i'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours

i delete everything i write about this weekend. i did some hard thinking, and some focused writing (thank Jesus), and some working out, and some staying young. i hung out with katie and stacie and my sister and courtney and flea, and was sad that i had to make the decision not to hang out with the silvers. i hate having to make choices between people, but when it happens i want to try and make choices that are more about love than they are about wanting... but it's not always easy to tell the difference. still, you can only try.

sometimes love is knowing when to quit, when you don't have anything left to give. stretching it out only leads to resentment. i thought about that when i was working with four-year-olds on sunday morning, and for the first time in three years i really didn't want to be teaching anymore. i was counting down the days till summer, and not because of the weather: i was just running out of... well, i was just running out, i suppose. sometimes you have to acknowledge that you're empty.

i'm going to be broker than i had planned to be, again, but that hasn't phased me yet. sometimes money appears like magic and sometimes it disappears like magic, and if i really believed in magic i guess i'd be worried. as it is, i don't believe that God is easily surprised. this is just the next thing, and that (hopefully) leads you to the thing after that. i'd be a fool to pretend that i knew what that was. anyway, my budget may be revised to include more time at my house. at least this will make it easier for people who are trying to get ahold of me.

oh! but i finally got my answering machine hooked up yesterday, with flea's help. so that's neat. now if you call me, and i'm not there, i might eventually find out that you called.

i'm going to get my hands on a longboard this summer, and also a guitar. and also a felt owl hat, and also issue 853 of batman detective comics, and allllsoooo... what? hopefully a finished apron, and a mini-community garden. and leonard cohen tickets, and a plane ticket to boston. and a short film. and a faery play.

there's a lot to stay home for. there's a lot to leave home for. but it's been that way for as long as i can remember, and i think the important thing is not to forget that you're making choices, no matter where you go. and sometimes it feels like making a wrong choice firmly is better than just floating along, knocked to and fro by the waves of other people's decisions and desires. i don't believe that i am the captain of my soul or whatever, but i do believe that i have some sort of responsibility to the life i've been given, to treat it like something significant, something worth examining, worth living on purpose. if i'm sitting around, i want to be doing that intentionally, not by default. then i feel like i'm not wasting time... then i feel like i'm respecting the life i've been given, the limited time and the limited resources and the limited space in my heart, by giving it to something like i mean it. and if that something is stillness, then okay. and if it's running, then okay. and if it's making felt owl hats or learning guitar or buying polaroid film, then okay. and if it's a person, then okay.

but let's not pretend that we're not making choices. let's not pretend that we're incapable of running out.

(tonite, i'll give myself to italian films and pretty dresses and red wine and katie d. i will not chase my youthful ambitions every nite - but some nites, it's true, i will go looking for the things i used to want. and i will not apologise.)