tonight i am happy-sad. the days blend together as unemployment and summer combine to form absolutely no reason for me to rise from bed. but i do, and anxiously. though i can't keep track of the time or the day or even the week-- i am fastidious and pro-active and strangely cheerful. my chores and errands feel somewhat like daydreams-- fantasies that leave me feeling fulfilled or sated, calm, as if i have finally bought into the illusion of progress and completion.

there is music and breeze and outdoor noise accompanying my every task. how is it that i can be drowning in the romantic?

- a friend sent me a sullen mix that is quite swoon-able.

- my life is full of the right kinds of stress and excitement

- i've had plenty of time to write, sleep, read, play chess, and give myself (and others) pedicures

- mmmm, chess.

- i have adopted the morning ritual of a fellow housemate: coffee and pastries and a morning blend juice (maybe some nature's candy) from the local co-op

- i'm very smitten with a certain someone who knows who he is.

on a lower note...

a wise and flighty poet-colleague of mine once told me that Iowa makes us sad because we are living in the big basin of a dried ocean. that there is nothing more depressing than that. he also told me thatevery time he passes the 24 hour Walgreen's on the way home, he thinks about the end of the world.

both such optimistic thoughts. both without so much as a nod toward nostalgia, wouldn't you say?

i've got so much in me i could burst. this may be a summer-dilemma for me. or just the late evening blues. or the lovesickness that swells and recedes behind my collected exterior.

right.