I write emails, post on web pages, and even update profiles on socializing sites. Then I lay down, eyes closing, diagonal across a wide bed. I've learned some veils maybe. And I've learned to remove them. Would it be better to be honest? *SLAP* Honest? What is honest?

That I desire, that I want to feel someone with me. That tonight I could enjoy flirtation and the sense of a soul or strong spirit next to me. Or maybe dissolution - losing myself in a haze of smoke and drink and sloppy sensuality on some corner floor. I've been disciplined; I've been on the road. And when I pause, I wonder, what do I want now? Now - between two trips, when I'm at the place I call home, but the place I'm not in very often.

I want her now quickly immediately and forever. I haven't met her yet, I guess. Or it could be any her. But what does that help?

Be with yourself, in bed I tell myself. Hah! Box of tissues and thou -

really, can I find that stimulation and satisfaction from observing my own behaviour and reacting to my own mind? Sharing seeing the world with myself? Can my fingers cradle my limbs to comfort? What more is there in another?

I meet so many people. What can I not get from our neatly dressed, introductory interactions? Even old friends I beg with my eyes. What depth beyond?

I would accept any offer or even more I would provoke, write more forward notes but maybe I have learned to be less honest. Because I don't have the time. I don't have the time to hold all that we strip off when we share our hunger. I say. After stirring some souls to action or excitement and then I retreat, back here, online introspective and travelling. Momentum is all I have. Hope too maybe, but it's hard to write with hope when you're hungry. And when the hunger is indiscriminate, you risk drawing odd shapes to your midst - odd shapes that might not satisfy without contortions. Odd shapes, I imagine you can trip over them when you're extending a hand to another friend.

It's a totalizing moment - all of my being projected onto anonymity. I can see decades to come in an unknown face, half-cloaked in hair, gazing in adoration at something I don't see or understand.

A life in balance demands I put this inquiry aside. And that's not hard, because it's going nowhere. I'm constantly experimenting. Here's my notes from my trip to New York and my trip to San Francisco today: putting in my contacts, dressing in a suit and holding my head up high with gel in my hair puts me on better footing with a wider array of women. Women on the street in New York actually smiled at me! So correct that - add, walking on the street helps put me in contact with women. Leaving my desk - Today I met one my age, smart cute with an odd accent. We chatted and pointed, observing the world shoulder to shoulder for the better part of thirty minutes. And when we were parting, she said, "it was a pleasure to meet you." I bowed slightly and agreed truly.

I didn't know her name. I thought about asking for some point of contact. But I remembered all my unanswered emails. And all of my phone numbers uncalled. Dates, appointments I couldn't make, even yesterday. I've already met her, and I haven't met her yet. I let this one go, pleasant. Maybe next time we meet, she will have evolved into something I can't resist. Or maybe I'll be more still and able to balance neither overreaching for something I can't sustain, nor retiring, from the palm upturned before me.

I'm looking for someone to lean on, perhaps. Suit myself up straight, and learn to lean on myself.