  I just got caught up with rereading my posts from the last week. Like watching a ball of twine unrolling, I like being able to trace the downward spiral of an inadequately managed mental illness. Ok, so much of this stuff cant be blamed entirely on genetics; life is what it is. But what a resource to be documenting this stuff. Besides the fact that I have to. Id cry if I couldnt write.
Ive even taken to recording things on bar napkins to relieve the word-lust. I have to. In my best testimonial voice: Its more than a hobby! Its an obsession! (Big toothy smile like the Every-American Dope! ) Except today Im absorbed equally into reading this stuff.
The Italy Travelogue the book I havent written yet. And the London Travelogue a work in progress. I so need to return. I keep dreaming of grey streets and dark bars (yes, theyre pubs, but the internal rhyme sounded better to me). of being a stranger in a city with an incomprehensibly complex history poured into the moulds of endless stretches of looming buildings. Feeling at once incredibly diminutive beside the towering monuments to capitalism and infused with the vibration of life with a pace so much faster than I could keep up with.
I just want to observe. To don my coat and walk. Breathe, watch, and walk like a native; with a sense of direction. Of a schedule. A shallow metaphor for a longing for something more universally meaningful (like having a clue about my own direction), but doesnt it sound like a nice exercise to jump start my writing, my world, my faltering momentum. Maybe Im too influenced by all the Virginia Woolf Im reading for Dawns grad class.
All the identification (same mental illness, same paranoia, same thwarted lusts) seems to wear away at my ability to separate myself from her. Just when I think remaining a hermit in my house will protect me from influence, Im taken by a literary figure. Things get in my head that I cant filter out. People. Moods. Images I wish not to recount in fear that theyll come back.
Its such a Radiohead and Kate Bush kind of day. Nothing like having your feelings validated. Something strange happened to me while I was talking to someone the other day. a total stranger, yet I felt moved to express something. Like I know her, but I dont. I could say more, but I don't think I know how to approach it.
Strange what happens when I leave the computer. Whats that about? Projection City? (Ok, each of you have just earned license to flog me for using a pop-psych term. Punishment Ill take with a fabulous contraction and a smile) I just want it to rain. Makes the world the way I see it; everyone else is suddenly covering their heads from the onslaught (no, too violent a word) from the environmental darkness.
Theres a wonderful intimacy of it all. Creates a sense of being at home that sunny days dont afford me. not these days anyway. Not until I can lay naked in the grass in a sweltering heat wave. Mmmm... Storms give me an excuse to be reclusive and reflective. To look at it for hours, the sheets of water.
To see the worlds passion without leaving my windowsill. Nothing like a good sweat. Even for the earth. 
