"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."

"I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy."

- Anais Nin

I cut and pasted these quotes last week after a friend posted them to her Facebook profile. They were without quotation marks, or the author's name, so when I sat down to write an entry this evening, I had convinced myself for about one second that I wrote those words. Then I remembered that I am not such an accomplished writer.

I'm currently wondering what the hell I am doing. This only applies to my dating world, which I can say is currently very half-assed on my part. Internet dating is a hopeless amount of work. Staying on top of all of those emails is exhausting. There are only a couple of people who I am actually interested in meeting face to face, but our schedules seem to be making that impossible. I would rather be here in the safety of the Fortress. And I'm actually enjoying feeling like this.

There are a couple of the usual inappropriate places to lay my heart, but I am managing those situations carefully. Sort of. I wouldn't be me if I didn't at least trail a toe in the water. There is an interesting tug of war happening, but I distinctly feel that the thrill is in the game, and I am just not playing. I am sick to death of weeding through mixed messages, and I've laid my inner masochist to rest. The memo must not have been circulated though, because something still gives people the idea that it's ok to just be confusing and ridiculous.

Maybe I'm still not ready. Maybe that gal was right. Everything I attract is impossible, or seriously flawed, or seriously impossibly flawed. There must be a reason for that, and I think this reason is what I need to concern myself with, if I'm going to be concerned about matters of the heart.

The wind is insanely fierce tonight. Since I was a child, the sound of the wind from indoors always terrified me. I never completely knew why, but then my mom told me that once, when I was a baby during a windstorm a piece of the building across the street blew off, and crashed into the bedroom of the neighbouring townhouse. We had to run across the street and take shelter in the apartment building until the wind died down.

I sit here typing and as the wind howls and billows the curtains of my badly insulated patio doors I feel small again, but less afraid. Secretly thrilled by the power of the wind, waiting to see if one of the giant trees around the house will come crashing into my living room. I stood in the wind yesterday, waiting for my father for what seemed like an endless amount of time. The only logical thing to do was to channel Lear. I dared the wind to bear down on me, to "blow winds and crack your cheeks". I have never felt more capable of handling the wind. Sometimes I think it was the fury in me that I was afraid of. The sound of it sometimes rattling more violently than the gusting outside. I'm ready now to knock over tractor trailers like they were hot wheels, and to snap the boughs of the mighty old oak.

It's the fury and the force in my belly that is making all these things that were so important feel silly and trivial right now.

I'll huff, and I'll puff...