Not really sure what to say, but I feel compelled to post something. Lots of stuff is going on, or has gone on or will go on, that I could spin into something funny, but I'm feeling a little too gummy-brained to break out the wit tonight. Aside from Sita's lovely visit last weekend and my first few days at my new job, I've been sequestering myself in the isolation chamber called my bedroom. Not answering phone calls or e-mails, just wanting my thoughts to keep me company. It sounds like I'm depressed, and maybe I sort of am, but it's not the same depression I've had before. I'm getting things done, and I'm planning for, and feeling excited about, the future. But I feel like my perspective and perceptions are so warped that I'm unable to interact with anyone normally. Or maybe that's just a verbose way of saying I Don't Want to Talk About It.

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll try to put together something interesting about my first days as an Aussie poseur. Wish me luck mates!

Sita is here for the weekend. Today we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu in search of a coffee shop where we could sit down and figure out our lives. To our dismay, there was no parking all the way up through Venice Beach that wasn't the approximate cost of a Disneyland admission ticket. After spending an hour circling around canal-lined streets named for bodies of water, crammed with colorful beach houses with sand-speckled driveways, we grew concerned about the as-yet-un-figured-out state of our lives and decided to try our luck further inland. Thankfully, we found parking on Main Street in Santa Monica, and stopped at a little cafe to eat lunch and figure out our lives.

As you can imagine we spent most of the time chatting about random ephemera and only devoted the last fifteen minutes to figuring out our lives. I made a list of my own interests, but mostly we talked about Sita. Which is just the way I really wanted it - if I'm totally befuzzled and discombobulated about my own present and future, then at least I can find solace in the false clarity with which I see somebody else's.

It's with some shame I admit I've found myself a job...at - wait for it - the "Dingo Diner." So for the next couple of months I'll be butlering out Bloomin' Onions and Foster's Beer to rowdy patrons sitting under boomerangs pinned to walls. I promised myself I'd never wait tables again but then, as they say, life is what happens while you're plotting the fastest way to get the hell out of your parents' house and into something resembling fulfillment. I'm also looking for some temp work as an office bitch. It's like summer and fall 2005 all over again, except this time I have a car and don't have to pay rent, and I don't have a huge crush on my boss. But everything else is eerily familiar - the disillusionment, the loneliness, the mind-swirling hopes and fears. But maybe I'll be able to make a better go at things this time around. I am a year older, after all, and so hopefully a sliver more wise. And I have a piece of paper that says I graduated from school. And a Trader Joe's in driving distance.

All right, time to curl up and read What Should I Do With My Life? If you have your own insights into that question, for yourself or (better yet) me (because I know it's always easier to figure someone else's life out) then do let me know.

Even more photos of my graduation, these actually of me in my black plastic robe, on my sister's Flickr page.

The family whose house is diagonal to ours has gone on vacation to Big Bear. They left their beagle at home. All day and night, he howls and barks and cries and howls and howls and howls. It's been three days now, and they won't be back for at least another three days. The howling itself is one thing, and I bet the busybody neighbor ladies are bursting their ovaries with irritation. But my heart aches for the poor dog. Anyone who's ever had a dog knows the single-minded devotion they have for their owners. Their owners are their whole worlds. And you can't explain things to animals, so for all the dog knows, they could have abandoned him forever, or they could be just around the block having a long visit with a neighbor. They're gone. No explanation. No understanding. The worst kind of abandonment of all. It reminds me...

O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see there in the white?

Loud! loud! loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!

High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves;
Surely you must know who is here, is here;
You must know who I am, my love.

Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
O it is the shape, the shape of my mate!
O moon, do not keep her from me any longer.

Land! land! O land!
Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again, if you only would;
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look...

But soft! sink low;
Soft! let me just murmur;
And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea;
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
So faint—I must be still, be still to listen;
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.

Hither, my love!
Here I am! Here!
With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you;
This gentle call is for you, my love, for you.

Do not be decoy’d elsewhere!
That is the whistle of the wind—it is not my voice;
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray;
Those are the shadows of leaves.

O darkness! O in vain!
O I am very sick and sorrowful.

O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
O all—and I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.

Yet I murmur, murmur on!
O murmurs—you yourselves make me continue to sing, I know not why.

O past! O life! O songs of joy!
In the air—in the woods—over fields;
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my love no more, no more with me!
We two together no more.

Ahem...

So I put a bunch of photos on Flickr. Check them out.