The idea of choices obsesses me. Not the "what could have been" train of thought, because here there be dragons. No, instead I think of how the status of my life right now is directly related to the choices, miniscule and unassuming, that I had made.

Like the day I met Emily. I wasn't even supposed to be at New Paltz that day. I was skipping classes so I could register with the other students matriculating in. Furthermore, I remember looking at several girls at orientation, though Emily caught my eye the most. On the way home she told her mother that she had met the man she was going to marry.

If Kate and I hadn't had an argument as to the state of our non-relationship a week earlier, if I had been a little less brave, if I had spoken to a different girl, I don't know what path my life would have taken. That I wouldn't necessarily be with Emily is plain, but the ramifications thereto are great. So much of my life since that point has been made in consort with or reaction to Emily's presence in it. I would not be living in Walden. Very likely, my only exposure to Walden would be as a place I pass through to go to Pine Bush to alien hunt. I frankly have trouble placing the course my life would have taken unattached. I suppose I would be living at my parents' house still... beyond that, I can't quite fathom. I was a different person then.

To think that I do not have her

You can't erase your past, is what I am saying. I couldn't expect that this renaissance angel would sculpt the course of my life to this point. I'm sure she could say the same, as she might otherwise be living in Colorado, attending Naropa University, and kissing the downy thighs of some crunchy lesbian.

I am who I am for the choices I have made. Aside from fits of needful writing at the wee hours, I rather tend to like who I am.

It is not only Emily. Most of those whom I hold dear have, owing to their proximity alone, curved my path. Perhaps not as much, as my commitment to them is less, but even now I want to remain in the area because it houses them as well. The world could be different if I had stayed in touch with KC Congedo, Kelly Iversen, Jason Oakes, or any of the other people who were once the focal points of my life. Their stars go on, as far as I know, but it is in someone else's sky.

I stress the importance of my dearest friend, but I am using technology as a shoulder on which to lean, rather than any of them. I write for a website that provides me better catharsis and therapy than could any flesh and blood person paid to analyze me. I purge these words from my head through literary trepanning, so I don't call up acquaintances in the depths of the night to tell them that I confirm their existences.

I do not currently confirm Conor's existence. I cannot get in contact with him, though I leave messages. What was once an idle curiosity as to his state has taken on urgency that I cannot even speak with his mother when I call their home. They screen their calls, I know, so I fear not to take this slightly personally, though I struggle to understand what affront I may have offered.

I have been thinking about Jen Egan a lot. I think that I had a true feverish dream in which she played a supporting role, though I don't remember the content. I just know I awoke and was mournful that she was not actually my friend. I tried calling her as well, or rather her parents. It may be presumptuous to believe that she still lives there. I don't know what would attach her here, job or relationship wise. I did not leave a message. I forbore so long at Zack's suggestion. I made the choice to listen to him giving voice and excuse to my fear.

I may have lost another chance to take the weight of how I treated her off my soul. I don't actually want forgiveness from her, nor do I care to forgive her for cheating on me with Nick. It is so long in the past. I bear only a passing resemblance for that be-braced boy, though I speak more of the content of my character than my mouth. It seems trivial and narrow-minded to not forgive her, which I did so many years ago.

It grows later still and I would that I could sleep. But, my muse is a bitch and a full soul. One must evacuate one's mind and bladder before resting, or they will be up several times with each. Had the blasted voice recorder not died because of overuse, I could spare my fingers the pressure and my eyes the light.

Perhaps my digitized confession would be enough there, that I could transcribe it later at my leisure. Instead, I type and wish I had a proper charger.

Again, small turns, pebbles under one's foot, can push us miles farther from home than a chasms before us could. The trail is easy to go back, but the path before us stretches out in infinite directions. I live with Emily in Walden because I met her at the New Paltz orientation, to which I was not yet invited. I only chose to go to New Paltz because this was the school where Kate went and it had thus been the school to which I desired to go. When Kate left me, I was still in love with her and still intending on going there. If Kate broke up with me sooner or more definitely, I may have gone to SUNY Purchase and be living a drastically different life right now... but I can't know. If we change a day or two, an action or two. If I am a little less brave or a little less cowardly, I never live in Walden. If Emily didn't train the morning she tore her ACL, she wouldn't have left college. She wouldn't have fought through a painful recovering and many lifestyle changes whose roots bear tiny fruit even today. The events go farther back, but you see the beginning. The chance of things happening as they have - though comprehensible in retrospect - is so astronomically high as to be dizzying. How can one even try to predict the future with so many paths unknown?

I try to keep the choices I make, particularly those of impulse (the cause of some of my greater life changes), in my mind. I ended up at the Randolph School because of a series of misunderstandings and my urge to get people off my back by making use of my otherwise wasted time and applying at schools. I ended up at exactly the place I would most want to teach nearly by accident. If I had gone to the health seminar like I expected, I would likely not have gone to the Randolph School and I would be spending sleepless night lamenting that I would have to student teach, rather than nights typing gibberish into Flea.

I suppose I will make my rest now. I have to eat birthday sushi with M and her family tomorrow, and event so astronomically unlikely that the universe shudders at the thought.

last watched: Cheaper by the Dozen
reading: Counting to None
listening: Fredo Viola
wanting: To know more of Sara the Goode.
moment of zen: writing this.
someday I must: practice the White Flame Ritual more successfully.