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The day is not today. The day was not yesterday, nor was it the day before yesterday, or the day before that. This may lead you to believe it is tommorow, but it is not tommorow, nor any of the days following or preceeding it. The day will never come which you live for. Sometimes you have to come to it.

The middle of June, the middle of Summer, the inverse of winter. Snowflakes of steam pelt us as the burning rain falls across Atlanta. Scattered showers clearing by midafternoon, a sweltering evening follows.

Eventually the pulsating trigonometric functions which govern our life cycles ebb, to rise again from the depths of negativity. Tears for Fears, Driving and Crying, shitty 80's bands express the times of today with the names of yesteryear. You'd never know it unless you thought so.

Shoot the skinnies, set up some perimeters. We've got wars of exponental magnitude both growth and decay. The perpetual union threatens to violate logical function, the plutonium cannot be returned to mars, we must send it to South Carolina instead.

The world goes on as we're driving and dying whether it be a humvee in the desert or a 747 headed for London on a clear blue night. (With apologies to Salman Rushdie, who cannot be forgiven.) Although this does not legally qualify as a vehicle.

The best we can do for you is offer you a war in miniture, televised, out of sight since it's held at 3am, just like the real one except the projectiles falling from the sky don't usually explode. We hope this doesn't detract from the entertainment value. Actually, we don't really care.

The world will never be the same except for the way it is now and always has been. The soda fountains and your '64 chevy are gone forever, although we wont pick up the flying cars, and you weren't really that innocent in those days, but the point is no one is. And just because you aren't innocent doesn't mean you can't hold up the light of hope screaming the Battle Hymn of the Republic like a madman as you wake up from your drunken stupor in a Marine Barracks somewhere east or west of Vietnam although you'd never relate your position to Southeast Asia just like you wouldn't consider the equidistant point between Sol and Alpha Centari unless there was a gigantic fish flying through space right about there, just like in that cartoon back in the day, Robotech.

A cartoon about war, the kind which you watched as a child and played soldier with. But now the times have changed and you're too quaker/sissy to fight to the death anyway. (Just like all of us.) But don't worry or weep for future, just walk there. Throw the dart, find the destination, but remember, Life is a Warzone.

Something always happens on the way to bedlam.

When they said repent I wondered what that meant.

Pull me closer and whisper in my ear. It might mean something to me. No one knows. There are things in everyday life that make us wonder how long it will take before we are washed away or stolen into the night by the undertow. Why smile unless the smile is geniune? We devalue everything by playing a part instead of opening the self to exposure and to false judges. How much of ourselves do we hide and how much do we allow to slip out in statements and actions we allow to be misinterpreted because it is easier than stopping the misinterpretation? It is easier to pretend to be interested than to tell another that what they say and offer means very little or that we just don't happen to give a fuck. Is that wrong? If we are traveling this life in search of connections that teach us something and help us somehow and validate us... are we losing touch with the road by pretending to care about things and people just to spare their feelings as well as our own?

A couple days ago a person who I only know as a noder here and have never met in person lit a beacon in my mind. This person, who shall remain nameless (protect the innocent and change the names and lose your charts kind of thing) made only a handful of vague statements open to interpretation. Yet, those statements burst a dam in my soul and caused me to re-evaluate my own course. A few minutes of reading and exchanging /msgs with this person has been all that happened, and yet it brings me to wonder why this poet and talented but angry writer means more to me based on this than people I work with and spend hours every week exchanging mindless banter with. Why? Because we seem to have lost our way. Courtesy is more important than purpose all too often in this life of ours and we seek the path of least resistance. This jump dish lickety split version of a life we muddle our way through here in this frame of existence has become a throw away flyer on the windshield of a much larger car shuttling us individually through the experiences we're only just somewhere in the middle of. How often do we slip another peg down the ladder of our experience by wearing false faces and trying to please and entertain all those who audition for parts in the play we call our lives.

Do we give a shit about honesty anymore or do we only care about trying to please everyone all the time. Our exceptions come when we get too pissed to take it any longer and lash out at some silly git who just happened to wander into our life at the wrong time. The dishwater sponge keeps soaking up more of our time and energy and we're all too reluctant to wring it out until we can only wring it out with anger.

The stop light we wait on determines things we are not aware of.

I remember the day I gave up on small talk and swore it off forever. As a result I spend more time nodding and walking past people I know and would otherwise be expected to ask "Did you have ham for lunch today?" I'm more interested in why they're getting divorced or why there is that scar running down the side of their face, but it isn't polite for me to ask the questions that I really want answers to so I'm supposed to ask them about ham. I can't do that. It distracts me and makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I once came very close to taking another human being's life. That was in 1989, but a voice spoke to me and stopped me. The voice came from inside me but I had never heard it before. So easy to have that desire when someone is taking everything you have and treating it like their own personal latrine because they caught you on the downside of life. I can talk about that anytime, but I cannot talk about whether or not you had a ham sandwich for lunch. I love weird, wacky conversations with no barriers where we can laugh until it hurts, but I don't want to hear "the one about the priest and the donkey." Why do we waste so much of each other's time?

There are those who call me a prick because I delete their e-mail forwards, tell them when I'm bored by their conversation or that I don't want to "just go somewhere and hang out." Cover the blackboard with chalk and paint everything the color of your soul. Give me something I can taste. I walk away when I feel I can no longer offer anything to someone's life path and all too often I wish they would do the same. It doesn't mean I don't love them anymore. Shit, I can't remember the last time I "stopped" loving someone, but I remember the last time I stopped being able to offer someone anything and it is just about ten minutes from now.

What if you got halfway to your destination and found out the captain lied?

Oh, and by the way, Jessie loves you, just stop calling every ten minutes and give Jessie some time to be Jessie for chrissakes.

Don't forget to tip your waitresses and bartenders.

It's funny how much things change, but how much they really stay the same.

For some reason I pulled out the "shit" box today. It mostly consists of stuff from my and Jesse's past relationship: old notes, pictures, etc. It has other things too, but he was the box's intent of origin. A particular note that caught my eye was one that was titled "this is the last note you will ever be receiving". I think it was written by Jesse about a year and a half ago from. It said that he got "shot down" by his friends for defending me that day, and he was tired of defending me because it was pointless. He was tired of getting crap from them because of me and he was tired of me anyway. He no longer wanted anything to do with me. I remember reading this letter when he gave it to me, and I couldnt breathe when I was finished. I thought I loved him so much, and the very thought that he would be out of my life forever truly broke my heart.

The part I found most amusing was when he said in the note "nothing short of a miracle will save you now". The reason that this is so amusing to me is because I just came from his house tonight. He never really did cut me out of his life. After all the pain he caused me, after the uncountable amount of times we tried to say good bye, I was still able to go over there and watch Finding Forrester and eat jelly bellys, nothing more. I dont feel like Im going to cry every time I look at him now. I really dont care now if I talk to him, and at one point I thought I loved him. And reading that note tonight, a year and a half later, didnt affect me at all.

Its funny how much feelings can change, but how a person can still remain in your life. Ive been through so much with Jesse, but I know if I ever need anyone I can call him. It gives me hope that anything can be overcome if a person means alot to you, because time really does heal all wounds.

Oh, man. What a day.

The Irish football team just got knocked out of the World Cup. They did the country proud, getting as far as they did, and playing as well as they did after all that shit about Roy Keane, but to go out on the last kick of a penalty shoot-out is just so depressing and arbitrary...

They were knocked out by a Spanish team who seemed to lack focus and ambition, especially in the second half. After Ian Harte missed the penalty, and Kilbane missed the rebound mid-way through the second half, I thought it was all over... and then in the dying moments of the game, Niall Quinn won a penalty for having his shirt practically pulled off him by a Spanish defender, and Robbie Keane put it away with composure and aplomb.

Aw, man. I'm thoroughly heartbroken. That's life.

Dear "Dad",

Thanks a lot for nothing.
Thanks for making most of my life a living hell.
You've caused me more problems than you can imagine. And although you don't want to admit it to yourself, it's true. You often think that you're doing things in my best interest, but you only think of yourself. I hate that I'm related to you. I hate that I have your last name. I can't wait until I can change it in a few months. I want no connections with you.

So it would be in your best interest never to talk to me ever again. I don't care, I really don't. You say you love me, but it's not true. So if you don't love me, why should I love you?

You think taking me places once in a while and buying me stuff equals love? That's why I stopped talking to you in January. You don't know what love is. Maybe when you do, we might have something to discuss, but for now, indefinitley, I don't want you and I don't love you. I don't want your sympathy, because it only makes me feel worse.

For 8 years you didn't talk to me or my sister, and all the sudden you decide to. You didn't pay child support, and my mother reluctantly didn't press charges. You're lucky you're not rotting in some jail cell somewhere. If people could go to jail for emotional pain against someone, you'd be there. I did fine those 8 years without you, albiet without money, but in the 5 years you did see me, I suffered depression, school issues, and angerproblems. That's not love.

The only man that was a father to me is dead.
You uttered your sorries, but you didn't even come to his funeral. You always had "something else" to do.
Something always "came up". You always said you would do stuff with me, or give me something, and I know this sounds selfish, but you never did. It's not even the material, it's just that you constantly broke promises.

Now that you're not around, it's better. Sometimes I feel like maybe what I did was wrong, cutting you off an everything, but I know it's for the best.

-Layla

Sunday.

The most mundane day of the week.

Early every Sunday morning, my mother and my father and my sister go to church, and I stay home. Every day at noon they come home and talk about what a wonderful sermon the pastor delivered and what a shame it was that I missed it. They reprimand and punish me over the decision they said I was free to make, all over the brunch I had spent a lot of my time cooking.

Later, after all of the dust from the Sunday morning religion debate has settled, I follow my own footsteps in my boring routine. I knit some length on my newest project, I read the works of John Steinbeck or Edith Wharton or Robert Frost, absorbed in my antisocial way of life until dinner, when I have to face my superficial younger sister and hypocritical parents for the final time of the day. If I cannot grab a veggie burger and eat it in my room, I am forced to socialize with them. They ask all sorts of nosy, intruding questions about my life, and demand answers, claiming they're protecting me from myself, or some kind of BS sugarcoated with the teachings of Jesus. Today was a social dinner, thanks to Father's Day. I was instructed by my mother to give my undivided attention to my father. I can't recall a time in my entire life when it was my time to shine, and he never gave me any extra attention, so I didn't see it fit to do the same for him.

This, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is the weekly interrogation of the solitary misfit of the family. This is Sunday.

He called me beautiful.
He told me I was a good listener.
He said he liked me.

It's been almost two years since anyone said these things to me. Two years in which I had complained to this same guy about how no one liked me and I questioned him as to why guys didn't like me. He had no answers, always saying I was a nice girl. I had liked him on and off for awhile, never anything even close to serious. He had always made it clear we were just friends, which was fine by me. He was a good guy, the type everyone needs for a friend.

And then last night he tells me he likes me. I grinned and blushed as he complimented me, for he knew no one had in awhile, atleast when it came to things like my looks. I asked him for how long he had liked me. He said when he had seen me the other day. I don't see him a lot, but talk to him on MSN quite a bit.

This was after he told me he was drinking. Nothing serious, just enough to get him a bit less nervous. I know he drinks occationally, but never really gets drunk, and never drives when he has been drinking. We had been joking earlier that one of these days I was going to have to drink with him. Neither of us are of age, and I have never drank before. It's one of those things you wonder what it is like. I jokingly told him later that now I knew why he wanted to get me drunk, especially since he had suggested we go camping. His rule for drinking is no driving. Camping means no one leaves. He said he wanted me to drink for my first time with someone that wouldn't take advantage of me, and he was curious to see what I was like when I drank. I, of course, know that we will most likely never drink together, but if we did, he would be the last guy on earth to take advantage of me.

I seem to have had a smile on my face most of the day. I miss those days knowing someone else in the world liked you and whispered those sweet little words in your ear.