monday october 15 2001    |    11:49 a.m.

it's almost noon. i haven't slept. how could i have.

what should've been a short, relaxing, bay-side night with friends switched without warning -- as these things will -- into a very ugly argument. punctuated by one person throwing a drink at another person's face, then pouring a good half-bottle of coke out over her head, then a beer. oh it was bad. potentially shattering.

i emerged dry and mainly unscathed, but it's hard to fall asleep after something like that. and during an invisible war. with a friend's father dying in the hospital. with an instinct for protection of family. with the swift realization that i am wasting so much time.

why do i write this? it's a big theme with the diaryland set, journaling angst. i think we all wonder and most of us keep writing anyway. and probably lots of people know, but me, i don't.

i've gotten, in general, pretty good at the dubious art of self-censorship over the past many months. i don't write much in here, not much of value. if i need to detail a weekend, don't i do it freely in a paper journal that nobody else sees? all right. then what?

exposure (of what? to whom?)? how long since there's been something even remotely insightful here? or styled? ever?

mass communication? that's no way to stay in touch with distant friends. individual e-mails, at the very least.

boredom? yes. procrastination? yes.

so many wasted moments.

when i walked back into my room tonight (this morning) at five, to the clutter of books and papers and records and stuff, i could hardly decide where to look, what to pick up and consider. good GOD if the slow decline of this world is worth anything, it should be making people aware of their incredible smallness and broad ignorance; and on a minute, all-important scale, their enormous and urgent importance. starting with me.

there are so many books to read, maps to trace fingers over, speakers to blow, people to talk with, things to think about... it's obvious, right? but how i lose sight of it!

he told a really interesting story in an entry a while back. about one of his friends who suddenly stopped hanging out with the rest. they'd call and he'd just say, uh, i'd rather stay in tonight, thanks guys. so they didn't see him for about a year, almost gave up. until one day he started coming back. and he could play guitar unbelievably well, he blew the rest of them away. spent all that time wrapped up in his music, writing songs, playing -- all that mattered to him at the time.

it's a small story, but it means a lot.

and i like this idea of a self-imposed exile. to write. to play music. to read. to think. to learn. to keep getting to know my parents. to work. to sleep. to be thankful. to do some kind of good.

because obviously inertia doesn't get you really anywhere.