in the morning i am waking and stumbling out the door, feeling clean after the shower, hair wet. i spot a dime glistening in the morning sun on the sidewalk on the way to the car. i pick it up, squeezing it tightly in my palm, wishing, hard as i might, "please let this be a good day." i am already feeling the onset of negative feelings, just a split second and i am hoping, praying even, for it to pass and for me to make it through today, if just barely, if by fingertips, if by skin on teeth. and i remember that each night, from wherever she may be, just before sleep, applause is echoing across the country for me from mara, her hands pounding hard against each other, palms slapping, in tribute to our survival of the day, that we made it through. it is a good thing indeed that there are people who love me, whoever they may be, wherever they may be hiding out, whatever they may be doing. i am in need, constantly, of reassurance, of attention and love. i am needing to take time out and to breathe. i am in need of seeing myself, of knowing and understanding each task before me, to outline it in my head. i am in need of telling myself what i think of things, what i feel. i am needing deeply to rest a moment, to catch myself before i fall, to know where precisely each path is headed and how. i want so badly to go back sometimes, to review what it was, to try again. it does not make sense to me, truly, that we only get one shot at this life, that we die without answers and alone. it is water torture - the idea to pick one path and do one thing, make one living. i would like so much to spice it up a bit and have more fun than that. yet, i am talking of stopping and sniffing at flowers, realizing the good in the everyday. there must be mediums to reach for. achievments that encompass all that is good about living one life, with one person and one goal, wasting one's youth properly, as one should, and still taking time to figure it out reasonably and logically, planning it so as to not waste it properly. there must be some middle ground to reach for and attain. but perhaps, and what seems most likely, is that you do what you do, however and wherever and whyever you do it, and ask questions later, try not to pause for too long or too often to be stumped with questions about where it all came from or where it is all going. you try not to consider the impossible or the unfathomable, end up doing it anyhow, end up confused and lost, searching and occasionally finding and realizing and revolutionizing and forgetting again. history is not the story of what not to do, it is the story of how it will all be done. it is not that which we build upon, but it is that which knocks us down. it is of our fairy tales, it is our hopes and our fears and nothing more. history does not build achievement. we are not moving forward admirably with civilization on our arms. we are not coming to ends or to crossroads. we are forever in the same spot, figuring the same things, knowing nothing, getting nowhere.