Wow. I thought I was ok. I'm crying. Why am I crying? No fucking clue. I'm crying because I feel like I should be. I'm confused. I look around my apartment, I see not just three years, but a lifetime. That's gone. It's time to start over again.

I went to Big!Lots to buy big!plastic tubs for all my possessions. Now it's time to put my life into them, to package up my Home. But there are things that won't fit. The firends I thought I would miss. The life I expected to live until death.

The song iTunes has chosen is Stars of Track and Field. Appropriate, for personal reasons. I always wondered if I was like that - never needed anyone to get around the track, but when I'm on my back... That's been the solution, so far. I haven't made friends in what will, in two weeks, be my new town. I've met boys. Boys to fuck, boys to flirt with. Boys so I don't have to feel alone. But right now there's no one I can call. I'm confused.

I was having a drink. I felt obligated to go out before I started packing. Maybe I thought I had someone to say goodbye to. That jackass showed up, sat two stools down from me and a world away. The divisions in the group I'd grown used to were crystal clean, divided by the bar line. But all my friends went home, not for anything I did, but there I was left sitting alone drinking wine as quickly as I could without choking.

I was halfway home and I wanted a cigarette. I reversed direction, turned right into a woman I knew in that other life, and we both said an embarassed "Hi" and brushed past each other. I crossed the street to The Spar, which is the only place to get cigarettes right now.

I asked if they sold those single sticks. No, they did not. Thinking cigarillos, thinking anything, I asked "Anything like that?" The guy at the counter gave me one of his own and his lighter. I went outside, lit, inhaled, and ran in to return his lighter. My hands were shaking so badly, I dropped it in the cash register. I backed up, saying "Thank you. Thank you so much." I walked home smoking.

Maybe it was just the feeling of standing outside smoking I wanted. That last memory of the girl who started here. Some snapshot to mark this night. I'm not ok. I'm not sad. I regret nothing. I have nothing to be scared of. I'm going to a job that pays $20,000 more a year. I'm going to an apartment even my unweildy collection of packrat treasures won't fill, in the perfect cool neighborhood in the city I've wanted to live in since I realized there was a world outside of the library.

I met a really nice boy. I like him more than I should. But in the middle of it, I find myself wondering, am I this chick who just bounces from man to man, constantly crushed or elated, never ok alone? Is some new man to occupy my idle thoughts all that's kept me from madness over the last month and a half?

I don't want to say it that way. It seems wrong. It's over and I no longer feel like it even mattered. But maybe this is the world's most absurd act of denial. Maybe there are things I should be feeling that I've denied myself and every rainy night when he appears like a creepy nightmare, I'll be reduced to some smoking cuckold wondering where her dreams disappeared to.

I just wanted him to disappear. He won't. Even when he's promised he's moving on the first, he's here four hours from the second. Go away, you fucking fuck. I don't want to think about it.

The song says, ain't got no home in this world no more. Home is just what you let yourself believe. And sometimes you walk through the door a stranger.

I can be a stranger in my life sometimes. That's ok. But when it's so overpowering I have to smoke... Now I'm scared.

Then iTunes decides to play Bad Reputation. Thanks, Joan.

Went to see Sin City today, with Eric and Christina. Halfway through the movie, I started thinking about Hector, which was distracting. What happened? When did I become this silly boy, smitten with another silly boy? I wrote Mrs. Hector Hernandes on my notebook later that evening, and got totally giddy about it. Then I went back to Organic Chemistry.

Before he left for his weekend in San Antonio, we walked around campus for hours. He felt nervous about showing public affection on campus, afraid of bringing trouble on ourselves. We visited the Bonfire Memorial. It was respectful, and surreal. It reminded me of certain scenes in Fellini's Satyricon, without the grotesqueries. It was a ring of twelve stone alcoves, each one devoted to a victim of the collapse, each one pointing toward the person's home town.

We talked about Castenada, about the university's love of pagentry, and he accidently used the L word. We moved on, and I showed him the neat thing about the O&M building. I came up behind him while we were walking, and put my hand on his ass. This caused him to make an exclamation in Spanish, out of reflex. I enjoy it when he curses in his native tongue. It's beyond adorable.

We passed a broken street light on the way home. He stopped for a moment, and looked at me.

"I'd like to see you in all different kinds of lighting."

At that point I had no choice but to kiss him, in front of God and everyone.

These are days of fear, violence and disillusion...

Earth quaked away for more than three times and the whole world is suddenly paying attention to an old dying man.

We could believe that the moment that John described as the Apocalypse has come.

The beast indeed is. It is the one that wants to turn Mankind into an army of soulless consumers. Call it Europe, call it America, I am sure many people might give it another name and attribute more evil to it.

When I got up this morning, still shaken after yesterday's tragedy, I read the online press. I saw that in a huge fraternal leap, the whole world, regardless of race, religion and ethics had suspended their respective businesses to focus on the Pope and to address him an immensely beautiful message of Peace and Love.

I felt more emotional than never and I suddenly realized that this Pope was our Generation's Gandhi. He was the man-in-the-middle, always prefering dialog and prayers to ignorance and hatred. He revived Faith in the hopeless.

John Paul II might not be there anymore tomorrow but he will remain in our memories for ever, like Gandhi. I now understand his very first words as a Pope: "Non habiate paura".

Don't be afraid!