I'm sitting in Insomnia. It's dark outside, and Jason is sitting next to me, puffing on his pipe. A song that I don't know the name of, but like, is playing, and we're ... chilling, that's what we're doing. I never thought of chilling as something I do, but in retrospect, it seems appropriate. It's David Bowie, or a cover of him, singing "Starman". This is our place, and I feel at home.

I'm sitting in Starbucks. It's dim outside, and I'm reading, and occasionally grabbing notebooks to take down ideas, notes, and scribble. There's no music, but a lot of conversation is happening, in at least 4 languages (English, Hebrew, German, and Italian, possibly others). I'm recovering from having my heart pulled out through my throat and stretched back over my head, yet somehow I feel alright, for now.

Years seperate me from myself, and my good friend is now over two thousand miles away. My heart has been broken again, and again it didn't have to end up this way. It's hard to keep believing in love, and I know that a lot of other people don't believe in it the way I do. I don't know if I'll ever have it, but I've seen it, I know it exists. Complete trust in one's future with another. Heat when eyes meet. Good conversations. Good physical connection. A warm glow, on the thought of "for as long as I have, there will be only you". That's what I want, and what I've felt, the two times I had a chosen. Both times, with women far more experienced than me, who were jaded, and had hurt and been hurt too many times to give all of themselves again. The first, I think was pretty much completely bad luck, and the second was largely my bad. I wonder what the future holds for me. Will I find love?

I need someone to be close to, someone to talk to like family here, with almost no barriers. I need a friend, or a chosen. Maybe I'll find one or the other. I would give quite a lot to have Jason or Dubin living here in town, or Woody or Martha, or someone else I know who I've opened up to to some extent. It's hard, when the person who has the closest ties to you is the person you can't see.

One very hard lesson for me to learn in life, which has slapped me so many times, and that I keep on coming back for more, is that I need people. I keep on thinking that I can do things alone, or mostly alone, or something like that, but really I need friends. I tend towards a few, small, intense friendships, rather than a lot of mild ones. One of the things I did wrong after Martha was, in fear of seeing her (she was interested in almost all the same things I was, and Columbus is socially small), I closed the door on all my friends, and didn't seek anything or anyone new. I was stupid, and it cost me a lot, almost everything. I'm steering the other way this time.

For the first time in over a year, I've managed to find people other than Debb attractive. At Starbucks, there was a girl sitting next to me at the table, studying law, and there was another girl sitting nearby, at a table full of female Germans. They were chattering away in a mix of German and English... Both of them smiled at me at various times. It's a pity I'm so shy. I'm almost incapable of starting conversations with strangers.

Argh. I can't believe that I'm going to the perl conference without a laptop. That totally bites. Maybe I can take one from work.

I wonder if I should get some really nice furniture after I move to the new place. Maybe I'll build the desks myself, but I really need nice carpentry stuff. I wonder where I can get nice tools, cheap.

I've been writing a lot of good stuff in notebooks, and have been working on CVS-izing all the versions of my website. I'm irritated to find that my CD player said it could read CD-Rs, but what it meant was CD-Rs in redbook format, not mp3s. Do I sell it, or cope? I dunno.

Word out.

Oh, and some lyrics to "Star Man" --- Goodbye love Didn't know what time it was the lights were low oh how I leaned back on my radio oh oh Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll 'lotta soul, he said Then the loud sound did seem to fade a ade Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase ha hase That weren't no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive

   There's a starman waiting in the sky
   He'd like to come and meet us
   But he thinks he'd blow our minds
   There's a starman waiting in the sky
   He's told us not to blow it
   Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
   He told me:
   Let the children lose it
   Let the children use it
   Let all the children boogie