I am very confused by the heart. It is no wonder that we all at one time or another find ourselves at such odds with our hearts. It is a battle sometimes. Oftentimes when we are on the outside of someone’s heartache, the solution seem so clear to us. And yet when we find ourselves facing a similar battle it doesn’t seem so clear.

What intrigues me most is our ability to still love someone who is clearly not “the best” for us. Or for that matter when we find ourselves still loving someone who does not return our love. You know, its an amazing thing. this. How no matter what we do to attempt to convince ourselves that we need to move on our heart still holds a special place for that person…. I wonder what that is? Why it is. Of course due to the public nature of the Diaries I am unable to fully go into the details of these torrid affair as much as I would normally before this experiment started…. what’s it been now? six years? seven years now…. wow…

I need to, really. For in writing I find the most relief from such maladies. But suffice it to say that I believe that in essence the real dilemma lies in the fact that at our very core we long for love. So in cases where we simply don’t have any love in our lives, our heart is willing to project true love’s fulfillment on the closest person that fills that role in our lives at that time.

I believe that is why it isn’t such a bad thing when necessary to just up and leave our environment when we have to in order to escape the clutches of being in love with someone who just isn’t going to ever fit the bill. If that isn’t an option and oftentimes it isn’t, then it is best to just stop communicating with the person altogether. Move on and just get them out of our lives as much as possible in order to get them out of our heart and mind as much as possible.

One of the things that I find most peculiar is this strange tendency of mine to still long for a girl even after I have made a decision that she isn’t the right one for me. I actually find myself feeling jealous if she expresses liking some other guy or going out with another guy. Now in times past I used to beg for those situations so I could rid myself of having to deal with the guilt one feels when one breaks up with a girl, but even then, I find myself feeling terribly agonized over them liking someone else. and this is even after I have let them go and know without a shadow of a doubt that they aren’t the one. Even then I still feel this great pain in my heart. it is two feelings simultaneously that are actually totally opposite of one another. On the one hand there is much about the girl that bothers me, even at times, just flat out annoys the hell out of me. And on the other hand I still find myself jealous and hurt that she is liking someone else and actually find myself wanting to be with her.

Such is the case now with a few. And for the life of me I cannot quite understand the nature of this mental and emotional anomaly. Why on earth would I even care? I mean is it not a blessing that one girl or another likes someone else and is now no longer projecting onto you that you are “the one.” She is no longer feeling sad or bitter or lonely or resentment towards you that you don’t want to be with her. That’s a blessing to be sure. And yet, every now and then, it still sneaks up on me with certain girls and hurts.

I think what it comes down to is that there are some people – when true love strikes us, which is rare – that we just never stop loving. No matter how incompatible we are with them, no matter how much they bother or annoy us or just downright create a feeling of disdain or loathing in us about them we still in our heart of hearts love them and are in essence still “in love” with them. With Weather Girl that’s what happened. No matter how much I feel that we are incompatible and how much she annoys me at times, there is still this cupid’s arrow kind of love for what she represented at one point in my life. You see? Not HER. But what she represented – what I was projecting onto her when Cupid’s Arrow struck…

With Sabine it’s more like she’s just this giant object of sensuality and mystery to me that will always captivate me, even though again I know we are completely incompatible. But I feel enraged sometimes when I think of her with another man, even though that is precisely the best thing that could happen to her, for both of us… And with Princess Little Tree I still feel the same love for her as I did when we were a couple. The only difference is that now I love her more as a friend and want her to be happy. I mean, talk about pain. fuck. We milked that for as long as we possibly could just because we wanted to be together so badly… but eventually I think we both just got tired of the constant pain of that realization in the back of our minds that we weren’t the best for each other because of the age difference and all. We had already been told that we were husband and wife in our last life from more than one psychic and I think that helped us understand the instant connection and attraction and deep care we had for each other, and in a way it helped it make it easier for us to say good bye to our idea of being together in that capacity in this life. God was that sad.

It hurt sometimes. All of it. All of them. I’ll tell you that. it hurts like a sonofabitch. It stings. It causes the body to tense up and clinch up and writhe in agony. Even though we very well know that they indeed aren’t “the one.” But that doesn’t really talk to the heart. the heart has its own switchboard and I don’t think that anyone knows how to tap into it yet or make a call into it. It just has its own special line. Only God knows how to get in there and talk any sense to it. time I

guess is all that can really heal these things…

I’m doing alright with it. The easiest cure of course is just to be in other relationships. And then you don’t really think about it. you get yourself a new crush and then you aren’t thinking of the old ones anymore… well that’s the theory. For me that never actually works either. Because if I could have it my way I would have them all together as my wives and we would all be fine. In Iran when I met with the infamous Iranian filmmaker Khoshrow Sinai who is now in his sixties, I met one of his wives. He lives with two wives and they are best friends. Two children from each wife. And they are all very happy. I would like that very much. I guess I essentially I have that now in a way… just in a slightly covert way… and without the fringe benefits…

The real dream would be to meet ONE GIRL who could satisfy all of it. I mean, people get married for a reason… it isn’t always just for children or tradition or convenience or even just temporary infatuation. Sometimes there is really something amazingly magical there…. and my dream would be to meet HER. that ONE girl that could really be THAT ONE for me. Where I would not need a handful of them to satisfy all the various different aspects of my gigantic personality… I wonder if that is possible… to have one girl that could do it… something to think about.

The closest I ever came was Cleopatra, but I was a kid and I was really fooling myself because she really wasn’t on the same plane as I. I mean, eventually once the infatuation faded away we realized that we were very different from each other. We loved each other deeply and took such precious care for one another but we were on totally different planes so we argued insanely and passionately and horribly all the time. It was truly a nightmare. I’m very glad that I was mature enough to make the decision to “start separating to see if we could work out our differences.” Proud of her too. We made the right decision.

And since then, I’ve always wondered if there was one girl out there who really has it. all of it. the whole thing. not just the looks and the package, but also the old soul and the brains… the breeding, the enlightenment, the ability to keep up, the kindness and caring and unshakable integrity and honesty and lust for truth. I think for each of us, what we are really asking for is quite the miracle, and if we are lucky enough to find it, we should remind ourselves just how lucky we are.

The other day I received this email from Dina, remember the cute little gelato girl from Roma? Gosh I cannot even remember what name I assigned her in the Diaries… and I don’t feel like looking it up… we had a great time for about a week or two in Rome just before I left. If you want to jump into that whole scene head to the Diaries from June through September 2003 and read all about it. There are some truly wild stories to be had there.

In any case, she fell in love with the song “Vicodin” from our Sleep with you CD that had just come out that year. (Good for her, cause it’s a damn good song and once she “got it” you know, not just liked the music, but understood the whole idea behind the song, she sort of took it as her theme song for a while…) And so she creates a new email address for herself from that point forward calling herself Vicodina… still now. Which is just fucking classic. In any case, we’ve kept in touch for the last five years and that’s the way it should be…. So the other day I get this reply from her because it was her birthday…

Ciaoooooooooooooo Fishy,

It is so nice to heard you, first of all you have to exuse for my english that i’ m sure it will be really hard to understand. Thank you for remembering my bifthday, I’m relly impressed your memory has win the battle with all the drugs you had in the past! Hahahhaaaa! Anyway my life goes really well, i’m working with my love fabrizio in a nice restaurant near Rome and we are living togheter from 1 year already, i have lost all my bads abits (i remember you was really worried for me) so now my life is more normal. I have to say that sometimes i still get drunk but is just because i don’t want to feel too old .I ‘m 31 this year and i still think i ‘m 28 ,and if you could see me i’m sure you will agree with me that time did not change me a lot. what about you ? please let me now if you come in Rome to play with your band, and if you got time tell me something about the life in the big apple…….. Tanti abbracci e baci dalla tua amica romana

Vicodina.

And you know, that’s the thing really. Is that its all about us being able to share with each other like this AFTER we are in a relationship with someone… you know, if we work everything out alright. If everyone puts their cards on the table and is honest and clean and has integrity, things can always work out alright and we often find that our best friends in the world are our ex-lovers…. with me and Sabine… we are still in that stage where we are struggling back and forth a bit. Still this tug of war. You know, I never know whether I’m coming or going with her really. I mean she’s such a fucking mystery. One minute she loves me, the next minute she hates me. then the next minute we’re just friends, then the next minute she hates Weather Girl just because I once liked Weather Girl. And then she just likes me as a friend. Just makes no sense. But she’s one of my best friends in the whole world and I put up with it all no matter what because we have the potential to be really good friends one day.

Lately I think she’s coming around. Perhaps we both are. We’re getting to this new stage where we can hang out and laugh and really be friends…. at least on the phone. Being a professional “ballerina” she’s not around that much anyway, so its better that way. Its weird though because I still find myself unable to just hang out with her and NOT think about her in a romantic way. which fucking drives me crazy. Because I don’t want to. And I know she doesn’t want me to either. You see? That’s where we were when we started…. And that my friends is the puzzle. First one to figure that one out wins the prize.