Things have never been so swell, I have never felt this well.

You know you’re right.

I am twenty three years one week old, and I have, today, for the first time in my life, mowed a lawn.

You may ask, how have I lived this long without performing such a common task? My answer is, I don’t know. Since I was a kid, we’ve had gardeners come once a week to the house. I think my dad retained them when we moved here to West Covina—our house, unlike the one in La Puente, had sculptured bushes, and it was outside my dad’s skills to maintain them. As a matter of course, they mow our lawn. We don’t even own a lawnmower.

There’s still some deeper mystery, though. I should have had an occasion to mow someone else’s lawn. The closest I ever came was when Connor and his father died. A few friends and I went over to his family’s house, to help clean up, to do some yard work in preparation for their funeral. I used a weedwhacker then, hesitantly and awkwardly, to trim the edges of some unruly grass.

So, yes, today, I mowed a lawn for the first time. I even used an edger. It was work, but the afternoon was pleasant, and I enjoyed it. Moreover, I mowed well, and I was pleased with my edging.

This is what life is about, I think: new experiences, every day. Small things that bring happiness, or, at least, personal expansion– which in the long run is the same thing.

I don’t want to write to you. I don’t feel the muse.

I don’t want to write about the guy I saw beat up by security yesterday at Inland Invasion.

I don’t want to write about Innana’s identity, or convince DC that, yes, you can be Catholic and Punk at the same time.

I don’t want to track these conversations through a thousand comment boxes.

I am too weary, and, also, I am afraid of engendering more miscommunication and more misunderstanding. I am afraid, today, of being like subtraction soup: the more you eat, the hungrier you get. The more I try to clarify, the more muddled things seem to be.

I don’t want to write, but I’m going to. Like my brother said, someone has to do it. Just give me a minute, here, to rest. I’ll get right to it.

There’s about 15 minutes left of September 11th, here in Los Angeles, as I start to write this. Probably by the time I’m done, it will be September 12th.

I slept late today. A year ago, I wasn’t sleeping at all. I’m staying at home for the next few weeks. A year ago, I was already mulling over the idea of driving to New York.

I didn’t write this entry in advance, and I feel a little sheepish. I’m grasping for something to say, to mark the occasion, and not getting ahold of anything.

I just have… memories. The flag was up again today, looking like it did one year ago. Has it been a year? It’s been so short and so long, both. Oh crap, that’s not saying anything.

Have we… Have we let ourselves fall back into the world? Have we let ourselves forget the feelings we had those days following the tragedy?

Could we have not done so?

Back then, we met each other’s eyes and knew that we were thinking about the same thing. There was a dignity to all of our interactions, a weight that we carried with us wherever we were going. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me.

Now… now we’ve descended once again to politics. To rudeness. To our banal diversions. To… everyday life. Is this bad? Is this good? How should we be acting?

There’s a sign at a car dealership in Duarte that has never stopped displaying the kind of messages every sign in America displayed in the weeks after September 11th. A month ago, it was the subject of a joke between me and Dave. Have they forgotten how to reprogram their sign? We laughed. Maybe the person who does the graphics quit, we conjectured.

The flashing REMEMBER THE DEAD seemed anachronistic by June of 2002. Not that we wanted to forget the event, but, in a way, this constant harping by that auto dealership seemed to trivialize nine-eleven.

Not that the other dealerships seemed less trivial, advertising their top used car salespeople.

So, I guess the question is, are you the same as you were before September 11th, 2001, Tim? Have you just returned to your old, comfortable, easy skin? Did anything new grow in you, nurtured by your tears? Did any fire rise in you from those ashes?

I hope I’ve changed. I think I have, but I know not enough. I have a lot of work to do. I can’t let myself go back to sleep. I can’t let myself get lost in the world, again.

I have had a persistent low-level cold for the past week and a half. I thought it was going away, but today it flared up. I coughed ineffectually for about an hour before finally giving in and taking some medicine.

Now, this might not have been a difficult decision for most people, but I’m special. I’m special because I react badly to cold medicine. All cold medicine.

The drowsy stuff– the kind of stuff that comes with warnings not to operate heavy machinery, the “so you can rest” kind of medicine– makes me into a zombie. I can never sleep under its influence. I wander the earth, restless, slow-minded– coughless, but nauseous and dizzy.

The non-drowsy stuff isn’t supposed to do that. It still does. I still become a zombie– just a slightly more agile one. If Nyquil makes me a character from Night of the Living Dead, then Dayquil makes me a backup dancer from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. I may be able to take part in some decent choreography, but I remain a member of the undead.

I have a presentation to make at Eagle Medical tomorrow morning. I have a lot of code I need to write between now and then. This medication makes me inefficient. I would be angry, or frustrated, or, yes, angstful, but another of the medication’s effects is to render me unable to feel any emotion strongly. I am merely annoyed.

…is beautiful.

I am feeling my limitations.

I am stuck, right now. I am not an amateur on the web; it is impossible for me to create pages with that kind of organic authenticity you’ll find on Geocities or personal accounts everywhere. I have learned too much to be able to do that anymore.

But at the same time, I don’t have the skill, or—and this is my fear—the talent to make the leap into truly great design.

It’s not that I don’t like my own work, it’s that… I visit other sites, and I see that there’s, well, something missing in what I am doing.

The way it feels, in my mind, is that I have been walking a long road, and now I have come to a wall. A tall wall. To continue my progress, I need to get past it somehow. So I have been walking up and down the wall, looking for a passage through, probing it for weaknesses. A few times now I’ve stepped back, started running, and tried to jump it. I’ve hit the wall every time.

What I need, I think, is training. Tools. I think I need graphic design school. Perhaps some graphic design books—I’m good at teaching myself. The point is, I haven’t been approaching this wall seriously, or thinking about it critically. I have been making refined, but nevertheless amateur attempts at overcoming it.

The question is, the real question I’m asking myself, is whether I should go and put in the time necessary to learn what I need to know to scale this graphic design wall. Web design, after all, was just a pleasure stroll I was taking.

There’s been an entry here all along, just waiting for me to write it.