Things have been busy to the extreme but thankfully its the good kind of busy that brings a sense of purpose and joy to life.

I've been struggling in my meditative moments -- mostly on mass transit -- with the cyclical trap of self-awareness. Third-person camera vision; thinking about telling a story about a girl to another girl and asking advice about life, and knowing this is on some level a maneuver, and that killing the whole appeal.

Thinking about how this condition of cynical self-consciousness prevents interesting things from happening, prevents simple happiness and authentic experience from emerging, creates an unattractive air of uncertainty, hesitation and pessimism.

And I look across the BART isle and there's a middle aged man, kids-off-to-college age, assembling a book of Magic the Gathering cards, which I remember from high school, and he's got a look of pure and unadulterated joy on his face, putting his new cards into their little plastic holders, arranging them just so. Totally unconscious to whatever else and just loving it in whatever personal world he inhabits. It was a poignant moment for me.

To use a theatrical phrase, sometimes we have to suspend our disbelief in our own lives, perhaps as a precursor to Really Actually Believing again.