I'm sitting at my computer listening to Bach; the harpsichord triples in minors, the violin purrs a story that's filled with despair, but balanced the one against the other, there's the feeling that I often get from Bach -- that life is sad but valuable, lonely but worthwhile in spite of, or perhaps because of, that loneliness.

I remember what Thornton said to me still, when I broke up with Jon and was in utter agony and whined and whined to him: he said that he didn't have time to talk to me because I was melancholy, that he didn't have time for people who have negative attitudes. That really struck me to the core. Of course it was mean and shallow of him to say that, and of course I hurt his friend, so I could expect no sympathy, but it reminds me of the things J.D. used to tell me -- and they're both of them older men, although Thornton is about 20 years JD's senior.

Is it really possible to control your happiness? Can you just decide to dawn or brighten up, like a light-bulb, at the flick of a switch? Sometimes, I'll admit, I treasure my melancholy, even though I rarely enjoy it -- because that's the life that I know, and it's hard to imagine anything else. I try to change my perspective, I try to be more social with people; lately I've been greeting people on the Trimet bus system, striking up conversations, and bidding good-day to random people I see on the street -- but sometimes I'm just sad, and more, I'm lonely. I feel like people expect me to be happy or go away, and that just doesn't seem fair. There's a certain morality in happiness, tenuous and tricky, but I think we expect our peers to be happy; we do, like Thornton, instinctively shy away from the whiners, the self-pitiers, and I'm not sure if that's merited or if it's a crime.

I still miss Jon. I don't miss anything about him particularly; he smoked pot all the time, he never had anything interesting to talk about -- but at the same time he was sweet and he was a boyfriend. He was interested in me. Or I felt he was interested in me; but to meet someone and be "together" with them but a week after...although to be fair, he dumped me. Still, it reminds me of Hamlet's quip to Horatio, 'the funeral meats did but coldly furnish forth the wedding tables'. Now he has a new boyfriend, and I'm alone. I feel like I deserve it; as if this is my punishment for breaking up with him -- and at the same time, I don't understand why I'm the one who has to suffer. Brannian tells me that's the way life works. There's no reason in it, no intricate meaning, no "karma" -- it just is. Shit happens. Still, when I broke up with him (at his birthday party no less), I remember feeling awful; I remember crying to the sky for a lightning bolt, for some kind of a punishment; I felt so guilty -- and I couldn't believe that I could do something so awful without suffering for it. But suffer I did, and I still am. Yet it was right. Ultimately, it was the right thing to do.

I finished Virgil's fifth eclogue today, the commentaries, and started on the sixth. I need to begin reviewing my Greek for classes next year, too; but I always shy away from it -- it's harder to use the Greek dictionary. There's also this business of mistakes: I have no way of knowing that I'm not making tons of mistakes as I parse through Virgil and Lysias...but I suppose even if I got one thing wrong and one thing right in every sentence, the true knowledge would augment and the false examples, in insolation, would eventually correct themselves when set against the larger store of evidence. Learning a language is a bit like excavating -- the more you unearth, the better a feel you get for the thing you're investigating; a single block of stone or a fragment of a pot isn't going to get you anywhere, but everything together tells a story, assembles into a coherent whole. Alex the archaeologist! Ha!

I went to a jazz festival tonight. It was five dollars to get in. I was a bit grudging to pay the five dollars -- I don't know why; I'm such a cheapskate. It was for a good cause, too: feeding the hungry. Still, all these philanthropic ideals -- I can't help but feel skeptical. I mean, feeding the hungry isn't going to solve things; it isn't going to somehow make life meaningful. There will only be more hunger; they beggars will reproduce, population will increase...from a biological standpoint, providing resources to the hungry doesn't seem like it will help things. And sometimes, sadly, I'm very much a biologist.

There were Christians outside of the fair trying to convert people. I was in a very bad mood; maybe it was because I'd just been reading the (highly inaccurate) War for God at a bookstore, but I just became so infuriated. I pushed my way through them and when one of them asked, "Have you heard the Gospel?" I said, "No, but I know when it was written," and walked on. I wanted to say, "I probably know the Gospel better than you do," or ask a million questions or start arguing. But Thornton said something else, "You aren't going to convert them and they aren't going to convert you." How these ghosts haunt me!

Ben is dating someone now, too. Well, I'm still single. If I'm single forever (which is a far way to predict from twenty) then I suppose I'd better get used to it; and take some small consolation in the fact that there are many other single people and the idea that there's much besides to do. Like memorize poems. Or dance. Tonight, outside, with a crowd of adults, some alone, or married, some young, others well into their sixties, I danced to accordion jazz. The Wilamette River flowed on by us, customers at restaurants ate their dinners, and a youth, poet and scholar, for once forgot his choler and moved to the inane beats of the herd. Maybe happiness is a choice after all.