One: A passage from the last short story I read, "Pigeon Feathers" by Updike. This is probably one of the most intense, most beautiful, most despairing, fearful and brilliant passages I have ever read. The first time I read it I was struck dumb. The second time, it was read to me by my English Prof, Ramon Kubicek, and I cried in class, in front of him and everyone. It's stunning. See what you make of it. And read the short story, the whole thing is brilliant.

"He had to go to the bathroom, and took a flashlight down through the wet grass to the outhouse. For once, his fear of spiders there felt trivial. He set the flashlight, burning, beside him, and an insect alighted on its lens, a tiny insect, a mosquito or flea, made so fine that the weak light projected its X-ray onto the wall boards; the faint rim of its wings, the blurred strokes, magnified, of its long hinged legs, the dark cone at the heart of its anatomy. The tremor must be its heart beating. Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you are drawn while the white faces above recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels pour dirt into your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, and unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars."

Two: I am insanely horny. I know, after that lofty and moving piece of writing this comment is seriously vile. But I am. I am certainly ready now, I'm open to new romantic experiences. I am fantasizing about EVERYONE. My roommate, which is dangerous, his friend who I believe has some kind of attraction to me, which I don't return in kind, but still seem to have a physical desire to fuck his brains out. Terrible. I knew that it was unlike me to have no sex drive. I knew that something was off within me to be so turned off the subject. It was me getting over a couple of serious blows to the heart.

But I appreciated it as well. It was nice to not be in a constant state of desire, or being frustrated by not getting what I wanted or feeling on display at all times. I just didn't care. Now that feeling is starting to fade slowly and I find that I am back in the game. Sad, in a way. I don't want to be in the game. I liked not being in the game, though I missed the companionship on some levels. The fear kept me honest.

Now that I'm not in as much fear, my mind starts to wander out a little, explore a little more. There are things that I want again, and that sucks almost more than not feeling whole or unafraid.

Fear isn't always a bad thing, is it? Sometimes it protects us from hurting ourselves.