More often than not, inferences about my life can be drawn from what I do not write about here on domesticat as well as what I do write about. Since beginning this weblog-turned-journal-turned-something-else-entirely a while back, there have been events in my life that I have not written about here.

Each time, the choice to withhold has been a deliberate one, made after much thought. I've come to grips with the fact that my life is, to some small degree, on display here—but that's for another story, another night. Tonight I'm tipping into the wider half of a bottle of Chardonnay, left unfinished from a night that we had friends over, and trying to dredge up a bit of bravery.

Okay. Attempt number three at writing a semi-coherent post. Doesn't seem to be in the cards tonight.

I've found lately that my posts are taking on more of the style of a letter to a friend; I'm starting to have trouble distinguishing between the two, and I don't quite know what to make of the change.

Just hung up the phone—tried to call Brad just now. I'm not terribly surprised he's not home; there's hockey on tonight and I really didn't expect him to be there. Strangely enough—I spent the evening with a large (for me) number of people, but at the end of the evening I found myself wanting most to curl up with the phone while talking to an old friend. Since my east coast friends are well off into dreamland, I thought I'd reach out, out west, and see what was going on there.

Too much caffeine. After bowling tonight, I probably shouldn't have downed that coffee from Barnes and Noble.

It always comes down to this.

The thoughts, they always come, in pulses and gasps and stuttering flows of intuition all at the wrong times. The attempts, futile, to pull it together, to make sense of the images and flashes of thought that come at me when I'm more interested in attempting to live my life: the images that stay with me when my eyes close at the end of the day.

How I see the same things in people, over and over, as the years pass. The names change, the people change, yet these are the same eyes and the same mind still looking out and observing, the still point of onlooking that can't seem to look away.

The intellectual part of my mind registers the differences between people, knows their intrinsic differences that make them into different people, but there's still the less cognizant part of me that still comes to a shuddering standstill when confronted with inexplicable strangeness and similarity.

While he was here, Brad gave me three books to read. Two I plowed through quickly—Clifford Simak's Way Station and Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. The third, George R. R. Martin's A Game Of Thrones, is the one that's currently cracking me up.

Everyone keeps asking, what’s it all about?
I used to be so certain and I can’t figure out
What is this attraction?
[duncan sheik]

Welcome back. Life returns, the friends go home, the cats relax, and my fingers start tapping almost of their own accord. They make it clear that whether I want to or not, it's time to start writing again—not because I should but because I must.

"And I could stand here waiting
A fool for another day
But I don’t suppose it’s worth the price, worth the price
The price that I would pay"
[d.s.]

Put the music on. Don't turn on the light. Listen to the cats in the next room, industriously tussling each other in brotherly fashion. Despite the fact that no one is here but me, I attempt to physically hide the fact that I am writing—because, of course, if no one knows I'm writing, no one will know to ask me whether or not I was able to finish what I started.

Here is why you are my valentine.