it's a courtesy to people without kids to eschew the attitude that no-one without kids can really understand what it's like--but, really, they can't. 062408 The secret (get it down, folks; finally got it after how many years? enuf) to getting stoned without the weed is: acceptance. Realization, corroboration--all the niggling perceptions that the world is really as fucked up as you suspected--a few key people to agree with you, a few key pieces of evidence--and you can finally accept that we're all just a bunch of screaming monkeys in a heap, and you're somewhere in that heap, and how much you want to scream and claw is pretty much up to you--then you can go around smiling as much as you want. And it's not even illegal. OR IS IT??? 062708 she's going to fill up with milk again. How long can the garden go neglected before it gives up the ghost? Where is the lonely space? What's there? Do the waves still carve the granite there? Do towers still embrace the azure? Is the quietness really real, there, still? Is the door still in the mossy side? Does the hollow tree still stand? oh god. help me. help me. help assumptions we have donned to cover our perpetual failures--anything that is best for my children will always win, for instance--assumptions that give us the chitin with which to forge an identity, a character--these are the assumptions which must be shattered, in order to have what we normally perceive as a story.