(entries from my personal journal):

"I want to learn from Cormac McCarthy. The care and precision and detail with which he writes is a skill I hope to at least near in my own writing. I must then, practice more; become more decided and aware about the meaning of my thoughts as words.

He constantly leaves more to be wanted; allows there to be unanswered questions. And he uses words that force the reader to become committed to understanding his true meaning. In these ways he keeps the reader's attention. They can't have everything they want in the moment, and so they are always seeking more." (5/8/10)

That was my experience, at least, when reading The Road.
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"My head is spinning. It feels light and my eyes are not heavy, they droop with a strange sensation that I feel with the nearing of sleep. Total comfort and...

I couldn't explain to you what is happening to me. I feel sick with comfort. I feel like crying. out of joy. I think that's what it is, but now I am second guessing myself.

Today was wonderful. The market at Pisco overwhelmed me with curiosity fulfilled. Truth and reality. Honesty of life that I have been looking for. Its something about this place that makes me feel like I am a part of life.

But that's not just it.
I fear for this, for the future, as I know things change and seeming perfection fades, and sometimes only loneliness and confusion remain. But what is happening is something so new and unexpected.
[...]
And I feel like I am spinning wildly in this strange new reality where things are actual and emotions are manifest so differently. There is no way to put it into words. I feel almost like I am part of a new sort of life. I have felt similar before, but this has been so much stronger.

I am writing in circles but only because I have yet to find anyway to say this that would represent it truely. I have felt at certain points in the past few days that some emotions I thought I had known, were never experienced by me until now. What does that even mean? Of course I have known happiness and love before. Why does this feel so new and different?

I'm afraid. I'm really afraid to allow any of this to continue -- my joy. I'm so afraid." (5/8/10)

That was from when I first got to Pisco.
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"Had a bad thought last night. it was a momentary relapse. And maybe I wouldn't necessarily call it a 'bad' thought. I just remembered something that drove me a little insane in the darkness: nothing lasts.

It made me toss and turn for a while. I don't know what triggered it, but suddenly I was ready to give up on this happiness that has seemed to finally become a part of my life. I guess I remembered how temporary it can be; how things change; how everything ends.

Meet Me on the Equinox was the first song that played on my ipod this morning. Everything ends." (5/10/10)
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"I love too easily -- people and places. I love too much, and so I hurt.
Love
involves loss.
You can't expect to love and not lose
or live and not lose.
Its just the way it is.
So you can guard yourself and be miserable, or you can open yourself to love, and people, and places. At least then your misery will [more likely] be intermittant instead of constant, and often, it will be shared.

You will still be alone -- as alone as everyone else, because you are an entity, walking, breathing on your own. And your life, your breath isnt fully reliant on anothers. If their heart stops beating, yours may flutter, but it will go on.

But even if we are alone, we can find connection, however brief. Everything is brief. Everything ends." (5/29/10)
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"Freedom from love is a process.
I mean not to be free of love,
but to slowly be rid of its suffocating hold. Not permanantly, but just for each individual grasp.
I only mean that I fall in love, and I fall hard (whether for person, or place, or feeling). This love often manifests itself in ways that mimic addiction, and border obsession. Tony and Zach are key examples of this. Perhaps the way I love is unhealthy.
Along with love, I adopt a fear of what will happen if I 'lose' it (the object of my affection). But the truth is, we lose what we love.
Perhaps the way I love is not unhealthy. Perhaps it is just honest. (Though it could demonstrate a weakness in myself that I so deeply rely on such a connection).
It doesnt really matter what it means though; not really, not if I can't change it.

What I want to say is that loveing (for me) is consuming. Almost all-consuming (good or bad). But I also don't think I would have it any other way. To feel any less deeply would be to lose a sincere part of myself.

And other thing: I know that I CAN be free of it. Not completely because the love will always be in my heart, a part of my soul. But I can free myself of it enough that I can breathe, and enough that I can love again (even if I didnt think I would ever want to).

Tony. I love Tony, to this day, but it is distant now. I loved him as much as one could love another. For so long it was like fire inside of me. I thought that burning love would last forever; that it would consume me completely. It took years of being rejected, being far away, and returning, and being turned away, and returning, and being used. And finally, eventually, I was free of it.

Oh man, that felt...
well, the way it was forced upon me was painful, but the release was a relief.

Unfortunately, this coincided with... Zach.
So in my breath for air... in my deep inhale, expecting nothing too significant, nothing heavy, I choked on something more. Instead of breathing, instead of floating, I was suddenly drowning again --worse than I was before. I was completely inundated, knocked off guard, spun around, ...lost. The ground I was on was gone. The thoughts in my head were questioned. Everything I had done to climb up the wall was lost, and suddenly I was at the bottom again.

How could one person, a couple of nights, completely destroy 3 years of recovery? How could I let myself fall for it again?

I didn't know if I would surface. I didnt know if I would even be able to get off the bottom. I didnt even know if I wanted to. Part of me just wanted it to end.

What happened with Zach... it wasnt all about him. It was a trigger for the rest of my depression.

Meaninglessness
weakness
loss of love
existance of love?
existance of happiness?

But... now, even as I havent seen him for 2.5 months, I love him.
Except today, Ari and Cari posted pictures from their trip to the beach, and I didnt feel the pangs of despised love I thought I would upon seeing his image.
My mind, my dreams, only know what I knew of how I think I feel, based on what I felt before. So when I dream of walking up his steps to see him for the first time, my heart pounding, my chest tightening so much that it wakes me... it is based on how i felt before. Not on how I would feel now, if I actually saw him again.
When I saw his picture, obviously the love was there, but I realized that, however slowly, I will be released from the breathtaking hold that once possessed me about him. That lets me breathe easier, and I can hope that more time, with continued distance, will allow the progression of this release-- as it did with Tony. I anticipate moments of return, of relapse, but...

life has happened, and it allows us to love,
and it forces us to change.

And in change
we lose
and we gain."
(5/30/10)

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2 Poems...

"Lies slip off my tongue with the ease of butter across a heated pan
gliding,
melting,
leaving little trace.
And the truth simmers in tiny bubbles,
until they lift away in steam,
unseen."

"Rejection is a weighted pit at the bottom of my chest;
it sits alone and heavy, reminding me of my emptiness."
(5/30/10)
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These next ones are from the bus ride from Pisco (Ica) to Cuzco.


"From beginning to end, you don't understand it all. You get bits and pieces that you add to your collection.

But sometimes there are moments where it all comes together. Moments where you actually transcend the capacity of your mind. All of those moments they said would make you grow, combine into some sort of mashup of thoughts/emotions/actions that suddenly line up and form a new part of yourself that you can access. True growth. The manifestation of a bunch of nothings (and somethings) into something (and nothing) new."
--

"The stars.

They are there.
And you forget about them.
And then one day you look up
and they are still there."
(5/31/10)