It's late late at night and I'm awake.  As if by habit, this is when my brain wants to write.  Hi, it's 3:45 AM.  I've got an idea.

I woke up sick to my stomach at one.  I'm drinking plain water -- instead of the usual juice-spiked stuff -- and being glad the pain in my stomach is hunger, not nausea.  I remind myself that I'm fasting.  That's what I've started to call the period of time between 9 PM or so and my morning meal.  That's why it's a break fast, yah?  I've been skipping the fast part for about the last 30 years.  This is my new official diet plan.  The exercise comes when possible, and I'm enjoying that more now that I've got the martial arts mixed in there.  Makes the elliptical machine tame and in some cases actually desirable.  I love "running" on the elliptical... it's like space jogging.  It's awesome.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

I've been talking to people I know in my living room.  They're not really here, I know that.  Still I'm working in a host-guest paradigm, here in my sweats.  The person on the other sofa changes, sometimes when I will it, and sometimes it's just someone else.  We chat as if there has been no change.  The conversation is connected and solid, the responses just come from other voices.  Funny.

When talking to other people, I talk less about myself and more about them.  Folks I find actually interesting usually talk about something else... concepts, designs, relations, or maybe simply stories of other people not present. History.  I like to talk about How Things Are, which is really an inverted way of talking about me, because it can only be about how I perceive the world.  I suppose I'm just looking for confirmation, feedback, or disagreement even.  "My world looks like this.  What does your world look like?" I sincerely want to know.

Growing up I often wanted a manual, something that would tell me simply how to work this world, how to get through the day.  Looking back on my growing up, I can understand that.  Puberty in general is frightening.  Childhood for me was scary.  I think I held my breath for a decade as a young adult, just waiting to make sure time would pass.

Ah guest number one has returned, also in evening attire, flannel PJs and fuzzy slippers.  She curls her legs under her and leans on the arm. I pretend she's not knockout gorgeous and keep talking blithely, "I thought I was an alien from outer space.  I just didn't get it."

"On a mission or abandoned?"

"On a mission. Isn't that whack?" 

She laughs.  "Do you remember the mission?"

"No!  That was part of the problem.  I was supposed to remember, but again, needed the manual.  There was something I was supposed to do."

I still feel like there's something I'm supposed to do.  I've about decided that I have to become a Rabbi to get any closer.  Not that I have to BE a Rabbi... but the process of becoming one will clarify the question more, and give me some direction on the answer.  Yep yep.  The rabbinate will give me the question(s).  The sum of my years will give me the answer(s).

How delightful to be so sure of it, I say to myself wryly.  And guest number two appears, cross-legged in black tights and leopard print with a gigantic smile.  She says, "Do you think it's not real if you don't critizise it?  Why are you so mean?"

"That was the other train of thought," I remind her and the non-existent video audience. "My 'fiery exterior' ... I think it scares people."

"Isn't that what you want?"

"Maybe.  Not always. No!  And then, later, yes."

"So much for being definite."  Ow, I think, and make her dissapear.

I try, I do.  I try to write.  I try to focus.  I try to remember the snippets I whip out in my head.  Like walking to the grocery store this afternoon, a squirrel up on a power line barely missed me with most of an apple.  Clearly he just lost grip of it.  It was funny as hell. I stopped and laughed out loud.

I try to focus, to remember.  I watched as the room filled this morning, not one person under 50 save myself, and maybe the Rabbi:  the Latina who rarely speaks, the Eastern European writer woman who insists she knows what it means, the recent widow, the lawyer/shrink couple (he's so damn dapper and she's a giant ball of blargh), the brotherhood leader who ages before my eyes, the guy who drools and never knows when he's left food on his face, the State Dept woman with heavy eyeliner and beautiful hats (she's one of two who stay for services and she sings like an angel in my ear -- the drooler has the other ear and he's completely tone deaf), the beautiful elegant and super quirky school teacher, the tall man who bends with age... oh wait, there is the guy who just got married, he's under 50.

Something I should be saying... there's a nugget of a problem that my brain is working on and it's not quite done with it.  It has something to do with personal justice -- not how you act towards others, but how you act towards yourself.  I think that affects how you treat others, eventually.

It has something to do with being whole, feeling whole, and what it takes to do that.  It has to do with how we're all on Facebook, comparing our lives, defining our sucesses and wondering if we measure up.  I'm single -- and for me that might just be sucess.  I broke the six-figure salary barrier -- possibly the last person who worked at Concert who is still employed in the industry to do so, but nevertheless.

It has to do with loving yourself.  With not sabotaging yourself.

It might be a fix for me... it might be a fix for you... or it might just be more questions, leading to an undefinable answer.

I know this:  I wish us all the strength to be all of who we are.  I wish us all peace of mind, even as we forge through the brambly life.  I wish us all patience, and length of time to allow us to appreciate what we have.  I wish we should discover that we have not only enough, that we have all.  Kein y'hi ratzon, my this be G-d's will1

And a slightly different take on it, as I begin to realize this:  I am extra competitive.  That's what it is.  All of that mental fist-fighting with Marilyn for 18 years... all the aggression... the need to control in the name of improvement. 

It's the things that make me good at managing, I guess.  Managing people is this weird thing.  You have to interact.  You have to choose carefully how to interact, but you also really need to just be real.  Then you run away and hide in your office, your cube, behind your monitor.

I know I can be too honest, too intense.  I can suck the life out of a person, I'm pretty sure.  I am greedy and constantly want more.

I know that I can read people really really well, and then not at all.  Too quick for my own good a lot of times.  Rushing.  Mega-multi-tasking.

And then I get stuck.