Why is it so hard to bring myself to communicate these days?

I am beginning to make plans to leave. Of course, as soon as I realize that I can leave whenever I want, I'm stunned still. I am sitting on the porch of Cafe Luna, it is 99 degrees and today the mood is one of slight disappointment, tempered with exhaustion and leavened with expectation. I can't remember either why I am disappointed or what I am expecting because it's too hot. So I sit here and try to decide whether I should leave in January or April. At this moment, I honestly can't decide which is better. I don't want to be here and turn 26. What if we're meant to work something out? Surely I should stay close by, just in case. I can't leave Vaughan's and Dani so soon as January. I don't want to be working for so long at the same place. I don't want to miss the possibility that something will happen. I don't want to break my lease. These are all negatives. So I want... to want something. To wear boots and a coat. To start myself over. To know for sure. To be learning something. To be able to walk at night. To have the time and ability and focus to read. The days go so slowly but the hours vanish.

I do not like people who refer to themselves as their pets' "Mommies" or "Daddies". Although, if we are honest, I am not overly fond of people with pets.

I am many negative things, but I do not think I am overly negative and right now I value that. Aaaah, now I remember why I am feeling disappointed. Yesterday I was disenchanted by two friends. It was an unpleasant and unsual experience (because I have superior friends). However, I am not unaware that at this moment I am personally letting down one grandmother, two brothers and three friends... and those are just the ones that I know of or am willing to admit to you.

It is not out of the realm of possibility that I will one day want to own or manage a restaurant or cafe. There are few places I like better and few things I like more than the sight of people enjoying themselves with other people in safety and comfort and warmth.

I've made some cuts to the old entries. It was an interesting exercise.

Perhaps the two most self-destructive things that I do are to stop talking to you and to stop reading. But I still don't feel like communicating... Not just yet.

Last night, as I drove home on Annunciation and turned left onto Magazine, the red light stayed red, while the green light turned on. Should I stay or should I go rendered in color. They flickered for a few moments and then died altogether, worn out with the effort of having to decide on a course of action. On Julia Street, a traffic light was knocked down and continued to turn red and green, lying on it's side in the gutter. Gallantry personified.

Amazing the effect of a pair of pink Wellington boots has on the mind during a rainstorm.

Fast changes are coming. I am restless and apathetic, rootless and weighed down at the same time.

Every night when I drive home at around 11:30, there is a slightly built man in shorts and a t-shirt standing on the corner of Jefferson and Magazine, talking on the pay phone. Every night. I wonder, does he always talk to the same person?

Justin has been selected to fall off a two storey building after fighting Porthos. He plummets headfirst and then twists to land on his back. I imagine him landing shaped like a starfish with a gentle 'poof' and a small cloud of dust, like Wile E. Coyote.

This is not much of an entry, but at least you know I'm here.

Strange few days. In the past week, I have become a model, I have not become a stock broker, and I have been flirted by a marine, a man with three children and the schizophrenic son of a local millionaire. A piano whistled at me and I danced down the Avenue of the Oak Alley Plantation in a wedding dress and a tiara a few days before we discussed why I am not loved.

The symmetry of Sam and Stina getting engaged at the same time.

I remember the day I went out for coffee with Feurey and he told me his father had died. The helplessness is wretched. If I could I would fly there and know what to do. I've never been good with distance. I shan't ever meet Sandra.

We do what we can in the time that we have.

Your Moment of Americana:

Me, driving a stick-shift car from the beaches of Alabama to New Orleans, listening to Lynrd Skynrd, wearing blue jeans and a red bikini halter top. I'd much rather be in a navy-blue wool coat under a grey sky day, because that is how I feel most comfortable, but it feels so good to try on someone else's skin and realize that it's your own.

Tonight I'm suffused with longing. Where are you? I need you. I'll be over it tomorrow. What good is this without you?

The things that are not worth posting because people will wonder and worry and bother you about them later. Don't; it's just Late At Night In New Orleans hitting me hard and laying me low. The heat leaves me without ambition and incapable of any emotion but desire and nostalgia.

The smartest thing I've heard in days, courtesy of Willie Nelson: "It's not pre-marital sex unless you get married." Well, that's a load off my mind.

It has gotten too hot and so I will have to suspend all of your visits for the rest of the summer. Yes, I know, you were all clamouring and fighting to come over and see me, but you will just have to be patient. My apartment is very warm and I don't think your delicate Northeastern bodies can handle it.

Over the past couple of days I have been asked if a) I know how to type, and b) if I would be interested in Management. To both these questions I answered honestly and resoundingly "No." It wasn't until later that I realised I was being considered for jobs. From now on my motto will be, "When someone asks you 'Are you a god? you say 'Yes!'"

Was anyone else wondering about the literal definition of "irony"? Here it is:

1. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning

2. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.

Tonight at work, a mildly tipsy man named Hank told me that I look "Biblical". The Woody Allen in me thought..."What are you saying? Anti-Semite!" But the Woman in me found it original, charming, and evocative of Rebekah by the well and Bathsheba and Jezebel (my favourite) and camels and crescent moons and palms. I'm saving that up.

In New Orleans, on a day like today which is every day, the air feels like warm water. In the meantime, cool water feels like a light breeze on your skin.

For some reason these days I have little to say. New York tired me. I find I'm not anywhere as near being able to predict or control my behaviour as I should be. I don't mind retroactively regretting behaviour, but it's a hellish feeling to be behaving badly and knowing it while it is going on and still being unable to stop it. To be trapped in a conversation that only gets worse and worse.

The idea that some people bring out the best in you still holds for me. As much a reflection of them as of me.

Last night at work was a night where people inexplicably liked me. I suppose it's always that night.

New Orleans has taught me to appreciate iced tea, which had previously been a mystery.

How do other girls get their jeans to fit them like that? Mine always degenerate into shapeless sacks within a few weeks. Bah!

For the first time I find myself curious as to who reads this.

It's three in the morning and I've just crawled in from Vaughn's. Time seems to stop there. I was there for three hours that only lasted about 35 minutes. Kermit Ruffins started the second set with "Child, Things Are Gonna Get Easier." The doorman, a lanky, black man in his 50s, danced with me and dipped me and spun me. For the first time I acknowledge the possibility that I am addicted to New Orleans. I don't want to leave. I don't want to always be thinking of what I'm missing when I'm not here. I only have a few more Thursdays left in my life and they will not be enough. If only it were worthwhile for me to stay. Let's see if there's a way to make it happen.

This past weekend in Maine on Bremer Island was exactly what it should have been: swimming in too cold water, getting to know Swimming Jon's Emily, rowing with Kol, hammocking with Paul, tanning for the first time since sophomore year, drinking too much Warre's Warrior. When I walked into Ethan's house in Georgetown, which is astonishingly unchanged, I was overwhelmed with memories. Being with the Bairds and all the attendant people like Paul and Kol, makes me feel young and taken care of and spoiled and petted. There's nowhere else I feel like that except maybe my grandmother's house.

Too many relationships to balance and nurture. I'm not good at it, I know and yet I enjoy people so much. Call me lazy, or selfish, or unbearable, but it's true.

I just don't enjoy smoking pot, which is a shame. I wish I did. It looks fun.

I'm drowning in my own life and I don't know where to start to recover my equilibrium. I'm not unhappy so much as overwhelmed. Not working for Doug anymore, which I would have thought would free up my time, has merely posed more questions than it has answered and left me with a vague sense of unease. The ongoing theme has been the Aesop's Fable about the man, his son and their donkey, where they try to please everyone and end in pleasing no one.

I need to stop traveling.

I bought my first suit a few days ago and three pairs of pointy-toed shoes. Neither would have happened without the voices of Stacey and Clinton in my head, explaining that pointy shoes don't make your feet look bigger; they lengthen the line of your leg and that skinny girls are better off in two-button jackets than three. This sounds like hooey to me, too, but it's true.

I'm off to arrange my life. Wish me luck.