*

Today I stopped by Fly's parents' house, like I do every Christmas, though every year I time it poorly so that most everyone is already gone or in bed. This time only Fly's brother Harlan, who courted me many times in the history of our whole party and has been rebuffed many times, on the grounds of my being homosexual, was awake. I hadn't seen him for two Christmases, though I get regular reports on his well-being from his sister.

He spends half his time in southern Mississippi, building homes that were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, and half his time in Murfreesboro, TN, laying down guitar jams. He looks up at me from across the kitchen table with a sardonic half-grin, half-grimace, and the first thing he says to me is, "You speak Russian yet?"

"No," I say, rueful. Daniel is right about my pious devotion to interpersonal history. "Not yet."

We talk about his band breaking up the past summer and about the influx of brown widows (a tropical spider) into the coast of Mississippi, then about my dad's recovery from alcoholism and Devon's new hair style. We're still visiting in his parents' kitchen when he gets an important phone call. "I have to take this," he says, and I tell him that it's fine, I have to get going anyway. He answers and puts his friend on hold.

"You're one of my favorite people," Harlan tells me.

We hug at the door. I tell him, "See you next year."

*

Many things are happening, somehow. I told Disa a few days ago that I wasn't sure, but that I might be completely happy. I know that I have everything I want, except for a lover with whom I can visit at my leisure and an obscene amount of free time, though even the latter may be in the cards for me in the not-too distant future. As for the former, I drive up on Wednesday to rendezvous avec et connaître le monsieur Daniel, who by now is an image of a man walking down a sidewalk in a grey coat, with grey on either side of him, with a wry smile deep in his heart.

Everything excites my mind. I feel that I'm getting lots of writing done, though really I do very little actual writing.

I was in my mother's bedroom earlier this evening, changing into pajama pants, and I wondered to myself about moments of god-ecstasy, which I have known and which live with me. In those moments, it is possible to feel violently grateful for everything-- everything: cement, scarves, famine, tobacco stores, windows and skin, etc., and I wondered if the torment of being unable to reconcile that feeling of perfect wonder and holiness with actual answers, with solutions to the suffering of mankind, is what creates fanatics.

Several months ago I read an interview with a childhood friend of Osama Bin Laden's-- a friend who remarked on the subtle changes that took place over time, the gradual increases piety and in ecclesiastical pursuits-- a beautiful peacefulness and humility that eventually led to a long withdrawal that eventually led to a great mania. I wondered if that kind of torment could ever do something similar to me. Stunted conversations w/ Disa forever, frustrated philosophical stalemates w/ Daniel, leisure w/ Devon-- then someday I bend down in the middle of the street, too confounded, and I never come back from that sudden vision of what must be done.

Sprekende end-times: years ago, Devon had a dream in which a half-dead bee, called a m'na, pronounced mee-nah, was a portent of the end of the world. A couple of weeks ago, one such bee survived for two days standing on our porch. To be honest, drawn conclusions are half-hearted.

*

Horoscope for today:

The Moon slipped into dreamy Pisces last night, activating our fantasies and increasing our need for meaningful spiritual connection. Mercury the Messenger joins shadowy Pluto today, sending our thoughts deep into the unconscious to uncover buried metaphysical treasure. We cannot know in advance what lurks in the dark, yet the exploration can prove transformational. We need not be afraid, for increasing the light of awareness can help us find our way.

*

And that's pretty much it. I really do not do anything. If those last days of me regularly updating this journal can be called a period of deconstruction and tearing-down, and the past year can be called one of bold steps and rebuilding from unfamiliar blueprints, then I am currently in the stage where I passively witness the fall-out. I have been reduced to my most basic components and then brought back into the company of all my old heroes.

I wrote a panicked e-mail to Disa in mid-November, after I'd been reading her old Diaryland entries from 2002 and 2003. I said,

it's weird; living life forward everything seems sort of orderly, one thing leading naturally from another, and looking backward at it, it seems like complete chaos, built on arbitrary decisions, or else clearly sloppily constructed backwards.

everything that unfolded between you and me, and just a step behind that, everything that unfolded between you and dan and bryant, and then me and dan, and then you and bryant again (still); and here we are. You and bryant struggled so much this year and now seem to have reached a sort of tenative equilibrium (though maybe not so tenative, I don't know exactly what's going on), and Dan and I have a one-year anniversary coming up-- and you and I, who knows what happens between us.

I've lost the thread of the narrative.

I had a weird experience with devon the other day-- she txt'd me at work to tell me that she might be asleep on the sofa when I got home, and if she was, would I please wake her up so she could sleep in her bed. she was, in fact, asleep on the sofa when I got home, so I knelt next to her and carefully squeezed her bicep and said her name, and she roused blinking at me, disoriented, and then I put my hands on either side of her waist to help her sit up. She was warm and wet from sleeping, and-- like that, holding her like that, she suddenly seemed foreign to me, like I had no idea who she was, even though I had spent 10 years knowing her, being (for a while) in love with her, sleeping over in her bed, cooking dinner for her, helping her raise a daughter, etc. I realized I'd never before thought of her as a real person, a real person with sweat who exists outside of my own self. it's-- progress, I'm sure. we're becoming grown-ups.

*

Let me 'splain.
No, there is too much; let me sum up.

Merry Christmas. War is over.


--e.