It's starting to feel here in Maine like it did in California this January-- God, I love that phrase, "in California this January." It means I was somewhere, somewhere important, somewhere cool, somewhere getting something done and being in the sun and inadvertently rhyming, much the way I do here. The freedom and the falling of it...One never appreciates something amply while they're in it. With the exception of the moments that I knew how damned lucky I was-- in bed, talking to Sherry at all hours of the night, or driving down the interstate in Heather's car, or on the back roads in Rachel's porsche...actually, pretty much every moment with Rachel. Maine just doesn't breed 'em like that.

The sun is warming Vacationland so that it can almost come close to that big, beautiful chunk of land out west...only temperatute-wise, it could never have the same kind of beauty of independence or other-worldliness, but at least it's got the people I missed so desperately while I was out there. Mom keeps offering to send me back so I'll feel more secure with my profession...I want to go just to see Sherry and Laura so much, go out to San Francisco, maybe stay with Nicky or Rachel a few days, get more travelling under my belt. I'd like to revisit cellulite elimination, though, and chair massage- I'm getting rusty on the latter and I never got a chance to learn the former enough. I've pretty much decided, however, that I don't want massage to be my life's work, even just for a little while. When I went out there, I thought I was going because money was important to me. Turns out, in the face of doing something I hate doing for it, I don't care about money at all. I have my Zachary, and we'll make it somehow.

Point in fact, though, I have no idea how that is. We have no cemented plans for next year whatsoever. Probably Gloucester. That's about it. The uncertainty makes me FAR more nervous than it makes him. He's never even been to our destination, and he doesn't mind. This is highly convenient for me, but also slightly scary. I wish he had more opinions so I could be more confident in the fact that I'm not totally ruining his life with my siren-like wiles. I've left too many tattered bodies in my wake....they were tattered to begin with, but, christ, let me have this one.

I am moving forward on some of my longer-standing projects. Tonight, I boosted forward on my attempts to make a CD of the world's most depressing songs. I am trying to get the opinion's of one and all- if it takes years, I want this to be as close to the genuine article that is at all possible. I want it to be an art form- I want to bring my compilation into a room of my peers and have us sitting their, listening to it, and by the end I want everyone to be crying together. (Crying in large groups...something else I miss about California) I want this to strip away the layers of pretention in people and forcefully regress them into a deeper part of themselves. I want this to be song therapy. That's right- therapy. I'm not sadistically determined, I'm a growth-oriented artist who's extremely generous in her endeavors. LOVE ME!

The song that's currently depressing me more than any other is "I'm Movin' On", by the Rascal Flatts. When Jenn first took a chance in introducing me to this country band, she was right in assuming that I could like them despite the redneck stigma. Our reactions to this song, the only she forced onto me, to my recollection, are polar opposites- the song makes her feel happy and hopeful about her life, an understandable reaction, considering it's message: putting shame behind you and letting yourself continue in life, and in love. The song to me, though, has too much of a sad undertone to be literal- it seems that the singer is reluctantly telling us that's what he's going to do- forgive himself, and let go- when really, he carries the baggage with him as he runs, trying to convince himself and others that he's doing the right thing for everybody. And the shame of it fucks with me-- "I sold what I could, and packed what I couldn't; I stopped to fill up on the way out of town. I've loved like I should, but lived like I shouldn't. I had to lose everything to find out. Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road. I'm movin' on.". When I say those words, I don't believe them...except that one line- "I've loved like I should, but lived like I shouldn't."- that I mean, and my voice inadvertently wavers when I sing along. I don't know if I believe I'd be forgiven for the things I've done, if people knew how much I hide from them. I don't know if anybody really understands how much wrong I can do when their backs are turned, and, in one case in particular, I try to convince myself that I keep my sins private to protect the victim, but I wonder if it's really to protect me.

So I wish, every day, for a reprieve of some sort, and I tell myself every day that carrying the guilt is the noble thing to do. And I hide nothing from Zack. Nothing. A week ago, or two, I was in his bed, and we were somehow discussing how much shame I feel for the things I don't dare admit to, all the things I've done wrong that I'm afraid would pile up and make me unabsolvable, the little and the big. When I thought about them all- the stupid little things- I cried. I cried until Zack wanted to make it better, and he told me he forgived me for everything I'd done to him, whether he knew about it or not. There are so few moments in life when I know, completely, what I want, but right then I wanted to believe him so badly, but I couldn't-- he didn't know, he couldn't forgive. So I told him, all of it, and one by one, he forgived me....for stupid little run-ins with stupid people in inappropriate ways at inappropriate times. For holding hands with another guy on a day he should have been the only thing on my mind, and for going through some messy break-up oriented emotions with Jeff that, for a while, made me question my potential for fidelity. For too many things that I thought were too small to mention, that weighed too much till he lifted them away for me. And now I don't hide anything from him, won't hide it, and I am so much more confident in my ability to keep him as the one-and-only man in my sights and in my....uh, heart.

And that's a good feeling.

If you, dear fab five frenzy, have any suggestions about what songs I should include in my search for the world's most depressing, please e-mail them to lindah@hotmail.com. And thank you for taking the time to appreciate the content...it's all for you. (And Casey.) (And anyone else who still checks this.)

On with it.