247 19th Ave, #2, San Francisco

At times it's easier to love Joy. I went over to her place last night and stayed until she went to work this morning. It was a time easier to love Joy. No focusing on negative things. Just love the one I was with. I have no standards for the people who get close to me anymore. That's good. No standards, no expectations, no disappointment. It's hard for me to say that cynically. There's too much truth in it.

I think I'm starting to forgive Amina. It's just a matter-of-fact realization. The only thing I have to forgive her for is the betrayal of our friendship. Nothing else we went through means anything anymore. The romance and the passion is nothing. What she turned out to be and what she did to end our relationship mean nothing. But she was such a dear friend and I loved her so deeply. I was fiercely loyal to her and would have done anything for her.

There is no sense of loyalty in my life anymore. All my loyalties have disappeared. I'm not particularly loyal to Joy in the long-term, multi-level sense. I'm loyal to her because she's my current partner. With all the other people in my life, past and present, the loyalty is dubious if it exists at all.

To none of my friends in the Bay Area do I feel any strong sense of loyalty; a sense of being a part of a group, a sense of being understood and getting more than baseline acceptance.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how I feel about the Bay Area anymore. Not that I can think of anywhere else I'd rather live. It's December, and at times I get a whiff of Autumn. At times I feel a forecast of Spring. But it never gets to extremes or the anticipation of extremes.

The whiff of Autumn is not the anticipation of true Winter, the snow, the bitter cold, the bundling, the warmth inside, the gloom and darkness, the dead season in the cycle of life. The forecast of Spring doesn't have the hope, the sense of rebirth and rejuvenation, the very texture of life itself. It doesn't anticipate the heat, the sultry humidity of Summer that I find so passionate. The heat that gives way to the glorious Summer nights that make me feel so vast that I could explode into the sky above and be a part of the cosmos.

I need to be where seasons change and where there is a true Winter and a true Summer and where Autumn and Spring are there to represent what I need them to. Where I can go, I don't know. Back to Japan? Where else?