Endless summer

It won’t be endless, of course.  It just feels like it now.  And I’m not doing anything with it.  I mean, I’m working…and spending a ton of time with my mother…and reading…I finished the gift I started making for Elana last year…I’m preparing for Brendan’s show, which I’m doing at the beginning of the semester…but still I somehow feel like I’m not doing anything.  Maybe I’ll feel better if I start taking dance classes.  Or spending more time with people.  It’s not exactly that I’m feeling antisocial — when I’m with people, I’m happy to be with them — but I haven’t really been seeking out human contact.  Sam, sometimes.  And last night Aviva came over and we watched a marathon 5 1/2 hours of Angels in America before she had to leave at midnight.  And sometimes I see my cousins, and that makes me happy, particularly Evie and Sarah.  There is something very special about Sarah.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but maybe that will become clearer as she gets older.  And Evie, as always, is just lovely.  She must  be the sweetest, most loving, and smartest four-year-old ever.  And somewhere she’s picked up the archaism of substituting "for" for "because," as in "I can’t show you my bear, for I left him at school," and it’s absolutely adorable.

I should dance, I should sing.  Maybe I miss theatre.  Maybe I feel like nothing that I’m doing is actually useful or important…maybe it’s all a hold-over from the LifeCycle.  What could feel important after that?  Another thing about the LifeCycle — I was at my best on the ride.  Strong, determined, yes, but more than that…I tried to have a smile for everyone I passed, and even more so for everyone who passed me.  So much so that there was a whole collection of gay men who passed me at roughly the same times each morning, not together, who all called me "Sunshine."  And people would shout as they passed me "Look at that smile!", or "You always brighten my day!"  That is what I have tried to hold onto most.  The sense that none of the day-to-day irritants are worth taking away my good cheer.  I was so happy, because life was beautiful and I was doing something good with it, and I made the people around me happy.  I want very badly not to lose that.  But in a different circumstance, such a different circumstance, it’s a hard thing to keep.

I need to make a trip to Michaels and find a project for Solomon.  Not another latch-hook, I’m sick of those and also they’re huge, and while Laura is very happy to receive huge wall-hangings for her children, Andrea would prefer to have something small that can be hung out of said children’s reach.  So…now for something completely different.  Well, not competely.  She still wants something to hang on the walls.

On impulse, last week, I started learning Welsh.  It’s fun.  It would be more fun if the program I found had any interest at all in teaching me grammar…as it stands, I am developing a very rudimentary vocabulary which I can’t actually use at all because I have no grammar.  Oh well.  When am I ever really going to have a chance to use Welsh anyway?  Well, if I want to ever attend an eisteddfod…

I sent Anna some gifts for her birthday.  I don’t know whether or not she and I are OK…we probably are, I probably have nothing to worry about, but I’m worried nonetheless.  But hopefully she’ll call me when she gets the gifts, and then we can talk, and that will be good.

I need to clean my room.  Maybe that would help.  Maybe exercise would help, getting back on my bike, for instance.  I haven’t ridden since the ride.

I’m rather ready to be back at school.  I’m rather ready to be done with school, but that won’t happen until after I get back there.  One more year and then I can start.  Find out just how hard it really is.  Meet some new people.  Give NYC a try.

Something about this summer just isn’t quite working out, and I don’t know what it is.

–Stephanie