11.18.2002 - 10:22 a.m.

Written Saturday night:

In some ways I miss sleeping with a person, although it is never a pure feeling. There is always a shadow of those too-narrow beds, sleeping with one shoulder sunk in the crack against the wall. There is always the memory of tolerance, of doing a thing because it was supposed to feel good and not because it actually did.

I look back at the person I was then, and I can�t regret. There is nothing to change. I can only look back with what is almost amusement, the way you look at a child who reaches for a cookie jar that is too high. It is almost a fond looking back. I was young. I didn�t know the price of things, and that innocence allowed me to act in ways I would never consider now.

And none of this is relevant at all, except to the extent that it haunts me.

I�m reading Octavia Butler's Lilith�s Brood, which is not good bedtime fare. I mean, it is fantastic, absolutely beautiful, but so far it is also a study in everything I have ever feared. This is how it comes to be three in the morning as I write this�but actually I think I will attempt bed again. I just couldn�t sleep until I was sure the �haunted� line would be here when I woke up the next day.

-stonebridge

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