Turnings, musings, a glimmer of a new health. Allure of drugs and drink, fading. Rustlings of courage, maybe? Scent of something new on these balmy summer days—

Well. There have been false lights. But—let’s not be fatalistic here. If I really turn towards it, it will be done. If in half steps.

Let’s speak it clear: I’m talking about being brave, about not allowing my life to become a box of the regular, the norm. Where my only flights are in my head.

Meeting women is one part of it, because so much of my courage or my failings congeal there, in women, love, sex, flirtation, my body, hers. But also just speaking with more truth and more heart to whomever is there. And moving with more purpose, and less. More fluid, more natural, more ignorant of the lines, coloring all over the page.

“It is foolish to be angry with a fact”, says Krishnamurti, simple plain funny wisdom. For me one fact is I’m not as beautiful, not as thin as I wish I was. Hairier, a bit clumsier, a bit bigger, a bit softer. Yes, well, those are facts, and like the man said, foolish to be angry about them. The truth is that at my best I’ve been radiant for long periods and all I have to do is find the brave, get used to it again. I wonder if E can be a part of it. My relationship with her is fraught with the peril of her beauty, her allure (Ah! Her stomach! When she stretches and the pants are riding low and the line of her hip, the crease above the thigh, ah! Sexier now that she’s not quite as skinny, not quite as hard bodied, more softness there to want to sink into). It is easy for me to start wanting her, usually because she will come to me with all that openness and physicality, and then when I start to want her she’ll seem to recede, this is a pattern that isn’t healthy, isn’t fair to either of us. Anyway. Beauty demands a high price, what we finally talked about, if not quite directly, lying on the blanket in the calico late afternoon light. I called it her subtle egocentrism, what I mean is that being beautiful can be, like any other power, a corrupter, it makes you crave it, consider it your due.