Thinking more about friends. It does get to a point sometimes where you cannot keep track of all the friends you have. I guess you sort of have to pick and choose in each moment depending on where you are. Because you just don't have enough time in your life to stay close to all of them. Especially if you travel a lot and are making lots of new friends all the time. the key is to try to stay as close and connected to as many of them as possible so that they all can feel your love and connection. Even though you may not be able to talk or hang out all the time. On a very mundane note, Microsoft outlook really helps with that.

I wonder if sometimes I sacrifice really close communication and connection with a few in order to maintain casual contact with many? I think sometimes that my close friends fault me for this. for being a bit too distant and aloof to everyone. I always vehemently denied this when someone would accuse me of it. but the last two days I have been thinking about it and perhaps there is some truth to it. am I not connecting enough? Am I not sharing myself enough with the people that I love?

Be yourself more. Let go and be yourself more. Tao Te ching says, stop comparing, stop competing. Do the work and stand back.

How can I become more real? More honest? More me? everyday is a struggle for it. to remain in the flow of me and not surrender to the world.

Did I mention that every day I feel closer and closer to her? Did I mention that on the slopes this ski trip that I felt so happy inside sometimes thinking of her that I would just break out in a huge grin. And yet I have not even met her yet?

[Did I mention that you are a lunatic??? And that I wish I wasn't you sometimes? (O.k. now you have truly gone off the deep end. you are typing to yourself...) Oh really? If I am typing to myself then who is reading? Answer that one smarty. My God, I am insane...]

Enjoying spending time with Beav. More and more each day I appreciate his being. I taught him how to tune a guitar to open tunings so he could enjoy the majesty of that. is there anything better than having or being a brother? I love that kid so much. I learn a lot from him. we live completely opposite lifestyles. So there is a lot of learning potential there for both of us. he says I am living the life of his dreams if he hadn't have chosen the life he now lives. Married with two young children; a young executive at a large oil company. I come home for the holidays showing my handheld videos of us out in the streets fighting the good fight against the profit at all cost tactics of the big oil and other large companies. He is watching people marching, protesting, speaking out, getting beat up and arrested on these videos I bring home and he is sitting there on his laptop designing software for the same big oil companies we are fighting while he is watching. We all start laughing at the irony of it all. Its how he supports his family. Mom just sits there and smiles so proud. Says we turned out exactly like she envisioned, one of us her crazy anarchist trying to save the world and the other her family man executive. Beav protests, ‘mom I'm an anarchist too. In my own way. I'm only working for the Man to support my family. But when I get enough money.... bam! Total anarchy! I'll save the world in a week when these crazy radicals have been trying to do it for hundreds of years!’ Beav says pointing to the TV. (Beav and I may just have the greatest mom in the world. One day if we ever need to we should auction her off on eBay, sell her to the highest bidder like they used to do in olden times. maybe just rent her by the week. Hehe.)

I will say this. the last two weeks I have really gotten a taste of what it is like to have children. Reality 101. and it isn't pretty. It may seem all romantic and all on TV and in the movies. But the reality is just so different than all that. hanging out with Beav and his wife and kids has made me realize two things: one, that I never want to have kids. And two, that I really want to have kids one day. ...the horror of my brain.   

Last screening: sound of music, as always. Now we all have it on DVD so there's like five copies floating around the house. if I had to choose I would say it is my favorite movie of all time. and late last night, the royal tennebaums. Forced everyone to watch it till about 2 in the morning. And then I came out here to write. There is this mood in the movie, like putting on an old album. whatever it is he was going for when he made it I think he def achieved it.