...climbed a mountain, and turned around...

There's nothing to parallel the agonizing and unavoidable inconvenience that occurs when you embark on a journey of introspection and regeneration and re-emergence into the waking life -- on the night you have 120 more pages to read for the anthropology paper which is suddenly due and you don't know when it crept up on you.

Among the other things that creep on you: little boys who want to be Minister of Culture to your Queen of the World; and the realization that you are finally in the place where you can lay old concerns to rest and let the future happen how it will.

When a dinner-time conversation left me feeling depressed, a 180 degree turn-around from the giddy excitement I had been feeling just a few minutes before, I knew that I couldn't wait for time to do its trick as they all said it would do. If I was going to move forward and start this new... something... untainted, I was going to have to be the one to cleanse and break through past hang-ups. Nothing passive in my hot self, but all the proactivity of the willful and charming.

I dug out my Pumpkins CD and listened to Landslide. So, so strong of me I thought as I was searching, telling myself I would listen to the entire song if it killed me. When a smile was starting to show itself on my face after the first 30 seconds, I knew that blatantly in the face of my objections, time had done something after all because the song was nowhere near to killing me. It was in the beginning of the second verse that I realized that the same song which had once articulated one of the most painful times of my life was now giving voice to my making peace with it.

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I've been afraid of changing cuz I'd built my life around you.
Time makes you older, even children get older
I'm getting older too.

At 1:34 into the song, and the instrumental section begins - where it used to sound vulnerable from being depressing, it now expressed the vulnerability of opening yourself again, with a tinge of optimism that the story unfold differently this time. Knowing that now the opportunity was there for the story to unfold differently this time.

I know, I know so well what my friends will say, some of them - that the opportunity has been there for months. I realize that, but I also know that I wasn't ready to let that opportunity exist, which is where Rachel's psychoanalysis kicks in to tell me that this is probably why for the months of June-October inclusive, I consistently went after a) the useless non-commitals, b) the unavailable ones, or c) the ones who could NOT be.

Hidden somewhere is a piece of information that could make a world of difference to the outcome of a very important story in your life. So, where should you seek and what should you look for? This weekend, some powerful cosmic indicators will make that obvious

Says the Toronto Star - I wonder if Billy Corgon can be considered a "powerful cosmic indicator"? He's certainly deep and... enigmatic?... like a cosmic indicator. It's silly because I took 23 minutes of my life to write this. But I am so happy I did, and that I am feeling so much freer now. Except of course for the fact that now I want to run to St. George and Dupont, and ignore my piles of homework to see a (temporarily) bearded Italian man. Who came to my house last night after walking me home, and met my roommates. Who, I think, enjoyed him. This is good? Do we agree? And if this time it doesn't work, it won't be for me not trying, or for me being non-commital as I have been these months. Take it as an anthem if you will, but here I am, saying I'm in it to give 100%, no flinching, no fearing. Que sera, sera, et tout ca.