Telegram

Friday, October 31st

10/31

Halloween. I remember, mostly, the years when I was big enough to want the candy, and the "outdoors after dark" suspension of dependence. I don't remember, for the most part, what I was, and I think nobody else much cared. I was the youngest, the last trick-or-treater, after a hiatus of a year or two. These days I see the kids from TTH every year, and they are very excited about the pretend part, and some don't even get the candy part. They are escorted in broad daylight, so there is no temporary independence. It's exhausting for everyone: all the routines are upset and nothing gets back to normal. This year, it's a Friday, so by next week everyone will be calm again.

I stopped pretending, some time, after all those years when I did it all the time. Instead I tried on personas, shed them after a while, but now I seem to have worn the same one for a long time. Not to say that it's not the "real" me; `the facade fits the man. But maybe it would be nice to be a pirate for an hour.
David on 10.31.03 @ 07:57 PM CST [link]

Thursday, October 30th

Day

It was the kind of beautiful day you get after a terrible storm. Not that it was an extraordinary storm: it rained hard from time to time, there was wind, it was a little creepy. But it went on too long and was just the latest in a series of unsettling storms which have occured regularly this year. Today started off crisp and warmed up nicely; I had no special things to do and didn't do them; I saw very few people I knew and found myself at home early in the afternoon. I did some laundry. I rode in the car. I went to the store. I tried to rollerblade without falling down. I read Count of Monte Cristo and listened to Richard II. It is still early, and the sky is blue.
David on 10.30.03 @ 03:13 PM CST [link]

Wednesday, October 29th

Pretender

I will write about the past; every story comes out of it, and every hope is anticipated by it. There are many people there, not all gone, and I think about some of them quite a lot. Last night's rain makes for the puddles, streams and clouds of today. I've slipped into metaphor even as I make a literal report: but I'll speak of the people and events of the past without getting too specific, clear and obscure all at once, clear to you, reader, who knows whereof I speak, obscure to those who need not know, or who may be assured that they will not be recognized. Like all of us, I have parents, family, friends, those whom I loved and those who loved me, acquaintances, fellow travelers, adversaries, demons, and blessed strangers. I pretend that I have sorted them out, which are which.
David on 10.29.03 @ 05:56 PM CST [link]

Tuesday, October 28th

Purposes

music: Solo Flight

What am I doing here? There is a time to scatter stones, and a time to gather stones together. I have little stones scattered all over the internet, placed in free space at various times,and now i am willingto spend a little to keep all of my stones in one place. I'm hoping, as I resend "Telegram", to be clear, to be concise, to be honest, and to say something worth saying. I hope to have the discipline to avoid addressing an unseen audience, whom I would hope to impress. Better that I be simple, say things I'll understand if I ever decide to reread them, and be as open as I can be, as if speaking to theone who knows all before it is spoken.
David on 10.28.03 @ 05:31 PM CST [link]

Monday, October 27th

Stormy

It's like water: always itself and always in disguise. Today I call the water I drink and the water I bathe in "good'; and I call the water pouring out of the sky in a violent torrent, overflowing the gutters and pouring into the cellar, "bad". The element itself is neither good nor bad, it is merely itself in different countenances. Needless to say, I wouldn't think this philosophically about it if I weren't in the dry and the warm, listening to the rain on the other side of the wall.
David on 10.27.03 @ 05:33 PM CST [link]

Sunday, October 26th

In Dreams

I was a stranger there, in my dream; and certainly you are a sojourner in dreamland, but it must be your own land, since it isn;'t anyone else's. My old friend was enrolled, had taken a room with a balcony. I pressed the button on my remote control and his printer discharged pages which gently drifted down. I went walking among the students; they played games on the green, undertook romantic clinches, and I was on the outside looking in. I looked in the shop windows.

Why so vivid, why so fragmentary? I wasn't unhappy, but I didn't belong, and I was comfortable in the knowledge. I woke to a life which isn't that different from my dream.
David on 10.26.03 @ 01:10 PM CST [link]

Saturday, October 25th

One

Welcome to Telegram.
David on 10.25.03 @ 02:05 PM CST [link]

October 2003
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