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A marathon is about the mind’s ability to run the race more than the body’s. Once you become a marathoner, you carry around the knowledge that the mind is strong enough to (fill in the blank). So you train your body, you trust in your mind, and what? The third region is the wild card – the one where the fork ran away with the spoon or the cow jumped over the moon. And it’s all caught up in waking, dreaming, intoxicated states of being that further blurs what’s really going on.

Next try to communicate inertia –

in·er·tia n
1. inability or unwillingness to move or act
2. the property of a body by which it remains at rest or continues moving in a straight line unless acted upon by a directional force

Inability to act versus continuous motion being acted upon by a directional force. You realize if a small noun can have such varying interpretations what to make of a grown girl?

My friend S always tells me my mind is powerful and I can do anything I set it to – she channels my mother who raised me saying those exact words – and yet when the Muse comes the mind grows muddled, confused about the task at hand – given all this strength of mind, why can’t I string together actions, conversations, dreams, desires, daydreams to present a balanced story? The addition and substraction of characters in this story is mind numbing. The inability to know thyself is of major concern. I had a long talk with L about this as he consternates over K – what do I want? the endless question right? It’s just that simply wanting isn’t enough – I want (fill in the blank) is fraught with risk and reward each step.

I dreamt Max was a fox and stood on a mountain with three dogs. A man ripped his ear off and he came to me, wounded, and I watched him die. I woke up feeling wretched and groggy.

What’s missing is the groggy clarity that L said he had about K the other morning. I want to wake restful and know myself. Instead I awake restless most mornings and feel drawn to a directional force that I feel I have no control over. The Muse so forcefully presents itself but tells me I am the one in control of the situation – and yet I cannot write.

Woke up from a restless sleep with last night’s musing on my mind – hot and cold – at times it winds to a perfect pitch and then a nuance can derail the flow. So seldom to enter sleep with a smile but delightful when it does happen. Yesterday I laughed a lot, which fits neatly into the five year goal to be happy every day. Maybe the long term plan is about fitting the Muse in more regularly and maybe, just maybe, that is not too far fetched an idea.

Subtitle: Take the poison pill:
Mom called the adminstrator and told him she’d like to meet with him, she wants to narc on the ADON who spent three hours putting in hair extensions last Saturday instead of working. She also wants to point out all the twist that goes on in the courtyard by the nursing assistants. I told her to keep a low profile – besides it’s not hurting the patients. Oh indeed it is, she told me. They are not getting the level of care because no one is around to give it to them. It’s like a real bad day care center – warehoused children, warehoused elderly. I need to find the poison pill and keep it close for when my time comes.

L and I had a discussion today after playdate that is best to remember. His peeps are saying no way, not good about K except for me who appreciates what might be there but then again I’m a know nothing romantic but I told him what I know about living – sometimes your peeps give good advice and sometimes they don’t. When S and I met 15 years ago his roommate S told him this is not good, don’t do it, but S was jealous because he was older and had just two weeks before informed S that he would find a woman first and he was also looking at the circumstance instead of the whole picture and conventionally it was not stacking up.

At the same time, my peeps were like are you out of your mind, you are on #2 and only into it 5 months and what? But I couldn’t help remembering when I met G I felt it wasn’t something something but I was swept away with the threesome of G, N and I and it really hit me when we are off to Spain alone and I sat next to the guy named Dwayne and I was married to G that I realized I was a fool in the middle of a bad rhyme. But weeks before I had been at the Milan with the Trout and C and said I don’t think G has the depth to love me like I want to be loved and they were both like, oh you are so wrong. Uh, no I wasn’t.

S always tells me that I pay too much attention to my network and I say, hey, go get a network and then you can criticize.

Last week J said I’ve never seen it like this but I have and he has and isn’t that the glory of the years when you can say, huh, been there, done that, kind of know what to expect or at least no need for panic. Yet.

I made a bet with N that I would not smoke for the first six months of living in NO. Lost it. I made a pact with S that I would stop and have been dallying. My body rejects cigs and yet I want a puff here and there — always with a cocktail. K said to L before they hung up, “Baby, let’s quit smoking,” – wish he would, he’s kind of the last vestige that keeps me dallying.

I woke up before all of this to a worry about N and S and their gig together. N just lept out of a 12 year gig and is ready to scale the mountain, Steve just came down from the mountain and he wants a scaled down version of the mountain. In one sense they need each other, S has work and needs help, and N needs money to get out, but worried they both can’t articulate what they actually want from each other right now other than help, and bothered that old behaviour – S not considering others needs and N wanting to roar – might hurt a long term friendship until they both understand what it is they truly want or could give each other. Seems to me and what I said to S is what’s important is the architectural compatibility not the how do we work details. Know they will figure out their lives by themselves but where my worry comes in is S and I have experienced a closeness with the M’s – awful close to what we had with the H’s a few years back and that did not end well when T and S were at odds over what they each needed, wanted, etc from work. We’ve circled back and our friendship is stronger with the H’s but not without the scars.

My muse visited this morning and told me it’s all a turkey shoot. But I didn’t write about that.

The kind of closeness K craves in L is what I linger on – untenable closeness – not even smoke between them.

L told me that T advised K to keep some in reserve.

How many times do you keep learning the same lesson? Or realize it is the dominant theme of everything that could cast a pall?

It wears me out… to keep starting over and stopping again.

I reached a saturation point with people – too many special interests, none can be ultimately satisfied, and so it turns back to the task at hand – the core. The core is still weak but getting stronger. (Thank you Joseph Pilates.) N&B are back and Renny’s happy but it was nice to get one last walk this morning in with L and just go over all the laundry list of what needs repeating or looked at from yet one more pov. I think about this back in NO thing and how good it really feels way deep down to the core. But today is a bless-ed morning, slept in my bed last night – after many three dog nights – with Arlene spooning me and playdate this morning with only her in tow was a breeze – I felt lightfooted and a lightness of heart. L said that K’s response was “if you gave us a chance, we would be awesome” – god I love that girl. My favorite was when L said, yeah, you have a thing for 50-year-olds but what about when I’m 65 and you still have a thing for 50-year-olds and I’m not 50 and she responded “will your character have changed? because that is what I am attracted to” – where did this girl come from? She’s 20 going on 50.

Maybe I should get K to come over here and be my wife because after being one for so many years I realize the value in it and greatly desire someone to do my laundry, cook and clean, rub my back, carry my emotional weight, plan my social calendar, bookkeep, buy my underwear, keep in touch with my family and remember their birthdays – would that be just so great? And I would be very appreciative – I’d buy her little gifts or simply bring her a nosegay of wildflowers after my walks, I’d tell her she is beautiful every day, I’d kiss the small of her back and would not neglect other parts of her body for the sake of breasts and China — hands to rub, feet to massage, nape to scruff, and top of thighs where she might not have to shave but have a little down anyway that is worth lightly rubbing fingers across.

K intrigues me, she’s like my altar younger ego – more articulate than I must have been back then – but as focused and engaged as I ever was because like her I love loving – it brings out the best in me. My footnote to K is not to lose that quality – EVER – even though it will become jaded (a little) – but can’t help feeling like I might should warn her she’ll find herself wanting not to be taken for granted after she’s sprinkled and spread that sumptuous, sensuous, golden love among the people especially after some of the key ones react unphased as if it weren’t nothing special.

I’d like to circle back with her when she gets to that point because I think I could tell her a thing or two that might right her course again.

So S is concerned that he’s fighting a ghost and while I don’t discount anything she tells me and it makes me sad to hear what she has to say sometimes, I think she too is fighting the ghost of C past. C (or D as she covertly refers to him) was rank bad, and she knew something was not right but was still blindsided, think she can’t forgive herself or him. She has never gotten over what he did no more than L has gotten over what P did and it’s possibly and probable that neither will. To this I say pishaw – leave it go. How many times have I told L you have to drop it before it poisons you – proceed with love and it will lighten your step. Besides it’s hard to beat a ghost in battle – go ahead write the farewell letter, post it or burn it, but dissipate the pall.

It’s amazing how many friends you require to field things in technicolor – I wonder how S survives with so few.

N resigned today cuz B finally called with the green light – Thunderbirds R Go! The architect plan coming together, the house maybe a few months away, the groove finally righting itself…oh the places you will go…

What do you say to your 50 year old friend when he tells you that he is fucking a woman with a fake ID – carpe diem or watch yourself? Neither, you tell him how convention has never satisfied you even though you and everyone you know seeks to have it and hold it with both hands clenched. Let’s say you love someone but you look down across maybe a decade and have a good hunch the years will not unfold in the tidy package you’d like the years delivered to you, does that stop you from following bliss right now?

My other friend S, a few years shy of 50, asked me the same question – she’s not concerned with what happens at the 55/45 equation, she’s more concerned about the 65/55 one – that gives her almost two decades to find out – seems to me she should take the plunge, no? What did Joseph Campbell mean by follow your bliss – is it right now, which will lead to all goody or is it as long as it fits into the plan and of course, then there is the which plan?

How does L expect me with three dogs in tow, actually one’s a puppy still training on the leash, on a not so hot August morning to even begin to give him advice when for the life of me I’m still digesting Rick’s cost of $725 plus $200+ in cash and how that could have bought one of those nice ceiling fans, and craving Wednesday morning when I will wake up in my bed, with one dog, alone. It is with puerile pleasure I listen in on my friends’ love entanglements because L does deserve someone to fawn over him so that he can heal but 5x in 4 days makes me think his healing path is golden, and I can hear in S’s tone that she does indeed like M – she repeats it as if to make sure she is hearing herself correctly. And L worries what his crew will think and S worries about hers but in the end knowing how it will be received only makes it that much more compelling.

“I’m just worried that I will walk into a get together with a 21 year old and people will shake their heads,” L said, adding one year to K’s actual age.

“I feel like I walk in with a man who is 5’7″ and me over 6′ with my heels and people think, he must have something,” S says, winking.

Meanwhile, hovering over the landscape of love is S and his almost $1000 fix in Rick’s champagne room with two strippers who said, “I told them it was my birthday.” And I responded I’m sure they wanted to make it “special” for you.

So August begins…