So hard finding inspiration
I knew you'd find me crying
Tell those girls with rifles for minds
That their jokes don't make me laugh
They only make me feel like dying in an unguarded moment

So long long between mirages
I knew you'd find me drinking
Tell those men with horses for hearts
That their jibes don't make me bleed
They only make me feel like shrinking in an unguarded moment - The Church "The Unguarded Moment"

Soul in isolation
I can hear you breathing down the hall
Soul in isolation
I can hear you whisper through the walls
And if I had a mind to now
I could call to you
Or I could simply shut you out
No more would you cry, cry, cry
I give you my time to kill
But you'll never never break my will
Or I could sink a sleeping pill
And in the morning could be sleeping still
But most of you are much too ill
Way beyond a surgeon's skill
In bondage to a dollar bill
What more can you buy, buy, buy?
Oh, when you think on it,
When you think on it we're all souls in isolation
I'm alive in here I'm alive in here
I scream but you still don't hear
I'm alive in here I'm alive--turn on the light.
- The Chameleons "Soul in Isolation"

It's been a month now since she last contacted me. Finally it's sinking in that she really meant it when she said we were no more. She's going on with her life, and I should too. Still it's hard to take. I mean 2 years of being friends, then silence. Just as well I suppose. Recently she had stopped answered my questions. When I voiced my displeasure after asking a question 3 times and not getting an answer, she got angry. So I never bothered to ask anything again, or expect answers to questions I did stupidly ask. Silly, perhaps, but was it really that difficult to answer a simple question? or to tell me that she moved, address unknown? Found that out from one of her webpages. Probably didn't want to feel obligated to send an address. Just as well. She says she's too busy now, so I will no longer bother her. We used to email everyday, but then she started sending email with messages like "Crazy busy today." She then apologized as if she wanted to get out of writing every day, and of course I told her she has to do what she has to do, so don't email me everyday. Then the notes came twice a week. Then once a week. Now complete silence. I mean... losing a lover is hard enough. Losing a friend who was dear to me though... someone I considered my best friend, that's much worse. Especially when it seems there is nothing I can do, nothing I can say, nothing that can be done to fix things. I mean I knew she was slipping from my grasp long before now, but the finality of things is still a shock. There's no going back now. For either of us. I feel useless. Very useless to everything and everyone. I know I'm to blame for most of it. I am. I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I am nothing. I remember the love we supposedly shared. God does it hurt. I hate that my mind files things like this away, just waiting to bring it on me at the precise moment I can't possibly deal with it. I don't mean to piss and moan about this, but I'm just trying to understand things. That's what I want... understanding. As much as I loved her and still do I have to stop drowning in sorrow and lift my head over the water to take a breath. I have to go on, for a few heartbeats anyway. At the same time, I must let her breathe. I can't smother or choke her anymore. She has her career dreams to think about. She also wants to spend time with her family and friends. A nice way of saying that I'm no longer considered a friend now I suppose. If she feels the need to talk, I will listen. But I am not counting on it ever happening. I have to go on now alone. Lonely is as lonely does. Lonely is an eyesore. Which is fine... I determined long ago I was going to go thru life solo. Be a perminent bachelor. But I guess I must learn not to feel needed. Stop the facade of being a "nice guy". It does me no good and nice guys are considered clingy, obsessive, creepy, passive-aggressive jerks. I've tried not to be a jerk, but I guess the more I try not to be one, the more I become one. I must get busy with my own pursuits. I must always have something going on and something to say. I must allow her to come and go as she pleases, as long as she allows me to do the same. I must learn that if I must wait, then I will wait. I must learn not to run with the pack. I must not depend on other people to make me "happy". I must not have to be reassured of interest in me. Or of love or need. I must listen with equal interest to worries and fears and small victories and bad jokes. I must not be strangled in jealousy. I must not be saddled with security or be clinging like a vine. I need to be some one who can ride shotgun, someone with whom to share secret weaknesses with. Actually I thought I was all of those things. I obviously thought wrong. I must learn not to make the mistakes I made this time and learn from them. Then maybe someday, after all of this, I will be "happy". Right...

The very worst place in the world is where she is right now.

I wrote the above in August. Now in March, I feel a little different about some things. She was sweet enough to send me a nice email which sorta detailed what she's been doing. I miss her. A lot. I miss her dog. I even miss the evil cat. Perhaps it's not enough to give a relationship another try, but at least I'd love to be at least a very good friend. Besides, it appears she has found someone else, and I wouldn't want to get in the way of her achieving real happiness. I severely doubt she'd want to pick things back up with me anyway. Of course, I'd prefer her happiness be with me, but I know it's not that simple, nor is the chance of that happening very high... try slim at very best. Meanwhile I've been trying to improve myself. Losing some weight, learning all the things I listed above, letting go of stuff I don't want or need and re-establishing links to people and things I haven't had links too in ages, meeting new people from the net, from school, everywhere. I'm a little happier now than I was in the summer. I feel as if I've grown up a bit in the process. But really who am I fooling? She basically wrote to say she was giving up her home on-line connection. Hopefulness aside, I know she's never going to get in contact with me again. I mean, why should she? She's too busy to care what I do or don't do. As much as I'd still love to be friends with her, I just have to put it in my mind that it's just not going to happen. The next time I expect to hear from her, if ever, is when she gets married or has a child. Cruel, but true. However... death now seems to follow me. Again. I don't know what it is with lent and Easter. Many people close to me, or who I know seem to die during this period. It's very distressing. Too bad one cannot give up death for lent... that is if I was Catholic. The saddest sight I know of is Jesus on the crucifix. I can't bear to watch it when an adeptation of the scene comes on TV. When I see a picture of it, I turn my head. I can't even watch in parody, like in "Monty Python's Life of Brian". Perhaps this is why my least favorite holiday is Easter. Nothing against Jesus coming back from the dead... and the beginning of Spring... and more importantly, baseball season. It's just all these deaths occuring around the same time.

And now here we are in June. She came to where we chatted many a time today. Not so much as a "hello" from her! How damned small can one get? It is now I finally get the message, if I didn't get it many a time already. The flame is dead now for good. I've tried to be your friend, I've wanted your friendship more than just about anything, I've tried being nice, but being nice, as always, gets me nowhere. You win Kate. Obviously you don't want or need my friendship so in essence I shall no longer care. Good riddance!

SADDEST POEM - Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.


And now here it is two days before y2k and there's no sentimental feelings about her at all. Just this lingering sadness that I no longer have her friendship.

"This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad." - Ps. 118:24


Click to see Edvard Munch's "The Scream" in full size.

"I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no men or women ought to feel." - Richard Hanney "The 39 Steps"



Anyway... another thing I'm writing about, not to illicit sympathy, but to find understanding. A long while back I was going with this woman who I greatly loved. We went out a good 2+ years and I picked up on signals that if I were to ask her to marry me, she would. Or so I thought anyway. I bought an engagement ring with the expressed desire to ask her to take my hand in marriage. I was to do so when we went out to dinner, during dessert. Everything went well, when about ten minutes or so before I was to pop the question, she tells me we have to talk. She then tells me about her infidelity. Not once, but twice. I was so crestfallen, so angry, so embarrassed that I ran out of the restaurant, never to return. There's no description for the kind of hurt I felt. It just felt like someone kicking my chest nonstop. Two months later, somehow she found out what my intentions were, and why I left the way I did. Anyway, she wanted to talk to me. She wondered if the "engagement" was on, she would say yes. I told her no way would I want to be married or have anything to do with her. It was then the calls started. She would normally be drunk on the other line, pleading with me to take her back, how I was better than the men she was going out with. I listened for as long as I could stand it. Is it any wonder I would prefer to live life alone? After a long time of this... I foolishly relented. I had long since sold the ring but I wanted to see if things could be the way they were. Answer? A resounding NO! But then, what did I really expect? She moaned how I wasn't as good in bed as I once was. I guess she'd become quite the expert. She was pissed I didn't offer her a ring right away. Why should I have? I still couldn't trust her. There were other things in the mix as well. So a month like this and it all unravelled ungloriously. She now has moved to another state and we don't speak to one another. I still have scars from this, but I like to think I've learned from all of this. That's all something like this is good for, sad to say. I don't even think of her anymore, so it must mean I'm totally over her. One can hope anyway.

At the all night party
Standing in the corner
I am watching you
Drink in my hand
I wish it were you instead
At the all night party
You are dancing
I am watching you
My hands are empty
I dance to your direction
I wish I'd never come here
To the all night party
I wish that I were miles away
In my hand I hold empty desires
In my hand an emptying glass
Standing in the corner
At the all night party
- Anne Clark "All Night Party"


"No miracles will come from your dimestore charms
Cause all the treasures are gone
and the people went home" - Prisonshake "Fairfield Avenue Serenade"

"Can you tell me why in the city skies are always grey?
Can you tell me why the sun won't shine on my house today?
It's always cold outside
Like never before I feel the cold." - My Dad Is Dead "Talk To The Weatherman"

"There's a black cloud rolling over my house
What does it mean?
What does it signify?
Think it's danger coming my way
Think I'll just stay inside
HOLD ON TO THE MEMORIES!!!" - My Dad Is Dead "Black Cloud"

"He greets the neighbors with firm handshakes and an empty stare
He smiles and shakes his head to ward off conversation
He lives a quiet life and nobody dislikes him" - My Dad Is Dead "The Quiet Man"

"I too have sung death's praises
but I'm not gonna sing that song anymore
cause I found out what living's all about
and it's Life! Life!
Life is the only thing worth living for!" - Flipper "Life"

"He's lost in the wilderness
He's lost in bitterness" - James Brown "It's A Man's Man's Man's World"

"It may come today
it may come tommorrow
but it's for sure
I ain't got nothin' but sorrow" - Four Tops "Standing In The Shadows of Love"

Nothin' I do don't seem to work
it only seems to make matters worse" - Rolling Stones "19th Nervous Breakdown"

"I walk in shadows, searching for light
cold and alone, no comfort in sight" - Jimmy Ruffin "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"

It's a mean old world
's hard livin' by yourself
can't get the one you lovin'
have to use somebody else" - Little Walter "Mean Old World"

"I'm a dumbhead, dumbhead...
won't someone beat my head against the wall?" - Ginny Arnell "Dumbhead"

how can I tell you I need you to understand.
when you seem so cold,
so cold that it's way out of hand.
I'm struggling for a connection
but you don't look way
it seems like we've grown short on things to say

and when we're apart
my life feels like a dream
I can't distinguish between where I am
and where I've been
and the telephone is useless
when the threads begin to fray,
it seems like we've grown short on things to say

if I could hold you now
I'd be speaking to you with my hands
but it seems like the force which willed us here
had other plans
well I'm struggling for a connection
but you don't look my way
and it seems like we've grown short on things to say

Well I pray that the morning sun
will burn these feelings away
and that I can step out in a new scene
like a man in a play
a scene where all will be forgotten
the anger and dismay
and then we'll have so many things to say
- Peter Himmelman "Things to Say"

At this very moment I just wish I were dead. I just can't cope anymore. - Ian Curtis from the suicide note.

I guess I'll go to hell or I'll rot here in this cell
But who taught who the cold hard facts of life?
- Porter Wagonner "Cold Hard Facts of Life"

You think I'm psycho, don't you mama?
I didn't mean to break your cup - Jack Kittel "Psycho"

A lonely heart grows cold and old - Buddy Holly "Think It Over"

There'll be good times ahead for me and you
But we can't stay together - doncha feel it too?
Still I'm glad for all we had and how I once loved you
- Carole King "It's Too Late"

"Mars Needs Women" - M/A/R/R/S "Pump Up Th Volume"
"So does Cleveland!" - reply to the above by the patrons of the Nine of Clubs

The truth is that I've been too considerate and so became unintentionally cruel - Sara in "Wild Strawberries"

PL : "A song about a chick who never takes her shades off."
DT : "That's the problem."
[Audience comment]
PL : "Thank you."
DT : "He's actually kind of nuts... it's so dark up here."
PL : "Always dark when things are happening..."
- Peter Laughner and David Thomas onstage with Rocket From The Tombs, 1975