Some days, some days most recently, I just don't know what to say. I feel like things are changing, not so much externally as inside me. Life always changes, sometimes we start keeping up.

My bro-law -- may I thank the lordette that the brolaw is in my life -- keeps coming up with this argument that makes me feel weepish every time he brings it up. It's funny, because I'm not sure he notices it makes me weepish, but he does gets a bit jumpy when the conversation sinks in, and he apologizes for making things too heavy if that's what he's done, which for me is sometimes what happens though I'm not sure what heavy means.

But the conversation is good. It is a reminder, if not to agree with my amazing peeps, then to think about what I want and where I am.

See, I think his argument baaaaaasically boils down to "Everyone looks after him- or herself; it is a biological and philosophical reality, and if you ignore it or pretend that some idealistic other reality exists, then you're just the fool who will get tromped on by nature's truth. And guess what, sislaw, you just got tromped, so what does that tell you?"

The whole conversation makes me remember the class I sat in on in AK before transferring to Florida schools where Christ was science and evolution religion. But before that life, I sat in on a psych class taught by the crazy father of my jr. high flirt/nemesis (in my mind). This teacher argued that everything could be rendered down to sex, everything -- all of existence clearly an imperative to perpetuate the species. Even then, a reason for queers existed: an altruistic instinct toward species diversification. Art: (basically) a pretense to attract the other. Kindness: sandbags along the city's shore. In retrospect, this teacher was probably just representing the argument of our friend Freud, but as it was the only class of his I attended, and his questions bit right into my own, I never forgot and have always argued.

It's a hard one to knock down though.

Here's how I knocked it down: it's the stories we tell about ourselves that count.

I believe we can say any number of things, probably most of it bullshit. Bullshit seems to be the mainstay of speech. Bullshit about religion. Bullshit about survival of the fittest. Bullshit about aliens, apocalypse, our own importance, the lack of our importance. Bullshit about karma, pay it forward, it all comes back to you, and I'd do anything for you. Bullshit about the role every other person and creature has in our lives, and we have in theirs. We can always say more. Or different. Or against. Or questioning. Or sorry. Or sad to not. Or I occasionally accept and feel the grace of having had.

Personally, what I say is that to me life seems a balance between "I give" and "I gain." I don't believe there are very many people in this world who are willing to put someone else's interests before their own every time. Parents perhaps, if they are good parents. But in terms of friends, I don't expect anyone to choose suffering so that I may thrive. To believe that would be utterly self-centered and pathetic. I can take care of my own thriving, thank you very much. But on the other hand, I do hope that those folks out there who care about me don't choose that I may suffer so they may thrive either. Certainly that is self-centered and pathetic as well. Instead, I think when people care about each other, it's not about biological imperative, although you can put it that way (When you take care of other people, you are more likely to create an environment wherein people take care of each other, i.e. look after you too. Thus a primary basis of modern civilization). But rather my story is that when people care about each other, they seek the middle ground... This may mean sacrifice. I know it has for me. But it also may mean communicating in order to achieve compromise or at least empathetic understanding. That is what I would like from my friends, although I understand it's not always going to go my way.

And does no good if what life, loss, and experience does is to strip me of my person -- what may be idealistic, what may be naive, what within me may hope and hope, too long, too suspect, too stalkerlike, too pathetic, too much at a loss to even exist anyways. No. I will not be telling that story about my life: that I got hurt and turned into someone else.

So, that our movement towards death, and our physical growth and disintegration and growth and inevitably utter disintegration happens, is truth. That we must look after ourselves and protect and fight and invest and live and dance and joy, is truth. But that we must search and feel sad and hope and create beauty and dance and joy, is also truth. Experience is (at the minimum) dual, the most intense experience is always intensely dual. We hate our best friend for being sick, just as we feel the joy of her continued life for the same reason; we feel grief only parallel to love. Stupid, nonbiological, nonsensical love that like so many things is also bullshit.

So much going on right now... starting school, my birthday, first date in a long time, finding out I don't get paid for that work I did this summer (ugh). And I'm working to keep dating, keep writing, keep finding new ways to be political and involved, keep on keep on. My story involves new stories. And I guess where I'm also at right now is backing away from the "giving" for awhile, and sidling up to the fighting for myself, for what I want. Yes, brolaw, I have not been my fittest for some time, neither physically nor mentally, and so I haven't been surviving in the way I want. Thus, the Year of Repair.

Yep, the Year of Repair is entering its third season: the season of "mental repair." I shall report that the season of "social repair," went well if strangely. It wasn't the kind of repair I expected, but I do think it was repair. I'm saying yes a lot more often to trying new things and meeting new people, which works pretty amazingly. I can say: proud of myself again. For the season of "mental repair," here are some of my goals: work hard on following through on the solutions I've found for the mind ruts (i.e. not brooding about things outside my control), drink way way less, establish a routine for the new quarter that involves exercise, writing, walking Herald, and being a good teacher.

Okay, that's that, but I want to say, brolaw: I'm onto you. These pictures don't look biological to me. They look idealistic, the kind of idealistic I've always dreamed about finding and working to hold on to. So, neiner neiner.