None of you know what you want. I worry a lot about my sisters. Women in general seem confused.

You want to be independent and autonomous, but you don’t want to be alone.
You want to be “out there,” a jet-set star, but you also want intimacy and familiarity.
You want to not need a man, but you can’t stand not having one around.
You want a gentle, nonviolent guy, but you want him to stand up for you.
You want a strong, dominant male, but you don’t want to be dominated.
You want men to be more feminine, but you’re only attracted to men that are strong and dominant.
You want men to do what you want, but afterward you can’t respect those who do.
You want to be left alone and not harassed, but you feel insulted if you don’t draw a crowd.
You want to be seen as feminine, but you want to “out-male” the men at their own game.
You want lots of men on your plate, but you want each one to love only you.
You want to be more sexual than Madonna, but as revered as Mother Theresa.
You hate standards of beauty, but you want to stay young forever.
You feel inadequate unless you’re a revolutionary, but you don’t want people to dislike you.
You want your life to be complex, but you’re sad and ashamed when it gets the better of you.
You want to be understood, but you hate it when men say things like these.
You want to be independent and autonomous, but you don’t want to be alone.

Sometimes I feel sorry for women, but I try not to, because I know that pity is also insulting.

We’re all confused in modernity.

I wish I could be as happily selfish as other people.

Looking out the window I realize that it has snowed for at least 24 hours and I haven’t ventured out into it for more than a moment — certainly not to recreate. How is this possible?

I am noticing that cameras have become a strange sort of extension of myself and that without one I have trouble justifying any sort of movement at all, beyond hunting, gathering, and shitting. It’s a strange sort of addiction to have, and it presents a strange set of symptoms. More to the point, it’s entirely wasted on me, considering the degree to which I am actually a working photographer at this point in my life (more than many but much less than many more).

—

There were on the order of 500 automobile accidents in Salt Lake City and surroundings during the last 24 hours. It’s the music of winter, a hum and a sensibility I’ve not felt in a long time. It is devilish seductive, all this snow and cold. I can’t believe I haven’t spent more time in it.

—

Things finally begin to coalesce on the income/employment front, after a very uncertain and shocking half-year during which nearly everything I’ve touched has fallen apart. I’m not by any stretch out of the woods yet, but I do appear, at the very least, to be on the verge of escaping the bear trap that has been bleeding me dry.

—

Speaking of blood, there are some from which I’d like to draw it.

The older I get, the more I realize that hate seems to be a nominal component of nearly every kind of relationship. Not to descend into an oh-so-deep pop-Zen wank session, but it does strike me just now in my life that love is not love and hate is not hate, but rather that both are binary subcomponents of human interaction without which the other is entirely undefined and, more to the point, unable to elicit any reaction whatsoever.

Either sans other is not, as one might suppose, the purer form, but is rather simply boredom.

—

I HATE THAT. This yin-yang shit makes life too God damn complicated and, even moreso, too damn hurtful. I’ve been alive almost 30 years. Christ. That’s got to be worth a bonus of some kind, or at least an “alive person of the month” plaque that comes without concomitant raise.

—

I miss nobody in particular. But I miss them very much.

—

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare:
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

Chorus:
Punch, brothers, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare.
Punch, Brothers, punch.

—

There are truths on this side of the Pyranees which are falsehoods on the other…

Nobody in the world knows what I am doing right now, or what it is like to be me. Nobody is keeping up on me, and nobody cares enough to know at the day-to-day level. I am alone once again after a few years of being not-so-alone.

It’s my personality type, in part, I know. Little tolerance for creatives, charismatics, apathetics or compassionates have I. And little tolerance for my at times hermit-like social skills have others.

There are times when I dislike having anyone at all in my life in any role whatsoever. I get tired of grappling with people, their needs, and their failure to dead with my needs. I’m a very useful sort of animal on my own. Why should I be bothered to try to nurse companions along?