Love

On Christmas Eve Day I called my sister a British cunt. I said "cunt" in a certain way, as if I were chewing beef. I said she looked like an aging British who thinks she looks like a great beauty. I was pissed because our traditional Swedish Christmas was off (we are half Swedish, a quarter English and a quarter Scot). As Swedes, we celebrate Christmas Eve with oyster stew, present opening, a beautifully lit tree, music, and a service. Our year was atheist. I hated it. The next day I went back on medications after not having taken any since September. I learned that the SSRI had been harmful due to unpleasant side-effects, but that the stabilizers, reduced by half from full regimen, were tolerable and that they improve me. So since then, I take them again. My sister later spent the night with a man who had claimed for years he wanted to marry me. The man is an atheist, so now the family, except my brother, acts atheist, too. "Religion is a matter of personal conviction" is how our mother taught us in childhood, and even though she does not say things like that to us now, I cleave to the original teaching.

Following my outburst and their later night together -- the bastard flew in from NY to stay with her without telling me -- I applied myself strenuously to finding love on the internet. I picked men by their faces. Twice, unwittingly, without it being mentioned in their profiles, I picked ministers. Once I picked a cool and handsome black man, an artist. I asked him in our first email whether he were a minister, and he said he was not, but that someone had once asked him that at Walmart. Since, we have had a few dates, including good sex. I feel too old for social love but not too old for proper love or rectitude. The artist is above that. Real love is my honest mission.

This is the anniversary of my return to Minnesota, 11 years ago: May 24, 1996. Also, it is Bob Dylan's birthday in 1941 or 66 years ago.