I love driving, but not when you have to just tap the gas pedal and keep hovering over the brake in fear of a sneaky cop skulking in every dark driveway. The speed limit on most streets is 25 mph, and the city makes its money through its arrests. She asked me over to her place today. To talk. I had apologized, yes over email, but whatever, I didn't think I'd see her again. Of course, I assumed I was headed for the lion's den. I had already apologized, many times, what more did she want? I felt like I'd have to go over every single way in which I'd wronged her. Instead, one of the first things she told me was that her grandmother died. Then I thought, oh no, the guilt - is she going to cry? Turns out she's still willing to have. . . something. But do I want it. I told her I need to think about it. She's a very special, good person, yes, I trusted her from the minute I met her, but I am not starving for her. I like my cigarettes. She doesn't. She's totally clean and doesn't like my vices. Oh, but I gave her this site on bondage, and she of course read it in a day. Gave me back my Peaches cd. Oh, excuses. What do I want? Courage. Half of me wants to make a list of things that make my blood run cold. The better half of me wants to bow out, out of respect, whatever that is. Hell, she's the one who said she's the masochist. She wants me to hurt her. I don't know if it's in my nature to do so. Had delicious soup and dinner at G's new place, which is looking quite spiffy, and left her to her conversation date with a woman I can't wait to meet. I've convinced her to ask her writer friends from NY to read at the main literary place here. She has some cool poet friends, some of them I know. Apparently the store gave her the cold shoulder. It's just that this place rules the airwaves, NPR, and it sucks , I mean the writers they get are not all that great. Well, the only one I liked so far was D.A. Powell. Anyway, the poets will come. Somehow. There's a beautiful woman who has given her heart away to many a woman. I've had a crush on her for a few months, almost a year. She was away most of the time I was in the city, but on new years eve she called, back from sf, and I asked her to join me for the night, and she said yes. Oh, women. I wish I could feel . . . something, anything but how I feel, which is confused and nervous and scared and yet leaping off of cliffs. I don't know trees, and this saddens me. I don't know the name of the tree in front of my house. There are three pear trees, but what kind? And walnut trees, but could I identify them, even though they scattered their green fruit all over the yard? I haven't counted their husks, they could be hickory, pecan, birch, alder. Hophornbeams. I need to slow down. How will I learn the birds? For someone who rejects shortcuts to identification in people, distinguishing species among plants, birds, and dogs is like tasting a new flavor. There are many things in this world, even if I knew their names, their inexplicability would be impossible to describe. The delicate beauty of my cat's eyelashes or the wisdom of his snores. Candle light illuminating stained glass, arched doorways in moonlight, chills while driving, spasms over a song, a voice, holy this and that. Why memory is stored in things, why things are what we use, and yet what we desire is to meet with the strange, the holy, the understanding.