What do I want?

I want to raise my son well and to know him.

I want to love someone and be loved in return. I want to be known.

I want to know my friends and in turn have them know me. I want to be who I am at all times.

I want to be financially secure and to take care of my family. I want my children to have more opportunities than I did.

I want to create things that last.

I want to prepare for the future while thoroughly enjoying the present.

I want to get the most of the time I have.

I want to be good.

One side effect of having learned to plan things in the army is that I often find myself wondering what will happen to something or someone should I get whacked. I don't plan on dying, but the possibility of it happening without my consent, and thereby leaving all these things I've been working on out in limbo, is something I think about probably once a day.

I know I'm finished because I just consciously downloaded and burned The Postal Service - Give Up so I can listen in the car. Put a fork in me, baby.

Last night I finished a run of 7 miles in 45 minutes, and as I walked up and down a street near the college, looking up into cherry blossoms and green trees with my hands on my head, breathing deeply the evening air, I thought of how fortunate I am. I found myself saying: This is happiness.

Even if it doesn't last, if these moments with her don't last, right now it is the best feeling, and I'll do my best to remember.

Her daughter came into the bedroom this morning as we lay tumbled in each other, and she didn't freak out about it. In fact her littler girl climbed right into the bed and we laughed and joked until it was time to get moving and make breakfast. She had Cheerios while we made breakfast bagels together. I made the eggs and she toasted the bagels.

It was so easy. I don't know when I've been allowed to be part of something that felt so easy.

A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced. All those on the right would be graded solely on their works’ quality.

His procedure was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group; 50 pounds of pots rated an A, 40 pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an A.

At grading time, the works with the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of clay.

We woke sometime early this morning and lay in the covers, our first night together. After a while she said, "It's so strange. I was looking at your arm lying across mine. It seems the older I get, the more I notice contrasts. The difference between masculine and feminine. "

"I think it's the same as an artist seeing shape and color," I said. "Masculine and feminine is probably the strongest energy that runs the world. It makes sense that you would notice it."

After leaving her house I went on a bird walk, invited randomly by a friend. The guide explained how first he listens for the birds, because so often they're heard and not seen. Then he searches the distance for color, shape and movement. Then, when watching a flock feeding or flying by, he looks for the differences that separate one from another. Some species are easily apparent. Others have appeared only once in a hundred years.

Five hours later, I thought of the words: The collage of you and I.

My days have no shape outside work. I feel the need for some kind of routine but it escapes me. Last night I went to a late movie and came home to friends in the house, three cases of beer into it, yelling at the street.

In June I will be 33. I feel perpetually 22.

The redeeming thing about Colleen was that if I caught her with sadness in her face, and she saw me, she would compose herself and smile brilliantly. (She did everything with glamor.) She presented happiness even if we both knew it was bullshit. That was no good for me but it was going to get her through. Her world of surfaces began with the smile, her perfect dental assistant's teeth, the teeth that even had their own picture on her Myspace page.

It wasn't going to work for me because I was trying to get closer to what hurt me. I was no longer interested in hiding what I didn't like in myself or others. I think she believed I was going to make it possible for her to slide from one life to another, and when I realized that and broke up with her, she said, "I'm trying to figure out who you are."

Maybe I wanted to take the smile away. Making her cry was enough. Another woman told me recently that she was evil. I don't know what that means, really.