Know Way, Knowhere, Know How (5/26/09 Tuesday)

The curls were happening yesterday, but nothing else was, really, at the cookout. I did manage to recapture some of my newfound conversational skills--drawing people out despite my actual relative disinterest in them--but there was no flirting to be done, no women I felt that kind of interest in or attraction to. To be back in Bellevue, though, was to be in an old comfort zone, the proximity to Stir Crazy (two blocks) notwithstanding. A place you lived for ten years, where you lived with a lot of other people your age for that long, is not easily gotten out of your system. I've lived in this apartment in the West End (surburbia) for seven years but I don't know anyone here and certainly haven't grown up with anyone here. Michelle upstairs was here when I moved in. I don't know her last name or what she does. I know that she leaves for work at twenty of eight, that she likes her gospel radio loud and that she's had sex over my head a few times in the past couple months. I lived in the Carytown area for the twelve years between Bellevue and here and made no friends or even connections. Though I'm drawn down there frequently, my nostalgic fondness for the place is drawn solely from familiarity of the streets and alleys I covered on foot and bike every day. There is no one there to recognize me. There was at least that at the cookout.

I have been dreaming about work at night and have been spending the days feeling guilty. The dreams, as nearly all my dreams do, have taken place in a gray half-darkness, but an element of stormy weather has been added. Julie was only in the first dream, in which I roll up through mud on my bike to the back door of work, though its not the library but, seemingly, a fast-food restaurant. I'm fumbling with my keys, trying one after another in the bike lock, when Julie comes out of the door on my left, fights through a throng, and brushes my back with her arm to come to the polite aid of a coworker. Presently, she brushes me again on her way back inside. I consider (in my dream) the contact significant, though not in a positive way, seeing as she didn't acknowledge me in any way. In actuality, we have only made physical contact twice, lightly and accidentally. In another dream, I was attempting, against the advice of other coworkers, to get to work. Though it was not raining, the river to my left was in angry, muddy spate, and though it had washed away much of the bank, the sidewalk was still intact, and I figured it would stay so. But a sudden rush of water, as if from a broken dike, poured across the path from my right and behind me. I looked ahead and upon seeing the way similarly blocked, attempted to return, but the rushing water swept my feet from the sidewalk, at which I clawed for new purchase. I did not panic but gave in to my certain death without fear or regret, and was swept into another dream.

I don't know where the guilt comes from or is about, and I'm not even convinced it's guilt. It feels like something I've always called "guilt," but what I think it is is a feeling that I'm not doing enough for myself to get where I think I belong. What am I doing toward getting that book written? What am I doing, even, toward getting this apartment clean? I walked out of work Thursday night intent only on getting down to Carytown and finishing Miss Marjoribanks during the next ten days. Why do I feel I should have set loftier goals? The word "occupation" as it applies to a job has taken on a new depth of meaning: It occupies my time, keeping me from loose ends. Ironic, that these "better things" I have to do besides work aren't enough to occupy me as well as the work does. There are plenty better things to do, but work is easier. I get paid for it, for a start. Is there no other motivation that is good enough to do the better things? What does it take to move from "easy" to "rewarding"? When I'm not working, easy is reading, doing some sudoku and writing some, maybe watching a DVD. Is this my life? Is this the road, with barbed-wire-topped walls, to the end of my days? What breaks the wall, severs the wire? Not guilt, but more than desire. Desire I have. What don't I have, what am I not using, that gets me to rewarding? More than curls and dreams.