2004-04-16 - 5:15 p.m.

i have a very vivid image of what i want from life in my mind already. it's been there for a long time, getting clearer and clearer. until today i don't think i ever even noticed it was there. it was always in the background, but now that i'm single again, it's all i can see.

here it is:

i'm in a cabin or small house. it's at a relatively high altitude, or in the woods, near a lake. it's sometime like late fall or early spring, when it's not really cold but every day is gray and the trees are all leafless. the house i'm in is on a hill surrounded by trees and the lake is a mile or so off.

i'm there with one to four friends. i'm falling in love with one of them, who is also falling in love with me. this is common knowledge to our friends.

it's early in the morning. i'm wrapped in a frayed blanket on a worn out couch. bluish grayish light is coming in the windows. my lover is making coffee or something. the linoleum in the kitchen is a little yellowed. the counters are that speckled vinyl kind with sharp corners, not rounded ones. the table is round and it wobbles a bit. we have a toaster oven, not the pop up kind.

our friends are either still asleep or have gone out fishing or something. we are alone together in the blue-gray light of about eight or nine in the morning. maybe we never even went to bed the night before, but stayed up talking and perhaps kissing and perhaps more. maybe we've been friends a long time and this is just the beginning of it becoming more. maybe we've only been friends a moderate length of time but it's been more than that for a while. either way, there are lots of windows and it's really quiet and kind of cold. not cold like brrr your whole body shivers, but enough to make your feet cold when you don't wear socks.

my lover makes the coffee and adds 2% milk to mine (the way i like it) or maybe i make the coffee and i fix theirs the way they like it. and maybe we're a little bit hung over or tired, and maybe we have some toast but we're out of butter or something.

by the way this cabin has a small wooden porch.

and i notice things like this person's toes curled under as they sit beside me on the couch and hand me my coffe, toes curled under in a subconscious futile effort to get warm, toenails softly scraping against the linoleum. i notice the lines of this person's face as they flash a smile to me.

we drink our coffee together in silence, broken by a few words here and there. we look out at the bare trees. we are wrapped in the same ugly frayed blanket. we are both kind of dirty, dissheveled, in our pyjamas or the clothes we slept in or never changed out of.

later our friends will come back and we'll go out someplace with them, or someone will make dinner, or something. but that's completely far away and separate from this moment i'm sharing with my lover.

that is what i want out of life.

one step forward - one step back