11.40pm, Wednesday July 29, N's bed ....this too shall pass

I wanted this trip to clarify things and send me through some sort of fire and back out again burnished more beautifully, but this was not exactly what I had in mind. My work and revelations were supposed to revolve around issues of competence, independence. Instead I feel no more competent and no more independent, but my trials have revolved instead around men.

Today I received two very different emails. One from MS, who in response to my emotional farewell email sent back a couple of sentences with incomprehensible sentiments, as they appeared incomplete and clipped from his previous three-line email. The other was from A, responding to the birthday email I sent him, making it clear that he does not want to hear from me and has a lot of repgnance for who he thinks I am. Fair enough, I guess. He's been telling me for two years that he doesn't want me to bother him and, as usual, I needed him to hit me over the head to listen to him over my own desires.

So, at last, I close this 12-year chapter of my life, and I must admit that MS was a part of this closure. It let me know that it is possible for me to find another man whose generousity is genuine, whose smile is full of joy, and who my body likes too.

I have also learned not to play casually with boys because I cannot handle the end of the play. The feeling of being with M was addictive and I don't like living without it.

For someone who wants to be single, I sure spend a lot of time thinking about the guys who impacted upon me romantically. There's only four, but they are never too far from my thoughts. I think I need to stay single for along while - until I can put men in proper perspective.

D told me that she loved my smile. I think this is the best compliment anyone can receive and I believe this is the first time anyone has complimented my smile. Women - I should stick just with them.

8.00ish pm, Sunday July 26 ....full

I have just eaten too much dinner. It was so good and I wasn't feeling full, until now. D made whole wheat pasta with tomato, artichoke and black olives, while I breaded, herbed and fried eggplant slices.

D's family is lovely. L is the type of man Steinbeck writes about: sweet-natured, smart, competent, patient and great with children. B, the little one, is, like all one-year-olds, self-entertaining. He is squirmy and warm and quite a little dancer. True to form, I've bonded with the baby and the dog, a chocolate retriever with a big, warm, wet smelly tongue.

This morning we joined C and S for a trip to the Cave of the Mound, a large cave featuring the shiny plastic look of stalactites and stalagmites. Anice tour, but I don't find cave formations to be as beautiful or impressive as I should. I preder a forest, which is much more mundane. Maybe it is the unspectacular colours of the formations that don't do it for me.

Last night D and I again talked into the dark, though not so late as the previous couple of nights. After returning home from the caves and eating a lunch of fruit salads and vegie burgers we went to the Sow's Ear Cafe cum knitting shop, located in an imitation Victorian house. A lovely cafe, there was a string of skeletons wrapped in tiny shawls, one with a tiny knitted sock hanging from his foot. There were ladies knitting at long wood tables, armchairs in the window, coloured skeins of yarn hanging on the back wall and male staff, one young man sitting in the back of the shop, knitting. Out front were metal tables with rainbow umbrellas under which D and I sat to drink our coffees.

For dinner I bought a bottle of Penfold's Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet, a not very expensive but quite lovely wine, all agreed.

?, Saturday July 25, D's basement ....babyless

The sun came back out today. D and I went to State Street to listen to a folk duo, and we ate lunch at a Nepalese/Indian/Tibetan restaurant. It wasn’t much like New York or Australian Nepalese/Tibetan food but was absolutely delicious. I had grilled marinated tofu with vegies, and rice with spinach. It sounds basic but the sauces were unidentifiably lovely. D's sister C and her boyfriend joined us at the restaurant. C's boyfriend was friendly and chatty and enjoyable to be with.

We all head off to a street fair where the three of us gals got a free iridology consultation. My eyes say that I have a strong constitution but, as a result, I take too much on and get stressed. This means I have to watch my vitamin levels, especially B. Also, I have liver issues and should watch the type of fats I eat or learn to regularly detoxify my liver.

We didn’t spend too much time at the fair. We wandered with microbrew in our hands and peered at the arts and goods in the stalls. People here in Madison look healthy, clean cut, normal.

D and her husband's dog Barley is down here with me, breathing heavily. His sleepy rhythmic breathing has been keeping us company, a relaxing soundtrack behind the chaos of children.

Yesterday D, her youngest son B, and I drove down to Willy Street and ate Laotian food. D had a mango curry and I had noodles and tofu with spicy sauce. I ate my first egg roll in many years (Chinese restaurants don't have them here in Australia) and enjoyed my meal thoroughly, though it was more Thai-like than Vietnamese-like. D was unable to sit down as B was in the mood for exploration. She chased him around the nearly empty restaurant, flipped him, threw him, twirled him. Lucky boy.

That evening D's husband, L, cooked us grilled mushrooms stuffed with gorgonzola, and I helped make garlic bread. I nursed a few glasses of Pymm’s and ginger ale. I had never drunk Pymm’s before and I love it – a refreshing, cool vegetabley flavour.

After dinner D and I went to see Moon at the Sundance theatre. The movie wasn’t as good as I had hoped. But then, I didn’t know what it was supposed to be about other than that it was a psychological space mystery. And I don’t find the subject of clones to be particularly interesting.

D and I have stayed up late in the nights having good, long heartfelt chats about our lives, personalities, confusions and desires. It is great being with her. Just because we spent formative years together does not mean we would get on now or be similar. And in many ways we are very different, yet we have a similar way of viewing ourselves in the world at a very basic level. Is that the NY suburbs? Mothers that were drawn to each other, though they were not close friends? Or something essential in us that drew us together even when we were 3?

We’ve grown up very differently, have made different choices, and yet here we are, vaguely dissatisfied, questing, questioning, and looking for more.

9.21pm, Thursday July 23, D’s kitchen ...the modesty of children

After playing a loud game of Operation (with electronic laughing, toilet flushing and nose blowing for current generations of kiddies), D asked her 5-year-old son if he wanted a bath or shower. He said to her, ‘A shower but she can’t watch me!’. I told him I had been planning on taking a bath WITH him.

Wednesday July 22, 3.00pm, Cleveland airport Terminal D Field Grill ….see you in another three years

I have left behind my family and am onwards to the little girl I grew up with in my formative years. It is a sort of 25-year reunion. I haven’t seen her since I was 8 years old.

Pennsylvania’s forested roots are obvious. Flying over the state you see carpets of green trees ocassionally broken by patterns of houses and then farms. There is more forest than town, as if the forest was mostly untameable. Pennsylvania changes into Ohio as the forest occasionally breaks into dense suburbs, first arranged like the cubes, squares and parallelograms of Andrei Bely's Ableukov in the novel Petersburg, each house on the end of a straight driveway, sticking out from the street. As the landscape becomes more urban, houses are crammed together in lines of squares and rectangles, not necessarily parallel or perpindicular to each other. The fields are replaced by neighbourhoods and in between the country towns of Pennsylvania and the urbanisation of Cleveland there are big stretches of farm.

Yesterday Mom, Aunt G and I went to Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where Italian, Asian and Middle Eastern supermarkets sell meats and cheeses, pastas and breads. There are restaurants and delis, grill bars and cafes. We ate in a Peruvian chicken place, where I had yucca chips, and rice and beans, and a bottle of blue corn juice chicha. We wandered around a craft gallery/shop exhibiting Latin American artists' takes on colonial impact. So there was a platinum-coated plantain hanging from a chain, animal caracases made out of used fabrics, and body suits constructed of canvas printed with photographs of skin and stitched together patchwork style – creepy and ugly.

My second pen just ran out, so enough for now.

Monday July 20, 11.00pm, Aunt G's bedroom

Today it poured with rain. Aunt G made me eggplant parmigiana and Uncle J absolutely creamed Dad at gin. Mom, Dad and I went to see Aunt L at the retirement home she lives in. We took her to Chipotle Mexican Grill (a chain) for lunch and to see Harry Potter and the Dark Prince. She wasn't too annoying, despite the reputation that precedes her, though by the end of the afternoon she had begun to stink of pee.

Mom didn't come to the movie with us and when it was time for us to all meet up again it was raining about as hard as it can rain. There was the briefest lull in which Mom decided to run across the street in her white blouse, with a plastic baggie over her head. She was an odd sight with the makeshift headgear and got soaked through anyway. We had to buy her a new shirt since Aunt L didn't want us to leave yet. Dad and I convinced her to buy a fitted scoop-necked shirt with stripes in beautiful shades of roses and blues. She looks great in it but probably won't ever wear it again because it fits her.

When we arrived home, Aunt G had not only made me macaroni with roasted tomato and chick-peas but also another eggplant parmagiana. This is because, last night, when I was not hungry exactly, but wanting to eat a few hours after a dinner of salad, pasta salad, string beans and bread. Mom and I were going to hard boil an egg and mix it with chickpeas and mustard, but Aunt G insisted on frying zucchini slices and onion. When my Italian aunts sautee vegetables it tastes much better than when I do, so the zucchini, chickpeas and egg tasted wonderful.

When I was pacing around in the kitchen trying to decide what it was I wanted to eat I kept saying what I really wanted was eggplant parmiagana. And, wallah, the next day, there it was. She doesn't take thank yous very gracefully.