The answer is nothing

2003-08-26 - 10:08 a.m.

Sometimes I feel like a starving wolf skulking around the outskirts of camp waiting for tossed scraps of food knowing that were I to try to get any closer it would only earn me a sharp kick in the ribs and an end to the handouts, all the while pretending that in the outskirts of camp is where I want to be and I'm not really hungry anyhow.

Last night I talked to Stretch again. This time he contacted me, though, not the other way around. He contacted me to say that the e-mail he tried to send me the night before hadn't gone through for some reason. He wanted to show me pictures. Pictures of beautiful things in the Portland area he knows I would love. Places he has taken his girlfriend. Things I can't have. I let him show me. I wish I knew what he was thinking. It's hard to imagine him purposefully doing something he knows will hurt me, even after what I've done. Maybe he just thinks they are pretty pictures and I will like them because I like pretty pictures. But why does he think of me at all? What does it mean that he's thinking of me and sending me e-mails?

But this isn't just any wolf, and this isn't just any camper. No, this camper raised this wolf from a pup. Even when other people told him it was dangerous and even when the wolf could never really be tamed and still snapped at him now and then. And then the wolf turned against him. She tore up his world and left him all alone. The camper, though, calmly put his world back together and found someone new to keep him company. And when the wolf came back, he didn't shoot her on sight or shoo her too far away. No, he let her stay close in the shadows, and throws her handouts now and then.

Last night I again had difficulty sleeping. But this morning I was out of bed by eight o'clock. It's a breakthrough, anyway. I got up and put on my lovely tight black shorts and went for a run around the neighborhood. I took the 5k route, but I was unable to run the whole thing. I made it to the two mile marker, though. Not that I was going fast by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know how long it took me because I don't have a stop watch, but I know that the clock in my living room chimed 8:30 when I was outside stretching before I left and it said 9:24 when I came home. So it was a slow jog, but speed wasn't the point. The point was that I got off my duff and moved. Maybe if I keep this up I will be able to keep off those pounds I lost due to jet-lag.

My plan for the rest of the day is to make some phone calls to see about getting a job. I'm really nervous about it, though. I shouldn't be, I don't think, but I am. Phones are not my fort�. What if I sound like an idiot? You'd think I'd be used to that by now.