25 Julliet 2005 1:00AM

I tried to rest, I petted the cat, in fact gave him a good brushing, but I am not able to dose off. So, as they say to do, I have arisen and am occupying myself instead of dwelling on the sleeplessness.

One of the reasons to write this online journal is to save the cost of a therapist! I've read in several other peoples' logs that it is very effective in providing a certain clarity and a perspective in evaluating their issues. I've decided it is worth a try. The trick, of course, is to make it a journey of Everyman so that it will be worth reading to someone besides myself. Humor, I've found is also key - that will be tricky for me! I have about as much natural humor as I have desire to sleep ( yes this is a euphemism) with a woman. I have nothing against women, I'm simply not attracted to them physically. Now, to their minds it's very different. I'm absolutely often enamored. My dear friend, Lisa, has a brilliant analytical thought process of which I'm in awe, and my darling Julia is capable of concise and pointed thinking which she maintains in her conversation making all our talks together most enjoyable. The only women I dislike cannot be grouped as their sex being the reason for the dislike - for I've certainly seen the behavior in gay men, and even straight dudes. The people who tend to irk me are those who are overly dependent, in a bad way and are needy to the point of leaving nothing left in me to leach out. They simply sap one of everything bit of energy: spiritual, emotional and even many times ones reason. When I wish to begin screaming at them to get the f*** out and never f****ing come back you know it's time to gracefully bow out before you allow yourself such a self indulgent and surely, very soon, regrettable act of surly unkindness.

RUN!

Doesn't Scripture say something about disengaging from those who vex your spirit. Well, those above are they.
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I'm puffing on my Gitanes as I'm writing and the smoke has a lovely way of curling and writhing about in the dim light. This tobacco is heavy and rich and very flavorful to taste, a sweet, dewy-earth sort of taste, which takes me back somehow to France, Provence in-particular and a little village called Le Baroux. It was a fortified hill town, now just a hill town with a castle. The Templars were residents at one time, though it is being gentrified these days into chic little getaways for Parisians and Ex-pats. At any rate a nearby Monastery had the most charming lavender garden, grown almost as a maze, and the heavy wet foggy air laid upon it, veiling it until the morning sun caused it's dissipation. It was the way the earth smelt at that moment, as the mist rose, that my smokes are able to remind me.
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More Regarding Antinous:

"And such a one is the new God Antinous, that was the Emperor Hadrian's minion and the slave of his unlawful pleasure; a wreth, whom that that worshipped in obedience to the Emperor's command, and for fear of his vengeance, knew and confessed to be a man, and not a good or deserving man neither, but a sordid and loathsome instrument of his master's lust. This shameless and scandalous boy died in Egypt when the court was there; and forthwith his Imperial Majesty issued out an order or edict strictly requiring and commanding his loving subjects to acknowledge his departed page a deity and to pay him his quota of divine reverences and honours as such: a resolution and act which did more effectually publish and testify to the world how entirely the Emperor's unnatural passion survived the foul object of it; and how much his master was devoted to memory, than it recorded his own crime and condemnation, immortalized his infamy and shame, and bequeathed to mankind a lasting and notorious specimen of the true origin and extraction of all idolatry"
Saint Anthanasius, 350 AD