Three Excerpts From My Journal

8/4/06

I’ve realized at recent family gatherings that I’m different from the rest of the cousins. I’m the oldest, on both sides. The next oldest is Joe, who’s three years younger than me. So there’s me, then five my sister’s age. Whenever we get together as a family, my sister always has someone her age to talk to, to share secrets with, to share their life stories with. Let me tell you, this is an exclusive party. Age 14 only. My brother plays with the younger kids, who all look up to him as if he were their god. I alone have no cohorts, no secret keepers, nobody to talk with So I just hang around with the adults listening to their conversations. The conversations begin to develop into a pattern. First the women talk about so and so and about how much that person’s life sucks. Then they move on to current events, which eventually evolves into how sucky our economy is and how Bush ruined it and how real estates prices are going down and no one can sell anywhere. An then, if we’re with my mom’s side of the family, it degenerates into baseball statistics from my uncle and everyone finds an excuse to get up and leave. My uncle could go on for days about the Cubs and how much he hates the Red Sox if he had an attentive audience. On my father’s side of the family, it ends with everyone being bored out of their minds by my Aunt’s speeches about the healing powers of certain plants and how my grandma should take better care of herself. Either that, or the equally fatal sermon from my uncle trying to convert us all to Kabala, or at least explain it to us.

2/21/07

Flight.

Why have humans developed an obsession with flight? Flying? I have reoccurring dreams of soaring through the clouds, wings outstretched, magnificent. Like in Brazil.

Humans have long nursed this obsession. It’s not just me.

To be able to soar like a bird. To rise above the cities, the people, the crowds. The dirt and grime. To fly above the clouds, walking on a bed of air.

rolling white

the weightless sensation almost like being in love.

the feeling of your stomach rising towards the heavens as a plane takes off.

choking on air. the height, angling towards the sun.

Flight.

2/27/07

Sometimes, I feel confused. Not naïve confused, more like old person confused. I forget where I put things. Beg everyday things, then I can’t for the life of me figure out where they are.

It leaves me feeling a little helpless. I can’t remember simple facts, like phone numbers or street addresses or birthdays. Or I forget to bring things, or do work. Or to grab stuff out of the printer tray. It’s a good thing he has such a good memory.

Why does everyone insist that we have to argue, eh ? So what if we don’t have explosive arguments regularly? I think it’s good. I know I love him and he loves me, so what is there to argue about?

Right, nothing.