I've got to get out of the house more.  Never left yesterday, still haven't yet today.  And it's really nice.  Cold, but nice.

I'm one of those who doesn't really like it hot (the ambient air, I mean), and humid is especially unpleasant.  So today is fine in Massachusetts.  There's that grungy-sweet smell of woodsmoke in the air, the sky is bright clear blue, and the sun's low-angled light has a little bit more yellow-orange in it than in summer.  The sunlight warms the skin a little despite the crisp air, telling us faint rumors of its distant love affair now beginning with other people on southern continents.  The boys of summer there will strut and shed their clothes on its approach, with the confidence of a lover on the upswing of an affair.  Not like us northerners, who now sheepishly dismantle our affair with warmth, and wonder why we were so foolish to think it could have lasted.  We hope for another chance.

Drowsy now.  Went out to get food, and to try and see some Leonids (meteorites).  I guess I'm among too many lights here in Worcester, though when I am not looking for shooting stars, I don't notice all the other lights.  I have been on a dating-spree for about a month.  Four dates in a month constitutes a spree for me; until last month, I hadn't been on a date in a couple years, and then I went out four times with four different guys.  The last date was a week and a half ago.  

My plan is not to find a lover, not right away.  My plan is to finally find someone, I mean really find someone, on all the levels where we can find each other.  I want to date but stay single for a while and explore intimacy--and I don't mean fucking.  I want to go into the places I avoid, I want to explore and spend some time in that space between the introduction and the bed.  That distance has been too short for me in the past.  My plan is to do for me what I need and deserve.

I stopped looking for shooting stars after that date ten days ago; I haven't noticed any light around me since then.  I know what I did wrong, and I know what scared me.  But I had no idea how much it had scared me until tonight.

You know, I'm 41, so I forget how childlike I can be.  There's nothing wrong with being scared, as long as you feel it, and don't run from it.  But I ran.  I pretended I wasn't afraid, and I pretended I wasn't an adult running away.  I was willing to chuck all my plans to do what's good and right for me--and anything else that might get in the way, no matter how important--just to get away from the fear.  It's taken ten days distance for me to feel secure enough to stop running.  

There's an awful lot of light around here tonight.  A lot of light.