history turns to legend, legend turns to myth, and as each succession of storytellers leaves their distinctive mark in the telling they obscure the past until at some point we lose the fact of who we were and all that remains is the vision of who we think we are (which so often in its turn shapes the course of history)

60 years ago or so, a young woman named Ida peeked shyly into the room that her church had set aside to house a poor music student who worked as the church's janitor and choir director to pay his rent. In that room, she saw a tiny space strewn with opened books and dirty clothes and she shook her head in wonder. Now she looks into my room, shakes her head and says, 'You must get it from Gung gung.'

love

first love is a suspicion, a faint rushing sound in the dark
then love overtakes you, suddenly,
then it is exhilarating, a great weightlessness that sends you spinning into the sky
then it is terrifying, as disbelief begins to set in, and you realize that from such heights you are at the complete mercy of a force you do not understand.

i am terrified

I can't stop thinking about this girl

and it's slowly driving me crazy.

I would like to have a garden with fruit trees, plums or peaches in the summer, apples in the fall, oranges in the winter, and I would have patches where I grew corn, or carrots and potatoes, or small cherry tomatoes that burst when you bit into them. I would have a small kitchen that smelled of spices and faintly of pine from the warn wood cabinets, and from my garden and my kitchen I would feed people

a great deal of falling in love simply entails first knowing how to love and be loved. The gift of that sublime faculty, the capacity for love, seems to me like a sign for the unrequited, which reads: have faith, be patient.

"Oh my. Where have the days gone?"

Dear God,

For New Year's all I really want is time to write, inspiration to write, and the wisdom to understand why I am compelled to write and how it fits into my life.

Thank you for this past year. It made me really happy as being alive almost always does.

Please look after my family, friends and loved ones, please help them in their struggles, please assist me to accept whatever fate is written for me.

Thank you again.

--Brian