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My oldest friend and my newest have fallen in love. Not with each other. With newly met others. Head over heels, destiny. They both tell me of how they thought it wouldn’t happen, that they are just happy to be with the person, that all of a sudden it’s all so easy and so right. They are aliens. I squint at them, and try and figure out if they are for real, or if it is just a surge of hormones. Or if there really is hope for the old and the odd. I feel kicked in the stomach by love of late. Like I finally opened the door a crack and a hurricane rolled in. It used to be safe, and I’m trying to remind myself that I don’t want safe anymore, that I want to be wide open, to feel everything. But I do want sanity. And I want someone who wants me just as much as I want him. No more arguing about the basics.

There was an ant invasion this AM. A thick line between a crack in the floor and the garbage. I’ve become somewhat inured. I took out the garbage and hosed down the can. And waited. The thing about ants is that they quickly disappate. Their communications is rather amazing. I can see how people are fascinated with them. Sometimes you see one wandering around, looking totally purposeless. But should a purpose be found, the others will show up en masse. A river of ants will flow. Removing the purpose and the flow subsides.

I’ve heard more than one person tell me that reading A Cricket in Times Square was motivation to move to New York. There’s a cricket in my bathroom. Not a literary one, but one that might leap into the air, directly at my face, should I come too near. Should I skip brushing my teeth? It’s so wild here. There was a possum Wendy’s yard. I think possi are dangerous, so I didn’t go look, but I’m told it was there, just a few feet from her back door.

My hair is smoky. But not from a bar, or even, indeed, cigarette smoke. Rather from a fire, a campfire, a campfire in the middle of a cornfield in downtown los angeles. Debra invited me to a lecture on permaculture, and we sat on a platform overlooking the cornfield, with the skyscrapers just beyond, while the super quiet metro hummed by. It was so striking and beautiful. When we stepped into the cornfield itself the temperature dropped. The air changed. We walked through it–a half mile–and arrived at the fire pit. Where wine and cheese were served, naturally. A small crowd, filled with the usual suspects, plus a dose of diversity. I couldn’t get enough of how beautiful it was. The thing that gets me about this city is what is within it. There are such big spaces to do big things. Runyun canyon. The cornfield.

“…when you need to make a decision, in you work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.” from Bird by Bird, Lamott of course.

I have been at the computer practically all day. I had a big list of things to do yesterday, and they all got shifted to today. Emailing, editing. Reading. My eyes are blurry and my wrists hurt. I can’t believe I used to do this all day every day. I did have a bigger screen, but still.

I did go to the farmer’s market, so I do have loads and loads of yummy fruits and vegetables. I find that comforting somehow, even though all I really want to eat is kettle corn.

I didn’t realize that tomorrow is a holiday. Annoying a little, because I’m not sure if anything will be open. It’s amazing how busy it is to be not busy.

Tomorrow is a double depot day–home and office. Normally I try and avoid home depot, but there’s a tool I want to use, and apparently they take returns even for used tools, so if it turns out I don’t need it as much as I think I do I can take it back. I’m going to make another set of plywood boxes. And I need a printer/faxer.

I emailed my old feng shui teacher today, to enquire about starting up again. I dropped out so that I could afford to be in therapy–it was almost exactly the same amount each month. I’m hoping that I can do both again. My finances are a bit weird at the moment, but I don’t want to live in poverty, so I’m trying to spend where it makes sense. And I think I can at least do enough consultations out here to pay for the teachings.

I’m feeling open these days. A little excited, a little hopeful. It’s a strange feeling. A feeling that the universe may be benevolent after all.

The plane isn’t crashing.

I was thinking tonight that I am just like a snail. All hard and swirly on the outside, all vulnerable slug on the inside. Just a tiny crack and a sprinkle of salt and I start falling apart.

I’m happy for my friends in love. I love them and it makes me hopeful. But when something goes wrong I also get that schadenfreude (spelling! spelling!). It’s wanting to feel less alone, even if it is in a community of loss.

Reading Anne Lamott helps so much. She’s so neurotic and cynical and yet filled with faith and hope. She fills her god-sized hole with god. I’m so full of holes at the moment. I’ve got a partner-sized hole, a house-sized hole, a child-sized hole, a creativity-sized hole, a travel-sized hole, etc. etc. Hopefully, with luck, time and a good therapist, some (or all!) of those holes will be with appropriately sized pieces. I’ve also got a huge god-sized hole, and only god can fill it. When I talked about looking for god, about wanting to have faith in my life, my father literally turned away from me at the dinner table. He’s so disdainful and dismissive. I think he would find me even more of a disappointment if I found a faith and practice that worked for me. It would be a sign of weakness, of going backwards rather than forwards. I read today (in Operating Instructions) something that Marianne Williamson said to her mother–that if she had two lives to live she would give one to her mother, but she only had the one, so she had to live it her own way. One of the other things that I love about reading Lamott is that she passes along so many great moments from other writers, it almost makes me want to read them.

I know that a relationship isn’t going to fix me. I’m not looking to get fixed in that way. But there’s a real difference between life with a partner and life without. They both can be meaningful, but they’re radically different. In my teens and twenties and into my thirties I didn’t crave partnership. I liked being in love just fine, but I wasn’t that bothered about the long term possibilities. I liked the beginnings of relationships better than the endings, but the endings didn’t slay me. When something was over I walked away. I probably spent just as much time single as I did with a boyfriend. But it feels different now. I’m aware that all I want to do, and how much of it I don’t want to do alone. I don’t want to buy and furnish a home just for me. I don’t want to travel alone. I don’t want to spend holidays alone. I don’t want to have a child alone, unless I have the means to support myself without handing over a baby to a caretaker.

I like the place I’m living now, but it’s just camping out. Furnished in the nomadic style. If I’m on my own there’s no reason to stay put. If I’m on my own I want the benefits of travelling light–the chance to try somewhere new, even if it is just another neighborhhood. But it could be another city, another country.

I don’t feel dateable. My recent experience in the land of love has left me feeling loveable but not partnerable, and if it’s not about partnership there’s no point to dating. I’m not interested in casual. I never really have been. I’ve never dated. I’ve always just met someone I wanted to be with and then been with them until it was over.

I’m a cliche. I’m not comfortable in my aging body–I can’t imagine anyone being attracted to me that doesn’t love me already. I don’t like the skin I’m in. I don’t believe that there are many out there who are comfortable with aging. Why date someone old when you can have someone young?

I’ve been back in LA for a week. I still feel like I’m camping out. A lovely friend of Tsia’s came and built me a bed. So at least I’m not on a mattress on the floor. I don’t feel settled enough to start looking for real furniture, but I’m loathe to go the Ikea route. If only I had a finishing nail gun…

So I continue to read Anne Lamott (I call her Annie in my head). Today I found this:

“I heard Marianne Williamson say once that when you ask God into your life, you think he or she is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture and that everything needs just a little cleaning–and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch.”

I can hear the creak of the wrecking ball chain.