I spent the evening with Sasha last night. We had some Thai at Amarin -- trying to smalltalk in spite of my vast uncomfortability -- then back to her place ostensably for me to pick up stuff of mine that's still over there. I launched "the pitch," laying out my feelings on the summer and my misgivings about breaking up.

Basically I know the summer was a poochscrew. We didn't talk about it enough. I didn't want to jinx anything, so I just sort of let it ride. That's a bad idea when you're planning two months worth of travel. Live and learn. This was the catalyst for the split, and I understand it. Even agree up to a point.

At the same time, I realized this week I'm not ready to let her go. This kind of thing doesn't come along all that often for me, and I decided that I can't simply roll over on the whole relationship. I did a pretty bad job making my case, lots of fumbling for words and hemming and hawing, but I think the point got across. It's better to regret what you've done than what you havn't. She says she's not going anywhere; we sat out in a hammock feeling the lightning and the rain come in. Just being close, which did great things for my soul.

It's going to be a little raw for a while. It's a hard situation. She says she's done fucking around. I echo the sentiment, but maybe we mean different things. She wants to settle, doesn't want to be a trucker's wife, which I can appreciate. But I'm not sure whether I'm a trucker or not. This is causing serious reflection, and time -- I think -- will be key in sorting it all out. Breathe. Drink water. Practice what matters.

Fuckin' Bangin' It, that's how I'm doing. The workaholism is kicking in strong, as I'm finding myself more and more involved in grassroots stuff for the Howard Dean campaign. It feels good to have something to work at. I also have -- cross fingers -- some paying work in the pipeline too, which would be a boon and a half. In spite of the recent round of tax cuts, my finances are still looking pretty shaky. I'm sure some sort of check is in the mail. Yeah, right.

Last night we wished Andrew a happy birthday. I had some wine with Kate before and we talked about life and all that jazz. She wanted to make sure I'm ok wrt Sasha and everything. Like I said, I know I'm not through all of it, but the indicators are good. I'll live. I tried to obliquely encourage her to think about starting her own indie litereary mag. Maybe a more concrete proposal should be floated...

Easy E is now in the 24 club with the rest of us. It was a grand old time. Capodiche showed up and reminded me about the Gooseberry, the 2003 summer drink of choice; gin and grapefruit. Try it out. We went back to Eleni's house and had a little party on the roof. "Do you party, man?" It was quite something to just hang out and laugh and feel the warm night air just right. Biking in the city at night in these warm halcyon days feels like some kind of New York dream. Freedom, terrible terrible freedom.

I got a monkey call at about 1am; full support in these troubled times. It's nice to know my people are with me in spirit. It gives me the spunk to sit up and fight a little. Good thing, too.

As anyone who's seen All That Jazz knows, there are five stages to dying. I feel like a little death is happening in my life right now, so I thought it might be wise to go look them up and see where I'm at.

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

I'd say I'm bouncing between denial, anger and bargaining. Hopefully -- if this is really kaput (still with the denial and bargaining) -- the change of scenery for the summer will help the anger and depression be short lived and the acceptance come on strong.

Humor is key. Tonight's new Strong Bad Email over on homestarrunner.com is a peach. Though he didn't answer my request to make a new #1 summer jam, the Cheat came through in the clutch. Click on the beat-up boombox at the end for a special treat.

Today I wake up and my heart is full of hope. The dream lives on, though in somewhat mutant and amorphous form. Don't count anything out just yet, my buddies. Don't count anything out. As I noted somewhere down below, melancholy sometimes puts me in a fighting mood. Not in a mean sense, but in the sense of a pure and noble and truly righteous crusade. It's the irish in me for sure.

The difficulty is that I'm acutely aware that nothing can really be done alone. If it tought me nothing else, I learned that the hard way in college. As an island, man is ineffectual. I am a monkey, and monkeys are social animals. It's in our DNA to group up and collaborate. I'm done fucking around. I want the real deal now, and I'm not going to settle for anything less. It may be that this whole relationship thing will have to go on the back burner for a spell. But the bottom line is that I'm not interested in accepting any second-prizes.

So last night didn't go quite as well as I thought it might. Sasha more or less broke up with me. I'm still processing this and may or may not have actually accepted it. I'm equivocating fiercely here -- dreams die hard. There's been a lot of crying, which is probably a positive step up from my adolescent tendency to punch very inanimate things and drag my knuckles against brick walls when emotionally agitated. Seems healthier anyway; but it's a hard thing for me to cry. Havn't done it in years. Yes, I'm something of a mess.

There's nothing like shaving yr neck-beard to legitimize your other facial hair. I'm feeling good now. Cleaned house, prepped food for stir-fry, lit some candles, put on some music and I'm waiting for Sashashama to come over for dinner. Simple things are good.

I yack yack a lot about Howard Dean here. Maybe that's a bit boring, so for anyone who's been wondering what's up in my life lately, this is it.

I was talking last night with Frank about my website a little, and it was interesting for me to reflect on how it's changed over time. I originally was inspired by Justin Hall's links.net, and had the idea of telling life stories and promoting my ideals through the hyperlinked medium. That's what I did for about a year, coding by hand and generally avoiding the whole blogosphere.

Over time I succumbed to my geekish roots and got more and more interested in the implications of the personal publishing phenomena. I also succumbed to my political roots and started ranting about the oncoming war. Now I look back over the last few posts and I'm a little bit surprised at what I'm seeing. I've become a partisan for Dean on this blog, and that's ok, but I think I aught to do more Dean stuff in the real world and write about more real world stuff on the blog. Questing for balance, always.

Being in a relationship has definitely changed how I write in this space. My life has vastly fewer salacious details to report, and when something juicy does happen I'm more likely to feel that it's "personal," and maybe not put it out there for the world to see.

So how are things? Well, they're topsy-turvy as of late. It was a beautiful day yesterday. I had an amazing four hour conversation with my old teacher Steve Wangh about the book he wants to write and which I'm going to help him research, and about my Praxis essay. On the ride back the air was beautiful and people were smiling and life was full of possibility.

But when I got home the worm turned rather quickly. I discovered I'm being questioned by the IRS for my lack of a 2001 tax return. My girlfriend is having a life crisis and she canceled plans we had because she needed some time along. I haven't seen her much lately, and this is bothering me a lot. I try not to let on -- don't really want to bore people with my peevish insecurities and emotional needs or put any undue pressure on her -- but it's becoming an issue. I've also been talking with Mark and Luke out in California and it sounds like Mark and Shannon my not be around for as long as we all thought. The dream slipping away, fantasy collapsing.

I have an earache. My laptop monitor cable is coming loose. I don't have any ready cash and I'm pretty deep in debt. Things seem to be conspiring to bum me out. Last night I was full of frustration and dull thoughts. I wanted to punch something, and old adolescent vice. I was grinding my teeth and drinking heavily. The world was ugly and loud and boring and full of sour temptation. Josh Koenig was a nice guy. He didn't need this shit.

And so now I'm sad and angry and I have a wicked hangover, but it's put me in a fightin' mood. I'm not afraid of these punks from the IRS. They sent me duplicate forms, and addressed them to my mother's house. They're clueless whores, saggy-fleshed middle-manager clowns who's lives are failures and who can be bought off on the cheap. And it will be ok with Sasha; Julia tells me so; the critical thing is remembering to keep breathing. It would seem that the question facing me straight in my puffy squinting face is whether or not I'm going to do anything about all this bullshit, whether or not I have the energy and drive to take the steps that need to be taken, whether or not I'm going to let the power of my will flow through me and into the world.

For now there is coffee, and life will go on. As my man Sam points out, it's not as though this is the worst things have been. He even made me an egg sandwitch. Considering it's his birthday today, that's quite a gesture.

My favorite internet sensation, Salam Pax, the blogger from Baghdad, now apparently has his own bi-weekly (or "fortnightly") column in the Guardian. Exciting stuff for the next generation.

Part of the joy and pain of having a website with an anonymous comment form is that I sometimes get strange and unsolicited email which I know isn't spam because no spambot I know of can fill out a form and hit "submit." While I was off canoodling and digging deeper into my relationship with Sasha, I got two true gems. The first is a bit of "career advice" from anonymous:

If you aspire to write, may I suggest you devote your energies to learning how to [a] spell; [b] write a coherent paragraph; and [c] sound like you are older than 15 and have a decent IQ. Just trying to be helpful.

In all likelyhood this is just someone pissed off at my politics -- not the first or last time this has happened -- but point taken on the spelling and grammar. I play it fast and loose here, and I realize that a professional writer would hold back for editing and not publish things when drunk, high, tired, rushed or otherwise impeded from giving his/her work a thorough review. I tend to take more time with more serious pieces. For instance, I've been working on a profile of the Democratic candidate field for a few days, and I'm showing it only to friend and keeping it tight until the time is right.

Here's the other gem from the weekend, came with the subject "Insult and Ridicule":

Submissive SWF enjoys being insulted and ridiculed. Will accept all forms of abuse.

This is kind of coming out of left field, I have to say. Is there something in the subtext of my site that would suggest I'm seeking a submissive? Is this merely someone trying to embarrass someone else by sending some fakemail? Lord knows I'm not about to respond to this, but it sure is an interesting thing to have turn up in one's inbox.