All right, here it is: you have before you the Collected Works of Lauren in the Netherlands, February 2004, starting here. There's a lot of blather here, so if you want a few suggestions, the most important entries are as follows:

Damned polyglots
Adamant
Old raincoat, two lives; no boyfriend, no wife
Break it down again
New Emode quiz: What kind of fascist are YOU?
Talk about the passion

The entry that follows I also recommend, but as it is sort of the culmination of a lot of things that have been bubbling to the surface this past month, I only suggest you read it first if you really don't want to read any of the preceeding.

Massive, right? :)

I have this impending, imposing sense that in the last month, which is not long even for me, I have pinned down each major shortcoming and evil of mine which had been building into a crescendo of what would be self-loathing if I had any self-knowledge in the corner of my eye for years, years, now in February of 2004 swirling around in front of me nearly tangible, nearly, if I will see them, ready to be grasped, plucked down and transformed into something useful.

What have we here?

- The ambivalence of my hatred of and longing for people, neatly rolled up into the being I have all but created called Francesca, who I think in five years will read like a great albatross but in reality (yet who cares for that?) means very little.

- My intense love of self, which, since I have no idea what my self is, is borne out in love for other selves I like to pretend remind me of me -- and how limiting that is, to have seemingly confined myself to plagiarizing what has already been done -- and how self-defeating it is to have already discounted other selves and other Others.

- That I wonder if I know how to love at all, if I have the capacity to learn the art, and if I could ever want to love another person truly, or if really I just want someone to touch me in all the right places and conveniently cease to exist in five days; can I love before agency, can agency be bestowed through love, or must agency come first, and if so, what step does that take me back to, exactly?

- And the better I get at being alone, the more content I am with solitude and the more I learn to fill my own time well, the clearer it is to me that all is improved with someone (worthwhile) to share it with.

All fed and colored by the fact that:

- I'm not nearly as horrible a bitch as I present myself, and truly I hate almost no one.

- I am typically quite reserved but lately have lapsed into fleeting bouts of visceral anger that come almost as out-of-body experiences.

- As I told Josh once, I am interested in everything, to whatever degree, and I'm not closed to new experiences though, unchecked, I do perhaps have a tendency to narrow myself; but I think, perhaps, it is not unnatural to be drawn to that which one understands and can relate to? Moreover, as I prize my self-actualization, I perhaps ought to seek out sources that will aid along that path; though in reality there is not a path nor a certain right kind of source and I ought not to limit myself at 21.

- I have become a nap queen, if I want to make light of it; or I could be honest and admit I get at least 8 hours of sleep per night and nap on average perhaps another 2-3 hours every day and I don't know why: boredom, escape, or real physical necessity? It seems wrong, though.

- I may have my Virginia Woolf, Katharine Hepburn and Shulamith Firestone, and I may force myself to be "unnaturally gregarious" until it becomes second nature, but I really cannot/will not certainly do not relate to much of anyone in real life -- I still carefully distance myself -- why?

- (What is first nature?)

- England is to the Netherlands what Columbus is to Marietta: just shut up, stay put, stick it out and don't complain for once: might just learn something.

- How exactly does one undo severe repression when one refuses to settle for cheap experience? That is, it seems the only way to get over sex issues is perhaps to have sex, but how long might it be before the opportunity to have meaningful sex presents itself? Meanwhile, am I just in stasis? If so I think it does me more harm than good, and my first inclination is still to run -- really need to rid myself of this preteen mindset, but the chance could be years off.

- Which is why, not paradoxically, I will not pursue email contact with John, because I was very close to renewing the preteen games, the safe zone where words are only words, and besides I know that if in the event it did become something more than words I really wanted him only to satisfy my sexual curiosity, so we'll just leave that there and I will try to quell my preteen fantasies.

- I have a horrible tendency to not think of people as people at all.

- I'm still unbelievably sensitive and reactive, which manifests itself as just a step above insecure.

- Which is why, to counteract, I think, I say and convince myself I don't need anyone -- I haven't learned yet how to do anything besides need desperately or need nothing.

- I go extreme, extreme, recenter, deconstruct, repeat. There is no sense to be made of me; perhaps this is an exercise in futility.

- Perhaps if I had it in me to create, to make real the unreal, to fix the transient, I would not be so fixated on grasping a self which I pride for its mobility. Yes, there is some sort of creation, apart from delusion and facade, which if I could master could anchor me, around which my soul could free-form rotate, merge, become, pulsate, shift: form, deform, reform...

It is all coming down now -- I feel this is such an opportunity -- but I don't know what to do with any of it! These puzzle pieces -- some new dimension, I see how they fit -- what does it mean? And then -- what do I do with them?

I'm ready for something -- god, I hope I don't sound crazy in the morning.