone today.  I haven't greyed out while coughing in  a long time but I have begun to again.  Eerie sensation. slowly coming back to one's senses while the room orbits gyroscopically.  You can make out sound but not its import, nor remember what you might have been doing.)

No point anticipating what the plane trip will be like.  I hope to just enjoy the flight itself and not think at all about what I am leaving behind.  I'll be flying economy but I do have window seats for both legs of the journey and not over the wings.  Flying by night is a cost-saving measure, but it's more because I'm a night person and always wanted to: I hope to see cities at night, and sunrise from the sky.  I wonder what a nighttime city looks like from that vantage through rain.   Y'know, I was afraid of flying before I went to New York almost nine years ago but it turned out mostly very relaxing.

***********

And then, I also don't know what else to say about Dana either.  Wednesday morning, had a dream about her, but she wasn't in it.  Wasn't anything new or that I didn't know already.  Guess my dreams are on Winter hiatus, I'm getting reruns.

The one this morning took a strange turn at the end.   It was a gathering of people from school, someone who I knew a little (in the form of John Goodman) was peddling photos of a corpse with its head removed, a close-up of a neck so you could make out the grisly detail.  I thought spreading these pictures a sick thing to do but he thought I was just 'virtue signalling'.  "Think for yourself", he objected.  I know there are a few people who love horror films who love that kind of real-life shock material, but the assumption that all horror fans do is a prejudice not borne out by reality.  Okay...morbid curiosity is human nature, no judgementalism there.  Respect for the dead is an issue, though, as is profiting off the dead. 

Not all horror fans are gorehounds.  In filmmaking, gore is a tool rather than an end.  The goal is the impact it has and the effect on the tone of the movie.  It can be useful, and it can also be detrimental.  John Carpenter's Halloween works, IMO, because it recalls a common fear from our collective recall of our more innocent days:  we were all babysat once, or were sitters, and many of us had that night where our fears ran away with themselves - was that someone looking in the window?  'Halloween' has no gore in it, it is almost entirely bloodless.  It's my belief that graphic violence would have destroyed the impact of that film by shattering that child-memory quality and the movie would not be hailed as a classic today if it had.  By contrast, would Un Chien Andalou be a celebrated film today had it not contained a handful of gory images?  I'm not dismissing the artistry of that film, rather pointing out the impact and effectiveness of the content.  It is intentionally a jarring movie.  If you've seen it, it's hard to see that shot of a thin cloud scudding across the moon without wincing.

Besides, what you're seeing in horror films isn't real.  I can't watch real-life surgical procedures.

Innocence...damn, there's a loaded topic.  People get hung up on that one, torturing themselves that they have somehow become 'impure'.  I don't think innocence is what we make it out to be.  Children sometimes say and do the ugliest things out of innocence precisely because they have not yet explored empathy.  It is by experience that we learn. 

Adam and Eve were innocent.  I once witnessed a conversation about that legend that began as a premise for blame that fell along gender lines.  Whose fault was 'The Fall of Mankind', the man or the woman?  Someone noted that I was remaining silent.  I wanted to say that if you approach the parable as one of blame, then there were two others present - Lucifer and God.  I don't think it is a tale of blame, though, rather the opposite.  It's an obvious parable about adolescence.  Adam and Eve were children.  If you leave children in a room with one particular toy in the center, specified by the command never to touch it, what do you think is going to happen sooner or later?   Turning pubescent (the apple) is not a choice but an inevitability.  You don't blame children for growing up - viewing the whole human race as inherently guilty is perverse, and I think unjustly contemptuous.   'Original Sin' has been a destructive doctrine.

The larger point, though, is the adult's penchant for romanticizing childhood as paradise.  We're being dishonest with ourselves.  We look back and see the lack of adult worries and strife in our own histories and imagine all children lead lives of blissful ignorance and joy.  It's not so.  We forget what it was like to be children ourselves, struggling with things that threatened us or challenged us.  We forget what it was to learn.  The Book of Genesis could only have been written by an adult.

***********

(Thursday)
Last post I mentioned the first time I saw Dana smoking, and just now had an odd dream in which I took a giant prop joint away from an SNL sketch in some protest of something, ruined the sketch. I dunno, not sure what I was supposed to be protesting - pot, I suppose.  Sometimes dreams have me acting out of character - I never can wrestle control back, lucid dreaming has always eluded me.  Once I dreamt that I was a white cop, star of a '60s TV show, beating a black guy because he was black.  I couldn't break out of the dream's script...and the guy himself just said, yeah, he knew I was racist - but he was talking about me the dreamer, not the character I was forced to play, as if the dream were some kind of test.  The dream felt pre-scripted and I was locked into acting out what had been written for me.

I dunno, I feel like I should elucidate a little, the smoking comment did sound oddly puritan.  I think my reaction to seeing Dana smoking itself may have had a puritan note, it's just that I'd never seen Dana herself smoke before and...eh, it's not so much that she was smoking but that it was HER smoking, if you take what I mean.  Somehow I had had an impression of Dana as very conservative (I'm not). It seemed out of character and oddly jarring.  Never bothered me with anyone else, just Dana.  Now,  Lori Hamilton... Lori used to chainsmoke, and strangely it's one of the things I miss about her - talking with her for hours wreathed in a cloud of smoke. It was part of the mood of being with her.  I don't smoke but I've certainly been around it.   It's not a morals thing, just never developed a taste for it.  My father used to smoke pipes, mom hated it so as a young child it bothered me he'd insist on risking his health though everyone begged him to stop.  Still, some tobaccos have a rich, sweet aroma.  Can't say I hated that.  Burn a lot of incense, me.  That reaction to seeing Dana with a cigarette, that was a singular experience.  Never had another like it.

I want to say that most people aren't Left or Right, but everyone I know really is.  We've become so rabidly partisan.

Huh.  Following stream-of-consciousness, it reminds me of something else.  Jealousy.  I've experienced that exactly once in my life and fucking hated it.  Definitely something to be mindful of.   I was so in love with K., and she was seeing a guy with a fucking swastika in his locker...

In one of those letters Dana wrote in '88, she expressed a concern that I should understand a point about her fellow residents at the time.  I didn't get why she thought it needed saying, so her comment stood out.  It came up again in dreams a few weeks ago as if it still bothers her.  In case she might see this, I wanted to reassure her:  I get it.  It wouldn't matter to me anyway, but I respect that it matters to her.

Costly Baggage

I have my ticket to New York, as of this past Wednesday.  Overnight, leaving March 13th.  Arriving Syracuse Wednesday morning.  Will be in this house until the end of February.

One of those long-ago dreams of Dana and I reconciling had us on the road:  all my stuff packed into the back of a moving van, she and I in the cab headed from Portland to her home in California.  Her father was driving.  We had a younger boy with us, in the dream he was a younger brother to Dana.  I don't know if she has children in real life.   We had just gotten married hours earlier.  I wanted that with everything I am. 

But I'm going to New York. 

In the last post here, I mentioned having recently had two dreams of Dana showing me the past*.  They were virtually the same dream - the very same events yet very different in tone.  One was a matter of fulfillment and the other very businesslike.  I think I get it, but not that I could explain here.  I really want to address those dreams, but I don't see any way that I can.  Both were about something I know she feels self-conscious about and I think it's a subject she still feels upset over, at least when it comes to approaching me and trusting me with her story.  I think it's a block for her, something she wants out of the way but can't bring herself to broach.  It's of such a personal nature that I can as yet see no way to allay her concerns in any way that is oblique enough to do publicly.  I am sure I had those dreams (UCA) because she is afraid of...ummm...whether or not I can perceive the truth behind them.  I don't know how to tell her not to worry.  I could if I could still message her privately.  Damn, I don't know if even she would grasp what I'm referring to if she were reading this!  It's very specific, something she alluded to in a letter once.

Dana has one thing to be ashamed of, and only one: the hateful way she's treated me. And if it's a block, then she doesn't even have that to apologize for.   Nothing else ever needed explaining or forgiving.  How many ways are there left for me to say that?   If this is a choice Dana is making, no excuse or reason will ever be forgivable.  I think I deserve to know so that I can get on with my life and start hating her.  I have a right to know if she really is the soulless bitch who would make that choice.



***********

It's a leap of faith, Dana, yours to make.  What's it worth to you?  To not be afraid of facing me anymore, to have me as a friend, to know I understand you, accepting everything, and always backing you?  Peace between us?  Does it hold any worth to you at all?  You keep telling me 'no' with your silence,  should I believe that?

You're a mystery.  You were afraid our friendship would end so you threw it away.  Now you're afraid to tell me things you know I already know.   

I'm not a godamn Boy Scout, Dana.  I can deal with more than you know, empathize with far more than you think - if I'm given the chance. I know a little more than I have been able to say here.  Your life has not been so alien to me as you insist.  Would I have fought this hard for you all this time to quail now??   I swear, sometimes it's as if you're afraid I'll actually get it and be sympathetic, like that's what scares you most.

I love you, Dana.  I respect you, and I admire you.  I cherish you.  You move me to be visible, seen where it would be easier to fade away unremembered by the rest of the world.  I'm emboldened by you, baffled by you, broken by you.  I've stories to tell about you - the first time I saw you smoking a cigarette and feeling jealous at an offhand comment by Sebastian, auditioning with you or the first time I saw you in a play.  I remember you rejecting the part of Kitty and wanting to play Mary L., it cost you a part in that one...I've wondered about that, and admired your resolve.  I remember you chasing Riga Farzana who grabbed a sketch and ran,  and the year-long war between my group of friends and yours in Collins' homeroom at Kellogg (I remember you standing before me, mad as hell and frustrated that no one would take you seriously)...but I've told all  these stories multiple times and grown weary of repeating them.  Then there are years of dreams and shadows, hints, hopes that died, wishing I could talk with you about all of it and what it meant to you.   Give me a new chapter to explore.  I long to know the rest.  I miss you badly.  And above all, past the longing and the hurt, the anger, the nostalgia and the desire to share your present...simply and finally, I love you.

***********

*That's an assumption not based on much, that the dream scenes were from past occasions.  If they're from the present, that's perfectly okay.  I'm asking Dana to have more faith in me than she could have in '88.  I've done my best to earn it.  She knows who I am now and what my values are, if she's read my movie reviews and so on.  

Achtui, Baby! (A New Year, "A New Dimension")

Again, no personal offense but all family members are requested to fuck off right now.   Stop spying on me.  It's none of your business.












A new year.
Can't say I've noticed.  Not yet.  Anything new, that is. Something will change, but not right away.  Can't guess what.

I was right about needing space to be able to revive my art.  I tried before for several years and was unable.  Having some space the past month, I was able to begin and complete a painting.  If I can get the house cleared and get some more time before I leave, I should be able to repeat that.  I wonder what kind of time I might find in New York.  I'll have to work at paying for my stay there.

New Year's Eve was uneventful except that I landed another damn cold.  I've just about lost my voice - how apropos is that??  Oy. 

On the morning of the 31st I saw Dana in a dream, but (I think) it was of the past and not current.  She was happy in it, though, enjoying herself.  That seemed hopeful, also the fact that I've never had a dream remotely like it before regarding her - could signal that something has changed somehow, maybe a breakthrough.  Also a quick succession of hypnopompic dreamlets that were all upbeat but didn't make a lot of sense.  Suggests maybe last post made a difference  If so and in what way remains to be seen.  I heard a string of 'thank you's that did not especially seem directed my way, might have been or maybe were said to God, like "thank you, he's giving up". One was a vision of a blog page that looked like mine with a post titled "A New Dimension" and Dana saying "you changed things", meaning either I have affected the way she sees things...or that she thinks I've misrepresented things. And I heard her say the strange phrase "I'm a winner and it's a picture."  Eh?  Okay, well, never mind the picture, the first part could be the self-affirmation I was hoping for or it could be her gloating that she beat me.  I can only wait and see if I hear from her, then I'll know.  Did I finally break through the wall between us or is she jubilant over my defeat? 

Did I say something that opened the cage?  Oh, let it be true!

Which picture, and what did that mean?  Or is all of it from my imagination alone?  Certainly over %99 of my dreams are just dreams, it's just...which few are more than that?  Which ones do I ignore?  'All of them', you're saying, I know, but it's impossible to dismiss the ones that give me hope.  The best I can do is to remain open to the possibilities.  But, see, that's what drives me crazy, being of two minds at the same time.  I've tried not to be but can't.

Practice and history have conditioned me to expect frost and silence from Dana.  As always.  On that score she has never let me down.   So why the kindness from her just that one time in October?   That was a complete surprise.   And why can't she do it again?  Or, why won't she?

I might not be making it to the library this week at all, depending how long this cold goes.  Bad enough I have to keep going out to the garage, it's freezing cold out there, aggravates my cough and prolongs illness.   I gave Dana my street address in October, I wish she'd use it and write an actual letter.  I've asked Scott to send Jesseca a message to let her know she might not hear from me this week.

Had another brief dream of Dana this morning (January 1st) but like the last one it was also set in the past.  Nothing of her in the present nor of her reacting to me.

It's difficult to reach sleep, this cold has had me at that juncture where you're desperate for sleep but your throat/cough/sinuses won't allow it.  Took til past three or four to get any last night.  Slept a little more today.   No sleep means no dreams.

***********

Was just thinking...it's something I feel quite often but have almost never put into words...Dana makes me feel as if...I think she's ashamed of having me as a friend,  embarrassed to have her friends learn she even knows me.  I've felt that from the start, from late '88 on, but never acknowledged it.  Now that I've put words to it, it has the ring of truth to it.  

***********

One of the stupidest wastes about this is entirely on me for never having been able to get over her.  It's my prophetic dreams of a future with her.  Only one ever gave me a glimpse beyond reconciliation,  and it was emotionally ambiguous (or worse, neutral).  In none of them did I ever even see us particularly happy together after reconciliation - or unhappy for that matter.  I saw us (over and over) happy to be reunited, joyous and relieved, and eager for each other's comfort*.  We embrace in every last one.  I saw and felt love.  Each was heavily tinged with sadness, presumably for the damage we'd already done to each other or for the time needlessly lost in finding each other again.   I never saw anything of where it would lead - joy and fulfillment,  or more mistrust, miscommunication, and heartbreak.  I saw us in Africa, of all things, on vacation together.  The mood was impossible to read.

I wonder...if she were to change her mind, would trust come back easily?  I mean, what would it take for me to trust her?

A good number of the people I know who are spiritual believe that whatever happens is meant to happen.  It strikes me as curious that they should feel this way as they never had psychic dreams filled with absolute promises of a particular future, yet the atheist (waves hand) did and struggles so much with what to do.  If I go to New York I don't see how I can join Dana's life in California...but if I'm in New York I will be in physical proximity of Jesseca, so I'll be right there when she crashes and with Brian can finally be of real help.  Maybe I'm supposed to go to New York just as I (believe that I) am meant to have a reconciliation with Dana as well.  They could both happen...maybe?  Yet they seem to me opposed.  One of those two things can happen by my choice, the other is in someone else's hands.  Dana's, primarily, or those of her God.  In theory, both could come to pass.  But I can't see how.  Reconciliation was a promise made by whatever force - by a god, by life itself, maybe some event loop I tapped into.  It's a promise that has never been kept.  It wasn't made by Dana, who had no part in devising it and has no reason to fulfill it.  I'm not angry at her for that but for her complete betrayal of me as a friend, which is far far worse if I was wrong to begin with.

***********

Wednesday 3rd, still sick, sinuses stuffy now too.  Thought about retitling the post 'Great Expectorations'.  How about 'Sick Bastard'?  No, wait, I've got it...(amends title).  Had my first sleep in days - not long, not deep, no Dana in my dreams.  Not getting enough work done on my stuff, the constant coughing and need for sleep.  Sent Karla several messages via Lore and John that I can't finish the bathroom without more 409 and rags.  Trying to avoid going out in the cold but I need to check the mail and hit the garage occasionally, do the garbage and recycling, etc.  Laundry.  Doesn't help, cough kicks in automatically every time, gets worse again.  Oh, repeating myself.  Ugh.  Hate preparing meals like this, too, not even hungry, need more zappable food.  Soft for my ripped-up throat.

'New dimension'.  Yeah, I hope Dana's seeing it and thinks so, but fuck -  been trying to tell her for three decades.  It ain't that new.  Message has most certainly been out there for her to see.  She wouldn't.  Probably still refuses to even now, damn her.

I have part of an image in mind but it needs developing.  There's a spot in the bathroom where I took off a guardrail, the circle it left behind and the screwholes created what looked a charming 'Man in the Moon' face.  I would like to put that in a blue sky, and Dana under it with her copper hair.  Copper, blue, and for the moon a bright-pale green/yellow/white.  I'm liking the colors.  Most vibrant should be her hair. I don't have a pose or a setting, or any idea what she should be wearing.  Hoping for inspiration.  Don't want realism, with that moon.  I could do this large with crayons or use paint on the smaller masonite...eh, the masonite is too small for what I want, but that's the approach I'd prefer for the sake of more vibrant color.  Well, the image is as yet incomplete in my head anyway.  I need a third element to bring it together.  Not looking for a concept or a message, the colors are what I want to be driven by.   Before I saw that moon  I had considered her in a halo of snow because I thought it would lend itself to a pleasing color and texture scheme, but "frozen Dana" is a little too on-the-nose.

I could do her as an angel but that doesn't feel right either for a couple of reasons.   This is not a diss... Dana is no angel.  She is a vibrant and very much alive human being with the inherent weaknesses and strengths of an individual.  For all that I cherish her I've never idealized her or put her on a pedestal.  In the past couple of months I've come to think of her lovingly as  'brazen angel', and unless she asks me otherwise that's how I'm always going to think of her.   I once read where her looks had been compared to an angel which I'm sure was meant as an endearment yet I got an impression somehow (a dream, I think)  that she never liked that much.

Friday, still sick but symptoms letting up some.  Have to cancel stepping out Saturday evening. Maybe make it to library on Monday?

Monday 8th 11:30 AM, 409 fumes and having to go out in the cold prevent my symptoms fully clearing.  Hoping to make it to the library today or tomorrow.  If there's no message from Dana then I guess I'll know.

# # # # #
Library, quarter past 5 PM.  I thnk the reason Dana posted to me in October was probably so Tammy wouldn't think badly of her.  No messages from Dana or anyone else.

*Remember, I had these dreams long before there was ever any rift between us.