I'm not what I appear to be.

John Lennon would have been 65 this weekend. When I was leaving the I.O. tonight, I heard his voice on NPR. It was him talking and then bits of music and then more of him talking. Tragic prescience. Tragic candle-snuffing. Tragic something.

I was feeling good and tragic when I heard it. Sadder and more distraught than I have felt in as long as I can remember. Exhausted by it. Tired of feeling it. Brittle and barklike. Made of stone and yet extraordinarily fragile. Overly sensitive. Unwisely hopeful. Typically reticent. Angst-ridden. I'm surprised I didn't burst into tears right there in my car. I almost did.

I've never had skin thick enough for the beating it takes. Nor has there been enough down on my back.

I finally unpacked some of my purchases from Comic-Con. They've been sitting in shopping bags for months now. Everything has been coursing by at such a rate that I haven't had a chance to just sit down and sift through my treasures. A thing I used to love to do after a Con or a shopping trip. Or whatever. Now I just acquire. And then the acquisitions sit. And eventually they become an eyesore. And I am tempted to chuck them. And it all amounts to a great lot of waste. Wasted time. Wasted money. Wasted space. Wasted plans and ideas on which nothing substantive was ever built.

My life has been reduced to pile-making.

Dorian and Krissy are watching my Firefly DVDs. I wish I could just sit at home and watch them with them and not ever have to be anywhere else again. Sometimes even the blasted sunshine is too much to bear.

Although I laugh and I act like a clown
Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown

No big surprises here.

Every Beatles song is sad to me now. And not just because of John Lennon.

I know what it is to be sad. And it's making me feel like I've never been born.