for the first time tonight, after a run - after pushing myself harder, again, than i thought i could go -

for the first time, i looked down at my sweaty, hairy legs, and i believed that they are beautiful.

not just a statement, not just a point of pride - but beautiful, natural; and in the right light, feminine, even.

i produced it. i did it for me. i bear it proudly.

yes i suppose i am more comfortable with myself every day.

but there are still moments when the realization that i'm twenty years old can stop me dead in my tracks - the obvious extending from the ludicrous realization that my life is a quarter through, that by my estimate i really only have ten good years left, anyhow.

maybe fifteen.

i wonder how 35 will feel. i guess at ten i couldn't imagine twenty. and i like twenty.

though the existential dread that baby bird (to which anyone could offer only a flat, unknowing, sympathetic smile) left me in is rare, i suppose the thought of death is with me all the time.

and a lot of the time, i can see it either as comforting or inconsequential. (that is how comfortable i have become.) i can think of my growing sense of communion with the world, and think of my body as stardust returning to the place from which it came.

sometimes, i'm peaceful enough i can do that.

other times... i guess everything's the same.

and sometimes, when i see the sunset or realize i have a functioning bladder, it's hard for me to deny god exists.

other times... fucking nothing i can come up with makes any sense.

funny how the more i believe i don't need answers the more i seem to search for them.

and here is your obligatory weekly reminder that i need out of this place

- for the past several days i have been trying to write an entry about how satisfactory this routine and these people have become -

so again i feel it is time to be spontaneous.

i keep traveling around the bend
there was no beginning, there is no end
it wasn't born and never dies
there are no edges, there is no size
oh yeah, you just don't win
it's so far out - the way out is in
bow to god and call him sir
but if you don't know where you're going
any road will take you there
george harrison