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Yeah, the guild has lain dormant for over a year now.

That doesn't mean it's a failure - it is needed more than ever. Gaians are good people, and deserve to be happy, confident and effective in their daily lives.

There are plenty of Gaians who know better, but get drowned out in threads on the forums, or stuck playing Word Bump.

And there are plenty of Gaians willing to learn, willing to listen, willing to ask questions, and willing to share.

What if the two sorts could be brought together?

That's Hopeland, that's why I'm bringing it back. Recruits of all sorts welcome.

Visit Hopeland: Beauty and Wellness Guild

...if you want to keep up, or drop me a line, visit http://inrethinking.blogspot.com and say hi. I'm always happy to talk to people.

There is a point where one cannot take control of one's happiness, no matter how hard one tries. For happiness in some sense is dependent on what we get, and it is possible to get less than nothing, to get "pain," which takes away and colors all good in one's life wrongly.

I'm whining about the fact I feel sad. I really do hope she'll come back, as delusional as that is. When I do feel hopeful, something weird happens: the fact she's not around matters not at all.

I guess what I'm switching between is two sorts of pain: a pain that will never resolve, for it sees no possibilities as healing, and a pain that will accept a resolution. For it doesn't really matter if she comes back, if I can hope anything, including the most unlikely and impossible thing.

Glen could be dying, and never have I owed so much in so little time to a professor. When they wanted to kick me out, he was there to vouch for me, and he gave me multiple opportunities - many of which I didn't use well - to show my worth. I owe him for teaching me Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Bacon, Lincoln, Spinoza, and for being one of the best friends I've ever had, really.

When I heard he had cancer, I was sure he'd beat it. Now the transplant is done, and he's sitting in a hospital room with no immune system - his blood is water, he says, as the cell count they did this morning had nothing in it. And I almost cried. I felt I was reading his last post. No, they say, this is part of the transplant, he'll get better.

I don't know what the hell is going on. I'm not angry, just worried, worried, worried.

Some of you have asked what the ex did that made me so angry. Part of her walking out wasn't that she just up and left; she up and left at the time I told her about his disease, and how it affected me. I don't think of her at all at this moment, except when wondering about the history of this thing, in the abstract. This is a scary moment for me: I've been composing a eulogy and stopping myself, over and over again...

The way you make it sound, the only way she could be a decent person is if she had feelings for you.

There is absolutely an element of that in my ranting, and it seems like the weakest part of my argument, when in fact it could be the strongest.

It should hurt to push people away, it should hurt to say "goodbye." Of course we can't have feelings "in that way" for each other, and awkwardness is something that makes us uncomfortable.

But she has a good idea how much pain I'm going through, and she chooses to exacerbate that pain, rather than treat me well. She doesn't apologize, she works to make me feel like I'm the bad guy the few times we talk. "Oh well, it's because I ultimately can't give you what you want. Better that you be angry than deluded."

Yeah, and whose fault is that? I mean, you'll say "I have a right to feel the way I want to feel."

So love isn't something you choose, but something that happens? Wow, that means no one owes anything to each other.

What she wants is something to tell her that unrestrained sexuality and all its consequences are correct, that people can treat each other like dirt because love is subjective. And while I can't sit around and say "you should love me," I can't say that not because it's her "right," but because I recognize her right since I love her as a human, and love her in an even deeper sense.

Trust me, I'd rather be deluded, because then I can have hope you have some dignity. Whereas, right now, you're making psychopaths look moral. At least they can blame their crimes on a mental disorder. You, on the other hand, willingly choose to hurt, to be used and use others and call that freedom.

Shame on you, and shame on us, for allowing this to occur. The latest rantings I have on Macbeth pretty much say that the modern world destroyed love by making the freedom to pursue desire the cornerstone of all politics and thought. What's funny is that my "rantings" are conceded by someone who very much wants the modern world to come about, William Shakespeare, and he can see this problem, the problem of others' greed destroying the happiness of those who want less, a mile away.

I was thinking the other day about her in the way I'm not allowed to think about her any more. We're done, she's off with her new beau now, and so those quiet moments when I would just wonder about her personality or how things she experienced made her the person she is - those quiet moments divorced from eros, for it is Thought, I think, discovering its true nature in those moments - well, they're not painful, but they're generic now.

They're generic because I don't really want to be thinking about her. The cause is involuntary. In this case, I was listening to friends talk about a soccer team, and I know nothing about soccer. But she used to play, and I was always happy to hear her talk about this thing or the other. They were talking about the positions in the middle of the field and how it was hard to define them, despite their absolute necessity. And they brought forth a number of ideas about offense and defense, and how this or that could be used to tell a midfielder what to do, and none of them fit.

And I wondered whether creativity and obligation met in the halfback/midfielder position. Aristotle says that poetry concerns making, and that politics is action, and uses this distinction to attack those who would have politics serve other purposes. I always thought something was iffy about that, for life is making and action, and I got into studying politics because politics is just the art of making things more complex than they are. That's life, of course: anything worth doing is going to be a mess.

One thing about a midfielder is that they have to do more running than anyone else on the field. She must have felt free during those times, free in a way I could not possibly enable. There's nothing like the feeling of breathing deeply and heartily while trying to accomplish something. Her activity was a making, and her resultant character was beautiful, and I fell in love with that.

Love is an imposition on women like that, esp. when one is whiny like me. It always is something that ties one down, but for women like that, it is especially negative.

I should be happy she's happy, and I have been working for some time to move on. The complexity of the phenomenon of her playing is really something very simple: it is only complex to me, who wishes it were different in a way that only benefits me.

1. Working on reviewing for major exams that will occur in a month or two. Working on Heidegger, Aristotle and Machiavelli right now.

2. In the ex aftermath, just looking to meet new people who are open. Not looking to date at all, but maybe re-evaluate my criteria for what I want.

3. Looking for teaching jobs.

4. Not giving up on the kiddie stuff I play around with, like this. It's good to meet younger people and see what their goals and ideals are, and if I can help. Those my age are far, far too cynical.

Yeah, her friends drove a wedge between us. She grew colder to me last week, and rejected my asking how she was as something I was saying to be creepy, even though I've asked her this sort of thing for years.

Oh, and we're not talking anymore.

You can tell I'm thrilled about this. I just want to know how I got into this situation; I'm still puzzled about it. To say I'm better than her would be obnoxious; it would also be the unvarnished truth, probably understated in the extreme.

I'm worried that her friends will drive a wedge between us. She's had them far longer than she's had me, and she has to trust their judgement, and I want her to trust their judgement.

Unfortunately, while I've been super nice to her friends, they already hate me. They hate how I'm articulate, they hate what they think is me being pretentious - I never correct them, ever, I just tell her what I think privately, I think they've mistaken "being courteous" for "pretentious," and I think they generally hate the fact I'm older than them and know more.

I'm not sure exactly why they hate me, but the spate of unprovoked attacks really bothers me. And I know it's going to get worse. Prejudice doesn't exist, we believe, in our society. Try being smart. Hahahahahaha. But since we don't believe it exists, we believe that ad hominem attacks are indeed the product of reason.

I just hope she will love me, and make this easier for me. I will never, ever say anything even remotely bad to her friends, and I have held my tongue far longer, already, than I should have, because I want her in my life.