Christmas eve. 

Went out to eat with Stephanie, discussed our mutual dysfunctionality, ate fabulous food, cruised teenage busboys, and had an all-around good time.

This is the night the visitor comes.

I have to work tomorrow (today--I haven't slept yet), and that's a good thing for me.  This is a good time to stay busy.  If I were not feeling anxious and sad, I would not be fully conscious of my emotions, and that is not a good thing.

The unexpected visitor is accepted in, or shooed away in annoyance.  It is important for me to remember, even in the midst of my irritability, that the opportunity to host the visitor may come at any time, and later on, after the chance has passed, I may find myself wishing I had been a more accepting host. 

The one who brings us grace and salvation can be anyone; the visitor is everyone.  In the end, we discover the unexpected visitor is our own forgotten self, who we didn't even recognize.  Let him in. 

Be blessed.

I was thinking about how negative and whiney these pages have been, and I realize I could probably make them different.  I could use the charming images of Norman Rockwell, instead of peeling paintings of frail angels.  I could take a walk on the wild side, which for me would also be the sunny side of the street.  And when I hear Alanis Morrisette every morning say, 'how about unabashedly bawling your eyes out?' I suppose I could do that too; I could get it over with, finally.

I suppose if I were trying to sell these sentences, as a column or a book, I would have to craft their content more carefully, with an eye toward how they will be received by the reader, and with more of a concern that my writing actually say something.  I would have to test this stuff for coherence and make sure I used the most direct language, presented in the most powerful way.  I would have to make it all presentable.

I'd be embarrassed to present these pages as anything but my raw ramblings.  And I have presented some of the stuff which appears here as if it had some value outside of my journal--and I have been embarrassed.  I tend too much toward a kind of archaeology that over-values the crap of past days as if it were valuable just because I produced it.  Little boys poop, and point it out with pride.  Sometimes, adults do too.

I started this morning trying to validate the unpolished way I record my days in this journal.  I wanted to defend the self-pitying tone that sometimes drowns out my better angels.  It is a journal, after all.  But that effort surprised me by bringing me back to an old theme; autonomy.

That's going to require some more time here, which I don't have right now, more time to talk about moving from 'blame mode' and infancy, toward responsibilty and the ideal of adulthood.  But now I am going to work.  See you tonight.

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