2001-09-24 - 10:43 p.m.

so i find my fourteen year old cousin in a strange room, with seventies suburban, lived-in furniture and she's strung out. she's vacant and too thin.

and i run over and grab the small white and brown baggy of herion with frayed plastic edges and take it from her, tossing it quick into my mouth to keep it from her pawing reach. the plastic melts away and i felt cocaine like powder starting to dissolve in my mouth. i run to the sink and spit it out, freaking that i'll become high. screaming at her for loosing herself and for what she's now done to me.

this is the dream that prompted my 20 minute speach about not doing herion to my cousin. i love her too damn much. she has changed. she has grown a young woman's, tanned body and a goregous face. i want to protect her from horny little boys who've had too much to drink. i want to protect her from addiction and loosing herself. i want to keep her. i desperately want to keep her.

and there's nothing i can do but stay close and wait.

i bought a reasonable auto from a moony, chirpy but calm, buddist looking christian, armenian man. we both smiled a lot. i got him down by 2grand. i checked the vin this time. i finally have an auto. and i've been grateful for all the rides, all the friends coming to help and i can't wait for someone to ask me to help them.

i have strep throat and can't stop thinking about smoking. that's about the way my ol' mind works. i desperately want to do nothing but lay in bed with loud music blaring, and smoke menthols, while talking to irreverant, strange people all night. instead i toss and turn coughing up scared throat tissue all night, my body beggin me to sleep, but this sickness keeping me rolling awake.

i feel so seperate from ny and the pain. it's so easy to walk forward when i don't exhist in the shadow of that valley. i'm afraid for how our lives will change forever. i'm afraid of dying. of not seeing my dad b4 it happens. of not making babies and falling in love again.

and it's cemented my perspective on truely living deeply submerged in the moment.

today i took the cousin to the beach and i stood in the cold water, feeling everything. the sound of water pulling itself back to sea, creating all these bubbles that feels like effervescent energy climbing up my body, leaving me tingly. the answer for me remains in the moment and in finding the love. i can't distrust and be in the moment at the same time. when i'm in the moment it literally pushes all other thoughts aside, all fears, all projections.

i can't believe that i'm an example for people. a friend getting sober and going to rehab. she's lived on coke for so many years now.

i drove home from san diego tonight, i found myself utterly happy. just content. with no big reason for it. were all in an insane time, i have no job and i'm sick as a hog rolling around in petrol. but i feel god damn lucky. i feel so lucky.

i called my brother, left a message telling him what i needed to. that i wanted to connect more and that it's my fault. that i was listening to cat stevens like we used to, and that i missed him.

ps. i went out with the bad breath boy. and now i think i'm in love. in some crazy place no doubt. he took me for lunch at some healthy sammy place in malibu. at first there were silences, i raced my tired mind for things to speak of. but then we talked as if we were never going to stop. he came back to my place we talked more. we talked that elongated talk that happens before some one busts a move. it just keeps going and going, leaving us both damn thirsty.

he reached over and touched my scar on my arm. we held hands. i felt like a kid who didn't know what she was doing with this adult. like he was thinking the whole time how silly and slow i was. i got shy. he tried to catch my eyes and i just wasn't up for it. then all of the sudden, my friend is here to pick me up to take me to the train station, and i haven't packed a thing and certainly don't want to end this moment. so i jumped up and surprised him with an innocent kiss. he went in for more, i said, i'm sick, but he didn't care. the urgency. the kiss was incredible. it had so much energy, neither of us wanted to stop. we were drinking eachother in, standing, holding, grasping. two kisses on his neck like i know him well. he melted into it. i threw my bikini and such into the bag and was off, thinking that my plan to buy a car in san diego wasn't so well thought out, but i was off.

things i like about him: i discovered he dated someone sober and he gets it!!! and AND he doesn't have any wierd addictions! he can take it or leave it. that's fuckin amazing to me as i feel like i don't know anyone truely like that. i felt safe with him. i felt a knowing. a very certain knowing. i may be crazy (as i've been know to be a complete lunatic before), but i felt a concrete knowing. i looked at him on my couch and felt like the universe gave me a surprise, out of no where. an unfolding i didn't at all expect. and that's what is great about surrendering and not planning or projecting. if there is anything i absolutely know, is that i don't know at all. i can't make any plans anymore, as life keeps changing on me. so i submit. i can't stop the river. i hope to fall into it's flow.

the train station was beautiful. full of warm, safe, unmoving twilight air. busy faces of mexican's, african americans, europeans pulsating by. old wooden chairs and long marble floors. i always love rolling out of los angeles train station in downtown. i see the castaway pieces of our society hidden in this city, in the back yard along the tracks. the things left unseen. grave yards of metal, trash, wood. piles of it. perfect stacks. graffiti. rubber tires. trash. it's so peaceful to me.

to be continued... will i find a job? will i EVER change the cat litter and buy some fuckin toilet paper? does that boy adore me?