i am very unstable, if you hadn't noticed by now. i go from WOOT! to the pits without so much as a stop for refueling. i am finding that i am in the pits more often of late. apparently i need some inspiration.

where is a t-ball coach when you need them?

earlier i mentioned fear of my daughter growing up. the alienation between teenagers and their parents. that whole bit...

and i have been sitting thinking about it for the last while. just now my daughter comes down and has me help her into a princess gown. maybe she isn't growing up too fast. maybe she is still very much a little girl. maybe...

i haven't been talking much lately. i find myself overwhelmed with my life most days. not that it is overly full or difficult. there are just portions that seem out of control. as if their orbit has broken and they are starting to spiral away from a center.

my point is not to wallow. i do that enough in person. (sorry to those that have to deal with me daily) i just thought that today i would share about one such thing.

for christmas, sinterklaas brought my lovely 6 year old a cd player. she is old enough that she wants to be a big girl and is developing tastes all her own in music and fashion. her christmas included cd's of Sinatra, Elvis, Hanna Montana and a belated Ben Harper. walking by her room now is like getting to see into the not so distant future. my little girl lying on her bed reading and listening to music. she wants her privacy. this is all too much at some moments. i am very comfortable with her being my little girl and the joy that i can see on my wife's face when she looks at N. the possibility that one day the teenage version of N will no longer be a source of joy, it chills the blood.

i think this may be the product of my mother cursing me to have children just like myself.

the trains had a tough time of it this morning. i stood on a platform for over a half hour without a single train passing. normally i am only on the platform for 5 minutes of so with maybe 10 people waiting along side. with the trains running "slow" there were more like 40 people on the platform, maybe more.

i had insulated myself from interaction as usual. Iron and Wine played on my ipod and i was reading SuperCannes. soon the coffee would kick in and i would be able to face the strangers around, but for the time i wanted to be alone and wait for the miracle of caffine.

i looked up to check for a train light and noticed the crowd around me. it was a bit of a shock at first. after the initial vertigo i started to look around. the people around me weren't exactly just a crowd of strangers. there was the young jewish girl that doesn't understand my tattoo. and there was the man who reads his bible in silence every morning, giving up his seat without question two stops down the line. there was the young stylish mother with her power-suite and top of the line baby carriage. there was the pregnant ballet dancer.

strictly i don't really know these people. i don't know where they live. i don't know who they go home to. i don't know where they work (except the guy with the old knit cap that works two floors above me as an intern in a law firm). for two hours a day, five days a week we ignore one another while riding in VERY close proximity. i know how most of these people smell when they leave for their day and when they return after a day. i have talked theology with the jewish girl and had a prayer with the guy with the bible. i caught the pregnant ballet dancer when she passed out one morning in the tunnel overcome by morning sickness (remind me i never want to be pregnant).

it is strange to spend so much time with people and have no idea what their names are, to know so little about their lives and directions. i am by no means a social butterfly. i like people, but i am shy and tend towards my internal conversation rather than chatting up strangers. i almost feel like i am swimming against the stream when i ride the train with leslie or kevin or natalya. knowing someone and talking and creating a little community.

this isn't going anywhere. it is an observation about how i spend so much time of my day alone with a hundred other people, each alone. maybe tomorrow i should introduce myself so someone? wow that gives me butterflies in my stomach.

ever have to wait for something? my life is starting to be measured off in waiting rooms of the mind. there is the waiting on the train. there is the waiting in a grocery queue. there is the waiting on test results. somehow i have begun waiting for life it seems.

i never thought of myself as one that waits for life. but it is definitely the direction my living has moved in the last year. i am presently waiting for the results of an interview and waiting until i am able to retake the one exam i didn't pass and waiting to see if there is a raise on my next paycheck... growl.

how do you move from being a passive verb to an active verb. when i was in school and hating diagramming sentences, i remember that my teacher harped on me about having a passive context to my voice. i always looked at her a blank look. (english may be my lingua franka, but i am doubtful that i could ever teach english or be considered fluent in it.) apparently somewhere along my late twenties i slipped from writing in a passive voice to living in a passive context. i am not the most patient of people so i am confused as to how this happened. active life is not patient. passive life requires LOTS of patience.

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i am not give to New Year's resolutions. this week i have been considering many things. finances, profession, family, daughter, health. so many things that could and probably should have been resolved. i was almost to the point of making a few resolutions when my beautiful daughter said something the other night.

we were having our usually boring evening together. wife was at work. the little bug started miming everything i did. after an extended period i asked her why she was copying me. "how else can i grow up to be like you?" was her answer.

it stopped me short and made me rethink the idea of resolving or change for changes sake. rather than look for how to change and renew or resolve i think this year i will be looking for what in me is of worth and admirable to my daughter. the things that make her want to be like me. i will be holding on to those things fighting to keep them as they are, without change.

i like the idea of holding still and holding breath for the year. so that only in December of 2007 i can exhale and let go. take a measurement here and there and see if am unmoved.

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................pation