Uploading pictures constantly on Flickr. Moby — 18 But one thing I cannot do, friends, is dress myself. The fact is, I am a fashion failure. — January 24, 2004 Moby — 18 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. — Anais Nin When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being. — Ernest Becker Beautiful new poem up by the loveliest German ever (actually, just a fragment of a poem he apparently never completed). I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here.	January 27, 2005 Heart trouble Lately I've been having heart trouble. Literally. I first noticed the irregular beat last Thursday night, lying in bed. There I was, under the covers, trying to fall asleep. But my heart kept waking me up. Instead of the usual, peaceful lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, there was a lub-dub, lub-dub, lub..... DUB! And then there was a palpable twitch in some mysterious valve, a rush of tardy blood into the waiting chambers. It felt like someone or something thumping a finger against the inner wall of my chest. It keeps happening, this hopalong heartbeat. It's happened enough that it has me concerned. I told Tom last night where to scatter my ashes (Berry College). I was sort of joking in that conversation, and sort of not. When's the last time your heart jumped up and down and demanded your full attention? I don't think I'm going to die tonight, but it's awfully strange to have such a vital organ make so much noise. Friends, there is so much that never gets spoken about in this space. There is so much that gets edited out. Have you read between the lines? Do you know all of this already? One of the stories you probably haven't heard about is how I am moving out of my house this weekend. Alone. I am putting my clothes and books into cardboard boxes and moving to a little room in a different house. The heart thing — it's probably due to stress. A doctor's appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning will probably confirm this. The past couple of months have been the most painful I've ever known. The questions that I began brushing up against last March are not growing quiet and going away. They are growing bigger, brighter, asking for more space and more time. And Tom and I seem to have reached a point where we can't go forward and we can't go back. I don't know what else to do. So I retreat. I regularly fall into tears in the driveway, coming home at the end of the day. I fell into tears tonight, after coming home from dinner with my mother, my dear mother, whose heart is possibly in even worse shape than mine. I came into the house, and touched the plaster walls in the bedroom, and the cardboard boxes on the floor. Disbelief. Most vivid is my sense of letting people down. I have had conversations with my family and my friends over the past month that I prayed I would never, ever have to have. I have said words I never, ever wanted to say. Life is so much more difficult than I would like to believe it is. The path we took out of the church that day was covered with smooth red carpet and fallen rosepetals. There is still so much love and warmth between he and I, but the path from where we are standing now is so unclear. My husband's name is not Tom. My name is not Grace. And of course our lives are not as neatly packaged and cheerful and understandable as my words here beg you to believe. The sticky, confusing parts are the first to get edited out. The conversations that trail into dust, the painful uncertainty dangling at the end of those sentences. The sobs that shake the body, the trembles that arrive again at night, the tears that spring up over and over and over. None of that stuff gets talked about here. But it happens. Lately, it happens all the time.