My cat bites me.

I've loved people like that sometimes: what else is there to do but bite you to remind you I would eat you, overwhelm you and swallow you whole, and have of you what I want in me, and then you could not leave the house on days like this, unless I did.

But I must leave the house, kitty, though you don't suffer my long days at the office well.

When Frank was here he asked me: do you suffer? He said: I've given it up. I don't think it gets you a thing. I said: I don't know. I'm looking for a quieter place. --Both of us speaking as if there is a habit to quit, a lifestyle, a fix, both nodding as if we are saying something wise and attainable.

The P&S course makes me nervous now. I've thought my way through it, but I've avoided thinking about my relationship to the material. What am I teaching? That suffering is necessary, pleasurable, empowering? That suffering is a choice? That beauty is a choice, is sublimation, is another form of repression, is trauma, is not trauma?

The class is full already, and overwhelmingly full of women, which somehow though I'm not surprised, I hadn't anticipated. --Precisely the kind of blind spot that makes me nervous about this course.

--What I'm not seeing.

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Oh, I really am very sad about Alberto. I missed his last post before it disappeared, so I don't know what's happening, but I know I will miss hearing from him and miss reading his posts. Alberto, thank you for your sincerity and generosity. Querencia.