Had an incredibly fulfilling day today. It was a struggle but I managed to get to sleep at a reasonable hour the night before. I'm currently tackling my sleep problems head on. Got up bright and early and headed out to do job sampling for Vocational Rehabilitation Services. I was stationed in a computer lab, in some office building, and worked at entering info from business cards into a computer data bank. And, simply put, I did GREAT. I did the job with energy, precision and satisfaction. My supervisor Stephanie Davis was even more impressed with myself than I was. It was such bliss to have someone of her status impressed with me and the job I had done. But even better than that was the knowledge that I possessed a genuine talent for something that was in demand, something that could support me financially, something that others depended on and required me to perform and afterwards bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. I'm an office administrative assistant now but more importantly I can say I'm an adult. I am proud.

I was struck with my ability to stay awake, for one, and to fixate on the task at hand with no real trouble. I have the ability to go on autopilot while reading and typing and my mind wanders far and wide while I complete my work. Furthermore the act of doing a job I enjoy brings all sorts of different parts of myself to the surface. I began to realize how much I rejoiced in my masculine sense of self-confidence and how much I loved the dreamy summer. Being in that computer/office environment reminded me of my youth wandering around the campus of St. Micheal's in Burlington, Vermont in the summers of the early to mid 1990s. My mom and dad both worked there at one point and sometimes I was there for summer camp and other times just to tag along. The grown-up environment of mysterious classrooms and corridors and nooks and crannies and self-serve cafeterias with pizza and ice cream, and student lounges to play card games in (how grown up I felt!) and sunny lawns and shade under trees... I loved all of it. How much did I really learn about other people? Was I just looking for a backdrop for my imaginary "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan" games? Perhaps. But I did enjoy myself and we grow up you know.

Went grocery shopping with dad today. Like some ancient hunter-gather I wander through the wilderness of consumerism. To think people actually try to make art of this stuff. I wouldn't pay to study something I eat or wash myself with. I'll never buy a single popwork from Warhol. I remember dad would listen to his Walkman while washing the dishes in our condominium in Burlington, Vermont. I should remember the way he handled work. It might come in handy. But then they invented dishwashers and that kind of took the fun out of it. I take care of that department in her current home.

Nothing like a little Judy Garland to make a bad day into a perfect one. I blare her tunes from stereo speakers. I love her so much. I want her so much. The very sound of her voice lifts me up to a heavenly climax. It's strange but I've never been much for stargazing even when I lived in out in the country in Morrisville, Vermont and you could see a lot on a clear night. I was wrapped up in the hit film of the day Toy Story and formed all my imaginary games around it. We go through phases you know. In Kuwait the city lights blotted out the night sky but there was so much there to grab one's attention. I grew to love the city as it was represented there.

I feel I'm spending this summer in as good a way as it needs to be spent. Just relax and take it as it comes. That's the right way. I always enjoy a bright blue sunny sky and warmth and green grass. Still don't know anyone in the neighborhood but the place is good to me. I absorb it and it's a part of me forever.

I've been reading up on Western paintings of past centuries. I've been into classic art since I was a boy. I love contemplating fantastic uplifting realism. There's never enough time for one painting. I have an emotional need to surround myself with this stuff; the stuff of my European ancestors. Anything to make me feel; to make me love. Of course I like pretty young women even more, the ones right out of the old movies. I watch Judy Garland or Bette Davis act brilliantly in a comedy, drama or musical of Hollywood's Golden Age. It's a slice of another life it is. Then in a dark moment when I'm alone I picture one of them and have them spend time with me and touch me: hug me, kiss me, and pat me on the back. And whisper to me as well through shimmering murmurings. Oh I do well with that sort of company I do. Pray continue, I need it badly.

I want badly to talk more with mom and dad but it's so hard. I dread it. Nothing to say and so scared of it. I'm 23 and in complete awe of my parents. I can listen to them and like it and the renovations they've been doing with the house are fascinating for a curious lad such as me. The slightest change to my environment makes everything seem so much more open and exciting.

An outing with my parents is always a highlight. In some ways the family dynamic has remained consistent for many years. We went to a place we've been to countless times before; a neighborhood diner. I got a sandwich. Not an adventurous eater, I. It's often a sandwich of some sort. But I know what I like. I don't want eating to be an adventure, like battling all odds to trek across the Sahara in the blazing heat (though I do enjoy a good dessert now and then). Eating is about comfort where I'm concerned and above all comfort is about the familiar. I had a root beer too. Kuwait was where I discovered soda as well as other aspects of American consumer culture. Late 1990s Cartoon Network, with its mostly Hanna-Barbara entourage, was big over there. You learn something new every day though rarely something worth knowing. This is more like the post-information age.

I recently find myself fixating, as I so often do, on a particular problem or phenomenon. Now it's the Tintin comic book adventure "Flight 714". It's depiction of air travel captivated me long before I experienced the real thing and it's "ancient astronauts" theme was something that caught my fancy. I developed quite a fixation on the paranormal as a child. Some of it's still left. I like studying each comic panel and appreciating the touches that make it a work of art. I like trying out the human expressions and poses that the different characters demonstrate. And I simply adore Herge's written dialogue. When I come across a line I like I play it again and again in my head to discover what essence of it I appreciate.

The main event this summer has been my driving lessons with mother. A combination of flashcards and textbook questionnaires have constituted the bulk of the venture. I hope to pass a test either this month or the next and begin to actually learn the ends and outs of operating a car, to get my hands dirty so to speak. She already has the perfect driving instructor picked out. Mother thinks of everything you know. The ambition and drive she received from her German ancestors has made every task she undertakes a study in stern efficiency for as long as I can remember. She seems quite addicted to work and lost without it. But it all doesn't quite conceal her heart of gold.

Xander drove me us both to a sandwich shop for dinner. HE already knows how to drive. If I could drive would it make life any easier? Would I know where to go?

Have really gotten into Jack London lately. I read as much as I can of the classics. Always seeking to improve myself.

Egypt Trip: March 1999

I'd been fascinated with ancient Egypt since I was a little boy. My parents had supplied the history books out of their desire to provide me with a cultured upbringing. But it was my decision to pour over them and it was my innate interest that pushed me on. I puzzle over what drew me to that ancient civilization. Perhaps it was simply a response to the superficial images of wonder that the mass media supplied: pyramids and mummies. I remember being interested in the process of mummification. This was intensified after visiting a Burlington museum early in my life. There was a empty mummy casket in the middle of the room I wandered into. I fixated on that casket. It wasn't so much a fascination with death. I was struck by the age of the thing. I knew little of history but I knew a vast mysterious expanse of time separated myself from the time that casket first saw the light of day. The museum had a musty smell to it; one I could only associate with the majesty of history. Later my parents and I watched a documentary in our tiny Vermont apartment. It invoked images of the dark recesses of Egyptian tombs and the inside of pyramids and I was haunted as I lay awake that night. I envisioned the Golden Mask of King Tut floating out a dark closet and hovering over me and my hair stood on end.

Well time passed and dreams became realities. I went from reading of Tintin's adventures traveling the world to having those adventures myself. In 1996 my family and I moved from Vermont to Kuwait after my parents got jobs as teachers at an international school in the Middle East. My world had truly expanded and I at last got the chance to visit Egypt. My parents were to attend a teachers conference there and my brother and I were to go along. Many other families we knew were going along: playmates who were students at our school and parents who were teachers.

We arrived in Cairo in March of 1999 and checked into the Semiramis InterContinental Hotel; a hotel I have forever after come to associate with the word "swanky." Think the 1932 movie "Grand Hotel." We lived like kings only a short distance from the resting places of actual kings. There was a fine dining hall for rich and decadent breakfasts, a private swimming pool and our favorite pleasure drug television. I watched some insipid American music videos that became special because I shared them with people I cared about.

The teachers conference was being sponsored by something called "Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools" (NESA). I never attended the actual conference though I was at the party given in NESA's honour. It was a gala affair with real whirling dervishes: men in elaborate Oriental costumes who spun themselves around wildly to music.

Egypt is a major tourist attraction and the place was certainly in the troughs of commercialism by the time I arrived. My mother and the various female teachers hit the shops immediately and I went along to some of them. The women's chief interest was gold and there was no shortage of that. As in Kuwait, Egypt's many little shops were great fun to behold. Unlike the sense of conformity found in Wal-Mart each Egyptian shop was unpredictable and extremely personalized according to owner. I felt like Howard Carter as I surveyed the jumbled assortment of exotic knick-knacks that crowded the shelves. I eventually got a personalized souvenir: a framed scroll that had my name in hieroglyphs.

I got to see more exotic knick-knacks at the Cairo Museum. I passed through whole roomfuls of artifacts that occupied every niche of ancient life. It was a lot to take in. There's never enough time to spend in a museum. However, I was happy to eventually come face to face with the Golden Mask of King Tut enclosed in glass. No fear now; just contentment at familiarity.

I suppose the climax of any tourists' excursion is a glimpse of Egypt's ruins. We, after all, were tourists after teachers and students. We all rode out in a bus and soon were standing out in the sands of the desert in the heat with the sunny blue sky overhead and the pyramids before us. I knew a dream had been realized. The pyramids are some of the most familiar images from all of ancient history existing as the old houses of Boston: firm, proud, resisting the new. Yet the pyramids are like a Monet painting; once you move in for a much closer look the grandeur of the thing is gone to be replaced by odd and disappointing clutter. Monet's fantastic paintings look like ordinary blobs and blotches of paint up close. Likewise Egypt's pyramids are mere masses of chunky stone when one stands at the foot and looks up. A sense of proportion is lost. No doubt they'd look better with the smooth, fancy outer covering they once had. But that material was eventually needed for mosques.

And so it went like clockwork. First the pyramids then the ruins at Karnak, the Temple of Hatshepsut at Luxor, and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Everywhere I went there was grandeur, columns, statues and hieroglyph carvings. King Tut's tomb was on the route too though it would no doubt have looked better with all it's treasures left intact. Having survived the tomb robbers of centuries past they had at last been carted away by men of a somewhat nobler station, at least in theory. My father was an ancient history teacher and I knew all about Howard Carter in the Roaring Twenties. Come nightfall there was a massive party near the Sphnix complete with a hammy narration and laser light show. History lessons need not be so dramatic.

This trip came complete with a cruise down the Nile in a ship. After we were through with Cairo we boarded and set sail. The ship had a disco and a hot-tub but these were mild trivialities in comparison to siting on deck and seeing the countryside glide past. We eventually arrived in Aswan and after visits to the Edfu and Philae temples, the feluccas, granite quarries and a dam the whole affair wound down and soon we were boarding the plane for Kuwait.

I like to think I took from Egypt some essence and romance of the place that will remain with me always. Perhaps they will always be superficial images of wonder but at least I've seen them in person. The Egyptians, like other Arabs, have a penchant for generosity and hospitality and storekeepers loved to have Westerners visit them. They were also keen on bargaining. They would shout advertisements from the streets as they had done for centuries. I wouldn't rank their efficiency very high but they at least have heart in what they do.

My social worker Donna is quite a remarkable person. She's become a true friend though for all I know it may just be part of the job. She's of mixed African-American and Native-American ancestry and is of a jolly and affectionate demeanor; loud yet easygoing. She's obviously intelligent and knowledgeable about the sort of subjects I like discussing. All in all it makes for refreshing conversation.

She likes taking me on outings into the larger community and yesterday she took me to a coffee house meeting. That's what it was advertised as anyway. I had expected it to be some beatnik enclave with poetry recitals and folk music. Instead it turned out to be located in a Christian church. It was quite unnerving. The people were like creepy abstractions from an Albert Camus novel. Either they had Down Syndrome or they were ultra-goody goody; worse than the Mormons I've met in Utah. Religion had explained the world to them in soothing terms and there was no need for them to know or experience anything else.

I've never been religious. My parents have been totally uninterested in it for as long as I can remember and I followed suit. Christianity, with its love-your-neighbor/everybody's equal message, has certainly contributed to the stupefying liberal environment the West now finds itself in.

We left the Christian coffee house quickly and Donna took me out to Mimi's for us to eat and chat. Now that was an outing.