sitting, tensely in the front seat of his new phatty car. trying not to pay attention to the traffic or the people around but afraid to pay too much attention to him, crying, half-hysterical at the reality of truly leaving home. unlike the last times we have left home, we always planned to return. this is not one of those times and the reality is stinging him like a wasp. i don’t really understand what is going through his head – i don’t know if i can. i mean, in two weeks time, i will be right back to the same desk that i was at two days ago, doing the same project i was doing then as well. how can i truly understand?? fact is, i can’t.

he just wants time to think. we turn on the drum and base, only to learn that his car battery is not equipped to power both the computer and the CD player (all strung in the front seat full of wires and mishap, connectors and speciality electronics, kinda like my brother’s room). thus, i am in windows, my favorite of all platforms, writing this letter to you, my diary of thoughts.

last year, when we crossed the country, conversation was intense and intriguing, crazy and bonding. i don’t know where to take conversation this year… especially since i need to actually produce work at the end of the trip. he is a peaceful boy, not particularly passionate about anything. while this is not necessarily bad, it means that conversation takes a bit of effort on my part and i feel as though i carry conversations and discussions. hmm.. need to work on that.

he points out a good thought – “did you ever think that we know each other so well that it is difficult to carry conversations?” he is right – we can easily talk about things that happen but there is not a lot that happens without one another. talking about opinions or world-views becomes pointless because we know the response that is about to come. ?have we melted into the same person? one friend told me that his relationship with his lover only works because they only see each other half the time (the rest of the time, he is away on business and when they come back they have plenty to talk about). is it a bad thing that conversation becomes challenging?

holy shit. what a wonderful weekend! friday afternoon, i was sitting at my computer, doing what i m always doing these days, not getting very far, quite frustrated wtih the multi-platformed reality and the unkind element of c++. suddenly, out of the blue, a friend from the past telephoned to ask if she may come down for the weekend. of course! i replied. then, 8 hours later, this gorgeous women who i had stalked during my freshman year of college appeared at my doorstep, looking fresh and lively, exuberant and excited. i almost melted.

although i hadn’t slept in 2 days, i stayed up until 5AM with her, flashing through our shared history and relating our current realities to one another. time stood still for us – there was no sense of distance in time or thought as we wpilled out and reonnected with facts. i was mentally orgasmic as we discussed politics, career thoughts, relationships and theories. those terms only make the conversations seem dry but they were anything but that. emotion flowed from our selves as we explored the intimacies of our own thoughts. even such boring topics as ‘career goals’ turned into lively discussions of women’s rights to abortion, what it means to have technology in one’s life and how medicine could be made accessible to all. going to bed that nite, i glowed with joy.

saturday, after a long walk around the campus that i am currently working at, we sat at the edge of the river, toes dipped in, continuing the intense conversations. at my house, another shared friend and her current !male! lover. we headed out to a nearbye pond for some fun skinny dipping. avoiding the fishermen, we jumped into the lake and tumbled around. afterwards, we headed for yummy sushi and a chill nite back at my place. this _entire_ day was supported by my homemade brownies, which were quite strong. our friend left and the two of us continued to talk and watch the movie already started. my lover headed towards bed.

flash of magic.

she and i started kissing and caressing, sharing ourselves with one another, playfully teasing our friendship to a new level. intensity was in the air as i caressed her cunt and found pleasure in the woman i had craved for so many years, the woman i thought untouchable. what pleasure.

bedtime next, at least for me. my lover repeated what i had already done, a pleasure for him who had also been awed by her for so long.

girlie day. all three girls rejoined in the early afternoon for intense discussions and bonding that lasted 11 hours and two restaurants (and some travel). again, conversation could not be tamed and the communication was intense. it was quite appreciated. it cannot be described well but our mutual friend said it best – i talk about my male friends all the time because we go out and _do_ stuff, bizarre and meaningless; with my women friends, we do this – sit around all day and talk about intense stuff.

it had been two years since i had seen her last but it didn’t matter – our bond still existed and only flourished with real-time, real-space contact. close friends are everything.

bleh. bleh. blah.

that is how i feel today.

bleh.

i never know what to do about my blah moods. i dreamed all nite of being stuck in a cage, forced to reside there because i was a “freak of nature.” i woke up and it was past 1PM, indicating that i slept for 11 hours. no matter what i do, i cannot wake up after less than 10 hours. this is depressing because i so much want my body to be happy after 6-8 hours. but it isn’t. therefore, i will have to return to alarm clocks and the pain endured in the morning as a result.

so i got up, after dreaming of being caged, only to look out the window and observe grayness, devoid of summer happiness. although rain was happily spattering on the browned grass in the strip between the roads in front of my apartment. i flicked on cnn and learned nothing new. election shit has started and the only foreign news i can get is that which we have a monetary stake in. so that is not fun. i flicked off cnn.

i proceeded to eat 2 bowls of cereal, honey smacks, reminiscient of my times abroad where that was the only “junky” american cereal they sold in the grocers.

i walked to the postoffice only to be reminded that airborne express is a separate entity than the post office and therefore, the post office won’t accept airborn express packaged. on to the bank, only to learn that i did not have much money. this did not come as a surprise. walked back towards work, noting that i did not see anyone walking or riding a bike, only in cars on this dreary from-hell day. how depressing. i decided that i am definitely moving back to amsterdam when i get the chance. my other observation came screaming forward. people are fat in the states. i feel guilty recognizing that, almost as though by thinking that i am causing it. i forgot that when you eat like shit and don’t exercise, you are bound to become large. i just don’t eat. this flashed me back to a story that i had seen on cnn this morning. apparently, in beverly hills, you can inject wrinkles with certain types of poison, killing the nerves below them which allows the wrinkle to disappear, making you look younger. a new trend in the fashion-fiend city. i am a fashion fou-pas.

into my office, onto my computer, only to receive a request from a friend to check out his latest webpage: imood.com where you can put your emotion on a webpage for the world to see. “shitty” was not an option. i felt shitty. what a blechy society and culture. we only continue all of the horrors that our culture has started. they become engrained and we let them perpetuate.

i just want to be a hermit.

silly ole me never learns. i knew i would hate austin powers 2 and yet, like a dumbass, i agreed to see it. we saw it in one of those big indoor ritzy malls – the ones where people dress up to go to them. this did not help my mood. there were pretty fountains in the mall, as people walked between banana republic and tiffany’s to get the perfect outfit. i rolled my eyes in disgust. they stared at me in return. apparently, i don’t look like i belong there. figures.

anyhow, back to austin. mainstream movies have gotten unbearable these days. eek!!! this movie, its humor, was entirely based on gross-out. the whole point was to disgust the audience. and for some reason, this humors people!!! one character, “fat bastard”, was entiredly for the purpose of gross-out. why?? why??? blech. what was i thinking. i paid $8 to watch mainstream audiences be humored by filth while the guy behind me kicked me and i had to pee standing up because the bathroom was so filthy. and then, i couldn’t even get toilet paper to wipe myself. and that is lame next to the shit i had to watch on the screen!

art is such a wonderful thing! a good friend came over for the evening to work on her model for her summer class. we watched random movies and did art all evening. she worked on her model while i scultped random comic characters with “sculpt and bake” shit. also, i learned to paint with acryllic on a canvas and i made an itsy model of a computer (for this, i got mocked by my dear ole friend who loves to make fun of me.) ahh.. i feel so much more relaxed by this. art is such a good thing, such a wonderfully good thing.

i love my brother.

he is just so adorable and so precious and it is so much fun to watch him grow. ahh.. i just spent a nite with him, in the woods, appreciating how much i love him. he is just so cute!!

i have been so angry this week. i don’t quite know how to manage it. i didn’t want to write it up on my diary because i was afraid of thinking about what made me angry, letting the frustration flow onto paper, making it a document for my anger and frustration, a way of revealing to the world why i am so pissed. but, yet, i had to. i have tried other “positive outlets” this week but to no avail. i don’t know how to get advice on this and yet everyone tells me to go to a shrink, the last possible thing i would even consider doing. there is nothing i hate more than dealing with shrinks all the time. they drive me insane. literally.

so what is it? what is driving me nuts? it is quite simple – feeling powerless. i hate that feeling – knowing, truly, in my heart that something is inherently wrong and not being able to do anything to fix it. this drives me bezonkers. i cannot cope with this. i want to fix it, i want to fix the problem in our society, and yet i am powerless to do so.

sex is complicated. this was another lesson that everyone keeps trying to shove down my throat. frankly, i don’t think sex is that complicated but that society keeps telling us that it is so if we don’t make it complicated for ourselves, someone else will just to continue that attitude. what a pain in the ass.

well, as we know (thanks to foucault who i currently want to kill.. except that he is already dead)… anyhow, thanks to foucault, we know that power is a part of every relationship and every interaction, including mine. well, that is nice but what the fuck does it mean? does it mean that someone else can describe the power that they believe should exist in that relationship, regardless of the actual power relations that we have forged? does it mean that power relations can be stereotypes and labeled, just like that which they are describing? does it mean that a book can tell me how my relationships are managed because “that’s the way it always is”?

i know i know.. i am being damn ass vague (although i am certain that those who are reading this and actually know me understand every gripe that is not said but seethes from between the lines). unfortunately, i have this uncomforable feeling about talking about it.. talking about it seems like validifying it and i cannot. how can i put words to a situation where the words were created by the opressors? how can i define something in a way that is appropriate when what is appropriate can only be measured in emotions? why must these complications exist?

all i know is that i have once again been reminded of what true anger is.

remember how i told you about flirting with a waitress in a bar, being a punk with my cousin? well, the chick remembers me. you see, i was sitting in a public space in the big city that i am currently living in, reading the recent copy of ms. magazine (an aweful article about how men in india are using acid to burn faces of women who “wrong them” by not marrying them or letting them have second wives)…. anyhow, i was reading and she comes up to me. “remember me?” she asked. of course i remembered her. i grinned, half out of embarrassment for being completely sober and running into the woman that i flirted with in a drunken stupor and half for the fact that she remembered me.

i laughed for the rest of the nite.

later that evening, after mexican, 2 of my friends and i went to a local urban outfitters and purchased this book called all about me and wrote for 70 pages all the details about ourselves, from what we look for in a friend to our past to our dreams, to whether we prefer hot or cold. it was quite cute, although my one friend was less than appreciative because she said it reminded her of all of her faults.. that was sad.

i am having severe motivational issues. it is extremely dumb too. there is no reason for me not to be motivated but the main problem is that it is picky motivational issues. like, i am highly motivated to finish my project and to do the thinking.. i am just currently anti-implimentation. i really have no desire to actuall do it.. just to think about it. erg. this is not helping my productivity. i am awefully curious what is causing this because i am not quite sure.

to make matters worse, it is not just about my work or what society would call my work, but it is about everything. for example, sex. i am highly motivated to talk about and think about sex.. but i am really not in the mood to have any. me! this is me we are talking about. somehow, i am not motivated to have sex?!?!?! this is a problem (ask my lover who will say it is a BIG problem). i feel badly about this whole situation.. i want to figure out where my head is if it is not in real space.. just in theoretical space. very peculiar.

at least i am writing…

ah! last nite was so american raver nite. at 10 pm, jon and i met in a parking lot with a ton of other people to learn where the secret location of the party would be. once we got it, we started a caravan of cars out to the parking lot. there, we took a smaller shuttle of people to the edge of a road where they dropped us off and we ran into the woods. unfortunately, this was the wrong place and we ended up jumping back into the car and heading out for the “correct” place. all commando style of course. no talking, minimum headlights, etc. then, when dropped off at the correct place, we raced into the woods where “ninjas” picked us up with glow sticks and took us on a 1/4 mile hike through the woods to the sand dunes where the party was to be held. mind you, the location was determined by a satellite picture of the area, so we were pretty damn far away from civilization. frankly, i didn’t realize that this section of the country had such sand dunes, but sure enough!

it was so wonderful to be at an outdoor rave with so many friends and people that i know. blacklights, glow sticks, djs, drums… wonderful. noone was able to get drugs for the party so it was pretty dry. i danced, and chilled and talked with people all nite. most of my nite was actually spent with a friend who has graduated. he was one of those people in my years at school that gives me a chill vibe ALWAYS. anyhow, for the first time, we actually sat down and talked … all nite. that was super cool!

morning reached and i couldn’t bare to stay up any longer so i went to the dorm room of a friend and begged her to let me take a shower and sleep. she laughed and let me in. i crashed all day in her room while my companion went off chasing girls and watching movies. it was exciting and playful!