It's been too long

Life is rushing past, actually not like whitewater but like a slow deep river, the Mekong maybe, which looks swimable, but once you lower yourself into it it's really hard to get back to shore, and when you do you are way downstream already.

I went through one presentation of my work which went well, although I was nervous and felt unprofessional, but I just talked like a child in front of a class (or a teacher...). Now the big one is coming up, I have to go alone to another country (guess which) and stand in front of who knows how many people, podium, mike and all. At least my bulging thighs and portruding tummy will hopefully be hidden when I am in that setting. I am nervous, and there is still a month to go. I am also working on a report of my work to hand to my bosses. Again, nerves, confusion, procrastination, and unhealthy diversions which involve a lot more food and far too little physical excercise.

But good things are happening too. I hear I love you quite often now.... I cycle to work and the hospital or gym or supermarket in the wind and rain and sometimes snow (though this year has been unreasinably, exceptionally warm winter, and judging by all evidence of science, this is just the beginning).... I am going home in April for two weeks and hopefully on a romantic getaway in Venice in May. We (we!) are talking about moving in together in April too, when I am back. Dunno if it'll really happen and am not really pushing for it, I feel exceptionally, oddly laid back and calm about my relationship. When I am not freaking out that is. But I am not doing that that much anymore. The end of P's contract looms in the horizon, and everything is so uncertain, but so long as we keep moving and loving.....

I am sick with some kind of throat bug which I hope won't migrate towards my lungs.
I met two wonderful, strong, impressive and not so healthy ladies that came up from Amsterdam, and got a bit of an insight into the positive women's world there. Because of the distance, and my laziness/preoccupation, I am not involved yet. And maybe that's just an excuse, maybe I am not strong enough to be involved, to see the effects of the drugs (meeting my doctor again in 2 weeks to discuss switching Stokrin for something lighter on the CNS) and the disease (meeting the gynocologist next week to discuss early menopause and cervical cancer fears). Here and there there are rumours of people dying. Just dying despite HAART and Western medicine. But I remain hopeful and hopefully stronger and tougher, though only bloodworks can reveal that.

Poor B in Thailand is sick. I sent him money with the pretext that he is doing work for me. His writing is really good. I don't know if it's malaria or HIV and the medicine there is not advanced enough to tell them apart, indeed to be certain that he is HIV positive. I tried writing some gay support site over there - no reply - shouldn't have said I was a woman.... a bit of bitterness going on here, or maybe more than a bit, between the "women of the world" and the predominantly gay male crowd. Different agendas. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, positive men and positive women are from entirely different galaxies. One cares about children and stability and love, the other (and yes, I know not the majority of gays or the majority of poz gays, but a very loud minority) about serosorting and the right to bareback without prosceution. The more I see the less I know, the more I know, the more confused I become at this world of ours.

"The girls" told me there are numerous cases of infection through abortion, despite my having googled it to no avail. They themselves know quite a few. Those are illegal abortions in which the suction device went insufficiently sterilized; mine was legal, but performed under illegal conditions. Which makes me hate Israel more. I already have a "full stomach" on it (can one say that in English?). But the Dutch are not angels either. No one is.... There are forces of lightness and darkness at play everywhere, withing countries, systems, and individuals. It is up to each of us to make the daily incessant choice, and when large groups of people make predominantly bad choices, you get countries like Israel, or the Netherlands in WWII, or worse.

Yes, I know, simplistic babble, but this is how I try to explain the world to myself. I am a child playing alone and thinking, thinking (and taking some strong medication too), and in some sense, I never left my grandparents' back yard, where for weeks on end of endless summers, my only companionship in the layered dusty shade of cypress trees were the ants that I would torture: pulling out a limb and then another, drowning them in a plastic cup to rescue them again, until finally a merciful beheading came. So I know all about the dark side.... although these were the only living things I ever hurt intentionally, I did that coldly and thoroughly. The problem is that I grew out of it, but some people continue in that vein. If they cross my path again I hope I can recognize them, but in every torturer there is a torturee waiting to be mistreated, excited at the prospects of sudden inexplicable intoxicating pain. So, in essence, I am no better than any BDSMer or barebacker, except that I made my choices much, much earlier in life. Whereas in their case, as S. put it, the choice is made only when they are dying alone at the hospital with no one to take care of them. But who's to say that with all my choices of love and light, or at least the conscious effort between making these choices and the default darkness, this will not be my ultimate fate?

*****

I recieved a request to post a link to a mega-blog containing links to positive writing, which was the excuse for starting Blogger and getting into my blog again. I doubt I would have unless the request came in. So here it is:
http://ronhudson.blogspot.com/2007/02/8th-edition-of-international-carnival.html