Friday 28 June 2002

Pic of the day: Would you believe this picture was taken at 23 (11PM) in the night?

Tired

I know it's been a long week when I sleep most of the way to work, not just from work as usual. (Actually I did not sleep on the bus home from work, as I had bought the Scientific American theme issue about brain and mind. But I usually do.) Then in the evening, I fell asleep repeatedly in my chair while playing The Sims.

I don't know though – I don't feel just sleepy, I feel tired. I mean, it goes deeper. I feel ... defeated. Perhaps not completely so, but it is still an unusual feeling for me. I look back at these four years of writing a daily diary (well, actually the first months are lost, but still). I haven't changed all that much, and yet I am so much older. It is hard to explain. There was an underlying optimism, I think, that's gone now. I was cynical, but in a humorous way. Now my sense of humor is pretty much gone, I'm afraid.

What's to grin about? I'm decidedly middle-aged now, over the top and sliding downwards. Losing a parent kinda drives it home too, not that this is unusual at such an age. My friends are slithering away ... it's the second generation of them now who slink into their houses and disappear into marriage and Pampers. I'm drifting unstoppably away from my last (and best) best friend. Or she is drifting away from me. I loved her like a ... uh, cousin? (Hey, I used to call her "SuperGirl" ...) Something like that. I guess I still do, but it is getting harder and harder to remember, to imagine, to believe. That she was real, that she really was my friend for a long long time. At least this time, I knew what I had before I lost it.

I see you standing on the other side;
I don't know how the river got so wide;
I loved you baby, way back when ...
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed,
but I feel so close to everything that we lost:
We'll never have to lose it again.

Leonard Cohen: Tower of Song.