2005-07-06 - 6:52 p.m.

No, I'm not leaving. Sitting here, I read some of the many entries that make up this diary and realized that this is me: pretty words and delirium, white letters on a black background, simple and calm and teeming with meaning. I'll stay here, as Diaryland has been very good to me and, I think, I have been very good to it.

It is summer again, and I am currently sitting at my kitchen table and looking at the trees wave in the hot summer breezes while waiting for something to happen. It has been years since I've started this little online project, and there have been many summers and winters and many more revolations. Why leave, even if less than desirable people have access to this piece of work? Let them. There is nothing I have to hide from the world, although sometimes I wish the world would do me the favor of hiding from me.

Life as I know it has not changed drastically: I find myself constantly appreciating simple things, like watching a cat attack a large bird on someone's front lawn while driving in a fast silver sexy car that is mine for the time being and listening to Danzig's "Mother." I find myself evolving just as much as I always have, or perhaps more, writing and reading and, more importantly, living. I still have friends around, sweet little bundles of flesh who love me despite what we've been through together or perhaps because of it. I'm still coddling this living thing inside me that knows there is more to life than eating and sleeping and working and money, things that are exotic and make this trip worthwhile, like tragedy and exuberance. Every day, I find myself saying that I am the happiest I've ever been, and I find myself believing it.

Then, there's the boyfriend. We've been pursuing something grand together for about half a year and the situation is perfect. We have the potential to spend our whole lives together and, unlike a lot of people, we know it. There is a dreamy sense of calm, not wanting to rush life but letting it come and bare its ugly fangs and spread its glorious wings, knowing that whatever comes, we'll deal with it gracefully and together.

I've been making plans to finally enroll in college, after a blurry and ecstatic hiatus. I've been reading good books and meeting good people, drinking coffee and eating breakfast in bed. I've been catching up with old friends and running riot, rethinking life while standing on its brink, blinking my eyes dispassionately while the flames leap and spread, covering all I know in destruction, smiling and saying, "Well, that wasn't so bad."

I've been away from the computer, yes, and haven't been around much, like the father spawning a child and skipping the country, but sometimes you have to take a break to find out what it is you'll miss. I've lived, and now am ready to recount the process, uncover the wounds, and showcase my ecstacies. While I was "away," I uncovered old notebooks of mine, finding poetry and prose and crude drawings of stick figures murdering each other and a diagram I made long ago that is a map of my mental processes. I started and almost finished a large collage and began work on a huge writing portfolio, containing everything I've ever written that's been of any note or importance. I've been reading ravenously, inbetween bouts of losing my mind and then finding it again, a little dusty and half-buried in the sand, but otherwise as good as new.

Here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.