I'm ready for the road again, the kind where I'm alone and all I feel is motion.

A year ago, I believe, was the happiest time of my entire life. Only I was terrified of it, so I lost it. I guess most of us lose most things, especially the good ones. That's all right, I suppose. It teaches a lesson...or however you want to interpret it.

On the music scene: Martin Sexton (again) "Freedom of the Road". He's had enough of that "freedom of the road" but I'm the opposite. I've had enough of stagnation. Lately, there's no time for that, because I've filled it up with things. I finally got some dirt on Melusine. The mermaid/snake fairy tale I became a little obsessed with in Luxembourg. Lucky me, though, my Classics professor is letting me research her, so I went up to the haunted third floor of the library, making my way through the secret staircases through the middle and picking out a couple of books. Half of them are in German and I have no clue how I'm going to get through that.

Otherwise, though, I'm busy with other things. Puritan poetry that really makes me want to gag most of the time with its utmost sappiness and extremism: love, love, love or hell. I'm the kind who likes a happy medium, no extremes.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I ditched anatomy. So I'm down to four classes and two jobs and no labs. Best decision I ever made. I had dreams three nights in a row saying "You dropped anatomy. Look how happy you are." I figured it was a divine message. So I took the advice, and lo and behold, I felt amazing afterwards.

SciFi is incredible, as expected. The War of the Worlds is the reading for this week. I'm almost done with it. Last week was Frankenstein, again, and it just gets better every time.

In Creative Writing, I finally pushed out a story (after fifteen drafts or so in fourteen days) that I'm proud. If any of you want to look at it, it's not even six pages, so you're welcome. It's completely different from my usual experimental literary junk, and more pulp, more readable, and more enjoyable in general. The bad thing is, I have to write a new one for next Tuesday and workshop it for the whole class. I guess I'll come up with something.

But Rosh Hashanah starts tomorrow night and I'm leaving campus for that until Friday. It'll be good to have a break.

Overall: life is amazing. And when I compare it with a year ago, maybe it's better. Because this year, my happiness is genuine, it's real, and not based on an illusion and a lie. No, complete bliss doesn't shoot through me, but there's that baseline of happiness that's always there, no matter what. That water is rising, too, and it's about time this island submerged.

Speaking of islands, John Donne came up recently and like I've said since I read his essay, I still say I disagree: all men are islands. It just depends whether you count the dots on the horizon and if you really take the water in between seriously. I'd rather be an island than not, though, because "a rock feels no pain and an island never cries."

"Alison!"
"No, Mac. Not anymore."
"What do you think this is, huh? You think you're alone in this, Al? You're not. And I've been in this longer."
"Not harder."
"I lost my sister. I lost everything."
"You don't get it, Mac! You never got it because you never knew the truth. You were always running after the wrong one! You still are."
"You're still blaming yourself on Margaret. It was the Knight. Not you. You know Zeus. He doesn't take place holders."
"God damn it, Mac! There's no such thing as the god damned Black Knight. You chopped off her leg that night and I know it. She watched Athena jump and she could've saved her but she didn't. She shot the fucking Minister even though she knew the history behind it. It was a ploy. And I was a part of it."
"How? How were you a part of it, Alison? The Knight is a rival."
"No, Mac. Zeus made all of us. There are no rivals. Just us and NOCs that no one knows about. We play double. That's what he did with the Second Generation. And this'll be our whole life. And mine. Caught up in it because even though we hate it we can't live without it. We don't know anything else."
"You're going crazy like Margaret."
"It was me, James!" she screamed. "It was me!"
"What was you? What!"
"The Black Knight is your little Alison. I worked against you my whole life. My right leg from the knee down is bionic. And the Black Knight is as much a legend as Sarah Hughes. A multitude of names for one person, all conjuring up a difference sense in the scattered subjects. You're out to kill me and I'm telling you now there's no way you'll succeed unless I let you. But the moment I pull that mask off and you believe me, that knife will be in your chest, not mine. Only you're the one who'll have to live with it, while you turn me into ashes and go on in Olympus. It's all lie. And you might've been in longer. But I think faster. And I only speak the truth."