today's moment of Zen...

...The giant football player with "Assassins" across the front of his uniform, who approached the cafe counter to order, in a mild voice, a latte.

rock me mama like a southbound train.

Itemized, because there is too much and no opportune organizational method:

1) Yes, I am still alive.

2) I have not updated because, I think, I have generally been avoiding reflection. I have been needing it, thirsting for it, and avoiding it. I've also been feeling out of place existentially and not knowing how to deal with it.

3) Done with the library job, and now have a job in a bourgeois "marketcafe" where the owners are nice, until it becomes stressful, when they yell at you for no reason. As this is my first week, I have been rather sensitive...

4) ...which isn't helped by the fact that my car has been broken into for the second time in two months to steal my CD player, and this time they shattered a window. Excellent. I love humanity.

5) F. and I are broken up--I think. I say I think because we are still in a lot of contact, and our "where is the state of our relationship" conversations end up, somehow, always deeply ambiguous. I cried a lot and instigated a break over him not paying enough attention to me when his sister was here, clearly distressing him. Our "Okay, break is over" conversation ended up with him exhausted and crying over being overly busy and not wanting to hurt me. I said okay. Since then it's been lots of messages from him and two meetings involving him bringing me printing pictures he'd taken of happy times over the summer and him buying me dessert and saying he wasn't sure if his newfound embrace of being alone was all that smart. So, I don't know. I know he is not someone I cannot live without. I also know that I'm drawn to him, comfortable with him, and seem to understand him--his need to be considered successful, same as mine; his appreciation for solitude; his need to keep everything together and organized or somehow, everything falls apart. His constantly feeling foreign in a place he struggles to know. But I am not a priority, and I know that, too. (I did, after all, convince him into a six-month relationship after he kissed me and immediately announced, as a preliminary warning, "I would not be a good boyfriend.") And I don't know if that's okay.

6) Some things, though, are okay. Tonight I went to the birthday party of someone I had never met with some friends. I had peanut butter pie and drank hot cider and rum. The evening descended into folk songs on ukulele and guitar. I sang. It canceled out some of the feelings I had from my shattered car window, and still more job rejections added to the pile (growing taller and taller) -- that it is the world in one corner, and me in the other.

I don't feel like I'm comfortable right now, on a deep level. The foundation feels shaky. I don't know if that's internal or external. I guess I'll have to work on that. I'm thinking of making a new blog -- tried the other day, but alas, my name was taken. Soon.