It's all Cupid's fault. Stupid Cupid. He may look like an innocent, beautiful lil thing, but in actual fact, he's an evil little boy armed with bleeding bows and arrows. I have no idea why, but despite having doing it forever, he seems to have not perfected the craft of shooting two arrows, instead of one or three. 
 
With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. Adn when it's gone, it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second, you have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, a painting can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, already I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die.
 
There are times when a feeling of expectancy come to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my unedrstanding, waiting for me to grasp it. I is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of hints of evolutio suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as is was accustomed to; the gradual dissapearence of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, coloured motion of the twenty-first century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolescence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revalation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grosteque joke. And then i'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.

Last night, I had to step outside for a few moments before I went to bed. I headed downstairs at 2 in the morning; and I glanced up. For a moment, I suddenly felt breathless, stifled. I was trapped, with the tantalising night above me and the feminine, warm atmosphere enveloping me in its thivk, feathery smothering embrace.
 
For that moment, all was at peace inside. I came out of the house, sick with unfulfilled longing, self-reviling. And there, miraculously, was the July night. It had just rained, and theair was thick with warm damp. There seemed to be no wind, but the leaves of the trees stirred, restless, and the water fell from them in great drops on the pavement, with a sound like that of people walking down the street.
 
The air flowed about me like thick molasses, and the shadows from the moon and streetlamps split like schizophrenic blus phantoms, grosteque and faintly repetitous.
 
Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. I guess, I'm afraid for myself... the old primitive urge for survival. I want to stop it all, before I annihilate myself. I think I'd be mush happier if I didn't think too much, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time. Oh, God, who am I? I want someone who believes I am a human being, not a name merely. I want to live, not to exist merely.
 
This continual motion kills me. You kill me. You break me. After being conditioned as a child to the lovelt never-never land of magic, of fairy queens and virginal maidens, of little princes and their rosebushes, of poignant bears and Eeyore-ish donkeys, of life personalized, as the pagans loved it, of the magic wand, and the faultless illustration- the beautiful ebony-haired child (who was you) winging through the midnight sky in her mother's box of reel- of Griselda in her feather cloak, walking barefoot with the Cuckoo in the lantern-lit world of nodding madrins, of Delight in her flower garden with the slim-limbed flower sprites, of the Hobbit and the dwarves, gold-belted with blue and purple hoods, drinking ale and singing of dragons in the caverns of the velley- all this I knew, and felt, and believed. All this was my life when I was young. 
 
To go from this to the world of "grown-up" reality. To feel the call loud to the flesh; to become aware of school, exams, bread and butter, love, compatibility, war, economics, death and self. What a pathetic blighting of the beauty and reality of childhood. Not to be a sentimental, as I sound, but why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and0cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals. To be aware that you must compete somehow, and yet that wealth and beauty are not in your realm. To learn that not everybody thinks like you do. To realise that you have to put on a facade if you want to be considered normal, to be liked. To learn that you can never learn anything valid for truth, only momentary, trasitory sayings that apply to you in your moment, your locality, your present state of mind. To learn that love can never come true, because people you believe in are unattainable, because you're not anything like another.
 
There comes a time when all your outlets are blocked, as with wax. You sit in solitude in your room, feeling the prickling ache in your body, which constricts your throat, tightens dangerously in little tear pockets behind your eyes. One word, one gesture, and all that is pent up in you- festered resentments, gangrenous jealousies, superfluous desires unfulfilled- that will burst out of you in angry impotent tears, in embarrassed sobbing, and blubbering to no one in particular. No arms will enfold you, no voice will soothe you as the voice of Corrine May sings softly from your stereo. In your trecherous solitude, arising from little sleep and high-strung nerves, and a feeling that the cards have been stacked high up against you this once, and that they are still being heaped up. An outlet you need, and theyare sealed. You live day and night in the dark, cramped prison you have made for yourself.
 
Maybe I'm not capable of love. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world. How much of my solicitude for other human beings is real and honest, how much is a feigned laquer painted on by society, I do not know. I am afraid to face myself. I heartily wish that there was some absolute knowledge, some person whom I could trust to evaluate me and tell the the Truth.
 
Maybe I cannot love. I can only love by giving up my love, of self and ambitions. But God, who is to say? Sigh.  
 
I love you too much to tell you. There's enough between us now, I don't want to change anything. Maybe time will come between us... but now, there's just something about you that makes me smile. And for that, thank you.