The old blog hasn't been very cheery, and I apologize for that. Maybe this one will clarify and explain. There's been some bad stuff backed up in me, and it kind of got suppressed and malignant. This website is supposed to be about the truth, but it's a lot easier when the truth is something you can swagger about, something that powers you. When bad things happen, I'm hesitant to talk about them; partly it's just shame -- no one likes telling people they've been cuckolded, for instance -- and part of it is my neurosis of not burdening other people with my own negative baggage. I greatly fear becoming a whiner.

But supression leads to internal purification. Last night it kind of reached a breaking point. After I wrote, Luke and I had a good talk about things. Lance that boil. Here's the shot.

I had a lot of Great Expectations going into this summer. The spring was kind of a magic time for me, what with the love and all. I was looking forward to coming out west in a blaze of triumph and glory. I envisioned a summer full of plans and platforms, a time when I would connect with all the people who mean something to me and we would form some collective understanding. We would create a bold vision that would lend our lives purpose and meaning.

I imagined the disparate pieces of my self -- the art, the politics, the technology -- and of my social network -- the monkeys, the meek, the object of my affection -- all beginning to settle into a grand and holy waltz of progress. It gave me the sense that everything was about to start happening, that exciting and positive times were coming, and I really liked the way this air of possibility made me feel.

Then one by one the wheels began coming off the wagon. I don't mean to attack any of these people I love, but the summer has been an almost parody-worthy cavalcade of disappointment. Sasha quit me about three weeks before I left NYC. I arrived in Berkeley to a house full of tension and growing pains. I found my cohort in Eugene to be up to the same juvenile stuff. The Oregon Country Fair was an exercise in confusion and bad planning. No one seemed to know how to communicate. And now I'm back in Berkeley with Lucas, wondering what the hell I'm doing out here.

Not that there haven't been great moments, but a record of only the high points would be mighty short. Everything seems rigged against us. In the past week even death has been on the scene; friends of friends and a close friend's father, their lives now just a memory. That kind of puts my personal heartache in perspective.

But what about that heartache? To be honest, there's a direct connection between Sasha breaking up with me and my weak tolerance for Monkey bullshit. When we were having the talk, the breakup talk, her central theme was "I'm through fucking around." Even though this was a pretty hypocritical line to pull at the time -- she cheated on me after all -- it stuck. It stuck with me because I realized I've been feeling the same thing for a long time: I don't particularly want to fuck around any more. It's not interesting to me. It's not fun. It's not cool. I don't see any point in it. Maybe it's growing up and maybe it's my ambition and maybe it's 9-11 and maybe it's just being fed up with the status-quo, but if we aren't getting fucking serious here and starting to try to build something, what the fuck is the motherfucking point?

So I've been thinking about all of these things.

She wrote me the other day to inform me that she's gone ahead and gotten together with the "other woman." This stings. I knew that band-aid was going to have to come off, and I was about half-way there myself, but having my paranoia validated like that... Josh Koenig was a nice guy, he didn't need this shit.

The upshot is that it's moved me right into the anger, a necessary stage of the grief process. I'll have to get mad before I can let anything go. She admits being selfish, and good for her, but having the courage to admit you're selfish doesn't make it any less hurtful to other people. I know this. I've been on the opposite end of this equation before, so this is clearly something in my karma.

But things are looking up. Now that this particular bubble has burst I'm starting to sense that movement is going to happen. I'm not getting back into the expectations game any time soon, but the wind is picking up and it feels good. Trust in the divinity of your forward momentum.