I don't belong among the angels, and baby, that's just fine with me

This is my entire aesthetic, yes.

can we still be friends?

we can't play this game anymore
but can we still be friends?
things just can't go on like before
but can we still be friends?

That is the plan. Nights like last night, though, erode all my resolve to just aim for friendship. Last night's dreaming was...easy, and difficult, both, and...neither I say lightly. They weren't nightmares, which is a huge relief, but they were intense, overwhelming, compelling...erotic.



we had something to learn
now it's time for the wheel to turn
grains of sand, one by one
before you know, it's all gone

It started out with flashbacks, with reliving memories, with embedding into lived experience. This is not unusual--I tend to fall into memories, recollections, sense events, with sometimes appalling regularity. But this was...different. If I didn't know better, if I didn't understand the distinctions being made, if I did not, in fact, know that I was dreaming--I would have sworn I was not alone in the bed, that there was another beside me, playing all the chords to encourage me to sing.



let's admit we made a mistake
but can we still be friends?
heartbreak's never easy to take
but can we still be friends?

And more charnel bones tipped into the firebox, heat becoming intense, because, right now, I can't think about this with a calm and cool head. I can still hear his whispered urging, still feel the play of heated breath over my skin, and I have to keep telling myself this was just a dream.



it's a strange sad affair
sometimes seems that we just don't care
don't waste time feeling hurt
we've been through hell together

And if there wasn't something my subconscious thought I should realize, my brain wouldn't be tormenting me with drunken sensual remembrance; I know that. A lot of times it just breaks down to my brain being a consummate teenager, pouting because the parental units just don't understand, cannot understand, they've forgotten how it feels to be seventeen and in serious lust...And again, I know that. To put it in less flattering terms, this is my subconscious kicking the traces. I get it.

But.



it's a strange sad affair
sometimes seems that we just don't care
don't waste time feeling hurt
we've been through hell together

But, when my dreams turn like this, it is occasionally hard to remember that it's just defiant immaturity. Last night, especially...Let me be clear: while nightmares are a constant, I have never, not once, had a nightmare of someone I trusted not accepting no for an answer. This is key. (And the downside of that is, yes, if I stop trusting someone, they've occasionally turned up as torturers in the nightly plays, disobeying all previous rules.)



can we still be friends
can we still get together sometimes?

That is, thankfully one line, at least, my brain refuses to cross. But I know I was begging--abject, audibly, shuddering, pleading, the 'no', the 'stop', so very nearly on my lips, but...never...never...explicitly uttered.

Thought, though. Begging, though. Begging for--surcease? Release? Mercy? Whatever it was, it wasn't given, and I woke in much the same state--shuddering, gasping, still whispering please, unable to draw in a full breath for sweeping pleasure. And I had to struggle to get my breathing back under control.

Exactly as if I had not been alone...



hey babe, can we still go on?

I won't say I'd rather have nightmares. My brain is far too facile with evisceration scenarios, so thank you, no, they can stay down with the alligators. But that dream has stayed with me all day, every time I close my eyes, a series of entwined jolts, gasps, and want, the still-intense desire searing through me, the flames still high.

So...yes. There are things still to work on. Obviously.



we awoke from our dream,
things are not always what they seem
memories linger on
it's like a sweet, sad, old song

It may just take time. Remove the immediacy of recollection, erase the sharp edges, fuzz the sensory recall. Let the days pass into weeks, and into months, and into years, until I can think back on sensuality shared and just have the occasional twinge and smile.

At least...that's the hope. Dear gods, if it stays this intense...that will...not be good for me.

And of course, the question now circling the steam tower...

can we still be friends?

I still want that. I do. I still think it's possible. I think we have taken strides forward to reworking things from fevered need to friendly discourse, and I...think...we have a good chance to remain on that path.

But nights like last night...they do make the end goal less assured, and more desperate. And they practically ensure that the next time I spend time, in person, with him...that I will be very locked down, all the unease back, all that flinching fear back, and it had just started to ebb, damn it.

And every time I close my eyes... Maybe it's time to stay awake for a while.

(Photos taken on the Vaak Rift sim [Adult], Kralovstvi Temple Court [Moderate], Masija [Adult], Black Nest [Moderate] and Angelstar Manor on Isla Ballenas [Adult]. Lyrics from Robert Palmer's Can We Still Be Friends?)

but my dreams, they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be

There are nights where I want to start screaming and just...get everything out. I don't, because first, I'd have to explain why, if I wasn't around people familiar with everything, and second, I might not stop. And I have to stop.

Or not start. It's easier just not to start.

All right. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Just relax.

Too much instruction in how to sing a scream, I think. I can't just yell myself hoarse. I'm not performing anymore and it's still there in the back brain--must never damage the voice. It takes too long to heal.

Of course, so do other things, and that never stopped me...Girl has a brand after all, I didn't get that accidentally.



I'm watching myself make all the right moves and all the wrong moves and my hands itch from wanting to seize my own shoulders and shake some sense back into me.

You haven't needed gills to breathe for a long time now. Just calm down.

I can't keep insisting nothing's wrong. I can't keep insisting everything's wrong. There's a middle ground, damn it. Somewhere, there's a center point. I need to find that, figure out where it is. Figure out why it is.

Figure out how to keep it in view.



Past pattern reflective and back again, and I can't even say this is a new situation, that's the utterly galling thing. I have been here before, damn it. I have stood on these shores. The bones in these sands are not recent, and they're not all mine.

I have been the one deciding the relationship can't continue and I've been the one who's told the relationship can't continue, and no, I don't mean ending things, I mean, the choice to end one aspect and retain just the friendship.

Though I will say, of the times it's happened before...I don't have those friendships anymore, either. Something else always got in the way.



Breathe. Breathe. You have space now. You have time. Everything is not on fire.

Are you sure?

And the tender car's been full of coal and it's been full of cavorite and at least once it was blood frozen stiff and solid and now, now, I think we're on charnel bones and fractured bits of personal history--

The whole point of the exercise is to stop making the same mistakes. Why am I making the same mistakes?



And I'm still getting it wrong, and I have no clue if there's a way to get it right, and the shards are poking through the bandages...

In. Out. Count if that's all you've got. If you control nothing else, you always control this. Over-control this on occasion, far too often. Slow it down and concentrate. Live second by second if you have to. Get. A damned. Grip.

I feel too much when it doesn't matter, and when it does I'm confused on what I feel at all, and this is drowning, not waving, but maybe I just need to sink...Maybe I forgot something on the ocean floor.

Maybe I brought the train up too soon. Maybe I should have stayed in the sea.



Ultimately, it's simple. Complicated and frustrating and obvious and stunningly arduous, but...simple. I have. To stop. Using people. Just because I'm flailing, just because I'm confused, just because I'm in freefall again because I'm trying to overcompensate...I need to stop. I have to stop.

Because it's not fair to them, it's not fair to me, and it won't help, and it needs to help. I need to help.

I need help.



And ring the changes rung before, again again again and for what? I left the doll long ago and she's back watching me, I never had the little to leave, and I've never felt smaller when anyone holds me now. I've walked away from everything so many times, did I just drag it all with me? Don't I know how to let anything go?

Just breathe. Just breathe. You bypassed easy mode a long time ago because you didn't learn the lesson. It's not one and done yet but it's getting close. Just. Calm. Down.

It's not even that there are no second chances left, it's that there are too many second chances and too many choices and too much could go wrong and too much did go wrong and it's too big. I can't contain this.

You're not supposed to.

I'm supposed to let it go and pick up the pieces later, but there are too many pieces--



I'm not okay.

You're not supposed to be.

I'm trying to be.

Too soon.

And I'm existing in a vacuum on top of everything else, all raw nerve endings and exposed organs and shatterglass eyes, and I did this to myself, damn it, and--

I need to stop.



--I need to rely on other people, and--

It's terrifying. It will never not be terrifying. It will never stop being necessary. It will never stop being hard.

There are too many directions to go and not enough of me to path them all out and I can't move, I can't MOVE--

And when one holds me I can breathe...And when the other holds me I can start to put the pieces back together...

Okay. Okay. I'm breathing. I'm not good at it, but I am breathing. I'm not good at trusting other people, either. I do trust, I do, but...I'm not good at it.

Time to learn.

And far past time to move forward.

Move forward.

'cause you are the ocean, and I'm good at drowning

Awake and fretting again. Awake when I should be sleeping. Awake and afraid of dreaming. Awake and pondering.

If the spider dreams come when I backslide, if they come when I respond to a touch, or a phrase, or the sound of breath between words, I would be more able to accept it. Tonight, I have no idea why I dreamed, only that I did. If it's not specifically tied to the love that left, then what do the spider dreams mean? And why did they go away--for at least a while--when I left? And why did they only return when I got close again? Why did I have one tonight when I haven't done a thing to encourage one?

I want this to be over. I want to be better. I want to stop feeling scared, and unsure, and yearning for things I lost along the way. I want my subconscious to pick another image to flay my nerves with. I want to feel less like I'm bleeding out and more like I'm healing. I want to look forward to sleep again.

More than a year later, I still can't go to a dance if I hear Duchess Gabrielle is going to be spinning the tunes. She's still an amazing DJ--I still listen to Radio Riel now and again--but I just can't bring myself to go. It's not resentment, it's not anger, it's not out of any desire for revenge. Mostly, it's just sadness. I walked away from so much of my life when I was fired, lost touch with people I genuinely cared for, and I know that's contributed largely to my isolation...but I can't get past it.

More than six months later, I'm still trying to sell that last bit of Caledonian land. Being in Caledon isn't the joy it once was, for multiple reasons, and I'm suffering a major period of disconnection from the grid anyway, for a variety of reasons as well. I'm finding it hard to create, hard to innovate, and I'm back to contemplating closing the business for good. In fact, coming this January is the yearly anniversary party for two businesses that are profoundly stalled, featuring virtually no creation of new product since last year. And I still have no idea what's going to happen then, or if we're even holding a sale, let alone a celebration.

More than eighteen months later, I'm still closing the ISC chat window more often than I'm leaving it open. People waver between being far too perky and far too prone to take offense, and I just don't have it in me to appreciate a good fight the way I used to. And most of the time, most social events just make me sigh, or shudder, and turn away in resigned frustration. I am getting profoundly lonely on the grid, but I can't bring myself to even show up at a dance to potentially ease that perception of loneliness.

And more than four years later, I think I'm finally accepting that I will never have another rez day celebration. Because I can't shake what happened after the first one.

I am stitched too deeply with regret, and layered too thickly with pain. This is going to take time, and more than I want each day, to resolve, and it won't be easy. It's not easy now. I feel as if I'm no longer moving forward, I'm just sinking in place.

So now I shore up, refocus, tabulate my successes and my failures. If I can't find my way forward, I build from here and see where we end up. I've already accepted it won't be anywhere near where I started.

I already boxed up every doll-related thing in my inventory. Maybe I need to go through and box up all the spider outfits and accessories. At least for a while. If I can't control the outer world, I control the inner. The mind writes deeply in the body; maybe forcing that disconnection from the arachnids within will push that image from my subconscious.

Yeah, I don't buy that either. But it's something new to try.

I just want something clear in all this murk and mist. Something solid, not ephemeral. Something to count on. A guidepost. A beacon. Hells, I'll take a rock kicked out of place at this point. (Though not a sign. Note to all gods who might be tuning in: I am NOT asking for a sign. Just...a nudge, maybe, towards the shore. Whatever works.)

And then I'll figure out where I am, and where I go from there. It's not like this is the first time the existential pangs have set in of an evening. It likely won't be the last either...

Sometime later, I tell him part of this. Not that I don't want to tell him all of it, just that articulation, currently, is not my strong suit. He listens, as he always does.

"Sometimes a dream is just a dream," he says. I think about that. I wrap that thought around me as I return to bed, and hopefully to sleep, believing that my dreams have more import, but needing the comfort.

"The lake is frozen over
The trees are white with snow
And all around
Reminders of you
Are everywhere I go..."

Accepting any loss is like a death in the family--there is an absence that we try to fold ourselves around, tell ourselves we are still whole and capable, and not empty in that one place. My personality, such as it is, has many empty spaces, but some of them are filled now with cobwebs, and others with weeping, and others with bars of iron and gold. I have to find a way to communicate with my subconscious, or listen more closely, while at the same time trying not to curl around the new emptiness.

It's okay to be empty, too. It's okay to suffer. I am not weak or foolish if I cannot immediately get up and launch back into the world.

And sometimes, it's just another dream, my mind playing with spider imagery because that's what my subconscious has been occupied with since Aprille. It's bound to happen. It doesn't have to mean anything more than it does already.

I think I can sleep now, for another night-turned-morning. Let's see what the morrow brings.

when it's time for curtain call, just before the shadows...

Pulled myself from sodden sleep, forced leaden limbs to move. Would not descend to the dreaming again, but the dream would not let me go.

I come along but I don't know where you're taking me
I shouldn't go but you're wrenching dragging shaking me
turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky
the more I give to you, the more I die

I breathed through it, moving, blinking, shreds of the dream clinging to me, trying to pull me back down.

if this is how we think we make amends
we're in for a race that never ends
where is it we think we'll go?
what is it we think we know?
it'll never change until we change ourselves

Change. It all comes back to change. Things changing out of my control, things changing seemingly on their own, but did good or bad choices prompt the changes?

That's what I'm still trapped in; the deciding. The moment of turning towards or turning away. I know where I'm standing but I've been here for a very long time.

I should. I wish I could,
maybe if you were I would--
a list of standard issue regrets.
one last 80 proof,
slouching in the corner booth--
baby, it's as good as it gets.

oh, such grace
oh, such beauty
so precious, suspicious, and charming, and vicious--

Nothing I think will change things. Action will. But it's action I still can't make myself take.

you seem so devoted
your love is unconditional
you were self-promoted
I never asked you
you were my everything
my apparitional faith
where are you when I am screaming to my God
what am I coming to?

The dream is still there. It won't quite leave me, even now; I can feel its pull on my limbs, I'm just trying to gain a little distance so it doesn't drag me right back down into its tight confines, once I try to sleep again.

What is left now?

strange winds are blowing me down this way
there's no prize in sight but the pain in my feet
but I won't remember after tonight
the clock turns red and the word on the street
is that we are getting ready to leave
behind me I've forgotten to check
all of the things that somehow now I don't seem to need

You can't get better if you're trapped in a sick system.

You can't get out of a sick system by pushing the sickness deeper down.

In a sick system, stronger elements cannibalize weaker ones in order to survive. By removing direct accountability, I am allowing this to happen.

I know all this.

I fall into the water, and once more I turn to you
and the crowds were standing, staring faceless
cutting off my view to you
they start to limply flail their bodies in a twisted mime
and I'm lost inside this tangled web in which I'm lain entwined
you're gone and I'm lost inside
this tangled web in which I'm lain entwined

This has to stop. But the how keeps eluding me. How do I get back to where I was? How do I get back to where I want to, need to, be?

How long can I survive on my own?

Sink or swim. Make your stand.

I don't know yet.

Yes or no.

I can't make that decision.

Live or die.

I'll get back to you on that.

where the sun sets slowly with a golden crown
and the leaves sing lullabies 'round vacant swings
give me those wings--

Nothing is precisely how I want it. I'm rebuilding but seemingly, I'm rebuilding the same sick structure. That's what I need to stop. That's why I'm stuck.

Change. Change is becoming imperative and I am refusing it. Sooner or later, change will happen on its own. I know this but I can't walk forward.

And meanwhile, the dreams keep pulling at me, pulling me awake, confusing me, disorienting me...showing me, in every way my subconscious has, that the system in in trouble.

I know it's in trouble. I just don't know how to fix it...yet.

(Lyrics are from Nine Inch Nails, Perfect Drug; Poets of the Fall, Rewind; OKGo, A Million Ways; Emilie Autumn, Castle Down; Headlights, Put Us Back Together Right, Sarah McLachlan, Vox; and Poets of the Fall, Given and Denied.)

stay and see the smoke, and who's still standing when it clears

Quiet nights. After the mad run of events, and planning, changing into outfit after outfit. Professional and perky and smiling on cue. Afterwards. After all my loves have gone and I can hear footsteps echoing down the long imagined halls of Caledon virtual, when most of its most active residents are long asleep.

I surprise myself again by reminding myself of old habits. I once had a perpetual habit, constant habit--I've always saved amusing or meaningful quotes, but the phrases I loved that someone had said, strong friends or loves, I'd save them, but I'd save them in that reserved space on the profile. I'm sure there are quotes and sayings still out there, on friends I've long forgotten, friends who left the grid and never came back, and I stopped caring to find their names.

I strolled through the ones I do remember, have remembered, hold dear, and remembered why I held them dear in the first place. Treasured words, declarations, movements of inspired tiredness, amusing banter, butterflies and poetry--it's all there.

I wonder how long it's going to be until I forget again.

In the meantime, I'm still working to keep the inventory to a dull roar--I haven't (yet) ended an evening over 57,000 items, but I've pressed to the limit of 56,900. Still, it's my line in the sand, I'm drawing it. We'll see how it goes.

Moment of irony I'm reflecting upon, though--I wanted to change my profile picture. I wanted something seasonal. So I went to a sandbox and ended up rezzing out, attaching or creating over one hundred and fifty separate prims of holiday treats--including the full backdrop, a striped full floor, the holiday scarf, a hanging light, face light, a sparkling lit tree, a box full of prim lights and candy canes, the Mystitool platform I used to get me up to where I wanted to create this...

...yes, all that for a picture. Which I'll likely change in three days. Maybe less.

Irony.

In other news, I can't decide if Secondhand Lands is something I want to join, or something I want to run from--at speed. (Watching the trailer does not help with the wanting to run part, by the way.)

I go to bed tonight remembering first nights. The urgency of love, and the addictive drowning yearning in waiting. And not waiting. How a smile from one of my loves still lights my heart. Moment to moment, moments of attention, moments of shivering bliss. My dreams will be sweet.

In the meantime, I'm running out of time to plot a holiday gifting of my own. I may well end up running something at the store from December 25th through to June 5th--Twelfth Night--and end things then, take the tree and gifts away.

I'm thinking holly bats, house slippers, maybe a dress or two...try my hand at earrings...see how it goes. It will get me building again, at the very least!

unzip my body, take my heart out

Could a body close the mind out?
Stitch a seam across the eye
If you can be good, you'll live forever
If you're bad, you'll die when you die



Couldn't shake off the dreams this morning, after far too long a night before. Not nightmares, not that, but disturbing, and feeling more like communication, soul to soul, mind to mind...mind to mine, with a mind not mine.

Hearing only one true note
On the one and only sound
Unzip my body
Take my heart out
'Cos I need a beat to give this tune



My subconscious speaks in code anyway, in hand signals, indications of language, hints and allegory, inference and vague suggestion. Many of the dreams featured Lindens changing hands, from small to large amounts, and the rest was blurred violence, emotional violence, pain and desperation.

Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of--



Three times I woke up enough to know I was dreaming, know there was a world just beyond my closed lids, and I had that oddly placid, yet desperate feeling of dragging myself away from what was happening, towards reality...and never quite being able to make it before I fell back into the world the images made.

Oh the body swayed to music
Oh the lightning glance
If I would give it all and all
Maybe you would hear me
Ask for half a chance



There was a lot of reasoning, I know. A lot of bargaining. A lot of trying to figure out what was happening, while everything was happening. Anger. Hurt. Deep rage, deep pain, and not from me. My body in the dream shaking so much, it translated to my actual body, the few times I was close to surfacing.

Hearing only one root note
Planted firmly in the ground
Undo my heart, unzip my body and
Lend to my ear a clear and a deafening sound



I've had worse dreams. I've had much worse nightmares. This was more the equivalent of watching a horror movie, that I've seen before and liked, and talking to folks in the same room about the issues of the day, over living in the world on the screen, and being terrified of what was going to happen next.

Unzip my heart



This was comprehension, understanding as far as I could, over ignorance. This was knowing that a led to b, hurt led to struggle, pleading led to pain. This was experience, and whatever dark lessons such experiences teach; this was not trapped in the storyline, just another taut line of vibrating ink drawn on parchment skin.

And if I need a rhythm
It’ll be to my heart I listen
If it don’t get me too far wrong



It's a small detail, a somewhat precise and miniscule distinction, but a valid one. Art versus life. Words on a page, not the universe within the pages. But it rocked me, these dreams, and I haven't quite shaken all of them off to back storage.

And if I--
And if I--
And if I need a rhythm
It’s gonna be to my heart I listen
If it don’t take me too far gone



Part of it was that sense of conversation. That I was not alone in this dream, that it wasn't just me alone, interacting with characters my mind had spun of whole dreaming. Instead, I kept having the strong feeling, the unshakeable sensation, that I was communicating with someone beyond the barrier of my skin.

Everybody smile please
Nobody pay no mind to me
Finger in position on the switch
A little flash photography



Part of that, also, was that the bulk of each dream centered on someone else, someone not me, interacting with someone else entirely. I was...bystander. I was barely an interested party, save for my wanting to stop what was happening, needing to stop what was happening, and never knowing how.

Taking a picture of you
Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of me
Taking a picture--



Simple deduction, this one: the events of last night (still unresolved, for which I'll have to speak with someone I was hoping I would not have to speak with) have left me feeling a sense of shared loss, a mournful frustration, a tinfoil-gnawing inability to offer more than support. I was, last night, stunned into silence and shocked mute, all of me wanting to reach out, all of me cripplingly unsure of the right words to speak, the right actions to take.

Ramalama Bang Bang
Flash Bang Big Bang
Bing Bong, Ding Dong
Dum dum d-dum dum



But that doesn't explain the major themes of this dream set. That doesn't explain the participants my mind chose. That doesn't explain the feeling of conversation, over imagining.

With a hammer Bang Bang
Flash Bang Press Gang
Bing Bong, Ding Dong
Dum dum d-dum dum



Far be it from me to go overboard on the psychoanalysis, but everything else made sense to me--from the setting to the scenes--until the actors of the play stormed in. Then all sense flew out the window, and I had to sit back and wonder, when I was capable of such detached observing, why them? Why those names, those faces? Why those hearts set against mine?

With a st-stammer
Bang Bang



I still have no answers, and more questions for every possible moment of comprehension I push myself through and beyond.

And if I
And if I need a rhythm
Gonna be to my heart I listen--



And through it all, every second, every moment, of dreaming, I still have this etched in razor-sharp clarity: that I did not invent this on my own. I still have this persistence of presence, this sensation from somewhere beyond me, that I shared these dreams, these fragments, with someone else.

On that, I most sincerely hope I'm wrong. Because there is no way to ask, and no answer I'd be able to accept.

(Lyrics from Roisin Murphy's "Ramalama (Bang Bang)".)

I'll give up everything just to find you

Loves for a summer, loves for an afternoon, loves for an hour...none replenish the heart as much as the loves that last longer.

But with such rich bounty of love comes turbulence indeed, on occasion...

I've finally replaced the glitching ShopOnRez box, and am contemplating switching from HippoTech entirely, replacing my vendors with the OnRez ones. I haven't fully committed to the concept yet.

I'm still working on packaging new items up, and I really need to get back to work making dresses. I finally acquired a functional loop script, and the results, re skirtmaking, have been...well. They verge from horrific to hysterically amusing, and I'm not sure which is worse.

Though Fawkes says, one of the programming loops, I should save. If we ever needed ballgowns for centaurs, he says, I have the perfect skirt script.

Do centaurs even wear skirts?

I'm running, I'm running, wind in my hair, my feet striking the rich black earth beneath me. Dappled sun paints the forest path in gold and lime, emerald and moss, and the forest does the rest, adding depth and shadow. I run, I run, the day is warm, but cool under the branches. I run, I run, and look behind me--

It's not a nightmare. It's not even, truly, a bad dream. But I wake from it thinking there's something I'm missing. I'm having this one, in some variation or another, every few days for the past two weeks. So there's something my mind wants me to know...I just don't know what it is.

But it's not a nightmare. There's no sense of pain, of anguish, of fear, of terror. Just this...odd confusion. What am I running towards? What am I not seeing? These could be important things.

I press against the wall currently hemming me in, keeping me from...certain actions. One never wishes for a thing more than when it is denied, and I know this game, I know it well, I've played it from both sides. But, oh, right now, just now, every fiber of my being reaches out, my soul on its knees, begging wordlessly for the one thing I cannot, at present, have.

Wednesday is going to be a very, very long time indeed, spinning in my personal limbo. I have been good, I have obeyed, I have not pressed against the edict nor wriggled around the words said. But oh, it is so long, so long, the waiting...

The waiting is driving me crazy.

And every time I remember the touch of his lips, I tremble...

Which is, perhaps, the point...

back from a far horizon

Sometimes, when things shift, it's hard effort--straining against another language, and suddenly losing to it, and rising from where one was thrown, touching everything, and hearing another name for it. Wrestling with ideas, trying to force them into pattern, and suddenly having the pattern become clear.

Sometimes the shift is paradigm.

I count the hours
you count the days together
we count the minutes in this passion play
walk dusty miles
and I ride that train
on a first class ticket
just to be with you again

Thrown up on the far shore, and the train moved against all expectation for the broken thing it had become. It moved slowly, to be sure, chugging nearly painfully into the mountains, laboring into the heights.

It's not going to be easy, I think, and I'm not wrong. I could get out and walk faster. But we keep going, it's important, essential, vital in some sense, this current psychopomp.

picking up tired feet
back from a far horizon
cleaned up and brushed down
dressed to look the part
fresh from God's garden
I bring a gift of roses
to stand in sweet spring water
and press them to your heart

I cling to the struts, fighting for reason, fighting against sleep, fighting until we find a good resting spot, and begin trying to slow the train down from "ridiculously slow" to "barely moving" once I see the sketch against the mountains that might be, just might be, a refueling station.

We crest the curve of the hill like cresting along the wave, and I'm hoping for a slow descent to shore, rather than crash. Never know with trains, but we're slowing, we're slowing, we're coming to a stop...in time.

like the Kipling cat
I walk alone
never inviting trouble
never casting the stone
but this badge of honour
is of tarnished tin
light your guiding beacon
to bring this fisher in

Endless pained hours later, it turns out I was right. Small little town, looking abandoned, but there's the refueling station, and I see water and coal, and anything else, I can work around. Empty, but it doesn't bother me, I've been alone before.

There's always a work-around.

picking up tired feet
back from a far horizon
cleaned up and brushed down
and dressed to look the part
fresh from God's garden
I bring a gift of roses
to stand in sweet spring water
and press them to your heart

More hours to live through, endure, accept, crawling the town for repair metals, hissing at the touch of bare iron on my skin. Wood and copper, ivory plates under the counter of the tea house, wire and leather straps from the stables, corset lacing from the mercantile.

It'll be patchwork, but ironically, that's appropriate. I set to work.

I count the hours
you count the days together
we count the minutes in this passion play
walk dusty miles
and I ride that train
on a first class ticket
just to be with you again...

The day's set, the moon's out, new day explodes into bright light again, before I'm close to done. Wiping sweat off my forehead with the sleeve over one arm, it's hard work. Grueling in spots, and some spots are going to be open for a while yet, simply because I couldn't find enough pieces. And the structure's weaker for it, but maybe that's all right, too.

I don't have to be strong for everything. Train still rolls. We're good. We can rest the day and pick up travel tomorrow.

I put the hammer down on the sheet of copper I was curving around a strut. I'll get it later. Now, it's time to find a bed, and I think the old hotel will do me fine.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Caution and revelation both. Absolution granted, responsibility given. We'll get through this.

I track down an old quilt in a hope chest, dragging it over me on the least bedsprung bed in the place, wrapping around myself the smell of old cotton and cedar. I lay my head on the goosedown pillow, breathing becoming slow and deep in the late afternoon sun.

I may dream. I may not. But the nightmares are gone. For now, I'm very thankful, and not thinking beyond that for now. Time enough to work out the details later.

Always time. With faith and trust. Always time...

(Lyrics are "A Gift of Roses" from Jethro Tull. And of course, the sonnet...is Shakespeare.)

what I learned I rejected but I believe again

I know it's hard to tell how mixed up you feel
Hoping what you need is behind every door
Each time you get hurt, I don't want you to change
Because everyone has hopes, you're human after all

There are moments we experience, moments that are set aside from the rest of our lives, defining moments. They vary in intensity--the birth of a child; the death of a friend; lovers leaving, learning new languages...signposts of a life. Moments we can point to--here, I was here, when it happened--

Whatever it was.

The feeling sometimes, wishing you were someone else
Feeling as though you never belong
This feeling is not sadness, this feeling is not joy
I truly understand, Please, don't cry now

Signposts of a life. Moments of definition. Moments we look back on later, and say here, here is where I saw the change. Here is where I noticed. Here is where I had to act.

Protests. Songs. Celebrations. Vigils. Hoping to hear good news, waiting for bad news. Raising voices in anger. Trying to understand.

Here. Here I was. Here I was when it first happened. Right here. This moment.

Please don't go, I want you to stay
I'm begging you please, please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate for all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion trying to change you

The one I was a year ago, even one year ago, would have watched me in this moment, watched what I did, understand to my ability to understand, when I lost everything I loved again. Because I knew that pattern. I knew what would happen. It had happened before.

Signposts. Moments in a life. Moments of confusion. Moments of understanding.

Please don't go, I want you to stay
I'm begging you please, please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate for all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion trying to change you

The woman I am now, could not do that. I could not stand by. I couldn't watch love die again. And I'd never fought for any love before, I never thought I had the right, I never thought I could.

All of my life. All of my signposts. Everyone I've loved.

But not this time. Not this time.

Being like you are
Well this is something else, who would comprehend?
But some that do, lay claim that
Divine purpose blesses them
That's not what I believe, and it doesn't matter anyway

Sometimes, the hardest thing is not suffering pain. Pain can be endured, pain can be accepted, pain can become familiar, after a while, known, quantified and categorized. Sometimes, the hardest thing is speaking about that pain. Sometimes, the hardest thing...ever...is simply...being honest.

This hurts. This hurts more than I want it to. And reaching out--to friends, to lovers, to the ones closest to the heart. How can we fix this?

Asking for help. It's something I have been, am, will be...very, very bad at doing.

Signposts. Moments of change. This was mine. Knowing I had to reach out. Knowing I had to speak of my pain. Knowing it would cost me--and cost me high--but...knowing the alternative was worse.

A part of your soul ties you to the next world
Or maybe to the last, but I'm still not sure
But what I do know, is to us the world is different
As we are to the world but, I guess you would know that

Fragments of the nightmare stay with me. Most of it's left. I'm blissfully grateful that I don't have every element perfectly concretized, because I'm having that one nightmare over, and over, and over again.

I just had the one. The one moment of heart-fluttering panic, and...then talking. Talking and talking and talking. Reinterpreting and explaining and nature of language and definitions.

--wandering around with a parboiled daisy dripping with spring water, through emerald grasses, knowing my friends were dying out of sight. Being walked back into the house past the corpse of a love, slowly being parted out on the butcher-block kitchen table. Led to a chair, curiously dispassionate, while they sat me down and took the flower and replaced it with knitting needles through my eyes--

And the thing is? That wasn't the part where I started really wishing I could stop dreaming.

Please don't go, I want you to stay
I'm begging you please, please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate for all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion trying to change you

Defining language. This is what it means when I say this. This is what I say when I feel this. This is what I say when I'm hiding. This is how I hide from you. Giving away my secrets, my heart's long-held defenses, giving entry points away. No way to change the locks and go on now.

This is me. And what you've done has hurt me. Just saying it, just saying that, instead of claiming all pain was my fault, and hoarding the rest. Just...speaking. Openly. Honestly.

Learning. Learning to speak. Learning to share. Learning to understand.

Learning to fight.

This moment. Right here. This signpost. Here, we begin to change. Here we change again.

Right here.

Please don't go, I want you to stay
I'm begging you please, oh please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate for all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion always trying to change you

They say the ultimate sacrifice is to die for love. They're wrong. The ultimate sacrifice is to live for it.

Now I can. Let's find the next signpost.

(Lyrics are from VNV Nation's Illusion. The link is not to one of their videos, but to a fan's tribute video, pairing that song to part of Andy Huang's Doll Face short film.)

somebody rip my heart out, and leave me here to bleed

I go to bed with uneasy heart, unsure of what to say or how to say it, torn between love and love as I have been before, as I have ever been before. I barely tell the one goodnight, and do not tell the other, and think I crawl up the bed to another night of staring at the wall fixedly...when I fall asleep.

But...there's a difference. Oh, there's a difference.

tried to take it all away
learn her freedom
just inside a day,
and find her soul to find there fears are laid...

For I wake the next morning, throat too clogged to scream, but the scream wanting to emerge with each shaking breath. The bones and bloody flesh full-borne, the twisting in the wind, despair in my wide eyes as I cling to the bedding.

My first nightmare...in months.

gold and silver rings and stones,
dances slowly off the moon,
no one else could know, she stands alone...
sleeping dreams will reach for her,
she can not say the words they need--

It doesn't matter what I dreamt. It doesn't, in the fullness of all things what I dreamt is meaningless. It is that I dreamt. More, it is that I dreamt of horror and pain, loss and fear, eviscerated visions and torture behind my eyes.

When I have been protected--from myself, from whatever in me fosters such things to stagger into conscious light--by him.

The only thing in my life that changed...has changed again.

ocean gypsy of the moon,
the sun has made a thousand nights for you to hold...
ocean gypsy, where are you?
the shadows followed by the stars have turned to gold...
turned to gold...

I pick over the shreds of the entry I'd planned to make, another diatribe against the train wreck, and it's meaningless now, just words, empty posturing. This is real. This is the danger. Not some allegorical vision of a possible collapse.

One tells me, it's a test. One tells me it lifts when he's home. But he's not sure, yet, whether he wants it to end.

And the other says, then tell him there's no issue. We're just friends, now. Resolve things with him. I'll still be here...if there's room for me.

And there may not be, he thinks.

And I go to bed, doubts circling inside, unsure which way to turn...

--and the weapons come out and the weapons go in and the weapons do not come out again--

...and I wake, shaking. I touch hands to my face and realize I'm crying.

then she met a hollow soul,
filled him with her light and was consoled,
she was the moon and he the sun was gold...
eyes were blinded with his light...
the sun she gave reflected back the night
the moon was waning almost out of sight...

I had so hoped the nightmares were gone...

This is more than allegory. This is more than pretty broken words and the careful described anatomies of past pain. This is more than nostalgia, more than reflection.

These are the patterns I'd been accustomed to, the patterns I'd happily left behind--shadow creature, formed of nightmares and choked-back screams, all the horrors I can't remember, all the ones I can, trapped with me behind my eyes.

This is my life. Full circle stop and we're here again.

something gone within her eyes,
her fingers, lifeless, stroked the sand,
her battered soul was lost,
she was abandoned...

Was it me? Did I bring them back? I have sought my sleep before, more than once, more than a handful of times, doubting I was making the right decision, doubting my path.

But I never doubted him before...and maybe that, that, is the difference.

And I sit, shaking, feeling tender and raw and half-formed, thrust up into the light half-made, sick to my soul with what my mind does when it's set free. And it's all back again.

This won't be the last one.

I have to find a way to resolve this, now.

Because this? Could be the real train wreck.

(Lyrics taken from Blackmore's Night, their song, "Ocean Gypsy".)

stay here in this moment, for all the rest of time

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
While you're far away dreaming...

He kisses me like I'm the only source of oxygen for him, and he must keep breathing me in. I hold him like I never want to stop touching him. He keeps me awake far too late at night. I keep him awake too.

Last night, I told him I had to sleep at two in the morning. He agreed. We still kept kissing, and talking in soft voices, until four, when I finally spun away, wrapped the blankets around my head, and fell into dreams of him.

I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure...

This is happening far too fast. And the tragic thing for me is, I have a memory of telling someone, "I don't move this fast, it's not me..." I told that one those words, more than once, and fell anyway. Maybe it was unavoidable, but the tragedy that followed is still searing my soul.

This, now, is happening far too fast. And every great love contains the seeds for great ruination, I know this full well. Taking the risk means risking pain as well as joy, and I have to take the risk anyway.

But it's making me breathless, how fast we went from "he looks interesting" to "never want to let him go"...

Lying close to you feeling your heart beating
And I'm wondering what you're dreaming
Wondering if it's me you're seeing

He asks me to dream of him and I do. He asks me what I dreamt and I blush. He speaks to me, soft voice in the back of my mind, for hours. What I've done, what he's doing, costumes he created, furniture I'm building. What I've learned. Philosophy. Humor.

Kisses...

Don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you baby
And I don't want to miss a thing

Always comes back to kisses. And holding each other. Close across the miles, the scent of his hair everpresent, the movement of his hands across my skin, the gentle smiles tossed my way, the tenderness in his fingertips.

I don't move this fast. The train wreck's speeding up. Does it matter that it's not on fire anymore?

I don't want to miss one smile
I don't want to miss one kiss
I just want to be with you
Right here with you, just like this
I just want to hold you close

And all my otherloves, gathered around me, and the questions in my eyes...is it just the flush of the new? Is it just infatuation? Adult-sized crush imbued with rampant kitten hormones...is that all it is?

I think my rational mind would love to say yes, dismiss this, dismiss him, just a fling, just a moment, lovely but soon will fade...

...but I don't think it is. This has time and care and intensity writ large across its structure. This has breathless wonder built into the bones of it. This is...

...bigger than a fling.

Don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
I don't want to miss a thing...

He kisses me, and I drown in sensation. He touches me and I'm happy. He's glad to see me and I purr. And less of me is scared at this, than the scared parts want there to be.

Five days in and I panic, he plays my body like his best-loved harp, and my inner control freak rises to the surface, wanting to wrest such knowledge from him. Can't go back, I know this well, but suddenly, it's too much, it's too much that he knows so much, too much that I've told him so much, and all because...

...the scared parts want this to be momentary. Because they want no more pain. And I do understand, I do, but understanding doesn't change anything.

Not now. Not after he knows. Not after I've handed him the keys to me, on the small silver plate, offering made to want and curiosity. Not after he's tested my limits, found how and when and where I fall shuddering to the ground, reaching for him, needy, desperate. Not after falling so far, so fast, and still not striking the cold still earth below.

...but I fear. Still, I fear. And I won't say I love him. Too soon, too far, too fast. I can't speak.

So the dance goes on...

(Lyrics are taken from Aerosmith's "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing")

and you will be my ain true love

Three ayem, and up again, circling in grey drenched with shadow. I could live without being up. The dream shouldn't have so much of an impact, as simple as it was.

It was just...standing on the windswept plain. Tall grasses moving, creating their own sussurance of whispered sound. And all around me, standing beside me, a loose circle of everyone I've loved here.

Everyone.

There were a lot of people there.

It must be admitted, I love a lot of people. There were those standing there who've known I loved them, who always knew. There were those standing there who to this day don't know. There were those who've touched me, held me, skin to skin, in the laughing dark, and those who've never even held me close, clothed or otherwise.

And the unspoken question moving sluggishly through the twilight air was..."Who is your one true love?"

And not having an answer woke me up, heart in my throat.

Thing is, I used to have one. I think that's part of the problem. While I always loved many, from the moment I was in this world longer than a few days, there was one who had as much of my attention as I could spare. There was one who got every evening I could give.

Past a certain point, it was a known fact--I'd be found with the vampire princeling. No one else had claim. My days were my own, and only occasionally spent with him, but my evenings were his. Whether we stayed in, whether we went out, my time was his.

He was the first to ask me to live with him, in this place. I'm learning that never goes well. But for a while, I was happily domestic, decorating the little Duchamp house we shared, draping it in sheer burgundy gauze, and strewing multicolored Kurdish rugs on the stone floors, finding a carved fireplace I liked. I asked a friend to help edit the animations in a cuddle bed I owned, so that--if nothing else--my vampire could hold me and I'd be in the proper places, instead of my insane lack of height throwing them off.



And then he died, and...I went a little mad over it, and...he returned, called back to this life by his clan, and...he cast me aside. Though it wasn't that simple. I bear my own responsibility for his leaving, because...when he returned, I was so angry with him, so...I had done everything I could to take back my life, to recreate myself without him, to be my own creature, no longer his...I honestly never expected his clan to reanimate him, return him to the world.

And I was angry that they did, not overjoyed. I was hurt that he returned, not blissful. That part was my fault. I bear part of the responsibility for driving him away.

Don't mistake me. I blame him plenty for casting me aside. But I am not blameless, either.

After that, I think...I haven't really trusted anyone who loves me. Oh, to a point, to a certain level, but...I'm waiting for it now, the leaving. And everyone bears the brunt of that mistrust.

The demon, now, the one who reminded me so much of the lost princeling. He never really had a chance, and I mourn over that. He became my client, and then my pet, and then--over my objections--my fiance, and would have become husband had he not disappeared from all contact points I had. I gave him a month, gone from my side, and then...I felt I had no choice but to sever the agreement. To tell him, in all ways that I could, that I would not be marrying him, because I could not marry someone who was as scarce as snow in summer.

Of course, three days after that decision, he returned, and apologized, and wanted everything back...but I'd once more come to that place of leaving, and...hurt or pride or willfulness, I could not go back on what I'd said to him.



Somewhen between the princeling and the demon in scarlet, comes the neko lad, who to this day has the bulk of my trust. But there have been problems even with him. When I accepted the demon's proposal, he was a close part of my life, and he...he went mad, for a bit, too. And I didn't know until much later that he'd lost his mind to that extent because he had wished to propose.

In fact, while I was still deciding on the demon's fate, still bound by my agreement to him, to marry...my neko proposed, for the first time.

It should be a joyous event when someone proposes to you. It should fill your soul with light, fill your heart with song, create no word other than yes...if it's the right proposal, from the right one...the one true love, let us say. When the neko lad proposed, my heart sunk into shadow, my soul stopped its song, and my bones were laced with strychnine objections.

Of course, part of that intense response was that I still felt bound by the demon's asking, and I could not accept the neko until I'd decided what to do about the demon. The neko, for his part, was mortified--somehow, he'd gotten the idea that I'd already turned the demon down...

...and to this day, it still surprises the hell out of me that he asked at all. And apparently, I'm the only one who was surprised--my best friends, my chosen God, staff of the club, even the princeling--no one else was surprised at all. They'd been waiting for him to ask me.

Wish they'd let me know...



At this point, I'm weary of being left. I'm soulsick with seeing it coming. The lady talent who never fully committed, because I wouldn't stop seeing men. The playboy who very nearly told me goodbye...and was turned down in his own right, by the one he wished to marry. The great black cat who wished to be boyfriend, not client, and when I told him no, he never returned again. The brokenhearted lad who loved me until his first love returned to him; then he married her.

And the incubus...It's so difficult to tell with him. I think he loved me, as much as he was able to. But he was my quicksand. I lost so much of my integrity, my will, my nature, in loving him in return...I felt emotions I never thought I was capable of feeling...went willingly to places I never thought I'd visit...and for all the joy he gave me, there was also confusion and pain. And even with all the ground lost, I was still in tears when he bade me go. It was made worse a day later when he wanted to take back his words of leaving.

I'd be lying to myself if I said I was no longer attracted to him. I've struggled with this, told myself I'm over, I'm beyond, I'm far from him, and moving forward with my life...and I've been lying. The fact that he was standing next to me, in the dream, staring down with those burning eyes at my shoulder, tells me something in me still holds him close.

No one ever said you couldn't lie to yourself. Just wish I'd seen it sooner.



But past a certain point, it's about the damage, not the delight. And for all that he discarded me for the wrong reasons, I have to bear my own responsibility there, too--because I grew acquisitive, I grew selfish, I wanted more than he wanted to give, and that is not me, that is not my nature. Yet again, I ended it as much as he did, stunted the growth of joy, strangled it stillborn until his walking away seemed the best thing for both of us.

In the dream, the pressure of all their variegated gazes on me, the question circling through the air, brings me to my knees, gasping. Who is my one true love? And I kneel and shake my head, and shake my head, and shake my head. I can't say one name. The dream wants me to. And I can't, I just...can't.

Spite or fear or willful denial or...even brighter, more egalitarian philosophies I hold dear...I can't say one name into the twilight air. Oh, the pressure of a name...but I can't.

It's what keeps me from fully committing to a marriage. It's what keeps me from fully committing to one single soul in the world. It's what holds me back, has always held me back. I cannot accede to this.

But with all their eyes on me, my only recourse is to bow my head and stay silent. Because anything I say in that moment, in the dream...would be the wrong answer.

Because no answer in that moment would be right.

the same old dream appears

I wake, heart clenched in my chest, into grey waiting. Late or early, eyes unseeing, it doesn't seem to matter. I've had that dream again. I resent my brain anew for having it. It drives me from sleep and into stark staring head-shaking denial, into controlled and exercised breathing, telling myself, it was a dream. It was just a dream.

and when October goes
the snow begins to fly
above the smoky roofs
I watch the planes go by

In it, I've returned to my life and my ways, and I'm standing in the place I call home, still, wondering who to inform first. And my strong neko lad--beloved, adored, the man I've named primary to all I am and all I do in this place--comes by. I hold him, and, as a matter of course, flip up his profile. It's more ingrained than habit at this point, it's become my second nature, pure driving instinct.

And in the dream, there's a name in his partner field. And it's not mine.

the children running home
beneath a twilight sky
oh, for the fun of them
when I was one of them...

Partner, I think. Partner. He's gotten married. While I was trapped in the grey spaces, pinned into ether by forces I could not control.

I cannot do other than ask; and I cannot do other than listen, when he says yes, he married. During the week I was gone.

Because that's the other part of the pain in this dream, that my life is spinning out without me, that things are changing, that I can't be a part of the world I love. I know how fast the world moves when I'm there. This week, I have not been able to be there.

and when October goes
the same old dream appears
and you are in my arms
to share the happy years

I feel...breathless. I feel my heart thudding, leaden, in my chest. I stare at him and ask--it must be asked--what that means, to him, for us.

He looks away.

He begins to explain, haltingly, that he was asked, and he would have told me, but for that I was gone...and he knew I'd return, but he had to be honest, about us, about what we meant to each other, and about what this other, this name in his profile, meant to him.

I understand all of it. It makes nothing easier, in this dream.

I turn my head away
to hide the helpless tears
oh, how I hate to see October go

And now I'm the one looking down, and I begin to slowly explain...I am who I am, I have never pretended to be other than I am, but...marriage. It is the reason I've refused him twice, when he's asked me previously to pair with him. Were he to share my view on marriage, it might be an entirely different thing, but...he does not, and I would not ask to change that, because...I've watched him alter so much for me. It would...injure something in me, I think, were he to try to alter to that extent. I'm fairly sure it would injure something in him.

Marriage? To me, even with my interpretations, it's vital, it's necessary, it must be preserved. With one exception, when someone I know, when someone I care for, has gotten married, I've stood aside. I've tried my best not to interfere, not to violate the marriage bond.

In some cases it's been a thing of great difficulty for me, and even now, I struggle with it. If you are paired with me, so goes my thinking...and you choose to marry someone else...I cannot then choose to remain with you. It is unfair to your choice, unfair to your marriage, profoundly unfair to your partner. I cannot be that person, for the most part. It...hurts too much, most of the time.

and when October goes
the same old dream appears
and you are in my arms
to share the happy years

And I ask again. What this means for us. Whether this means there is an us. And I listen as he explains, that he will always care for me, he will remain my guardian and defender, he will always be my friend...I don't have the heart, the air to carry the words, to say to him, stop. Stop. I have heard this before.

It's what I know he would say anyway.

I have to ask again, my own questions, answers known before I speak, but...in the dream, I have to. I have to have these things said.

"Primary," I whisper. I look up, my eyes brimming with tears I'm fighting not to shed. "So now, I should...change that? Because you...won't be, any more?"

"Ayy, grrl," he whispers, and draws me close again, and I fight my body to wakefulness, preferring grey nothing to continuation, to hearing him say goodbye.

It's what happened the first time I had this dream. I let it play out, so I know where it would go. It bothers me that my brain saw the need to have it twice.

I turn my head away
to hide the helpless tears
oh, how I hate to see October go...

And what does it mean to the larger sense of who I am, of what I do? Some of my otherloves, they hold similar views. Were I to get married, were I to accept the third proposal from my neko--that part of me is convinced is coming--I will lose them. As utterly, as completely, as this dream tells me I'd lose him, had he actually chosen another to wed.

And I am left on the far shore, gasping in the space between, needing to think all these issues through again, remake my choices, consider every angle. Is keeping him worth losing the others? Is accepting his wedding proposal the death knell for my chosen occupation? Could I conform to his idea of marriage, which is one man, one woman, pairbonded and allowing no others?

He says no, he says it would not be this way, but...he also says yes, that this is his concept of marriage, and...could I be that wife to his husband? Could I hold to the monogamist's view of fidelity? Or would I be doomed from the start?

I should be over it now, I know
it doesn't matter much how old I grow...

In a perfect society, all the forms of polyamory--polysexuality, polyfidelity, triad or quatrad monogamy, all the rest--would be accepted and understood. We do not have a perfect society.

But more, part of the problem is that I keep falling for, becoming involved with, monogamists. I proposed the questionnaire, and did write the card, even though I haven't handed it out. Something in me twitches at the thought--it seems so rude to ask. Yet...if I don't ask, I find myself here again, with someone else--torn in that gulf of perception between the concept of loving the other, and of loving many others. It doesn't seem to be something I can ask someone else to consider, until it looks as if I am growing serious. And if I'm growing serious, it becomes difficult, if not outright impossible, to pull away at that point, deny anything further.

As my brain says, it will be if he asks again. As my brain tells me, it will be if he marries another.

And worse, I'm left with the truly damning bit--when he asks again, and my brain tells me, over and again, it is a when, not an if--and I say no...will I lose him anyway? Three times said, three times denied, it has the air of charm about it, ritual, defined spellcraft made flesh and bone by word. Three times denied...would that be too much for him, then? Three times no, would that say to him I didn't want him, that I've been playing all along?

I don't play, in this sense. But part of me cannot, will not, say yes, as long as I'm sure our views on marriage differ, so extremely. Which means my brain is partially convinced I will lose him anyway, when this day comes.

I consider sleeping again, but it may be no use. I may be up and forced to drift in the grey spaces awake. I long to return to my place in the world, but the waiting has never been harder, with the dream behind my eyes.

I hate to see October go...


(lyrics are Barry Manilow's, from "When October Goes".)