2001-10-12 - 1:08 a.m.

What am i afraid of, really? What is such a fear that it has taken on animal form to attack me in my dreams?

It was strange that I dreamt it, because the same afternoon I bought a copy of White Oleander by Janet Fitch. I picked it up in paperback at the drugstore (something I never do, buy books from a drugstore). But the book (which i have already finished) has turned out to be one of the best reads of my life. Anyway, it was odd that I picked it up the same day as the dogbite dream, because, as I read this afternoon, the heroine is attacked by a dog that ripps her up so fiercely she had to go to the emergency room, and it left her with scars.

Which of course reminds me of La who was herself attacked by a dog as a child and scarred. Not much of a coincidence, with the book, I guess alot of people get bitten by dogs. But the book read to me as if it was written by her - she doesn't share any of the actual brutal history of the characters, but i felt as if the writer had stolen pages from out of La's mouth. It seemed to me so close to how she thinks. Its hard for me to put into words. It really tripped me out. I didn't think there was anyone in the world who understood La and her view of the world. I mean, I feel like I do but I couldn't put it into words and convey the same meaning or magic that would cause someone to read what I had written and feel as if they knew her. I guess my writing reveals only myself - perhaps reading my writing would let you see into me.

It was incredible for me to read this book - It gives me hope that there are other thoughtful beautiful magical people in the world like L left to know. But if I met them, the others, i wonder what it would take to become friends. La and I are so alike and yet so different. I think if I met others like us they wouldn't recognize me as one of them. But then again, to make a friend, it just takes time and love and patience.

Its strange how you can be so profoundly happy and sad at the same moment. Tonight I was sitting out on the porch, with the crazy little chinesey patio lanterns, and the rain was pouring, and I was reading a wonderful book, and I was wearing my cowboy hat to keep my head warm, and I was smoking the last of my Kamel Red Lights (brought back from a jaunt to Seattle) and everything felt so just right. I felt so completely me. It was beautiful, the rain - and the smell of the wet mountain and the glow of the colored lanterns, and the taste of the cigarette that reminds me of her, and it was all so good and I was happy and so glad to be alive this day. And at the same moment, I was crying for the tragedy of the character in the book, and longing to be in LA with my friends, and sad for the little girl i had been who missed her father, and feeling sorry for the people I will leave behind in this city too, and i felt so sad. Life is a constant paradox of innocence and adulthood, of joy and sadness.

This joy and sadness thing keeps happening to me and every time I feel it is new, and i want it to be one or the other, i want my choices to be clear, i want not to feel lonely like i do sometimes, but i know that it is all part of the human existence - that feeling too much is a good thing and that my physical circumstances may change but lonliness is something that will touch us all at different times throughout our lives - its not like a phaze you grow out of as a kid, its more like a season that you keep returning to, like fall, and then time passes and you go on to other seasons, and come back to it to in a cycle. But I still haven't gotten used to the lonely season yet. I wonder if you ever do - or if getting used to it makes you dull and filmed over. Or maybe its good for the soul, so that you can appreciate the springtime more fully.

I'm having more difficulty with the job search than I'd anticpated. Unemployment is very high in Canada. Its going to take more effort to get a job than I was prepared to exert. But I will do it. Because i want to go home. To La and Jim.