So, it's Sunday. One way I like to work around the house is to mix cleaning and working and packing and singing with writing. I'll have an open word document on the computer and just go in and out of writing as the ideas move me.

This afternoon I found myself thinking to you, and so this - I guess it's a letter - started up. I decided to put my journal thoughts in a place that you could visit if you were so inclined. I'm not really a "journal keeper" per se; I'm really more of a letter-writer, because I find myself much more inspired by others, and the invitation to communicate, than I am by the act of writing to myself.

I'm sure this is partially reflective of some dysfunction in my general make-up; I seek external validation as a result of one of fifty million childhood disconnects I experienced - you know, those things that are supposed to be soul-lessons and help our overall evolution but hurt like a bear while the band-aid's coming off. Oh, well. Perhaps the enlightenment will come with time. That's what I signed for in The Contract.

You know, this ready tendency to talk out loud toward others tends to get me into a bit of trouble. I always assume that everyone writes like me, and thinks like me, and feels like me - the ultimate naive solipsist to the end.

I also end up having mostly male correspondents, because they're the sex that finds the energy to converse about the things I'm interested in - numbers, and physics, the economy, societal abstractions and speculations about power (or at least argue about it, which is certainly lots of the fun). Actually, they'd probably talk about anything, and I'm most likely deluding myself about their true interest in what's being said, as opposed to the skirt that's saying it.

Unfortunately - and I haven't figured this one out yet - if I express interest, and then do what I always do, which is flirt, banter, cajole, and prod (because that IS how you get people talking with their fingers), I get amorous attentions flooding in the door. Well, not flooding. That's certainly an exaggeration.

Actually, one is probably a flood to me. I'm not exactly the girl who's used to getting a lot of attention - at least, not that kind. I was a homely adolescent, a fickle and obstreperous young woman, and marriage to my first husband - a dear but (back then) emotionally distant man - brought out the matriarch in me, since that was the only vehicle for caring that was allowed. And, when I have received that kind of attention in the past, it's often made me uncomfortable if I can't reciprocate in kind. Love is, after all, a gift that begs a return.

Therefore, because I'm an absolute wuss when it comes to boundaries in the feeling world (generally, I'm an all (rarely) or nothing (mostly) woman when it comes to the sticky wickets of sexuality, and I don't navigate the middle ground as deftly without body language that Mother always said should include a handshake), these attentions easily confuse me, and I rapidly get tangled up and can't get out very gracefully.

Well, I always do, but I usually stop feeling inspired to write.

So far there's no sign of that.

-- Anonymous, October 07, 2001

Answers

This is a back door returning to One Abode

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001