On the floating, shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving into your eyes

And you sang
“Sail to me, sail to me; let me enfold you”

Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?

Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken lovelorn on your rocks
For you sang “Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow”
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow

I’m as puzzled as a newborn child
I’m as riddled as the tide
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or should I lie with death my bride?

Hear me sing: “Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you”
“Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you”

This morning, I thought of you while I walked shoeless in the rain.

It's been a while since I did that -- played in the rain, I should clarify. And never, that I can remember, at sunrise (or what should have been sunrise, had the sun actually come up). I woke up after nearly 24 hours in bed with a migraine, and the storm was just coming in, and I lay there, listening, wondering when it would pass. And it did, blowing through in a matter of minutes, taking with it the power, and I went ahead and stayed awake, thinking I might run some early morning errands, or finish a book... and then I was outside, walking down the block to the park, barefoot, soaking slowly and revelling in it. And I thought of you.

It's been a while since I thought of anyone like I do you.

The thought has crossed my mind: is it worse to pronounce something dead before it has ever had a chance to start, or to have to kill it after it has had time to blossom? And I don't think there is a right answer. Both are painful in the end, to one or both. But to me, it's more cruel to have to wonder what could have been; I'm too much of a dreamer to appreciate what ifs. I try to live my life so that I never again have to ask that question; that being the case, maybe it's a little more clear why this doesn't sit with me.

It's been a while since I saw this kind of potential in someone, in a romantic way.

I see in you someone that I would very much enjoy sharing with, be it faith or music, passion or emotion, sorrow or celebration.

You're right: I don't give up easily. I don't know that I actually give up, come to think of it. I'm stubborn like that. But last year, at the same time that I got divorced, I gave up after 17 years of friendship. There's more to the story than I'm in the mood to go into, what it boils down to is that I suddenly removed from my life the two people that I was closest to, that I felt comfortable with, that I could share with. And since then, I've met a lot of people, from bartenders to designers to CEOS, women and men, my age, younger, older... and no matter how many of them I meet, none of them have inspired me to share.

And you have.

It's been a while since I've had that.

I hate what ifs.

I thought I had never met a real life stalker before.

I was wrong.

Thankfully, it's not mine. I've always wanted a stalker of my very own, though... Maybe that's what I'll ask for for Christmas?

At least I know where to shop for one.

The Big Lab Experiment - Was our universe created by design? By Jim Holt "You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker."

So proud to be associated with these people: "Pointing crudely at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi, the petite brunette with a cigarette hanging from her lips epitomised America's shame over revelations US soldiers routinely tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.
Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker's daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call 'a backwoods world'. She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero.
At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong. 'A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,' Colleen Kesner said.
'To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised. Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis...' "

(Thanks to Warren Ellis' blog for keeping us updated on the non-American POV...)

Falling Sky: "It's one of those many things that makes existence so bloody infuriating - I can barely remember any of the French vocabulary I used to be able to blather at will, yet my brain cheerfully hangs onto every bitter moment from every relationship, as though each glare went through my eyes and burned itself onto my cerebrum, capturing each bitter, spiteful, senseless, shameful second."

Jon Nagl, I miss reading your stuff. Come back to the forums, Jimmy Dean...

Without you I cannot confide in anything
The hope is pale designed in light of dreams you bring
Summer's gone, the day is done soon comes the night
Biding time, leaving the line and out of sight

One moonlit shadow on the wall
Disrupted in its own creation
Veiled in the darkness of this fall
Is this the end - manifestation

It runs in me, your poison seething in my veins
This skin is old and stained by late September rains
A final word from me would be the first for you
The rest is long but I'll go on inside and through

One moonlit shadow on the wall
Disrupted in its own creation
Veiled in the darkness of this fall
Is this the end - manifestation

Patterns in the ivy
Patterns in the ivy

-Opeth